View source for Earth as the Garden of Mankind

'''* Article: Lindholm, M. (2022). The Earth has Become the Garden of Mankind. Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, 18(1), 83–102.''' 

URL = https://cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/journal/article/view/1004


=Abstract=

"The environmental crisis challenges our faith in humanity. Building on deep ecology and recent insights in evolutionary psychology, this article elaborates evolutionary peculiarities of our species, in order to develop foothold for new perspectives on the relation between man and earth. Premodern cultures managed to interact with their environments by establishing bio-cultural interfaces, thereby maintaining sustainable resource use. Homo sapiens has not generally been 'a plague of the earth', but rather a species that enhanced local biodiversity. In addition to genetical information, humans share a reservoir of cultural meaning. This reservoir has been coined 'the noosphere' and probably make up the last stage in a series of major evolutionary transitions since the Precambrian. Through the noosphere, the earth has become the garden of mankind. Such perspectives may open for re-establishing faith in man and in his ability to develop flowering relations to his environment."


=Excerpt=

See: '''The [[Noosphere as a Evolutionary Transition]]'''. By Markus Lindholm.

From the conclusion:

Marcus Lindholm:

"Through  this  recent  cognitive  transition,  the  entire  earth  is  potentially  fertile  domain of Homo sapiens, ready for exploitation and cultivation. And instantly, the whole  earth  in  its  natural  state  is  under  threat.  Nonetheless,  our  ancestors  demonstrate  that  humans  can  establish  sustainable  resource  use,  thereby  even  enhancing  habitat  heterogeneity  and  biodiversity.  They,  however,  had  not  undergone the Cartesian mind-body split, that so profoundly affects our present civilization. Instead, the modern mind has strengthened another ability: That of responsibility and recognition of beauty, in the shimmering of the marvelous blue earth as seen from space.  The  demands  for  restoration  measures  of  deteriorated  streams,  forests  and  cultural landscapes reflect not the least the modern minds growing responsibility for   the   earth.   The   necessity   of   integrating   human   dimensions   in   nature   conservation  is  increasingly  acknowledged,  emphasizing  conservation  to  be  complimented  by  restoration  principles,  where  local  cultural  traditions  interact  with  science  to  develop  new  sustainable  solutions.  IUCN  programs  like  The  Earth Restoration Project, pointed to the relevance of bio-cultural interfaces for any  conservation  and  restoration  measures,  by  emphasizing  the  significance  of  measures as sensitive for human needs (Gritzner et al., 2011; Gann et al., 2019). What started a century ago in saving buffalos, beavers and birds, has grown to a cultural task of global significance, as numerous large and small restoration initiatives  are  launched  worldwide.  The  African  Great  Green  Wall  and  the  Kenyan Green Belt Movement have managed to reforest more than 50 million acres of degraded land (Goffner et al., 2019), and studies supports the assumption of a positive effect on regional climate and rainfall (Yu et al., 2017). The Aral Sea collapsed  during  the  last  decades  of  the  20th  century,  due  to  unsustainable  irrigation  and  water  use.  Fisheries,  previously  comprising  13  %  of  the  Soviet  fishery, vanished and evoked regional social erosion. Construction of the Kokaral dam in 2005, however, allowed parts of the sea to recover, with reintroduction of the  aquatic  flora  and  fauna  from  the  lake’s  tributaries,  even  allowing  native  fisheries to return (Micklin et al., 2020). As for Sahel, the measures undertaken are seemingly associated with increased rainfall. Similar successfully restoration measures  are  reported  from  the  Nearctic,  for  example  of  the  upper  Mississippi  river  catchments,  where  eutrophication  erased  backwater  ecosystems,  which  at  present regain many of their previous features (Theiling et al., 2015). Such  large-scale  restoration  measures  find  their  microlevel  counterparts  in  millions of people, who express their biophilous passions on a daily occupational basis. The naïve joy of gardening signals steps towards bridging the gap between object and meaning, by means of biophilous responsibility and aesthetics of deep bio-cultural  features,  where  environment,  love  for  life  and  wellbeing  come  together (Sempik et al., 2005; York & Wiseman, 2012). Historically, environments invoked  a  rich  venue  of  myths  and  metaphors  for  cultural  development. Gardening  is  a  possible  developmental  pathway  to  reconcile  the  cartesian  violation  of  object  and  meaning  and  renew  the  metaphoric  language,  which  historically framed the bio-cultural interfaces of man and earth (Richards, 2001). The relationship between man and earth comprises more beauty and depth than can be conceived by claims of 'humans as plague of the earth'. Perspectives like these may renew curiosity and hope in environmental education. It  looks  quizzical  to  us  from  eutrophic  lakes,  from  hillsides  demolished  by  wind  farms,  from  plastic  litter  along  seashores,  from  the  smoke  of  burning  rainforests, and from the climbing CO2 concentrations of the atmosphere: Who are you, man? If we insist to be nothing but a zoological entity among so many, we will neither   understand   the   earth   nor   ourselves,   and   challenges   of   the   Anthropocene will remain unsolved.  For  better  or  worse,  the  earth  has  become  the  garden  of  mankind  (Clark,  1989;  Steffen  et  al.,  2020).  

To  quote  one  of  the  leading  authorities  of  the  novel  upcoming  earth  system  science:  “the  time  has  finally  come  to  extend  the  gardening  to  the  planetary  scale  –if  only  to  counteract  anthropogenic  global  despoliation  that,  ironically,  results  in  part  from  the  measures  taken  to  protect limited-area  environments“  (Schellnhuber  1998,  p.  8).  

Scott  F.  Gilbert  (2017),  similarly,  recently  claimed  that  "land  development  and  economic  development  lead  to  something [new]: Earth as managed plantation. (...). It is metamorphosis, bringing us and the land to higher, more developed, stage" (p. 82). 

Already pioneers of evolutionary thinking anticipated this perspective. Alfred Russel Wallace, in the aforementioned article, outlined this view, in claiming that man actually is "able to take away some of  that power from nature which, before his appearance, she universally exercised. We can anticipate the time  when  the  earth  will  produce  only  cultivated  plants  and  domestic  animals;  when  man's  selection shall have supplanted natural selection" (p. cixviii). That does not mean that all environments  should  be  manicured  flowerbeds.  But  humans  across  the  earth  have since ancient times treated their environment like gardens, by means of bio-cultural interactions, where meaning and objects are two sides of the same coin –   as  they  are  in  any  feeling  of  responsibility  and  in  the  aesthetic  experience  of  daily life."

(https://cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/journal/article/view/1004/1657)

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