{"id":7489,"date":"2021-07-14T00:10:00","date_gmt":"2021-07-13T22:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/?p=7489"},"modified":"2021-07-19T23:14:34","modified_gmt":"2021-07-19T21:14:34","slug":"thomas-berry-univerzita-%e2%80%95-o-transformaci-vzdelavani-pro-ekozoickou-dobu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/thomas-berry-univerzita-%e2%80%95-o-transformaci-vzdelavani-pro-ekozoickou-dobu\/","title":{"rendered":"Thomas Berry: University \u2013 about transformation<\/nobr> education for the ecozoic era"},"content":{"rendered":"

American cultural historian, cosmologist, advocate, and Earth spokesman Thomas Berry (1914-2009) was one of the most far-sighted ecological thinkers of the 20th century. In his book The Great Work - Our Way into Future<\/em> ( 1999 \/Great Work \u2013 Our Journey into the Future<\/em>) urges us to renew our intimate connection with the Earth and create a new ecologically sensitive civilization based on one Earth community, which will strive for the mutual benefit of both us and the planet, rather than its continued devastation. This is the seventh chapter, \u201cThe University,\u201d of Berry\u2019s book, which is being published in Czech by Malvern Publishing. Translated by Ji\u0159\u00ed Zem\u00e1nek and David Sanetrn\u00edk.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cUniversities must decide whether to continue educating people for temporary survival in the declining Cenozoic era or to begin educating students for the emerging Ecozoic. The planet is already so damaged and the future so threatened by a growing human population that the conditions for survival in the years ahead will be far more difficult than those we have known in the past. \u2026 However, this is not the time for further denial by universities or further <\/em>"blaming universities. It's time for universities to reevaluate themselves and what they do."<\/p>Thomas Berry<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The university plays a major role in directing and implementing the \u201cgreat work.\u201d It seems appropriate, therefore, to reflect a little on the problems that universities face. <\/strong>have experienced recently and on what directions they could take in fulfilling their role in the 21st century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The university can be considered one of the four fundamental institutions that significantly determine the functioning of human life: government, religious traditions, the university, and commercial and industrial corporations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, these four types of institutions fail to fulfill their basic purpose for the same reason. They all assume that there is a radical discontinuity between nonhuman and human modes of being and that all rights and all fundamental values are given only to man. The nonhuman world is seen as having no fundamental rights or fundamental values. All fundamental realities and values are identified with human values. Nonhuman modes of being acquire their reality and value only through their utility to man. It is this attitude that has led man to a devastating attack on the nonhuman world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earlier human traditions experienced a deeply intimate relationship with the natural world in all its living forms, and even experienced a profound spiritual exaltation in the religious-spiritual experience of natural phenomena. From this intimate relationship of earlier people with the natural world we have moved into the situation of alienation of modern civilization. If any aesthetic appreciation of the natural world remains, it rarely has the depth of meaning that we experienced in those earlier times. Yet this participation in the natural world appears with extraordinary power and insight in such figures as Henry David Thoreau and John Muir, and in many other writers who wrote about nature in the 20th century. For example, Aldo Leopold, Loren Eiseley, Edward Abbey, Edward Hoagland, Brenda Peterson, Barry Lopez, Terry Tempest Williams, Gary Snyder, David Rains Wallace, Annie Dillard, David Suzuki, Farley Mowat, and many others too numerous to list here. But these writers play no role in shaping the basic direction of contemporary universities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As universities operate today, they prepare students for their role in expanding human domination over the natural world, not for developing an intimate relationship with it. The harmful use of this power has devastated the planet. Suddenly we find ourselves losing some of our most noble human experiences, which come to us through participation in the natural world. The devastation we have wrought is so appalling that we can only conclude that we are stuck in a severe cultural disorientation, one that is intellectually maintained by universities, economically by corporations, legally by the Constitution, and spiritually by religious institutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Universities should examine their own contribution to our current problems. Some of our most able biologists, such as EO Wilson, Niles Eldredge, and Norman Myers, who have developed a comprehensive understanding of the planet's biosystems, tell us that the comparable devastation of Earth's life systems that is occurring today has not occurred since the end of the Mesozoic Era some 65 million years ago.1<\/a><\/sup>Edward Osborne Wilson. Biodiversity<\/em> (National Academy Press, Washington DC 1988).<\/span>. What is happening today cannot be compared to any other historical change or to any other cultural transition, such as the transition from the classical Mediterranean period to the Middle Ages in Europe, or the transition from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment. Nor can the transition from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic in our cultural development be compared to what is happening right now. Because we are not only changing the human world, we are also changing the chemistry of the planet and even its geological structure and its overall functioning. We are disrupting the atmosphere, the hydrosphere, and the geosphere in a way that is destroying the work of nature over hundreds of millions of years, even billions of years. <\/strong>The genetic strains we wiped out will never return.