Deontology is a position in ethics which views morality as being based on the adherence to principles or explicit rules, as opposed to the consequences of the actions (consequentialism) or virtue ethics, which focuses on the development of virtues. There are more than these 3 positions in ethics of course, the field is sprawling with concepts and debates, but these are the main ones around which we can compare the other views.
The form of environmental collective deontology I was thinking of can be seen in the following tale, which you might have heard a variation of. The story goes roughly as such:
One day, a massive wildfire spreads through a forest. All the animals scramble for their survival and run away in fear, and can only look at the disaster unfolding in front of them, hopeless about their situation. But a small hummingbird flies around, looking for a few drops of water to carry with its beak to throw onto the fire.
After a while, an armadillo speaks out, annoyed by what it considers to be a waste of time: "Hummingbird, do you not see how these measly drops of water will never be enough to extinguish the fire?"
The hummingbird answers: "I know, but I am doing my part!"
You might have heard a more sophisticated version of this, such as the one where a small boy picks up a few starfish which have been washed up on the beach. An old man looks at the little boy and tells him how pointless it is, because there are so many of them. The boy acknowledges that and answers: "Perhaps, but for those few ones it makes all the difference!"
The starfish example is certainly better because obviously a wildfire is a dynamic process, which means that the next to zero contribution of the hummingbird is immediately rendered useless in the second which follows. But I still have a massive problem with both of them, 1 which hold a rather crude form of collective deontology, which could be roughly stated as: "do your part for the collective whole, even if it seems tiny".
First of all, this is incredibly naive if the things you are doing are simply not effective. This is typically what Effective Altruists (EAs) would reproach about deontologists, that they focus on "efforts" and "right action", but not on the results of their effort. A surprising amount of people for instance think that recycling, saving a bit of effort and electricity by being more mindful of their usage, and buying things with less plastic on them are somehow sufficient in terms of "ecological" activities.
I mean it is better than nothing obviously, 2 but the real change would really come from reducing and being more local, not from those tiny add-ons to a lifestyle which is utterly sustainable, reliant on a massive amount of fossil fuels, which are really the only real source of energy we have to maintain industrial and post-industrial technology. Thus, not driving a car, being less reliant on AC and heating, and buying local products as much as you can would make a far more significant difference than all those tiny "green" lifestyle changes that people try to push.
As misguided as the EAs can be, they are very correct in recognizing that consequences often have a major quantitative component to them. Some actions are so tiny in their effects that it is much better to focus on implementing one big change, such as not being reliant on a car, rather than adding 35 insignificant hacks which don't sum up to much.
There is also a morality which glorifies weakness in many environmental deontologists, which is that their ideal revolves around the principle of "doing your best", but because your "best" is very small if you have little power, it means that it ends up appealing to people who have little power in the world but want to feel morally superior to those around them. It's quite rare to see someone give up their car voluntarily, but on the other hand, those who never had the means to afford a car and its associated costs are quite likely to latch onto environmental ideologies to make themselves seem more moral, because they are "doing their best for the planet".
Thus what starts as a good intention to doing good even if you can't change things by yourself ends up becoming a contest of morality, simply because the consequences are so large and diffuse that no individual can really take responsibility. If there was a mess in the kitchen in your family, you could be the bigger person and decide to clean it, and get people around the table to make sure it doesn't happen again. But there is no equivalent for that in our globalized society, because the scale of environmental problems is so large that no one can step up to doing something about them at their root without large institutions and movements backing you up. Sure, you could get a few people with you to pick up garbage and clean a river, but this doesn't address the systemic way in which companies prioritize profits over their impact onto the world.
And what we see happening as a result is that people get stuck in games of politics, trying to rally people on their side so that their actions may have some impact, which ends up corrupting the movement because even charities and foundations which start around a good intention end up having to prioritize money and influence over impact, simply because they would stop existing if they didn't have a steady flow of money.
Thus what the naively idealistic stories ignore is the double bind which arises from the sheer complexity and scale of our system: at a local scale, you can only have limited influence, which granted is better than nothing and does change the life of those around you. But at a global scale, you are forced to play games of politics and power to have any say whatsoever, but that game by its nature corrupts whatever good intentions you wanted to cast into the world, because maintaining your movement or business becomes more and more of a challenge.
