Begining an Idea of Anthropocentric Holism

What in nature warrants our moral consideration and what does not? How do we balance our dependence on the natural world and the respect that we seem to believe it deserves? There are questions concerning what aspects of nature must be taken into consideration and what aspects do not. It may seem evident that any sentient being, at least, is deserving of moral consideration and that there is no need to stretch our ethical standards beyond creatures that can feel pain or have some notion of what life is. An environmental ethics discussion should not necessarily begin with trying to decide what has intrinsic value or what should be afforded moral consideration. We do not need to think of everything in the world being either valuable or not. It is all part of the natural world. Therefore instead of categorizing what is in the natural world, we should just attempt to follow ethics that will protect the world as a whole. Aldo Leopold had a holistic perspective of environmental ethics. It is through an idea of holism that I am going to attempt to show that everything is one working system and that it should all be taken care, if we must think of moral considerations then we should just think of the world as a whole system in need of moral consideration.
Seeing as I am a person and will be writing for other people, I am going to take the Andrew Light approach to writing about environmental ethics – that is I will look at things in an anthropocentric light. I will look at human activities and the way they affect the environment and how if people accept a holistic perspective then the damage we do to the earth may be reduced. Perhaps we can call this anthropocentric holism, even if that may seem like an oxymoron at face value.
It has been argued by Peter Singer that it would be enough to extend our current moral values to include all sentient beings. He claims that by doing this, and having a deeper concern for future generations, we would see that it is in the best interest of all sentient beings and all future generations to preserve certain aspects of nature. This standpoint relies on the assumption that future generations will appreciate nature the way we do. It also relies on our current ethical standards.
Forming a system of moral values based on our current values won’t do, as Don Marietta points out in his book For People and the Planet, many current environmental philosophers do not see an extension of current ethics suitable for the situation we are in. There must be a kind of over haul and rethinking of ethics, not as we know them, but a complete rewrite from scratch, if that is possible.
Aldo Leopold suggests a new way of thinking about the environment and our relationship to the natural world. He calls for a holistic perspective on the biosphere, which he describes as a complex system that is misunderstood by society. He describes the world as circuits of energy or a land community. The idea of a community immediately brings with it ideas of union, dependence and a balance of give and take. We have community watches to keep our neighborhoods safe, community fairs to bring us together and share a good time and community meetings to help figure out what needs to be done to better the community. All of these ideas of helping the community stop where humanity stops. Sometimes these community meetings may decide to have a “community clean up the park day” which is a lot like what Singer calls for in that it cares for the environment but only in so far as people are considered and will benefit from the aesthetic pleasures of going to a clean park. Leopold suggests that we have to include the park and nature as a whole as part of our community and take care of it for its own sake.
In important part of the community is the idea of balance between giving and taking. For example we give time and money (in the form or physical volunteering to clean parks and taxes) in order to have a park for all members of our community to use. If we expand our community to include the environment we should be able to find a workable system of give and take. If we need to build a house, we can cut down the necessary trees for the lumber, but then we should have to replant them. We should also only take what is absolutely necessary. The man who hunts for sport is certainly participating in a questionable activity, but the person who hunts for food, like African tribesmen, is doing only what is essential for him to live, the same way the animal he kills would have killed another animal in order to live.
In an earlier draft I proposed an idea that what is best for one aspect of the community is best for the community at large. It was brought to my attention that this can’t really be true. Like the tribesman who kills an animal for food, that is good for the mans family, but clearly bad for the animal. Or, for example (to keep consistent with anthropocentrism) a tax on every resident of a school district that pays for a high school basketball team does not seem fair for the resident whose child wants to participate in theater or oil painting. There would clearly be conflictions in what is best for anybody. However, the example used was what is best for humans may not be best for mosquitoes. I want to elaborate on this idea for the next paragraph or so.
At face value, this seems credible. Certainly we can use pesticides (as we do) that are air born and called “adulticides” to kill living adult mosquitoes that carry West Nile Virus. We also have the option of putting pesticides in water to kill the larvae.
Pesticides that kill mosquitoes appear good for humans and bad for mosquitoes, especially the somewhat innocent ones that carry no disease. However, according to a report released in August 2002 by the Citizens Campaign for the Environment and The Citizens Environmental Research Institute, most, if not all of the pesticides currently being used in New York are harmful to humans and other species of animals. Pesticides such as Scourge, Anvil, Permethrin and Malathion have been linked to cancer and nervous system problems in humans as well as increased asthma cases and allergic reactions. Other aquatic pesticides kill or make ill aquatic animals, perhaps the very ones we will eventually eat.