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is no space here to assess the full extent of the disruption of the planet that has occurred. However, it is worth noting that the separation of the human economy from the Earth's economy in particular has had extremely disastrous consequences. The increase in the gross human product is undoubtedly at odds with the current decline in the gross product of the Earth. Preserving the integrity of the Earth's economy should be the first goal of any of our economic programs. Yet until recently it was difficult to find a university that taught this first principle of economics. It is strange to witness people moving from suicide, murder, and genocide to biocide and geocide, led by the false idea that they are improving human conditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This devastation of the natural world is not only the result of an industrial economy that is willing to ruin the entire planet for financial gain or for the so-called improvement of human conditions. It is also due to the American Constitution, which guarantees people participation in government, personal freedom, and the right to own and dispose of property as they wish, without any legal protection for the natural world. The jurisprudence that supports such a constitution is completely inadequate. It provides no basis for the functioning of the planet as an integral community that includes all its human and nonhuman components. Only a jurisprudence that is based on the concern for an integral earthly community is capable of keeping the planet viable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This legal status of rights for natural modes of being is especially needed today, when man has acquired such extensive power over the functioning of the planet. As long as the American Constitution, in its present form and interpretation, is our main guide in legal matters, we will never achieve equitable treatment of natural modes of being on this continent. Several steps have already been taken within the great community of nations to remedy this situation. The most impressive is the World Charter for Nature, which was approved in 1982 by the United Nations General Assembly.2<\/a><\/sup>The World Charter for Nature proclaims five principles of conservation that should guide and assess all human behavior affecting nature: 1\/ Nature must be respected and its processes must not be disturbed; 2\/ Genetic viability on Earth must not be threatened; 3\/ All terrestrial and marine areas are subject to these principles of conservation; 4\/ Ecosystems and organisms, as well as soil, marine and atmospheric resources used by humans, must be managed in such a way as to achieve optimal sustainable productivity that does not threaten the integrity of other ecosystems and species; 5\/ Nature must be protected against degradation caused by warfare or other hostile activities.<\/span>. <\/strong>This charter clearly states that \u201cEvery form of life is unique and deserves respect, regardless of its value.\u201d <\/strong>for humans; for all organisms to receive such recognition, humans must follow a moral code of conduct.\u201d A similar position is expressed in the Earth Charter, which was prepared for presentation to the UN in 20023<\/a><\/sup>The first written draft of the Earth Charter was presented at the UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The civic process of creating this international document, which involved more than 100,000 people from all over the world and 5,000 experts from all fields, took place between 1994 and 2000. The final text of the Earth Charter was publicly released at a special ceremony at the Peace Palace in The Hague on June 29, 2000. Today, the Earth Charter initiative is based and operates in San Jos\u00e9, Costa Rica. See www.earthcharter.org<\/a> .<\/span>It is a comprehensive document that seeks to connect social justice and sustainable development issues with environmental issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Religious institutions also have serious shortcomings in not teaching more effectively that the natural world is our primary experience of revelation. The emphasis on verbal revelation, which overlooks the manifestation of the divine in the natural world, leads to a misunderstanding of the entire process of revelation. Added to this is the overemphasis in Western religious traditions on the processes of salvation, which neglects the processes of creation and prevents us from religiously benefiting from this primary and most profound way of experiencing the divine in immediate life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Awareness of this need for greater religious interest in environmental issues led to a series of ten conferences on the relationship of various religious traditions to the environment, held at Harvard University from 1996 to 1999. This remarkable series of conferences brought together some eight hundred scholars and followers of the world's religions to reflect on the practical and theoretical resources of individual religious traditions for developing mutually enriching relationships between people and the Earth.4<\/a><\/sup>This conference series, entitled The Religions of the World and Ecology, was organized by Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim at the Center for the Study of World Religions (CSWR) at Harvard Divinity School.