Protecting endangered places is also a form of protecting one’s own self

Evidence

Unexpectedly, I started crying. Although this site would certainly be classified as “natural,” it appeared to me like nothing short of a miracle, one I felt I or this world somehow didn’t deserve. In its unlikely splendor, the slough seemed to represent all of the threatened spaces, all that stood to be lost, that was already being lost. But I also realized for the first time that my wish to preserve this place was also a self-preservation instinct, insofar as I needed spaces like this too, and insofar as I couldn’t feel truly at home in a solely human community. I withered without this contact; a life without other life didn’t seem worth living. To acknowledge that this space and everything in it was endangered meant acknowledging that I, too, was endangered. The wildlife refuge was my refuge. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 614

Categorization

• XREF: Directly supports the defense against the withdrawal misreading: preservation is self-preservation, an engaged not detached stance. — connects to: Care for particular places and creatures sustains rather than blocks global concern — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 709; Immediate dependence on local habitat once made conservation self-interested — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2527; Self-domination destroys the very subject self-preservation aims to save — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 62 (+4 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Care for particular places and creatures sustains rather than blocks global concern — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 709; Immediate dependence on local habitat once made conservation self-interested — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2527; Self-domination destroys the very subject self-preservation aims to save — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 62 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Self-domination destroys the very subject self-preservation aims to save #complicates (0.78) — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 62