What connections (if any) do you see between respecting the environment and respecting yourself? are the two exclusive, or is there some relationship between self respect and earth care? can only those who respect themselves first truly make the effort to respect the earth? why or why not?

Other Answers (7)

• I agree with the firist answer.
• If you have no respect for yourself chances are you will care less about the environment.
• the guy with the tree hugger comment is not a good example of respect for anything whatsoever.. and a good example of lower consciousness at work.
  
  Respecting yourself ultimately means respecting everything else because you essentialy are everything. The true self, sometimes called Atman is one with all there is. Knowledge of that true self is the goal of all true spiritual paths. That%26#039;s why people with higher consciousness are ALWAYS environmentalists. They understand the interconnectedness that underlies all reality.
  
  We have free will. We can choose not to harm the environment.
  
  We are making a mistake by assuming that we are just animals and nothing more. Man creates his own reality with his thoughts. If that seems like an outrageous statement, I%26#039;m here to tell you, that
  that is what all enlightened people in the world know. The state of things in the world are the result of the collective thoughts of all the people in the world. Outragious? Maybe, but it is true.
  Too much us and them thinking, too much thinking that the world is just stuff and therefore what does it matter what we do to our environment. It is all based on an incorrect world view. Reality is
  quite different than commonly assumed.
  
  You might want to read some books by Fred Alan Wolf Phd who writes books about quantum
  physics and the nature of reality. The universe is far more strange than we think it is.
  And man is far more than commonly thought.
  
  Wolf%26#039;s books include The Spiritual Universe,
  The Dreaming Universe , Taking the Quantum Leap. Also a book called The Tao of Physics is an earlier book with a similar theme. But Wolf makes the ideas accessable to a layman and fun to read.
  
  And if you are open to expanding your perceptions even more, I recommend the three books called %26quot;Conversations with God%26quot; by Neale Donald Walsch. The ideas presented there are consistant with what all enlightened people worldwide understand. This is true no matter what spiritual disipline or path they have followed. Fundamentalists will have a hard time with this and probably call it the work of the devil, trust me, it is the truth. Approach with open mind. It%26#039;s hard to receive new information when your mind is already full of preconceived notions.
  
  
  The mechanistic universe of cause and effect is based on Newtonian physics several hundred years old. This is still the outlook of most scientists and constitutes most of our world view, but that is changing.
  
  That is by no means the universe that quantum physics describes.
  
  Also, evolution is much more than just survival of the fittest. this aspect of evolution has been
  stressed at the expense of perhaps a more important concept, that of symbiosis. Evolution happens as much by cooperation among species as it does by competition. The first idea has so dominated our thinking, especially in the west, that we have arrived at a dog eat dog kind of perception of reality that has colored our cultural values, economic theories and more. It is a very limited view.
  
  That is what is wrong with the world.
  And religions have limited views as much as reductionists scientist do.
  
  I saw a bumper sticker recently that speaks to what I am saying here.
  
  %26quot;God is too big to fit inside one religion%26quot;
  
  That%26#039;s because God, or the absolute or whatever you want to call it, is INFINITE. Beyond any
  religion%26#039;s description and beyond any of our scientific descriptions. No concept can describe infinity. You don%26#039;t have to be religious per say to get something from what I%26#039;m saying.
  
  This is what no one is talking about; that what the world needs, to solve it%26#039;s problems is higher
  consciousness. If you think that%26#039;s a pipe dream, you are dead wrong. The world is full of people
  who have achieved this higher consciousness. I personally have met hundreds of them.
  As Bob Dylan said in a song, %26quot;there%26#039;s something going on here, but you don%26#039;t know what it is, do you Mr Jones?%26quot;
  
  And as William Blake said %26quot;a fool and a wise man don%26#039;t see the same tree%26quot;
  Reality is a perception. Not a fixed rigid thing.
  
  Shakespeare, another wise man, said the same thing . to paraphrase since I don%26#039;t have it here in
  front of me, %26quot; the world is far more than you philosophers could possibly dream of%26quot;
  
  Life is a dream! some people wake up from the dream. Blake and Shakespeare were among those who wake up.
  
  How%26#039;s that for food for thought?
  If you truly understood what I am saying, you%26#039;re views about the environment would be quite
  different.
• It%26#039;s the respect one gives to their own Mother. It%26#039;s a family affair. Ha, tree hugger, that%26#039;s a compliment Patz! Stay cool.
• you respect the environment, u respect yourself by giving clean air, water, and things like that.
• i only respect energy which can be in any form.
  
  i don%26#039;t know where and why energy was came ?
  who made them .
  i do not believe in God.
  in environment of earth or any other planet, can be harmful when the people will disturb environment.
  people and other can live when they stop period of time of conversion of one energy to another energy form.
  i am one part of environment.
• We are nature. Therefore in order to take care of ourselves we must take care of nature. You can learn to respect yourself by respecting the Earth or vice versa. Once you learn to respect it is only a matter of application after that.