Sublime

I hope to persuade you of a more ancient yet also more optimistic doctrine: that our collective social life, as with so many rhythmic systems in nature, requires seasons of sudden change and radical uncertainty in order for us to thrive over time. Or, to paraphrase Blaise Pascal: History has reasons that reason knows nothing of.

. . . a steep winding-down of the size of the industrial economy. It strips away its burdens and complications, nurses the human ecology back to health, builds local competence and discovers a sense of place. . . . This is managed descent. . . . The shock is as gentle and as survivable as foresight can make

Even as we discern the imminent danger to ourselves, we seem unable to locate any exit from the hall of mirrors, so thoroughly transfixed have we become by our own reflections.

In the garden, appearances are lush. Everything seems as if it is freely given, originating from some hidden, mysterious source. That is why in literature, they are often sites of epiphanies – spiritual or erotic or otherwise – gateways to other worlds or orders of being.

theologian Thomas Berry, this model identifies the anthropocentric bias of existing legal structures as it seeks more equitable remedies for both people and ecosystems. The Center for Earth Jurisprudence

A world in which the environment itself was dominant, an ecological world, is of much longer duration and, despite the thoughtless exercise of our power, has never gone away. Indeed, the tumult in which we find ourselves today might be considered its violent reassertion.