It has been said that that it is perceptions
which influence decisions in environmental
management rather than the actual environmental factors which occasion them.
The particular way that groups and individuals
perceive their environment and manage it
involves their shared beliefs and values, ideologies and philosophies. These constitute
an irrational element in perception and decision making. The influence will not be
measurable or predictable. It has been proposed to deal with it by regarding it as an
'indeterminate element' within a set of elements that can be determined. This means
management decisions are made within a defined culture framework within which the
decisions will take effect. There is a screen of values through which the environment is
perceived.
Cybernetics has shown that there is only
one way to manage a system, and that is via a
control mechanism 'which operates by detecting data essential to the maintenance of
the system's stable relationship with its environment...' The data can be resolved into a
'model or set of instructions' which ensures the normal day-to-day behaviour of a
biological organism conforms to a norm. The subjective response of humankind is to be
regarded as a random statistical element in an otherwise predictable model that
produces a deviation from the norm. For a social organism such a model or template is
the society's world-view, and in pre-industrial societies the main control was religion.
Religion governs the behaviour of tribal
people, who do not treat their environment simply
as a resource to satisfy short-term needs. Through animism and the like they sanctify it.
The absence in industrial society of a religion which provides a goal structure enabling it
to achieve a stable relationship with its environment drives that society towards
discontinuity and disintegration.
Religion can ensure that society's basic
structure is maintained. It admirably satisfies
cybernetic requirements. Religion encourages some order in differentiated and
structured traditional societies. It gives the stability which the social ecosystem needs; it
ensures that everyone can have a complete model of the environment and a
corresponding strictly prescribed behaviour pattern. Religion consecrates or sanctifies
the generalities of a society's behaviour pattern.
Goldsmith, who is largely responsible
for articulating the above view within
environmentalism, forecasts that with increased industrialisation and increased
recognition that a materialist paradise is unattainable will come
'a growing number of Messianic movements which will attempt to establish a new social
order
based on a new view of man's relationship with his environment. Many of them will adopt at least a
facade of Christianity...'
In systems terms, religion will be re-established
as a control mechanism enabling the
social system to reach equilibrium and stability with respect to the environment.
There are several objections to these
'systems' views of man, society and nature. Some
see them as dehumanising and grossly mechanistic, while others emphasise their
essential determinism, placing man in too subordinate and dependent a role in relation to
nature.
Regarding the use of belief and value
systems in environmental management, we are
left with the following unresolved questions:
Can relationships between men, and within
and between societies, and between man
and nature, be precisely quantified and mathematically structured?
Can culture and values, emotion and irrationality
be built into a predictive social model as
mere 'degrees of randomness'?
Can religion and spirituality be regarded
simply as a control mechanism holding a social
system onto a particular course?
Are men and society qualitatively no different
from cells or dogs?
