Thoreau, and his many heirs among contemporary naturalists and radical environmentalists, assume that human culture is the problem, not the solution. So they urge us to shed our anthropocentrism and learn to live among other species as equals. This sounds like a fine, ecological idea, until you realize that the Earth would be even worse off if we started behaving any more like animals then we already do. The survival strategy of most species is to extend their dominion as far and as brutally as they can, until they run up against an equally brutal natural limit that checks their progress. Isn’t this exactly what we’ve been doing?
What sets us apart from other species is culture, and what is culture but forbearance? Conscience, ethical choice, memory, discrimination: it is these very human and decidedly unecological faculties that offer the planet its last best hope. It is true that, historically, we’ve concentrated on exercising these faculties in the human rather than the natural estate, but that doesn’t mean that they cannot be ecercised there. Indeed, this is the work that now needs to be done: to bring more culture to our conduct in nature, not less.
– Michael Pollan, Second Nature, p. 114-115