Naess, one of the most influential philosophers of his generation, died in his sleep at the age of 96 in Oslo, Norway. The avid mountaineer founded the Deep Ecology movement, drawing inspiration from Buddhism, Rachel Carson, Aldo Leopold, and above all from nature itself. Greenpeace can be proud that he served as the first chairman of Greenpeace Norway in 1988. His personal story illuminates the path of ecology in the 21st century.

Arne Naess at the opening of the Greenpeace office in Oslo, 1988
(c) Henrik Laurvik NTB/Scanpix – used under licence

On the Mountain

Naess was born in 1912, in Slemdal, near Oslo, and his father, banker Ragnar Naess, died the next year. Naess later recalled that his mother, Christine Dekke, appeared preoccupied with raising his two older brothers, so he often wandered alone into nature for companionship.

In How My Philosophy Seemed to Develop he revealed, at the age of four, "I would stand or sit for hours … in shallow water on the coast, marvelling at the overwhelming diversity and richness of life in the sea."

At the age of 17, while climbing on Norway’s Hallingskarvet massif, he met a kind Norwegian judge, who also adored nature. This mentor advised young Arne to read Dutch Jewish philosopher Spinoza, who equated the ‘highest virtue’ with knowledge of nature. For Spinoza, Naess learned, all thinking about truth and human society begins with recognising the basic ’substance’, the diversity and magnificence of the natural world.

In his 20s, Naess built a life-long writing cabin, Tvergastein, high on this mountain. "In the mountains," Naess once said, "you are small compared to the surrounding view, so you more easily and more intensely feel that you are a part of something greater. You find that your idea of your ’self’ is more vast and deeper." This depth he felt in vast nature – mountains, sea, forests – inspired his use of the word ‘deep’ to describe his understanding of ecology.

Ecology in Action

After graduation from the University of Oslo, Naess studied in Austria where he met the famous Vienna Circle of philosophers and psychoanalysts influenced by Sigmund Freud. Although inspired by the Vienna group, Naess found their philosophy too disembodied and intellectual. He pointed out that their understanding of the ’self’ failed to include nature, and was therefore ‘dead wrong’. Based on the notion from Spinoza that all being exists wholly in nature, he expanded the Freudian idea of ’self’ and ‘ego’ to include our place in nature. Thus began one of the most influential traditions of modern ecology, Naess’ development of ‘Deep Ecology’.

Naess returned to Norway, became Oslo University’s youngest professor, and during World War II joined the Norwegian resistance, helping prevent the shipment of Norwegian students to German concentration camps. After the war, he led a UNESCO project to improve communication between the East and West by exploring how various cultures use similar words. The resulting report sold out, but UNESCO never reprinted it, according to Naess, "due to the politically dangerous character of its items." During the Cold War, listening to each other was not a high priority in Washington, Moscow, or London.

In the meantime, by learning about Buddhism and Gandhi, and by reading Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, Naess realised that his love of nature had to be put into action if his ideas were to matter. In 1969, at the age of 57, he resigned his position at the University of Oslo and became active in environmental protection, "to live," he said, "rather than function." In 1970, he joined rural farming families near the town of Myvatn, Norway to stop a dam on the Laxá (‘Salmon’) River that threatened to flood their farms. This successful campaign, along with the Chipko movement in India, marks the beginning of environmental action that inspired the early Greenpeace movement.

The names of things

In the early 1970s, members of the nascent Greenpeace group in Vancouver, Canada began to hear about the Norwegian activist, Arne Naess, and his ideas about ‘deep ecology’. As Greenpeace evolved from peace protests to full-fledged ecological action, Naess served as one of our inspirations. We agreed with his belief that other beings in nature – whales, seals, insects or trees – had their own ‘intrinsic value’. We protected whales or seals not just to preserve the environment for human purposes, but for their own sake. This fundamental respect for nature became an important distinction in the environmental movement.

I met Arne Naess in Los Angeles in the mid-1980s and later at a conference convened by Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme in Northern California. I discovered that the best way to engage him in conversation was to walk with him in whatever natural setting was close by. I recall his genuine sense of curiosity about species of trees, birds, or being engulfed in what he called ‘the total-field’ of nature. He never seemed intellectual, but rather spoke with a humourous, teasing quality that appeared to be always searching for some fresh, new understanding. He said his ideas were not ‘philosophy’ in the classic sense but rather ‘intuition’ gained from observation. We once pondered whether a particular sparrow was a ‘Fox’ or ‘Song’ sparrow, and I recall how he laughed that humans believe they understand something because they have named it. We talked about seeing an ‘individual’ in an animal, not simply a ’species’.

