{"id":67,"date":"2010-07-21T15:09:02","date_gmt":"2010-07-21T20:09:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ipsinaction.com\/ips\/?p=67"},"modified":"2024-06-20T15:47:50","modified_gmt":"2024-06-20T15:47:50","slug":"environmental-crisis-cosmic-opportunity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/ips\/?p=67","title":{"rendered":"Environmental Crisis, Cosmic Opportunity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.robertludwig.org\/2010\/2010\/07\/environmental-crisis-cosmic-opportunity\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-68\" style=\"border: 1px solid black;margin-right: 4px\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ipsinaction.com\/ips\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/EL_Snap_Drive.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"199\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/luc.edu\/ips\/About_facultystaffLudwig.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Robert Ludwig<br \/>\n<\/a> <\/em><\/p>\n<p>Perhaps the single most important spiritual issue of our time emerges  in the global ecological crisis we face. The vast devastation that  human beings have visited on the Earth in modernity poses profound  threats to the survival of all life forms on the planet. Pollution of  the land, air, and water has introduced life-threatening toxins into the  food-chain and our bodies.\u00a0 Depletion of the protective ozone, global  warming, alarming increments in human population growth, and the killing  off of millions of plant and animal species\u2013all of these suggest a grim  future devoid of natural aesthetics and a radically diminished  existence, if, indeed, we can survive at all. The source of these  problems is not superficial. It has to do with our self-understanding  and our relationship to the natural world. We are alienated from nature,  estranged from the elegant magnificence which is all about us and  within us. Growing awareness of this alienation and estrangement  challenges our fundamental meanings and values.<\/p>\n<p>We need to stand back from the present crisis and assess why things  are so amiss. What are the underlying reasons for today\u2019s threatening  situation? The answer, of course, is the human species. We are what has  thrown the natural world into such imbalance. But is the human species  intrinsically the problem? Are we a mistake of nature, inevitably drawn  to behaviors which are destructive to the planet as a whole? A closer  look suggests that the underlying problem is not the human species as  such, but the human species of the past 200 years\u2013and more precisely,  the human species in the Western hemisphere and north of the equator  during the past 200 years. It is modern Eurocentered humanity that has  plundered nature and wrought such destruction to the planet.<\/p>\n<p>Thomas Berry suggests that the underlying problem is twofold:  otherworldly religion and controlling science\u2013religion that denigrates  the natural world and sees it as at best neutral and at worst our  spiritual enemy; and science as conquest which seeks to conquer and  subjugate the world of nature. Transcending nature through religion and  overcoming nature through science\u2013these prevailing attitudes combine to  create a human species which devastates the natural world, perceiving  itself as separate from, and even alien to, nature.\u00a0 Clearly, it is our  understanding and perception that must change.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.robertludwig.org\/2010\/2010\/07\/environmental-crisis-cosmic-opportunity\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read More&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Robert Ludwig Perhaps the single most important spiritual issue of our time emerges in the global ecological crisis we face. The vast devastation that human beings have visited on the Earth in modernity poses profound threats to the survival of all life forms on the planet. Pollution of the land, air, and water has introduced <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/ips\/?p=67\"> read more <span class=\"meta-nav\"><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/ips\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/ips\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/ips\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/ips\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/ips\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=67"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/ips\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4899,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/ips\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67\/revisions\/4899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/ips\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=67"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/ips\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=67"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/ips\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=67"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}