The Trumpeter - Journal of Ecosophy (Athabasca University)

Sessions, George

Wildness, Cyborgs, and Our Ecological Future: Reassessing the Deep Ecology Movement

Drengson, Alan

Devall, Bill

The Trumpeter  
ISSN: 0832-6193 
Volume 22, Number 2 (2006) 
 
 
Arne Naess, His Life and Work Part Two:  
The Continuing Development of the Long-range, 
Deep Ecology Movement 
Introduction 
 
This issue of The Trumpeter concludes the four-issue, special series 
devoted to Arne Naess and his contributions to the long-range, deep 
ecology movement. 
 
The first issue, 21.1, includes Alan Drengson’s comprehensive essay 
“The Life and Work of Arne Naess: An Appreciative Overview” and a 
selection of Naess essays on total views, forms of life and open inquiry, 
and essays on values, systems, and communications research. 
 
The second issue, 21.2, includes essays by Naess on history, education, 
practical applications, and on local grounds for personal mythologies.  
 
The third issue, 22.1, includes an account of the reception held in Oslo 
in November, 2005, celebrating the publication of the Selected Works of 
Arne Naess (SWAN). In this issue, we turned to other authors, teachers, 
and philosophers who use Naess’s approach to life’s philosophy to 
further develop themes in the long-range, deep ecology movement. In 
this issue Bill Devall writes about “Living in Mixed Communities” and 
Alan Drengson discusses emotions and life quality. Tim Quick defends 
and explains Naess’s Pluralism, Anthony Weston gives a vision of 
“Multicentrism,” while Ralph Metzner writes of “Transitions to the 
Ecological Age.” The issue ends with two personal sketches of Naess 
and his work by Margarita Notario and Andrei Whitaker. This third 
issue also has the first online Naess Festschrift as a supplement to the 
issue.  
 
The Festschrift collection is a bare bones selection of Naess’s work 
offering a representative mosaic of his essays and reflections. Its 
sections include total systems in theory, elements, language, and 
application. The second section addresses these gestalt features in 
The Trumpeter 2 
 
 
relations, places, and practices. We have learned that Naess’s empirical 
studies, and first hand observations in nature, are all interconnected 
with an ongoing philosophical inquiry that is part of a larger journey, as 
major thematic elements in his life and work. Readers can get a better 
sense for this journey if they read his book Life’s Philosophy. There he 
characterizes some of the organizing features and their typologies in his 
own life and work. There is no separation between his life and work. 
Living in his hut, Tvergastein, or in Oslo, he is always inquiring and 
living as joyfully as possible. No work or essay is ever completely 
finished. Even if one has spelled out a life philosophy as systematically 
as possible, as is shown by Goedel’s theorum, no such system can be 
complete. All systems in our life space are interrelated, changing and 
responding to each other. The expression of any life philosophy 
includes language based on narrative contexts that are themselves 
changing, just as our experience and the world is. 
 
Communication is taking place all the time, everywhere, and living 
languages are like rivers, changing, suitable for some purposes, always 
filled with values. Human languages are only a small part of the total 
communication systems on planet Earth. We can reflect on the 
possibility of other planets as rich in life and values as our own. Today 
there are still over 6000 languages and cultures around the world. This 
diversity is under threat. Given knowledge of a few languages and 
cultures, we can reflect on the amazing gift of this diversity of cultures 
and communication systems. Cultures and languages are forms of life 
that are living systems of participation. They are always adjusting in 
different ways.  
 
The ecophilosopher, as Naess stresses, likes to appreciate diversity of 
all kinds, and welcomes discovery of each new species of dialect, 
culture and language. These are organizing gestalts with unlimited 
possibilities. When asked: What is possibilism? Naess said, “Anything 
can happen.” Modernism as a philosophy rests on a mechanistic 
approach to life that is dogged by the spectre of meaningless 
determinism. That is a scary idea, but we now see that it is only one of 
countless possibilities we can entertain. We should practice with an 
open mind, and one guiding principle is that we should try to know 
what is the case. We also realize that this is, in essence, a way of living 
from moment to moment as well as a philosophical orientation or 
approach; that is, we are always learning. Naess shows by his example 
that great joy is to be found in living with these open possibilities and 
creative learning. 
 
