Edward Goldsmith

The industrial society in which we live, and that we take to be normal, desirable and permanent, is in fact aberrant, destructive and necessarily short-lived.

Summary

Edward Goldsmith is an Anglo-French environmentalist and eco-philosopher.

He is particularly well known for his anti-industrial, rural beliefs, and sympathy for tribal and other traditional peoples and their belief systems. He calls for conservation and organic farming. He represents a Romantic strain in the green movement that nostalgically looks back to a world before the Industrial Revolution, indeed before the advent of civilisation.

He was influential in the development of Biocentric Culture (see Vital Unconscious and Biocentric Principle).

Ideas

• Deep Ecology - Goldsmith is one of the advocates of Deep Ecology.
• Its principles are:
  • The well-being and flourishing of human and nonhuman life on Earth have value in themselves (synonyms: intrinsic value, inherent value). These values are independent of the usefulness of the nonhuman world for human purposes.
  • Richness and diversity of life forms contribute to the realization of these values and are also values in themselves.
  • Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except to satisfy vital human needs.
  • The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantial decrease of the human population. The flourishing of nonhuman life requires such a decrease.
  • Present human interference with the nonhuman world is excessive, and the situation is rapidly worsening.
  • Policies must therefore be changed. These policies affect basic economic, technological, and ideological structures. The resulting state of affairs will be deeply different from the present.
  • The ideological change is mainly that of appreciating life quality (dwelling in situations of inherent value) rather than adhering to an increasingly higher standard of living. There will be a profound awareness of the difference between big and great.
  • Those who subscribe to the foregoing points have an obligation directly or indirectly to try to implement the necessary changes.