Alternative Human Suicide

KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab 1NC (1/3)

The environment is not solely the Earth; it encompasses outer space

Bhutia 10 (WANGCHEN RIGZIN BHUTIA [West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences],“Protection of the Outer Space Environment”; March 17, 2010. http://jurisonline.in/2010/03/protection-of-the-outer-space-environment/)

The first thing that comes to a person when one talk about ‘environment’ is the land we live on and the water we drink or the air we breathe. The value of these resources has only been considered in the context of human beings and their activity. Therefore there have been many environmental regulations focusing on the prevention of direct damage to the human interest and not on the prevention of the damage to the environment so to speak. Therefore there are much legislation on matters such as toxic wastes, clean air and water and so on. Protection of the sparsely populated environments, for instance the Antarctica, has only been recently area of legislations. This recent trend is one indication of the movement towards a broader long term view of human interests and a wider understanding of the term ‘environment’. However, the ‘environment’ is in reality surrounded by a much larger environment of outer space the importance of which is growing due to the stupendous growth in science and technology. The interrelationship of different aspect of the Earths environment becomes much clearer by placing the earth in a broader context. As we have seen, there has been a rapid development in the space technology especially after the historic day when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik-I into the orbit. This achievement marked the opening of a new territory, full of vast resources and exciting opportunities. A new era began in the life of mankind known as ‘the space age’ which changed ideas, science, communication and the life itself.The technological advances, such as weather satellites, are increasingly making outer space a part of our everyday lives and, therefore, our environment.

1 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab 1NC (2/3)

Even if you recognize the problem, you’re complicit

Kochi 8 (Tarik is a lecturer in the school of Law, Queen’s University, Belfast, Northern Ireland, “An Argument for the Global Suicide of Humanity,” December 2008, Vol. 7 No. 3, www.borderlands.net,au, http://www.borderlands.net.au/vol7no3_2008/kochiordan_argument.pdf)

The question here is open. Could a modern discourse of reflection, responsibility and action be strong enough to fundamentally re-orientate the relationship between humans and other species and the natural environment? If so, then maybe a truly revolutionary change in how humans, and specifically humans in the West, conceive of and interact with the natural world might be enough to counter environmental disaster and redeem humanity. Nonetheless, anything short of fundamental change – for instance, the transformation of borderlands modern, industrial society into something completely different – would merely perpetuate in a less exaggerated fashion the long process of human violence against the non- human world. What helps to render a certain type of action problematic is each individual’s ‘complicity’ in the practice of speciesist violence. That is, even if one is aware of the ways in which modern life destroys or adversely affects the environment and inflicts suffering upon non- human animals, one cannot completely subtract one’s self from a certain responsibility for and complicity in this. Even if you are conscious of the problem you cannot but take part in doing ‘evil’ by the mere fact of participating within modern life. Take for example the problematic position of environmental activists who courageously sacrifice personal wealth and leisure time in their fight against environmental destruction. While activists assume a sense of historical responsibly for the violence of the human species and act so as to stop the continuation of this violence, these actors are still somewhat complicit in a modern system of violence due to fact that they live in modern, industrial societies. The activist consumes, acquires and spends capital, uses electricity, pays taxes, and accepts the legitimacy of particular governments within the state even if they campaign against government policies. The bottom line is that all of these actions contribute in some way to the perpetuation of a larger process that moves humanity in a particular direction even if the individual personally, or collectively with others, tries to act to counter this direction. Despite people’s good intentions, damage is encapsulated in nearly every human action in industrial societies, whether we are aware of it or not.

2 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab 1NC (3/3)

The affirmative’s logic of domination results in objectification of nonhumans and the inability to impose moral constraints on the dominant group.

Ahkin (Mélanie works at Monash University, “Human Centrism, Animist Materialism, and the Critique of Rationalism in Val. Plumwood’s Critical Ecological Feminism,” Emergent Australasian Philosophers, 2010, Issue 3, http://www.eap.philosophy- australia.com/issue_3/EAP3_AHKIN_Human_Centrism.pdf)

Richard Sylvan and Val Plumwood's pioneering 1979 critique of human chauvinism within dominant western ethics defines the concept in relation to class chauvinism, as the “substantially differential, discriminatory and inferior treatment” of the class of non-human entities by members of the class of humans, where this treatment lacks sufficient justification.2 They contend that insofar as dominant western ethical systems unjustifiably treat humans as uniquely morally significant; fail to provide an account of humans' direct, non-instrumental moral obligations to non-humans; and promote varying degrees of human dominion over non-human nature, these frameworks sanction differential, discriminatory and inferior treatment of non-humans and are by consequence human chauvinist.3 Plumwood's development of this collaborative critique of human chauvinism in her early 1990's work, and beyond, draws on feminist analyses of oppression and rationalism as well as insights from liberation theory in order to enrich and expand the analysis of the human mastery of nature.4 Her critique of the dominant western framework of rationalist reason allows her to draw out the structural features and logical patterns common to various instantiations of oppression, namely the logic of centrism and its foundational value dualisms, and also the role of related instrumental egoist models of selfhood. Thus she is able to provide a more global critique of oppression than that offered by the earlier analysis of human chauvinism, involving not just the problems inherent in the human chauvinist framework's foundational instrumentalist value theory, but also highlighting the broader conceptual and perceptual distortions involved in centric structures and dualist logic, and the injustices and prudential dilemmas they cause in both social and environmental realms.

On Plumwood's analysis, the rationalist conception of the human self is defined in polarised opposition to concepts such as materiality, nature, and necessity, and in accordance with those of reason, consciousness, culture, freedom and transcendence of nature. Together with an emphasis on instrumental and colonising forms of reason, this exclusionary conception provides an important conceptual foundation for the human mastery of nature. Indeed, the logic of the foundational human/nature and reason/nature dualisms which underlie this conception of the human self provide much of the justification and naturalisation for the instrumentalisation of nature, fostering the assignment of exclusive moral significance to humans based largely on their allegedly unique possession of the capacity for reason.5 This further emphasises their conceptual hyperseparation from non-human nature and permits the instrumental valuation and treatment of the sphere of nature. The rationalist tradition also holds feminine attributes to be similarly radically separate from human virtue (likewise defined principally in terms of reason), thus creating a “master perspective” which subordinates and is alienated from both the feminine and nature, marrying the concept of reason with power and domination.6 Given this connection between the subordination of women and that of nature, Plumwood appeals to androcentrism as a more fully theorised parallel model for the human mastery of nature and accordingly reconceptualises human chauvinism in terms of the logic of hegemonic centrism. Plumwood defines hegemonic centrism as “a primary-secondary pattern of attribution that sets up one term (the One) as primary or as centre and defines marginal Others as secondary or derivative in relation to it”.7 This logical structure is founded on that of a value dualism, defined as an exaggerated dichotomy involving the extreme polarisation of contrasting conceptual pairs and their formation in terms of a value hierarchy. Dualised concepts are formed by a relation of power, promoting the treatment of inferiorised concepts as mere means to the ends of the superior relata, which seek to differentiate, dominate and control the inferior relata.8 In Plumwood's terms, "[d]ualisms are not universal features of human thought, but conceptual responses to and foundations for social domination".9

The five key features of dualism's “logic of domination” are as follows: Radical exclusion or hyperseparation involves the denial of continuity between dominant and marginalised groups, instead stressing extreme difference and creating a polarised relation which denies any possibility of overlap. Combined with backgrounding- the dominant group's denial of its dependency on the marginalised group and rendering of the latter as inessential background- this works to justify and naturalise the superior relata's claim to unique importance and dominance over the radically discontinuous and seemingly inessential inferior relata. Incorporation or relational definition involves the definition and recognition of the inferior relata solely in relation to (as excluded from) the superior group; this assimilation to the superior 3 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab

relata's identity, needs and ends negates the needs and ends of the inferior relata and results in the latter's inability to impose moral constraints or limitations on the dominant group. Thus, it is subject to instrumentalisation and objectification: it is further stripped of intrinsic value, ends, and needs by means of the denial of its subjectivity and intentionality, facilitating its treatment as mere means to the ends of the dominant group. The formation of the dualised relata in terms of a moral hierarchy naturalises this instrumentalisation, making it seem a normal consequence of their differing degrees of moral significance. The final feature of homogenisation or stereotyping occurs when differences within the subordinated group are denied, allowing it to be attributed a reductive and stable identity, thus also promoting the treatment of its constituents as interchangeable and replaceable resources for the dominant group.

4 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab Link—“ecosystem health”

The affirmative draws the connection between non-humans but not between non-human and human life.

Crowley 11 (Thomas is Director, Division of Substance Dependence, University of Colorado School of Medicine, “From Natural to Ecosocial Flourishing” Evaluating Evaluative Frameworks, Vol. 15 No. 1, 2011, http://www.jstor.org/pss/10.2979/ETE.2010.15.1.69, JSTOR)

“Ecosystem health”—unlike “natural” and “sustainable”—is not a simple adjective, but rather a broader framework in which to explore ecological values and evaluations. The framework of “ecosystem health” owes its existence to the science of ecology, which takes the ecosystem to be a “foundational organizational unit” (Rangan 2000, 55). Ecology emphasizes the way that ecosystems shape and are shaped by the complex interactions of their constituent parts, from predator-prey dynamics to nu- trient cycles. Any consideration of ecosystem health must first start with considerations of ecosystems, and thus of interconnection. For instance, if we believe a healthy ecosystem is one that supports and sustains a diverse range of species over long periods of time, we will be led to ecological considerations of how such sustained diversity is ensured. We might look at the role of keystone species that, because of their connections to the larger web of life in their ecosystems, play a disproportionally large role in maintaining ecosystem diversity.21 Unlike “strong” sustainability, which undermines its own goals because of its atomistic framework, “ecosystem health” points us towards a more interconnected way of thinking. “Ecosystem health” thus looks promising as an evaluative framework, at least with respect to highlighting connections. However, upon closer inspection, we see that “ecosystem health” shares some troubling simi- larities with “sustainability,” including its ambiguity and its penchant to separate humans from the rest of nature. While the general conception of ecosystems is one that stresses community and relationship, more specific conceptions—which are necessary to conduct ecological research—can be problematic. For instance, a basic ecology textbook tell us: “[a]n ecosystem is a biological community plus all of the abiotic factors influencing the community” (Molles 2002, 413). The difficulty lies in determining the boundaries between one community and the next. The boundaries we draw determine the interactions and interconnections upon which we focus, and which factors we disregard as isolated disturbances coming from outside the system. However, given the “infinitely complex web of relationships connecting nearly all living things,” such boundaries will be provisional at best, and will likely reveal deeper theoretical assumptions (Rangan 2000, 55). This is an inevitable problem given the very phenomenon we want to recognize: the great complexity and interconnectedness of all life. I do not suggest abandoning ecosystem thinking simply because it involves difficult conceptual problems; still, we must be very mindful of the ways we ad- dress the problem. So far, ecologists have drawn boundaries in part by ex- cluding humans from ecosystems. In other words, the dominant approach to ecosystems has recognized the interconnectedness of non-human life, but it has not recognized the interconnectedness of humans and non-humans. In short, “[b]iologists have focused on the ‘impact’ measures of humans, a strategy that puts our species outside the ecosystems as, at most, a permanent perturbation” (Machlis et al. 1997, 22). This conception of ecosystems (as human- exclusive) leads to a flawed conception of ecosystem health—namely, ecosystems are healthy when humans stay out. This view has a long history among naturalists and environmentalists, and it is linked to the notion of stable ecosystems; that is, ecosystems exist in a state of equilibrium and stability (the “balance of nature”) until an outside disturbance (often anthropogenic) strikes. When the disturbance ends, the ecosystem will return to its stable state, provided that it has not been permanently damaged.22 This view is implicit in Aldo Leopold’s land ethic, perhaps the most famous formation of ecosystem health: “[a] thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community.” (1949, 224–45).23 However, Rangan, after reviewing the extensive literature on ecosystem change, concludes: There is little evidence to support the assumption…that nature, when left alone, always returns to its primordial, stable state. There is no way of confirming a general law of self-regulating ecosystems that holds true across all time and spatial scales. (2000, 57) The assumption of bounded, stable ecosystems has more to do with theoretical assumptions about nature and humans’ place in it (or out of it) than with the results of ecological research. This is a great irony of ecology—a science devoted to exploring the interconnections of nature removes from the web of interrelations the species that has the greatest ecological impact today: humans. Such human-exclusive understandings of ecosystems and ecosystem health lead to questionable theories of ecosystem management. First and foremost, it implies that ecosystem health should be implemented by minimizing human “disturbance” of ecosystems. Rolston (1999a), for instance, argues that we should manage ecosystems simply by leaving them alone.

5 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab Link—saving environment

Framing environmental protection in terms of “rights” and “justice” assumes non-humans ac as a human would and justifies saving a species and not their habitat

Purser et. al 95 (Ronald E. Purser is an assistant professor of organization development at the University of Chicago, Changkil Park is a doctoral candidate in the Dept. of Organizational Behaviour at Case Western Reserve University, Alfonso Montuori is an adjunct professor at Saybrook Institute and College of Notre Dame. “Limits to Anthropocentrism: Toward an Ecocentric Organization Paradigm?” The Academy of Management Review, October 1995, JSTOR, p.1053-1089, Vol. 20, No.4, http://www.jstor.org/stable/258965

Environmental management approaches rely upon a traditional ethical framework that is also rooted in anthropocentrism. Traditional ethical analysis is based on a progressive extension model of ethics, better known as ethical extensionism (Regan, 1983; Singer, 1976). Des Jardin (1993: 142) identified three major shortcomings of ethical extensionism: (a) it leads to a hierarchical ordering of species (with humans on top); (b) it is inherently individualistic in focus, paying consideration to individual biological organisms but disregards whole ecological entities such as habitats and ecosystem processes; and (c) it lacks comprehensiveness, focusing instead on case-by-case problems that usually do not provide guidance on what should be done when confronted by more pervasive environmental problems, such as global warming. Ethical extensionism uses comparable human attributes as the sole moral criteria for determining the intrinsic value of nonhuman species (obviously, plant, biota, and inanimate objects are omitted from such analyses automatically). Further, ethical extensionism is atomistic as it focuses upon individual biological organisms. According to Rodman (1983: 87), this atomistic tendency is "so deeply imbedded in modern culture, locating intrinsic value only or primarily in individual persons, animals, plants, etc., rather than in communities or ecosystems, since individuals are our paradigmatic entities for thinking, being conscious, and feeling pain." Thus, with ethical extensionism, objects of valuation are individual entities (Page, 1992), whereas human interests are the sole measure of right and wrong. The anthropocentric ethic in environmental management is mainly concerned with issues of "justice," "rights," and other attempts of extending legal rights to the nonhuman world. Rodman (1983) criticized this "rights-of-nature" approach as a weak alternative because it assumes that other species and biota can participate (as humans would) in an ethical system. What is important here is not whether one agrees that nature or animals have "rights," but that the argument is still based upon the centrality of the human being as the reference for conferring value or disvalue upon Nature. This is the problematic of the ethical extensionism approach: extension of intrinsic value to the nonhuman world occurs only if entities measure up to the criteria that are defined by humans, criteria that must mimic or resemble humanlike attributes. With this framework, one could arrive at an ethical decision to save an endangered species without the necessity for also having to save or preserve the endangered species' ecosystem habitat. Ethical extensionism subjects the nonhuman world to "inappropriate models, without rethinking very thoroughly either the assumptions of conventional ethics or the ways in which we perceive and interpret the natural world" (Rodman, 1977: 88).

6 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab Link—environmental management

Environmental management paradigm is the obsession with environmental efficiency

The movement toward an egocentric conception of organizations and management will require a revolutionary shift in paradigm. However, as Kuhn (1970) suggested, theory development and revolutionary paradigm shifts do not occur all at once. Instead, there is a long struggle involved in justifying the plausibility of alternative theorizing (Kuhn, 1970). Accord- ingly, theory development proceeds as the deconstruction of anomalies associated with the dominant paradigm highlights the incommensurabil- ity, as well as the continuity, between competing approaches (Kuhn, 1970; Willmott, 1993). Clearly, the foundational concepts and underlying philosophies of the environmental management and ecocentric responsibility paradigms are incommensurable. The environmental management paradigm is anthropocentric; its proponents continue to elevate human beings to a dominant position over nature. Indeed, anthropocentrism is foundational to the dominant social paradigm (Dunlap & Catton, 1980; Milbrath, 1984, 1989). Rather than viewing the environmental crisis as a challenge to, and consequential anomaly of, the dominant social paradigm, concepts and practices within environmental management are retrofitted to perpetuate this reigning paradigm. In contrast, the bottom-line within the ecocentric paradigm is that human beings have moral obligations to ecosystems. However, ethical considerations regarding the conservation of ecosystems are muted when subjected to the instrumental technical rationality of anthropocentric discourse. Surely, those who are more concerned with calculating the productivity of old-growth forests, bioengineering designer species, or making Chesapeake Bay a more efficient sewer, are not likely to give much consideration to conserving ecosystem health and integrity (Sagoff, 1992). This problem suggests that members of egocentric organizations will need to assign much more importance to ethical considerations than typically has been the case, because environmental managers have been primarily concerned with technical efficiency.