Volume 22, Number 2 3
The fourth, concluding issue of the Naess Series, 22.2 includes essays 
that reflect the continuing, international development of the long-range, 
deep ecology movement. These essays explore life’s philosophy in the 
United States, Canada, Portugal, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, 
Australia, and Norway. They continue the discourse on major themes of 
the movement including topics in ontology, pluralism, possibilism, and 
respect for diversity and cultural differences. 
 
The first essay, “Holons or Gestalts? A Response to Wilber and 
Zimmerman” by Tim Quick is a continuation of a discussion involving 
Stan Rowe, Michael Zimmerman, and Arne Naess. This essay 
continues Tim Quick’s discussion in Volume 22.1, “In Praise of 
Naess’s Pluralism.” 
 
Jorge Conesa-Sevilla’s paper, “The Intrinsic Value of the Whole: 
Cognitive and Utilitarian Evaluative Processes as they Pertain to 
Ecocentric, Deep Ecological, and Ecopsychological ‘Valuing’,” 
discusses the larger issues of language and interspecies relations. It 
returns us to focus on the intrinsic value of each whole, including the 
whole Earth system with us in it. Naess, Rowe, and others have been 
discussing these themes through several issues of the Trumpeter and 
elsewhere. 
 
Manuel Couret Branco’s essay, “The Interaction of Cultural and 
Economic Factors: Arguments for a Pluralist Political Economy of 
Development,” discusses economic and policy issues that are found in 
Naess’s Community, Ecology and Lifestyle and in some essays included 
in SWAN. Respect for diversity and cultural differences leads us to 
appreciate cultures and total views and the uniqueness of places and the 
need for diversity in global relations, economic systems, and 
development models. Branco presents the case for pluralism in this 
domain, a topic that Naess had earlier addressed. The importance of the 
cultural gestalts can’t be ignored. It is beautiful that there can be 
ecosophic cultures and persons living in ideal situations. A major part 
of our system that controls or limits much of what can be done is said to 
be the economy, as if it were some independent thing that could not be 
influenced or guided in any way. It is the hand of “destiny.” But as 
Naess realized in Ecology, Community and Lifestyle, the economy is a 
system and, like every other such system found in culture, open to 
creative change. Branco supports this view. Cultural systems are always 
changing and we can influence the nature of this change. 
 
Today, of course, there is a global system that is interrelated with 
political organizations. It is not a completely neutral system in its 
The Trumpeter 4 
 
 
direction. A neutral system cannot be constructed. All systems have 
values and norms, hypotheses and facts. This list of features is itself a 
simple nonneutral typology. There are other ways to approach and 
understand such processes and forces as economics. There are other 
systems of measure that must be considered if we want sustainable 
practices. Whether we are designing a forest use system, or a food 
system for local needs, and so on, all such systems are ways of 
organizing our practices and habits. Our values play central roles in 
them, and our judgments and feelings are expressions of values. As 
Spinoza noticed, we have a choice in emphasizing positive feelings. We 
can adopt an approach that changes our ability to relate, learn, and 
understand, so as to live with the deepest feelings and greatest joy. The 
more we understand, the more we can enjoy. So policies can be ones 
that promote practices that are sustainable and have high life quality. 
The solution in each place is found by adapting our practices to the 
character of our home places. In our personal lives too, we have to be 
alert to how we can personally improve quality of life where we are. 
Economic development models are open to choice and should be 
pluralistic, as Branco observes. 
 
Petr Kopecky, “Nature Writing in American Literature: Inspirations, 
Interrelations, and Impacts of California Authors on the Deep Ecology 
Movement” discusses the California experience and development of  
deep ecology supporters and environmental leaders there. Although 
Naess is mentioned, but not discussed in this essay, it should be noted 
that he first lived California in 1938 as a visiting professor at the 
University of California, Berkeley. He experienced the desert for the 
first time during the year he spent in Berkeley. Naess returned to 
California several times over the decades from the 1950s to the 1990s. 
He always made visits to the desert where he found inspiration as he did 
in the mountains. An attempt to evaluate, for the California setting, 
some of the general guidelines that Naess advocates for human 
relationships with other species, was published in an earlier issue of this 
special series, Volume 22.1, in the article by Bill Devall “Living in 
Mixed Communities.”  
 