What environmentalists hope to achieve is that if they convince enough people to take local responsibility, then we can all do our part and ultimately steer towards a form of decentralized collective change. What ends up happening in practice is that on the human side, people do the moralizing thing I mentioned above, where they focus more on feeling superior to others and using guilt and fear of catastrophes to get people to change.
And on the systemic side, not much changes because the demands of the system are far, far deeper than what environmentalists would like to think. It's not just that we collectively constantly need more and more energy because people are greedy, which forces us to depend ever more on a dwindling supply of non-renewable (and polluting) fossil fuels, but that this greed is rooted in the fundamentally alienated self which builds up civilization. The reason why "different" or even "less" is unthinkable to such a self is that it is not interested in Reality, only in grasping it and manipulating it for its own utility.
All the moralizing games played by activists does nothing whatsoever to address this fundamental aspect of the self-informed self 3, and if anything, it bolsters it, because moralization typically leads to rebellion, which is probably why all the talks around the urgency about climate change have fueled an opposing movement which denies it is even happening.
All of politics can be seen as a collective game played to avoid any responsibility whatsoever. Do you notice how the conversations always revolve around who is to blame or "who are the bad guys and what did they?" but never around what can I take responsibility for? This is because the self-informed self never wants to examine itself, because that would ultimately lead to the examination of its illusory nature, and on a lesser level, the fact that nothing it has done has really given it satisfaction. It constantly looks for problems outside to avoid having to look within, which is why activists can never solve the problems they claim to be concerned about, because they fuel this game played by the self-informed self. They give you reasons to be mad, angry, depressed, but they never invite you to see the whole of your life.
It is interesting then to compare these stories which have been co-opted by the system to one which most decidedly hasn't, which is the parable of the vineyard workers told by Jesus. Whereas the former give you the illusion of responsibility, in a message which is so crude that it can be summarized in a single sentence, the latter is far more confusing at first, and invites a more subtle form of morality than we are used to. The parable goes as such: 4
For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for a denarius for the day, he sent them into his vineyard. When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around, and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’
When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’ When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received a denarius. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received a denarius. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’
But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ So the last will be first, and the first will be last.
This tale completely goes against any of our modern notions of fairness and around what work is supposed to be, which is what makes it so potent as a story nowadays. It confronts us with the limitations of rewarding effort proportionally, such as how it stiffles generosity and also doesn't allow circumstances to improve, since those who lived in less favorable conditions will always complain that they had it harder than those who came after them.
But the more important point here is that Jesus is pointing to conscious quality, not some socially imposed "should" as the environmental deontologists do, a quality of generosity which is reflected in the Divine itself. Whereas the system-coopted stories tell you how you can do good for the system (and by extension yourself, as someone depending on the system), the parable of the vineyard workers challenge you with what good even is, and what it could look like.
This is because morality, like all conscious qualities, is betrayed by literal speech. This is why you cannot simply get people to be more moral, by telling them what to think or what to do. Literacy is embedded in the dualistic self, which is why the efforts to get people to be more environmentally conscious have created a shadow, a swing in the opposite direction, which it too is part of the same self.
Deontology of all kinds fails because of this fundamental reason, 5 the limitation of literal speech, though it is easier to see it with the versions we are surrounded with, which are secular and which as a result can only take worldly problems in their sphere of concern.
It's simply impossible for the self to create a self-graspable thing which could solve all its problems, whether it is a self-help manual to work out all its troubles, or a collective ideology which can lead the way to Heaven, because fundamentally, what we want as conscious human beings is ineffable, which doesn't mean we can't give words to them or have general heuristics about what works or what doesn't.
But what this means is that morals, laws and regulations, and in general any finite dualistic structure devised by the self, eventually run their course into Reality itself, and the conscious reality which people inhabit. People will sabotage your version of the tower to Heaven if they cannot be free, as Dostoevsky points out in "Notes from Underground", and there will be a point where the movement focuses more on maintaining itself than on helping people. It doesn't matter how many justifications you can bring that your environmentalist deontology is "right" and "aimed at the greater good", because as we can see again and again, self-righteousness at a large scale ends up creating its own monsters.
I am 25 years old as of writing this, and have heard the two stories I shared in the beginning quite frequently, as well as all the warnings related to climate change and other environmental issues. Sorry to say but I don't believe that their approach which consists in hammering young people over and over again about how they are responsible for addressing widespread issues which meddle with geopolitical conflicts does any good.
