MAVE Dissertation,
Lancaster University 1994

Mind, systems and the sacred:
A paradigm change in values
for environmental survival?

Noel G. Charlton

"There is no precedent for the change in prospect. Building an environmentally sustainable future depends on restructuring the global economy, major shifts in human reproductive behaviour, and dramatic changes in values and lifestyles. Doing all this quickly adds up to a revolution......
Social change occurs in response either to new information or to new experience.... Social and economic change always starts with individuals, even when it occurs within large organisations.... Strong visionary leaders can accelerate the Environmental Revolution, but in democracies, government policies and priorities broadly reflect the concerns and priorities of the people..... It is in the most fundamental sense a social revolution: the product of changing values, of seeing ourselves again as part of nature rather than apart from nature."(1)
(1) Brown, L. R., et. al., "State of the World, 1992" Report of the Worldwatch Institute, Earthscan, London, 1992. Ch. 11. (L.R. Brown), pp.174-178.
MIND, SYSTEMS AND THE SACRED:
A PARADIGM CHANGE IN VALUES FOR ENVIRONMENTAL SURVIVAL?.
I offer my grateful thanks for help in developing the ideas contained in this paper to Theodore Roszak and Fritjof Capra for lengthy conversations at Schumacher College, to other members of staff and course participants there, to Henryk Skolimowski for correspondence and for a day of discussion at his summer home in the mountain village of Theologos in the Greek island of Thassos, to the staff of the philosophy department at Lancaster and to many friends and fellow students. Not least, I thank my wife Jean and the members of the Rivendell Community in which I live and work for the patience, encouragement, tolerance and sharing of my workload that has made all this possible.
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NOTE: Part of the material outlined below was from lectures and discussions with Fritjof Capra and from conversations with Henryk Skolimowski. Capra has now published his "Theory of Living Systems" in "The Web of Life", Harper-Collins, London, 1996. Skolimowski has published his recent thinking in "The Participative Mind", Arkana (Penguin), London, 1994.
Noel G. Charlton, November, 1996.
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MIND, SYSTEMS AND THE SACRED:
A PARADIGM CHANGE IN VALUES FOR ENVIRONMENTAL SURVIVAL?.

CONTENTS
Introduction
The Paradigm Change
Four Thinkers
The New Understanding of Mind
Religious Process
The New Cosmology
Evolution and Transcendence
Telos and Teleology
Theology and the Paradigm Change
Strategies and Values for Survival
Conclusion
Bibliography

"We have to have in mind not an orthodoxy but a wide and compassionate recognition of the storm of ideas in which we are all living and in which we must make our nests - find spiritual rest - as best we can." Gregory Bateson.(1)
Many environmentalists believe that an acute and urgent threat to the planetary biosphere exists, due to human industrial and military activities. Though other thinkers dispute this opinion it is, at the very least, expedient to consider the threat as a serious possibility and so, in this paper, I assume that there is a need to search for ways that may avert such disaster.
After setting out the assumed situation of risk I will examine the paradigm change that seems to be occurring in scientific and environmental thinking. I will consider the emergence of new ways of thinking about "mind" and sanity, the effect of new understandings of cosmology and evolution and consequent teleological implications.
In particular, I wish to claim, as a newly emergent and perhaps surprising possibility, that due to these inter-related changes, it is now becoming possible to see some processes and attitudes previously labelled "religious" as having ontological validity. Whereas these processes were seen as unreal or imaginary, dependent on "the supernatural" and hence marginal to consideration of the real world, they now appear as processes evident in natural systems.
I further claim that, because religious processes can influence human action in unique ways, these modes of relating to the world may be necessary tools for enabling a sufficiently widespread and speedy human response to the global threat. These are not new processes but they may be re-enabled by new ontological understanding.
11/13/96
(1) Bateson, G. and M. C., "Angels Fear: An Investigation into the Nature and Meaning of the Sacred", Rider (Century/Hutchinson), London, 1988. pp. 178-9.
I suggest that the recovery of some values and attitudes that we have previously characterised as religious may be a necessary precondition of effective human action in maintaining the biosphere.
In supporting these claims I will examine the recent work of four thinkers and writers: Gregory Bateson, Fritjof Capra, Theodore Roszak and Henryk Skolimowski and some recent and parallel trends in Christian theology.
Lester Brown, of the Worldwatch Institute, warns: "We only have twenty years left on this planet to mend our ways". It is now a commonplace assertion that the future of life on earth is threatened by our industrial, scientific and military activities. Apathy, self-interest, industrial greed and narrow nationalism continue to endanger the biosphere. Our situation is unique in human experience. Never before have we faced global responsibility. The leaders of the world's religions have met in Assisi, world governments have conferred in Rio, grave pronouncements have been made and little has been done.
I claim, and in what follows assume, that cohesive actions taken by societies are largely determined by the values and attitudes prevalent in the society. If action is supported by the beliefs and normative judgements of the majority, it is likely to be undertaken. The actions of Fascist German society, the attitude of starving Hindus who preserve edible sacred cattle or the ritually controlled respect for the environment of Native American tribes are cases in point.
In our own case, the currently prevailing values of exploitation, self-interest and short-term expediency in the dominant Western society seem unlikely to effect the necessary changes. We already have a surfeit of information about the issues, the media is saturated with environmental stories and warnings, the subject is a significant element at all levels of education, Governments and Churches pay lip service to the needs but no general move of the magnitude necessary is evident. Commercial and military expediency still controls decision making. If the actions of societies follow from their dominant values and attitudes then we must look for profound changes, adopted by the majority and reflected in active decision making very soon.
I also claim that values and attitudes are influenced by the society's understanding of the world in which it is placed. Present and previous worldviews have produced very different values: contrast Athens and Sparta, the Native Americans and the immigrant settlers from Europe, peasant village India and the industrial West. There is not space to develop further support for this claim here but it is supported by the work of the writers discussed below and I assume its truth in what follows. The key assertion is that an appropriate worldview, an accurate understanding of our relationship to the world, will generate values that are fitting for the situation of global society. Our attitudes and, hence, our actions are thus dependant on our epistemology, on our ways of knowing about the world. It follows that our present need is for a worldview that recognises such imperatives as the fragility of the biosphere and the interdependency of species; a new and appropriate mindset could be expected to effect change in human behaviour.
THE PARADIGM CHANGE.
Many thinkers and writers are recognising that such a "paradigm change" is occurring in scientific, philosophical and technological thought. Such "discontinuous evolutionary changes" in the development of new general perceptions of reality were emphasised by Thomas Kuhn thirty years ago(1) and all four of the writers I will discuss in some detail below believe that we are in the midst of such a change:
Gregory Bateson, writing not later than 1980(2) was saying:
"We are in extraordinary confusion at this very moment. Our beliefs are undergoing rapid change at a pace comparable to the rate at which things were changing in classical Greece, say between 600 and 500 BC, or again at the beginning of the Christian Era..... The old beliefs are wearing thin and there is a groping for new."
As he claimed in "The Turning Point",(3) and re-emphasised in the 1993 Schumacher seminars,(4) Fritjof Capra believes that there is an overall paradigm shift in progress. He defines paradigms (after Kuhn) as inter-related networks of concepts, values, perceptions and practices shared by a community. They are reflected in social organisation, embodied in institutions but only become visible when they are outdated. Capra sees the present paradigm shift as bringing about a change in values. Such changes include moves from:

thinking towards intuition
self assertion	integration	
expansion	homeostasis (homeoresis)	
competition	co-operation	
rational	intuitive	
analysis of small parts	synthesis	
reductionist	wholistic	
linear	non-linear (cyclic)	
quantification	quality	
domination	partnership	
hierarchy	networks	

(1) Kuhn, T., "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions", University of Chicago Press, 1962.
(2) Bateson. op. cit. p. 178.
(3) Capra, F., "The Turning Point: Science, Society and the Rising Culture", Flamingo (Fontana), London, 1983. pp. 11-15.
(4) Capra, F., "Ecology, Gaia and the Systems View of Life", Schumacher College, Devon, 31/5/93-1/7/93.
Henryk Skolimowski(1) claims that a similar transition is occurring which he expresses in value terms:

TECHNOLOGICAL CONSCIOUSNESS	ECOLOGICAL CONSCIOUSNESS	
manipulative, controlling	reverential	
atomistic	holistic	
quantitative	qualitative	
secular	spiritual	
mechanistic	evolutionary	
alienating	participatory	

Theodore Roszak, writing as early as 1972:(2) saw this change as a progressive abandonment of dualism:
"Here and now, as we restore the borders of reality, we are at the stage of closing up all the traditional dichotomies of western culture which have served as the bulwarks of the old Reality Principle. Spirit-flesh, reason-passion, mad-sane, objective-subjective, fact-value, natural-supernatural, intellect-intuition, human-non-human... all the familiar dualisms which have divided the spectrum of consciousness vanish as we create the higher sanity.... Even science, in its awkward single-visioned way, has been drawn to continuities that baffle traditional assumptions. It can no longer draw hard lines between matter and energy, organic and inorganic, man and lower animal, law and the indeterminate, mind and body."

