Lynn White Jr. offers an important assessment and critique of Western culture and its’ effects on the environment in “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis”. Throughout the short essay he brings to light the ways in which Westerner’s anthropocentric lifestyles and suppositional inherent place at the top of the food chain has had a profound and disastrous affect on the natural world in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Because the timeline of the natural world is understood differently than the human timeline, the effects of man on his environment have been vastly undervalued, misunderstood, overlooked, and underestimated. In the following paragraphs, I will address Whites’ arguments, critiques, and his suggestions for moving forward towards an alternative future.
The date of the first appearance of the word “ecology” in English language is telling of the lateness with which we came to understand, at least in a scholarly way, the interconnectedness of all things. In his essay, White points out that less than a century after the word first appears in 1873, human impact on the environment has so changed in scale that it has transformed into a whole new thing altogether (White, 1). I …show more content…
He cites Saint Francis of Assisi as a character to look to for guidance in reconciling our unhealthful relationship to the environment. With great insight, White leans on Saint Francis’ principles of humility and democracy. I think White is suggesting that we displace ourselves from the top of our created hierarchy and resituate in communion with “all of God’s creatures” (White, 5). In White’s proposal for an alternative future, he indicates Christian arrogance and postulates that environmental crises will continue and worsen until we begin to value nature outside of its utility to man (White,
The date of the first appearance of the word “ecology” in English language is telling of the lateness with which we came to understand, at least in a scholarly way, the interconnectedness of all things. In his essay, White points out that less than a century after the word first appears in 1873, human impact on the environment has so changed in scale that it has transformed into a whole new thing altogether (White, 1). I …show more content…
He cites Saint Francis of Assisi as a character to look to for guidance in reconciling our unhealthful relationship to the environment. With great insight, White leans on Saint Francis’ principles of humility and democracy. I think White is suggesting that we displace ourselves from the top of our created hierarchy and resituate in communion with “all of God’s creatures” (White, 5). In White’s proposal for an alternative future, he indicates Christian arrogance and postulates that environmental crises will continue and worsen until we begin to value nature outside of its utility to man (White,