The Viable Human: Thomas Berry. excerpts

• " cosmic and biological realms" in response to to the natural world.
• "instinctively, humans have always perceived themselves as a mode of being *of the universe as well as distinctive beings *in the universe."
• (this at least was in the beginning...)
• "Just how long this primordial harmony endured we do not know beyond the last hundred thousand years of the Paleolithic period." (some 10,000 years the Neolithic and then the Classical civilizations came into being).
• says, that within the last 5,000 years as the classical and literate civilizations and cultures developed, humans became more oppressive and destructive of other life forms. "Alienation from the natural world increased... because of this human dysfunctional relation with the world, some of these earlier human cultures became non sustainable." (i.e. the Med, Greek, and classical Roman civz) (but since they where decentralized and regional areas, the bulk of the human species were not seriously endangered.)
• Deep cultural pathology has developed.

• "Question of the viability of the human species is intimately connected with the question of the viability of the earth."
• "an exaggerated even pathological, fixation on its own comfort and convenience that is willing to exhaust any and all of the earth's resources to satisfy its own cravings." Indulging in the consumer society, is disgusting and unsuitable to this degree.
• Moving from anthropocentric to biocentric, must ask how can this be achieved and how would it work??

• "This plundering (by diminishing the value of the larger community (i.e. ecosystems and natural world) is being perpetrated mainly by the great industrial establishments that have dominated the entire planetary process for the past one hundred years, during hte period when modern science and technology took control not only of our natural resources but also of human affairs." The media, political systems, educational systems, whole cultural development led by ______. Even our language and constant use of "progress" or "profit" is misleading and control the direction human life is going. These words need to be rectified, "profit according to what norms and for whom? The profit of the corporation is the deficit of the earth. The profit of the industrial enterprise can also be considered the deficit of the quality of life, even for human society."
• "the planet is now ruled and determining its future through human decision." is this still an anthropocentric OR egocentric thought?
• "what is absolutely threatened is the degradation of the planet's more brilliant and satisfying forms of life expression."
• "human species shows itself to be a pernicious presence in the world."
• "such deterioration is from a rejection of the inherent limitation of earthly existence and from an effort to alter the natural functioning of the planet in favor of a humanly constructed wonderland." The earth as a bio-spiritual planet must become, for the human the basic reference. "
• The entrepreneur who's creating the wonderland is in fact creating a wasteland.

• "Having identified the magnitude of the difficulty before us, we must establish a specific analysis of the problems themselves and provide specific programs leading toward a viable *human situation on a viable planet"
• Industrial society is "already a spiritual and psychic degradation", any idea of the world as sacred has been manufactured into lust for money and things. "the naive assumption that the natural world exists solely to be possessed and used by humans for their unlimited advantage," cannot be accepted.
• "Each living thing participates in the celebration as the proper fulfillment of its powers of expression" ~spiritual or religious perspective.

• solutions: a new legal system, integrating the knowledge and connection of the earth process, mutual enhancement of of a human- earth relationship.
• 4 basic patriarchal oppressions: rulers of people, men of women, possessors over nonpossessors,and humans over nature.

• The could be's: conscious sensitizing of the human to those "profound communications made by the universe."
• adjustment of the human to the conditions and restraints of the natural world.

• **some seem to perceive limitation as an obstacle that needs to be eliminated opposed to a discipline to evoke creativity. It's like an opaque or even threatening aspect , but really an experience liberating or energizing, rather than confining.

• "ever-accelerating process until we experience an enormous glut of basic process. But we see unmatched deprivation for the growing numbers of people living the shantytowns of the world"

• "microphase solutions for macrophase problems"

• recover our sense of maternal aspect
• also recover our archetypal sense of the cosmic tree, tree of life
• increase awareness of the world, how it functions, how the human fits into the larger community of life, and the role that the human fulfills, the historical sequence that have shaped our physical and "cultural landscape".