<\/span>The lectures from this conference were published by Harvard University Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I mention economics, law, and religion because they are among the subjects taught in our colleges and universities. Unfortunately, these subjects are not presented in their entirety here, because these disciplines hold the view that the non-human world is essentially there to be used by humans, whether economically, aesthetically, recreationally, or for spiritual purposes. For this reason, universities are one of the mainstays of the pathology that is so destructive to the planet today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a result of this basic attitude, we believe that the more we exploit the world around us, the more progress we make toward some higher state of being. The idea that by exploiting the natural world we will reach a kind of otherworldly status has driven us to strive even harder to achieve this goal. The ideal is to extract as many natural resources as possible, process them, rush them through the consumer economy as quickly as possible, and then dump them in landfills. We consider this progress \u2013 even though today a vast accumulation of garbage floods the landscape, seeps into the air, and fills the oceans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is important to note, however, that four major movements have emerged that are resisting this trend. In the field of economics, the Society for Ecological Economics, founded by Herman Daly and Robert Costanza. In the field of law, the Earth Charter emerged as a basis for recognizing the entire vast earthly community. In the field of religion, the aforementioned three-year series of conferences at Harvard University gave rise to5<\/a><\/sup>See note 63.<\/span> The Forum on Religion and Ecology, which explores different perspectives on nature in religious traditions around the world. And in the field of education, the Tailloires Declaration, which has become an impetus for the greening of universities and encouraged universities and their leaders to start incorporating sustainable practices into their teaching.6<\/a><\/sup>The Tailloires Declaration is the outcome of a conference convened in 1990 by Jean Mayer, President of Tufts University, in the French town of Tailloires. It represents a commitment by a total of 22 universities to be world leaders in the development and promotion of sustainability in higher education. To date, more than 500 universities from 55 countries have signed up to this commitment.<\/span>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet there is still a deep source of trouble in the universities. It lies in what is called the humanities or liberal studies. These supposedly, humanistic scholars tell us, allow for the expansion of a truly human quality of life. However, this concentration of value on man to such an extent distorts his place and role in the structure and functioning of the universe. We fail to realize that while the various parts of the universe exist for each other, they all exist primarily for the integrity of the universe. Man, too, however magnificent in himself, exists more through the integrity of the universe and through the earth than they exist through man. Man is indeed dependent on the larger universe for his life, his functioning, and his self-realization. Within the order of the universe, planet earth provides the effective, irreversible material and formal conditions that bring man to life, sustain him in his existence, and lead him to fulfillment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The primacy of the universe over every part of the universe and the primacy of the earth over every part of the earth had previously been recognized in our Western religious and cosmological tradition. The sacred community is primarily a cosmic community, not a human community. Whatever the shortcomings of medieval theological thought, it was clear that the primary value was the entire universe. Man belongs entirely to the order of creation as part of a larger integral whole. As Thomas Aquinas, the most important medieval theologian, pointed out, \u201cthe order of the universe represents the highest and most sublime perfection within the framework of all things.\u201d7<\/a><\/sup>Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles<\/em> (University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame 1955, book 2, chap. 46). In Czech: Summa Against the Pagans II<\/em> (Cyril-Methodist Matrix, Olomouc 1992). Summa Against the Pagans <\/em>was written by Thomas Aquinas for missionaries working among Jews and Muslims as an encyclopedic theological handbook and defense of the Christian church. Its second part, "The World and Its Creation by God," deals with the characteristic qualities of God towards the Earth, as well as his omnipotence.<\/span>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even in a traditional theological context, one could say that <\/strong>What is done by God within the order of creation has within it, from the perspective of its highest purpose, the brilliance of the whole, not the brilliance of any individual part of the whole. <\/em>Only the whole has any integral meaning. Even the incarnation and salvation, as presented within the Christian tradition, must be understood primarily as the good of the universe, even though they have a certain immediate relationship to man. As was said at the time: "The whole universe participates together in the divine goodness and represents it better than any single being."8<\/a><\/sup>Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica<\/em> (Benzinger Brothers, New York 1946; question 46, article 1.). In Czech: Theological Summa<\/em> (ed. P. Emili\u00e1n Soukup Ord. Praed., published by the Professors of the Theological Seminary of the Dominican Order in Olomouc in 1937).<\/span>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The historical break with this tradition occurred at the time of the great plague, known as the Black Death, which struck Europe in 1347-1349.9<\/a><\/sup>The Black Death epidemic swept across Eurasia in the mid-14th century. It was a deadly disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. The disease originated in Central Asia. It was first recorded in Constantinople in 1347 and gradually spread to virtually all of present-day Europe. This first pan-European plague epidemic killed 25 million people, or about one-third of the population of Europe at the time.<\/span>It was a traumatic moment for the Western world. Its result was a deep aversion to the natural world that has profoundly influenced and continues to influence Western cultural tradition ever since.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This aversion reached its highest point at the beginning of the 17th century with Ren\u00e9 Descartes. Descartes in a very real sense of the Earth soulless<\/em> by dividing reality into the realm of the mind (thinking thing<\/em>) and the world of bodies (res ecstasy<\/em>). Within this perspective, the non-human world was understood simply as a mechanism. But it was a mechanism that could be and even must be used for the benefit of man.