in principle versus in practice..............

 

If nature is placed above man, such that every brook has its transcendent spirit, then, man, women, and child are by necessity placed below nature.  This might mean in principle that the wonders of the environment would become rightly valued.  In practice, however, it all too often means instead that human beings are given no more shrift than weeds or rats.  This inversion of value enables not so much the stewardship of the earth as the exploitation of those deemed no more worthy than the lesser forms of life—exploitation by exactly the sort of people who eternally step forward to abuse such advantage.

-Jordan B. Peterson, We Who Wrestle with God: Perceptions of the Divine