In 1988, we felt honoured when Naess agreed to serve as the first chairman of Greenpeace Norway. Upon hearing of his passing, Greenpeace Nordic’s Truls Gulowsen remarked, "Naess’ ecological philosophy is still important to Greenpeace." So, what is that philosophy?

Deep Ecology

Deep ecology starts with accepting the intrinsic value of all beings in nature and of the ecosystem itself. Naess challenged environmentalists to think beyond ‘humans in nature’ to recognise that the ecological system is not something separate that we are ‘in’. Nature made us, made our eyes to see, made our limbs, tastes, and even our thoughts. He taught ‘diversity and symbiosis’, both in nature and in human ideas. A rich culture, he said, like nature finds stability in diversity and recognises how distinct parts and points of view serve the larger whole. This did not invite, he insisted, lazy thinking, but rather required precise language to express observations and experiences.

Naess believed that humanity has no right to reduce the richness and diversity of nature except to meet vital needs of health and survival. He taught that our current impact on the world was excessive, perhaps obvious today, but a radical idea in the 1960s. He believed that the human population was too large, and that we should stabilise population growth and eventually allow human population to decrease. He believed this might take a century or more, but he believed humanity could eventually achieve a state in which our technology was non-invasive and "children could grow up in nature".

"Then," he said, "we are back in the direction of paradise."

Some environmentalists and human rights activists thought Naess’s ideas were ‘anti-human’, but his compassion remained universal. "Appreciating a forest or mountain does not diminish anything humans do," he said. "We don’t say that every living being has the same value as a human, but that it has an intrinsic value … it has a right to live and blossom."

He challenged the common psychological notion that the ’self’ develops from childish ‘ego’ to an adult social-awareness and finally to spiritual awareness. "Nature is left out of this formula," he noticed. "Humanism displays a certain arrogance, as if we are somehow separate or superior to nature." He believed that with enough attention to the world around us, "we cannot help but identify our self with all living beings; beautiful or ugly, big or small, sentient or not."

He insisted that through this sort of maturity, we will discover that genuine quality of life has very little to do with consumption, wealth, and power. He summarised this in a proverb for the ages, and certainly for our time, about living lightly on the earth:

                 "Simpler means, richer ends."

 rw. February 2009

As intelligent and technologically advanced as humanity appears, we remain animals living from and within a dynamic ecological system. The fundamental error that has led humanity to the brink of ecological collapse is the spurious notion that we exist independently, that we belong to some exclusive club that does not have to follow the laws of ecology, and that nature is here simply to supply us with "resources" for our galloping economies.

The ideas below incorporate ideas previously articulated by Arne Naess, Chellis Glendinning, Rachel Carson, Aldo Leopold, David Abram, and other nature-centred ecologists including Greenpeace co-founder Bob Hunter. A summary of the values that we might associate with a non-human-centred, genuine ecological awareness include:

1. The inherent value of wildness, nature, diversity, symbiosis, and complexity, independent of humanity’s desires or existence.

2. Systems: Everything in nature exists in interlocking systems. No species operates independently. The survival unit of evolution is a “species-in-an-environment,” co-evolving with all other living systems.

3. An ecological-self: The human sense of “self” expanded to include these living systems. The popular economic notion that people act as “private” pursuers of “happiness” remains a tragic conceit, destined to fail.

4. Biocracy: extending the idea of “rights” to all things, but more importantly to the ecological system itself, and therefore, limiting human interference in nature.

5. Nature, not a “resource”: The elements of nature that we call “resources” also (1) provide resources for everything else that lives, and (2) possess value in themselves, in situ. A river is a living part of a system, not simply a “resource” for human purposes.

6. Ecological design: Our tools must mimic and work with the habits, laws, and designs of nature: 100% recycling, lowest possible energy use, integrated living systems, low impact, and so forth.

7. Addressing human trauma: The destruction of the supporting ecology has traumatized humanity and led not only to poverty and desolation among the poor, but to anxiety, addiction, and violence among the comfortable. Witness the “holiday” to a mountain, seaside, or forest, as self-medication for this trauma. As I write, I’m watching a pair of Wilson’s warblers, who have nested in the thicket behind my house. I cannot quantify how therapeutic this is. Every lost wild place reduces human well-being.

8. Social justice, gender equality, and international peace: War, sexism, racism, and injustice not only cause direct suffering, but also contribute to ecological catastrophes.

