The End of the Modern World
& Young Eco-Spiritual Energy for a Local-Global
Postmodern Electronic-Ecological Civilization
The End of the Modern World
& Young Eco-Spiritual Energy for a Local-Global
Postmodern Electronic-Ecological Civilization
WHY ECOSPIRIT-EARTHCARE ? (Ecological Spirituality & Ecological Ethics for an Ecological Civilization) "Will Man murder Mother Earth or will Man redeem her? He could murder her by increasing technological potency. Alternately, he could redeem her by overcoming the suicidal, aggressive greed that, in all living creatures including Man, has been the price of the Great Mother's gift of life. This is the significant question which now confronts Man." Arnold Toynbee MANKIND AND MOTHER EARTH 1976 (Toynbee's non-inclusive language was no doubt intended to be inclusive. But, given classical patriarchy and modern hyper-masculinism, its non-inclusive meaning may in fact be historically accurate.) _________________________ Arnold Toynbee (1889-1973), an English scholar, was the greatest historian of human civilizations. His 12-volume work, A STUDY OF HISTORY (1934-1961), examined close to thirty human civilizations. According to Toynbee, many civilizations have collapsed because their elite leaders stopped responding creatively to extreme challenges. Instead, they fell into nationalism, militarism, and the tyranny of a despotic minority. In contrast, resilient civilizations responded creatively to extreme challenges because creative elite minorities rose to leadership and opened fresh pathways for creative response. For Toynbee, the deep difference between collapsing and resilient civilizations has been the creativity or lack thereof in their underlying elite-led mystical-spiritual insights. As early as the 1970s, Toynbee saw the late stage of Modern World falling into internal suicide by "murdering Mother Earth," that is, by killing the vibrant Biosphere of our garden-planet home. At the same time, Toynbee hoped that new mystical-spiritual prophets would arise to help the great world religions become what he called the "chrysalis for new civilizations." (With gratitude to Phyllis Amenda's masterful 1999 paper on Toynbee's "A Study of History." For more on Toynbee, see the Wikipedia article on his 12-volume study of human civilizations, "A Study of History," at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Study_of_History) _________________________ AN ECOSPIRIT-EARTHCARE REFLECTION ON TOYNBEE'S STUDY OF HUMAN CIVILIZATIONS Joe Holland, Ph.D. President Spirituality & Sustainability Global Network (SSGN) _________________________ PART ONE THE DISINTEGATION OF MODERN INDUSTRIAL-COLONIAL CIVILIZATION A. THE END OF THE MODERN WORLD We now live within what the 20th-century European Catholic philosopher-theologian Romano Guardini prophetically foresaw as "The End of the Modern World" (the title of his 1950 book). In my analysis, the Modern World began in the European mid-15th Century with the communications revolution of Mechanical Printing. But in the 15th Century, the Modern World was just a baby. It still needed to fully develop. Even so, the Modern Print Revolution began to undermine the cultural-spiritual authority of the formerly dominant and anti-modern aristocratic class, whose wealth and power were based in military control of accumulated land. It simultaneously began to legitimate the emerging cultural-spiritual authority of the rising pro-modern bourgeois class, whose wealth and power have been based in civilian control of accumulated capital. However , as I will soon address below, the Modern World, constructed by the modern bourgeois class, is now dying. It is dying across its interwoven ecological, societal, and spiritual dimensions. To understand why the Modern World is dying, and to understand why we need "EcoSpirit & EarthCare" (Ecological Ethics & Ecological Spirituality), we need to review the long story of the Modern World's philosophical-scientific foundations (cosmological and ethical), the triumph of its Modern Industrial-Colonial Civilization, its foundational spiritual error, and its still expanding "polycrisis" of interwoven ecological, societal, and spiritual disintegration. B. THE MODERN WORLD'S ANTI-SPIRITUAL MATERIALISM & ITS MANDATE FOR TECHNO-SCIENCE TO CONQUER NATURE For their