Arne Næss (1912 to 2009) was a Norwegian philosopher and mountaineer who coined the term ‘deep ecology’ in 1973 for an ecology movement that “questions deeper”: one that values all life for its own sake and asks what in our culture and ways of living lies behind the damage, rather than only fighting pollution. At its heart is the ecological self, a sense of self that widens as we come to identify with other beings, so that caring for the living world becomes a matter of joy more than of duty. Therapeutic Shamanism shares his sense of a self that reaches beyond the human, and finds that wider self in the direct experience of journeying.
Who was Arne Næss? #
A Norwegian philosopher, born in Oslo in 1912, who in 1939 became the youngest person ever appointed a full professor at the University of Oslo. He was also a mountaineer, who in 1950 led the first ascent of Tirich Mir, and spent long periods at Tvergastein, his mountain hut in Norway. He joined his ecological thinking with the nonviolence of Gandhi, and once chained himself to the rocks in front of the waterfall Mardalsfossen, refusing to come down until plans to dam it were dropped. He died in 2009, at the age of ninety-six.1
What is the difference between shallow and deep ecology? #
Næss drew it in a short paper of 1973, “The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement”. The shallow movement is the fight against pollution and the running down of resources.2 The deep movement shares those aims but does not stop there. It keeps asking why, all the way down to the values, philosophy and religion behind our economic life, where the shallow approach stops arguing long before it reaches them. So, in his words, deep ecology is “the ecology movement that questions deeper”.3
What does deep ecology hold? #
Næss and the American philosopher George Sessions set out eight points that supporters of deep ecology could share, whilst each holding their own deeper reasons for them. The first is that the well-being and flourishing of human and non-human life on Earth have value in themselves, independent of their usefulness for human purposes. The second is that the richness and diversity of life-forms are values in themselves. The third is that humans have “no right to reduce this richness and diversity except to satisfy vital needs”. The rest follow: that human interference with the non-human world is excessive and getting worse; that human numbers should come down over time, for the sake of non-human life; that policies must change at their roots; and that quality of life matters more than an ever-higher standard of living.4
‘Life’ here is meant broadly. It takes in what biologists call non-living, such as rivers, landscapes and ecosystems, as the slogan ‘Let the river live’ shows.4 Næss called his own personal version of all this Ecosophy T, ‘ecosophy’ meaning ecological wisdom, with the T said to stand for Tvergastein.5
What is the ecological self? #
The idea at the centre of Næss’s own philosophy. Accounts of how the self matures, from the ego to the social self and beyond, largely leave nature out; Næss introduced the ecological self to put it back. We are “in, and of, nature” from the start, and our self is made up of our relationships with other living beings as well as with other people. His shortest statement of it is: “The ecological self of a person is that with which this person identifies.”6
So the self widens and deepens as we identify with more and more beings, and he called this growth Self-realisation. His standard example came from the 1940s, when a flea jumped into a drop of acid under his microscope and took minutes to die. He felt compassion, but the compassion was not the root of it: “I saw myself in the flea.” Without that identification, in his view, there would have been no compassion at all.6
From this he drew a practical conclusion. Borrowing a distinction from the philosopher Immanuel Kant, he set the moral act, done from duty and even against our inclination, beside the beautiful act, done because we want to. Environmentalism, he thought, should work on people’s inclinations, and its moralising had given the public the false impression that it mainly asks them to sacrifice.6
Is deep ecology disputed? #
Yes, from more than one side. Feminist critics, the philosopher Val Plumwood amongst them, have argued that the deep ecological idea of the expanded self is in effect a disguised form of human colonialism. The Indian historian Ramachandra Guha, in a 1989 essay on wilderness preservation written as a Third World critique, presented the work of many Western-based conservation groups as a new form of cultural imperialism.7 Næss for his part rejected any suggestion that deep ecology is committed to imperialism of any kind.7 A related worry, that identifying with nature means little unless nature has a self of its own, is taken up in What did Freya Mathews argue about matter and the ecological self?
How does deep ecology connect with Therapeutic Shamanism? #
Most closely through the self that reaches beyond the human. Since the FallThe Fall. The catastrophe at the root of the whole diagnosis: the shift from animist, egalitarian hunter-gatherer life to owning, agricultural Taker culture. In domesticating other species we domesticated ourselves, cutting ourselves off from Mother Earth (Power-loss) and from parts of our own nature (soul-loss). When dated precisely, the Fall begins with the first city-state cultures, around 4000 BCE (Domestication begins earlier, with the Neolithic). A sickness, not our true nature. ‘Fallen culture’ is used interchangeably with Taker culture; the Great Rupture is a looser alternate name. Read the full answer we have come to experience a strong sense of being a separate ‘I’; before it, people experienced themselves as individuals and, equally, as part of a larger whole. The more someone journeys and experiences being things like Otter, Oak Tree, Ocean or Obsidian, the more that narrow ‘I’ is felt to be part of Human, part of Animal and part of a much bigger whole: a community, “a great Tribe of all the PeoplesThe Peoples. The Animal People, Plant People, Standing People (the Trees) and Stone People: our elder kin, of whom the Human People are the youngest and least wise. A family, not a hierarchy. Read the full answer, a part of Mother EarthMother Earth. The sacred Feminine pole: pure potential, from whom all the Peoples arise. The Lower-World is her realm, and she is all the realms: “The Earth is indeed our Mother.” More about this“.8 Næss’s widening self, reached through identification, is a philosopher’s account of something close to this. See What are transformation practices and shapeshifting?
His preference for joy over duty also meets the teaching. Hunter-gatherers did not refrain from wiping out other species because a principle or a law forbade it, but because they simply would not; their relationship with the other Peoples and the land was heartfelt, arising from Soul and Spirit.9 Laws are necessary, but they can only go so far, and empathy has to come from within.10 Deep ecology’s ‘beautiful act’ and the animist’s felt kinship both put the source of care inside the person. See What is kinship, and why do animists extend it beyond humans? and What is Joanna Macy’s work, and how does it connect with shamanism?
Where does Therapeutic Shamanism see further, or differently? #
In three ways. First, in how the wider self is found. For Næss it grows through empathy and maturity, and he set it out in the language of philosophy. In Therapeutic Shamanism it is an experience before it is an idea, met directly in journeys and in shapeshiftingShapeshifting. Becoming another being within a journey, fully enough to know it from the inside: one of the two routes to grokking, a transformation practice, and a direct experience of interconnection. Read the full answer into the other Peoples.
Second, in what the wider self is like. Næss speaks of one widening Self. The same experience that takes a person beyond their individual ‘I’ also shows that there was never one single ‘I’ to begin with, only an inner tribeInner Tribe. The community of parts-of-self that a human being actually is. Health is not one part’s triumph but a well-run tribe: every member honoured, every member doing its proper job, the Adult in charge. Read the full answer of parts with their own needs and drives, just as each of us is part of the greater Tribe of all the Peoples.11 See What is the inner tribe?
Third, in what the more-than-human is. Deep ecology values all life, rivers and landscapes included, for its own sake. Shamanism goes a step further than physics, and further than value, in holding that everything is made of energy, and that this energy is alive and conscious.12 Individuals are twigs on the branches of one tree of life, whose great trunk is rooted in Mother Earth.13 The rivers and mountains are not only valuable; they are kin who can be met. See What does it mean to say the world is alive and full of persons?
