I enjoyed reading through Lynn Whites narrative on the roots of our modern-day
ecological crisis and found a few concepts that really stuck out to me. First
the mentioning of the calendars that showed men “coercing the world around
them.” I found his depiction of man and nature, with man being master to be so
impactful. The imagery described shows this master of man to be harmful to the
implied submissive nature. But in my eyes, I see nature as the master, we can
never fully control it as humans. Yes, we know how to exploit some aspects, but
I don’t see anyone stopping hurricanes before they destroy thousands of homes.
The next thing that stood out to me was the mentioning of the guardian spirits.
This idea that you had to please a spirit of the land weather tree, mountain,
river, or season before you took advantage of it was really interesting to me
and reminded me of the popular Lorax. However, the way Christians dismantled
this idea of pagan animism for their own wellbeing was a bit unsettling. The last
bit of reading that stood out to me was this quote from White, “Hence we shall
continue to have a worsening ecologic crisis until we reject the Christian
axiom that nature has no reason for existence save to serve man.” As a whole
this idea seems impossible, how could we ever flip so many people’s opinions on
the environment? But with Whites suggestion of using Saint Francis as a patron
saint for ecologist maybe the impossible could be possible.