philosophical-scientific foundation to guide the Modern World, early-modern European bourgeois intellectual elites, overwhelmingly males, constructed a new bourgeois worldview composed of two distorted elements: 1) THE EPICUREAN ANTI-SPIRITUAL COSMOLOGY OF ATOMIST-MECHANICAL MATERIALISM 2) THE BACONIAN UTILITARIAN-ETHICAL MANDATE FOR MODERN TECHNO-SCIENCE TO CONQUER NATURE For the first element, early-modern bourgeois intellectual elites retrieved the Philosophical Cosmology of Epicurus (341-270 BC), the classical Greek philosopher who taught the cosmological doctrine of anti-spiritual Atomist-Mechanical Materialism. More recently, the distinguished British philosopher Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1847) gave the Modern World's Epicurean Philosophical Cosmology the shorter name of "Scientific Materialism." However, Epicurus loved Nature and wished to live in tranquility within Nature. So Epicurus' Cosmology, while crassly anti-spiritual and denying any sacred-spiritual dimension to Nature, was nonetheless not anti-ecological. Then early-modern bourgeois intellectual elites combined Epicurus' Anti-Spiritual Atomist-Mechanical Materialism with the utilitarian ethical mandate issued by the famous British Chancellor Francis Bacon (1561-1626), who is considered the most important philosophical visionary for Modern Techno-Science. Bacon ethically mandated that Modern Techno-Science should "conquer" Mother Nature by placing her "on the rack" and forcing her to reveal her "hidden secrets," so that those secrets might be exploited for human utility. Thus, drawing on Epicurus' anti-spiritual Materialism and Bacon's mandate for Modern Techno-Science mandate to conquer Nature, the Modern World's grounding philosophical-ethical misguidance became anti-spiritual and anti-ecological. That Epicurean-Baconian anti-spiritual and anti-ecological philosophical Cosmology then mis-shaped modern institutions, including business, education, government, law, media, medicine, and sometimes even religion, as well as other areas of the Modern World. C. THE TRIUMPH OF MODERN INDUSTRIAL-COLONIAL CIVILIZATION Modern Western bourgeois elites quickly assigned political sovereignty to modern nation-states, and they unleashed, first, the Modern Scientific Revolution and, second, the Modern Industrial Revolution. Those two successive revolutions produced Modern Industrial-Colonial Civilization, which was originally Western but has now become fully globalized. However, and again, this now-globalized Civilization remains philosophically misguided by anti-spiritual Epicurean Materialism and by the anti-ecological Baconian mandate for Modern Techno-Science to conquer Nature for human utility. Therefore, as Modern Techno-Science has become incredibly ever-more powerful, it is increasingly killing -- or, in Toynbee's words, "murdering" -- the biological life system of our loving Creator's beloved and sacred creatures across our home planet Earth's beauteous but fragile Biosphere. It is also killing -- in culturally suicidal form -- its own now-globalized Modern Industrial-Colonial Civilization. At the same time, it is even threatening the precious but fragile life of our loving Creator's beloved and sacred human species, which remains part of and dependent upon Earth fragile Biosphere. D. THE MODERN WORLD'S DENIAL THAT NATURE IS SACRED In pre-modern times, our ancient human ancestors fully understood that our loving Creator is the creative source of our cosmic Creation, and that all of our loving Creator's Creatures are sacred. Sill to this day, Indigenous Peoples across our home planet Earth, still preserve our ancient ancestors' belief that: WE ARE CREATOR'S BELOVED CREATURES & ALL CREATURES ARE SACRED! However, today, so many modern bourgeois intellectuals still believe in the Modern World's anti-spiritual Epicurean Materialism and its anti-ecological Baconian techno-scientific mandate to conquer Nature -- both of which deny that Creation is sacred. Those same bourgeois intellectuals also often label as ignorant and superstitious our ancient ancestors' cherished beliefs that we are our loving Creator's beloved creatures, and that all creatures in our loving Creator's beloved Creation are sacred. As as a result, the Modern World's hard and soft forms of