Though many of the trends evident in the paradigm change appear to be desirable and necessary for avoiding the environmental catastrophe now threatened,(3) there is real risk that it will take too long for these changes to become part of general public understanding and, hence, of effective decision making in commerce, industry, economics and politics. These changes may not be effected without a general adoption of values reflecting responsibility and generosity towards other social and national groups, future generations, other species and the total interactive web of the biosphere. The question is: what influences can produce such a profound change in attitudes and values quickly enough?
(1) Skolimowski, H., "A Sacred Place to Dwell: Living with Reverence on the Earth", Element Books, 1993. p. 21.
(2) Roszak, T., "Where the Wasteland Ends: Politics and Transcendence in Post-industrial Society", Doubleday, New York, 1972, new edn. Celestial Arts/Robert Doubleday, Berkley, 1989. p. 462.
(3) For a good analysis of the risks (and another assertion that "a major change in our habitual patterns of thought is essential" though little idea of what values might fuel the changes of attitude he commends) see Tickell, C., "The Quality of Life: What Quality? Whose life?" in Environmental Values, No.1., Spring, 1992, pp. 65-76.
What is needed is a general public acceptance of the need for a move away from high consumption lifestyles towards sustainability, to co-operation rather than competition, to sharing rather than greed. It will be necessary for societies to agree to redistribute resources where inequity exists, to move, in the words of the now world famous non faith-specific "Prayer for Peace":(1)
"...from despair to hope, from fear to trust, from hate to love, from war to peace..."

Notable among the emphases of the present paradigm change are new understandings of the history and development of the cosmos, of the interrelatedness of objects and events (stemming from particle physics), of the nature of mind, of evolution and transcendence and of teleological process. These new insights form the preconditions of a surprising ontological change by which processes and values that are essentially "religious" are being transferred from the realm of the supernatural into that of the natural world.
Such religious processes and attitudes include the following: the ability to regard the natural world (including humans and their activities) as worthy objects of reverential feeling; a sense of the self as significant and meaningful in the processes of the cosmos, resulting in feelings of "being at home" in the world, feelings for which the term "grace" is appropriate, and the resurrection of the concept of sacredness as a value relating to real entities and processes. The key process is the experiencing of the self as immersed in, and merged with, a meaningful and greater process, a merging with a larger reality. This sense of oneness is what members of many religious faiths have called a relationship with the deity, with God. God too is now being seen as purposeful process rather than as entity or person.
(1) The Prayer for Peace was created by Satish Kumar and promoted by Mother Theresa. It is not specific to any deity or religion and is used in over forty languages, traditionally at mid-day, local time, around the world.
What, then, of the more traditional processes of religion such as ritual, worship and celebration? Many people are finding these activities appropriate in healing, in relating to such concepts as Gaia, the earth as process, mental and physical healing or the extension of the sense of the self to environment as in Deep Ecology. Again, the ontological status granted to these experiences is that of something as real as thought or mind or energy, existing in the natural world as process. Much of the language is necessarily metaphorical but metaphor also is being granted status as one of the ways in which we can most vividly and meaningfully come to know the world. All this is discussed in more detail below in considering the work of Bateson, Capra, Roszak and Skolimowski.
This is a newly non-supernatural understanding of religious activity, a new ontology derived from evident processes within the natural world. I believe that this new understanding may be a key factor in generating an appropriate worldview for our society.
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One facet of the present paradigm change is the re-introduction of "religious" language to the environmental and philosophical discourses. Terms such as "reverence", "spiritual", "grace" and "the sacred" are now freely used about the relationships of people to other people and to the natural world. I instance a few examples in illustration of the trend:
Prince Charles, speaking at the inauguration of a new Institute of Architecture in London,(1) accused mechanistic science of denying humanity's "sense of the sacred", a process to be resisted by finding a "continual sense of awe and reverence" that "comes from øthe heart". He cited the feeling of "anxiety that something is missing" as we create an "age without spirit". Spirit is, for him, the feeling of one-ness with the natural world and with "the creative force that we call God which lies at the central point of all.....an experience...both pagan and Christian...the fundamental expression of what we call religion."
(1) H.R.H. Prince Charles, "Age Without Spirit", Resurgence No. 153, July/August, 1992. pp. 4-5.
The environmental philosopher R. D. Ryder lists seven motives for being an environmentalist.(1) The two motives that he finds to be non-speciesist are "the mystical...characterised by a deep poetic feeling of reverence for nature" and "compassion which... is close to the mystical.."
Holmes Rolston III sees the absence of eagles from the sky as "spiritual loss".(2) For him, "the natural dialectic is the cradle of our spirituality" and there is "hope in some blessed, sacred point; and bread, water, wine, paths, fatherhood, motherhood, mountains, rivers, light and darkness are not incidentally among our richest sacraments".(3)
Charlene Spretnak, writer on eco-feminism, women's spirituality and Green politics, describes spirituality as an experienced interconnectedness, the sense of being embedded in a sacred whole as part of the earth community. She sees ecological postmodernism as itself becoming a "wisdom tradition" and claims such disparate religious philosophers as A.N. Whitehead and Mary Daly in support of the idea that the divine is becoming recognised as a process, "as the verb 'becoming'" rather than as a noun.(4) She sees "grace" as the experience of realising that our mind participates in the larger mind of the planet and the universe.(5)
Jonathan Porritt, speaking at Lancaster University,(6) claimed that the necessary moves for the development of an effective green political process include "bearing witness", giving service, reverence for the natural world and the redevelopment of our capacity for celebration.
(1) Ryder, R.D., "Painism: Ethics, Animal Rights and Environmentalism", Centre for Applied Ethics, University of Wales College of Cardiff, 1992, pp. 11-12.
(2) Rolston, H., "Is There an Ecological Ethic" in Ethics, Vol. 85, 1985,
p. 104.
(3) Rolston, H., "Values in Nature", Environmental Ethics, Vol.3, 1981, p. 128.
(4) Spretnak, C., "States of Grace: The Recovery of Meaning in the Post-modern Age", Harper, San Francisco, 1991. (Harper-Collins edn. 1993, p. 231.)
(5) Spretnak, C., op. cit. p. 25.
(6) Porritt, J., Lecture: "Next Moves for the Green Movement", Lancaster University, 3/3/94.
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Within western Christianity, there is a parallel and complementary trend in theology which emphasises process, the natural world as revelation and the importance of social and ecological concern. David Steindl-Rast and Thomas Matus, Roman Catholic theologians in discussion with Fritjof Capra(1) claim that contemporary theology is moving from the polemical to the integrative (e.g. understanding other traditions), from generating theological propositions to story-telling, from preoccupation with the discursive,(2) analytical and reductive to the intuitive and to holistic synthesis, from the propositional and abstract to the poetic, metaphorical and experiential.
In Christian mission the emphasis has moved from conversion and preaching to service, witness, "illustrating the good news" and conveying joy. All this is, in part, a recovery of the early Christian paradigm but there are new things added: the feminist perspective, our newly global awareness and the present danger of ecological disaster. These trends are discussed in more detail below.
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There is a great deal of work being done in the area of the interface between environmentalism and religious process. Theodore Roszak's most recent book "The Voice of the Earth"(3) contains a bibliography, produced by Paul Fayter of York University, Canada, detailing 118 serious works dealing with the "New Deism", published since 1980, excluding works dealing with science and eastern theologies. Roszak believes that the agnostic orthodoxy of science is now significantly questioned and that the renewed exchange has profound implications for environmentalism. He claims that the relationship between religious thought and natural philosophy, broken off at the end of the enlightenment and now no longer tied to Christian apologetics, is restored,
(1) Capra, F., Steindl-Rast, D. and Matus, T. "Belonging to the Universe", Penguin, London, 1992. pp. 76, 79-80.
(2) Steindl-Rast and Matus prefer the term "discursive" to describe the rational discourse because they do not want to imply an opposition between rationality and the intuitive. They regard the latter as a deeply rational process.
(3) Roszak, T., "The Voice of the Earth", Bantam Press, London, 1993. pp. 323-5.
FOUR THINKERS:
I intend to examine the work of four thinkers who, together, evidence the progress of the paradigm change and articulate an understanding of the emerging ecological values and the eco-spiritual discourse without recourse to any belief in the supernatural. These writers are particularly fitted to consider the issues raised by bringing religious process back into the epistemology of the real world. All have lived and worked in the American culture of consumerism and each (Bateson, Capra and Skolimowski were immigrants from England, Austria and Poland respectively and Roszak is the son of an immigrant family) offers the maverick stranger's critical analysis of mainstream thought.
GREGORY BATESON.
"...the Ten Commandments, the rules of morphogenesis and embryology and the premises of grammar in animal and human communication are all part of the vast mental process which is immanent in our world and is as real, and as unreal, as syllogistic logic."(1)
Bateson; biologist, anthropologist, psychologist and lifelong atheist came, knowing that he was terminally ill, to the examination of transcendence through his seminal thinking about systems theory.(2) The result was a new and essentially religious conception of mind in the world. Though Gregory Bateson died in 1980 he was at the time working on "Angels Fear" with his daughter Mary Catherine Bateson who completed the unfinished manuscript as "the collaboration he intended".(3) She claims to have left unaltered Bateson's thinking and theoretical structure, being familiar with the material from years of discussion. For this reason, though substantial parts of the text are actually written by her, I have simply attributed to "Bateson" the material discussed in the following sections.

