Mankind in Global Ecology
By Carol Gigliotti

From an ethical standpoint, what is your notion about the proper place of mankind in global ecology?

Well, personally, and in terms of what I was talking about yesterday in my presentation, I guess my interest is to see mankind not as separate from beings in the world. I made the point yesterday that we have fellow creatures that we tend to think of as, in our culture, Western culture, as beneath us and I feel that's certainly not what I believe to be true, and it's certainly not, I think, what a number of animal rights people think.

... we were all connected but different, in other words, each of the nodes on the net is different than the other and yet they are connected.

In terms of the environment, I like to think of it as a whole system and yet, Erik Davis said something that I thought was really important. He discussed the idea that instead of a holistic system, that if we thought of the web of life so that we were all connected but different, in other words, each of the nodes on the net is different than the other and yet they are connected. So that you get this idea of biodiversity and whether that's within humankind or whether that's in our fellow creatures, in terms of animals and insects and bacteria, mountains, oceans - there is this kind of difference. Those things are equal, but very different and so they're treated that way.

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