"Intrinsic Value: Will the defenders of nature please rise?"
So, I’ve finally read my first Arne Naess. Having been previously exposed both to some dubious claims that grow out of Deep Ecology (ie: Oates in Myth and Reality in the Rainforest: ‘the great thing about dictators is that they can really get conservation done.’) and some of the important challenges to it (Nations: “Deep Ecology Meets the Developing World.” ‘try to tell someone whose kids are starving not to shoot that wildlife because it has intrinsic value’)… I suppose I was expecting something more out there. Granted, there are some problematic ideas here. Like positing identification with all life forms (and concomitant desire to protect them) with “full human maturity.” (He does admit that social realities sometimes make the protective step impossible.) BUT. There is something terribly wrong with creating a spectrum from ‘not fully mature’ human beings and societies to ‘mature human beings and societies,’ and placing yourself smack on the mature end.
Otherwise (and that’s a big otherwise), Naess is rather more measured and more deeply interesting than I was expecting. His concern that scientists answer the questions at hand (compare Evil Dam Project A to Evil Dam Project B) and do not publicly advocate their personal convictions… this slips interestingly into the discussion which is very much ongoing (See Lackey’s 2007 “Science, Scientists, and Policy Advocacy,” who suggests that scientists must never advocate, or the public will lose respect for the impartiality of science. An unsurprising position for a scientist in the Bush EPA, in fact.) (And I would tend to agree with Naess.) I was also intrigued by his depiction of the microscope as an instument of pleasure – a motif, if you will, that’s intrigued me in both Dillard and D.H. Lawrence.