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Six centuries after the Great Plague and more than three centuries since Descartes, Western society has grown increasingly disinclined to engage in any intimate relationship with the natural world, except during the Romantic period of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Scientists have insisted with increasing vehemence, until recently, that the universe can be understood only as the random action of tiny particles, without any orientation or meaning. It is quite right that we should have resisted such an interpretation of our own discoveries by scientists. It is deeply regrettable that we have allowed scientists to instill in us such a profound distrust of the natural world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We should be able to offer our own interpretation of scientific discoveries. It should be clear to us that our empirical investigation of the structure and workings of the universe has revealed a magnificent world that surpasses anything we have ever been able to contemplate or dream of. Any reasonable response to these discoveries is admiration, wonder, and even a certain foreboding of the deeper mysteries contained in such an overwhelming reality. We might even consider that the emerging evolutionary universe offers us a new experience of revelation in the sequence of its unfolding, whatever the beginning from which it arose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We do not need a telescope, a microscope, or scientific analysis for this experience. Yet with these very instruments, which have allowed us to approach the universe intimately, we have arrived at a new understanding of the sequence of changes through which the evolutionary process has passed until it has become what we observe today. If religious experience were merely the naive impression of uninformed people, it could not have led to such high intellectual understanding, to such spiritual exaltation, to such admirable religious ceremonies, or to such a vast amount of song, poetry, literature, and dance that humans have produced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, there seem to be few in whom the sight of the stars, the ocean, the singing and flying of birds, the perfect forms and activities of various species of animals, or the wonderful vistas of mountains, rivers, and valleys does not evoke a certain sense of inner spontaneity, of a guiding principle, of a consciousness of a transmaterial presence, manifesting itself throughout the entire material incarnation; a sense of a guiding principle that can be observed in every living being and that allows all the complexity of DNA in the genetic process to function in some coherent way. Although we cannot perceive this principle with any of our senses or express it in any equation, our immediate perception tells us that there is a certain unifying principle in the acorn that allows the complex components of the oak tree's genetic code to function as a single unit - to send roots down into the soil, to raise the trunk up, to spread branches sideways, to sprout and develop leaves, and to form seeds, and then to nourish all of this with hectoliters of water and many tons of minerals, pumped from the earth and distributed throughout this living system. That this enormous complexity of functioning should have some unifying principle, traditionally known as the "soul" of the organism, is immediately obvious to human intelligence. Since there is no occasion here to argue for a psychic, spiritual, or mental dimension to a living organism, I will only suggest that my generation has become an autistic generation as a result of its inability to establish an intimate relationship with the natural world. This mental deficit has brought us to the terminal phase of the Cenozoic Era in the geobiological history of Earth's evolution. We now need to figure out how we can break free from this alienation and how we can arrive at a more viable way of relating to the natural world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I believe that religions are too pharisaical, corporations too greedy for profit, and governments too servile to be able to provide any adequate remedy in this regard. However, universities should have the knowledge and independence and should provide the leadership that the human community needs. Universities should also have the critical capacity and the ability to influence other professions and other activities of society. Universities have a special connection with the younger generation that is necessary to reorient the human community to a greater understanding that man can live, survive, and become whole only within the one great community of planet Earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the main pathology that led to the end of the Cenozoic is the radical discontinuity that has arisen between the human and the nonhuman, then the restoration of life on the planet must rely on the continuity between the human and the nonhuman as one integral community. Once this continuity is recognized and accepted, then we will have fulfilled the fundamental condition that will allow humans to be present on Earth in a way that is mutually beneficial to both them and the Earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this new context, each part of the earthly community should have its rights in accordance with its appropriate way of being and its functional role. The fundamental rights are in any case the right to habitat and the right for every being to have the opportunity to fulfill its role in the natural system to which it belongs. People would be obliged to respect these rights. If in the 18th century, when the American Constitution was being drafted, such interests were not the subject of discussion, today they must be the central topic of any discussion about the legal framework of our society. It is a critical mission of the law faculties of our universities to deal with these questions in depth, which unfortunately has not yet been manifested.. <\/strong><\/em>It seems that a much broader base is opening up for legal science today. The initial step in this direction was taken by Justice William O. Douglas in his book A Wilderness Bill of Rights<\/em>), which was published in 196510<\/a><\/sup>William O. Douglas. A Wilderness Bill of Rights<\/em> (Little, Brown, Boston 1965).