ABSTRACT
Industrial civilization, through its use of fossil fuels and high energy technology, has managed to accelerate this anti-ecological and anti-evolutionary trend and has brought the entire planet within the orbit of its destructive influence. Western culture today is the end result of the Lamarckian inheritance pattern stimulated by the scientific paradigms growing from the Renaissance, coupled with the discovery and exploitation of fossil fuels. Animism, the attribution of divine character, or “personhood,” to natural objects and ecological systems, seems to be an important reason why traditional cultures are able to maintain a non-exploitative and stable relationship with their surroundings. The eco-community, as symbol and strategy, is the basic building block for the creation of a new form of human culture that joins modern science and technology with the sacred worldview of archaic and mystical traditions in a new synthesis of nature, self and society.
