Thoughts for the Day: Saturday 4 September 2021

2018 publication more important than ever

 

Encyclical on Climate Change and Inequality

Pope Francis

[78.] Judaeo-Christian thought demythologized nature. While continuing to admire its grandeur and immensity, it no longer saw nature as divine. In doing so, it emphasizes all the more our human responsibility for nature. This rediscovery of nature can never be at the cost of the freedom and responsibility of human beings who, as part of the world, have the duty to cultivate their abilities in order to protect it and develop its potential. If we acknowledge the value and the fragility of nature and, at the same time, our God-given abilities, we can finally leave behind the modern myth of unlimited material progress. A fragile world, entrusted by God to human care, challenges us to devise intelligent ways of directing, developing and limiting our power.

79. In this universe, shaped by open and intercommunicating systems, we can discern countless forms of relationship and participation. This leads us to think of the whole as open to God’s transcendence, within which it develops. Faith allows us to interpret the meaning and the mysterious beauty of what is unfolding. We are free to apply our intelligence towards things evolving positively, or towards adding new ills, new causes of suffering and real setbacks. This is what makes for the excitement and drama of human history, in which freedom, growth, salvation and love can blossom, or lead towards decadence and mutual destruction. The work of the Church seeks not only to remind everyone of the duty to care for nature, but at the same time “she must above all protect mankind from self-destruction.”

Pope Francis. Encyclical on Climate Change and Inequality (pp. 49-50). Melville House. Kindle Edition. 

Now from William Patrick Ophuls Requiem for Modern Politics by William Ophuls

Quotes from Ophuls, Pt. 2

Despotism may govern without faith, liberty cannot. Religion is much more necessary in the republic which they set forth in glowing colors than in the monarchy which they attack; it is more needed in democratic republics than in others. How is it possible that society should escape destruction if the moral ties not strengthened in proportion as the political tie is relaxed? And what can be done with the people who are their own masters if they are not submissive to the deity?

Alexi de Tocqueville, p. 29

As much biblical prophet as political philosopher, brokes decisively with Hobbes and the Enlightenment mainstream by brining religion back into politics. The Marxist sovereign has the duty to . . . end the class domination and social oppression that has marred all previous history. When this overweaning objective is joined to the general enlightenment drive for social perfection, the result is an ideological crusade for an earthly paradise – in effect, a secular religion. By resurrecting the eschatological element that Hobbbes had tried to exclude from politics, Marx unleased a new era of quasireligous warfare, both withing and between states. . . . As a political doctrine, Marxism therefore combines the autoritariansim of Hobbes with the very worst aspect of premodern politics: the religious element that Hobbes tried so hard to get rid of. p. 42

Other voices: 

The Uninhabitable Earth

David Wallace-Wells

A state of half-ignorance and half-indifference is a much more pervasive climate sickness than true denial or true fatalism.

The Way of Zen

Alan W. Watts

Reasonable–that is, human–men will always be capable of compromise, but men who have dehumanized themselves by becoming the blind worshipers of an idea or an ideal are fanatics whose devotion to abstractions makes them the enemies of life.

The Ingenuity Gap

Thomas Homer-Dixon

Our leaders’ apparent failure, though, has less to do with gross character flaws and more to do with the ever greater empowerment of social groups and the generally rising complexity of our world.

Nixon Agonistes

Garry Wills

Spiro Agnew’s career has about it a somnambulant surefootedness, an inevitability of advance, that reminds one of Mencken’s Coolidge, of the juggernaut of snooze: “There were massive evidences of celestial intervention at every step of Coolidge’s career, and he went through life clothed in immunities that defied and made a mock of all the accepted laws of nature.” . . . . It was said that Nixon regretted his choice [of Agnew], his deal with [Strom] Thurmond. But Agnew was a guided missile, swung into place, aimed, activated, launched with the minute calculation that marks Nixon. Once the missile was fired, the less attention it drew to itself the better—like a torpedo churning quietly toward its goal. Agnew has a neckless, lidded flow to him, with wraparound hair, a tubular perfection to his suits or golf outfits, quiet burbling oratory. Subaquatic. He was almost out of sight by campaign’s end; but a good sonar system could hear him burrowing ahead, on course.

Kinds of Power

James Hillman

Economics is our contemporary theology, regardless of how we spend Sunday. Economics is the only effective syncretistic cult remaining in the world today, our world’s only ecumenical faith. It provides the daily ritual, uniting Christian, Hindu, Mormon, atheist, Buddhist, Sikh, Adventist, animist, evangelist, Muslim, Jew, fundamentalist and New-Ager in the common temple, admitting all alike, from which the money changers have not been thrown out, the Swiss bank.