On April 14, 2023, Zhou Jinfeng, Secretary-General of China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation (CBCGDF), was invited to deliver the fifth speech in the series of lectures on science ethics and technology ethics at Southern University of Science and Technology. The theme of his speech is "Contemporary Ecological Crisis and Environmental Ethics". The moderator of this lecture is Professor Song TIAN from the Humanities Center of Southern University of Science and Technology.

Civilization is productivity and production relations, and is the relative condition of overall technology and nature for economic and social development. The word “civilization” comes from Greek. It was first related to the word city. When people live in the city, they can’t start to have neighbors and rules like they do in nature or in their own homes. And the rules here are civilization. Therefore, the starting point of civilization is the rules of getting along with each other in life and production, which is the earliest morality and ethics.

With the further development of human civilization, it is not enough to have rules alone, but also to have contracts; later, contracts are not enough, and there must be laws and police. In this way, human civilization has been continuously enriched and developed. So what else does modern civilization include? It includes politics, law, science, technology, etc.. It is the sum of everything that human beings rely on for survival in an era.

Ethics has been playing a very important role in the progress of civilization until today. So how has ethics changed? Why should it change? Why was it possible to catch birds before, but why is it not possible now? Our ancestors, in the past, whoever caught more birds and beat tigers was a hero. The origin of human beings depended on farming, fishing and hunting. At that time, whoever hunted and killed more animals was a hero. But today, hunting and killing wild animals will be punished.

For the survival of the entire humanity, we are constantly adjusting civilization, and the ethics in civilization are also constantly adjusting. Everything we do must conform to our own ethics, the ethics of society, and the ethics of the world.

Only in this way, what we do will become more and more accepted and popular.

Whether it is the East or the West, the fundamental view of the world that is becoming more and more unified is that man and nature live in harmony, not simply to conquer nature, not to fully transform it. This is today's new philosophy.

As worldviews change, methodologies change with them. On the premise of not destroying nature, we should strive for a better and happy life for human beings. This is the essence of today's thinking and philosophy. If we clarify these things, we will know how to do many things is right and how to do it is wrong. Many things were controversial at the time, but as time goes by, it will gradually become clear.

Original Chinese Article:https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/Z2X8HWskM2OT9mg5GlAeZQ

Translator: Daisy

Checked by Sara

Editor: Daisy

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