Environment Ethics the Main Idea

Environment Ethics

The main idea conveyed in Deborah Bird Rose's essay, "So the Future can Come Forth from the Ground" is that humans have a responsibility to take care of the world. This is not an abstract concept. The author conveys the fact that after spending a significant amount of time with Aborigines in their native environment, they have propagated the notion onto her that literally taking care of the world -- the ground and all that it births -- is akin to taking care of the future. The earth is what will sustain people on this planet; indeed, it always has. The author contrasts this primary idea of humans taking control of the future by not destroying their environment with that of conventional Western society. The latter viewpoint contends that the future is some dim, brimming light that will eventually come into fruition, regardless of what people do in the here and now. There are various forms of religion which seem to reinforce this notion.

However, the Aboriginal concept that the author prefers is a lot less abstract, significantly more pragmatic, and certainly more involved. This viewpoint holds that the future will only arrive and be preserved through the work done to prepare for it in the present. That work revolves around taking care of the country, of the ground and its streams, its mountains, its foliage and all of the wildlife that feeds upon these things in various ecosystems. Without doing such work, there will be no future, because the earth and its ground that birthed everything will no longer exist.

Lastly, one final concept that ties into this main idea is the notion that people have an obligation to effectively steward or take care of the earth. That obligation, of course, was disseminated form their ancestors, who were successful in their caring for the planet so that the planet still exists at the present moment. The Aborigines believe that because of the success of their ancestors, they must continue to on such a tradition that has always existed.

On the one hand, a Westerner such as myself could read Rose's essay regarding this perspective of the future and the land that is supposed to engender it and think is little more than a quaint tale, some outmoded way of dealing with life that has no practical application to the modern world. However, there seems to be a lot of sense in the approach that the Aborigines take regarding the world that birthed them, and which they in turn believe they must protect to create a future existence for others.

The part that I identify with the most is the aspect of living in harmony with the world, as opposed to trying to control it. In Western society, the age-old struggle has always been man attempting to assert his will over that of nature, which of course includes the world and pretty much everything else in it other than man. The Aboriginal viewpoint discussed within this text, however, brings a degree of temperance and even peace to man's relationship with the world. The earth, I believe, is not something that should be tamed and taken advantage of, rather than something that should be protected and preserved. Therefore, from an ethical perspective I see a lot of validity in the perspective of the Aborigines.