7 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab Link— asteroids—environmental interference

Stopping an asteroid attack is uniquely anthropocentric- even if it benefits humans, it is still an environmental interference

Cockell 7 (“Space on Earth; Saving our world by seeking others” Charles S. Cockell, [Professor in geomicrobiology, Chair of the Earth and Space Foundation] 2007, Macmillan. Pg 128-9. Print)

The realization that Earth has been, and will be, struck by asteroids and comets, potentially destroying large percentages of life, has led to suggestions that we should divert these incoming objects. We would do this by detecting them early and then exploding or deflecting them to stop them colliding. These propositions all have at their core highly anthropocentric environmental ethic. Unlike anthropogenic ozone depletion or deforestation, asteroid and comet impacts are natural and their prevention is actually an environmental interference, regardless of whether it happens to be of benefit to humans. It might be argued that such schemes represent an unacceptable environmental manipulation. If dinosaurs had implemented an asteroid and comet diversion plan, mammals might never have risen to preeminence, and we would not exist. Thus, the diversion of asteroids and comets might be said to have a negative environmental impact when the opportunities for life that arise after such events are considered to be thwarted. This same argument could be applied to any attempt to prevent any other natural catastrophes like earthquakes or volcanic eruptions.

8 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab Link—space exploration

Every life-form possesses intrinsic value; space exploration rejects this notion and in turn has abject effects on extra-terrestrial life

Lupisella 9 (Mark is and engineer and scientist for the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, “The search for extraterrestrial life: epistemology, ethics, and worldviews,” Published in Exploring the Origin, Extent, and Future of Life: Philosophical, Ethical and Theological Perspectives, September 28, 2009, http://www.scribd.com/doc/31517429/Exploring-the-Origin-Extent-And-Future-of-Life- Philosophical-Ethical-And-Theological-Perspectives-Constance-M-Bertka, Scribd)

Robel1 Zubrin, the founder of the Mars Society, acknowledges the unique value of extraterrestrial life. especially scientific value, but nevertheless stresses that we don't hesitate to kill terrestrial microbes under many circumstances adding to the case for substantial devaluation of Martian microbes relative to human interests [8]. While this is an understandable sentiment, it is also reasonable to consider that extraterrestrial life, especially of independent origin, could be unique, valuable, and worthy of respect in a way that terrestrial microbes are not. The ecologist Frank Golley has argued that activities in space such as the colonization and terraforming of Mars will be unavoidable since it is consistent with the dominant myths and metaphors of Western civilization [9]. Unfortunately these dominant myths and the exploration that results from them have often had serious adverse effects on indigenous environments and life, including human beings. Indeed the dominant myths of '"manifest destiny" have featured prominently in public discussions of humanity's relationship to Mars [10, 11],

Although the notion of rights is not explicitly articulated in Carl Sagan's sentiment, his perspective can be associated with a rights-based metaethics. While the justification of intrinsic value has been philosophically problematic, rights based ethical views nevertheless often depend on conceptions of intrinsic value. J. Baird Callicott [13] writes: "The assertion of 'species rights' upon analysis appears to be the modern way to express what philosophers call 'intrinsic value' on behalf of non-human species. Thus the question, 'Do nonhumans species have a right to exist?' transposes to the question, 'Do nonhuman species have intrinsic value?' " Chris McKay has appealed to an intrinsic value of life principle and hence suggests that Martian microbes, particularly of independent origin, have a right to life -"to continue their existence even if their extinction would benefit the biota of Earth" [14].' Deep Ecology view, tend to have as a central tenet, biological egalitarianism, according to which all organisms have an equal right to life [15]. If one claims that other animals, and in particular, Martian microbes, have rights, but that there are no degress of rights, how are we to assess situations that involve conflicting interests between humans and other life forms? Indeed, for those who think Martian life has rights, a compromise might not be satisfactory. Only a non-interference policy would be acceptable [16] (p. 227). However, degrees of rights or degrees of value (perhaps even degrees of intrinsic value) may provide a more pragmatic framework for considering these issues [17].

In outer space we must consider the values of the most primitive life forms

While the focus of this chapter is not extraterrestrial intelligence, astrobiology nevertheless prompts us to consider values of other potential rational beings, especially as they might apply to non intelligent or primitive life forms. For example, if we take a view of ethics in which rational beings are the only moral agents, might the possible existence of rational extraterrestrial beings prompt the consideration of broader ethical views that might be important to them- such as a conservation ethic that extends to non-rational living beings (for example extraterrestrial microbes), perhaps as part of a broader environmental/ cosmic ethic? This is similar to considering values of our fellow human beings that might go beyond our own values. If others value something for plausible reasons, shouldn't we be prompted to consider respecting those values? Extraterrestrial intelligent beings may consider life in the universe, perhaps independent origins of life in particular, to be extremely valuable, perhaps intrinsically or "cosmically" valuable. Perhaps such values should be considered as we formulate our own views regarding how we should move out into the solar system and beyond.

Space exploration harms both the terrestrial environment and beyond

The exploration of the space environment is a natural extension of the desire of the mankind to explore the planet to which he belongs. The issue of pollution of the outer space is more complex than the environmental pollution on Earth. The launching of vehicles into outer space and celestial bodies is known to involve inevitable contamination as the vehicles emit exhaust gases throughout their burn. The term pollution and contamination denote the introduction into the environment of toxic substances or other elements in such a quantity that exceeds the natural ability to render them harmless or purify them and thereby causes harm to animate and inanimate nature, and the health and welfare of man.

11 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab Link—launches

Space launches kill non-human species for the benefit of humans—hydrochloric acid decimates fish and other wildlife, and also ruins the ozone layer

Smeaton 5 (Zoe, Reporter Chemist and Druggist, UBM, “Is the Shuttle Green?” August 8, 2005, BBC News, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4130980.stm)

Professor Fraser said: "The classic example of environmental impact is in Kazakhstan at the Baikonur launch site, where there are reports of quite serious environmental damage." For most shuttles, the damage comes from the solid rocket boosters, or SRBs, require at shuttle launch to provide 71.4% of the thrust at lift-off and elevate the shuttle to an altitude of 45km (28 miles). As a shuttle launches, a "cloud" becomes visible which contains SRB exhaust products, either dissolved or as particles in the water vapour released by the main engines. Hydrochloric acid formed in this launch cloud leads to acidic deposits in the surrounding area, a phenomenon which may also be observed some distance away if exhausts are carried on prevailing winds. The scenes of dead fish in Spain could be repeated next to launch sites John Pike, president of Global Security.org, and an expert on the US space programme says: "The hydrochloric acid can pit the paint on your car if it is too close to the launch site." A 1993 Nasa technical manual considered environmental effects of space shuttle launches at Kennedy Space Centre, and stated that some cumulative effects of launches in the nearby area are "reduction in the number of plant species present and reduction in total cover". The manual also pointed out that acid deposits from the launch cloud can also impact nearby water lagoons and their wildlife. If hydrochloric acid is deposited, the pH value near the surface of the water may drop and prove too acidic for fish, although these impacts on wildlife do "appear minimal and manageable". Professor Fraser points out also that while shuttles may cause a small amount of damage to the ozone layer this will be "far less marked than that from the large number of high altitude aircraft in the World all the time".

12 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab Link—launches

Ground clouds created by spacecraft launches release toxins that decimates the Earth’s ozone

When a spacecraft is launched into the space, they produce something called “ground cloud” which basically consisting of exhaust gases, cooling water, sand and dust. The use of certain rocket and stratospheric aircraft fuels has been found to speed the depletion of the earth’s ozone layer. Specifically, the chlorine, aluminum, nitrogen dioxide and sulphur dioxide that are present in these fuels have been detected in the ozone layer by scientists. The ozone layer is very important as it absorbs harmful ultraviolet rays and acts as a shield around the earth. The depletion of this shield or the ozone results in incoming ultraviolet radiation which causes harmful effects on plants, and skin cancer, eye damage on the animals. At least one study has concluded that the presence of nitrogen dioxide and sulphur dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere “may reduce the temperature of the earth’s surface,” potentially impacting agricultural production. The exhaust gases released by the spacecrafts will affect the ionosphere which is situated 80 kilometers above the earth’s surface. This may lead to the creation of a ‘hole’ in the ionosphere which will have harmful effects on the environment of the earth

13 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab Link— technocentrism

The drive to accelerate technology is a purely human interest

Grey 93 (William is professor at the University of Queensland, Australian National University, Temple University, and the University of New England, “Anthropocentrism and Deep Ecology,” Australiasian Journal of Philosophy, Vol 71, No 4 (1993), pp. 463-475, http://www.uq.edu.au/~pdwgrey/pubs/anthropocentrism.html) Moral philosophy aims to provide a rational critique or justification of the principles which guide or govern human conduct. In this inquiry it is of course assumed that these principles are accessible to reason. Human activity, particularly when amplified by sophisticated science-based technologies, now extends far beyond the stone age boundaries which constrained our actions for most of human history. The chain saw and the drift net have transformed biological systems far more rapidly and violently than the neolithic axe and spear. The rapid and accelerating technologically-driven modification of our natural surroundings has changed them beyond the wildest neolithic dreams. It is these changes which have prompted the question whether constraints on human conduct should take into consideration more than purely human interests. Environmental philosophers have proposed a critique of traditional Western moral thought, which, it is alleged, is deficient for providing a satisfactory ethic of obligation and concern for the nonhuman world. This concern, it is claimed, needs to be extended, in particular, toward nonhuman individuals, wilderness areas, and across time and species. The project of extending our concern in the latter two cases—over time and over species—is a central concern of this paper.

14 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab Link—technology

Technology fosters the view that nature is merely instrumental to human ends and advancement

Orr 79 (“In the Tracks of the Dinosaur: Modernization & the Ecological Perspective” David W. Orr[assistant professor of political science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill] Polity, Vol. 11, No. 4 1979)

Modernization has destroyed the unity between man and nature. En- vironmentalists since George Perkins Marsh have argued that indus- trialization and modernization have jeopardized the relationship between man and nature. The awareness of membership in a natural community has been dimmed by layers of concrete, steel, asphalt, glass, and an ethic that stresses conquest. But the question remains why man should regard nature as anything but the exclusive subject of his domination. One answer is that nature must be protected and its laws understood so that it can serve man more efficiently. Modern techniques of high yield forestry, seafarming, and agribusiness, based on the concept of "maximum sustainable yield," reflect this instrumental view. But from the environmental perspective, it remains less than obvious what the management (conquest?) of nature means and precisely who manages what and why. C. S. Lewis provided one answer by suggesting: At the moment then, of Man's victory over Nature, we find the whole human race subjected to some individual man, and those individuals subjected to that in themselves which is purely "natural" -to their irrational impulses . Nature untrammelled by values, rules the Conditioners and, through them, all humanity. Man's conquest of Nature turns out, in the moment of its consumation, to be Nature's conquest of Man.50 If Lewis is correct, the conquest of nature becomes one way for some men to control other men who use nature only as the medium. But in the end, the "conquest" proves to be illusory, with nature in fact subduing man. Aldo Leopold reached the similarly ironic conclusion that nature can serve man instrumentally only if "people really believe that Nature is something which exists and has value for its own sake." 51 The inevitable price of the material view of man, then, is the devaluation of a range of important but nonmaterial goals.

15 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab Link—military

Military readiness protects humans at the expense of non-human life, contaminates groundwater, birds, and marine life.

Glenn 6 (Jerome C. director of American Council for the United Nations University, director of the Millennium Project, “Nanotechnology: Future military environment health considerations,” Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Vol. 73 Issue 2, February 2006, Pages 128-137, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040162505000909#SECX3)

The following is an unranked list of the panel's suggestions (edited and condensed for clarity) that might occur between 2010 and 2025: • Artificial blood cells (respirocytes) that dramatically enhance human performance could cause overheating of the body and bio-breakdowns, and their excretion could add to the environmental load. • Large quantities of smart weapons—especially miniaturized, robotic weapons and intelligent, target-seeking ammunition without reliable remote off-switches—could lead to unexpected injury to combatants and civilians, destruction to infrastructure, and environmental pollution. • Small receptor-enhancers that increase alertness and reduce the reaction times of humans could cause addiction and/or subsequent Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, leading to weakness, neural damage, and death. • Inorganic, non-biodegradable nanoparticles (and perhaps also non- biocompatible) nanoparticles for drug release or cancer treatment, or “permanent” nanosensors, might induce a foreign body reaction. • Proteomic targeting, genetically selective “designer quasi-viral components,” engineered to select specific human targets based on definable genetic markers, might mutate, creating a biological pandemic. • Nanoparticles to “clean up” contaminated areas might create new compounds that could have unknown impacts on the environment, including long-term leaching into groundwater reserves. • Ubiquitous surveillance systems deployed without strong controls on the use of information could lead to psychological stress from the sense of being watched by strangers. • Numerous centimeter-scale buoyant platforms deployed in the atmosphere might interfere with birds and aircraft, and damaged devices might fall as precipitation at uncontrolled locations over Earth's surface. • Nanoscale biomolecule-driven motors that enhance the efficiency of ATP (adenosine triphosphate) usage, the frequency of generation of ATP, and the life of ATP molecules in endurance athletes and/or long-haul soldiers could cause overheating of the body and biobreakdowns and could possibly lead to Rapid-Onset Muscle Soreness after a stipulated duration; if allowed to function beyond this duration, they may kill the organism thus modified. • Ubiquitous sensing in the oceans via large numbers of small drifting devices linked by acoustically based data-packet networks, and countermeasures to disable them, could affect sea life from these materials, as well as from acoustic pollution. Other interesting suggestions for the period 2010–25 that are not conventionally thought of as health or environmental impacts included:

16 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab Link—science

Reductionist science moots the entire context of the Earth’s biota into mechanical ecology; this mindset forces us to dismiss the intrinsic value in the world.

Harding (Stephen, resident ecologist at Schumacher College, an international centre for ecological studies. Trained as a field ecologist, Stephan Harding collaborates with James Lovelock on Gaian computer modeling, “From Gaia Theory to Deep Ecology,” May 6, 2011, http://www.adishakti.org/pdf_files/from_gaia_theory_to_deep_ecology_(gn.apc.org).pdf)

To understand Gaia, we must let go of the mechanistic, compartmentalising conditioning imposed on us since childhood by our society. From an early age nearly all Westerners (and especially young scientists) are exposed to the concept that life has come about due to the operation of blind, meaningless laws of physics and chemistry, and that selfishness underpins the behaviour and evolution of all plants and animals. A child’s mind becomes totally ensnared by this style of intellectuality, so that the intuitive, inspirational qualities of the mind are totally ignored. The mind’s intuitive ability to see each part of nature as a sub-whole within the greater wholes is destroyed by this sort of education. The result is a totally dry, merely intellectual ecology, not a genuine perception of the dynamic power, creativity and integration of nature. A Gaian approach opens new doors of perception and opens up our vision of the inter-dependence of all things within the natural world. There is a symphonic quality to this interconnectedness, a quality which communicates an unspeakable magnificence. When you stand on a sea-cliff in winter, watching masses of grey cloud rolling in from the Atlantic, a Gaian view helps you understand the cloud in its global context. It has formed due to massive climatic forces and has manifested within a small part of the whole ~ the part you happen to be standing in. The water in the cloud is circling through the water cycle, from rain to river to sea to Coccolithophore to cloud again. As you experience this dynamic, ever-shifting reality, you may suddenly find yourself in a state of meditation, a state in which you lose your sense of separate identity, and become totally engrossed in the life process being contemplated. The contemplated and the contemplator become one. From this oneness there arises a deep appreciation of the reality of inter-dependence, and from this comes the urge to be involved in opposing all sorts of ecological abuses. Here arises the feeling that what is happening in evolution has great value and a meaning impossible to articulate or to detect via reductionist scientific methodology. This highly developed sensitivity, this experience of radical interconnectedness, is the hallmark of supporters of the Deep Ecology movement, and is the basis for the elaboration of any ecological philosophy, such as the pioneering work of the Norwegian philosopher, Arne Naess, who first coined the term 'deep ecology'. No student of ecology is ever introduced to this new mode of mental discipline ~ in our schools and colleges. There is no culture of experiencing oneness with the natural world. All one does on an ecology field trip is to collect and measure. Deep contemplation of nature is considered to be at worst a waste of time, at best something to do during one’s spare time. It can be argued that truly great scientists had this connection, this sense of the greater whole of which they were a part. Without educating this sensitivity, we churn out scientists without philosophy, who are merely interested in their subject, but not thoroughly awed by it. We churn out clever careerists, whose only concern is to make the grade, be the first to publish, be the first to be head of a department, or to split the atom. It is this kind of training which leads to the mentality responsible for the massive social and environmental mistakes of Western-style development. Trained to shut down our perception of the world so that we see it as a mere machine, we are perfectly free to improve the clockwork for our own ends. We are perfectly free to build huge dams which flood vast areas, perfectly free to log established forests, perfectly free to sanction economic growth at all costs, or to alter the genetic make-up of any organism for our own ends. Gaian perception helps to remedy this great mental and spiritual plague, a malaise which has arisen in the West and which is now claiming millions of victims, human and non-human, throughout the world. Gaian perception connects us with the seamless nature of existence, and opens up a new approach to scientific research based on scientific institutions arising from scientists’ personal, deeply subjective ecological experience. When the young scientist in training has sat on a mountain top, and has completed her first major assignment to ‘think like a mountain’, that is, to dwell and deeply identify with a mountain, mechanistic thinking will never take root in her mind. When she eventually goes out to practise her science in the world, she will be fully aware that every interconnected aspect of it has its own intrinsic value, irrespective of its usefulness to the economic activities of human beings.

