What is Deep Ecology?

Deep Ecology is a phrase, a label if you like, which means many different things to different people,doubtless suffers from misuse and, in many cases hijacking by whatever vaguely green cause is flavour of the month. It is a concept that I believe can only be properly understood when one has first come to deeply realise and accept as truth that everything physically constructed by man in this world of ours – everything- came first from the earth, from the ground and has therefore no permanence. This can be fairly easily comprehended on a purely intellectual level and is doubtless readily done so by the tiny minority of us who afford it even a passing thought. However, to get at the real essence of what this means one has to move beyond intellectual pondering to feeling the deep, the original truth of this matter and it is from this standpoint only, that one can then move forward to the second fundamental acceptance – that of the interrelatedness and consequently the interdependence of all things.
c.j.o Edinburgh – Oct ‘04