The results over the last decade have been very lacking to say the least, as the Paris agreement of 2016 started out with the rather low aims of mitigating the impacts of climate change without really doing much beyond that, but the legitimacy of the promises linked with that treaty is questionable to say the least, since emissions have only increased since that time and several of the biggest emitters, such as the United States, are thinking of pulling out from the treaty.
Not that the USA is that much worse than Europe for instance, because evidently the facade of "green" which Europe is trying to pull off instantly falls out of the window when you consider just how dependent it is on the exports of polluting countries such as China, India, and a whole host of Asian and African countries.
Again, the root lies in the disastrous nature of the technological system itself, and the fact that countries try to avoid taking any responsibility by exporting their pollution to the manufacturing countries is rather telling of the real aim of politics, which is as I've mentioned, a game all about avoiding responsibility.
No treaty or collective action could address the system as a whole, because everyone is far too dependent on it for any meaningful change to happen, but at least some of them might avoid the shame and anxiety so present in young people, who feel utterly helpless at the direction of our society.
The main consequence I observe from the actions and talks of environmentalists is really their energetic impact, more than anything. They might not explicitly believe this, but what they are doing basically consists in making people feel as much shame and anxiety as possible, hoping that things might change.
This does not work. The system as a whole was doomed from the start, it cannot be changed into something more sustainable, because the ego that creates and maintains the system does not understand limits. It only understands more because it is fundamentally alienated from Reality. No amount of energetic manipulation can make someone more conscious, as I have said several times now it just breeds an opposing movement, one which will feel no guilt whatsoever about its impact on the environment.
It's time to give up those manipulation tactics and realize just how much harm they've done. I don't believe in deontology because I don't believe in shame. But the way forward is not through another literally-defined path, it is through living consciously, which usually starts by facing pain in discomfort directly, rather than avoiding them through distractions and excuses, and then taking responsibility. Not because that will "save" the world, but because being conscious is its own reward. It's impossible to give a rational reason for why you should be good, because rationality is bound by the self, and goodness is an ineffable quality which slips through the grasp of the self. But He who has ears to hear, let him hear. Not from a teacher, but from Life itself.
1 On a lesser note, there is also a lack of ecological perspective in both of those stories, which is that wildfires occur naturally, even if human beings aren't involved, and the same is true for the way that starfish end up washed up on the beach. Those are not "bad" events, as for instance wildfires happening regularly prevent forests from overgrowing, which would thus make any subsequent wildfire far, far worse. But even if we could not easily identify the positive aspect of those events, nature is a complex whole which works in intricate cycles, which means that disrupting any part for a significant amount of time is probably not a good idea unless you really know what you are doing, and thinking that you should decide what happens or doesn't in nature because you don't like it is part of the typical anthropocentric delusion which afflicts our time, which is fairly ironic for stories which are supposed to be grounded in an environmentalist worldview.
2 Although it's not that rare for recycling to literally be useless because the people collecting the bins end up putting them in the same container anyway. But of course reducing and reusing, the more fundamental moves, are certainly not useless. Even if no one around you does them, you end up saving money and become less dependent on money, which is very useful in a declining system such as ours.
3 Darren Allen's more precise term for "ego". The self is what provides you with a sense of separation, that I am separate from you, from which all dualities result from. There is nothing inherently wrong with this, until this self is only concerned with itself, i.e. become self-informed, in which case a series of existential problems start to slip into its life: existential dread at its own death, because it only experiences and only wants to experience itself. This existential dread then compels it to drown itself in pleasure, distractions and self-augmentation which allows it to increase its power. But nothing it does can fundamentally address this dread, which is why it is constantly running away from Reality, and even building an entire world with other self-informed selves to shield itself from Reality. This process seems to work well in the beginning, when resources are abundant and people are motivated, but as civilization ensues, resources start to run out, complexity leads to bureaucracy, and suddenly all the good aspects taste like ash in one's mouth. The ego fundamentally cannot solve its own alienation, which leads to its tragic fate of constant denial and then death.
4 From Matthew 20:1–16, New Revised Standard Version, which I have taken up from Wikipedia (yes shameful I know)
5 I hope it's clear that this doesn't mean that the other views of ethics are flawless either.
Go back to the list of blog posts
Morality Activism Parable Limitsliteracy Shadow Essayworthy Mimetics
2025-10-02