The continuing importance of some California writers is recognized by 
John Seed in his essay “The Ecological Self.” Seed is inspired by the 
poems of Robinson Jeffers. John Seed and Ruth Rosenhek live in 
Australia. They teach practices and ceremonies for healing ourselves as 
members of the Earth community in many nations around the world. 
John Seed and Joanna Macy, a California activist, writer, and teacher, 
helped to create a ritual Council of All Beings during which human 
participants take the position of non-human beings and speak for bear 
Volume 22, Number 2 5
or deer, for example. Rosenhek’s essay “Earth, Spirit and Action: The 
Deep Ecology Movement as Spiritual Engagement” addresses such 
questions as how do we balance our desire to protect a place with the 
deeper understanding that, in the long run, a greater shift in 
consciousness is needed? How do we work from a genuinely peaceful 
place, when we are filled with grief, anger, and frustration over the 
callous disregard for billions of years of evolution? 
 
Espen Gamlund, “Arne Naess’s Humanistic Ethic,” takes the reader 
into the important domain of personal and individual human lives and 
urges sensitivity to the needs of one another as persons, not as concepts 
or abstractions. We should try not to equate the agent with his or her 
actions, rather we should reject actions that are destructive but not the 
person. Reject torture but not the torturer. A person is always more than 
his or her actions. Gamlund’s article has been inspired by Arne’s talks 
and actions which impressed him with Naess’s humanity and 
compassion. Arne urges us to not create enemies but to see even those 
opposed to us as possible friends. 
 
Andrei Whitaker’s essay, “Arne Naess on Possibilism,” is a 
continuation from Volume 22.1 of Whitaker’s reflections on Naess and 
his musing about possibilism. As Whitaker found while in Oslo, Naess 
frequently talks with joy about Einstein’s imagination. “Fabulous!” he 
says. Naess also celebrates the open-ended nature of our daily lives, 
here in our places that we share. As a possibililist he realizes that each 
moment is both great and deep in possibilities to be realized. We can 
make possibilities manifest by our own actions and choices. Since we 
cannot avoid values, we should choose the best and most deepening 
ones available. We each have the capacity wherever we are to realize 
ourselves fully. For Naess, being the best he can in those exchanges 
now going on is an end in itself. He shows us by example how to create 
a life that is beautiful. We each can act beautifully. We can help others 
to realize themselves as, beginning with thoughts and language, feelings 
and energy, and so on, to actions, we realize ourselves. We are limited 
mainly by our lack of imagination and by taking ourselves too 
seriously. Even at 94, Naess is playful and jokes about himself. 
 
The last article in this issue by California philosopher George Sessions 
is “Wildness, Cyborgs, and Our Ecological Future: Reassessing the 
Deep Ecology Movement.” Sessions reflects on the wide range of 
philosophical issues that have been discussed and debated in periodical 
and book literature as these have bearing on the ecological crisis and 
the deep ecology movement. Many of the papers cited have appeared in 
The Trumpeter. The topics include wildness, wilderness, the creation of 
The Trumpeter 6 
 
 
artificial nature, creationism, deconstructionism, the social construction 
of nature, postmodernism, social ecology, ecofeminism, Western 
science, political action, and grass roots movements. Sessions’ paper 
refers to Naess’s contributions to these discussions over and over again. 
His paper provides a good overview of some of the main discussions 
that have taken place over the last 15 to 20 years. He offers his 
assessment of their relevance to the long-range, deep ecology 
movement today. It is a fitting conclusion to our special Naess 
Trumpeter series. 
 
While this issue of the Trumpeter concludes this special Naess series, 
plans are underway for future issues that continue to explore some of 
the topics that Naess explored. We plan a special issue on caring for 
and appreciating wilderness and the wild in this time of global climate 
change. These essays will examine the scientific, emotional, and social 
dimensions of the rapid changes occurring due to global warming and 
their impact on wild nature. We also propose an issue devoted to 
Maturity, Wisdom, and Meaning. We invite submission of essays for 
these special issues from people who are exploring themes relevant to 
these topics. Those who have articles related to these issues should send 
them as electronic files to Bill Devall bdevall@northcoast.com and 
Alan Drengson ecosophy@islandnet.com. Thanks! 
 
