Animist Environmentalism

Abstract

One notable consequence of the Rationalist mind-gaze, and therefore of modernist world affairs, are changes in the condition of the planet’s environment. There is global warming, for example, industrial pollution, deforestation, and species extinction. There is depletion of vital resources as the size of the human population continues to grow. And there are the uncertainties that attend our attempts to manipulate that “marvellous living alphabet” inside the cell from which all life is constructed (Eiseley, 1988, 141). These all have consequences for world affairs. Indeed, without a viable planetary environment, there are no world affairs, modernist or otherwise.