Healing Ecological and Spiritual Connections Through Learning to be Non-Subjects

Abstract

This paper discusses three responses of cultures on the margins of the System, with a focus on colonised and indigenous peoples. In the third response, that of nonsubjects, colonised people continue to draw strength from their own spiritual traditions and cultural patterns, rather than reacting to the System. The paper challenges the scientific and technological approach to the global environmental crisis, seeing it instead in terms of a cultural and spiritual crisis of modernity. Non-subjects are affirmed as a source of inspiration for healing ecological and spiritual connections and for encouraging all peoples to relate to nature with a more profound ecology — an ecology of understanding.