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.