Reclaiming Ecological Wisdom: On Culture, Education, and the Roots of the Ecological Crisis

Sammanfattning: The paper looks at the ecological crisis as a human crisis of perceptions and values. Its origins can be found in the Western anthropocentric-individualistic worldview whose expansion through the processes of colonization and globalization has allowed the industrial culture to become a global culture. The manifest inability of industrial societies to respond to the seriousness and complexity of environmental degradation they cause imposes us to consider strategies for change that go beyond the political, economic, and technological realms and address sustainability in its cultural dimensions. The ecological crisis is a crisis in the way people in the dominant industrial consumer culture have learned to think and thus to behave in relation to larger living systems and toward each other. Inspired by the existing literature surrounding the fields of human ecology, environmental philosophy, and philosophy of education, the paper analyses the ecological implications of modern Western worldview and how it legitimizes exploitative human-environmental relationships. Then, it proposes a work of reconceptualization of the contents and practices of education on ecological perspectives which can help develop citizens who are able and willing to build diverse and sustainable human communities and can further advance the transition towards a more balanced and harmonious human-Earth relationship.