This slideshow explores the prevailing ethics and value systems that have shaped culture and guided human behavior. It looks at philosophical as well as religious & spiritual systems, and discusses today's dominant, neoliberal point of view about the nature of the world and its resources.

1. Ethics, Culture, & Human Behavior

3.  Universalism: ethics/morals are unchanging and universal
 Utilitarianism: an action is right if it produces the greatest
satisfaction or pleasure for the greatest number of people
 Relativism: ethics/morals are relative to cultures, eras, or
situations—there is no absolute right and wrong
 Rationalism: ethics/morals can be developed through logic and
reasoning
 Nihilism: concepts of ethics/morals are useless because nothing
can be known, all that matters is survival: “might is right”
Relating to Nature: Philosophy

4. Relating to Nature: Religion
 Shamanism: all living
creatures have souls or
sacred spirits that should be
revered and respected
 Shintoism: all forms of life
and natural objects have
divine spirits or deities;
revering them secures their
continued favor

5. Relating to Nature: Religion
 Buddhism: people should have respect
and compassion for life and the Earth,
only taking life when required to live;
all life is integrated into a web of
mutual interdependence
 Taoism: all systems coexist in a
network which adapts and changes
through interactions between
opposites: Yin and Yang

6. Relating to Nature: Religion (cont.)
 Islam: humans are above, and therefore they must shepherd
and respect, nature’s bounty and all life on Earth
 Hinduism: respect nature by living in harmony with all life,
instead of trying to change or conquer it
 Christianity: humans have dominion over the Earth (Old
Testament) and should manage the Earth with humility and
reverence for places and species (New Testament)
 Judaism: humans are superior to other forms of life, have
dominion over the Earth, and should humbly care for the Earth

7. Relating to
Nature
Reflect on the following:
1) How have your religious or
philosophical views shaped
your view and treatment of
the natural world?
2) How have the religious or
philosophical views of the
society you are most familiar
with shaped its view and
treatment of the natural
world?

8. The Industrialization of Nature
The industrialization
of nature, from
1500 to the present,
represents a
massive shift in the
way humans
interacted with the
earth and other
species

9. The Industrialization of Nature
Tropical regions provided plantation crops (such as sugar,
tobacco, cotton, rice, indigo, and opium)
Temperate regions allowed for the cultivation and export
of grain
This brought significant changes in ecosystems across the
globe, especially deforestation and soil erosion

10. The Industrialization of Nature
These changes were minor
compared with the 19th
century, the most rapid
global economic growth
seen ever before or mostly
since due to:
 fossil fuel energy
extraction and use
 mineral extraction

11. The Industrialization of Nature
We also see a binary emerge: the southern hemisphere provides
resources for nations in the northern hemisphere.

12. The Industrialization of Nature
The Great Acceleration: beginning in 1950, “humans have
changed ecosystems more rapidly and extensively than in
any comparable period of time in human history” (The UN)
It allowed the global population to increase by billions and
created wealth and prosperity for many
The economic growth and corresponding consumption of
natural resources is increasing at an unpredictable and
exponential rate (i.e. it’s nonlinear)

13. The Industrialization of Nature
The Great Acceleration’s negative impacts include:
 soil degradation
 deforestation
 wetlands drainage
 damming
 air pollution
 climate change
 among others This used to be a lagoon (photo: https://missionbayhideaway.com)

14. Ethics, Culture, & Human Behavior
In response to this, sustainability’s goal is grounded in
commonsense: to ensure that conditions on earth continue
to support human civilization
Both nations and the international community “must strive
to avoid the unmanageable, while managing the
unavoidable”

15. Ethics, Culture, & Human Behavior
These realizations
highlight the fact that
sustainability is as
much a social issue
as it is an
environmental issue.

