There is widespread public misunderstanding of ecology and conservation. A culturally entrenched ‘balance of nature’ paradigm abets consumerism by encouraging the use of materialism to preserve a static socioeconomic identity. Static self-identities do not foster the depth and breadth of individual self-meaning that is necessary to integrate the existential properties of biodiversity into a popular culture of conservation. The ‘flux of nature’ paradigm, however, provides dynamic narrative devices for expounding the link between adaptive individuality and functioning social-ecological systems. Shifting from a product-idealised to process-based self-construction will empower individual agency by emancipating self-identity from regulatory social, economic and political institutions. Thus, the flux paradigm has the potential to rescue the practice of conservation from its perceived paradox and to instil lasting ecological morality based on existential freedom.
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