17 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab Wipeout Alternative

Humanity as a whole has inflicted enough damage on the environment and non-human beings to justify our removal as a species. No ethical grounds exist for justification for the continuation of our empirically harmful existence.

This blurring and re-defining of the subject of moral discourse can be found in other ecocentric writings (e.g. Lovelock, 1979; Eckersley, 1992) and in other philosophical approaches. [5] In part our approach bears some similarity with these ‘holistic’ approaches in that we share dissatisfaction with the modern, Western view of the ‘subject’ as purely human-centric. Further, we share some of their criticism of bourgeois green lifestyles. However, our approach is to stay partly within the position of the modern, Western human-centric view of the subject and to question what happens to it in the field of moral action when environmental catastrophe demands the radical extension of ethical obligations to non-human beings. That is, if we stick with the modern humanist subject of moral action, and follow seriously the extension of ethical obligations to non-human beings, then we would suggest that what we find is that the utopian demand of modern humanism turns over into a utopian anti-humanism, with suicide as its outcome. One way of attempting to re-think the modern subject is thus to throw the issue of suicide right in at the beginning and acknowledge its position in modern ethical thought. This would be to recognise that the question of suicide resides at the center of moral thought, already. There continues to be a debate over the extent to which humans have caused environmental problems such as global warming (as opposed to natural, cyclical theories of the earth’s temperature change) and over whether phenomena such as global warming can be halted or reversed. Our position is that regardless of where one stands within these debates it is clear that humans have inflicted degrees of harm upon non-human animals and the natural environment. And from this point we suggest that it is the operation of speciesism as colonialism which must be addressed. One approach is of course to adopt the approach taken by Singer and many within the animal rights movement and remove our species, homo sapiens, from the centre of all moral discourse. Such an approach would thereby take into account not only human life, but also the lives of other species, to the extent that the living environment as a whole can come to be considered the proper subject of morality. We would suggest, however, that this philosophical approach can be taken a number of steps further. If the standpoint that we have a moral responsibility towards the environment in which all sentient creatures live is to be taken seriously, then we perhaps have reason to question whether there remains any strong ethical grounds to justify the further existence of humanity. For example, if one considers the modern scientific practice of experimenting on animals, both the notions of progress and speciesism are implicitly drawn upon within the moral reasoning of scientists in their justification of committing violence against non- human animals. The typical line of thinking here is that because animals are valued less than humans they can be sacrificed for the purpose of expanding scientific knowledge focussed upon improving human life. Certainly some within the scientific community, such as physiologist Colin Blakemore, contest aspects of this claim and argue that experimentation on animals is beneficial to both human and non- human animals (e.g. Grasson, 2000, p.30). Such claims are ‘disingenuous’, however, in that they hide the relative distinctions of value that underlie a moral justification for sacrifice within the practice of experimentation (cf. LaFollette & Shanks, 1997, p.255). If there is a benefit to non-human animals this is only incidental, what remains central is a practice of sacrificing the lives of other species for the benefit of humans. Rather than reject this common reasoning of modern science we argue that it should be reconsidered upon the basis of species equality. That is, modern science needs to ask the question of: ‘Who’ is the best candidate for ‘sacrifice’ for the good of the environment and all species concerned? The moral response to the violence, suffering and damage humans have inflicted upon this earth and its inhabitants might then be to argue for the sacrifice of the human species. The moral act would be the global suicide of humanity.

18 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab Wipeout Alt—Solvency—only

Withdrawing from modernity is impossible for humans—a wipeout is the only option

For some, guided by the pressure of moral conscience or by a practice of harm minimisation, the appropriate response to historical and contemporary environmental destruction is that of action guided by abstention. For example, one way of reacting to mundane, everyday complicity is the attempt to abstain or opt-out of certain aspects of modern, industrial society: to not eat non-human animals, to invest ethically, to buy organic produce, to not use cars and buses, to live in an environmentally conscious commune. Ranging from small personal decisions to the establishment of parallel economies (think of organic and fair trade products as an attempt to set up a quasi-parallel economy), a typical modern form of action is that of a refusal to be complicit in human practices that are violent and destructive. Again, however, at a practical level, to what extent are such acts of non- participation rendered banal by their complicity in other actions? In a grand register of violence and harm the individual who abstains from eating non-human animals but still uses the bus or an airplane or electricity has only opted out of some harm causing practices and remains fully complicit with others. One response, however, which bypasses the problem of complicity and the banality of action is to take the non-participation solution to its most extreme level. In this instance, the only way to truly be non-complicit in the violence of the human heritage would be to opt-out altogether. Here, then, the modern discourse of reflection, responsibility and action runs to its logical conclusion – the global suicide of humanity – as a free-willed and ‘final solution’.

19 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab Wipeout Alt Solvency—thought experiment

The question of consider to what extent our existence is worth the harm of other species— it’s a thought experiment

While we are not interested in the discussion of the ‘method’ of the global suicide of humanity per se, one method that would be the least violent is that of humans choosing to no longer reproduce. [10] The case at point here is that the global suicide of humanity would be a moral act; it would take humanity out of the equation of life on this earth and remake the calculation for the benefit of everything non- human. While suicide in certain forms of religious thinking is normally condemned as something which is selfish and inflicts harm upon loved ones, the global suicide of humanity would be the highest act of altruism. That is, global suicide would involve the taking of responsibility for the destructive actions of the human species. By eradicating ourselves we end the long process of inflicting harm upon other species and offer a human-free world. If there is a form of divine intelligence then surely the human act of global suicide will be seen for what it is: a profound moral gesture aimed at redeeming humanity. Such an act is an offer of sacrifice to pay for past wrongs that would usher in a new future. Through the death of our species we will give the gift of life to others.

It should be noted nonetheless that our proposal for the global suicide of humanity is based upon the notion that such a radical action needs to be voluntary and not forced. In this sense, and given the likelihood of such an action not being agreed upon, it operates as a thought experiment which may help humans to radically rethink what it means to participate in modern, moral life within the natural world. In other words, whether or not the act of global suicide takes place might well be irrelevant. What is more important is the form of critical reflection that an individual needs to go through before coming to the conclusion that the global suicide of humanity is an action that would be worthwhile. The point then of a thought experiment that considers the argument for the global suicide of humanity is the attempt to outline an anti-humanist, or non-human-centric ethics. Such an ethics attempts to take into account both sides of the human heritage: the capacity to carry out violence and inflict harm and the capacity to use moral reflection and creative social organisation to minimise violence and harm. Through the idea of global suicide such an ethics reintroduces a central question to the heart of moral reflection: To what extent is the value of the continuation of human life worth the total harm inflicted upon the life of all others? Regardless of whether an individual finds the idea of global suicide abhorrent or ridiculous, this question remains valid and relevant and will not go away, no matter how hard we try to forget, suppress or repress it.

20 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab Wipeout Alt Solvency—new standpoint

The proposal of a wipeout helps us identity the way in we value different forms of life

Finally, it is important to note that such a standpoint need not fall into a version of green or eco-fascism that considers other forms of life more important than the lives of humans. Such a position merely replicates in reverse the speciesism of modern humanist thought. Any choice between the eco-fascist and the humanist, colonial-speciesist is thus a forced choice and is, in reality, a non-choice that should be rejected. The point of proposing the idea of the global suicide of humanity is rather to help identify the way in which we differentially value different forms of life and guide our moral actions by rigidly adhered to standards of life-value. Hence the idea of global suicide, through its radicalism, challenges an ideological or culturally dominant idea of life-value. Further, through confronting humanist ethics with its own violence against the non-human, the idea of global suicide opens up a space for dialectical reflection in which the utopian ideals of both modern humanist and anti-humanist ethics may be comprehended in relation to each other. One possibility of this conflict is the production of a differing standpoint from which to understand the subject and the scope of moral action.

21 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab

23 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab Cosmocentric Alternative

Cosmocentric framing is best- functions to include the extraterrestrial environment; allows us to realize the interconnectedness of nature on a larger and more accurate scale

In exploring ethical issues regarding the extraterrestrial environment, several writers have suggested the need for a "cosmocentric ethic" because they conclude that existing ethical theories exclude the extraterrestrial environment since they are geocentric and cannot be applied to extraterrestrial environments [18, 19, 20, 21, 22]. While many philosophers would disagree about the extent to which ethical theories are narrowly constrained to geocentric application, the relatively new context or "lens" of space does nevertheless appear to raise interesting and novel ethical challenges, and provides us with an additional perspective with which to re-examine ethics and value theory in general. Exploring a broader-based ethic such as a cosmocentric ethic may be helpful in sorting through issues regarding the moral considerability of primitive extraterrestrial life as well as other ethical issues that will confront humanity as we move out into the solar system and beyond [23, 24]. But as with environmental ethics, an important challenge for a cosmocentric ethic is justifying intrinsic value [25]. Indeed, part of the usefulness of appealing to the universe as a basis for an ethical view is that a justification of intrinsic value and perhaps degrees thereof might be possible since it could be based on what is for many a compelling objective absolute-the universe itself.Systemic nature is valuable as a productive system, with Earth and its humans on one, even if perhaps the highest in richness or complexity, of its known projects. Nature is of value its capacity to throw forward all the storied natural history. On that scale, humans on Earth are latecomers, and it seems astronomically arrogant for such late products to say that the system is only of instrumental value, or that not until humans appear to do their valuing does value appear in the universe. (Holmes Rolston III [26]) Holmes Rolston offers a view that appeals to the "formed integrity" of "projective nature." This view suggests that the universe creates objects of formed integrity (for example objects worthy of a proper name) which have intrinsic value and which should be respected. Robert Haynes points out, how-ever, that such a view appears to conflict with modifying the Earth, even to the benefit of humans [18]. The systemic interdependent connectedness of ecosystems is often cited as a foundation justifying the value of parts of the larger whole, since a subset con-tributes to the maintenance of the larger whole. Consider Leopold's egalitarian ecosystem ethic: "A thing is right when it if to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong if it tends to do otherwise" [27]. Freya Mathews suggests that intrinsic value can be grounded in self-realization, which is a function of interconnectedness. The universe qualifies for selfhood and hence self-realization (again, for which interconnectedness plays a critical role) and humans participate in this cosmic self-realization.

24 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab Cosmocentric Alt Solvency—new ethic

Establishing a new all-encompassing framework is critical to realizing that all beings have intrinsic value, not just to be seen as instruments for human use

Frodeman (Robert Frodeman is a Proffessor and former chair in the Dept. of Philosophy at the University of North Texas, “Separated at Birth, Signs of Rapprochement Environmental Ethics and Space Exploration,” Vol. 13 No. 1 Spring 2008, Project Muse, Ethics and the Environment Journal http://www.csid.unt.edu/files/env_ethics_and_space.pdf) Lessons learned about our impact on the Earth’s surface and atmosphere have relevance as we travel beyond our home planet. The unintended and often destructive effects of humankind on the Earth environment highlight the need for caution and restraint as we travel beyond our home planet. Several authors, acknowledging the probability that humans will one day be active and constant presences in space, have suggested the need to identify and preserve wilderness areas on celestial and planetary bodies. Using the United States National Parks System as an analogue, scientists Charles Cockell and Gerda Horneck (2004) suggest that an extraterrestrial park system with strict regulations and enforcement measures would go a long way to ensure that portions of Mars remain pristine for science, native biota (if any exist), and human appreciation. Such a policy would acknowledge the competing interests and priorities of many parties: national space agencies, the international community, the community of space scientists, private enterprises who have fixed their sights on space tourism, commercial, and/or industrial enterprises in space, environmental ethicists, and the general public. The issues involved are complex. National Parks in the United States were established after centuries of thinking through the relationships between human and nonhuman, nature and culture, beauty, truth, and the sublime, and humans’ obligations toward the Earth. Scientists and political decision-makers will have to confront these issues, whether explicitly or implicitly, as they consider the future of the space program. But this thinking will now take place in a context where humans are aliens. Earthbound environmental philosophy occurs in a context where we are a natural part of the environment. On other planets we face a new first question: what are the ethical and philosophical dimensions of visiting or settling other planets? In short, should we go there at all? To date,the discussion of natural places has turned on questions concerning intrinsic and instrumental values. Intrinsic values theorists claim that things have value for their own sake, in contrast to theories of instrumental value where things are good because they can be used to obtain something else of value (economic or otherwise). This debate tends to get caught up in attempts at extending the sphere of intrinsically valuable entities. Ethical extensionism depends on human definitions of moral considerability, which typically stem from some degree of identification with things outside us. This anthropocentric and geocentric environmental perspective shows cracks when we try to extend it to the cosmic environment. The few national or international policies currently in place that mention the environment of outer space (e.g. NASA’s planetary protection policy, United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space) consider the preservation of planetary bodies for science, human exploration, and possible future habitation, but there is not yet any policy that considers whether these anthropocentric priorities should supersede the preservation of possible indigenous extraterrestrial life, or the environmental or geological integrity of the extraterrestrial environment. Anticipating the need for policy decisions regarding space exploration, Mark Lupisella and John Logsdon suggest the possibility of a cosmocentricethic, “one which (1) places the universe at the center, or establishes the universe as the priority in a value system, (2) appeals to something characteristic of the universe (physical and/or metaphysical) which might then (3) provide a justification of value, presumably intrinsic value, and (4) allow for reasonably objective measurement of value” (Lupisella & Logsdon 1997,1). The authors discuss the need to establish policies for pre-detection and post-detection of life on Mars,and suggest that a cosmocentric ethic would provide a justification for a conservative approach to space exploration and science—conservative in the sense of considering possible impacts before we act.5 A Copernican shift in consciousness, from regarding the Earth as the center of the universe to one of it being the home of participants in a cosmic story,is necessary in order to achieve the proper environmental perspective as we venture beyond our home planet. Of course, given current and prospective space technology, our range is quite limited. The current Pluto New Horizons probe, launched by NASA in January 2006, travels at 50,000 mph, the limit of chemical propulsion. At such speeds Pluto is nine years distant, Alpha Centauri 55,000. On the other hand, there are perhaps 1000 near Earth asteroids greater than 100 meters—not counting those in the Asteroid Belt beyond Mars—with a frequency of impact of perhaps one in a hundred years that would cause a regional scale disaster.

25 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab Impact— extinction of natural environment

This mode of thinking strips nonhuman life of all beauty and restricts ethical concern to humans, which leads to extinction of the natural environment

Ahkin (Mélanie works at Monash University, “Human Centrism, Animist Materialism, and the Critique of Rationalism in Val. Plumwood’s Critical Ecological Feminism,” Emergent Australasian Philosophers, 2010, Issue 3, http://www.eap.philosophy- australia.com/issue_3/EAP3_AHKIN_Human_Centrism.pdf)

Such an anthropocentric framework creates a variety of serious injustices and prudential risks, making it highly ecologically irrational.13 The hierarchical value prescriptions and epistemic distortions responsible for its biased, reductive conceptualisation of nature strips the non-human natural realm of non- instrumental value, and impedes the fair and impartial treatment of its members. Similarly, anthropocentrism creates distributive injustices by restricting ethical concern to humans, admitting partisan distributive relationships with non-human nature in the forms of commodification and instrumentalisation. The prudential risks and blindspots created by anthropocentrism are problematic for nature and humans alike and are of especial concern within our current context of radical human dependence on an irreplaceable and increasingly degraded natural environment. These prudential risks are in large part consequences of the centric structure's promotion of illusory human disembeddedness, self-enclosure and insensitivity to the significance and survival needs of non-human nature: Within the context of human- nature relationships, such a logic must inevitably lead to failure, either through the catastrophic extinction of our natural environment and the consequent collapse of our species, or more hopefully by the abandonment and transformation of the human centric framework.15 Whilst acknowledging the importance of prudential concerns for the motivation of practical change, Plumwood emphasises the weightier task of acknowledging injustices to non-humans in order to bring about adequate dispositional change. The model of enlightened self-interest implicit in prudentially motivated action is inadequate to this task insofar as it remains within the framework of human centrism. Although it acknowledges the possibility of relational interests, it rests on a fundamental equivocation between instrumental and relational forms of concern for others. Indeed it motivates action either by appeal to humans' ultimate self-interest, thus failing to truly acknowledge injustices caused to non-human others, remaining caught within the prudentially risky framework of anthropocentrism, or else it accepts that others' interests count as reasons for action- enabling recognition of injustices- but it does so in a manner which treats the intersection of others' needs with more fully-considered human interests as contingent and transient. Given this analysis, it is clear that environmental concern must be based on a deeper recognition of injustice, in addition to that of prudence, if it is to overcome illusions of human disembeddedness and self-enclosure and have a genuine and lasting effect.

