The Natural Alien: Humankind and Environment

By: Neil Evernden

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Synopsis: An aura of success seems to surround the environmental movement today. Its concerns are voiced by news media and heeded by governments around the world. But its real achievements have been few, and the publicity they have generated may disguise the movement's essential futility. In this thoughtful and sympathetic evaluation of the international environmental movement Evernden raises grave doubts about its ability even to express adequately its real message, let alone to establish societal acceptance and government support for it. He reviews the assumptions inherent in western industrial societies that make them so resistant to the basic motivating concerns of those active in the environmental cause. From that analysis Evernden considers an alternative view of human/ environmental relations as presented by such thinkers as Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger. Their evocation of self as 'being in the world' is quite different from the dominant 'Cartesian' view, and far more accommodating to the environmentalist's sensibility. Evernden argues that the existence of such differing approaches to human/environment relations is evidence of a flexibility that is a basic feature of humanity. In this flexibility lies the basis of hope. Our uncertainty, although predisposing us to confusion and alienation, also enables us to develop a new understanding of 'self in world.' Only through such understanding can the impulse to environmental advocacy be understood.