 
Volume 22, Number 2 7


Arne Naess, His Life and Work, Part Two: The Continuing Development of the Long-range, Deep Ecology Movement

Gamlund, Espen

Arne Naess's Humanistic Ethic: Personal Impressions and Reflections

Metzner, Ralph

Transitions to the Ecological Age

The Trumpeter  
ISSN: 0832-6193 
Volume 22, Number 1 (2006) 
 
 
Arne Naess, His Life and Work  
Part Two: Reflections on Naess’s Inquiries 
Introduction 
 
Bill Devall and Alan Drengson, Editors of the Naess Series 
 
The third of four issues in this special Trumpeter Series, devoted to the 
work of Arne Naess and its relevance to the deep, long range ecology 
movement, contains essays written by various people who have been 
influenced or impressed by Naess and the principles of the deep, long-
range ecology movement. A Festschrift, a special supplementary 
volume of works by Arne Naess, is being published simultaneously as a 
companion to this issue. 
  
The first part of this issue focuses on Relations, Places, and Practices. 
Bill Devall’s essay on living in mixed communities uses an empirical 
research approach to evaluate how Naess’s general ‘norms’ for living 
with specific species of wildlife can be applied to conditions in 
California. Alan Drengson’s essay “Emotions, Judgments, and Life 
Quality” explores the language and psychology of emotions in older 
traditions and in contemporary society. Drengson explores the ways in 
which we might follow Spinoza’s advice to emphasize positive 
emotions and how these are life actualizing. This tack is in line with 
Naess’s interpretation of Spinoza. 
 
In the next part, the focus is on Overviews and Transitions. It includes 
essays by Tim Quick, Anthony Weston, and Ralph Metzner, who reflect 
on pluralism, multicentrism, and some of the main factors in transitions 
to an Ecological Age. These three writers, each in their own way, give 
us reason to be pluralists in Naess’s sense. We are led from Quick’s 
insightful appreciation of Naess’s approach compared to more 
monolithic ways of looking at the world. Weston’s brilliant paper on 
multicentrism vividly articulates what respecting many centres does to 
open our understanding. Metzner’s paper puts all of this in our Western 
context and touches on global changes and common grounds of main 
The Trumpeter 2 
 
 
orientations and practices suitable to ecologically aware and responsible 
societies.  
 
The last part offers Personal Sketches of Naess from people who have 
studied Naess’s work and who have spent time with him. It includes 
two essays, one by Margarita García Nortario on meeting Naess on his 
ninetieth birthday and the other by Andrei Whitaker, called “Five 
Things You Should Know about Arne Naess,” which reflects on 
Naess’s playful approach to living joyfully in a world of fact. Both 
authors give us insights into Arne’s personal life and character and into 
how his daily life reflects his philosophy. 
 
All together, this Naess Series provides a broad sweep of articles 
representing Naess’s main areas of research and writing. They 
underscore major themes in his work, such as the role of empirical 
research, critical focus on language, its logic and semantics, cross 
cultural perspectives, examination of the ways to discuss and compare 
different worldviews, lifestyles, and cultures, as well as quality of life 
issues—the roles of feeling and reason in an interconnected world with 
many cultures, languages, religions, and great individual diversity. 
Naess’s approach to language is in terms of systems of communication 
within an ecologically centred, place-based context. This is partly 
shown in his own identification with specific places, especially the 
mountains, such as Hallingskarvet. 
 
Throughout Naess’s life and work there has been the constant theme of 
the mountains and free nature. In his own personal life this has been 
one of the touchstones of his personal meaning and myth. He has from 
an early age realized the many ways in which all beings communicate 
with each of their own kind and with others not of their kind. He has 
from an early age been committed to nonviolence in personal relations. 
He recalls how he was always trying to prevent other boys from 
fighting by getting between them and asking why they were doing this. 
He shows the utmost respect for those with whom he disagrees. These 
directions led him to Gandhi, and so he became one of the leading 
authorities on Gandhi in the Scandinavian countries.  
 
