Holism

Here Edmund expounds on holistic management principles as defined by Allan Savory. He finds that Savory's focus on the whole is a concept mirrored everywhere in Swedenborg's writings. These guidelines are as applicable to a farmer managing the natural resources around him as they are to an individual navigating his spiritual life. -Editor

Over the last year I've been studying the principles of Holistic Management as developed and described by Allan Savory. Savory's background was as a scientist and park ranger in the African bush. He developed a system of land management that has successfully reversed desertification, improved water availability, increased livestock and game populations, and helped stabilize unsettled human groups by improving their economic opportunities. Holistic Management centers on the development of a holistic goal and then using seven questions to test decisions, large or small, prior to instituting change.

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Land Ethic 6: New Church Arguments

  Faced with the huge, daunting ecological challenges our technological society has created, what is an appropriate Christian response?  More specifically, do the Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg justify developing an intimate relationship with the land that supports us a la “The Land Ethic” so eloquently envisioned by Aldo Leopold? Is a land ethic compatible with New Church doctrine? The short answer is yes, but the reasons for acting, the motives one brings into play, must be different than those proposed by Leopold. Where Leopold saw humans as a product of evolution we should see God’s providence. Leopold would have us love nature because we are part of it, but as I read the Writings we should love nature for its uses and for the fact that God created it. Swedenborg writes that nature does not exist in its own right. “All this shows how sensually people are thinking when they say that nature exists in its own right, how reliant they are on their physical sense and their darkness in matters of spirit.” (DLW #46) The gentle determinism and view of man as ‘merely’ a citizen in a much bigger world is incompatible with the Writings of the New Church. Two numbers make this point quite clear,

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Land Ethic 5: Theological Arguments

There are three broad interpretations of the Bible accepted in Christian circles these days, dominion, stewardship, and citizenship ethics. The dominion ethic holds that people were created in the image of God and granted mastery over nature to do with it as we please, negative side-effects on exploited ecosystems are of no importance because only heaven matters. The stewardship ethic reads the Bible differently. It finds support for a belief that man is the reason for creation, but that must keep the world we have been entrusted a beautiful life sustaining gem, which we should use but not exploit. Lastly there is the citizen ethic that claims we are merely citizens in a natural world. All of God’s creation is equal in His eyes. Across these three schools of thought there is a gradation of spirit-body dualism from absolute in the dominion ethic to only the slightest trace of dualism in the citizenship ethic. The dualistic attitude toward nature inculcated in Genesis is often blamed for many of our environmental problems. If we are to have dominion over the world and subdue it, then we will do with it as we please, and the Hebrew word, ‘subdue’ has a harsh militaristic sense to it. Reading that passage literally we were enjoined by God to wage war on the surrounding environment, to wrest a living from it. (Black, 37) This is the dominion worldview that Lynn White Jr. attacked vigorously.

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Land Ethic 4: Intrinsic Value Arguments

Next we come to the topic of intrinsic value. It is here that the Land Ethic truly makes its case. Intrinsic value arguments are made under many different names and assumptions, from the deterministic ‘biophilia’ of E.O. Wilson, to Naess’s ‘Deep Ecology’, and to Callicott and Gorke’s ‘Holism’. The common ground they share is the belief that humankind is a small part of a larger world, a dispensable part, and that life would go on fine without humans around. The first of eight points to the deep ecology platform is that, “the flourishing of human and non-human life on Earth has intrinsic value. The value of non-human life forms is independent of the usefulness these may have for narrow human purposes.” Arne Naess, Ecology, Community and Lifestyle, Cambridge, 1989, CUP, p.29 In developing the idea of a land ethic Leopold had much more than the economic value of nature to humans in mind. He used instrumental arguments since they are generally common ground for all people. He used economic rationale to support the stances he took, but more often than not he writes of the sacrifices required to have a true land ethic, and the main thrust of his essays are for the development of a relationship with the land, a valuing of it for what it is, not simply for what it can provide. He writes that, “It is inconceivable to me that an ethical relation to land can exist without love, respect, and admiration for land, and a high regard for its value. By value I of course mean something far broader than mere economic value; I mean value in the philosophical sense.” ( Leopold,223) “We can be ethical only in relation to something we can see, feel, understand, love, or otherwise have faith in.” (Leopold, 214) Clearly Leopold thought that the land ethic must grow out of a ‘love’ for the natural world.

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Land Ethic 3: Utilitarian Arguments

Utilitarian arguments for the development of environmental ethics make much of the statistics and about the state of the world, but they take the moral sphere and extend it beyond anthropocentrism to all sentient creatures. Very simply put, utilitarianism equates happiness with goodness, but since happiness is so subjective and difficult to measure their focus ends up falling on the alleviation of suffering. Peter Singer is a modern ethicist who has written extensively on the world-view. His ethic extends to all sentient creatures, anything that increases happiness or pleasure is ‘right’, anything that causes suffering is ‘wrong’. This is good so far as it goes. What sane person would actively desire another’s needless pain or suffering that is not for the greater good? Weaknesses in the utilitarian arguments become obvious when extended to the environment. Singer uses a wooded valley with hydropower potential as an example or case study of why ethics are important. Flooding the valley would cause the displacement and subsequent death, therefore suffering, of many sentient creatures. He does not address why the death and suffering imposed by a dam is worse than that imposed by mother nature as a rule of her regular workings. Also, using this logic, if over the long term it could be shown that a greater amount of ‘happiness’ would result from the construction than the ‘suffering’ it would cause, then there would be a moral imperative to build the dam.

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Land Ethic 2: Instrumental Arguments

Faced with the huge, daunting ecological challenges our technological society has created, what is an appropriate Christian response?  More specifically, do the Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg justify developing an intimate relationship with the land that supports us a la “The Land Ethic” so eloquently envisioned by Aldo Leopold?      Starting at the most external level is the economic set of arguments used to promote a land ethic.  They are called instrumental arguments because they value nature’s use to mankind as a source of products such as coal, wood, food – a source of all basic necessities.  Nature (land) is seen as having instrumental value to man as a means of meeting his needs, both material and aesthetic.  The instrumental arguments used suppose that human life is good and that future human life is desirable.  Therefore it is wrong to imperil human life by irreparably damaging the natural world that supports it. The philosopher Holmes Rolston points out that this is “an ethic that is secondarily ecological”. (Rolston, 13, Wild)  He goes on to show that the laws of health are non-moral but we break them to our own detriment.  Therefore most people impose an “antecedent moral ought,” which in the case of health is “you ought not harm yourself”.  By extension then you, “ought to preserve human life” is the antecedent moral ought to the “moral imperative” of conservation and preservation of land. (Rolston, 13-16, Wild)

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