The Meaning of Deep Ecology

With Deep Ecology, the Original Mind of archaic Man is brought to self-consciousness for the first time, in modern civilized man-- the Self manifests, as the Menning, because we return to the developmental stage of Culture-creation, the Mythopoetic Age, before the overdevelopment of certain human traits with the development of advanced civilizations, to a more juvenile, undifferentiated state of mind that is open, spontaneous, innocent, vital, flexible, creative, yet we retain our mature knowledge, including the lessons of experience gained over millennia by civilizations, and so do not repeat the mistaken turns we  have made in our cultural evolution.  This neoteny, the retention of juvenile traits with maturation, will be characteristic of the Menning, as if we regenerate growth from the rootstock of our nature, getting culture-civilization right this time, rather than heading further down the wrong road-- to a dead end, literally-- to annihilation.  We have learned that, though we can no longer be a natural animal, that is, subject to natural selection, we can, and must become ecological, or else we, and the Biosphere, are doomed.  That simple knowledge is the essence of Deep Ecology.  So, it must be 'back to the rootstock', of original Nature-mind, to rethink civilization from the ground up.  And the ideal of Ecology,  personified in the Drygand, becomes the god-idea upon which a civilization of survival-- the Menning-- is worked out, its Ethos.  We become, for the first time, the protectors, the Saviors, of the Biosphere-- that is to be our species-nature, and our role.  This is our destiny-- to evolve into a new species, with an ecological way of life, both part of Nature and outside it, as its protector.

Menning (Ice.)= culture, civilization: the ecological culture-civilization.

The Phylogeny of the Mennings

First, there was archaic Man.  Nature was his matrix, the All, full of numinous power, and he was its child.  Nature was his family and his neighborhood.  It was respected, feared, and loved.

Then came civilized Man, who had learned to herd animals and grow grain and store food and so-by increase over the land, building permanent townships to hold and protect his own, against beast and man without the walls.  In his mind he became detached from Nature and increasingly distant from it, seeking to become independent and secure from it.  He sought the favor of gods against the demons and monsters and fiends that lurked outside the walls, in the wilds.  Nature was no longer family.  It could be benevolent and beautiful, but it was set against him.

Finally, the estrangement of Man from Nature becomes extreme as his independence and security increase to enormous levels-- Nature becomes negligible, an ornament and a useful supply-store at best, a hindrance and a plague at worst.  The numinosity has fled from it, apart from the horrific.  Numinosity, if it exists at all, resides in the God of human welfare.  Nature itself is overrun, used up, laid waste.  And before long, it is dying. Man has triumphed over Nature, and now the child of Nature kills his parent.

This is when the Drygand comes.  And the first men to become Mennings.

The Phylogeny of the Drygand

First, there was the primordial Serpent, a power-animal of fierce numinosity, representing the great, wild forces of the whole of Nature.

Then came the chimaeric creatures of civilizations around the world, the mightiest of which was the serpentile Dragon.  It took various forms, notably as the destructive, treasure-hoarding Western monsters, as the Hindu were-snake Nagas, strangely similar to the aristocratic Celtic Faeries in their splendid underground courts, and as the Chinese Lungs, fabulous divine Nature-beings of the clouds, the rains, and the waters.

Finally comes the ecological Drygand, the ultimate evolution from Serpent and Dragon forebears; a quintessential synthesis from them; a revolutionary mutation induced by the crisis of the human-engineered Extinction Event; archetype of the modern Idea of ecology; heroic, transformative noumenon; and, finally, the heraldic icon of the new ecological civilization.