16. Ethics, Culture, & Human Behavior
We can say that there are three ontological orientations (or
foundational ways of seeing the world) from which one can
approach “sustainability”:
1. the theocentric (religion)
2. the anthropocentric (humanity)
3. the biocentric (nature/earth as a system)
a. we can identify three different, biocentric
perspectives of sustainability

17. Ethics, Culture, & Human Behavior
Sustainability as:
1. the efficient
management of
resources;
embodied by
Gifford Pinchot

18. Ethics, Culture, & Human Behavior
Sustainability as:
2. the preservation
of wildness,
radically
rejecting an
ethic of human
use; embodied
by John Muir
The Mojave Desert Preserve

19. Ethics, Culture, & Human Behavior
Sustainability as:
3. the land ethic/land
citizenship—a
synthesis of the two
that respects the of
the of Earth’s biotic
community’s
systems; embodied
by Aldo Leopold
Aldo Leopold Nature Preserve in Michigan's Upper Peninsula

20. Ethics, Culture, & Human Behavior
Despite decades of rhetoric and research on the risks of
globalized industrialism, national and international
organizations have only just begun to develop and take on
the policy responses required to address it
While we mostly understand our dilemma, our political
decision-making and consumption patterns have not
significantly changed. Why is this?

21. Ethics, Culture, & Human Behavior
Reese (2010) argues that our current “unsustainability” is a product
of two factors, the first being the bioevolutionary factor–the natural
systems that led to the evolution of Homo sapiens in the first place

22. Ethics, Culture, & Human Behavior
These “bioevolutionary presets” indicate that, unless
constrained by disease, starvation, self-pollution and the
like, the populations of all species will:
1. Expand to occupy all accessible habitats
2. Use all available resources
Without powerful restraints, a species will exploit all
available resources–human technology has done just the
opposite, heightening our ability to extract resources

23. Ethics, Culture, & Human Behavior
The second factor is the resource-intensive societal and
economic systems Homo sapiens have created.
Reese argues we must acknowledge the bioevolutionary
factor if there is to be any hope of addressing the second.

24. Ethics, Culture, & Human Behavior
Humans’ biological presets are combined with what Reese
calls “a particularly powerful ‘meme complex’…
 a socially constructed vision of global development and
poverty alleviation that is
 centered on unlimited economic expansion
 fueled by open markets and more liberalized trade”
Social behavior and political decision-making are not being
driven by knowledge, but by these entrenched attitudes

25. Ethics, Culture, & Human Behavior
AND ONE DOES
NOT SIMPLY
CREATE A NEW
MEME COMPLEX

26. Ethics, Culture, & Human Behavior
Some call this an Instrumentalist economic belief system
 it is based on models of perennial growth
 it measures the value of ecosystems according to their
production of resources for profit
 the cost of resource extraction to the ecosystem itself is
externalized (i.e. it’s not factored into the product and
shareholder values of the industry)

27. Ethics, Culture, & Human Behavior
Many people operate with a simple frame of understanding,
such as “I’d look good in those shoes!” or “Steak is delicious!”
While they may be right, frameworks
like this ignore the world’s
inter-related and systemic nature.
In other words, its complexity.
“The Story of Stuff” Project
seeks to address that.

28. Ethics, Culture, & Human Behavior
This simplified outlook,
which ignores large swathes
of reality, also makes us
more vulnerable to episodes
of system collapse (the
sudden breakdown of either
economic or ecological
services we rely on)
A home improvement box store during COVID-19 outbreak

29. Ethics, Culture, & Human Behavior
Reese argues that the evolutionary design of the human
brain leads to individual behaviors and personalities that
are the blended product of reason, emotion, and instinct.
Humans may desire to act on reason and logic, and even
think that we do, but we may be driven more by emotion
and instinct than we care to admit.

30. Ethics, Culture, & Human Behavior
Moreover, traits like competition
and normalization (humanity’s
ability to accept, analyze, and
adapt to fluctuating circumstances)
may be liabilities.
Humanity’s long-term selective
advantage may have to shift
toward a cooperative genetic
predisposition.

31. Ethics, Culture, & Human Behavior
For Reese, humanity must “socially reengineer ourselves”
and create a “whole new sociocultural paradigm for survival”
Photo: https://www.legalmetro.com

32. Ethics, Culture, & Human Behavior
But ecologists like E. O.
Wilson believe that our
species’ long evolution…
has [already] imbued us
with another adaptive
trait that will help us on
that path: biophilia” (a
love for the natural world).

33. Ethics, Culture, & Human Behavior
For Thies and Tomkin (2015), the solution starts with the
economy:
“Only a reformed economic system of natural pricing,
whereby environmental costs are reflected in the price of
products in the global supermarket, will alter consumer
behavior at the scale necessary to ensure economic and
environmental objectives are in stable alignment, rather
than in constant conflict.”

34. What do
you think
is the solution?