(1) Bateson, G. & M. C., 1988, p. 162.
(2) Bateson, G., "Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity", Dutton, London, 1979.
(3) Bateson, G. & M. C., 1988, p. 1.
FRITJOF CAPRA.
"... Most of today's physicists do not seem to realise the philosophical, cultural and spiritual implications of their theories. Many..... support a society which is still based on the mechanistic, fragmented world view, without seeing that science points beyond such a view towards a oneness of the universe which includes not only our natural environment but also our fellow human beings."(1)
Capra, physicist and systems theorist, deeply influenced by Bateson, himself having discarded Catholicism and later come to see the insights of the new physics already reflected in the meditative traditions of Buddhism and Taoism, has been led to a re-examination of religious process - not least by the responsibility of offering a spirituality to his young daughter.
He acknowledges the formative influence of Bateson on the development of his own "theory of living systems": "Gregory Bateson..... broadened my world view by placing life at its centre."(2)
While Bateson, in articulating his theory of mind, offers a comprehensible notion of process that could equate with "God" and a recognition of religious processes as necessary to ecological understanding, Capra stops short of this in his public offerings. He is a scientist, intent on remaining credible to scientists, and will not publish thinking that he cannot support by proof. Nevertheless, his "theory of living systems" offers a further view of mindlike processes in nature and may influence many different aspects of the new paradigm. It is a synthesis of work by several thinkers, notably Ilya Prigogine(3), Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela(4), as well as Bateson. A summary appears in Chapter 9 of "The Turning Point"(5) but Capra's current thinking (so far unpublished) was the subject of a month-long course at Schumacher College, Devon in 1993.(6)
(1) Capra, F. "The Tao of Physics", Flamingo (2nd. edn), London, 1983, pp. 339-40.
(2),(5) Capra, F., "The Turning Point - Science, Society and the Rising Culture", Flamingo (Fontana), London, 1983. pp. 285-332.
(3) Prigogine, I. and Stengers, I., "Order out of Chaos", Heinemann, London, 1984.
Prigogine, I. and Stengers, I., "From Being to Becoming", Freeman, San Francisco, 1980.
(4) Maturana, H. and Varela, F., "The Tree of Knowledge", Shambhala, Boston, 3rd. edn. 1992.
(6) Capra, F., "Ecology, Gaia and the Systems View of Life", Schumacher College, Devon, 31/5/93 - 1/7/93. Lecture notes and materials, tapes of tutorials and personal conversations.
HENRYK SKOLIMOWSKI.
"The physicists themselves are reluctant or perhaps unable to draw the larger philosophical consequences from their stories. They are especially reluctant to draw theological consequences from their researches. But hear it: a new view of the universe, which at the same time is a new view of the human - as we are no longer expected to be docile observers of the universe, but rather active participants in bringing about what is potentially there."(1)
Skolimowski, philosopher and environmentalist, is highly critical of analytical philosophy. He regards western Christianity as antipathetic to environmental wellbeing but is still hopeful for its future influence. He has been influenced by Teilhard de Chardin as well as by Bateson to propose an eco-philosophy and an eco-theology based on evolution as the pre-eminent religious process. For him, "God" is synonymous with the processes of transcendence that drive evolution; humankind is charged with responsibility for the evolutionary future.

THEODORE ROSZAK.
"What is the measure of sickness for society as a whole? Surely.... the species that destroys its own habitat in pursuit of false values, in wilful ignorance of what it does, is 'mad' if the word means anything..... If psychosis is the attempt to live a lie, the epidemic psychosis of our time is the lie of believing that we have no ethical obligation to our planetary home..... Those who wish to make some greater philosophical sense of the emerging worldview of our day will have to address questions of a frankly religious character.""(2)
Roszak, historian and futurist, having also rejected Catholicism in youth, provides a broad perspective of thought about the implications of the new science, teleology, the nature of sanity in society and our need for reconnection to the natural world. He approaches the question of mind via the issues surrounding "personhood"(3) as true individuality, psychology and the meaning of "sanity" and "madness" for individuals and societies. He recognises religious process as deeply concerned with the sense of connection to the natural world and finds teleological process to be implicit in the working of natural systems. He sees many concepts
(1) Skolimowski, 1993. p. 92.
(2) Roszak, 1993, pp. 70, 16, 102-3.
(3) Roszak, T., "Person/Planet: The Creative Disintegration of Industrial Society", Gollancz, London, 1977.
from religion as "philosophically rich, scientifically useful" especially teleology, final cause and emergence. His thinking offers "a new (oblique) concept of God with the focus on mentality rather than divinity, not at all on parental authority."(1) A perception of spirit, creative will and intentionality (inherited from animism) could be the "metaphysical scaffolding of a new cosmology". Like Bateson he sees metaphorical processes of communication as deeply significant. He believes that psychology, the search for sanity, is really concerned with the "health of the soul"; it is thus a philosophical undertaking, about ethics, moral purpose and the meaning of life.

All four of these writers recognise the importance of the insights of "new science" and share the belief that the trends they describe may lead to more responsible human action in the world.
My intention in the following sections is to look first at the emerging understanding of mind in the cosmos and its implications for the status of religious process as seen by these men. I then consider their understanding of cosmology as meaningful process, its effect on the sense of significance in our lives, the extension of this process into the understanding of evolution and the consequent new emphasis on teleology. I will conclude by drawing out what are seen as the possible ways forward to a viable ecosystemic and human future.
Bracketed page numbers in the following text refer to the main sources detailed in the above footnotes: for Bateson - "Angels Fear", for Skolimowski - "A Sacred Place to Dwell" and for Roszak - "The Voice of the Earth". Unless otherwise footnoted, material from Capra is drawn from the 1993 Schumacher College discussions and lectures.

(1) Roszak, 1993, p. 104.

