Environmental Ethics

Volume 16, Issue 4, Winter 1994

Myth, Nature, and the Bureaucratic Experience

From the “deep” ecological perspective, there is a dualism between an ecocentric and an anthropocentric perspective, and this dualism is reflected in the ideal of the bureaucratic experience. The bureaucrat lives by the myth of the human ability to control nature. An eco-myth is evolving that can offer one means of transcending the dominant bureaucratic mythic experience. This eco-myth moves toward a positive and sensitive human relationship with nature—a collective experience that values nature on its own terms and not as standing reserve. This position is no less mythic than the one it is replacing, but it is a better myth, because, being non-dualist, it offers the prospect of a political society in harmony with nature.