Karen Kovaka -

People always struggle to understand themselves in relation to nature. We have worshipped and exploited nature, seen it both as a place of retreat and solace and as a place of exile and loneliness. At times, nature has been a symbol of lost purity; at others a reminder of a primitive, animalistic past.

Living in an ecologically conscious, scientific age, the most prevalent attitude toward nature (in the West, at any rate) has the character of reciprocal altruism. We understand that our own survival depends, largely, on the wellbeing of the planet. The survival of all creatures great and small is now the personal concern of each one of us. But I wonder – Is this dominant attitude of reciprocal altruism the most practical and viable one available to us? Reciprocal altruism has its strengths, to be sure, but is it sufficient to rescue us from the current “ecological crisis?”

I want to set aside, for the moment, concerns about theoretical truth and to evaluate two possible attitudes toward nature practically. The question will be, which one puts us in the best position to deal with our environmental woes? The first attitude is reciprocal altruism, and the second one is stewardship.

Reciprocal altruism means altruism that occurs when an individual is likely to later be the recipient of similar altruistic acts. Applied to environmental concerns, this means we are motivated to “save the planet,” reduce carbon emissions, farm sustainably, and organize climate change conferences when we realize that our own survival as a species depends on using our unique power as humans to take care of the rest of nature. Understood in this sense, reciprocal altruism would have us see every part of the physical world as somehow connected to us and therefore worthy of care and respect.

The results of this attitude are promising. I think it’s fair to give reciprocal altruism credit for most of the environmental progress the world has seen in the last fifty years. However, my concern is that it’s not good enough. The trouble is, at the bottom of this whole way of thinking is the idea of caring for nature out of self-interest, and self-interest may not be strong enough to get the job done. One particular weakness that compromises the effectiveness of this approach is that people tend to be shortsighted. Environmental concerns require us to think in terms of great spans of distance and time. If facts such as “Americans account for 5 percent of the world’s population but consume 30 percent of the world’s resources” tell us anything, it’s that after decades of environmental education, we haven’t learned our lesson. For us, it tends to be that out of sight is out of mind, and if threats to our survival are sufficiently distant, we can disregard them.

I think that the attitude of stewardship may help us here. At the root of stewardship as an attitude toward environmental concerns is the claim that a sense of responsibility, rather than necessity, should guide our thinking. Stewardship builds a sense of responsibility for nature in three steps. First, it tells us that the nature is a gift for us to use and interact with as we think best. Second, it says that accepting the “giftedness” of nature requires us also to accept responsibility for its care. Just as the places that we inhabit are given to us, so is the responsibility for caring for them. The third ingredient in an attitude of stewardship is a notion of “creatureliness.” People are somehow “other” than nature, but at the same time, we are part of the natural order. We belong to the natural system; we don’t transcend it, at least not entirely. We may be beings of responsibility and spirit, but we are also creatures of the dust.

In practice, stewardship instills in people a deep sense of both humility and responsibility. If you accept this attitude, nature is significant not only because your survival is connected to its survival, but also because you were made to be a caretaker and shouldering this responsibility is, in a very real sense, your destiny. If people bought into the concept of stewardship as genuinely as they now buy into the concept of reciprocal altruism, then they would have greater motivation to act responsibly in relation to the environment than they do now. The reason? The ‘out of sight, out of mind’ pitfall is circumvented. Stewardship personalizes the issue of environmental care in a way that reciprocal altruism cannot because its force comes from adopting an internal perspective about self and nature, rather than from an external presentation of future troubles that we don’t yet directly experience.