THE NEW UNDERSTANDING OF MIND.
GREGORY BATESON AND "MENTAL PROCESS":
Bateson sees contemporary beliefs as undergoing rapid change, the very premises of language are, he claims, in question. So, again, is the old matter of the relation between body and mind which has been the central theme of world religions. We know little about the direction of change and nothing about where it will end. He sees the focus of today's changes as the need for a new and unitary solution to the mind-body problem. The present conceptual separation of mind and matter is the product of "an insufficient holism". Concentrating on the parts we fail to see the characteristics of the whole and we then attribute the phenomena resulting from wholeness to the supernatural.
Bateson offers a new understanding of mind as process at many levels of being. For him, mental processes are not limited to association with human (or any other) brains and do not entail consciousness, let alone self-consciousness. "Minds" are processes rather than "things". By definition they include all examples of systemic process wherein the interaction of the parts is triggered by difference, requires collateral energy and circular (rather than linear) chains of determination, shows the effects of difference as coded versions of the preceding events and in which the "description and classification of these processes of transformation disclose a hierarchy of logical types immanent in the phenomena". (18-19) Such "minds" would include organisms such as bacteria, parts of organisms such as individual cells or organs and also systems of multiple organisms such as social groups, societies or ecosystems. A key idea is that all minds are nested within larger minds: a bacterium may be nested within a cell, organ, body, society, ecosystem and so on. Each of these entities is "mindlike" in its activity and any given mind is likely to be a sub-system in some larger or more complex mind. Such "mental process" therefore includes the processes of embryology, evolution and all exchanges of information and injunction within and between organisms.
For Bateson mind is life. All living things "make and receive news". Information is "a difference that makes a difference" and exists only in the world of living things - "Creatura". Bateson borrows from Jung(1) the terminology of "Pleroma" (the inanimate world of forces and impacts) and "Creatura" (the world of life, distinctions and differences).(13) These worlds interpenetrate and are only separable as levels of description so no real dualism is proposed.(18) Bateson's theory is one of connections, not dichotomy (20) and he emphatically rejects Cartesian dualism between mind and matter. Similarly, he denies the usefulness of linear logic for the relationships contained in Creatura, where trains of causation (as in cybernetics) are circular and information transfer is achieved by a process resembling metaphor in which patterns and relationships are, for instance, compared, matched or copied. Logic is, for Bateson, blemished by linear thinking; ecological thinking is circular, cyclical. Formal logic rejects the validity of the metaphorical connections so pervasive in nature.(143-4) All non (or pre-) verbal communication depends on metaphor (e.g. evolutionary coding).(28) Bateson was fond of using the example of a heating system to show that even non-living material objects (thermostat, switches, furnace, walls etc.) can be related so as to allow mental process (the maintenance of a desired state) to operate.(2) So, for Bateson, the mental is the organisational. It is accessible to study but it is not a thing. This, he claims, allows development of a monistic, unified way of looking at the world in which mind and matter are interdependent(50-51). He claims that this understanding of mind permits precise, systematic attention to "religious matters", in which he includes love, the sacred, wisdom and mind itself.(6-7)
His new view, for Bateson, amounts to a release from the ontological limitations of "hard science". All knowledge of things or relationships exists only in Creatura - all maps, names, ideas, relationships, webs of
metaphor, understandings of meaning, significance, interrelationship and co-dependence are in the living world and not in the world of impacts and forces which are the proper domain of old science. Healing (and
(1) Jung, C.G., "Septem Sermones ad Mortuos", Stuart & Watkins, London, 1967.
(2) Capra, F. "Uncommon Wisdom", Flamingo (Harper/Collins) London, 1989. pp. 78, 82-3.
suffering) and life is mental process.(65). Hence, all understanding of aesthetics, religion and God is of the creatural kind, it is process, mind-like, not material or thing-like and therefore is not subject to or relevant for hard science.
Bateson believes that we cannot know with certainty about things but we can know about relationships between things. Qualities exist in the relationship between the observer and the object; "...it is a man-made notion that "hardness" is immanent in one end of a binary relationship".(157) Epistemology (because what is, for all human purposes, equals what can be known) is not distinct from ontology. He prefers to define epistemology as "the science that studies the process of knowing".(20)
VERY LARGE MENTAL SYSTEMS AND "GOD":
Bateson proceeds to offer an argument for very large mental systems which may equate with what we have in the past called "God", systems of ecosystemic size and larger within which human minds would be subsystems.(135-144) Using illustrations from Greek mythology, he demonstrates the recognition by societies of large impersonal forces, themes and tendencies.
Though Bateson has "great difficulty in discussing the vast mental organisation of the world and...... in discussing the parts of it, .... it seems to him that we can, with care, talk about how that vast organisation thinks. We can "explore the kind of links it uses between its propositions, while we can never know what it thinks about." These links, he believes, are necessarily regular. They form a part of the "eternal verities". Among them are the processes inherent in DNA, embryo and body, the structure of brain-processes and thought and "all discourse which bonds together the phenomena of any ecosystem". These bonds are not unbreakable but there are inescapable consequences.(158) Thus, "....sinning against ecology produces involuntary retribution ..... The ecological God is incorruptible and therefore is not mocked."(142-3)
He suggests that structure (as normative process) is equivalent to God and that the attempt to describe and understand structure is a religious activity. "I am trying" he writes, "to investigate the communicational regularities in the biosphere, assuming that in doing so, I shall also be investigating interwoven regularities in a system so pervasive and so determinant that we may even apply the word "god" to it.......whom we might call Eco."(142)
The concept of "Eco" is not offered as "a God that people might believe in. We could believe him to represent an accurate idea" but such a system would not be "concerned with good and bad in any simple way, ... not be provided with free will." In talking about Eco, Bateson is "trying to make people think about Creatura, about mental process. ... the connectedness that holds all life and evolution together." This mental entity is "beautiful and terrible, Shiva and Abraxas."(149-50) The communicative fabric of the living world is ordered, pervasive, determinant "even to the point where one might say of it "that is what men have meant by God".(151)
It seems, therefore, that Bateson's "god" would not, in its manifestation as "very large mental system" have any concern for individual organisms, could not "love" or "cherish" its "believers". Moral concerns could only be relevant as representing preferences for behaviour that would tend toward homeostasis or evolution towards "maximum differentiation, complexity and elegance".(175) It is important to realise that Bateson denies all possibility of the supernatural. The mental process he, half jokingly, calls Eco exists entirely within the natural universe of material and life-processes. It interpenetrates and is itself comprised of the universal totality.
I would suggest, however, that since very large mental systems must consist of all the nested minds within them as well as the functional identity that flows from their own macro level of activity, that there will be levels in the hierarchy of minds (e.g. societies, communities, social groupings, persons) at which individual interests are recognised and acted upon. Bateson's model depicts each "mind" as being in some way distinct; as conforming to a higher or lower logical type. It would, alternatively, be possible to think in terms of a continuum of interpenetrative mind, any point on which would be subject to influence from (and would influence) mental activity on higher and lower levels. This second model may make it easier to see that concern with moral or ethical activity at the societal or personal level is not necessarily precluded by accepting the equivalence of a universal mental system with "god". Either of these models seems to be a very much more comprehensible way of understanding such ideas as responsibility, immanence, transcendence or the place of one's own life in the cosmic reality than is any traditional religious system.
Bateson's thinking has had profound influence on subsequent theorists including Capra, Varela, Maturana, Prigogine and Skolimowski. His contribution to this field is unique: as a scientist, seeking to bring rigour to the analysis of areas that have so far been seen as entirely metaphysical, he insists that there is no need to go beyond the "natural" to examine and understand religious process.
CAPRA'S THEORY OF LIVING SYSTEMS:
Capra's living systems, particularly in the aspects of the theory related to process, are seen in very similar ways to the processes of Bateson's "minds" or mental systems and, in some ways, the theory amounts to an extension of Bateson's own work. He claims that his theory overcomes the Cartesian divisions, offering a complete "psychosomatic system", a general theory emphasising ecological thinking for all the sciences, providing a language for ecological discourse. His "living systems" (like Bateson's mental systems) may be cells, organisms, social systems or ecosystems and are similarly nested within larger systems, ranging from sub-cellular organisms to the planetary biosphere. The key concept is that of "self-organisation" within systems
Inevitably, all aspects of the theory inter-penetrate but, for conceptual purposes, a useful division into the areas of structure, pattern and process can be made.
Pattern is the totality of the relationships that define the living system; the configuration of internal and external relationships. "Autopoietic" living systems (from Maturana and Varela) are "self making": such systems receive energy and material from outside but are otherwise self-sufficient. Such systems are both stable and constantly changing, the pattern of organisation remaining recognisable through constant renewal of sub-systems; death at one level permits the system (at higher levels) to live. Pattern enables the maintenance of living organisms far from equilibrium. Another key concept is that of "emergent properties" which are capacities of systems that become evident and operative at sufficiently high levels of organisation. Among such emergent properties are those of growth, reproduction and consciousness.
Structure is the physical realisation of the pattern of organisation (molecule, organism, ecosystem, society) but this is much more than chemical or cellular structure. Prigogine's "dissipative structures" are autopoietic, open in terms of energy, closed in terms of organisation, necessarily so in order to maintain a non-equilibrium state. Prigogine's emphasis is on the way these systems "dissipate entropy", taking in material and energy, using it to operate far from equilibrium and externalising high entropy material. In terms of Prigogine's biology (as distinct from reductionist physics) the world is being moved to a greater state of order by the action of living systems dissipating entropy.
Indeterminacy is an essential aspect of these systems because, at moments of "choice", systems opt unpredictably, from their own internal resources, for courses of action. From indeterminacy results variety, beauty, uniqueness. The "choices" made by systems are, in principle, irreversible. Prigogine claims this as a constructive phenomenon, in that living systems bring order into being within themselves, though disorder in the environment is thus increased. Energy brought into systems is used to move the system to higher levels of organisation.
Fluctuations within systems are important. All variables fluctuate. Negative feedback loops within the system will assist in adapting to change. Positive feedback loops may push the system through instability to a new state of order by amplifying the fluctuations, or such amplification may destroy the system. Successful entering into new state of order is self-transformation, which is learning, development or evolution.
An example of such structure would be the planetary biosphere, taking in photons from the sun at 5800 Kelvin, dissipating them at 280 K., the difference being available for fuelling internal biospherical processes. The present stresses imposed by greenhouse gases and global warming may cause increasing systemic fluctuations (e.g. climatic changes) that could push the planet through to a new, stable state, perhaps inimical to many present life-forms.
Process in living systems is, in Capra's understanding, the most radical aspect of the theory. He sees it as an extension of the theory of mind, claiming (like Bateson) that mind is a process, not a thing. Capra sees this as the major theoretical break-through.
By definition, all systematic interactions are considered to be mental or cognitive processes. (Cognition, in this sense, is not consciousness, not thinking, but does involve learning: the making of "decisions" within systems). Mind (as cognition) and matter are not different but are two aspects of the phenomena of life. Cognition (for living systems) is an emergent property at the level of self-organisation.
Process is the activity (cognition) involved in realising the pattern. This understanding of cognition incorporates the work of Bateson, Maturana and Varela. The key concept is that of "structural coupling", the continual interaction of living systems with the environment which constantly triggers structural changes, the nature of these changes being specified internally by the system itself, not by the environment. The environmental factors that will act as triggers are also selected by the system: this is what it means for systems to be autonomous. By specifying which environmental factors will effect change in itself, the living system "brings forth a world", acquiring the ability to distinguish differences, so gaining individuality. The system does not produce a representation of an independently existing world but "brings forth" an individual world. Only aspects of environment which trigger change exist for the system. The claim is that living is a mental process. Living is knowing. The brain (in advanced organisms) modulates its own structure. The "map making" process brings forth the territory. Continual structural coupling evolves a unique "pathway" for the system which is a record of previous structural changes, previous acts of cognition. In this process organisms generate novelty. Individual pathways provide ontogeny, group pathways provide phylogeny, and so arises learning, development or evolution. In this way cognition becomes "embodied action". In advanced organisms, language arises as an emergent property in the process of structural coupling.
Maturana and Varela extend their theory to consciousness. Consciousness is an emergent property of living systems which is defined as self-awareness, "being aware that we are aware", self reflection. This is a further level of evolution. It is essentially about communication, by which they mean not language but the co-ordination of behaviour through mutual structural coupling. This is not "information", the metaphor of something being transmitted is inadequate.
Language arises when there is communication about communication. In the human realm the bringing forth of a consensual world is done by (verbal and non-verbal) language. Through language arises the notion of objects, concepts, symbols, the self. As Capra puts it: "As we know that we know we bring forth our selves". Consciousness arises (in children and in evolution) when language comes; this is possibly so for some other animals but it is particularly characteristic of the human race. It cannot be understood from the structure (the physics or chemistry) but arises from the pattern and the process. The main message of the theory is that consciousness is a social phenomenon, it arises from our contact with others to produce self-actualisation, an idea that raises interesting questions about our limitation of our notion of meaningful "society" to other humans. A deep ecological view of humankind in an egalitarian relationship with other natural organisms might generate a very different view of the communication our consciousness might arise from and, hence, a radically altered consciousness.
Capra offers an example of the way systems thinking can alter perspectives within human systems. Rather than seeing the nervous, endocrine and immune systems as items respectively in the provinces of neuro-surgery, endocrinology and immunology, living systems theory would recognise that the immune system is as complex, interconnected and diffused as the nervous system. Mobile elements (e.g. blood cells) bind chemically to other parts of the system. Lymphocytes bind mostly to other lymphocytes, a process "more like people talking to each other than soldiers fighting". Their main function is to relate and this behaviour develops even in organisms artificially isolated from challenge. Varela claims that the immune system provides the identity of who we are as a body, allowing cells to act as a community so that the system is effectively a language. There is a defence capacity but this is not the main activity; to consider it so would be like limiting brain activity to the reflexes only. The immune system is the body's identity, it is a second, dispersed, brain.
The unity of all three systems is further illustrated by the current work of a Canadian team of biologists. Studying peptides, they have shown that the brain, immune and nervous systems are a single network. Peptides, which exist also in plants and are extremely old, are a family of macro-molecules which link physical, emotional and mental activities and are produced both in the brain and in other parts of the body. They travel along nerves and wait at the ends for stimulus, they control and integrate the way the immune system works. They are thus a physical, biochemical substrate of emotions, they alter behaviour and evoke emotional tone (e.g. "gut feelings" - the intestine is lined with peptide receptor cells). Thus all bodily functions are linked to emotions, the brain filters incoming peptide data so there is no purely "mental" thought. At the physical level peptide activity is emotion. Peptides are effectively "bits of the brain floating around in the body".
Capra's central claim is that his synthesis of theories comprises a new way of understanding living systems in terms of cognition, learning and (effectively) mind. It is (with Bateson's theory) a new way of seeing mind and the world that transcends the subjective-objective duality. There is remarkable symmetry here with Thomas Nagel's view(1) that what is needed to understand mind beyond "the framework of subjective unity ...is..... a theory of conscious organisms as physical systems composed of chemical elements and occupying space, which also have an individual perspective on the world, and in some cases a capacity for self awareness as well". Nagel looks for "an integrated theory of reality" which would account for "the strange truth .... that certain complex, biologically generated physical systems, of which each of us is an example, have rich non-physical properties". He believes such a theory would "alter our conception of the universe as radically as anything has to date". Nagel sees new intellectual tools, generated by reflection on such apparent impossibilities as the formation of mind out of the recombination of matter, as leading towards "a new unity that is not reductionist". It may be that Capra's synthesis of theories is a significant step in this process.
THEODORE ROSZAK: MIND AND SANITY.
Theodore Roszak's approach to mind is through psychology and the understanding of sanity and madness. He considers the processes of sickness and healing for human minds and for the mental process in larger systems both social and ecosystemic. His thesis is that the present widespread mental unease in people may be a symptom of the planetary mind's distress: our mental distress may be the voice of the earth demanding change.
Roszak chronicles the increasing separation of humanity from nature over the last two centuries which he sees as the basic cause of the increasing mental sickness of individuals and societies. He describes as "City-Pox" the growth of cities in size and influence, the concentration of resources,
(1) Thomas Nagel, "The View From Nowhere", Oxford University Press, 1986. pp. 51-52.
political power and control as the terminal stage of a pathological aberration.(217-20) City living is a form of madness and yet there is no psychiatric questioning of the city: psychiatrists depend on it for clients and livelihood. The city is symptomatic, he claims, of our whole industrial consumerist life style and current psychiatry is behaving as would a devoted practitioner doing his best to ease the experiences and fears of the inhabitants of Buchenwald. "What would we say to a psychiatrist who undertook to heal the mad in a place that was itself the creation of madness? What would it mean to 'cure' in such a place?(223)
As it is we live in a culture of expediency, "Purpose, meaning and value are left to be improvised within the human heart"(66-9) and we have a pathological inability to respond to dangerous situations.(70-2) Growing up, in Judeo-Christian and Islamic cultures, has meant denying joy in natural mysteries, learning distrust of nature, learning respect for the "denatured objectivity that is the ideal of modern science". Such consciousness deprivation has cost us our ecological intelligence. He instances our persistent denial of intelligence or even sentience to animals, which any child can see.(300-301) This is the first step to reading sentience and intentionality out of nature altogether. "How difficult it then becomes for well-trained scientists to make sense of the ordered complexity they find in all the natural systems they study. They are staring at evidence of mind in the cosmos, the original mentality of which their intellect is a distant echo. But professional caution prevents seeing things that way... or from saying that they do."(302)
MIND AS THE ECOLOGICAL UNCONSCIOUS
Like Bateson and Capra, Roszak claims that mind is implicit in the cosmos, it has been taking shape throughout our cosmic history. He thinks that Jung's concept of the collective unconscious, the "worldsystem of the spirit", may really be our evolved racial "mind" which, interacting with the planet's own mental system, could be the process we have experienced as God.(63-4) New physics and its understanding of the non-corporeal nature of matter and the new understanding of the hierarchical systems in nature offer the possibility of re-interpreting the collective unconscious as "the evolutionary record that ties the psyche to the full sweep of cosmic history". "Mind.... connects with øthe universe as the latest emergent stage on its unfolding frontier."(305)
This comes close to Bateson's understanding of a cosmic mental process. For Roszak, the process would be comparable to a societal "id" drawing on the evolutionary heritage that "must be encoded in us". We may possess a Gaian birthright from which to draw strength.(288) In contrast to Freud's dismal understanding of the id as predatory and savage, we may see it as "that protohuman psychic core that our evolution has spent millions of years molding to fit the planetary environment". Our dominant long-term characteristics must have been selected for sound reasons; modern societal conditioning is "the come lately product of many false starts and compromises between ecological balance and social aspirations that, like the grandiose ambitions of the god-kings of the ancient river valleys, border on megalomania."(291) There may be a "wisdom of the id" that knows what ecosystemic sanity is.(292)
"The collective unconscious, at its deepest level, shelters the compacted ecological intelligence of our species." From this comes culture as a reflection of nature's "mindlikeness". The survival of life and our species depends on this self-adjusting, system-building wisdom. Our ego (individual and societal, must re-unite with that id "if we are to become a sane species capable of greater evolutionary adventures".(306) It may be that the mental process of the planetary biosphere gains access to us through the id: turning a deaf ear to its voice may be the cause of personal and societal neurosis.(305)
Roszak's imputation of an intentional voice to the biosphere brings the discussion to the question of teleology. A recognition of far greater mental processes in the world than our own raises questions about appropriate attitudes to them: reverence, awe, and so, religious process. Both these themes are subjects of later sections.
SKOLIMOWSKI:
Skolimowski's approach to the process of life is angled towards evolution as the key evidence of purposeful divinity in the world. It is therefore discussed in the sections on religious process, evolution and teleology below. Nevertheless, there is a broad complementarity in the views of these four thinkers and the main thrust of this is agreement that mental process within systems of all sizes is evident and real. They offer a new ontological recognition of mental process.
RELIGIOUS PROCESS.
I define religious processes as those purposeful sequences which confer a sense of the self as immersed in a meaningful and greater process, a merging with a larger reality.
Such processes include reverencing the natural world and other people, experiencing the self as significant and meaningful in the processes of the cosmos, understanding sacredness as a quality appropriate to real entities and processes and, perhaps, granting ontological standing to God as purposive mindlike process in the universe. Such traditional religious activities as ritual, worship, celebration and prayer gain new potential for meaning from the increasingly accepted view of metaphorical forms of communication as epistemologically valid.

