"Symbiosis or Death": - Rhodes University

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USA and was the first to apply the term ecology to man’s relationship with the
environment (1991: 36). She said:
For this knowledge of right living we have sought a new name … as theology is
the science of religious life, and biology the science of life … so let Oekology be
hence the worthiest of the applied sciences which teaches the principles on which
to found healthy … and happy life. (in Bate 1991: 36)
For Swallow, ecology as the knowledge of right living would lead to a healthy and happy
life. I call this a state of “ecological equilibrium’, a state which Livingstone intermittently
explores and depicts as the idyllic in his poetry. The phrase “knowledge of right living”
reverberates and pinpoints the core concern of ecology. Why is it that Swallow’s words,
uttered more than a century ago when the world was still relatively unspoilt, have by and
large been ignored? The real problem seems to be the human refusal or inability to see
beyond our noses and accept global responsibility. The eminent biologist Edward O.
Wilson calls this inability the juggernaut theory of human nature. This theory “holds that
people are programmed by their genetic heritage to be so selfish that a sense of global
responsibility will come too late. Individuals place themselves first, family second, tribe
third and the rest of the world a distant fourth” (Wilson 186). Livingstone articulates this
human predisposition in the poem “Christmas Chefs at Station 1a” (LZ 12):
the perfectability of man,
the conservation of beauty,
the final attainment of truth
are salients that ever evade us.
If humankind is genetically programmed to be deaf to Swallow’s concept of the
“knowledge of right living”, is there any hope? This is explored in the final chapter where
I argue that Livingstone prods our psychic awareness and appeals to the less tangible
concepts of the imagination and the human capacity for love as possible antidotes to
humankind’s ecological ignorance and destructiveness.
This notwithstanding, does scientific ecology have a role to play? Is it, as
Swallow claimed, the key to happy and healthy life? At one level, yes, but the import is
more dire than this. The survival of the human race depends on ecological awareness or
on what Julia Martin terms “environmental literacy”. Ecology is not ‘out there’ as an
applied science which has no bearing on the concerns of the man in the street. It is an
ethical issue and our knowledge of the science of ecology should be seen as a tool for,
without ecological awareness and action, humankind is doomed. Something about this