<\/span>We find in it a remarkable confirmation of the need to create a legal status for the natural world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this new context, the sense of community would extend beyond the Earth to the entire universe, understood as one single cohesive community that emerged into being with the complete dependence of each of its parts on all the other parts. Indeed, we must consider the universe as the highest level of reality and value in whose context all the parts of the universe participate, each in accordance with its own role. In this framework, the universe becomes the primal university, as well as the primal lawgiver, the primal economic corporation, the primal scientist, the primal technologist, the primal healer, the primal revelation of the divine, the primal artist, the primal teacher, and indeed the primal source and model and ultimate destiny in all earthly affairs. Throughout our entire human intellectual development, we have always been completely dependent on what the universe tells us\u2014in that early phase through direct observation, and in this later phase through all the observational instruments we have invented for that purpose. With these instruments we enter deeply into the most hidden realms of phenomenal existence, while at the same time these hidden realms enter into our own minds. It is a reciprocal relationship. We are touched by what we touch. We are shaped by what we shape. We are enriched by what we enrich.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The human university would be a context in which the universe reflects itself in human intelligence and communicates with the human community. The university would have the universe as its initial, affirming, and unifying frame of reference. Because the universe is an ever-emerging reality, it would be understood primarily through its story. Education at all levels would be conceived as learning about the story of the universe and our human role in that story. The story of the universe would be a core course in every college or university.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This story can only fulfill its role if we understand that the universe has had a psychic-spiritual as well as a physical-material aspect from the very beginning. This should not be difficult, since we recognize what this \u201csomething\u201d is by its appearance and by what it does. We recognize the thrush by the variety of its song, by its size, by the slate-gray color of its plumage, by the white patches on its wings, and also by its white tail feathers. Since the universe brings us to life with all our knowledge and artistic and cultural skills, it must therefore be a process that creates intelligence, aesthetics, and relationships of intimate reciprocity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These qualities that we associate with man are also qualities that we find throughout the natural world. Even at the level of the elements, we observe self-organizing capacities, including the ability to form intimate relationships. All this testifies to incredible psychic possibilities, so impressive that it forces us to consider that modes of consciousness exist throughout the universe in an immense number of qualitatively diverse manifestations. Above all, we discover that each being has its own spontaneity that arises from the depths of its own being. This spontaneity expresses the intrinsic value of each being in such a way that we must say that the universe is a community of subjects, not a collection of objects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is in this intimate relationship with the entire universe that we overcome the mental fixation of our time, expressed in the radical separation we make between the human and the non-human. This fixation, which I have described as man's callous relationship to the natural world, is healed at its deepest roots once we realize that the entire universe is composed of subjects to be interacted with, not primarily objects to be exploited. This experience of community is, I believe, universal. It can be observed in the immediate reaction of almost anyone who simply looks at the ocean at sunrise or sunset, or at the night sky with all its shining stars, or in the reaction of those who enter the wilderness with its terrifying and breathtaking aspects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At every stage of our imaginative, aesthetic, and emotional lives, we are profoundly dependent on this larger context of the world that surrounds us. There is no inner life without the experience of the outer world. The tragedy of deforestation is not the economic loss, but the loss of the soul that goes with it. For in doing so we deprive our imagination, our emotions, and even our intellect of the overwhelming experience that wilderness has to offer. Children who live only in contact with concrete and steel, with wires, wheels, and machines, with computers and plastics, who rarely experience any primal reality or even see the stars at night, suffer a spiritual deprivation that prevents them from experiencing the deepest of their human experiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I propose here that universities teach the story of the universe as we know it today. Because the story of the universe is our own story. We cannot adequately know ourselves except through an account of the transformations of the universe and planet Earth that brought us into being. This new story of the universe is our personal story, as much as it is the story of our community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From a perception of time in which the universe simply revolves in ever-renewing cycles of the seasons, we have now arrived at a universe that has emerged into being through a series of irreversible transformations, even as it simultaneously circles in an ever-renewing succession of seasonal changes. Our greatest and most personal need is to embrace this story of the universe as we now know it as our sacred story. It could be considered the grandest of all creation stories. This story in no way diminishes the previous story we have thanks to the book of Genesis\u2014a story that related to the ancient Mesopotamian accounts of the creation