BATESON:
Religion, says Bateson, provides "a rich, internally structured model that stands in metaphorical relationship to the whole of life, and therefore can be used to think with."(195) Throughout history, a religion has been the pattern that linked individual lives to "the complex regularities of the world". Religions were "extended metaphors" which enabled people to think at levels of otherwise impossible complexity.(196) The rain dances provide examples of "true religious ceremonials" allowing the integration of the participants into their environmental whole.(56) Such experiences as sacraments "work" by enabling metaphorical processes to be a valid way of knowing.(28)
Religion, being essentially a metaphorical system, protects the communications appropriate for understanding Creatura, it acts as a therapy for pathologies in information handling(197) and amounts to a cognitive subsystem that opts in favour of the Creatural modes of thought. Within its discourse we can choose to suspend Pleromatic thinking and "find ourselves in a world of mystery and ambiguity where objective reporting is not primary...øwhere secrecy and what we have called unknowing become important, and certain ideas are unquestionable - or rather immune to validation and invalidation".(196) Religion may be the only way a culture maintains its equilibrium vis-a-vis its ecosystem. (my italics)(106) We may need, Bateson claims, for the sake of maintaining our ability to adapt, to preserve these ways of knowing.(198) He claims that religious processes address vital epistemological problems: "the limitations on knowledge, the unavoidable gaps in every description, the paradoxes produced by recursiveness" and suggests that "certainly through human history, and perhaps necessarily into the future, religion has been the only kind of cognitive system that could provide a model for the integration and complexity of the natural world, because these are the characteristics that most persistently elude even the most meticulous efforts to describe."(199-200)
For him, the sacred is the integrated fabric of mental process that envelopes all our lives. Our principle (but not necessarily only) way of approach to the sacred has been through religious traditions - "vast, interconnected metaphorical systems". "Without such metaphors for meditation, as correctives for the errors of human language and recent science, it seems that we have the capacity to be wrong in rather creative ways - so wrong that this world that we cannot understand may become one in which we cannot live."(200)
Bateson offers two senses of "sacred": "that with which thou shalt not tinker" and "a sense of the whole which can only be met with awe...and which inspires humility"(148) He was aware that the unity of nature he claimed in "Mind and Nature"(1) "might only be comprehensible through the kind of metaphors familiar from religion" and this integrative metaphorical dimension is what he calls "the sacred".(2) It is "the pattern which connects".(145)
(1) Bateson, 1979.
CAPRA:
Fritjof Capra particularly emphasises the sense of belonging in the world as the basic religious experience. For him, this is spiritual consciousness. Because we are "special, capable of abstract thinking and so have the tendency to separate from nature"; we have to seek re-connection and this, he believes, is an essentially religious process. It means finding healing through relationships with people and nature, creating meaningful community, experiencing the sense of belonging to the cosmos, counteracting the sense of isolation, transcending fragmentation.
Capra uses the term "spiritual" in its original sense, referring to "breath", the breath of life. In many spiritual traditions what unites the living world is "the animating breath of life." The association of spirit and breath goes through many cultures. In Latin, Hebrew, Greek and Indian thought the concepts are very similar. Spirituality is expressed when religious experience flows into daily action; the spiritual life is then spirituality. When we are aware of this unity, of belonging to the web of life, that is spiritual experience. He mentioned with approval David Steindl-Rast's analysis of spiritual experience(1) as that which occurs at the moments when we feel most alive. We are animated by the life-breath when we feel most alive. For the systems view, the process of life is cognition, mind, consciousness; "the breath of life" is really only a more poetic way of saying the same thing. The mental, the spiritual, the affinitive consciousness locates itself in this process. When we are most alive, when we feel this sense of connectedness, then the boundaries of the ego, which we feel so acutely in western culture, dissolve and we actually experience a sense of belonging to the whole, of being most alive, we feel that we have come to rest, our questions are no longer necessary.
"Then the question becomes, what do you do with this, because these are rare moments, not as rare as we believe but they are not one or two every day. We have the desire to communicate and to relive these moments and
(1) Capra, F., Steindl-Rast, D., and Matus,T. "Belonging to the Universe - New Thinking About God and Nature", Penguin, London, 1992.
this is where ritual comes in. If you have the experience at a certain place you will go back to this place, you will try to go back to this place at sunset because you had the øfirst experience at sunset and maybe you don't eat before because you happened not to have eaten the first time, and so this is how we build up ritual. In the Buddhist tradition you have hundreds of thousands of people who can reach these states, through meditation, through the path. It really helps a lot of people."
"Reverence is an natural response to awe, to gratefulness, to recognising feelings of transcendence. When you recognise the tremendous richness in these relationships, in this Gaian system, that we are all part of this, that we came out of this, it is a very wide and awe inspiring perspective on life. Reverence is a natural response. Living the self-organisation paradigm is very compatible with a spiritual outlook. God? Not really, except in an immanent form, as immanent in everything. God transcends everything we can say about God."(1)
The main thesis of Capra's "The Tao of Physics"(2) is that many aspects of new scientific understanding , especially in particle physics, have parallels as "religious" knowledge in the meditative traditions of Taoism, Buddhism or Hinduism. He holds that the scientific concepts and the religious ones are not different in kind but are expressions of the same truths. Science is rediscovering religious processes.
SKOLIMOWSKI:
For Skolimowski spirituality is the active aspect of religious processes. An appropriate spirituality for today echoes ecological values and attitudes and is that which connects these with the person and with societies.
The forms of spirituality that societies generate are not haphazard or subjective but are specific to the society and its needs, history and
(1) Capra, F., from conversations at Schumacher College, June, 1993.
(2) Capra, 1983(a).
experience. An effective spirituality "articulates the human condition of the time" provided that there is a "fit", an adequate correspondence with the cosmology, consciousness, values and escatology of the society. Only if the culture and the spirituality are coherent does this fit occur. The consciousness of a society depends on its worldview, its ontology and its understanding of its cosmology. Its values must be cohesive with its sense of destiny, its ultimate goals, its concept of salvation. If any of these is incompatible or meaningless then alienation follows.(75-6) Lacking, as we do, a cosmology that confers meaning on life, our Biblical account no longer credible, we have no basis for values beyond self-interest and expediency. Technology now functions as a religion, consumption as ritual. Consumption has become our spirituality, the astronauts are our saints, receiving respect, awe and reverence.(64-5)
Skolimowski claims that seventeenth century secularism and eighteenth century reason perpetuated redemption theology by offering salvation to individuals through "the dreams of secular understanding", e.g. marxism or the "American dream". We now claim to have taken responsibility for our lives but in fact we have delegated the role of saviour/redeemer to science and technology.(88) Christianity and Islam have induced in us the temptation to wait for another to save us. We think salvation is a public act to be performed by a chosen one: science and technology in the role of messiah. Throughout modern society we wait for someone else to fix us. We deny religious process but effectively worship the god Technos.(96)
For the individual, "spirituality ...is about how our life affects other human beings and other beings in the universe.."(5) Healing the planet and healing ourselves is spiritual work. Living spiritually is about life as an "active prayer" of healing, helping, nourishing and nurturing. Prayer becomes "acting out the ecological dimension of our existence", a meditative attitude in daily action which heals us and others and thus becomes a form of ethics. Spirituality is "the realisation of our inner being, of our deepest potential, of the God within."(12) The quest for grace is part of the process. Though grace is a natural potential it is not conferred by any external divinity but is the product of working on oneself, a subtle and painstaking process perhaps using the tools of meditation, inner silence and avoiding mental pollution. It does not come easily.(97-9)
ROSZAK
Asking what processes can lead us back to global sanity, Roszak considers what he calls "stone age psychiatry", the healing practices of ancient or contemporary traditional peoples. Such essentially religious processes might, he says, be "mined" for useful insights.(76) Modern psychiatry is a diminished sub-species of traditional healing which operates in "the sacramental realm" by the healing of souls, in special places by special people, usually at some cost to the patient.(77-79) For such healers, madness is related to impiety and healing is interconnected with the myth, economy, spirituality and politics of the society.(80) Such psychology assumes an animist worldview: because nature possesses sacramental quality people must remain connected in an ongoing dialogue. "The human must establish a transactional bond with the natural." In the relationship with the natural there was give and take, courtesy and respect. One bargains, apologises, begs pardon, makes good the losses, offers sacrifice and compensation. Nature is seen as alive, possibly divine. "Sanity is... such a matter of balance and reciprocity between the human and the not-human. The very idea that the two can be segregated, that the human world should, or even could be treated as autonomously self-contained, would be the very height of madness for a traditional psychology." Relations with environment are ethical, the natural realm is infused with divinity, to break faith is both crazy and sacriligeous.(81-82)
Animism was truly how our ancestors saw the world and we have to ask whether this loss of connection is the basis of the present ecological crisis and our own endemic discontent.(84) In the animist worldview "things were once 'transparent' to the human eye, greater realities moved behind and within them..... This is where the concept "spirit" comes from, this once homely, utterly normal sense that something other than matter moves behind matter, animates it, sustains it.... Of that.... people stood in awe."(95)
Roszak sketches our path away from natural integration. Since the agricultural revolution we have experienced 10,000 years of "ontogenic crippling", we have manhandled the environment, bonds have been broken. At an advanced stage of evolution intelligence took over from instinctual drives and so now we have culture as a "second nature". Our early responses to nature are now subject to intellectual self awareness and expressed as myth, ritual, symbols or rites conveyed by teachings or images embodying what was once instinctual. What other creatures understand instinctively we have to learn from discourse, folk-tale or religious ceremony.(92-4)
Outlining the ideas of deep systems theory, Roszak says that the new deism has no need of Judeo-Christian theology or a personal God. "Without dismissing the role of reason, the new Deism opens itself to intuitive insight and aesthetic experience and so sounds more levels of the psyche than rationality can." Deep systems theory is "the prose version of nature mysticism", offering the promise of a unified worldview that seeks to do justice to the mental, the cultural, the spiritual as much as to the mathematical and the physical.(181-2) Commenting on the current re-discovery of "savagery as ecological wisdom", he claims that the durability of traditional societies had to do with moral reciprocity between people and environment. Ecosystems were "ritually regulated", religious lore and the reverential process were indispensable. Knowledge is not sufficient: "Something else is needed, at the very least, a properly non-ethnocentric humility and a willingness to admit the error of our collective ways" - a sentiment that reintroduces the religious processes of repentance and atonement.(226-8)
