On the one hand, placing humanity at the center of the universe, over it in some ways, helps to justify domination of nature and its destruction. On the other hand, as an approach to nature, humanism will never achieve a full understanding of nature's complexity, in spite of scientific ecology. As a result, humanity's quest to manipulate nature to its wants and needs spells disaster for biodiversity as well as humanity's reverence for nature. Besides building roads in the wild, human's tend to leave their waste products about. Ideology - A system of beliefs that may include figures of speech, stereotypes, and social and cultural assumptions based upon the dominant culture's definitions of nature and social relationships.
Ideological categories arise and subside as hierarchical power relationships change.
Industrialized and postindustrial nation-states make wide use of publicity owned media to sustain power relationships for social, political, and geographic purposes, as did their predecessors use central forms of communicating ideas. Propaganda becomes a category of the dominant ideology as needs arise. The core of the dominant ideology remains intact until a paradigm shift over several hundred years obscures what was once the dominant ideology. Examples can be found in early Egyptian religions that justified their existence from Pharaoh's relationship to their deity. Papal justifications came to work in a similar fashion.