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    Ancient Roots of Our Ecological Crisis PDF

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    The Ancient Roots of Our Ecological Crisis Donald Hughes J. Donald Hughes (b. 1932) is Professor of History atthe University of Denver, Colorado. He has writen extensively on the ecological perceptions and environmental impacts of ancient civilizations Hughes believes tha a human community's relationship tothe natural environment is influenced bby a umber of factors: the community members’ attitudes toward nature, their knowledge and twiderstanding of nature's balance and structure, their uses of technology, and their ability to exert control over the actions of individual members that fare directed toward the environment ‘Hughes idenifies animism, Judaism and Christianity, and Greek and Roman philosophies as the dominant factors influencing Western attitudes toward nature. He notes that early Near Eastern civilizations gathered much information about the natural world through trial and error investigations The Greeks were the first 10 apply a consistently rational approach tothe study of nature; they sought explanations based on reason forall natural Phenomena. Under the Romans, interest in research and discovery declined as thinkers often chose 10 ‘uild on older foundations rather than to seek new Anowledge. The human relationship tothe natural ‘environment worsened under Christianity, since the ‘world often was viewed as temporary and even as a barrier to salvation. Contemporary Wester society ‘has supported an intensified interest in developing ‘accurate knowledge about the world in diverse The technologies of older civilizations and their impacts on nature are minor compared with those of contemporary industrial nations. Hughes notes that technological progress often was very slow in ancient societies, because of common practice of not pursuing inventions n contrast, the Romans” auttudes, and emphasis on hight developed technology were closest to those of contemporary Western sociery. CHAPTER 4: HISTORICAL CONTEXT 157 According to Hughes, ancient civilizations were able o exert considerable social control because ‘most ancient peoples perceived themselves primarily ‘as members of their societies, and only secondarily ‘as autonomous individuals. Later, Greek and Roman governments established some policies in agriculture ‘and natural resource use, but allowed citizens many choices. In contrast, modern industrialized nations ‘have surpassed all previous societies in their degree of organization and social control. Yer, they have ‘been slow to implement steps to protect the ‘environment. Among modem democracies, ‘environmental policies can be established only with ‘broad-based public support, which often faces ‘opposition from powerful interest groups. Likewise, the former totalitarian states had not always made environmental protection a high priority ‘The damaging changes being suffered today by the natural environment are far more rapid and wide- spread than anything known in ancient times. Today deforestation proceeds on a worldwide scale, the atmosphere becomes more turbid and opaque every year, the oceans are being polluted on & mas- sive scale, species of animals and plants are being ‘wiped out at arate unmatched in history, and the earth is being plundered in many other ways. But although the peoples of ancient civilizations were unfamiliar with such recent discoveries as radioac- tivity, insecticides, and the intemal combustion en- gine, they faced problems sometimes analogous to those the modem world faces, and we may look to the ancients in order to see the beginnings of many of our modem difficulties with an environment which is decaying because of human misuse. ‘A human community determines is relationship tothe anual envament in many ways. Among the mos in- Portant are its members’ attudes toward nature, the knowlege of nate and the understanding ofits balance and snucture which they atin, te technology they are ale to se, ane the social contol he community can exet overs members ode ther ction which aet the en- vironment. The ancient world shows us the roots of cour present problems in each of these areas. Ina wellknown and often reprinted article, “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologie Crisis,"! Lynn White traced modem Wester attitudes toward the Hughes, J. Donald. 1998. The ancient roots of our ecological crisis. In Environmental ethics: Divergence and convergence. 2nd ed. Edited by Richard Botzler and Susan Armstrong. Boston: ‘McGraw Hill. Reproduced with permission, 4158 PaRTONe: METHODOLOGIES ANO PERSPECTIVES natural world back to the Middle Ages. But both ‘medieval and modem attitudes have ancient roots Greece and Rome, as well as Judaism and Chris- tianity, helped to form our habitual ways of think ing about nature. And itis evident that the modern ecological crisis is to a great extent the result of at- titudes which see nature as something to be freely ‘conquered, used, and dominated without calcula- tion of the resultant cost to mankind and the earth. ‘These attitudes stem from similar ideas which were held by the ancient peoples who have most influenced us. Animism, which saw the natural world as sharing human qualities and treated things and events in nature as sacred objects of re- spect or worship, was the dominant attitude in carly antiquity and persisted almost everywhere in the Mediterranean world, but it gradually gave way to other ways of thinking. In Israel, tanscen-

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