Thus Bateson, Roszak, Skolimowski and Capra all claim and illustrate the existence of religious processes as evidenced by recent science and their relevance to the development of responsible attitudes and a new world view.
THE NEW COSMOLOGY.
SKOLIMOWSKI:
Skolimowski argues the importance of cosmology in influencing our world view most fully in "Living Philosophy". He there claims that our understanding of cosmology, through an interactive string of relationships, influences philosophy, produces values and, hence, dictates our action. To see life and humanity as a meaningless and purposeless accident in a cosmic wilderness is to experience fundamental alienation and hopelessness. Hope is a "precondition of of all meaning, of all striving, of all action".(1) New thinking about the nature and development of the universe gives the possibility of seeing the role of life and, specifically, of humanity as part of a meaningful process of evolution. Skolimowski believes that such thinkers as Teilhard de Chardin,(2) John Archibald Wheeler,(3) and David Bohm,(4) have made it possible to think of life as participating in the universal process and have given rise to such ideas as the "anthropic principle" which, in various formulations, proposes that the universe has exhibited purposeful activity in bringing about life and intelligence. This sort of understanding is basic to Skolimowski's claim that we can learn to view the universe and the world as "sanctuary" in which the human role becomes that of "responsible priest and guardian" of all life forms. This view, though highly anthropocentric, is not the same as the Christian "stewardship" model as will be seen when we consider the immanent-in-the-world nature of Skolimowski's God and the intrinsic value given to evolving living systems. There is no suggestion of stewardship on behalf of an absent deity.
To act as if the world is a sanctuary is to make it reverential, sacred. Skolimowski claims that we respond intuitively to the idea of the world as sanctuary and that the natural human response to this idea is to adopt an attitude of reverence. "Sanctuary" is at first sight an inappropriate
(1) Skolimowski, H, "Living Philosophy: Ecophilosophy as a Tree of Life", Arkana (Penguin), London, 1992. Ch. I. especially pp. 22-3 and Ch. 8, pp. 234-9.
(2) Teilhard de Chardin, "The Phenomenon of Man", Harper, London, 1959.
(3) Wheeler, J. A., "The Universe as Home for Man", American Scientist, November-December, 1974.
(4) Bohm, D., "Wholeness and the Implicate Order", Routledge, Chapman & Hall, London, 1980.
metaphor implying an alternative, more dangerous habitat from which living beings can escape. It is evident, though, that Skolimowski's thought is that "world as sanctuary" is the alternative to the world as an ecological disaster area, and as a contrast between the earth as home of life and the cosmic wilderness.
ROSZAK
Roszak endorses Skolimowski's emphasis on the significance of understanding the "intentionality" of the universe in ways that offer meaning to human life. He quotes James Jeans(1)
"..The stream of knowledge is heading toward a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears as an accidental intruder into the realm of matter; we are beginning to suspect that we ought rather to hail it as the creator...."(101)
Roszak believes that we are only now recovering from impact of Galileo's thought which precipitated a "change from closed world to infinite universe ...the most wrenching intellectual experience of the modern Western world". The sudden awareness of an infinity that was "meaninglessly big" left only faith in the creator God to fill the void. When this was lost "infinity became a wilderness in which the Earth wandered without guiding direction, without merciful witness...... We carry still..... the numbing anxiety of being sunk in the abyss of endless space".(185-6) He emphasises that the worst environmental damage has been done in the modern period when the prevailing world view was influenced by a "rigorously non-anthropocentric" cosmology. Such a "sweeping devaluation of human life may .... øhave served to starve our need for meaning until it produced a pathological infatuation with power"(203).
The new knowledge of the limited time the universe has existed offers a radically changed view of human significance. Infinite time was meaningless, limited time means that the universe has history. Vast
(1) Jeans, J., "The Mysterious Universe", Longmans, London, 1950.
space and matter become the pre-conditions of life. The Anthropic Principle proposes that the size and age of the universe must be exactly what they are in order to be life sustaining.(185-6) In its stronger versions it claims that the entire universe has been "set up" to produce intelligent life.
Roszak, like Skolimowski, sees human evolution as producing "the culminating level of complexity". As "the emergent form at the outer edge of cosmic evolution, our species assumes a strange, new centrality in that history". The universe uses distance and matter "to embody its ideas of things".(186-7)
Science is for the first time giving the questing mind a significant status in the universe. The "eager unfolding of the natural hierarchy from the Big Bang to the human frontier" was "substance reaching out hungrily toward sentience" though this was better known by pre-scientific humans who worked with myth, image and ritual.
Now, once again:
"The person is anchored within a greater, universal identity..... Salt remnants of ancient oceans flow through our veins, ashes of expired stars rekindle in our genetic chemistry. The oldest of the atoms, hydrogen - whose primacy among the elements should have gained it a more poetically resonant name - is a cosmic theme; mysteriously elaborated billions-fold, it has created from Nothing the Everything that includes us. When we look into the night sky, the stars we see in the chill, receding distance may seem crushingly vast in size and number. But the swelling emptiness that contains them is, precisely by virtue of its magnitude, the physical matrix that makes living intelligence possible. Those who believed we were cradled in the hands of God have not been so very wrong."(319-20)
EVOLUTION AND TRANSCENDENCE.
Gregory Bateson provided the seminal idea of evolution being driven by "very large mental systems" towards increasing complexity. Capra's theory of living systems provides understanding of the mix of autonomy and stability that permit evolutionary process. For Skolimowski, evolution is purpose and process, life itself; we humans are required to assume responsibility for its future.
HENRYK SKOLIMOWSKI AND THE DIVINITY OF EVOLUTION
The core theme of Skolimowski's thought is that the evolutionary process is central to all experience: of life, epistemology and divinity. Transcendence, the tendency or the will to transcend, is the creative force of the universe. Evolution is the manifesting of transcendence. This force is a given, it is the nature of life.(13) Evolution is progressive, creative: we and the planet are unfinished, "we have somewhere to go".(24) The whole universe is a story of creative unfolding.(51) Everything evolves, even our thinking about evolution.(52) Our ethical sense, like our aesthetic sense, has evolved. Before articulation by such figures as Moses or the Buddha it was not explicit. We have now reached a new evolutionary stage where ecology is being articulated (as an underlying system of values) for the first time. Ecology is itself becoming a form of thought and awareness. To be a sensitive being now requires ecological sensitivity.(7-8)
There have been four steps in our growing understanding of evolution: the geological (Lyell), the biological (Darwin), the conceptual and now the theological.
In conceptual evolution, knowledge and the nature of knowledge evolved. Skolimowski cites Karl Popper in support of the idea that all knowledge is
conjectural.(1) In the New Physics the knower merges with the known, even the nature of scientific laws evolves. We are now seeing our minds as part of the evolutionary process.(53) If minds are evolving, so must the nature of what can be known evolve and, for Skolimowski, this includes God. Because he does not avoid the use of the name God, there is a consequent risk of reading Skolimowski wrongly, assuming that he refers to a personified supernatural entity. In fact, as with Bateson and Capra, there is no suggestion of "God" as operating outside the parameters of the real world. God is manifested in all the evolutionary processes. He says(2) "I often use the term God but the term is so broad and comprehensive that it is not unitive to anthropocentric individual Christian or Judao Christian Gods. So God is a kind of divine and creative substance in the universe - this divine agent."
Skolimowski holds that there is an evident process of theological evolution from which it follows that there can no longer be one fixed and immutable God. Our understanding of deity, redemption and salvation is itself an evolutionary product. Our mind (the sum of our knowing and comprehending) provides our conception of the nature of God. As we now comprehend evolution in everything we know, we come to recognise the evolutionary nature of God. The nature of such a God is the product of our changing ability to understand religious process. Eco-theology and Creation theology are the fourth stage of evolution.(52-4)
The basic tendency of evolution is transcendence and, so, is the basic tendency of humans also. Evolution permits us to see life as divine process, as not limited to the material but not as "given" by an external God either.(24-25) We aspire to divinity. God is spirituality actualizing itself through us. Jesus and the Buddha are reminders, inspirations that even at this early stage we are capable of grace.(55-6) "Spiritual life is the blossoming of the force of transcendence".(14) "God...øis the crystallized essence of the process of transcendence - finally leading to divinity" and so "transcendence may be conceived as God itself"(24) Evolution is God. We are God in the making. We can (and
(1) Popper, K., "Conjectures and Refutations", 5th. edn. Routledge, London, 1963.
(2) Skolimowski, the Theologos conversations, June, 1993.
must) be rational and spiritual simultaneously. Rationality and divinity are not opposed; they are complementary aspects of reality.(56)
It is part our our evolution to become aware that we are responsible for caring for and healing the earth. Our image of God must come from the needs of our time, from the relevant experience of our present needs. The traditional Christian God and the evolutionary God are diametrically opposed. Any attempt to return to the historical Christ or to a fictitious lost paradise only recapitulates the past while the goal of evolutionary perfection (of God and creation) is in the future. Skolimowski's theology is about unfinished human beings and an unfinished God. Clearly, future perfection is for the species, though individuals have to play their part in the process. God is actualizing himself in us; he can't simultaneously be fully perfect and neither can we.(102-3)
GOD
Skolimowski's system offers a God who is equivalent to the process of evolution, is immanent in the cosmos and the world. Such a God is purposeful in the sense that there is intention towards the perfection of life forms and the world. Within an understanding of that purpose individuals can find meaning and a sense of "being at home" in the universe. Ecological imperatives have always been included in such conceptions as "God is love .... we have just been too obtuse to see it".(90) Such a God is creative and is willing us to become co-creators, to "get it right". God's recent messages consist of the ecological imperative: we are challenged to learn, from the new physics, "how to dance in the universe in a new way."(91) Divinity is conceived as diffused throughout all creation. For us, claims Skolimowski, it is a human attribute; we cannot experience it otherwise. We experience divinity in other people; it is "the sum total of awesome characteristics of other human beings." We humans actualize the divine that is potential in the cosmos. (133-4)
ROSZAK
Roszak, discussing Gaian theory, claims that it modifies Darwinian theory because the emphasis is now in the integration and co-operation of species, the unit of survival is now the entire biosphere. Future evolutionary processes may select or discard species for planetary survival potential.(148) Similarly, in the understanding of the developing "symbiotic biology" there are no individuals, only communities that have joined together. Co-operation, harmony and balance replace the emphasis on conflict.(155-6)

