"Symbiosis or Death": - Rhodes University

18
the cultural. Poetry also seeks to explain the world but uses metaphor rather than
provable physical fact as its building blocks. Jonathan Bate also claims a double function
for the poetic. He says poetry may be seen as ecological in two senses: “it is either
(both?) a language (logos) that restores us to our home (oikos) or (and?) a melancholy
recognizing that our only home (oikos) is language (logos)” (2000: 281). In short, poetry
(from the Greek, poeisis, making) offers humans an understanding of both the Earth and
the world through a particular use of language. Bate is pointing to both our intuitive
awareness of a biological belonging with the Earth and to our cultural estrangement in the
artificial world we have created. This is the underlying tension in ecology, itself an
artificial paradigm created by humans to emphasize the interconnectedness of all things.
The sticking point is humankind itself. Are we a part of, or apart from, nature? The
answer to this question is both yes and no. Bate points out that deep ecology is an
impossibility, that the true deep ecologist is a utopian (2000:37). Macauley, on the other
hand, argues that: “The best utopian thought follows strong insights and tendencies to
their logical conclusions; provides imaginative possibilities for association, through
communication, and organization; and is implicitly critical of existing conditions. In this
sense, it is real insofar as it is a realizable ideal” (6, my underlining).
There is no short definition of deep ecology. It can best be described as a call for
wisdom and “right living”, as Ellen Swallow put it. Arne Naess, the original proponent of
deep ecology, makes circular statements like: “The essence of deep ecology … is to ask
deeper questions” (in Sessions 37). Naess’s further statement that “Ecosophy, or deep
ecology then, involves a shift from science to wisdom” is both idealistic and based on the
premise that science lacks wisdom. I am not sure that this is true and believe that
Livingstone would not support this view. His paper “Science and Truth” is evidence of
this. Perhaps the flaw in Naess’s well-intentioned argument is that it does not escape
dualism. Gary Snyder offers a more holistic (and realistic?) view:
We have it within our deepest powers not only to change ourselves, but also to
change our culture. If man is to remain on earth he must transform the fivemillennia-long
urbanizing civilization tradition into a new ecologically-sensitive,
harmony-oriented wild-minded scientific-spiritual culture. (in Sessions 147)
The literary equivalent of deep ecology is the pastoral. Deep ecology can best be seen as
an ideal philosophy which expresses human longing but which does not offer a practical
solution. But, because this utopian concept feeds the human imagination, it does have