The Ethics of Social Engagement: Learning to Live and Living to Learn

Over the last 500 or so years, humanity has largely replaced a holistic and socially meaningful interrelationship of nature and self with a mechanistic and socially confusing relationship between nature and self (Franklin, 2002; Merchant, 1980). Among the many drivers of this change, one of the most important is the idea that only people have moral worth. This idea has had a fundamental effect on the decisions we make and the actions we take in the world (Hamilton, 2002).