26 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab Impact—speciesism

The ability to suffer puts animals and humans on the same level; to disregard this connection and think we possess superior moral status is similar to the logic of sexists and racists

Singer 3 [Pete, Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University; Professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy at the University of Melbourne]May15, 2003,“Animal Liberation at 30” The New York Review of Books, Vol. 50, No. 8 http://www.animal-rights-library.com/texts-m/singer04.htm In the text that followed, I urged that despite obvious differences between humans and nonhuman animals, we share with them a capacity to suffer, and this means that they, like us, have interests. If we ignore or discount their interests, simply on the grounds that they are not members of our species, the logic of our position is similar to that of the most blatant racists or sexists who think that those who belong to their race or sex have superior moral status, simply in virtue of their race or sex, and irrespective of other characteristics or qualities. Although most humans may be superior in reasoning or in other intellectual capacities to nonhuman animals, that is not enough to justify the line we draw between humans and animals. Some humans—infants and those with severe intellectual disabilities—have intellectual capacities inferior to some animals, but we would, rightly, be shocked by anyone who proposed that we inflict slow, painful deaths on these intellectually inferior humans in order to test the safety of household products. Nor, of course, would we tolerate confining them in small cages and then slaughtering them in order to eat them. The fact that we are prepared to do these things to nonhuman animals is therefore a sign of "speciesism"—a prejudice that survives because it is convenient for the dominant group— in this case not whites or males, but all humans.

27 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab AT: Perm

A combination in moral theories justifies self-serving actions such as the aff

Lupisella and Logsdon 97 (“DO WE NEED A COSMOCENTRIC ETHIC?” MARK LUPISELLA{University of Maryland} and JOHN LOGSDON {Director, Space Policy Institute, The George Washington University}November 1997)

Steve Gillett has suggested a hybrid view combining homocentrism as applied to terrestrial activity combined with biocentrism towards worlds with indigenous life.32 Invoking such a patchwork of theories to help deal with different domains and circumstances could be considered acceptable and perhaps even desirable especially when dealing with something as varied and complex as ethics. Indeed, it has a certain common sense appeal. However, instead of digging deeply into what is certainly a legitimate epistemological issue, let us consider the words of J. Baird Callicott: “But there is both a rational philosophical demand and a human psychological need for a self-consistent and all embracing moral theory. We are neither good philosophers nor whole persons if for one purpose we adopt utilitarianism, another deontology, a third animal liberation, a fourth the land ethic, and so on. Such ethical eclecticism is not only rationally intolerable, it is morally suspect as it invites the suspicion of ad hoc rationalizations for merely expedient or self-serving actions.”33

28 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab AT: Perm—serial policy failure

To allow the aff to still happen is the banality of evil; this re-entrenches policies created in anthropocentric paradigms and causes serial policy failure

In one sense, the human individual’s modern complicity in environmental violence represents something of a bizarre symmetry to Hannah Arendt’s notion of the ‘banality of evil’ (Arendt, 1994). For Arendt, the Nazi regime was an emblem of modernity, being a collection of official institutions (scientific, educational, military etc.) in which citizens and soldiers alike served as clerks in a bureaucratic mechanism run by the state. These individuals committed evil, but they did so in a very banal manner: fitting into the state mechanism, following orders, filling in paperwork, working in factories, driving trucks and generally respecting the rule of law. In this way perhaps all individuals within the modern industrial world carry out a banal evil against the environment simply by going to work, sitting in their offices and living in homes attached to a power grid. Conversely, those individuals who are driven by a moral intention to not do evil and act so as to save the environment, are drawn back into a banality of the good. By their ability to effect change in only very small aspects of their daily life, or in political-social life more generally, modern individuals are forced to participate in the active destruction of the environment even if they are the voices of contrary intention. What is ‘banal’ in this sense is not the lack of a definite moral intention but, rather, the way in which the individual’s or institution’s participation in everyday modern life, and the unintentional contribution to environmental destruction therein, contradicts and counteracts the smaller acts of good intention. The banality of action hits against a central problem of social-political action within late modernity. In one sense, the ethical demand to respond to historical and present environmental destruction opens onto a difficulty within the relationship between moral intention and autonomy. While an individual might be autonomous in respect of moral conscience, their fundamental interconnection with and inter- dependence upon social, political and economic orders strips them of the power to make and act upon truly autonomous decisions. From this perspective it is not only the modern humanist figures such as Hawking who perpetuate present violence and present dreams of colonial speciesist violence in the future. It is also those who might reject this violence but whose lives and actions are caught up in a certain complicity for this violence. From a variety of political standpoints, it would seem that the issue of modern, autonomous action runs into difficulties of systematic and institutional complicity.

AT: Reciprocal ethics

Justifying deplorable treatment of animals with ethics stemming from reciprocity is flawed

Singer 3 [Pete, Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University; Professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy at the University of Melbourne]May15, 2003,“Animal Liberation at 30” The New York Review of Books, Vol. 50, No. 8 http://www.animal-rights-library.com/texts-m/singer04.htm

That takes us to the second question. If species is not morally important in itself, is there something else that happens to coincide with the human species, on the basis of which we can justify the inferior consideration we give to nonhuman animals?Peter Carruthers argues that it is the lack of a capacity to reciprocate. Ethics, he says, arises out of an agreement that if I do not harm you, you will not harm me. Since animals cannot take part in this social contract we have no direct duties to them. [8] The difficulty with this approach to ethics is that it also means we have no direct duties to small children, or to future generations yet unborn. If we produce radioactive waste that will be deadly for thousands of years, is it unethical to put it into a container that will last 150 years and drop it into a convenient lake? If it is, ethics cannot be based on reciprocity.

30 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab AT: “Nonliving” irrelevant

Whether or not something is ‘living’ by our standards doesn’t compromise the intrinsic value of it; there’s no clear distinction in the environment

Nicholson 92 (Shirley J. Nicholson, former chief editor of Quest Books , Krotona Institute of Theosophy in Ojai, CA, "Gaia's Hidden Life: The Unseen Intelligence of Nature" 1992, http://books.google.com/books? id=dLJW84nISZYC&dq=gaia+nicholson&lr=&source=gbs_navlinks_s, Google Books)

If this vital force, like Sheldrake's "immaterial" and "subtle" something that makes a body alive, is the energy that is equivalent to all matter (E=mc2), then indeed everything is alive, including those things we usually consider inanimate, such as rocks, water, and molecules.

Esoteric philosophy has long held that everything is alive. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, in her source book of ancient wisdom The Secret Doctrine, confirms this view: "It has been stated before now that Occultism does not accept anything inorganic in the Kosmos. The expression employed by Science, "Inorganic substance,' means simply that the latent life slumbering in the molecules of so called 'inert matter' is incognizable. ALL IS LIFE, and every atom of every mineral dust is a LIFE, though beyond our comprehension and perception, because it is outside the ranger of the laws known to those who reject Occultism" In this view even the remains of a dead animal contain potential life force that permeates everything in the universe, but it becomes obvious to us only when the organism is imbued with purpose and self regulation, as is a living plant or a human being.

There are certainly those who would vehemently disagree with this interpretation of what in our world (and perhaps in the universe, too) can be considered as life. Lovelock mentioned in his definition of life, similar to Blavatsky's, that this sort of definition would also apply to flowing streams, to hurricanes, to flames, or possibly even to objects made by humans. However, Lovelock and Margulis, after much soul-searching, have come to observe that the boundary between life and what we consider inanimate (the fire, the flowing steam, rocks), which most of us intuitively believe not to be alive, may not be so easily drawn after all. They studied the complex interactions on our Gaian earth, the way plant becomes rock becomes gas becomes a part of plant again. They considered that matter and energy appear to be completely different yet completely interchangeable. They concluded that one can substitute living organisms and their inorganic environment for each other. This is tantamount to stating that at least all matter on earth is alive, and perhaps this includes all matter in the universe as well. According to Lovelock, "there is no clear distinction anywhere on the Earth's surface between living and nonliving matter. There is merely a hierarchy of intensity going form the 'material' environment of the rocks and the atmosphere to the living cells."

31 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab -----AFF ANSWERS----- No Link—we protect an ecosystem

We do prioritize the intrinsic value of the environment; this is uniquely ecocentric

The ecocentric responsibility paradigm is based on efforts to maintain, preserve, or restore the health of ecosystems. Legislation pertaining to the loss of wetlands, old-growth forests, and the Wilderness Acts are just some examples of where a responsibility for preserving the health of the land has been of major concern (Des Jardins, 1993; Leopold, 1970; Rolston, 1994). As Leopold (1970: 274) pointed out, "A science of land health needs, first of all, a base-datum of normality, a picture of how healthy land maintains itself as an organism." This picture is usually derived from ecosystem studies of pristine natural systems with their biological integrity intact; that is, ecosystems that have not been culturally modified. The health and integrity of a culturally modified ecosystem can be gauged by comparing its functioning with that of a pristine counterpart, usually located in wilderness areas. "Wilderness," as Leopold (1970: 274) pointed out, "assumes unexpected importance as a laboratory for the study of land health." An ecosystem's biological integrity is intact to the extent that it has the ability to maintain "a balanced, integrated, adaptive community of organisms having a species composition, diversity, and functional organization comparable to the natural habitat of the region" (Karr & Dudley, 1981; cited in Rolston, 1994: 70). To measure the relative integrity of an ecosystem, conservation biologists might compare the species constitu- tion of an affected area to that of similar ecosystems that have not been invaded by humans. Similarly, indicators of ecosystem health have to do with systemic capacities for self-repair and resilience to stress. A well- functioning, healthy ecosystem is stable and sustainable as member organisms can flourish in their respective niches, free of "distress syndrome" (Constanza, Norton, & Haskell, 1992). This is ecosystem health as Leopold defined it: "the capacity of the land for self-renewal" (1970: 258). Healthy ecosystems then do not require constant repair, upkeep, and management. In contrast, unhealthy ecosystems require "environmental management," constant doctoring, and engineering. The focus on ecosystem health in this paradigm is not simply to preserve wilderness by attempting to outlaw culture from the perimeters of nature. Modern culture is also a part of nature. Rather, the issue is one of conserving natural values (Rolston, 1994)-that is, values that do not place the health of ecosystems at risk-values that allow cultural systems to flourish within safe operating limits and that are fitted to support the biological integrity of ecosystems. Rolston (1994: 71) maintained that healthy ecosystems "produce natural values, as well as support cultural values, and such productivity and support is the bottom-line." This shift in perspective places primary emphasis upon the valuing of ecosystem integrity. Cul- tural development is acceptable so long as ecological integrity or ecosystem health are sustainable. In this case, the focus is on ecological sustainability, rather than sustainable development.

32 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab No Link—we protect biodiversity

We protect biodiversity and are instilling a paradigm of intrinsic value rather than instrumentality for our involvement with nature

An ecocentric perspective also gives moral consideration to ecological "wholes," such as forests, wetlands, lakes, grasslands, deserts-that are both biotic and abiotic communities. Such ecological communities are composed of many interdependent relationships. Rather than focusing upon the study of species isolated from their habitat, an ecocentric perspective is holistic: the focus is upon understanding and explaining how a species or biological organism functions within the overall context of ecosystem processes and relationships. Every species and biological organism is viewed as a member of a larger biotic community. Ethical holism is derived from this ecocentric perspective: Each species and biological organism depends upon a web of relationships within its ecosystem; conversely, the stability and integrity of an ecosystem is dependent upon the function, role, and operation of various species interacting in mutually beneficial ways.

33 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab No Link—some interference okay

Some instances of stewardship are justifiable; it priorities not just human life, but the preservation of all life forms.

Grey 93 (William is professor at the University of Queensland, Australian National University, Temple University, and the University of New England, “Anthropocentrism and Deep Ecology,” Australiasian Journal of Philosophy, Vol 71, No 4 (1993), pp. 463-475, http://www.uq.edu.au/~pdwgrey/pubs/anthropocentrism.html)

Suppose that astronomers detect a modest asteroid or comet, say five or ten kilometres diameter, on collision course with planet Earth [8]. The impending collision would be perfectly natural all right, and cataclysmic enough to do to us what another one rather like it probably did to the dinosaurs. Such periodic disruptive events are natural all right, though they probably destroy most of the then extant large life forms. These times of renewal provide opportunities for smaller, flexible organisms to radiate opportunistically into vacated niches, and life goes on. From a biocentric or ecocentric perspective there is little doubt that our demise would provide comparable opportunities for development which we currently prevent. Should we, in such circumstances, step aside so that evolution can continue on its majestic course? I think not, and I think further that interference with the natural course of events, if it could be effected, would be no bad thing—at least from our point of view and in terms of our interests, which it is quite legitimate to promote and favour.

Suppose again that we are entering one of the periodic epochs of reduced solar energy flux. An ice age is imminent, with massive disruptions to the agriculturally productive temperate zones. However suppose further that by carefully controlled emissions of greenhouse gases it would be possible to maintain a stable and productive agriculture. A the detriment of various arctic plant and animal species, but I do not think that such interference, though "unnatural" would be therefore deplorable. Nature in and of itself is not, I suggest, something to be valued independently of human interests. It could be argued moreover that in thus modifying our natural environment, we would be following the precedent of three billion years of organic evolution, since according to the Gaia hypothesis of Lovelock (1979), the atmosphere and oceans are not just biological products, but biological constructions.

34 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab No Link—satellites

Satellites are the least impacting on the environment

The use of space for various purposes is increasing day by day. Satellites have been launched by the space- capable nations including the United States , erstwhile Soviet Union, the European Space Agency, France, Germany, Japan, China and India for number of applications. The most important application relates to the field of communications. The satellite communication has brought the world closer and promoted the concept of global village. Telecommunications was the first aspect of outer space activity to be commercialized. It remains the most lucrative sector of space commerce. Telecommunications is also the sector with the least potential for environmental damage from its primary activity . This has led to a number of benefits to man. Entertainment worldwide is provided by satellite hook up. The weather satellites have helped in the weather forecasting and monitoring has been a lot easier. The transportation sector of space commerce that is, services for carrying payloads into outer space, experienced the greatest growth during the 1980s. It has also been the most competitive sector. Space transportation activities have the greatest present potential for adverse environmental effects. These activities involve the highest risk of accidents, and they create more waste and debris than do other types of space commerce. Thus, they have the potential to affect the environment in many different ways, both on the Earth and in space. Remote Sensing are used for resource mapping, monitoring forest cover and other uses. It is a small but a competitive and politically controversial are of the commercial activities in space.

35 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab No Link—we remove space debris

Space debris can harm the earth’s environment if they come into our atmosphere

‘Debris’ is derived from the French ‘debrise’ which means to break down. There are no treaties which have given a definition of this word. In general use, the term debris consists of spent space objects, used rocket stage, separation devices, shrouds clamps, and all large and small fragments including the particles remaining after the disintegration of the space objects. Carl Q. Christol suggests that the debris is something that possesses tangible, physical characteristics of the kind that can be seen, touched, weighed and processed in factories and analysed in the laboratories. He further said that ‘debris’ may consists of a space object, including its component parts, or it may be composed of fragments that are located in space or which endure the test of atmosphere and ultimately comes to rest on the surface of the earth.

36 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab PERM—combine theory and practice

A pragmatic approach is best to preserve the life of all beings

Frodeman (Robert Frodeman is a Proffessor and former chair in the Dept. of Philosophy at the University of North Texas, “Separated at Birth, Signs of Rapprochement Environmental Ethics and Space Exploration,” Vol. 13 No. 1 Spring 2008, Project Muse, Ethics and the Environment Journal http://www.csid.unt.edu/files/env_ethics_and_space.pdf)

Revolutions in philosophic understanding and cultural worldviews inevitably accompany revolutions in science. As we expand our exploration of the heavens, we will also reflect on the broader human implications of advances in space. Moreover, our appreciation of human impact on Earth systems will expand as we come to see the Earth within the context of the solar system. Most fundamentally, we need to anticipate and wrestle with the epistemological, metaphysical, and theological dimensions of space exploration, including the possibility of extraterrestrial life and the development of the space environment, as it pertains to our common understanding of the universe and of ourselves. Such reflection should be performed by philosophers, metaphysicians, and theologians in regular conversation with the scientists who investigate space and the policy makers that direct the space program. The exploration of the universe is no experimental science, contained and controlled in a laboratory, but takes place in a vast and dynamic network of interconnected, interdependent realities. If (environmental) philosophy is to be a significant source of insight, philosophers will need to have a much broader range of effective strategies for interdisciplinary collaborations, framing their reflections with the goal of achieving policy-relevant results. If it is necessary for science and policy-makers to heed the advice of philosophers, it is equally necessary for philosophers to speak in concrete terms about real-world problems. A philosophic questioning about the relatedness of humans and the universe, in collaboration with a pragmatic, interdisciplinary approach to environmental problems, is the most responsible means of developing both the science and policy for the exploration of the final frontier.

