Origins of Deep Ecology

Bald eagle perched above nest
under a waxing gibbous moon

Romanticism emphasized emotion as a wellspring of aesthetic experience, particularly the awe felt in the presence of the sublimity of nature.

Tennyson's short poem The Eagle exemplifies the reverence of the Romantics.

The Eagle
Alfred, Lord Tennyson

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

Center of Nature

Poets and artists of the Romantic period (1800-1850) were attuned to the beauty of nature. Romantics viewed humans at the center of nature. From a contemporary perspective, the notion of humans at the center of nature seems ego-centric and naive, but should be seen in the context of the hierarchical mono-theistic dogma of the time.

At One With Nature

Poets and writers in the early 20th century connected natural beauty to metaphorical human organs.

“beauty is a light in the heart.”
― Kahlil Gibran

The mid 20th century began a cultural pivot from the center of nature to being at one with nature.

“As if you were on fire from within. The moon lives in the lining of your skin.”
― Pablo Neruda

Deep ecology is a contemporary philosophy that recognizes the complex inter-relationships of all living organisms. Deep ecology recognizes the consequences of human consumption as an existential threat to life on earth.

Existential Threat

The population decline of the bald eagle is the quintessential narrative connecting human activity to existential threats. The bald eagle population, estimated to be 3-5 hundred thousand eagles in the early 18th century, declined to 412 nesting pairs in by the 1950s.

The human-generated pesticide DDT interfered with calcium metabolism, making the bird sterile or making the female's eggs too brittle to withstand the weight of a brooding adult.

Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, published in 1962, documented the detrimental impact of indiscriminate use of DDT. Ten years later agricultural use of DDT was banned in the US.

"Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature -- the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter."
— Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

REFERENCES

• Deep Ecology, Wikipedia.
• The Eagle by Alfred Lord Tennyson: Summary & Analysis, study.com.

Cycle of Change

Wind-sculpted sandstone.
Wind Canyon, August 2012.

Many 19th century thinkers were attuned to earth's continuous cycle of change.

The recognition of geology as a field of study, and the growing acceptance of scientific inquiry as a foundation of critical thinking, emboldened poet laureate Alfred Tennyson to write of the solid earth:

"The hills are shadows and they flow
From form to form and nothing stands,
They melt like mists, the solid lands,
Like clouds they shape themselves and go."
— In Memoriam A.H.H, 1849.

"Like clouds they shape themselves and go" was a radical metaphor for the solid earth, previously believed to embody the static properties of terra firma. Ten years before the publication of Tennyson's poem, Charles Darwin wrote:

"Where on the face of the earth can we find a spot on which close investigation will not discover signs of that endless cycle of change, to which this earth has been, is, and will be subjected?"
— Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle, circa 1836.

Darwin recognized the transient nature of the very bedrock we stand on:

"Daily it is forced home on the mind of the geologist that nothing, not even the wind that blows, is so unstable as the level of the crust of this earth."
— Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle, circa 1836.

By 1869, John Muir had used the metaphor of ancient religious texts when describing the manuscripts of evidence revealed by the solid earth processes of glaciation, erosion, deposition and transport (see My First Summer in the Sierra). By contemplating clues left behind over geologic time, we recognize how scale shapes the change we notice and acknowledge.

In surprising ways, the cycle of change is etched in stone. On a geologic time-scale, etchings in stone, like the horizontal striations etched by a receding glacier, are as ephemeral as shoreline footprints in the sand.

REFERENCES

• In Memoriam A.H.H, a poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson, completed in 1849.
• The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin. Published in 1839.
• My First Summer in the Sierra by John Muir published in 1911 about the summer of 1869.