ARTUR GLIKSON 
confidence in future when such an harmonious man- 
environment relationship might be re-established. 
When we wish to effect change in the man-environment 
relationship, the realization of its mutuality is a necessary start- 
ing point. But the truth that man and environment determine 
and are determined by each other is not sufficient to provide 
guidance for man’s modifying actions. On the contrary, 
this knowledge is liable to hide the fact that the incentive to 
change results from the experience ofan incompatibility between 
the environmental situation and the human situation. 
Environmental change is motivated either by the existence 
of free human energy, not needed for the maintenance of 
existing communities, or by a disturbance in biological or 
physical equilibrium. A surplus or a deficiency of population 
or resources, migrations or wars, may initiate a process of 
environmental change. Such conditions urge communities to 
“‘reflect’’ themselves in new ways upon the surrounding biota 
and landscape, to introduce different types of land use and to 
reorganize their cultural habitat. But, in the course of this 
activity, they encounter reciprocal environmental influences 
which modify their goals and way of life. 
Environmental disequilibrium stimulates thought and action. 
Yet no definite programme of action can result from the mere 
awareness of estrangement from environment. The disturbed 
relation, therefore, urges man to search for guidance on a 
different level. So long as such guidance is not found, men have 
no choice but to justify or permit arbitrarily any environmental 
effort or neglect as a “‘natural” or a “human” process. 
Guidance for environmental modification and cultivation 
ensuring a balance was gained in the past by instincts, or by 
myths, or religions which established doctrines about man’s 
situation and responsibilities in the universe. Our understand- 
ing of past environmental relationships remains incomplete, if 
we disregard such spiritual bases. In our time we must seek 
for such guidance, first of all in what Aldo Leopold called 
‘a land ethic... reflecting the existence of an ecological 
conscience” and evolved as “‘an intellectual as well as emotional 
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