37 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab Alt Fails—hopeless

Anti-anthropocentrism is circular and can never truly be achieved; it requires rejecting all values and preferences so much so that we cannot flourish

The attempt to provide a genuinely non-anthropocentric set of values, or preferences seems to be a hopeless quest. Once we eschew all human values, interests and preferences we are confronted with just too many alternatives, as we can see when we consider biological history over a billion year time scale. The problem with the various non-anthropocentric bases for value which have been proposed is that they permit too many different possibilities, not all of which are at all congenial to us. And that matters. We should be concerned to promote a rich, diverse and vibrant biosphere. Human flourishing may certainly be included as a legitimate part of such a flourishing.

The preoccupations of deep ecology arise as a result of human activities which impoverish and degrade the quality of the planet's living systems. But these judgements are possible only if we assume a set of values (that is, preference rankings), based on human preferences. We need to reject not anthropocentrism, but a particularly short term and narrow conception of human interests and concerns. What's wrong with shallow views is not their concern about the well-being of humans, but that they do not really consider enough in what that well-being consists. We need to develop an enriched, fortified anthropocentric notion of human interest to replace the dominant short-term, sectional and self-regarding conception.

Our sort of world, with our sort of fellow occupants is an interesting and engaging place. There is every reason for us to try to keep it, and ourselves, going for a few more cosmic seconds [10]

38 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab Alt Fails—bacteria rules

Their totalizing criticism of anthropocentrism fails—bacteria is the dominant life form

Consider some extreme cases: should we be concerned about the fate of the planet several billion years hence, or about the welfare of bacteria? I think not. Such concern would be pointless and misdirected for the simple reason that there's nothing we can do to affect the fate of the planet in the very long term, or to seriously disrupt the welfare of single-celled creatures. Bacteria have been the dominant life form on the planet for more than three billion years—about five sixths of evolutionary history—and will almost certainly continue long after the demise of our species. It is often said that we live in the Age of Mammals; but, as Gould has pointed out, it is now, as it has always been, the Age of Bacteria. There are more e. coli in every human intestine than there have ever been homo sapiens. Multicellular life is a comparatively recent arrival in the biosphere, having evolved only within the last half billion years or so.

39 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab Alt Fails—purely ecocentric bad

Purely ecocentric or biocentric perspectives offers no standards for making decisions and moving forward

Other natural properties—such as biodiversity, beauty, harmony, stability, and integrity—have been proposed to provide a non-anthropocentric basis for value. But unless we smuggle in some anthropocentric bearings, they fare no better than the property of being the outcome of a natural process in providing an intuitively plausible ordering of better and worse states of the world. For example, if biodiversity is taken as a basic value-giving characteristic, then the state of the planet just after the Cambrian explosion (about 570 million years ago) would be rated much more highly than the world of the present, as it was far richer in terms of the range and diversity of its constituent creatures. Most biology textbooks recognize between twenty and thirty extant animal phyla—the phylum being the fundamental design plan of an organism (and the second broadest classification, following 'kingdom', in biological taxonomy). Yet the Burgess Shale, one small quarry in British Columbia dating back some 530 million years, contains the remains of fifteen to twenty organisms so unlike one another, or anything now living, as to each constitute a separate phylum (Gould 1989). In terms of basic diversity, a far greater range of radically different anatomical types existed at that epoch of evolutionary development.

These examples disclose a serious difficulty for a view such as Goodin's which seeks a non-anthropocentric naturalistic basis for value [9]. The fundamental problem is that we can rank preferences only given some anthropocentric bearings. An austerely ecocentric or biocentric perspective delivers no determinate answer as to which of the abundant and wonderfully various unfolding planetary biotas should be preferred.

40 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab -----Deep Ecology K----- 1NC (1/)

The current world wide view is that man dominates over nature as he does in his technocratic society that he created for himself. Deep ecology is needed in order to awaken the deep inner spirit within that is needed to change world ideals

Devall ‘85(,Bill currently is a consultant to the Foundation for Deep Ecology in San Francisco and Professor Emeritus in Sociology at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California. Devall is a well-known lecturer and author, most notably (with George Sessions) of the influential book, Deep Ecology (1985), and Simple in Means, Rich in Ends (1988), Living Richly in an Age of Limits (1992), and Clearcut: The Tragedy of Industrial Logging (1993). He is completing a book on bioregional politics and culture, Bioregion on the Edge; “Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered; pg 65-66) Many of these questions are perennial philosophical and religious questions faced by humans in all cultures over the ages. What does it mean to be a unique human individual? How can the individual self maintain and increase its uniqueness while also being an inseparable aspect of the whole system wherein there are no sharp breaks between self and the other? An ecological perspective, in this deeper sense, results in what Theodore Roszak calls "an awakening of wholes greater than the sum of their parts. In spirit, the discipline is contemplative and therapeutic."' Ecological consciousness and deep ecology are in sharp contrast with the dominant worldview of technocratic-industrial societies which regards humans as isolated and fundamentally separate from the rest of Nature, as superior to, and in charge of, the rest of creation. But the view of humans as separate and superior to the rest, of Nature is only part of larger cultural patterns. For thousands of years, Western culture has become increasingly obsessed with the idea of dominance: with dominance of humans over nonhuman Nature, masculine over the feminine, wealthy and powerful over the poor, with the dominance of the West over non-Western cultures. Deep ecological consciousness allows us to see through these erroneous and dangerous illusions.

1NC (2/)

We control uniqueness the current view of deep ecology is not in the worldly view of humanity. Devall ‘85(,Bill currently is a consultant to the Foundation for Deep Ecology in San Francisco and Professor Emeritus in Sociology at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California. Devall is a well-known lecturer and 41 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab author, most notably (with George Sessions) of the influential book, Deep Ecology (1985), and Simple in Means, Rich in Ends (1988), Living Richly in an Age of Limits (1992), and Clearcut: The Tragedy of Industrial Logging (1993). He is completing a book on bioregional politics and culture, Bioregion on the Edge; “Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered; pg 66) Warwick Fox, an Australian philosopher, has succinctly expressed the central intuition of deep ecology: "It is the idea that we can make no firm ontological divide in the field of existence: That there is no bifurcation in reality between the human and the non- human realms ... to the extent that we perceive boundaries, we fall short of deep ecological consciousness."

1NC (3/)

We need to become self-realized in order to live a better life with nature, the method to achieve this is without the state since it just corrupts the entire process of self-realization. Devall ‘85(,Bill currently is a consultant to the Foundation for Deep Ecology in San Francisco and Professor Emeritus in Sociology at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California. Devall is a well-known lecturer and author, most notably (with George Sessions) of the influential book, Deep Ecology (1985), and Simple in Means, Rich in Ends (1988), Living Richly in an Age of Limits (1992), and Clearcut: The Tragedy of Industrial Logging 42 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab

(1993). He is completing a book on bioregional politics and culture, Bioregion on the Edge; “Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered; pg 66-67) In keeping with the spiritual traditions of many of the world's religions, the deep ecology norm of self-realization goes beyond the modern Western self which is defined as an isolated ego striving primarily for hedonistic gratification or for a narrow sense of individual salvation in this life or the next. This socially programmed sense of the narrow self or social self dislocates us, and leaves us prey to whatever fad or fashion is prevalent in our society or social reference group. We are thus robbed of beginning the search for our unique spiritual/biological personhood. Spiritual growth, or unfolding, begins when we cease to understand or see ourselves as isolated and narrow competing egos and begin to identify with other humans from our family and friends to, eventually, our species. But the deep- ecology sense of self requires a further maturity and growth, an identification which goes beyond humanity to include the nonhuman world. We must see beyond our narrow contemporary cultural assumptions and values, and the conventional wisdom of our time and place, and this is best achieved by the meditative deep questioning process. Only in this way can we hope to attain full mature personhood and uniqueness. A nurturing nondominating society can help in the "real work" of becoming a whole person. The "real work" can be summarized symbolically as the realization of "self- in-Self" where "Self" stands for organic wholeness. This process of the full unfolding of the self can also be summarized by the phrase, "No one is saved until we are all saved," where the phrase "one" includes not only me, an individual human, but all humans, whales, grizzly bears, whole rain forest ecosystems, mountains and rivers, the tiniest microbes in the soil, and so on.

We need a close relationship with nature it is as basic as the need for food, water, and shelter for without we cannot become fully developed mature humans Devall ‘85(,Bill currently is a consultant to the Foundation for Deep Ecology in San Francisco and Professor Emeritus in Sociology at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California. Devall is a well-known lecturer and author, most notably (with George Sessions) of the influential book, Deep Ecology (1985), and Simple in Means, Rich in Ends (1988), Living Richly in an Age of Limits (1992), and Clearcut: The Tragedy of Industrial Logging (1993). He is completing a book on bioregional politics and culture, Bioregion on the Edge; “Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered; pg 68) A fuller discussion of the biocentric norm as it unfolds itself in practice begins with the realization that we, as individual humans, and as communities of humans, have vital needs which go beyond such basics as food, water, and shelter to include love, play, creative expression, intimate relationships with a particular landscape (or Nature taken in its entirety) as well as intimate relationships with other humans, and the vital need for spiritual growth, for becoming a mature human being.

44 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab Link—technology

The technocratic society is leading to over consumption through the spread of propaganda Devall ‘85(,Bill currently is a consultant to the Foundation for Deep Ecology in San Francisco and Professor Emeritus in Sociology at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California. Devall is a well-known lecturer and author, most notably (with George Sessions) of the influential book, Deep Ecology (1985), and Simple in Means, Rich in Ends (1988), Living Richly in an Age of Limits (1992), and Clearcut: The Tragedy of Industrial Logging (1993). He is completing a book on bioregional politics and culture, Bioregion on the Edge; “Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered; pg 68) Our vital material needs are probably more simple than many realize. In technocratic-industrial societies there is overwhelming propaganda and advertising which encourages false needs and destructive desires designed to foster increased production and consumption of goods. Most of this actually diverts us from facing reality in an objective way and from beginning the "real work" of spiritual growth and maturity.

45 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab Link—space the human view needs to change along with the notion of outer space as the escape idea that is bad we need to focus our efforts onto fixing rather than escaping the planet that gave birth to the human race. Devall ’85 (,Bill currently is a consultant to the Foundation for Deep Ecology in San Francisco and Professor Emeritus in Sociology at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California. Devall is a well-known lecturer and author, most notably (with George Sessions) of the influential book, Deep Ecology (1985), and Simple in Means, Rich in Ends (1988), Living Richly in an Age of Limits (1992), and Clearcut: The Tragedy of Industrial Logging (1993). He is completing a book on bioregional politics and culture, Bioregion on the Edge; “Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered; pg 176) The overall claim here has been that the explicit or implicit utopian visions of the technocratic social worldview-of humans dominating and managing Nature as a resource in the production of the "artificial environment" or as an expendable launching pad in the journey to outer space are indefensible. Human attention must now rapidly shift to an ecological worldview and utopian vision to serve as a guide for individual and social values and action. Intellectual debate must focus on the refinement of these visions together with appropriate social strategies. Educational goals and strategies must follow suit

46 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab Link—development—overpopulation

Overpopulation is bad the people of richer nations produce the most waste per individual Devall ‘85(,Bill currently is a consultant to the Foundation for Deep Ecology in San Francisco and Professor Emeritus in Sociology at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California. Devall is a well-known lecturer and author, most notably (with George Sessions) of the influential book, Deep Ecology (1985), and Simple in Means, Rich in Ends (1988), Living Richly in an Age of Limits (1992), and Clearcut: The Tragedy of Industrial Logging (1993). He is completing a book on bioregional politics and culture, Bioregion on the Edge; “Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered; pg 72) As many ecologists have pointed out, it is also absolutely crucial to curb population growth in the so- called developed (i.e., overdeveloped) industrial societies. Given the tremendous rate of consumption and waste production of individuals in these societies, they represent a much greater threat and impact on the biosphere per capita than individuals in Second and Third World countries.

47 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab Link—government

Government interaction for the environment is bad especially when that is applied to third world nations that have no interest in deep ecological ideals in the first place. Devall ‘85(,Bill currently is a consultant to the Foundation for Deep Ecology in San Francisco and Professor Emeritus in Sociology at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California. Devall is a well-known lecturer and author, most notably (with George Sessions) of the influential book, Deep Ecology (1985), and Simple in Means, Rich in Ends (1988), Living Richly in an Age of Limits (1992), and Clearcut: The Tragedy of Industrial Logging (1993). He is completing a book on bioregional politics and culture, Bioregion on the Edge; “Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered; pg 73) Governments in Third World countries (with the exception of Costa Rica and a few others) are uninterested in deep ecological issues. When the governments of industrial societies try to promote ecological measures through Third World governments, practically nothing is accomplished (e.g., with problems of desertification). Given this situation, support for global action through nongovernmental international organizations becomes increasingly important. Many of these organizations are able to act globally "from grassroots to grassroots," thus avoiding negative governmental interference.

48 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab Link—farming

Farming is bad and it is a disease that is destroying the planet it needs to eradicated and replaced with hunting and gathering it is in our genetics. Devall ’85 (,Bill currently is a consultant to the Foundation for Deep Ecology in San Francisco and Professor Emeritus in Sociology at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California. Devall is a well-known lecturer and author, most notably (with George Sessions) of the influential book, Deep Ecology (1985), and Simple in Means, Rich in Ends (1988), Living Richly in an Age of Limits (1992), and Clearcut: The Tragedy of Industrial Logging (1993). He is completing a book on bioregional politics and culture, Bioregion on the Edge; “Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered; pg 172-173)

Not only is farming itself an ecological disease, according to Shepard, but the traditional peasant has led "the dullest life man has ever lived." While the pioneer subsistence farm is in fairly close ecological harmony, farmers in a monocultural setting "require constant social supercharging to remain sane and human." Rural life is hopeless in modern industrial irrigation farming. Domestic plants and animals are biological disasters, he claims; they are "genetic goofies." Shepard agrees with Brownell that humans need wild animals in their natural habitat to model themselves after and become fully human; domesticated pets and farm animals provide pathetically inadequate substitutes. For Shepard, an ecologically sane future requires that almost all forms of farming together with genetically-altered plants and animals must go. Another requirement for the future is the full recognition that humans are genetically hunters and gatherers: Most people seem to agree that we cannot and do not want to go back to the past; but the reason given is often wrong: that time has moved on and what was can never be again. The truth is that we can not go back to what we never left. Our home is the earth, our time the Pleistocene Ice Ages. The past is the formula for our being. Cynegetic man is us.

49 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab Link—science

We can’t expect for science to be the saving grace for all of our problems in the status quo. Science just shows the view from shallow ecology, with deep ecology we are able to identify ourselves with other beings like animals and landscapes and feel as they feel, but only with ecological maturity. Devall ‘85(,Bill currently is a consultant to the Foundation for Deep Ecology in San Francisco and Professor Emeritus in Sociology at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California. Devall is a well-known lecturer and author, most notably (with George Sessions) of the influential book, Deep Ecology (1985), and Simple in Means, Rich in Ends (1988), Living Richly in an Age of Limits (1992), and Clearcut: The Tragedy of Industrial Logging (1993). He is completing a book on bioregional politics and culture, Bioregion on the Edge; “Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered; pg 75) "All the sciences are fragmentary and incomplete in relation to basic rules and norms, so it's very shallow to think that science can solve our problems. Without basic norms, there is no science.” "... People can then oppose nuclear power without having to read thick books and without knowing the myriad facts that are used in newspapers and periodicals. And they must also find others who feel the same and form circles of friends who give one another confidence and support in living in a way that the majority find ridiculous, naive, stupid and simplistic. But in order to do that, one must already have enough self-confidence to follow one's intuition a quality very much lacking in broad sections of the populace. Most people follow the trends and advertisements and become philosophical and ethical cripples.” "There is a basic intuition in deep ecology that we have no right to destroy other living beings without sufficient reason. Another norm is that, with maturity, human beings will experience joy when other life forms experience joy and sorrow when other life forms experience sorrow. Not only will we feel sad when our brother or a dog or a cat feels sad, but we will grieve when living beings, including landscapes, are destroyed. In our civilization, we have vast means of destruction at our disposal but extremely little maturity in our feelings. Only a very narrow range of feelings have interested most human beings until now.”

50 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab Link—space flight

Space flight is just a method discovered by man to avoid the pain that he is feeling deep within his inner self, and that it continues in the form of the need to get off the rock because it is going to kill us Devall ’85 (,Bill currently is a consultant to the Foundation for Deep Ecology in San Francisco and Professor Emeritus in Sociology at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California. Devall is a well-known lecturer and author, most notably (with George Sessions) of the influential book, Deep Ecology (1985), and Simple in Means, Rich in Ends (1988), Living Richly in an Age of Limits (1992), and Clearcut: The Tragedy of Industrial Logging (1993). He is completing a book on bioregional politics and culture, Bioregion on the Edge; “Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered; pg 165) One space engineer of Eiseley's acquaintance claimed that "We have got to spend everything we have, if necessary, to get off this planet" because the Ice Age is returning. A space agency administrator claimed in print that "Should man fall back from his destiny ... the confines of this planet will destroy him." Eiseley finds the expression of this kind of continuing psychic alienation from the planet shallow and dangerous: It is not fair to say this planet will destroy us. Space flight is a brave venture, but upon the soaring rockets are projected all the fears and evasions of man. He has fled across two worlds, from the windy corridors of wild savannahs to the sunlit world of the mind, and still he flees. Earth will not destroy him. It is he who threatens to destroy the earth.

