What kind of philosophy do we need protecting the nature?
We need a set of values that inform the way that we treat the environment around us. We need a philosophy that keeps us from raping the world in which we live. All the speeches about environment’s protecting , pollution’s prevention, greenhouse effect etc. don’t get deep into human’s mind. Nothing has as big effect on human’s behaviour as the philosophy that human considers. So I can assert that the greatest influence on environment has the philosophy. And the biggest philosophies are the religions. But now I have to be disillusioned with the absence of the proper religion. If we take for example the Indian – this religion treats the world as an illusion. The reality is the great one. I don’t think that kind of philosophy / religion is effective in forming a backdrop for environmental responsibility. We are growing larger and larger as a world. More and more people will be inhabiting the earth, and we will need to do more to see that the world can provide for us all. Where will we find the appropriate philosophy for it? Indian religion, with respect for the spirits of the animals and the trees, cuts closer to the kind of philosophy I would like to see. However, the religion is perhaps too deferential. Indian religion arose in an atmosphere of relative abundance and few people. Indian philosophy of the environment is predicated on an abundance and not subduing our environment to make it produce more. The ways are traditional and more passive. The earth gives us what we need, and we take what we need. With the amount of population of the world today, however, we do need the division of labour and economies of scale to allow for the abundance of food and needed items to feed, house, and cloth the world’s people. If we look to the East we will found that this philosophy is not appropriate at all. Too big population will cause the lack of food, houses, and clothes. For some people of this religion the ideas of saving the environment may seem completely alien. In my opinion some places of this religion should be changed, should be updated. The same thing is with the Christian religion. If we look through the history we can find lots of facts when Christianity was trying to stop the development of science. If it had happened differently the great pollution would have started earlier. But on other hand the people would have earlier noticed the impact of human-beings on the environment. The Christians tenets indicates all the human’s behaviour, except his relationship with nature.
It is too bad that the inherent environmentalism has not been taken more seriously. Humans were placed on the earth , in this system, to do three main things: govern the earth, tend the garden, and be fruitful and multiply. Now it seemed that we have taken the word govern and changed it in our own minds to pillage. Rather than tending we have ravaged. I believe that Christian philosophy of the environment has the ingredients for a balance between the need to produce for a huge population of humans (to creatively use what we have been given by God to use in the earth) and to treat the earth as if it were not our own but God_s and we were put in charge of caring for it as an older brother or sister is put in charge of the younger children when the parent is away. However, we have not always treated the earth in this way. Can we find an environmental philosophy that makes us treat the earth with care that goes beyond pure pragmatism?
So in conclusion I would like to add that all religions arose in the time when the problems of pollution prevention and environment’s protection were not as urgent as nowadays. In fact there were not such problems in those times. So the main idea of my report is that people shouldn’t lean only upon their religion and they should try solve the problems that are alien to their religion, but, of course, they are urgent to themselves and to every inhabitant of the Earth. And also the religions should be supplemented with new ideas that would change peoples’ attitude to the environment