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Lill Sarv
My story
I have been educated in art history, semiotics and cultural studies and in philosophy. Almost every child who grows up in Estonia spends their summer holidays in a summer cottage or at grandparents house in the countryside just like I did. Right next to my grandparents house there was an ancient holy site – a sacred circle of oak trees, visited by tourists and believers. The surrounding nature has never been just an object or material but has a soul and mind of its own.
I was drawn by the idea of nature-friendly sustainable society with all the benefits offered by today’s scientific discoveries and technological advancements. I was particularly interested in the values that were behind the ecological design because a change in the value system is the first and most important change that our society needs to make. Everything else will follow from there.
What I have learned?
From art history I learned that through art practices it is possible to question the common beliefs in society, draw attention to various problems and engage people in discussions.
From semiotics and cultural studies I learned that communication is not just verbal communication but that we are surrounded by many different meaningful communication systems. And that every living being sees the world differently depending on their previous knowledge and physical differences – which is called umwelt (meaning their own world or environment in german) in semiotics. Our world is constantly reshaped and changed by every new piece of information that we have learned.
From philosophy I learned to question many things that I used to not even think about. Like what is truth? What are the facts? Why do we act in certain ways? Why does society consider some behaviour acceptable and some not? What are the patterns behind it? And motivations?
In the current chapter you will learn how social values influence our behaviour toward nature and environment.
We are going to discuss how values are created, what is holistic worldview, greenwash and indifferent differences.
DEFINITIONS:
UMWELT – Jakob von Uexküll defines Umwelt in his Umwelt theory as the living organisms modality to appropriate and precept its environment. We can imagine umwelt metaphorically as kind of inhabited soap bubble. Every organism lives in their soap bubble that is designed according to their specific visual, tactile, temporal etc experiences, which sums up to a kind of experiential bubble. In Umwelt just like in a real soap bubble the external imagines are deformed when projected inside the bubble according to their quality and consistence.[1]
VALUE – Important and lasting beliefs or ideals shared by the members of a culture about what is good or bad and desirable or undesirable. Values have major influence on a person’s behaviour and attitude and serve as a board guidelines in all situations
HOLISTIC WORLDVIEW – Emphasizing the importance of the whole and the interdependence of its parts. Concerned with