Ecology, politics and religion

Interesting books:

Evening thoughts, Reflecting on Earth as Sacred Community by Thomas Berry, 2006 (one of the leading environmental thinkers in North America, see www.thomasberry.org)

"It is hardly possible for the political function of the United Nations to be achieved when there is a profound disillusionment with the human process itself because of a lack of satisfaction or of an adequate life orientation. When human existence itself has lost all meaning, then the political function cannot have any serious significance or any effective power or any sustained direction. Especially at this time of personal enervation, of political instability, of economic hardship, and of ecological peril, it is important to recall those ancient visions that still provide for many humans a basic life meaning." ( p. 130)

The New Science of Giambattista Vico (Ithaca, N.Y.:Cornell University Press, 1970)

According to Berry we are in a time of "barbarism of reflection", here is his thoughts expressed through the writings of Vico:

"Such people, like so many beasts, have fallen into the custom of each man thinking only of his own private interests and have reached the extreme of delicacy, or better pride, in which like wild animals they bristle and lash out at the slightest displeasure. Thus no matter how great the throng and press of their bodies, they live like wild beasts in a deep solitude of spirit and will". (p.381)


"Influenced by Vico, then, Berry has developed a comprehensive historical perspective in periodization, an understanding of the depths of contemporary barbarism, and the need for a new mythic wisdom to extract ourselves from our cultural pathology and alienation. Berry has described contemporary alienation as being especially pervasive due to the power of the technological trance, the myth of progress, and our own autism in relation to nature. With the New Story and the Dream of the Earth, Berry hopes to overcome that alienation and evoke the energies needed to create a viable and sustainable future." Mary Evelyn Tucker commenting Berry.