An Ozymandian Nightmare Part 11

 

What’s with Ozymandias?

Roman-era historian Diodorus Siculus, who described a statue of Ozymandias, more commonly known as Rameses II (possibly the pharaoh referred to in the Book of Exodus). Diodorus reports the inscription on the statue, which he claims was the largest in Egypt, as follows: “King of Kings Ozymandias am I. If any want to know how great I am and where I lie, let him outdo me in my work.” (The statue and its inscription do not survive, and were not seen by Shelley; his inspiration for  [the sonnet]  “Ozymandias” was verbal rather than visual.)  http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/guide/238972   View Shelley’s sonnet here.

This paper is a commentary on the book; Keeping the Wild:  Against the Domestication of Earth

The book is Edited by George Wuerthner, Eileen Crist, and Tom Butler. Published by the Foundation for Deep Ecology in collaboration with Island Press, 2014, Washington D.C.

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Conservation in No-Man’s-Land

 

Claudio Campagna and Daniel Guevara provide a well prepared rebuttal of the claims of the HCCs. [Human Centred Conservationists]

 

Claudio Campagna is a Senior Research Zoologist affiliated with the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Daniel Guevara is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

 

They pose that the “deepest issue – the real crisis – is that we do not have  the concepts or language for expressing, or explicitly understanding, the intrinsic value of Nature; nor, therefore, for articulating its violation.”

 

I fully agree and add that the reason for this is primarily that we do not realise that we are the Earth.  We are Nature.  We use tools designed to measure “things”, mechanical objects and use the results to pronounce about the hows and whys of a living being. Further, Earth is an immense and intelligent living being.  We treat Earth the way we do because we do not love the Earth, our higher self. Unfortunately for Earth, including all life therein, we speak of the planet as “it” and consider “it” as out there.

Our religious traditions were formed by people utterly devoid of scientific knowledge, steeped in hubris, and dedicated totally toward establishing principles approved by their personal God.  Next they set up a hierarchy of special men who were imbued with the authority to speak “for” God.  Following was a kicker message devised to frighten the masses into submission by pronouncing that their God would punish them for disobeying the opinions of their God’s spokespersons on Earth.  Even into modern times, we have millions who live in fear of damnation and disapproval of their God.

Sadly, when so many people believe that humans are especially fabricated in God’s image and then thrust upon the Earth to, as written in Genesis 1:28 “…Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”

 

Actually, the domestication of the Earth underpins the religious foundation of both Christianity and Judaism.

 

How could we ever expect a population from  Christian and Jewish religious Sunday schools to love and cherish the Earth when they have been taught that their God has given  the Earth to humans to subdue?