of the universe\u2014but rather amplifies it. We have arrived at this new story of ours in a more empirical way, using new observational tools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today we recognize ourselves as genetically related to all other living beings in the universe. Only through this story are we able to overcome our alienation from the natural world around us in some integral way. We are finally able to understand why our own well-being is dependent on the well-being of the Earth. Even though we realize this with such depth of understanding today, it is still difficult for us to re-evaluate economics, law, religion, and education within this new scientific context. Our universities seem to be stuck in a fixed idea from which they are unable to escape, even as it is becoming clear that earlier cultural forms cannot prevent the devastation of the planet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Existing cultural forms remain apparently the only context for survival that our universities are able to recognize. However, the problem lies not so much in the cultural forms themselves as in the failure to broaden the understanding of how these cultural forms function in this new context. The difficulty also lies in the misunderstanding or overemphasis of some phases of these cultural forms\u2014for example, in religion, the emphasis on redemption that leads to the neglect of creation. And also in our failure to understand that these earlier cultural forms will enter a broader phase of their existence in the new context than they have ever known in previous times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The urgency of transitioning to a new situation would not be so great if the devastation of the planet were not so overwhelming. As long as we live, as long as we have our values and educate ourselves in this previous context, we will not be able to reach a deeper understanding with those who already have this new understanding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although our universities have undergone many transformations since their inception in the early Middle Ages, they have never experienced anything like the transition that is being demanded of them right now. This problem cannot be solved by simply creating an ecology course or program, because ecology is not a course or a program. Rather, it is the foundation of all courses, all programs, and all professions, because ecology is a functional cosmology. Ecology is not part of medicine, medicine is an extension of ecology. Ecology is not part of law, law is a superstructure of ecology. And the same \u2013 taking into account their specificities, of course \u2013 can be said of economics and even of the humanities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There have been periods in history when theology has dominated Western universities as the queen of sciences. There have been times when humanistic interests have ruled universities. There have been times when universities have been dominated by mechanistic sciences, engineering, or commerce. This new situation requires universities to find their main interest in a functional cosmology. Such a functional cosmology, however, can only exist in universities where the spiritual dimension of the universe is recognized as well as its physical dimension.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The transformation of human life that is implied in this transition from the Cenozoic to the Ecozoic era affects our sense of reality and values so profoundly that it can only be compared to the great classical religious movements of the past. It affects our perception of the origin and meaning of existence itself. Perhaps it could be considered a meta-religious movement, because it concerns not just one segment of human society, but the entire human society. It even transcends the human order and encompasses the entire geobiological order of the planet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this opening period of the third millennium, we will have to make fundamental decisions at every stage of our lives. The most immediate decision will be whether any of our fundamental institutions\u2014government, religious organizations, universities, or businesses\u2014can moderate their strong inclination toward the terminal phase of the Cenozoic, or whether any of these institutions, or all of them, can effect this change in its full scope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Universities must decide whether to continue to educate people for temporary survival in the declining Cenozoic era or to begin educating students for the emerging Ecozoic. The planet is already so damaged and the future so threatened by a growing human population that the conditions for survival in the years ahead will be far more difficult than those we have known in the past. We did not think clearly or behave correctly in the 20th century, and today we are caught in a painful split mind. We have such vast knowledge of the universe and its workings, and yet we show such an inability to use that knowledge to benefit ourselves or any other mode of earthly existence. However, this is not the time for further denial by universities or for blaming universities. It is time for universities to reevaluate themselves and what they do.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

American cultural historian, cosmologist, advocate, and Earth spokesman Thomas Berry (1914-2009) was one of the most far-sighted environmental thinkers of the 20th century. In his book The Great Work \u2013 Our Way into Future (1999), he urges us to renew our intimate connection with the Earth and create a new ecologically sensitive civilization based on\u2026 Continue reading Thomas Berry: University \u2013 about transformation<\/nobr> education for the ecozoic era<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7490,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[59,44],"class_list":["post-7489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-texty","tag-preklady","tag-thomas-berry","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7489"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7551,"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7489\/revisions\/7551"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}