The historical mission of our times is to re-invent the human—at the species level, with critical reflection, within the community of life-systems, in a time-developmental context, by means of story and shared dream experience.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of redefining humanity through collective narrative and reflection to adapt to our evolving world.
Thomas Berry's quote speaks to the urgent need to rethink and reshape what it means to be human in the context of our current ecological and social challenges. He highlights the need for critical reflection and collective imagination, suggesting that through shared stories and dreams, we can forge a new path for humanity that acknowledges our interconnectedness within the broader community of life-systems.
In practice
In a community meeting focused on sustainability, this quote could inspire participants to rethink their roles as caretakers of the planet.
If the religious experience were simply some naive impression of the uninformed it would not have resulted in such intellectual insight, such spiritual exaltation, such spectacular religious ritual, or in the immense volume of song and poetry and literature and dance that humans have produced.
We might sometimes reflect and recall that the purpose of all our science, technology, industry, manufacturing, commerce, and finance is celebration, planetary celebration. This 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.
Diversity is the magic. It is the first manifestation, the first beginning of the differentiation of a thing and of simple identity. The greater the diversity, the greater the perfection.
Both education and religion need to ground themselves within the story of the universe as we now understand this story through empirical knowledge. Within this functional cosmology, we can overcome our alienation and begin the renewal of life on a sustainable basis. This story is a numinous revelatory story that could evoke the vision and the energy required to bring not only ourselves but the entire planet into a new order of magnificence.
If the outer world is diminished in its grandeur, then the emotional, imaginative, intellectual, and spiritual life of the human is diminished or extinguished. Without the soaring birds, the great forests, the sounds and coloration of the insects, the free-flowing streams, the flowering fields, the sight of clouds by day and the stars at night, we become impoverished in all that makes us human.
It's all a question of story. We are in trouble just now because we do not have a good story. We are in between stories. The old story, the account of how we fit into it, is no longer effective. Yet we have not learned the new story.
Have mountains, and waves, and skies, no significance but what we consciously give them, when we employ them as emblems of our thoughts?
I'm a capitalist. I believe in capitalism. But capitalism only works if you have safety nets to deal with people who are naturally left behind and brutalized by it.
One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
There's a metaphor Vincent Eades likes to use: "If you examine a butterfly according to the laws of aerodynamics, it shouldn't be able to fly. But the butterfly doesn't know that, so it flies.
It would be, in fact, very ominous if Iraq were to be able to get weapon-usable material, hydro-plutonium or highly enriched uranium from abroad.
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