After centuries of the human mind measuring, structuring, and imposing meaning on the
world around us there is now a deep desire to understand the relationship between the
human being and the world in a different way. Our desire to control and exploit the earth
has moved us irremediably towards destroying it. We are beginning to recognize that the
earth is a living organism that has its own life forms that have their own rights of existence
as much as we have ours. Our destinies as humans are irretrievably linked with the earth
and all its life forms. But to move away from being in the world as though we control it to
being in the world as though we share it requires a huge shift in the away we understand
ourselves and our relationship with our other-than-human compatriots.