The Land Ethic

Aldo Leopold, followed the path begun by the first and ecology helped raise the level of philosophy and literature.


What strikes me most of his writings is how much they agree with my own reflections, as well as the tremendous force of today and the problems and ideas to offer, despite the previous lack thereof had and having been written in the mid to late 40's. In his work, and a beautiful literature more or less theoretical and philosophical, we can find many life experiences and totally personal, practical and realistic.
Actually, all his work is to explain, justify and emphasize the need for humanity totake a further step in its ethical-spiritual development, which consists of assuming and widespread practice in a real natural ethics ("land ethic"), which extend not only to all people, but the rest of living beings and inert elements that make up the world's community.

I got very curious how people live within the natural world with little casually,without thinking in their cycles, their life dramas in his great interest, intensity and diversity. For the vast majority of people, nature is a mosaic of fields, meadows, forests, rivers, mountains, lakes and seas that make up a beautiful landscape andyou provide food and water. Aldo Leopold recounts a routine bus ride through the countryside in an area of the State of Illinois, which emphasizes that he never heard any of the passengers to make any comment on the wildlife was on the other side of the window, except once a kid when he saw a flying silver Plover and exclaimed "Look dad a scholarship!" People always talk about things more logical, normal and "important" such as the mortgage bank, work, family andsports, the countryside and wildlife around them are simply "the sea bottomthrough which the currents of life take them without a clear direction. "

His message is not a fiery call to worship, but a quiet invitation to introspection: "No change has been made possible ethical never without an internal change in our intellectual emphasis, loyalties, affections and convictions. The proof that conservation has not yet touched these foundations of conduct lies in the fact that philosophy and religion have not yet heard of this. In our attempt to make conservation easy, we have become banal. "

For him (and for many more people among whom I include myself) the actual dissociation between the "humanities" and "Natural Science" is the main reason that we do not fully assimilate our true integration in nature, or be able to achieve a truly "sustainable development".

The question that arises is: Why do not really feel part of nature? Why the effort to highlight a clear line between the artificial and the natural, wild and domestic, human and otherwise? 'In my opinion, at the bottom of this worldview are deeply rooted in our Judeo-Christian, our vanity and our pride. What is already more complicated to know how much influence the genetics and evolution of the human species with respect to causes purely educational and socio-cultural. Note that this same disquisition I just asked is an example of our efforts to separate the causes of "artificial" of "natural" Is it really that important?

Aldo Leopold helped found the "Wilderness Society" and regularly wrote articles in various magazines such as "American Forests" and the "Sierra Club" (the environmental organization founded by John Muir in 1892). Finally died in 1948 at age 61, following a heart attack suffered while helping their neighbors to fight a fire of grass near his farm in Wisconsin. "A Sand County Almanac" was published posthumously without much success, but his work, his message and his example have managed to last over time. All his sons and daughters have excelled in various fields of natural sciences, and his spirit lives on in the work that sponsors and promotes the "Aldo Leopold Foundation."