Convenient Myths: The Axial Age, Dark Green Religion, and the World that Never Was

10. On Truth and Consequences: Why Myths about the Past Matter

121 On Truth and Consequences Why Myths about the Past Matter 10 Romantic misconceptions might not matter, except that the conventional wisdoms arising from them generate normative prescriptions . . . . Current strategies of environmental and conservation education reflect our faith in such ideals . . . but typically without tests of whether any of the assumptions are true. —Bobbi Low, “Behavioral Ecology of Conservation in Traditional Societies” If we really want to restore Yellowstone’s preeminent predator, then the public should be lobbying for the return of the park to Native Americans. —Charles Kay, afterword to Wilderness and Political Ecology The mythmakers behind the myths of the axial age and the dark green golden age do violence to the ancient religions and philosophies they claim to describe. They do so in the course of distorting the past in general. This is problematic in terms of ethics. It matters, because it is morally wrong. We should not disrespect the past or the peoples of the past. We have a duty to tell the truth. 122 Convenient Myths Do the distortions matter for any other reason? I believe that they do. They matter because the past, the present, and the future are so closely bound up with each other. As the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre suggests, the story in which I believe myself to be a character is also the story in which I come to understand my nature and my destiny. 1 My sense of who I am, where I should be heading, and what I should do next—I “own” all these in the context of what I believe to be true about the world, its history and destiny, the nature of divinity and humanity, and the good society. It is all very much bound up with the story in which I believe I find myself. This includes the parts of the story that are now in the past. If I do not get the story straight with respect to the past—if I start believing claims about the past that are simply not true—then there is a very good chance that I will make significant mistakes in my thinking and living in the present. There is also a very good chance that I will go astray in my planning and advocacy with regard to the future. This is the reality that Charles Kay has in mind in the first epigraph to chapter 8: “Without a factual understanding of what happened in the past we will never know where we have been or where we may be headed.” 2 If, in fact, there was an axial age—if there was before that a Paleolithic golden age—then these ages may indeed offer us insights that will help us in our present moment of need. If these are fantasies, however, then their relevance to our present moment becomes less clear. Indeed, allowing a fictional past to dictate our approach to the present and to the future may well be very damaging and dangerous—as the epigraph from Bobbi Low at the head of this chapter suggests. Even while possessing the best of intentions in terms of looking after our fellow human beings, other creatures, and the planet itself, we may go badly wrong in our practice, because we begin in the wrong place. We may indeed end up harming the very people—the very world—that we are intent on trying to save. In this final chapter, I simply wish to illustrate the danger briefly with respect to two issues, before bringing my whole argument to a conclusion. The first is the issue of the human rights of native populations in Latin America. The second is the issue of wilderness care in the United States. In both cases, it is clear that the way we imagine the past can have significant implications for the ways we act in the present and plan for the future. On Truth and Consequences 123 Noble Savages and Human Rights Consider, first, the impact of what others have called the myth of the ecologically noble savage on the lives of those modern “primitive peoples ” who are widely regarded by the proponents of dark green religion as preserving ancient ecological wisdom. Consider what has happened to them because others have regarded them (wrongly, as it turns out) as inheriting a long tradition of living in harmony with nature—taking care neither to exceed in population the carrying capacity of their...