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Is Nothing Sacred?

ladyinwhite's picture

Is Nothing Sacred? - The Divorce of the Study of Nature from the Sacred and the Spiritual

What is the earth? who is the earth?

what is ecological intelligence? - what is ecology? what is intelligence?

How can we feel the impact of our actions?

How do we truly understand our dynamic relationship with the earth?

We have reached the period of classification, and the secularist point of view has taken charge of study. It has crept up, slow by surely since the 17th century, following the Galileo trials. Galileo’s controversy regarding the heliocentric model of the solar system ended with the Catholic Church’s decision to have nothing to do with the cosmos. This parting has taken shape, culminating to a modernist’s view, divorcing the study of nature from the sacred and the spiritual. 

Our system of understanding has yielded the environmental crisis. It is not merely the scientific aspect that is to blame – it is the paring of science with capitalism. Technology is a tool – it canbe used for good or bad. In hand with capitalism, it’s dangerous. 

 

 

Comments

Anne Dalke's picture

so much to go on exploring here, ladyinwhite--as you say elsewhere, the "multidimensionality of carrying forward" involves more than material terms....and i am liking it very much that, in your last two papers, you figured this visually as well as verbally....

we have spoken very little, this term together, of the sacred. i would like to speak more with you about this, and also about how "carrying forward" means "going back" ... is this different (or not?) from what Bowers calls for, in reclaiming traditional practices and beliefs...? de-sacralizing science, practicing religion, rather than secularing its study...?

i am glad to know that you that will be doing your "little part by researching, interviewing, reflecting, seeking, questioning—always moving, always doing." me, too.

more later,

a.