0000000001250632
AUTHOR
Florent Kohler
Embracing diverse worldviews to share planet Earth
Leading societies toward a more sustainable, equitably shared, and environmentally just future requires elevating and strengthening conversations on the nonmaterial and perhaps unquantifiable values of nonhuman nature to humanity. Debates among conservationists relating to the appropriateness of valuing ecosystems in terms of their human utility have eclipsed the more important and impactful task of expressing conservation concerns in terms that are meaningful to diverse stakeholders. We considered the wide global diversity of perspectives on the biosocial complex-the relationships and interactions between all living species on Earth-and argue that humanity's best chance for effective conse…
Ecological solidarity as an avatar of Animist spirituality
Animism is a worldview of Siberian origin that diffused out in the Americas thousands of years ago. Shamanism is its main spiritual expression, but it is also perceptible in hunting and gathering practices. It relies on the idea that human and other living beings are societies related to each other, among which cooperation, reciprocity, but also wars and retaliations (e.g. because of overkilling) can happen. Animist peoples understand the world not as a hierarchy, but as constituted by different beings, and the shaman plays the role of an intermediary between these entities, thanks to his power of transformation and mental trips among the underworld of master-spirits. Thus, animist societie…