Toward a New Consciousness

Values to Sustain Human and Natural Communities

By Gus Speth

Many of our deepest thinkers and many of those most familiar with the scale of the challenges we face have concluded that the changes needed to sustain human and natural communities can only be achieved in the context of the rise of a new consciousness. For some, it is a spiritual awakening—a transformation of the human heart. For others it is a more intellectual process of coming to see the world anew and deeply embracing the emerging ethic of the environment and the old ethic of what it means to love thy neighbor as thyself. But for all it involves major cultural change and a reorientation of what society values and prizes most highly.

Photo: Elaine Hyde, Williamsburg, Massachusetts

Vaclav Havel has stated beautifully the fundamental shift that is needed. “What could change the direction of today’s civilization? It is my deep conviction that the only option is a change in the sphere of the spirit, in the sphere of human conscience. It’s not enough to invent new machines, new regulations, new institutions. We must develop a new understanding of the true purpose of our existence on this Earth. Only by making such a fundamental shift will we be able to create new models of behavior and a new set of values for the planet.” For Havel and many others, the environmental crisis is ultimately a crisis of the spirit.

Aldo Leopold, the father of the land ethic and perhaps the most famous graduate of the school where I am dean, came to believe “that there is a basic antagonism between the philosophy of the industrial age and the philosophy of the conservationist.” Remarkably, he wrote to a friend that he doubted anything could be done about conservation “without creating a new kind of people.”

One way of describing the values that are needed is to identify the transitions that are required to move successfully from today to tomorrow. I would describe these transitions as follows:

from seeing humanity as something apart from nature, transcending and dominating it, to seeing ourselves as part of nature, offspring of its evolutionary process, close kin to wild things, and wholly dependent on its vitality and the finite services it provides;
from seeing nature in strictly utilitarian terms, humanity’s resource to exploit as it sees fit for economic and other purposes, to seeing the natural world as having both intrinsic value independent of people and rights that create the duty of ecological stewardship;
from discounting the future, focusing severely on the near term, to empowering future generations economically, politically and environmentally and recognizing duties to yet unborn human and natural communities well into the future;
from hyper-individualism, narcissism, and social isolation to powerful community bonds reaching from the local to the cosmopolitan and to profound appreciation of interdependence both within and among countries;
from parochialism, sexism, prejudice and ethnocentrism to tolerance, cultural diversity and respect for human rights;
from materialism, consumerism, getting, the primacy of possessions, and limitless hedonism to personal and family relationships, leisure play, experiencing nature, spirituality, giving, and living within limits;
from gross economic, social and political inequality to equity, social justice, and human solidarity.

What might spur human sensibilities in these directions? When one considers our world today with its widespread ethnic hatreds, intra-state warfare and immense violence, militarism and terrorism, not to mention the dysfunctional values already indicated, the task can seem hopelessly idealistic. In truth, it is precisely because of these calamities, which are linked in many ways, that one must search for answers and hope desperately to find them.

There is a vast literature on cultural change and evolution. In what spirit, then, should we take up the question of spurring change? The goal must be forging cultural change, not waiting on it. Here, the insight of Daniel Patrick Moynihan is helpful: “The central conservative truth is that culture, not politics, determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.”
Unfortunately, the surest path to widespread cultural change is a cataclysmic event that profoundly affects shared values and delegitimizes the status quo and existing leadership. The Great Depression is a classic example. I believe that both 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina could have led to real cultural change in the United States, both for the better, but America lacked the inspired leadership needed.

Photo: Joe Trudeau, Hancock, New Hampshire

A Congressman is said to have told a citizens group, “If you will lead, your leaders will follow.” But it doesn’t have to be that way. Harvard’s Howard Gardner stresses this potential of true leadership in his book Changing Minds: “Whether they are heads of a nation or senior officials of the United Nations, leaders of large, disparate populations have enormous potential to change minds . . . and in the process they can change the course of history.”

“I have suggested one way to capture the attention of a disparate population: by creating a compelling story, embodying that story in one’s own life, and presenting the story in many different formats so that it can eventually topple the counterstories in one’s culture. . . . [T]he story must be simple, easy to identify with, emotionally resonant, and evocative of positive experiences.”

There is some evidence that Americans are ready for another story. Large majorities of Americans, when polled, express disenchantment with today’s lifestyles and offer support for values similar to those discussed here. But these values are held along with other strongly felt and often conflicting values, and we are all pinned down by old habits, fears, insecurities, social pressures and in other ways. A new story that helps people find their way out of this confusion and dissonance could help lead to real change.

