The Norwegian Roots of Deep Ecology / Edited by Peter Reed and David Rothenberg
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WISDOM IN THE OPEN AIR Peter Reed, 1961-1987 THAE NORWEGIAN ROOTS OF DEEP ECOLOGY WISDOM IN THE OPEN AIR EDITED BY PETER REED DAVID ROTHENBERG UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA PRESS MINNEAPOLIS LONDON Copyright 1993 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota Peter Wessel Zapffe, "Den sidste Messias" was first published in Janus, no. 9 (1933): 645-65; translation by Sigmund Kval0y with Peter Reed; reprinted by permission. "Farvel Norge" was first published in Norsk Tindeklubbens jubileumsbok (The Norwegian Mountain Club's jubilee book), 1958; translation by Peter Reed; reprinted by permission. "Epilogue?" is from Jeg velger sannheten ( I choose truth) (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1983), pp. 96-99; "Vuggesang" (Lullaby) is from Peter Wessel Zapffe: Utvalg og innledning (Selections and introduction) (Oslo: Pax Forlag, 1969), pp. 101-2; translations by David Rothenberg with the assistance of Esben Leifsen; reprinted by permission. "Intrinsic Value: Will the Defenders of Nature Please Rise" was the keynote address at the Second International Conference on Conservation Biology, University of Michigan, May 1985, and was first published in Conservation Biology: The Science of Scarcity and Diversity, ed. Michael Soule (Sunderland, Mass.: Sinauer Associates, 1985); reprinted by permission. "Complexity and Time: Breaking the Pyramid's Reign" is a revised version, specifically authorized by Sigmund Kval0y, of the E. F. Schumacher Lecture given at Bristol University, 1983, and published in Resurgence, no. 106 (September-October 1984): 12-21; reprinted by permission. "The Way of Two- ness" is a composite of several sections from the novel Dynamis (Oslo: Aschehoug, 1982), selected and translated by David Rothenberg in collaboration with Finn Alnses; reprinted by permission. "The Future in Our Hands: Its Conceptions, Aims, and Strategies" is based on a lecture inaugurating an FIOH movement in Britain in 1982; reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Published by the University of Minnesota Press 2037 University Avenue Southeast, Minneapolis, MN 55414 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wisdom in the open air : the Norwegian roots of deep ecology / edited by Peter Reed and David Rothenberg. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8166-2150-0 (alk. paper). - ISBN 0-8166-2182-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Deep ecology —Norway. 2. Human ecology — Philosophy. 3. Philosophy of nature. I. Reed, Peter, d. 1987. II. Rothenberg, David, 1962- . GF50.W57 1993 363.7'009481-dc20 92-5811 CIP The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer. Contents Preface vii 1. Introduction: Deep Ecology from Summit to Blockade 1 2. Peter Wessel Zapffe 37 The Last Messiah 40 Farewell, Norway 52 Poems 59 3. Arne Naess 65 Intrinsic Value: Will the Defenders of Nature Please Rise 70 The Politics of the Deep Ecology Movement 82 Everything Really Important Is Dangerous 99 4. Sigmund Kvaløy 113 Complexity and Time: Breaking the Pyramid's Reign 116 Getting Our Feet Wet 147 5. NilsFaarlund 155 A Way Home 157 Touch the Earth 169 v vi CONTENTS 6. Finn Alnaes 177 The Way of Two-ness 180 7. Johan Galtung 193 Development Theory: Notes on an Alternative Approach 196 8. Erik Dammann and The Future in Our Hands 211 The Future in Our Hands: Its Conceptions, Aims, and Strategies 215 9. Conclusion: Deep Ecology as a Force for Change 229 Notes 241 Selected Bibliography 249 Index 253 Preface Peter Reed and I both found ourselves attracted to Norway at the same time in our lives, just after graduation from college in the United States. Here was a land with deep, dark fjords and shining mountains, home to a uniquely philosophical kind of environmentalism that we had both heard fragments of back home. Why Norway? What were they up to in this idealistic northern land that might be of interest to the rest of the world? People told us we were crazy when we got there. "What?" they laughed. "Norwegians don't care any more about nature than anyone else. It's just that there are fewer of us." But outsiders can always concoct particular visions of the countries they visit, where they see what they want to see, and write down what they think reflects the essence of the foreign land. Sometimes this picture is sharper than the one seen from inside its borders, even if it might not always be true to life. Soon after we began to learn Norwegian we conceived of this rather ambitious project—collecting the writings of the various native philoso- phers of nature, translating them if necessary, to present a vision