51 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab Alt Solvency—save planet man needs to ask deeper questions about the society that we live in and also ask those same questions to himself. Deep ecology is the best option in the terms of saving the planet. Devall ‘85(,Bill currently is a consultant to the Foundation for Deep Ecology in San Francisco and Professor Emeritus in Sociology at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California. Devall is a well-known lecturer and author, most notably (with George Sessions) of the influential book, Deep Ecology (1985), and Simple in Means, Rich in Ends (1988), Living Richly in an Age of Limits (1992), and Clearcut: The Tragedy of Industrial Logging (1993). He is completing a book on bioregional politics and culture, Bioregion on the Edge; “Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered; pg 74) "The essence of deep ecology is to ask deeper questions. The adjective `deep' stresses that we ask why and how, where others do not. For instance, ecology as a science does not ask what kind of a society would be the best for maintaining a particular ecosystem-that is considered question for value theory, for politics, for ethics. As long as ecologists keep narrowly to their science, they do not ask such questions. What we need today is a tremendous expansion of ecological thinking in what I call ecosophy . Sophy comes from the Greek term sophia, `wisdom,' which relates to ethics, norms, rules, and practice. Ecosophy, or deep ecology, then, involves a shift from science to wisdom. "For example, we need to ask questions like, Why do we think that economic growth and high levels of consumption are so important? The conventional answer would be to point to the economic consequences of not having economic growth. But in deep ecology, we ask whether the present society fulfills basic human needs like love and security and access to nature, and, in so doing, we question our society's underlying assumptions. We ask which society, which education , which form of religion, is beneficial for all life on the planet as a whole, and then we ask further what we need to do in order to make the necessary changes. We are not limited to a scientific approach; we have an obligation to verbalize a total view.

52 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab Alt Solvency—no revolution

Deep ecology helps to provide the best efforts to help fix the planet and stabilizes the population without revolution Devall ’85 (,Bill currently is a consultant to the Foundation for Deep Ecology in San Francisco and Professor Emeritus in Sociology at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California. Devall is a well-known lecturer and author, most notably (with George Sessions) of the influential book, Deep Ecology (1985), and Simple in Means, Rich in Ends (1988), Living Richly in an Age of Limits (1992), and Clearcut: The Tragedy of Industrial Logging (1993). He is completing a book on bioregional politics and culture, Bioregion on the Edge; “Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered; pg 75-76) "For deep ecology, there is a core democracy in the biosphere. In deep ecology, we have the goal not only of stabilizing human population but also of reducing it to a sustainable minimum without revolution or dictatorship I should think we must have no more than 100 million people if we are to have the variety of cultures we had one hundred years ago. Because we need the conservation of human cultures, just as we need the conservation of animal species.”

53 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab Alt Solvency—no blindness

The ecotopian view helps to remove the bandages that are covering our eyes to show us the current issue that we are facing within our technocratic society Devall ’85 (,Bill currently is a consultant to the Foundation for Deep Ecology in San Francisco and Professor Emeritus in Sociology at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California. Devall is a well-known lecturer and author, most notably (with George Sessions) of the influential book, Deep Ecology (1985), and Simple in Means, Rich in Ends (1988), Living Richly in an Age of Limits (1992), and Clearcut: The Tragedy of Industrial Logging (1993). He is completing a book on bioregional politics and culture, Bioregion on the Edge; “Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered; pg 162) Creating ecotopian futures has practical value. It helps us articulate our goals and presents an ideal which may never be completely realized but which keeps us focused on the ideal. We can also compare our personal actions and collective public decisions on specific issues with this goal. We suggest that ecotopian visions give perspective on vain-glorious illusions of both revolutionary leaders and the propaganda of defenders of the status quo. Furthermore, ecotopian visions help us see the distance between what ought to be and what is now reality in our technocratic-industrial society.

54 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab Alt Solvency—interconnected

Deep ecology focuses on one branch of science and that is life sciences and teaches that the world is all interconnected Devall ’85 (,Bill currently is a consultant to the Foundation for Deep Ecology in San Francisco and Professor Emeritus in Sociology at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California. Devall is a well-known lecturer and author, most notably (with George Sessions) of the influential book, Deep Ecology (1985), and Simple in Means, Rich in Ends (1988), Living Richly in an Age of Limits (1992), and Clearcut: The Tragedy of Industrial Logging (1993). He is completing a book on bioregional politics and culture, Bioregion on the Edge; “Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered; pg 170-171) Confronted by [examples of ecological damage], it's easy for the child to see the need for conservation and then to go on from conservation to morality easy for him to go on from the Golden Rule in relation to plants and animals and the earth that supports them to the Golden Rule in relation to human beings. The morality to which a child goes on from the facts of ecology and the parables of erosion is a universal ethic. Conservation morality gives nobody an excuse for feeling superior, or claiming special privileges. "Do as you would be done by" applies to our dealings with all kinds of life in every part of the world. We shall be permitted to live on this planet only for as long as we treat all nature with compassion and intelligence

55 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab Alt Solvency—fabric of life

Man is a part of the fabric of life and that there are too many people on this planet. Devall ’85 (,Bill currently is a consultant to the Foundation for Deep Ecology in San Francisco and Professor Emeritus in Sociology at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California. Devall is a well-known lecturer and author, most notably (with George Sessions) of the influential book, Deep Ecology (1985), and Simple in Means, Rich in Ends (1988), Living Richly in an Age of Limits (1992), and Clearcut: The Tragedy of Industrial Logging (1993). He is completing a book on bioregional politics and culture, Bioregion on the Edge; “Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered; pg 171) Man is but a part of the fabric of life-dependent on the whole fabric for his very existence. As the most highly developed tool-using animal, he must recognize that the unknown evolutionary destinies of other life forms are to be respected. There are now too many human beings, and the problem is growing rapidly worse. The goal would be half of the present world population, or less!...

56 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab Alt Best—no violence

Deep ecology is the best inround option since the ethical response to this leads man to accepting the world for what it is and rejecting all other forms of violence that is plaguing the world today Devall ’85 (,Bill currently is a consultant to the Foundation for Deep Ecology in San Francisco and Professor Emeritus in Sociology at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California. Devall is a well-known lecturer and author, most notably (with George Sessions) of the influential book, Deep Ecology (1985), and Simple in Means, Rich in Ends (1988), Living Richly in an Age of Limits (1992), and Clearcut: The Tragedy of Industrial Logging (1993). He is completing a book on bioregional politics and culture, Bioregion on the Edge; “Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered; pg 167-168) Mysticism enables man to comprehend the unity of direct experience which is denied to science, and in so doing he is in touch with the influence of environmental forces and relationships contextually rather than through the inadequate symbolic formulations of scientific method. In Brownell's mysticism,, man is more fully aware of the sanctions and limits of the natural world because he is sensitive to their direct intervention in his daily life, and so is better able to overcome his anthropocentrism and shape his social life in accordance with ecological norms [In an ecologically healthy man/nature environment] subjectivity is transformed and judgment begins to be conditioned by respect for the normativeness of ecosystemic relationships and sanctions

Alt Solvency—save all

Man needs to leave the cradle of the urban world in order to save not only the environment, but also himself, as well as decentralize society to have a healthly integrated human society Devall ’85 (,Bill currently is a consultant to the Foundation for Deep Ecology in San Francisco and Professor Emeritus in Sociology at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California. Devall is a well-known lecturer and author, most notably (with George Sessions) of the influential book, Deep Ecology (1985), and Simple in Means, Rich in Ends (1988), Living Richly in an Age of Limits (1992), and Clearcut: The Tragedy of Industrial Logging (1993). He is completing a book on bioregional politics and culture, Bioregion on the Edge; “Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered; pg 168-169) From this ecological metaphysical/epistemological base, Brownell launches his attack on the urban/industrial worldview. The gargantuan size and complexity of modern industrial societies eliminates the possibility for direct concrete experience: Industrial man, fragmented by the divisive specialization he is forced to engage in, vainly compensates for his lack of direct experience by vicarious cultivation of still other specializations, either as spectator or participant in extroverted pursuit of pleasure and material goods, or as lone practitioner of highly wrought technical and professional skills. For Brownell, our culture is a culture of escape and substitutive behavior. Substitutive behavior forces us to separate emotion from direct action; and this separation, Brownell thought, is the essence of decadence. Brownell was especially critical of urban life: The greater aggressiveness and violence of city life stemmed from an excessive concentration of the specialized functions and organizations. But because the activities of corporate organizations increasingly reached out to include the remotest of rural areas, they too became affiliated with the extensive urban culture. All industrial life is lived in the urban context… [Urban men] have learned to value false gods. They have been seduced by bright, divisive cultures, specialized perfections and privileges, glittering fragments, gadgets, ready-made arts, and importations bought promiscuously without relevance to the basic making-using rhythm that is central in any good life. They live on the loot of the world, on trinkets and odds and ends, the only value of which is often the thrill of acquisition. Colwell sums up Brownell's critique of industrial society in his review of Brownell's writing In limiting concrete experience and reinforcing acquisitiveness, the goal of urban culture becomes the perpetual expansion of the scope of acquisitive experience. An acquisitive culture is a man-centered culture It is morally narrow in its outlook and suicidal in its course it fails to realize that the destiny of man, his well-being and happiness, must be framed in accordance with the welfare of the life of the whole of Nature and not just his own immediate desires. to achieve a healthy, ecologically integrated human community, Brownell called for the decentralization of society: "The true human community is incompatible with corporate mass society." The reform of education, even in ecological ways, is by itself insufficient. Education as a social institution is part and parcel of the larger social context.

58 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab Alt Solvency—feasible

The solution is as plain as day the world of the alt. is feasible in the world with our technology in the current world. Devall ’85 (,Bill currently is a consultant to the Foundation for Deep Ecology in San Francisco and Professor Emeritus in Sociology at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California. Devall is a well-known lecturer and author, most notably (with George Sessions) of the influential book, Deep Ecology (1985), and Simple in Means, Rich in Ends (1988), Living Richly in an Age of Limits (1992), and Clearcut: The Tragedy of Industrial Logging (1993). He is completing a book on bioregional politics and culture, Bioregion on the Edge; “Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered; pg 173-174) Unlike some of the earlier utopian literature, Shepard squarely comes to grips with the recent anthropological /genetic literature on Homo sapiens. In any realistic utopian planning for the future, it is necessary for our physical and emotional health that we incorporate into our lives the central features of a hunting/gathering way of life (rituals, exercise, etc.). Secondly, modern ecological findings support the existence of huge expanses of unmanaged wilderness to ensure the integrity of ecosystems and wildlife habitat. Shepard also addresses this issue in his utopian proposal. As he points out: It is impossible to overestimate the ecological crime of species extinction, which is the only irreparable environmental damage by man. Extinction is caused by alteration of the habitat. The measures necessary to avoid it are the same that preserve the biosphere as a whole. The prevention of extinction should be the criterion for a plan or policy of environmental activity of any kind. Shepard's proposal is somewhat desperate in that he plans for the world population to stabilize at about eight billion people by the year 2020. In order to meet the requirements for hunting/gathering existence, he argues that cities of the kind designed by Doxiadis or Paolo Soleri might be strung in narrow ribbons along the edges of the continents and islands while the center of the continents would be allowed to return to the wild. If eight billion people ... were to live in some 160,000 cities (of 50,000 inhabitants), and these cities were uniformly distributed over the earth's fifty million square miles of land, only some three hundred square miles of land would surround each city (allowing two square miles for each city itself). Cities would then be only about seventeen miles apart, and no true wilderness would be possible. If, instead of being dispersed in the interiors of continents, they were constructed in a broken line on the perimeters of the continents, the whole of the interior could be freed for ecological and evolutionary systems on a scale essential to their own requirements and to human cynegetic culture. What would provide the basic diet for humans living in these great ribbons of cities stretching endlessly around the continents with agriculture gone, only occasional gardens, and meat brought back from hunting/gathering forays into the wilderness? Surprisingly, Shepard's answer is a food technology based on microbial life: Biochemistry and microbial biology make possible the recovery of a livable planet complementing ecology rather than opposing it ... the transition to non-land-based subsistence might take half a century ... but perhaps three-quarters of the earth could be freed from its present destructive use.

59 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab Alt Solvency—destroy the first world

Man needs to fix the first world that created him since his second world that he created is destroying the first Devall ’85 (,Bill currently is a consultant to the Foundation for Deep Ecology in San Francisco and Professor Emeritus in Sociology at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California. Devall is a well-known lecturer and author, most notably (with George Sessions) of the influential book, Deep Ecology (1985), and Simple in Means, Rich in Ends (1988), Living Richly in an Age of Limits (1992), and Clearcut: The Tragedy of Industrial Logging (1993). He is completing a book on bioregional politics and culture, Bioregion on the Edge; “Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered; pg 164) In his essay "The Last Magician," which appeared in his collection of essays, The Invisible Pyramid (1970), Eiseley says that humanity now faces a magician who will shape its final form: ... a magician in the shape of his own collective brain, that unique and spreading force which in its manipulations will precipitate the last miracle, or, like the sorcerer's apprentice, wreak the last disaster. The possible nature of the last disaster the world of today has made all too evident. Man has become a spreading blight which threatens to efface the green world that created him ... the nature of the human predicament is how nature is to be reentered- how man, the relatively unthinking and proud creator of the second world- the world of culture may revivify and restore the first world which cherished and brought him into being.

60 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab Education now fails

Education in the status quo doesn’t have the right mentality to attain ethics of the environment Devall ’85 (,Bill currently is a consultant to the Foundation for Deep Ecology in San Francisco and Professor Emeritus in Sociology at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California. Devall is a well-known lecturer and author, most notably (with George Sessions) of the influential book, Deep Ecology (1985), and Simple in Means, Rich in Ends (1988), Living Richly in an Age of Limits (1992), and Clearcut: The Tragedy of Industrial Logging (1993). He is completing a book on bioregional politics and culture, Bioregion on the Edge; “Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered; pg 170) Specialization ... is necessary and inevitable. And if one educates the whole mind-body along with the symbol-using intellect, that kind of necessary specialization won't do much harm. But you people don't educate the mind-body. Your cure for too much scientific specializetion is a few more courses in the humanities By themselves the humanities don't humanize. They're simply another form of specialization on the symbolic level. Reading Plato or listening to a lecture on T. S. Eliot doesn't educate the whole human being: like courses in physics or chemistry, it merely educates the symbol manipulator and leaves the rest of the living mind-body in its pristine state of ignorance and ineptitude.

62 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab Education Key education reforms are needed to help promote the idea of self-realization. Devall ’85 (,Bill currently is a consultant to the Foundation for Deep Ecology in San Francisco and Professor Emeritus in Sociology at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California. Devall is a well-known lecturer and author, most notably (with George Sessions) of the influential book, Deep Ecology (1985), and Simple in Means, Rich in Ends (1988), Living Richly in an Age of Limits (1992), and Clearcut: The Tragedy of Industrial Logging (1993). He is completing a book on bioregional politics and culture, Bioregion on the Edge; “Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered; pg 169) The goal of the school is to promote the self-realization of each community member, and this leads to an appreciation of the broad world beyond the culture itself. Man is a part of Nature, his full humanity is realized when he has defined his own particularity in relation to Nature's totality…The community is the supreme educational environment, and however such educators may try to institute instructional reform in the schools designed to enhance self-realization and overcome alienation, their efforts will fail as long as the community is organized on the principles of mass-society. Education must therefore become the agency of social reconstruction to make the small community the primary environment for educational activity. In so heavily emphasizing the dependency of educational reform on social reconstruction, Brownell has made the possibility of educational reform hinge on what amounts to utopian social innovation.

63 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab Education key

Education is key to help spread and enforce the deep ecological philosophy into the world Devall ’85 (,Bill currently is a consultant to the Foundation for Deep Ecology in San Francisco and Professor Emeritus in Sociology at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California. Devall is a well-known lecturer and author, most notably (with George Sessions) of the influential book, Deep Ecology (1985), and Simple in Means, Rich in Ends (1988), Living Richly in an Age of Limits (1992), and Clearcut: The Tragedy of Industrial Logging (1993). He is completing a book on bioregional politics and culture, Bioregion on the Edge; “Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered; pg 162) In addition to acting as a provocative catalyst for public debate, creating ecotopian visions is also useful for the development of ecological consciousness in people who struggle with these visions. This process enables one to sharpen both the image of the ecotopian future, and the rational skills needed in public debate to argue the points. We feel this process is an essential part of environmental education for high school- and college-age students. This may help them see viable alternatives to the status quo which they can incorporate into their own lives. Even grammar school children can gain from this activity. With some ingenuity on the part of teachers, deep ecology principles can be introduced using the deep questioning process.