TELOS AND TELEOLOGY:
"Evolution has been compared to a journey from an unknown origin towards an unknown destination, a sailing along a vast ocean; but we can at least chart the route which carried us from the sea-cucumber stage to the conquest of the moon; and there is no denying that there is a wind which makes the sails move. ..... The pull of the future is as real as the pressure of the past. Causality and finality are complementary principles in the sciences of life; if you take out finality and purpose you have taken the life out of biology as well as psychology."
Arthur Koestler.(1)
The question of intentionality in the natural world is a key one for my consideration of a general change of paradigm. Attitudes of reverence or disinterested concern may more readily be generated if the world is seen as purposeful and, hence, possessing meaning. Much religious thinking involves the idea of purposeful process, whether it is the expression of the will and intention of a divinity, a tendency towards perfection, the maintenance of a cyclical process or of a balance between extremes.
Within philosophy, such teleological trends have been understood as evidenced by "phenomena exhibiting any or all of order, design, purposes, ends, goals, tendencies, aims, and direction..." Telos is seen as "the completion or fulfilment of something... the final point toward which a process is directed".(2)
Such views are about the teleology of things, not processes. Teleological explanation is seen as the opposite of mechanistic explanation. Scientific explanation refers to the structure and processes of things while teleological explanation is usually understood to refer to the
(1) Koestler, A., "Janus - A Summing Up", Hutchinson, London, 1978, p. 226.
(2) Angeles, P. A., "The Harper Collins Dictionary of Philosophy", 2nd. edn. Harper/Collins, 1992, p. 309.
processes involving an object that itself in some way evidences and contains the purpose of goal orientation.
Viewed from the perspective of new science and systems theory, teleology may become a more useful concept. If such qualities as pattern, order or tendency are seen as resident in some way in "the spaces between the things" - in the system itself - as innate conditions of "how things are", then it becomes possible to recognise processes as appropriate evolutionary tendencies deserving of co-operation, even reverence, without positing a deus ex machina or any non-rational force in the things themselves. This would amount to recognising inherent value in going with and assisting the natural flow of the larger systems which enfold us. This may be thought of (as it has been in the past) as religious process. We have, after all, accepted that one version of a teleological explanation can be that in which "the structures and activities of the parts of a whole øare adapted (coordinated, adjusted, fitted, suited) to each other toward the purposes or needs of that whole."(1)

