Being in the World: the ability to think about the self in interconnection and interdependence with the surrounding world. John Danvers, author of ‘Picturing Mind’.
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If we are to develop sustainable ways of interacting with, and making use of, the world’s material and immaterial resources, we have to change the way we think about ourselves and to develop more sustainable ways of being-in-the-world. We have to re-orientate and re-educate ourselves as beings in, and of, the world, as embodied fields of consciousness participating in an indeterminate flux of chemical, biological and cultural interactions...Since at least the 17th century in the West there has been, and perhaps there still is, a tendency to view the self and its relation to the world in what might be labelled Cartesian or Newtonian terms (though this over-simplifies the thinking of both Descartes and Newton). While Newton, argues for a model of the world as a clockwork machine-like system composed of distinct and solid bodies that interact according to deterministic processes and laws, Descartes emphasises the separateness of things and the importance of rational thought as a way of understanding the world...
Click for pdf download of the full chapter 'Being in the World' from the Handbook for Sustainability Literacy