65 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab Perm—two worlds

Man needs to blend his two worlds- the world that he came from with the world that he created to make the third world that incorporates them both by developing an ethic that extends to the living world around him as well Devall ’85 (,Bill currently is a consultant to the Foundation for Deep Ecology in San Francisco and Professor Emeritus in Sociology at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California. Devall is a well-known lecturer and author, most notably (with George Sessions) of the influential book, Deep Ecology (1985), and Simple in Means, Rich in Ends (1988), Living Richly in an Age of Limits (1992), and Clearcut: The Tragedy of Industrial Logging (1993). He is completing a book on bioregional politics and culture, Bioregion on the Edge; “Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered; pg 166) Today man's mounting numbers and his technological power to pollute his environment reveal a single demanding necessity: the necessity for him consciously to reenter and preserve, for his own safety, the old first world from which he originally emerged. His second world, drawn from his own brain, has brought him far, but it cannot take him out of nature, nor can he live by escaping into his second world alone. He must incorporate from the wisdom of the axial thinkers an ethic not alone directed toward his fellows, but extended to the living world around him. He must make, by way of his cultural world, an actual conscious reentry into the sunflower forest he had thought merely to exploit or abandon. He must do this in order to survive. If he succeeds he will, perhaps, have created a third world which combines elements of the original two and which should bring closer the responsibilities and nobleness of character envisioned by the axial thinkers

66 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab Utopian Key utopian ideas are the only way that we can maintain cultural and biological diversity. Devall ’85 (,Bill currently is a consultant to the Foundation for Deep Ecology in San Francisco and Professor Emeritus in Sociology at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California. Devall is a well-known lecturer and author, most notably (with George Sessions) of the influential book, Deep Ecology (1985), and Simple in Means, Rich in Ends (1988), Living Richly in an Age of Limits (1992), and Clearcut: The Tragedy of Industrial Logging (1993). He is completing a book on bioregional politics and culture, Bioregion on the Edge; “Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered; pg 176) Utopian proposals which are less specific and less global in scope may increase the likelihood that cultural as well as biological diversity will be preserved as each area works out its own unique version of reinhabitation.

67 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab -----Deep Ecology AFF ANSWERS----- Alt Fails—centric bad

A centric view of the world is bad McClellan ‘93 (John (PhD, University of Colorado at Boulder) studies the discursive qualities of organizing with attention to issues of knowledge, identity, collaboration, and change. With an interest in communicative approaches for living and working together in an increasingly pluralistic society, his research explores collaborative practices that might enable creative decision-making and mutually-beneficial, sustainable ways of organizing. As a former organizational change strategy consultant, his research attends to organizing discourses that simultaneously enable and constrain opportunities to transform the ways we understand and engage organizational life; NONDUAL ECOLOGY In Praise of Wildness and In Search of Harmony With Everything That Moves, 1993 http://www.colorado.edu/peacestudies/sustainable-economics/nondual-ecology/nondual-ecology.html) The ambivalence of deep ecologists toward technology is clearly expressed in the recent book, Gaia's Hidden Life, by Nicholson and Rosen. This contains some of the best recent thinking in deep ecology-wonderful arguments for the recognition of living being in the natural world, even among the rocks and stars, etc. But almost every one of the 27 authors, from James Lovelock to Thomas Berry, unequivocally rejects technology as an invalid, unnatural, even wicked form of existence. Meanwhile, they idealize the vanishing dream of free, wild biological systems. They seem to want to restore them to their erstwhile splendor-as though evolution ever moved backwards! This is wishful thinking, like when we imagined the earth was the center of the universe, or that humans represented the culmination, and hence the end, of evolution. This point of view is called biocentrism, and is proudly opposed to anthropocentrism, which is supposed to be outmoded and provincial, a naive and self-serving 'humanist' outlook. But to me biocentrism is little better. It is based on the assumption that evolution reached its pinacle not with Man, but with Biology. But evolution isn't like that. She never reaches a pinacle. She never rests, and she never ever turns back. A contemplative biologist would not want to be 'centric' about any stage of the evolutionary process. Evolution unfolds continually and mysteriously out of itself: She has no goal, claims no achievements, and is uninterested in any past or future states. Just this mysterious present moment unfolding, in which there is most definitely and certainly nothing to cling to. Sound familiar, dharma students? Where have we heard about this before? All we see in the world around us, just as with what we find in our own minds is good, or at least authentic, valid, workable. There is nothing to reject, nothing to protect, nothing to be centric about. Why can't we be as wise in our understanding of the evolution of this planet as we are gradually becoming about the evolution of our own states of mind?

Alt Fails—authors don’t solve

The authors of deep ecology don’t fix other problems of society McClellan ‘93 (John (PhD, University of Colorado at Boulder) studies the discursive qualities of organizing with attention to issues of knowledge, identity, collaboration, and change. With an interest in communicative approaches for living and working together in an increasingly pluralistic society, his research explores collaborative practices that might enable creative decision-making and mutually-beneficial, sustainable ways of organizing. As a former organizational change strategy consultant, his research attends to organizing discourses that simultaneously enable and constrain opportunities to transform the ways we understand and engage organizational life; NONDUAL ECOLOGY In Praise of Wildness and In Search of Harmony With Everything That Moves, 1993 http://www.colorado.edu/peacestudies/sustainable-economics/nondual-ecology/nondual-ecology.html) Biology is a series of provisional sketches for negentropic systems. These systems are built out of and on top of and into each other in endless shells of interdependent co-arising fields, just as the microbial world is built out of and on top of and into the material world of the four elements, just as the multi-celled (i.e. multi- microbe) animals and plants and insects are built out of and into the microbes, and we humans ourselves are built out of and onto the animals and plants. The world of technology, cultural behaviors and abstract & concrete symbolic structures are likewise built out of, on top of, and into human brains, emotional drives and bodies. This is planetary symbiosis at work. Perfectly natural. All this creative activity is blowing in the restless wind of change, of Impermanence, like the thought forms that flow through our minds. Many humans, particularly in the contemplative traditions, have come to understand the working of our mind, the theory and also to some degree the practice-but we still seem to hold primitive beliefs about the workings of planetary evolution and life systems. The leading thinkers I've met in deep ecology today all seem to have this biocentric attitude, Gary Snyder, Arne Naess, Bill Duvall, John Seed, Doloress Lachapelle.... Many or most of them have good dharma teachers too, but they don't listen to them carefully enough, in my opinion. They talk about surrender to what is natural, following the Tao, and so on, but are not willing to stretch their arms all the way wide open, and let Everything in. Everything That Moves. They would like to exclude certain things, exploitive technology, warfare, social injustice, famine, urban landscape, television, the extinction of non competitive species, the collapse of planetary life support systems for higher species....

69 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab No Link—tech

Technology is not bad they are a part of the balance of nature McClellan ‘93 (John (PhD, University of Colorado at Boulder) studies the discursive qualities of organizing with attention to issues of knowledge, identity, collaboration, and change. With an interest in communicative approaches for living and working together in an increasingly pluralistic society, his research explores collaborative practices that might enable creative decision-making and mutually-beneficial, sustainable ways of organizing. As a former organizational change strategy consultant, his research attends to organizing discourses that simultaneously enable and constrain opportunities to transform the ways we understand and engage organizational life; NONDUAL ECOLOGY In Praise of Wildness and In Search of Harmony With Everything That Moves, 1993 http://www.colorado.edu/peacestudies/sustainable-economics/nondual-ecology/nondual-ecology.html) You have to go to Walt Whitman and William Blake to find a real grasp of these elementary subjects, biology and evolution, a view in which all of Life is honored impartially, devils and angels together, on their own scary terms. Zen teachers give clear expression to this, as do Tibetan teachers at times. American Indians know it, Rumi says it clearly again and again, all the contemplatives are clear on this understanding. It's time for deep ecologists to get up to speed here. I think the limited, overly precious view of deep ecology today exists because deep ecologists are not serious contemplative mystics. They specialized too early in a limited professional expertise on the 'natural environment'. Serious ecologists must learn to let go of personal or social agendas, and embrace everything that arises, the good the bad and the ugly. Only after this painful surrender can one go deep. Technology seems to play the role of the devil for us in this outlook. There's nothing wrong with having a devil or two or ten million around, but devils should not be insulted, and no attempts to banish or vanquish them have ever been successful to my knowledge. Like wicked fairies, if you do not invite devils to the feast, honor and feed them, they make worse mischief. Those who would worship the angels of pure 'unspoiled' biologies, must allow the devils of technology their due. This means recognizing them as independent evolutionary forces, in symbiosis, like the microbes, with biological systems.

In the current world there is a new form of evolution taking over and that is the technobiotic evolution that we need to accept McClellan ‘93 (John (PhD, University of Colorado at Boulder) studies the discursive qualities of organizing with attention to issues of knowledge, identity, collaboration, and change. With an interest in communicative approaches for living and working together in an increasingly pluralistic society, his research explores collaborative practices that might enable creative decision-making and mutually-beneficial, sustainable ways of organizing. As a former organizational change strategy consultant, his research attends to organizing discourses that simultaneously enable and constrain opportunities to transform the ways we understand and engage organizational life; NONDUAL ECOLOGY In Praise of Wildness and In Search of Harmony With Everything That Moves, 1993 http://www.colorado.edu/peacestudies/sustainable-economics/nondual-ecology/nondual-ecology.html) The first question here must be, what are these new forms of life that seem to have taken over the planet recently, these machines, the social and metabolic behavior systems of civilization, the new energy, information & transportation networks that hold our planet in such a close and deadly embrace? Are they authentic biological entities, legitimate expressions of sentience, the result of the natural working of evolution on a pristine planetary wilderness ? If so, they may be entitled to some respect, perhaps protection or even saving under the Code of Rights of Sentient Beings. The Evolution of Non-DNA based Life-systems: "As soon as the primeval soup provided conditions in which molecules could make copies of themselves, the replicators themselves took over. For more than three thousand million years, DNA has been the only replicator worth talking about in the world. But it does not necessarily hold these monopoly rights for all time. Whenever conditions arise in which a new kind of replicator can make copies of itself, the new replicators will tend to take over, and start a new kind of evolution of their own. Once this new evolution begins, it will in no necessary sense be subservient to the old. The old gene-selected evolution, by making brains, provided the 'soup' in which the first memes arose. Once self-copying memes had arisen, their own, much faster kind of evolution took off. We biologists have assimilated the idea of genetic evolution so deeply that we tend to forget that is only one of many possible kinds of evolution." Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene We humans are no different than we have been for the last quarter million years or so-our brains and bodies, our emotions and instincts are the same. But ever since we started using symbolic systems to good effect, some ten or fifteen thousand years ago, the world has been transformed. These symbolic codes, and the knowledge, tools and social behaviors that came with them, have given rise to immensely vigorous evolutionary activity: from agriculture and animal herding to social systems and warfare, from city states & nations to space exploration and global ecological crisis, all are expressions of the power of this new life activity. In evolutionary terms, the whole biological kingdom, all the animals, plants, microbes etc, is a set of 'morphs', or bodies, built according to the information codes contained in the DNA molecule. Until humans came along no information codes sufficiently complex to build bodies or shape behaviors existed on this planet outside of DNA. Nothing else held complex data about how to build a negentropic object that could do something to keep itself going, and to copy, or replicate, that precious life-giving information-not the clouds, not the air, not the sunshine or the heat in the earth, not water or mud, not the rocks, not even the silicates and crystals-all of the vast world of the four elements was dead, inert, i.e. subject to entropy. Only the DNA molecule could code information, and use it to create things, like bodies. So four billion years of DNA driven evolution went peacefully by, age after age of dreamy biologies. Then finally one of the morphs, or body types (humans) develops a brain capable itself of independently storing and manipulating information structures complex enough to generate morphs or bodies of their own. At last, the first new copying system in the history of life! The world of technology and culture was born. With the tremendous symbolic activity which our incomprehensibly large brains allowed, information codes had jumped out of their ancient amino acid cradle, and began to pursue 'their' own evolutionary destiny. Immediately a torrent of new morphologies and behaviors were loosed on our innocent and unsuspecting planet. Such things as language, alphabets, mathematics, engineering, arts and crafts, religions, belief systems, social customs, the stuff of technobiotic civilization, new tools, new hunting, farming and herding behaviors, new buildings, new forms of social organization. In a blinding flash, from an evolutionary time frame, the planet has been transformed. A new form of evolution is at last unfolding here. Information codes are free, free to replicate in any way they wish or are able. The rate of evolutionary change undergoes a blinding, heart-stopping degree of acceleration, as compared with biological evolution. No longer forced to be made of either meat or cellulose or chitin, (the animals, plants & insects), you could make a body now out of anything you liked. A wood or rock club (arm), wool & leather clothes, a dirt or log or steel & glass house (skin), metal shovels & swords (claws), ceramics, rubber, plastic, silicon, etc. Many vibrant morphs are nothing but pure behaviors, like social customs, languages, music, government, and so on. Many more, among the most evolutionarily potent in fact, are completely abstract in morphological character-most notably ideas, the pure and applied sciences, music, dreams, etc. All of these are bodies, or life processes, in the scary new meaning of the word. All are active, hungry, exciting, and dangerous. If you back off ten thousand miles into space and squint your eyes, as a biologist 71 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab

from another planet might do, you would see that this planet had gone through an evolutionary phase change, from a pure 'climax' biology to early techno-biology. Now then, if there is in fact a new kind of evolution happening on this planet, and the stupendous changes in the last ten thousand years suggest clearly that there is, we cannot afford to ignore it, to dismiss it as dangerous, ahuman, or unpleasant. Above all, we must not think we humans, just because we "hosted" it, can control or even understand this new form of life very well, any more than we do nature herself. This is where deep ecology can be of help: the attitude we should have toward this new life process could be one based on respect, on awe and wonder, rather than on likes and dislikes. We should, in fact, have the same attitude toward techno-biotic evolution that we are finally learning to have toward good old biological nature herself. These are mysteries, divine (that is to say natural) in origin. We should not seek to accept or reject, nor even to control them, but rather to learn how to coexist among them, and accept their inherent wildness, to appreciate this dangerous quality, to honor and respect, even revere it, even when it's dangerous or life threatening to us.

Biological evolution has become a subset of evolution for this planet and been paired with technological evolution McClellan ‘93 (John (PhD, University of Colorado at Boulder) studies the discursive qualities of organizing with attention to issues of knowledge, identity, collaboration, and change. With an interest in communicative approaches for living and working together in an increasingly pluralistic society, his research explores collaborative practices that might enable creative decision-making and mutually-beneficial, sustainable ways of organizing. As a former organizational change strategy consultant, his research attends to organizing discourses that simultaneously enable and constrain opportunities to transform the ways we understand and engage organizational life; NONDUAL ECOLOGY In Praise of Wildness and In Search of Harmony With Everything That Moves, 1993 http://www.colorado.edu/peacestudies/sustainable-economics/nondual-ecology/nondual-ecology.html) There may yet arise on this planet, an evolutionarily stable technological civilization, but who would wish to assert that this one-in-a-million shot just happens to be this one, the first ever made on this young and still innocent planet? This marriage of biology and technology may have to arise again and again, and again, until some incredibly lucky combination of biological traits falls in symbiosis with a perfect, sweet and sensitive technology. Today's world, with our aggressive-ferocious technology linked to the primitive emotional agenda of a top-end predator-carnivor, does not so far seem to be that perfect, stable union. But of course you never know... Boundaries, to Life-systems? So who are we? Are we still pure humans anymore? Is it even possible to conceive of technology, machines and information systems etc, as a separate class of existence from humans? I think not. We have become technobionts, symbiotic members of this new lifeform which has taken over the planet. Any alien biologist would recognize this at a glance. Our "human" nature has merged with the new morphologies to become technobiotic nature. It is a nature that cannot be clearly conceived. Its boundaries cannot be drawn, as they include everything in our culture, in a variety of groupings on endless levels of meaning and organization. Through all this evolutionary transformation, is our primordial true nature, our original buddhanature still clear? I think so. True nature is enormously mysterious, but one of its most reliably established qualities is its indestructibleness, its vajra nature. Today's buddhas report that buddhanature is alive and well, in spite of the odd circumstances and curious surroundings it finds itself in. New Life. A new form of Life has arisen on this planet, which could be called the Technobia. Its power and speed of evolution lead instantly off every scale on which we are accustomed to measure living systems. It is young, but terrifyingly, thrillingly, overwhelmingly vigorous. It is feeding on us humans, just as we feed on the plant and animal kingdoms, and just as they feed on the microbial kingdoms, who rest in turn on the material universe. We are not in control of this process, we are merely a part of it. It is happening to us, and in spite of us, as well as because of us. In this case we are the host organism, the medium in which technobiotic lifeforces are finding their fertile soil. We humans, with our obsolete bodies, easily exploitable emotional drives, and our fabulous brains, are the primeval soup our symbiotic technology partners have come to live in. What this means is that purely biological evolution is no longer the main focus of life on this planet. It's become a subplot, relegated in its wild forms to out of the way corners, to empty lots, roadsides, and cracks in the sidewalk of civilization. It's been built over on top of, subsumed, in the best evolutionary style, by the techno-biotia. So in any discussion of ecology, whenever one refers to rocks, clouds, rivers and mountains, microbes animals and plants, one should include kitchen tables, cars and computers, stuffed animals and nuclear reactors, as well as abstract symbolic systems such as mathematics and music, and belief or behavioral morphologies, including social systems, religions, culture. etc. These are all valid forms of life, if we or rocks and clouds are.

