ABSTRACT
The industrial states adopt policies which to some extent limit pollution and conserve non-renewable resources. There is also a slight recognition of over-population in the sense of too great a consumption per capita. The value-dualism spirit/matter, soul/body does not hold in Spinoza nor is it of any use in field ecology. The ecologist Barry Commoner has called ‘All things are connected’ the first principle of ecology. Good and evil must be defined in relation to beings for which something is good or evil, useful or detrimental. Rachel Carson, who started this international movement fifteen years ago, found man’s arrogance or indifference towards nature ethically unacceptable. There is a deep convergence in metaphysics, ethics and life styles among the people inspired by field ecological thinking. The issues of pollution, resource depletion and over-population are not neglected within the deep ecological movement, but they are integrated in a vastly more comprehensive frame of reference.
