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The Determining Features of the Ecozoic Era

Thomas Berry

1. Earth is a communion of subjects not a collection of objects.

2. Earth exists and can survive only in its integral functioning. It cannot survive in fragments any more than any organism can survive in fragments. Yet, Earth is not a global sameness. It is a differentiated unity and must be sustained in the integrity and interrelations of its many bioregional modes of expression.

3. Earth is a one-time endowment. It is subject to irreversible dam-age in the major patterns of its functioning.

4. Earth is primary, the human is derivative. Earth must be the pri-mary concern of every human institution, profession, program and activity. In economics, for instance, the first law of economics must be the preservation of the Earth economy. A rising Gross National Product with a declining Gross Earth Product reveals the absurdity of our present economy. It should be clear, in the medical profession, that we cannot have healthy people on a sick planet.

5. The entire pattern of functioning of Earth is altered in the transi- tion from the Cenozoic to the Ecozoic Era. The major develop- ments of the Cenozoic took place entirely apart from any human intervention. In the Ecozoic the human will have a comprehen- sive influence on almost everything that happens. While the hu- man cannot make a blade of grass, there is [liable] not to be a blade of grass unless it is accepted, protected and fostered by the human. Our positive power of creativity in the natural life sys- tems is minimal, while our power of negating is immense.

6. Progress, to be valid, must include the entire Earth in all its com- ponent aspects. To designate human plundering of the planet as progress is an unbearable distortion.

7. The Ecozoic can come into existence only though an apprecia- tion of the feminine dimension of Earth, through a liberation of women from the oppressions and the constraints that they have endured in the past, and through the shared responsibility of both women and men for establishing an integral Earth community.

8. A new role exists for both science and technology in the Ecozoic period. Science must provide a more integral understanding of the functioning of Earth, and how human activity and Earth ac- tivity can be mutually enhancing. Our biological sciences espe- cially need to develop a “feel for the organism,” a greater sense of the ultimate subjectivities present in the various living beings of Earth. Our human technologies must become more coherent with the technologies of the natural world.

9. New ethical principles must emerge which recognize the absolute evils of biocide and geocide as well as the other evils concerned more directly with the human.

10. New religious sensitivities are needed that will recognize the sa- cred dimension of Earth and that will accept the natural world as the primary manifestation of the divine.

11. A new language, an Ecozoic language, is needed. Our language is radically inadequate. A new dictionary should be compiled with new definitions of existing words and an introduction of new words for the new modes of being and functioning that are emerging.

12. Psychologically all the archetypes of the collective unconscious attain a new validity and a new pattern of functioning, especially in our understanding of the symbols of the Tree of Life, the heroic journey, death and rebirth, the mandala and the Great Mother.

13. New developments can be expected in ritual, in all the arts, and in literature. In drama especially, extraordinary opportunities ex- ist in the monumental issues that are being worked out in these times. The conflicts that until now have been situated simply within the human drama are magnified considerably through the larger contours of conflict as these emerge in this stupendous transition from the terminal Cenozoic to the emerging Ecozoic. What we are dealing with is in epic dimensions beyond anything thus far expressed under this term.

14. Mitigation of the present ruinous situation, the recycling of mate- rials, the diminishment of consumption, the healing of damaged ecosystems—all this will be in vain if we do these things to make the present industrial systems acceptable. They must all be done, but in order to build a new order of things.

This text is from a 2004 handout by Thomas Berry maintained in the library of Santa Sabina Conference Center, San Rafael, California, 2004, except that Item 7 is from a similar list presented by Thomas Berry at an annual conference of the Center for Reflection on the Second Law held in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.