The human individual is a shepherd of Being. Meaning that the world comes to us as a given. We are, therefore, the shapers rather than authors of our lives. Thus, we had better take care of the world to which we owe our lives and that is the ground of our being. To deny that our role is such a secondary one, is to undermine our essence and leaves us open to self-destruction.

In a related passage, we are like the other animals of creation, bar that we are possessed by language. And language reveals (again, not creates) meaning. It is like stumbling through a dense forest and coming upon a clearing from which we can see, to some degree, the wood for the trees. There is a sense in which this is sacred, for it appears to come to us from what is not human. 'Our goals here are fixed by something which we should properly see ourselves as serving,' he writes. It sounds very much like the religious who conceives of their life as offering back to God that which has been given to them by God.

Without this profound sensibility of gifted respect, the tendency is for humankind to exploit the world. So what we might say to the present ecological crisis is that alongside technological solutions we also need to learn a new way of being in the world, this metaphor of shepherding provides a clue.