One way to put the question that I want to answer here is this: why was it virtually impossible not to believe in God in, say, 1500 in our Western society, while in 2000 many of us find this not only easy, but even inescapable? Charles Taylor A Secular Age
Side effects isn't only a problem with drugs and pharmaceuticals. Being green has its side effects for example the new fluorescent energy saving bulbs contain heavy metals and require alternative disposal. The targets for the development of biofuels means diverting food and in particular grains and especially corn from human consumption to fuel production. This supposed trust in technology continues to frustrate me and is a residue of a human aspiration that human progress and technology will ultimately solve all problems. or perhaps even worse maybe humans are ostriches hiding their heads in the sand of denial of a problem.
Something a little more base has come up in our attempt to green things, fungi. In particular a Patagonian rainforest tree fungus naturally produces a mixture of chemicals that is remarkably similar to diesel. Not only that it doesn't use the valuable sugars and starches but cellulose which is that fibrous part of plants such as stalks and sawdust which we throw away. Strange it was more about going and finding than creating and having science or technology being involved. I suppose it is part of the older scientific tradition of collecting, observing and sampling - which is associated with wandering and wondering about the the world. I am reminded of the quotation attributed to Johannes Kepler.
"I was merely thinking God's thoughts after him. Since we astronomers are priests of the highest God in regard to the book of nature, it benefits us to be thoughtful, not of the glory of our minds, but rather, above all else, of the glory of God."Perhaps what we have essentially lost is our wonder. That the natural world can actually give a sense of awe and wonder. What went wrong? Why can't people find motivation to change their attitudes and lifestyles? Charles Taylor continues in A Secular Age:-
…the salient feature of the modern cosmic imaginary is not that it has fostered materialism, or enabled people to recover a spiritual outlook beyond materialism, to return as it were to religion, though it has done both these things. …it has opened a space in which people can wander between and around all these options without having to land clearly and definitively in any one.We're in real trouble, aren't we? The side effect of losing God and recovering a new spirituality is a new space and a new freedom. The trouble is we lost the freedom to think and the freedom to choose. Taylor see this as the Age of Authenticity where “each one of us has his/her own way of realizing our humanity, and that it is important to find and live out one’s own, as against surrendering to conformity with a model imposed on us from outside, by society, or the previous generation, or religious or political authority.” The rise of a new individualism and a new spirituality which is reactionary against traditional religion. Being true to oneself and authentically oneself in style and practice.
I'm left with wondering even my own spiritual practices are actually an expression of this movement in culture. Perhaps even yours or the abandonment of them? What can happen in our search for authenticity in this age of the individual self is lostness and the inability to truly commit. perhaps this is the source of my own acedia?
And now, O Israel, what does the LORD your God ask of you but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, Deut 10:12