Another source of value change is social movements. Social movements are all about consciousness raising, and if they are successful they can usher in a new consciousness. We speak casually about the environmental movement. We need a real one. Curtis White’s book, The Spirit of Disobedience, reminds us of the 1960s. “Although the sixties counterculture has been much maligned and discredited, it attempted to provide what we still desperately need: a spirited culture of refusal, a counterlife to the reigning corporate culture of death. We don’t need to return to that counterculture, but we do need to take up its challenge again.”

Another way forward to a new consciousness lies in the world’s religions. Mary Evelyn Tucker has noted that “no other group of institutions can wield the particular moral authority of the religions,” and that “the environmental crisis calls the religions of the world to respond by finding their voice within the larger Earth community. In so doing, the religions are now entering their ecological phase and finding their planetary expression.” The potential of faith communities is enormous. About 85 percent of the world’s people belong to one of the 10,000 or so religions, and about two-thirds of the global population are Christian, Islamic, or Hindu. Religions played key roles in ending slavery, in the civil rights movement, and in overcoming apartheid in South Africa, and they are now turning attention with increasing strength to the environment.

Photo: Jay Warner, Racine, Wisconsin

Finally, there is the great importance of sustained efforts at education. Here one should include education in the largest sense as embracing not only formal education but also day-to-day and experiential education. It includes education we get from personally experiencing nature in all its richness and diversity. My colleague Steve Kellert has stressed that such exposure, especially for children, is important to well-being and human development. Education in this broad sense also includes the fast-developing field of social marketing. Social marketing has had notable successes in moving people away from bad behaviors such as smoking and drunk driving, and its approaches could be applied to larger themes as well.

All of these forces for change are potentially complementary: a calamity or breakdown (or, ideally, the public anticipation of one brought on by many warnings and much evidence); occurring in the presence of wise leadership and a new narrative that helps make sense of it all, draws on the best of our values and traditions, and points to the future we must realize; urged on by a demanding citizens’ movement that fuses the causes of environmental sustainability, social justice, and strong democracy; informed and broadened by well-conceived social marketing campaigns; joined by a contagious proliferation of real-world examples that point the way. It is not difficult to envision such circumstances coming together. Except for a real calamity, these are all things we can join together in pursuing.

There was a real calamity off Santa Barbara, California in 1969 – a huge oil leak from the Union Oil Company’s offshore drilling operation that turned beaches black, destroyed fish and wildlife, and, more than any single event, catalyzed the remarkable environmental progress of the 1970s. Drawing on what had just happened to them, citizens in Santa Barbara were inspired to write the Santa Barbara Declaration of Environmental Rights: “We, therefore, resolve to act. We propose a revolution in conduct toward an environment which is rising in revolt against us. Granted that ideas and institutions long established are not easily changed; yet today is the first day of the rest of our life on this planet. We will begin anew.”

In the midst of that disaster, residents of Santa Barbara found the spirit we need today.

Gus Speth has served as Dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies since 1999. In 2007, Gus visited the Leopold Center to take part in the inaugural Leopold Conference, a discussion among forward-thinking conservationists and scientists from around the nation about the relevance of Leopold’s land ethic in the 21st Century.

This article arises from a conference held by the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental studies in 2007 in Aspen, Colorado, to discuss the challenges facing us in the 21st Century. It first appeared as the foreward to the conference report. Read more about the New Consciousness conference online here.

Leopold Centennial Celebration

Aldo Leopold with his 1909 Yale graduating class. Leopold is in the front row in a light-colored suit.

In 1909, Aldo Leopold graduated from what was “Yale Forest School,” now Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and joined the first generation of professional foresters in the nation. Yale instilled in him Gifford Pinchot’s doctrine of forestry—“the greatest good for the greatest number in the longest run”—and Leopold was ready to try his hand at applying what he had learned to actual forest policy. He entered a career with the U.S. Forest Service, as did most of his classmates, and left for his first post: forest assistant at the Apache National Forest in Arizona. He would go on to become one of the most important voices in American conservation.

On April 3rd, 2009, Yale F&ES will host a symposium and gala celebration honoring Leopold’s time at Yale and his acclaimed contributions to environmental conservation. The day-long symposium will consider Leopold’s legacy and how his storied land ethic might be reformulated for the global environmental and social challenges of the 21st century. Structured conversations with audience participation will revolve around short presentations by Leopold scholars, as well as practitioners who have put Leopold’s ethics into practice. Featured themes include Leopold’s place in American environmental history, and his contributions to philosophy, ethics, and natural resource management. Conferees will be challenged to answer the question: What advice would Leopold give to this year’s graduating class? The venue will be the school’s new headquarters, a near-carbon-neutral LEED platinum building. Tours of the historic building where Leopold studied will be available. The day will conclude with a private preview of GreenFire, a new movie, still in production, about Leopold’s life, followed by a reception and gala dinner party. For more information or to register, please contact leopold@yale.edu or call 203-432-5055.