9. Decrease Human population: A human civilization that understands nature will limit its interference by reducing its numbers. A positive step would be a target (perhaps over two centuries) of reducing human population to, say, a billion people, roughly the 1800 population. Global women’s rights and contraception would contribute to achieving this. The population discussion invokes fear for human rights, cultural rights, racism, and immigration. Who has the right to tell other humans not to reproduce? The answer is that the living earth has the right and will impose that right if we don’t. Excessive human population reduces the quality of life for humanity and everything else.

10. Simplicity: learning to enhance the quality of life with the simplest means and least interference in nature. This requires a shift in expectations, to rediscover the joy of simplicity and a supportive environment – the joys of nature, peace, community, family, and creativity. Less stuff, more peace of mind.

11. Action: We won’t solve our dilemma with philosophy or slogans. The new environmental human society requires action at every level. Primarily, we need a massive protection of wilderness and relocalization of human survival. 

12. Worship the miracle: Since the advent of empires, agriculture, and urban living, humanity has searched for paradise in all the wrong places, in wealth, power, money, and invisible realms beyond time and space. Humans appear to possess an innate sense of mystery and the more-than-human sacredness of life, but we have failed to worship – to “ascribe worth” to – the one thing that sustains us, the living earth.

If ecologists claim to work for the earth or if presume to negotiate with governments or corporations on nature’s behalf, they owe ultimate allegiance to their client, the earth. We dare not sell her cheaply. If ecologists represent the earth’s voice at the table of human society, we must point out that nature has its own values and purposes. Rivers, trees, and hawks are going about affairs as noble and important as my own affairs feel to me. No matter how powerful and clever we appear, we are not in charge of how nature will evolve on earth.  

Ecologists must help prepare human society for the depth and breadth of the authentic shift at hand: Nature possesses values, laws, and limits beyond human purposes. Wise design is essential, but we won’t simply engineer ourselves out of our economic dilemma, without changing our habits of excessive consumption. We won’t consume ourselves to freedom by tacking “green” onto every enterprise like a postscript. Natures own laws will be our primary guidance.

Ecology remains the subversive subject as Paul Sears said four decades ago. Humanity may flourish in a long run with nature, but only by revisioning human society as a guest of the earth’s living systems.

(Excerpted from my Deep Green column at Greenpeace International)

Dolores LaCapelle, Paul Shepard, Gary Snyder, Lynn White, and others built on this theme that nature possesses intrinsic value independent of human needs. Some environmentalists felt insulted by being depicted as shallow, and criticized the deep ecology movement as elitist. Naess, however, simply intended to distinguish core ecological values from human concerns. He referred to his approach as “ecosophy,” approaching wisdom from nature’s point of view.

Paul Sears called ecology the “subversive subject” in 1964, because it signalled a shift in awareness that would revolutionize all human enterprise, economics, politics, biology, cultural mythologies, engineering, everything about human habitation on the earth.

We either learn ecology, deeply, or experience a drastic crash. And by “learn” ecology, I don’t mean 10% recycled paper cups, solar panels on the ski lodge, and hybrid cars. I mean learning that we remain a natural species that must find our place, in peace with our host, fully integrated with the systems that sustain us. This will mean re-designing human technologies to a scale appropriate with a living earth. Learning from nature means shifting focus from consumption to the authentic qualities of life.

Naess articulated this well four decades ago as “simple means, rich goals.” Ivan Illich, about the same time, wrote Tools for Conviviality, advocating that we “invert” technological society from massive, centralized systems, to simple tools that foster “independent efficiency.” Illich depicted optimum human technology, for example, as the bicycle.

So-called “deep” ecological awareness refers to humanity’s reunion with nature. We are animals, and regardless of our technologies, we live from the bounty of a wild habitat. Even as we learn ecology and the laws of exponential growth, we still cannot engineer or “manage” the planet solely for human enterprise and benefit.

During the whale campaigns of the 1970s, Greenpeace did not set out to protect whales or seals for human enjoyment. We pointed out that whales possess their own inherent value, their own communities, and vital needs. We protected whales, seals, and forests for their own sake first.

An ecological renaissance does not mean a planet engineered for 12 billion humans, mining nutrients from every acre of soil, diverting every river, burning the last coal deposit. An ecology renaissance means honouring nature and experiencing the joy of being a natural being in a paradise that once fed us without any farms, oil, or computer chips.

For more on this, see my "Deep Green" column at Greenpeace International.