| Page(s) | Quote | Keywords |
|---|
| 69 |
We might sometimes reflect and recall that the purpose of all our science, technology, industry, manufacturing, commerce, and all finance is celebration, planetary celebration. That is what moves the stars through the heavens and the earth through its seasons. The final norm of judgment concerning the success or failure of our technologies is the extent to which they enable us to participate more fully in this grand festival. |
religion spirituality |
| 76 |
[Our] mythic commitment to continuing economic growth is such that none of our major newspapers or newsweeklies considers having an ecological section equivalent to the sports section or the financial section or the comic section or the entertainment section, although ecological issues are more important than any of those, even more important than the daily national and international political news. The real history that is being made is interspecies and human-earth history, not nation or internation history. The real threat is from the retaliatory powers of the abused earth, not from other nations. |
ecology |
| 115 |
Just as the doctrine of divine transcendence took away the pervasive divine presence to the natural world, so the millennial vision of a blessed future left all present modes of existence in a degraded status. All things were in an unholy condition. Everything needed to be transformed. This meant that anything unused was to be used if the very purpose of its existence was to be realized. Nothing in its natural state was acceptable. |
ecology Fundamentalism Christianity theology |
| 134 |
It is clear that the primordial intention of the universe is to produce variety in all things, from atomic structures to the living world of plant and animal forms, to the appearance of humans, where individuals differ from one another more extensively than in any other realm of known reality. This difference can be seen not only in individuals, but also in social structures and in historical periods of our development. |
ecology cosmology sociology |
| 167 |
The earth is our best model for any commercial venture. It carries out its operations with an economy and a productivity far beyond that of human institutions. It also runs its system with a minimum of entropy. There is in nature none of that sterile or toxic waste or nondecomposing litter such as is made by humans. |
ecology economics design permaculture |
| 199 |
We can recognize the earth as a privileged planet and see the whole as evolving out of some cosmic imaginative process. Any significant thought or speech about the universe finds its expression through such imaginative powers. Even our scientific terms have a highly mythic content -- such words as energy, life, matter, form, universe, gravitation, evolution. Even such terms as atom, nucleus, electron, molecule, cell, organism. Each of these terms spills over into metaphor and mystery as soon as it is taken seriously. |
cosmology science philosophy |
| 206 |
When the absurdity of progress through exponential growth was indicated a few years ago in a work entitled The Limits to Growth, a general outcry could be heard across the country. That outcry was more than a justified criticism of the specific data or the time scale of future events. It was resentment against the indication that the dynamism of our consumer society was the supreme pathology of all history. ... the change that is taking place in the present is not simply another historical transition or another cultural transformation. Its order of magnitude is immensely more significant in its nature and in its consequences. We are indeed closing down the major life systems of the planet. |
ecology economics |
| 209 |
These consequences [of our attitude that we are too good for the natural world] are now becoming manifest. The day of reckoning has come. In this disintegrating phase of our industrial society, we now see ourselves not as the splendor of creation, but as the most pernicious mode of earthly being. We are the termination, not the fulfillment of the earth process. If there were a parliament of creatures, its first decision might well be to vote the humans out of the community, too deadly a presence to tolerate any further. We are the affliction of the world, its demonic presence. We are the violation of earth's most sacred aspects. |
ecology economics doomsday |