People who have known Arne for a long time have said that he is a 
linguist of exceptional talent and skill, and that his research in major 
philosophies in East and West has focused on original texts rather than 
secondary commentaries. Nowhere is this more evident than in his work 
on Spinoza, whom he started reading in the original Latin while still in 
high school. As he never tires of pointing out, Spinoza is a philosopher 
who developed a well-articulated total view that represents the 
Volume 22, Number 1 3
wholeness and maturity of his own person. In his work as a whole, 
Spinoza shows us how to live a high quality of life by emphasizing 
positive emotions and feelings. The self-actualizing person is always 
changing with the world and yet maintains an inner balance or 
equanimity no matter what the circumstances. Naess has shown us all 
this balance whether climbing a mountain or responding to attacks in 
discussion, or when being arrested by authorities for demonstrating 
against projects that violate nature and human rights. 
 
A recent book published in Norwegian, Timotei, also shows in pictures 
and text, the Naesses’ playful approach to relationships. Arne and his 
wife, Kit-Fai, have for years had a pig doll that always smiles and that 
they named Timotei, who is, Naess tells me, a little unphilosopher. 
Timotei is a person of the moment, and he is part of the couple’s daily 
life and goes everywhere with them. He acts as a playful go between for 
two people from quite different cultural backgrounds. At the reception 
for the Selected Works of Arne Naess (SWAN) Arne wore a Timotei pin 
on his sweater and also said he himself is “a lucky and happy pig.” 
Another recent book in Norwegian offers a series of discussions about 
life and culture between Arne and Wenke Voss, a well known diva and 
elder in Norway. Also just released in Norway this fall is a book called 
Sva Marga. These Sanskrit words, which Naess considers among his 
favourites, mean to follow your own path, or to go your own way. The 
cover shows Naess in a patterned sweater dancing in his own unique 
way. It is a collection of quotes from things he has written and said over 
the years, a distillation of his wisdom and insight. Throughout all of 
these books, events, and themes, the role of nature and the 
interrelatedness of all beings is a continuing concern to him. This is 
why he has focused on grass-roots movements and the importance of 
cultural diversity in living sustainably in harmony with the natural 
world.  
 
Naess has long said that the three great movements of our era—the 
ecology movement, the peace movement, and the social justice 
movement—have many areas of common interest. There is no more 
central issue of justice than the safety of our own persons and the places 
we dwell in. To have our places and our personal self polluted without 
our agreement is a major social justice issue throughout the world. We 
cannot separate peace, social justice, and environmental responsibility, 
they all come together in daily life in concrete places. Naess 
emphasizes the importance of tolerance for the great diversity of ways 
of life and religions. He is a celebrant of diversity on every level and 
yet recognizes the interconnections between the three grass-roots, but 
global, movements of our era.  
The Trumpeter 4 
 
 
 
The Nobel Prize committee agreed with this view in 2004, when they 
awarded the Peace medal to Wangari Maathai, a woman who has 
worked for decades on reforestation in Kenya. She contends that 
planting trees in Kenya advances women’s rights and democracy. In her 
essay in the New York Times, “Trees for Democracy,” she says  
Unless we properly manage resources like forests, water, land, minerals and oil, 
we will not win the fight against poverty. And there will not be peace. Old 
conflicts will rage on and new resource wars will erupt unless we change the path 
we are on. 
The deep, long-range ecology movement provides a framework for 
many paths toward the same goals of conservation, peace, and social 
justice. 
 
The fourth issue of this special Trumpeter series devoted to Arne Naess 
and the deep, long-range ecology movement will include essays by 
people who have been involved in deep green work. Just as Naess is 
always revising his essays to reflect changes in conditions and in his 
ideas, the deep, long-range ecology movement is developing in the 
changing circumstances of the twenty-first century. 
 
Volume 22, Number 1 5


Introduction

Naess, Arne

Notes on the Methodology of Normative Systems

Branco, Manuel Couret

The Interaction of Cultural and Economic Factors: Arguments for a Pluralist Economy of Development

Friendship, Strength of Emotion, and Freedom in Spinoza

Conesa-Servilla, Jorge

The Intrinsic Value of the Whole: Cognitive and Utilitarian Evaluative Processes as they Pertain to Ecocentric, Deep Ecological, and Ecopyschological "Valuing"

Notario, Margarita Garcia

Meeting with a Giant

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