Deep Ecology

Deep Ecology is a worldview and associated way of life grounded in the new cosmology. It branches out of the awareness that the environment is not “out there,” separate from us, but that we are part of vast cosmological, geological and biological cycles which are concentric and interrelated. My own body, for example, is constantly exchanging matter, energy, and information with the “environment.” The atoms and molecules of my body now, what I collectively call “me,” are not the same ones that made up my body a year ago. Every five days I get a new stomach lining. I get a new liver every two months. My skin is replaced every six weeks. Every year, 98% of my body is replaced. The molecules that are continually becoming “me” come from the air I breathe and the food I eat. Before that they were part of fish and snakes, lizards and trees, birds and humans, and all that we eat. I give out as I get. It makes little sense, then, to overly identify with my “ego” self, for that is only a very small part of “me.” My larger body is the body of Life itself. Earth is my larger self. This is the essence of deep ecology.

• Michael Dowd