Techno-Science, again increasingly ever-more powerful, are now fragmenting, undermining, and murdering our home-planet Earth's spiritually sacred communities of ecological life across Earth's sacred but fragile Biosphere, which includes our fragile but sacred Human Life. It has not only been those proclaiming Atheism or Secularism who deny that all creatures within our loving Creator's beloved Creation are sacred. Many religious people have also accepted the modern bourgeois claim that Nature is NOT sacred. They have done that by reducing human spirituality to our psychological "interior life," which they then schizophrenically isolate from "secular" and "exterior" Creation. Further, many have even privatized their "interior spirituality" and then claim that it has no societal or ecological responsibility to the "exterior" world. Of course, our "interior life" remains a fruitful place for spiritual life, but only if its "interior" consciousness sustains a holistic awareness that all creatures across our loving Creator's beloved "exterior" Creation are sacred, and only if that consciousness then seeks to live in loving partnership within our loving Creator's beloved community of Earth creatures. However, today, too many of the Modern World's bourgeois elites -- and now on a global scale -- feel free to to endlessly exploit and increasingly to destroy the beloved and sacred Biosphere of our loving Creator's beloved and sacred home planet Earth, which includes our loving Creator's beloved and sacred Human Life, and on which our loving Creator's beloved and sacred Human Life depends for its human survival Again, the Modern World, still misguided by its Epicurean anti-spiritual Materialism and by its Baconian techno-scientific conquest of Nature, is progressively "murdering" more and more sacred of our loving Creator's beloved and sacred Earth creatures, including beloved and sacred Human creatures, across the fragile Biosphere of our sacred home-planet. That murdering of our loving Creator's beloved and sacred Earth creatures, including beloved and sacred human creatures, now constitutes the great global crime of planetary ECOCIDE and the great global sin of planetary BLASPHEMY! E. THE INTERWOVEN ECOLOGICAL-SOCIETAL-SPIRITUAL DYING OF THE MODERN WORLD For all the above reasons, the Modern World, including its maturation into Modern Industrial-Colonial Civilization, is now dying. And again, it is dying ecologically, societally, and spiritually. Further, as we have seen, that dying is itself only a small part of the much large dying of our loving Creator's beloved and sacred Biosphere of living creatures across our loving Creator's beloved and sacred garden planet Earth. Also, because the Modern Epicurean-Baconian Philosophical Cosmology portrays the Cosmos as devoid of Divine presence, modern bourgeois secularized elites have been tempted to idolatrize their modern anti-spiritual and anti-ecological ideologies by worshiping the false gods of Scientific Materialism -- like "Progress," or "Science," or "Technology," or "Efficiency," or the economic "Market," or the political "State," or even the dictatorial "Leader." Again, too many modern bourgeois elites, still following Modern Industrial Civilization's anti-spiritual and anti-ecological philosophical-cosmological misguidance, are busy techno-scientifically colonizing -- and in the process murdering -- our home-planet Earth's sacred Biosphere. Within that Biosphere, they are also busy colonizing our human bodies and now even our human consciousness. This tragic process clearly constitutes what the late great historical scholar Arnold Toynbee would probably agree is the terminal disintegration of Modern Industrial-Colonial Civilization. If that is true, will Toynbee's vision that there can arise a new generation of pioneering young mystical-spiritual elites come true? Will that new young generation of mystical-spiritual elites then open regenerative pathways to a fresh global civilization, which I will name our future Postmodern Ecological-Electronic Civilization. _____________________ To be continued in: PART II THE LOCAL-GLOBAL TRANSITION TO POSTMODERN ELECTRONIC-ECOLOGICAL CIVILIZATION (Coming soon!)
The above picture is "Sunrise over Earth" from Shutterstock / Muratart with NASA components.