of why this particular country has developed a particularly thoughtful strain of environmentalism. It has only been over the last five years that this kind of thinking has become generally known as "deep ecology." Though this is a term that vii viii PREFACE has been interpreted in many different directions, this collection of read- ings should help to establish what kind of place it came from. Norway remains a land that alternates between dark and light, from beauty to despair. It can be a dangerous place if you do not know where to go. In the midst of work on this project, Peter Reed died under an ava- lanche in the Jotunheimen mountains in the spring of 1987. All who knew him were devastated by the loss of so energetic and promising a thinker. What can one do after losing someone who would have been close by for many years, on the same path, bushwhacking through a wil- derness of ideas? When I heard of this tragedy I wrote the following lines to our friend and collaborator, Esben Leifsen: To Peter: "the blue mountains are constantly walking" —Dogen and the ice dissolves you as you hide in your hair you knew the rocks and skies teach us, of what we cannot speak we will not use useless words — but we will not stop we will not go away from here, into the dark for the snow is dark — it falls light, but can crush us as light can blind: as fright can . (and do not doubt that the mountains do walk and the Earth itself is change) All our ecologies are less deep without him. PREFACE ix Thanks to everyone who helped us. All the authors whose works we have included, and Ola Glesne, Dag Hjelle, Gunvor Berge, Tore Braend, Chris Butters, Manhar Patel, Jan Borring, Paul Hofseth, Sven Erik SkJ0n- berg, Randi Viberg, Britt Hveem, Hermod Haug, Dag Polyszinski, Olav Benestad, Vanja, Astrid, Jennifer, Solveg, Bard, Ulv, the Blokksberg crowd, Gabrielle, Carol, Jill, June, Ane, Bendik, Esben, Barbro, Abha, Anja, Kristin, Leen, Thale, and everyone else. Thanks to Jorn Siljeholm for checking to see if the manuscript is up to date, and for carting things back and forth from Boston to Oslo. I am grateful to Barbara Coffin at the University of Minnesota Press for renewing my interest in this project, and to Ole Rikard Hoisaether at Grandahl-Dreyers Forlag for help in lo- cating illustrations. Thanks also to Doug Tompkins and the Ira-Hiti Foundation for providing a grant to fund the completion of this work. I hope someone out there will benefit from what we went to the arctic spaces to find. It was not always an easy trip. David Rothenberg Cambridge, Massachusetts June 1992 Solen (The Sun, Edvard Munch) Chapter 1 Introduction: Deep Ecology from Summit to Blockade What is deep ecology? Put simply and broadly, it is the belief that today's environmental problems are symptomatic of deeper problems in our so- ciety, and that this belief requires an effort to solve these fundamental problems, not just retrofitting our current practices to be in line with en- vironmentally correct mores. It means, for example, that we should not stop with the building of more fuel-efficient automobiles, but question whether we need to be so dependent on these machines at all, and devise a society that would not need so many of them. It means not only developing methods of sustain- able forestry, but recognizing that some lands might be preserved for their own sake, giving nature value in itself, independent of human need. We would like to keep the definition as open as this, so that deep ecol- ogy involves real interrogation of the current way we use the Earth, of- fering up the possibility that the world might be appreciated apart from what we can humanly enjoy of it. It begins as a reaction against our cur- rent path, and proceeds by asking us to pay attention to the richness and diversity of the land in all its forms. The term "deep ecology" was coined by Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess in 1972. His use of the term and its gradual proliferation has been described many times before.1 When the word was introduced, its precise meaning was left very much up for grabs. Since then, it has been turned 1 2 INTRODUCTION and twisted in quite different directions. Much of the writing on this idea tends to retool it to apply to specifically normative, particularly radical visions of the human relationship with nature,2 or else decide that it properly belongs to those few thinkers who have devoted themselves to a philosophical refinement of the special terminology invented by Naess.3 But the words continue to have an evocative, popular appeal somewhat akin to the influence of "existentialism" in the fifties and sixties. And in this case, there is no use trying to artificially limit the meaning of the term through careful reading.