ABSTRACT
The relevant normative goal of human-environmental relationships is to seek and maintain the integrity of a combined natural/cultural ecosystem which is an expression of both ecological understanding and an ethic that guides the search for proper relationships. The concepts of open-system thermodynamics are increasingly being used as a starting point in a discussion of self-organizing and self-integrating processes in living systems. Practically useful insight and information flows mostly from comparative empirical comprehension that is a pragmatic synthesis of holistic perception and analytical understanding, i.e., between tempered holism and tempered reductionism. It has often been assumed, tacitly or explicitly, that the disintegrative effect of such exotic/cultural stress will be similar to that of some natural stress. In North America, the 1960s brought with them strong political activism to reform a number of abominations: war, gender discrimination, racial discrimination, class, poverty and environmental abuse. Forecasts of future ecosystems are not possible, but some future imaging of preferred ones is.
