The Nature of (Human) Life and the Life of Nature: Advancing Environmental Sustainability

The willful and wanton destruction of the ecosystem has been extremely alarming. Farmlands are brazenly destroyed through lumbering, oil exploration and exploitation, bush burning and other economic activities. In fact, the entire ecosystem is continuously under threat by human activities. The simple explanation is anthropocentric ethics of the environment; man being the only privileged specie in the ecosystem with his exclusive moral status. Man is therefore on a rampaging mission to consciously exterminate nature and by extension unconsciously exterminate himself. The major aim of this work is how to advance explanations that clearly interpret man’s nature and nature’s life such that man does not see himself as significantly different from nature. To achieve this aim effectively, this research adopted methods of analysis and hermeneutics. With analysis, this work simplifies and connects related concepts that indicate the connectedness of man and the ecosystem. The types of analysis relevant to the breaking down of ambiguous and complex concepts and ideas are conceptual and linguistics analyses. Hermeneutical analysis as a type of analysis and hermeneutics as a second major method adopted in this research engage the interpretation of the concepts and carry out the analysis of the interpretations. All of these approaches are intended to show the implications of the narrowed views of anthropocentric and biocentric perspectives of nature. This research finds out that the anthropocentric and biocentric attitudes have found roots in every of man’s destructive activities on the ecosystem. It therefore concludes that a proper interpretation of the nature of both human and non-human parts of the ecosystem exposes the similarities between the two aspects of nature. With this consciousness of oneness with nature, human beings are more likely to halt the damages on the environment.