Environmental Value System

• The environmental philosophy of an individual.

• Shaped by community, culture, socio-economic status, education, and religion.

• ECOCENTRISM- holistic view of the world.

• Strive for sustainability for the whole earth.• Include spiritual, social and environmental

concerns in decision making• Look for a minimum disturbance of natural

processes.• Place the same value on human needs as

those of the natural world• Includes Deep Ecologists and Self-

Reliance Soft Ecologists.

• ANTHROPOCENTRISM- Believe people are environmental managers of global systems.

• Support community involvement and small scale decision making on resource usage.

• Believe that with proper regulation and legal protection man and nature can coexist.

• Includes Self-Reliance Soft Ecologists and Environmental Managers.

• TECHNOCENTRISM- Technology can keep pace with and provide solutions to environmental problems. Human ingenuity will solve all our problems.

• Attempt to understand natural processes in order to control them

• Strong belief in scientific analysis when making policy

• Include market and economic growth when making environmental decisions

• Includes Environmental Managers and Cornucopians.

ISHMAEL

Discussion Questions

1) Who are the Takers and the Leavers?

2) What event marks the “birth of our culture”?

3) Why does Ishmael refer to our creation story as a myth? Do you agree with this?

Questions

4) Do you accept Ishmael's thesis that modern culture plants in human beings from birth the belief they are divinely destined to control the world? If so, discuss what you find most compelling in his argument and cite examples not in the book. If not, explain why.

Questions

5) How can the poster in Ishmael's room, "WITH MAN GONE, WILL THERE BE HOPE FOR GORILLA?" be understood? Which interpretation do you prefer?

How do you interpret the other side "WITH GORILLA GONE, WILL THERE BE HOPE FOR MAN?"

Questions

6) Why is it so hard for people to give up a story?

Why is it that even the worst off in our society would just assume continuing to enact a story in which they are miserable?

Question

How do we save the world?