I’ve being seeing a lot of this graphic👇of a pyramid and circle, each full of silhouettes of living beings, superimposed on a grassy landscape and blue sky:

Note the difference between the grassy version above and 👇 this image, spotted on the One Terrene International website:

Given the language on its website, One Terrene International could be the origin of the EGO->ECO design concept.

OK, back to the bright-blue-sky-and-green-grass version of the graphic. Why does it include cows and other domesticated animals—not just in the hierarchical EGO-pyramid, but even on the ECO-circle side of the graphic?

The One Terrene (natural, muted design) version appears to show ECO as free-living, not controlled. (There’s a cat, but it could be Felis silvestris lybica, a member of the small wildcat communities of Africa, India, and China).

Darach Croft: Animal Husbandry as Preservation

I found Darach Croft, the possible source of the grass-and-sky graphic design, on Twitter.

I tweeted:

I see your EGO-ECO graphic (and other versions) often, @DarachCroft. I don’t understand your version placing dogs and farm animals on the ECO side of the image. Purpose-breeding strikes me as a clear case of EGO.

Darach Croft responded:

Hiya, I think the point is there are exactly the same animals and plants on both sides of the image and that it is the way that we interact with the animals that differentiates the EGO-ECO relationship. But certainly purpose breeding that is detrimental to animals would be EGO.

And I replied:

I’ll include your answer and I appreciate it. I’d say purpose-breeding is detrimental per se. It twists and thwarts evolution, takes land and water that could have been the habitat of free-living wildcats and wolves et al., respected, living on their terms, not chased off on ours.

Darach Croft is a Scottish animal farm (a croft is a sort of micro farm) based on regenerative animal farming methods, whose members sell flesh, eggs, honey, wool, and wool fat soaps.

That would explain the placement of human-controlled, purpose-bred animals in an image supposedly telling us how to subvert our egos for the sake of the planet. This is a subtle form of hogwash—suggesting that exploiting the other beings of the Earth can be sustainable, eco-friendly, and exemplary.

Questioning the Stewardship Trope

To my mind, it’s hugely important to question this suggestion—when we find it in public presentations, and when we find it in our own minds. For example, if we are committed to animal liberation, respecting our rescued pet or farm animals involves questioning their position of dependence on Homo sapiens—a dependence the other animals cannot outgrow, a dependence we engraved in their Earthly experience through selective breeding, a dependence that made them individually vulnerable to lifelong use and abuse of just about every imaginable kind.

And no matter how gently treated these animals might be, we are not bestowing a benefit on animals by bringing them into an exploitive system that need not exist. 

Some people will avoid a vegan commitment if, at least from time to time, they can find animal products marketed as natural, humane, biodynamic, local, sustainable, or the now-popular regenerative. We can understand the psychology here. Haven’t we all, at some point back in the day, asked: Is there anything wrong with eating eggs if the chickens are allowed to live natural lives? If I look for the free-range label? If the farmers are good stewards of the land? Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. I’m not “calling out” anyone in any way I haven’t called myself out. 

The Power to Change This Structure

An enormous segment of the human economy is based on taking advantage of conscious life, yet each one of us has the power to change this structure, and we constantly encounter other people with this same potential. We’re all in this together.

When ego gives into an eco-aware human identity, we won’t be “stewards” who justify breeding others for our own ends. We’ll have regained our lost sense of awe and excitement in living among the members of Earth’s great biological community—not according to some ideal we imagine. Not by some process we control. But as they evolve, on their terms.

Love and liberation,

Lee.

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_{Banner photo: People’s Climate March, Melbourne, Australia (21 Sep. 2014). Originally posted by John Englart (Takver) at https://flickr.com/photos/81043308@N00/15120960559 (archive) and licensed under cc-by-sa-2.0; via Wikimedia Commons.}