73 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab No Link—all natural

Everything that happens on this planet is natural and pristine there is nothing on this planet that is unnatural McClellan ‘93 (John (PhD, University of Colorado at Boulder) studies the discursive qualities of organizing with attention to issues of knowledge, identity, collaboration, and change. With an interest in communicative approaches for living and working together in an increasingly pluralistic society, his research explores collaborative practices that might enable creative decision-making and mutually-beneficial, sustainable ways of organizing. As a former organizational change strategy consultant, his research attends to organizing discourses that simultaneously enable and constrain opportunities to transform the ways we understand and engage organizational life; NONDUAL ECOLOGY In Praise of Wildness and In Search of Harmony With Everything That Moves, 1993 http://www.colorado.edu/peacestudies/sustainable-economics/nondual-ecology/nondual-ecology.html) The way I see it, anything that arises on this planet is completely natural, pristine, and pure. Created by God's spontaneous, self-arising nature, sacred. God itself. Deep ecologists reserve this level of honor for wilderness areas, asking that they be untouched by outside forces, meaning generally man or machines. But is this entire planet not a pristine, sacred wilderness? Has it ever been touched by 'outside forces'? Is not all this Gaia's own doing? I wouldn't even insist that it remain untouched from the outside. When aliens do ever arrive on this planet from other stars (if they are not already observing us discreetly from a nearby 'blind'), that just shifts the wilderness boundary out a bit. The galaxy as a whole remains a pristine wilderness. If they come from outside the galaxy, the larger universe will most likely still be a pure evolutionary preserve. Where could 'unnatural' processes ever find a crack in the skin of this planet, Gaia, natural child of the natural universe, to poke their way in and corrupt her? No, everything we encounter in this universe must be considered natural, and intimately related to us in some way, like the contents of one's own mind. This awkward intimacy changes one's point of view. The deepest ecology might not seem to be specially 'environmental', because it doesn't cling to any version of reality; it surrenders continually to whatever situations occur. This viewpoint doesn't directly advance the work of saving the planet or preserving local landscapes, but it could be helpful for environmentalists nonetheless. Because unless we enter into the heart of that Wildness where life itself is continually born, we remain outsiders in our own world, and outsiders never really know what's going on. Outsiders can't help sentient beings-they don't know what to do. We have much to lose by entering the world of real wildness that surrounds us today. We are losing a nice local version of reality we've been basking in for several million years, the lovely landscapes, the fauna and flora of the late Cenozoic, the Age of Flowering Plants and of Mammals. These have have been sweet indeed, and it is sad to see them go. Difficult goodbyes must be said. But we won't miss them for long-there's plenty more where they came from. The unbridled, fecund wildness that lies at the heart of co-arising emptiness-luminosity will not disappoint us. A really deep ecologist has understanding of this, and faith in it. This fertile, dangerous, healthy and real wildness is where we should be resting our hopes and our hearts and our minds. We have nothing to lose.

74 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab No Link—all natural

Life includes everything McClellan ‘93 (John (PhD, University of Colorado at Boulder) studies the discursive qualities of organizing with attention to issues of knowledge, identity, collaboration, and change. With an interest in communicative approaches for living and working together in an increasingly pluralistic society, his research explores collaborative practices that might enable creative decision-making and mutually-beneficial, sustainable ways of organizing. As a former organizational change strategy consultant, his research attends to organizing discourses that simultaneously enable and constrain opportunities to transform the ways we understand and engage organizational life; NONDUAL ECOLOGY In Praise of Wildness and In Search of Harmony With Everything That Moves, 1993 http://www.colorado.edu/peacestudies/sustainable-economics/nondual-ecology/nondual-ecology.html) Everything moves. This alone should be enough to demonstrate inherent aliveness. From mindless hydrogen clouds swirling purposelessly in interstellar space-time, to clouds of thoughts swirling around in the brain, all cloud forms are the same. They move-they have buddhanature. None of these patterns from beginning to end have any greater or more distinct 'separate self' than any other. All are meaningless, empty of personal intent. All are falling into their own true nature, effortlessly, along with all other illusory phenomena. We must not underestimate them. All are beautiful to behold, including the ugly ones, all are precious, including the worthless ones, all are friends & relatives, even the dangerous ones, even when they kill you! Their value cannot be conceived in ordinary ways. Some of these (not all) have a tendency to grow in complexity, energy, and information density, to blow off greater & greater clouds of waste heat, to become increasingly improbable, ephemeral and fragile. Others prefer to stay simple. They are all good, because complete. Even the rocks & clouds are like this, even the technobiotia. This good life stuff is the swirling of clouds-nothing more-it's what evolution does around here.

75 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab AT: Just earth

Life on this planet is not unique there are other places that life can be taking refuge McClellan ‘93 (John (PhD, University of Colorado at Boulder) studies the discursive qualities of organizing with attention to issues of knowledge, identity, collaboration, and change. With an interest in communicative approaches for living and working together in an increasingly pluralistic society, his research explores collaborative practices that might enable creative decision-making and mutually-beneficial, sustainable ways of organizing. As a former organizational change strategy consultant, his research attends to organizing discourses that simultaneously enable and constrain opportunities to transform the ways we understand and engage organizational life; NONDUAL ECOLOGY In Praise of Wildness and In Search of Harmony With Everything That Moves, 1993 http://www.colorado.edu/peacestudies/sustainable-economics/nondual-ecology/nondual-ecology.html) Nothing special has been accomplished in the last 600,000,000 years since the arising of multi-celled creatures on this planet; nor in the 3,750,000,000 years since microbial life began-no one is looking(!), no one is interested. We are all alone here in space, and nobody cares what happens to us. For all we know, God might be taking a nap. Our precious stream of lifeforms during the last four billion years are nothing more than clouds blowing in the wind. Nothing special will be lost if we 'higher' lifeforms crash back down to the ranks of microbes. There's plenty more where we came from too, in the bottomless womb of evolution. Evolution is a child, doodling lifeforms in the sand, humming a little tune, absentmindedly letting grains of life trickle from her fingers into pretty piles. Wind & waves erase all by sundown. There is nothing here to save or regret. What's wrong with a world of microbes anyway? OK, worst case: what if our unruly technologies, in symbiosis with our unruly human appetites kick the whole planet into a positive feedback heating loop, causing it to spiral up into thermodynamic equilibrium (shudder, the only thing negentropic entities really fear), at uncomfortably high temperatures, like 1000! or so, causing biological meltdown and permanent sterility like Venus-or suppose things go the other way, and we spiral down to subzero thermodynamic equilibrium, clouding over and freezing solid forever like Mars-what's wrong with that? There's plenty more planets where we came from, plenty more galaxies to give birth to them, plenty more universes to hatch galaxies.... As for the innumerable creatures on our planet who are undoubtedly suffering and in need of assistance, including very much and most especially our own personal selves, what kind of saving do we really need? I suspect this saving has more to do with the ability to see and share the true nature of these beings than it does with trying to increase their good health and large numbers. Perhaps we should concentrate more on seeing them clearly, on feeling what they feel, knowing and caring about them, than on setting up biopreserves and housing projects to save them in. Thinking in this way, one comes to feel that the saving of sentient beings has more to do with knowing and feeling and suffering and caring with them, than with preventing their extinction or raising their minimum income level or wiping a bit of pollution off their brow. Sentient beings can take care of themselves, just as we like to think we can do. Considering them in this way is a mark of respect, it honors them. This deep frame of reference may seem chilling to some, but it is not. On the contrary, it warms the heart and lightens the step, and it should help to save the earth and advance the agenda of conservation biology too, along with any other worthy projects. The buddhas and patriarchs may seem to play rough, but this roughness is good for us. It is the roughness of real wildness, real wilderness. There's no reason in the world that environmentalists shouldn't be able to hold a deep view and still be energetic and effective, good people to have around when things are tough. We aren't babies. We can look at Reality along with the rest of sentient beings. We do not need to tell ourselves children's stories about how unique and precious we are, to make ourselves go out and help the world. We are precious and worthless at the same time. We are neither precious nor worthless. It's not like that.

Collapse Inevitable

Extinction and civilization collapse is inevitable and natural no matter how it happens McClellan ‘93 (John (PhD, University of Colorado at Boulder) studies the discursive qualities of organizing with attention to issues of knowledge, identity, collaboration, and change. With an interest in communicative approaches for living and working together in an increasingly pluralistic society, his research explores collaborative practices 76 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab that might enable creative decision-making and mutually-beneficial, sustainable ways of organizing. As a former organizational change strategy consultant, his research attends to organizing discourses that simultaneously enable and constrain opportunities to transform the ways we understand and engage organizational life; NONDUAL ECOLOGY In Praise of Wildness and In Search of Harmony With Everything That Moves, 1993 http://www.colorado.edu/peacestudies/sustainable-economics/nondual-ecology/nondual-ecology.html) This civilization, like all that have preceded it, is bound by the laws of biology, which have expanded to include the domain of culture. It is likely to do what all others have done: It will expand, or rather explode, beyond the safe boundaries of its uncontrollable technologies, and then crash back into the biological/cultural background. The Sumarians, the Egyptians, the Mayans and Aztecs, the endless Chinese dynasties, the Greeks, the Roman empire, the great African kingdoms, the Mongolian hordes, the Ottoman empire, and so on and on till the pages of recorded history become too numerous and tattered to read. A corollary principle seems to be, the higher they rise the harder and more abruptly they fall. This is our diastolic social-cultural rhythm. Civilizations seem to have an indefinite, but distinctly limited lifespan, just like all other living organisms, whatever their level of organization. The only recent variation on this theme is that our Civilization is playing out the drama for the first time on a global scale. Does the global scale make a difference? Not at all-the drama is always played out on the largest possible scale the society is capable of expanding to and destroying itself on. Measured on a psychometric scale, this means that the collapse totally engulfs and obliterates all meaningful existence for that society. Whatever remains after the crash, whatever survives, is considered 'not to count'. Today we feel that to crash the biosystems of the planet back to the Stone Age, or back to a level where only the arthropods and plants, the fish and microbes, and a few marginal rodent-like mammals remain, would be tantamount to 'total global death'. Of course this is nonsense; it would be a very nice earth indeed, and would rebound to a nice climax biology in the twinkling of an evolutionary eye. This rush to apocalypse may nonetheless have a useful role to play: It seems to function as a form of population control of civilizations, and is governed by biological/cultural laws as implacable as those which mandate the death of individuals and the inevitable extinction of all species. Why should the death of civilizations be feared any more than the death of individuals or the extinction of species? No matter how painfully it happens or awkwardly it's done, through ecosystemic collapse or apocalyptic warfare or diseased culture crisis or toxic pollution, it is natural, and good, magnificent life and death activity. Any extraterrestrial observer would be quick to point out, having observed our stream of technobial civilizations for a few thousand of years, that It makes little or no difference what the human beings do on the earth at this point. The torch of evolutionary development has slipped out of our brains and is loose in the world. The technobiotia are the dominant lifeform on this planet now, and we/they are defining our own future, as all dominant lifeforms do. No force whatever can control us, or even exercise any discernible influence over us. We are alone with the laws of physics and the rules of evolution. From the point of view of freely evolving technobiotia, we are wild creatures. There's no safety for wild things. Never has been. This is the good life as it is lived in a real wilderness. As for who's right about this, and who's wrong, there's no waiting period. 'We shall see', or 'Time will tell' do not apply here. Either things have been this way for 30,000 years, or four thousand million years, or they are not this way.

77 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab Counter Alt—leave

Counter-alternative: deep ecology fails we need a better idea and that is to leave everything as is and to continue what we have been doing in the world. McClellan ‘93 (John (PhD, University of Colorado at Boulder) studies the discursive qualities of organizing with attention to issues of knowledge, identity, collaboration, and change. With an interest in communicative approaches for living and working together in an increasingly pluralistic society, his research explores collaborative practices that might enable creative decision-making and mutually-beneficial, sustainable ways of organizing. As a former organizational change strategy consultant, his research attends to organizing discourses that simultaneously enable and constrain opportunities to transform the ways we understand and engage organizational life; NONDUAL ECOLOGY In Praise of Wildness and In Search of Harmony With Everything That Moves, 1993 http://www.colorado.edu/peacestudies/sustainable-economics/nondual-ecology/nondual-ecology.html) Deep ecology is good, but not always useful in everyday life. We need a working ecology, something tough and flexible, that you can use to save the world with. A practical ecology might come in two parts, view and practice, as follows: The View. Reality is as perfect today as it has ever been. The world in this moment, along with one's mind in this same moment, is the Great Perfection spoken of in the teachings. It must be enjoyed just as it is, pollution, warfare, famine & poverty, confusion and materialistic greed and all, no matter how unlikely, unhappy or sorry a specimen it may seem to be (world or mind). Ecosystems like minds are always in perfect balance, even when they're neurotic, ill, confused or going extinct, miserably and unnecessarily. The Practice. A dynamic ecology has got to work in a world which is changing from one moment to the next. Ecology cannot be based on trying to preserve ecosystems at some particular stage of their evolution, no matter how beautiful that stage may have been. This is like trying to prevent our children from growing up, or our old people from dying. It is a form of materialism to be overly attached to a special set of God's Works, and is doomed to failure in any case. We will never "get" our dream of attractive, healthy ecosystems-they will always be collapsing around our ears. This is what ecosystems do! They have a natural lifespan, which in addition to being short, is frequently terminated 'unnecessarily' early by accident or misfortune. Just like our own lives. Wanting to freeze ecosystems at a certain charming stage of their existence is like our other foolish dream of always being young, attractive and healthy ourselves. Good luck! The only ease lies with the process of evolution itself. Sound ecology must be based on respect for God's creative/destructive working process, not on a childish clinging to pretty toys He may have made. Then we can live in this world, help it out a bit, and go with, lean into its mysterious unfolding.

78 KNDI 2011 Anthropocentrism K Levy/Liebler/Acosta K Lab Life/ death dichotomy inevitable

The battle of life and death is a sacred activity of the cosmos we need to accept the world for what it is McClellan ‘93 (John (PhD, University of Colorado at Boulder) studies the discursive qualities of organizing with attention to issues of knowledge, identity, collaboration, and change. With an interest in communicative approaches for living and working together in an increasingly pluralistic society, his research explores collaborative practices that might enable creative decision-making and mutually-beneficial, sustainable ways of organizing. As a former organizational change strategy consultant, his research attends to organizing discourses that simultaneously enable and constrain opportunities to transform the ways we understand and engage organizational life; NONDUAL ECOLOGY In Praise of Wildness and In Search of Harmony With Everything That Moves, 1993 http://www.colorado.edu/peacestudies/sustainable-economics/nondual-ecology/nondual-ecology.html) To combine this challenging view with the challenging practice, one simply regards everything that moves as a form of sacred activity. The mad materialist technobic frenzy gripping the planet is nothing other than this. There is only One Thing happening, not some things that are good and others that are bad. This includes fragrant ecosystems, fresh and unsullied in wilderness areas on spring mornings, and it includes urban industrial megagrid, ghettos & famine zones, materialist mind greed, the extinction of wild animal species and the slavery and torture of 'domesticated' ones. Life and death. Even television. Everything we love will die, and everything we hate will live, and vice versa, and we will never be rid of such problems. No contemplative would want the buddhas and patriarchs to catch him trying to escape death, much less get rid of it. Death is sacred activity. What is happening on this planet today is the sacred activity of life and death, which we sometimes call evolution, Ed Abbey and his friends to the contrary notwithstanding. It is perfect as it stands, flawless, without blemish . But as Suzuki Roshi said, there is always room for improvement too. So it's proper to fight and struggle with the situation, to take care of each other, and try to save a few suffering sentient beings. We must do this!, and we do, just as we struggle to improve the 'climate' , 'landscape' and evolutionary process in our own minds and hearts. The thing to be careful about is not to reject what is ugly and cruel, dangerous and poisonous, even the heartless machines, the computers & TV's, cars & highways, nuclear bombs, animal and plant slavery and torture, and money. These are our sacred enemies. They might even be our sacred friends, one never knows for sure. We should not try to know for sure. It's none of our business. Friend and enemy are not distinguished on this level. It's disrespectful to try to do so. To the enemy, one offers a deep bow, as deep, and as filled with respect as one offers to one's friends and teachers. This bow is offered to everything without reservation. It is a form of protection. It saves us from attachment and illusion, and in the end, from the wrong sort of despair.