Beyond Environmental Crisis: From Technocrat to Planetary PersonBeyond Environmental Crisis addresses the most pressing challenge facing humanity at the end of the 20th Century: Can the peoples of the Earth get together with enough creativity, commitment and skill to avert the twin threats of nuclear holocaust and environmental destruction? This book employs comparative, creative philosophical inquiry to analyze and offer alternatives to the modern Western worldview which was the foundation of the Western technological revolution. It describes an emerging alternative ecophilosophy that is inclusive enough to serve as a cross-cultural ground for synthesis of new visions of technological and social practices that promote ecological harmony, wisdom, and democratic values. It exemplifies appropriate philosophizing as an art that creatively uses shifting paradigms as a transformative discipline leading to the creation of new practices of appropriate design, for diverse lifestyles which promote preservation of the Earth's wild places, while sustaining its ecological communities. Comparative, creative, ecophilosophical inquiry facilitates participatory activity, which becomes an applied philosophy of life that is a way to ecosophy (wisdom and harmony based on ecocentric values). The way to ecosophy leads beyond environmental crises. To illustrate this transformation two philosophies are described, along with their ideals of progress, persons, community and Nature: The technocratic representing the dominant industrial paradigm, the planetary person (pernetarian) representing an ecosophic alternative. |
Contents
Basic Strategies and Assumptions | 13 |
Exemplars Paradigms and Values | 33 |
The Philosophical Dimensions of the Environmental Crisis | 67 |
Copyright | |
6 other sections not shown
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
Aikido anthropocentric appropriate design appropriate technology archetypal acts awareness basic become conceptual consciousness constellations create creative philosophizing cultural deep ecological Descartes dimensions diverse Drengson Earth ecocentric ecofeminism ecological approach ecological paradigms ecological wisdom ecology movement ecomonk ecophilosophical ecosophy ecosphere Environmental Ethics environmental philosophy example exemplars forms harmony intrinsic values involves knowledge living logic machine mastery means mind-set models modern moral Naess Nature nocratic nuclear ongoing orientation patterns perennial philosophy pernetarian approach pernetarian paradigms philosophical activity philosophy of appropriate planetary person problem context productive reality realize relation relationships religious religious conversion sacred sense shallow shamanic shifting paradigms social society specific spiritual practices Taoist tech techniques technocratic approach technocratic mind technocratic paradigms technological power technology practices things tion traditions transcend transformation ture understanding unifying University value-array vision vision quest voluntary simplicity whole wilderness wisdom worldviews York