[bksvol-discuss] Submitted/nonfiction
- From: "Deborah Murray" <blinkeeblink@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2013 15:57:58 -0400
Hi all,
I've just submitted for proofing "The Natural Alien: Humankind and
Environment" by Neil Evernden.
It's been read and spell-checked. All headers stripped, page numbers/section
titles present, footnotes formatted, fonts adjusted.
160 pages.
Description:
An aura of success seems to surround the environmental movement today. Its
concerns are voiced by news media and heeded by governments around the
world. But its real achievements have been few, and the publicity they have
generated may disguise the movement's essential futility.
In this thoughtful and sympathetic evaluation of the international
environmental movement Evernden raises grave doubts about its ability even
to express adequately its real message, let alone to establish societal
acceptance and government support for it. He reviews the assumptions
inherent in western industrial societies that make them so resistant to the
basic motivating concerns of those active in the environmental cause.
From that analysis Evernden considers an alternative view of human/
environmental relations as presented by such thinkers as Merleau-Ponty and
Heidegger. Their evocation of self as 'being in the world' is quite
different from the dominant 'Cartesian' view, and far more accommodating to
the environmentalist's sensibility. Evernden argues that the existence of
such differing approaches to human/environment relations is evidence of a
flexibility that is a basic feature of humanity.
In this flexibility lies the basis of hope. Our uncertainty, although
predisposing us to confusion and alienation, also enables us to develop a
new understanding of 'self in world.' Only through such understanding can
the impulse to environmental advocacy be understood.
Deborah
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