The Great Work by Thomas Berry

Author:Thomas Berry [Berry, Thomas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-43419-7
Publisher: Crown/Archetype
Published: 2011-08-09T16:00:00+00:00

12

The

EXTRACTIVE

ECONOMY

WHEN WE CONSIDER WHERE WE ARE IN THE COURSE OF OUR historical destiny we might observe three events that could be considered as defining moments leading to our situation at the end of the twentieth century.

The first of these events occurred when the biblical-Christian emphasis on the spirituality of the human joined with the traditions of Greek humanism to create an anthropocentric view of the universe. At this time a certain discontinuity became possible between the human and the nonhuman components of the planet Earth. Throughout the earlier centuries of Christianity the integral relation of the human with the other components of the natural world was preserved. The natural world was considered as manifestation of the divine and the locus for the meeting of the divine and the human. Yet the sense of the Earth as a single integral community, with every being having inherent value and corresponding rights according to its mode of being, and with the human as one of the component members of this great community, was in the course of centuries diminished by excessive emphasis on the human as a spiritual being aloof from the physical universe.

A second historical moment occurred when this spiritual and humanist alienation was deepened into a feeling that the natural world was an actual threat to both the physical and spiritual well-being of the human. This feeling arose when the Black Death occurred in Europe from 1347–1349, a period when at least a third of the human population of Europe died. An even greater proportion of community leaders died. In the summer of 1348 fewer than 45,000 persons survived in Florence, Italy, out of 90,000 who were there at the beginning of the year. In Sienna, of 42,000 inhabitants only 15,000 survived (Meiss, p. 65).

Since the peoples of Europe knew nothing of germs, they had no way of understanding what was happening. They could only conclude that humans had become so depraved that God was punishing the world. The best thing to do was to intensify devotion and seek redemption out of the world. Along with a certain amount of moral dissolution caused by desperation a new intensity of spiritual dedication developed. A spiritual suspicion toward the world developed that has continued throughout the intervening centuries until our own times.

The division between the secular and the spiritual was intensified. Each was disengaged from and in a sense abandoned by the other. Thus, disengaged from any restraint imposed by spiritual concerns, industry and commerce, with the assistance of science and technology, seized control of the natural world and forced it, with great profit to themselves, into subservience to human convenience. Once we understand this background of our present situation we can proceed with our understanding of just what has happened. We might also recognize, with some clarity, just how we should proceed to bring about a remedy.

A third historical moment occurred in the last two decades of the nineteenth century when an even more severe situation arose. These were the critical years.

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