This pesticide issue should show that sometimes what is good for humans and bad for mosquitoes is in fact bad for both. I do not mean to advocate for letting mosquitoes run rampant, surely they annoy me all summer as much as the next person, but this idea that what is good for one and bad for the other may have unforeseen consequences.
You may say that this does not answer the idea that there are still conflicts. It just shows that there is a negative affect for humans by the use of pesticides. Sure. However, if we were to not bother trying to kill all the mosquitoes in the world (certainly holism would tell us to leave the mosquitoes alone), perhaps the rate of cancer would not be continuously increasing.
There are other, perhaps more obvious, reasons to consider adopting a holistic perspective as well. These include industrial farming, automobiles and the extinction (or near extinction) of wolves in Yellowstone Park.
Industrial farming is exploitative of both land and animals. We over farm what was fertile land in the Mid West to grow corn to feed cows in CAFOs also in the Mid West, which are then transported across the country and across the world. Michael Pollan details the amount of fossil fuels used by industrial farming, from the transportation of it, right down the fuel used to make nitrogen which farmers fertilize their fields with. This practice affects the animals and land involved the atmosphere and the quality of food on our plates. We now eat meat that has been grown far too quickly thanks to hormones and grown on the sweet sugars of corn which should have been grasses that would have been digested slowly in the bovine seven stomachs. Instead the cows suffer stomach aches due to the production of acids that are not needed to digest the simple sugars of the corn meal they are fed.
Automobiles are a pretty simple example compared to industrial farming. We make cars that are not fuel efficient and we buy new ones every three or four years. This is killing the atmosphere sucking dry whatever oil reserves there are left and creating much more waste than there should be. Where do the parts of a car go when we are done with it? Sure some of it is reused in next years model, but first we must melt the metal (using fossil fuels) and the rest, all the plastic, is most likely thrown in a hole in the ground or seen floating in the wasteland recently discovered in the Pacific Ocean.
The example of gray wolves being hunted to extinction in Yellowstone Park may be the easiest way to see how human actions have affects on many parts of the natural environment. Humans hunted wolves because the wolves wreaked havoc on cattle ranchers. The extinction of wolves then seemed like a fine idea for the economic and business practices of the ranchers. However when the wolf population disappeared, the elk population sky rocketed because wolves are the main predator in the area. That led to a drastic decrease, almost extinction, in vegetation life near rivers and creeks because there were more elk eating the plants. When wolves were reintroduced to the habitat a few years ago, scientists observed an increase in vegetation in the areas where certain ferns had almost gone extinct.
The problem now is that we see all of these activities from an economic point of view, a very parochial form of anthropocentrism. If we want to continue being able to farm and travel and look at the wonders of Yellowstone Park, we have to consider them all a part of our world community. It is not much different than talking about other nation’s people being a part of our world community. We do not say people in one place should be morally considered because they can read and write and therefore know whether they are being taken into account. We simply accept all people from all nations as people, part of our world community.
It is hard to make an argument to prove that all life forms have their own intrinsic value and therefore should be cultivated and cared for. That is why holism should be adopted as a new societal perspective. If we all saw the biosphere as one large, complex system, we would see the importance of trying to maintain “stability of the ecosphere.” (Marietta, pp. 47)
There is still the issue that to live here as humans, we are going to need to use some resources, we will always need shelter, transportation and farming. So when is it alright to use these resources? Can we use them without really harming the natural world?
Certainly we can. If we adopt small farming practices, like so many “Eat Local” campaigns are trying to do or invest in new more fuel efficient modes of travel, and travel only when we need to.
Peter Singer may claim that raising cows for food is altogether wrong and should not be done even if we are treating them right. I think the idea of giving and taking as a community would support the idea of farming. It is not exploitation, it is use. In return for the use of animals and the rest of the natural world, we have to give respect to the land. We have to cultivate the forest by letting them grow naturally and by not over hunting or over farming. Holism and accepting that we are all part of the same system is the first step toward real results that will allow humans to live at least similarly to the way we live now and allow the natural world to flourish as it should.

-the colonel