Bateson and Capra both deny teleology in nature. In contrast, Skolimowski pins his whole structure onto the intentional nature of evolutionary processes and Roszak believes that the recognition of cosmic and biological processes as purposeful is the basis of the ecopsychology by which he believes the alienated human condition can be healed.
BATESON
Bateson claims that his use of "determinant" in describing the mental activity of the system we have understood as "God" does not carry a teleological sense. He says it is typical of our "appetitive culture" to see the example of the heating system as evidence of goal directedness where in fact it is "error (threshold) activated"(39). However, I think it
(1) Angeles, P.A., op. cit., p. 101.
arguable that maintenance of the status quo is in fact a "goal" and not necessarily less teleological than a drive toward some other state. It would certainly be the goal of the person who set the thermostat, who should in any case be regarded as a component of the system. In fact, elsewhere Bateson sees the "complex of mind" as "moving towards a semistable system of maximum differentiation, complexity and elegance".(175)
CAPRA
The only system we truly identify with is the individual human being. To this alone we grant teleological status. Challenged about this, Fritjof Capra claims that "humans are atypical systems".(1) Because his understanding of teleological process is strictly linear and because he assumes a teleological drive to imply change to a different, pre-decided state, he denies any teleology in nature.(2) Though systems may be said to "make choices", this does not imply, says Capra, that there is any purpose, intention or goal directedness involved. He believes that choices are made "according to who you are, to what character traits are prevalent at the moment of choice". This is true of any system. The structure of the system is the consequence and the record of previous choices but the choice is still unpredictable and is not dependent on a goal to be achieved in the future. Nothing is gained by formulating, say, the choices of simple organisms (e.g. "in favour of life") in teleological terms. His only concession is that one may be able to couch teleology in terms of the "evident pattern" at a higher level of behaviour which appears as random behaviour of sub-systems at the lower level, e.g. the apparently random behaviour of a single white blood cell which becomes, in a sense, purposeful at the level of cells gathering "to fight infection" at a point of damage to the larger system.
(1) Capra, F., the Schumacher College discussions, June, 1993. Tape recordings available.
(2) This, incidentally, is in direct contradiction of Jonathan Ainsworth's contention in his MAVE Dissertation: "The Ecological Holism of New Science", 1991. pp. 22-26. I have been unable to find in any of Capra's work the teleological emphasis of which Ainsworth accuses him.
He also denies that evolution and change are evidences of telos. Change is normal to life. It is a fallacy that evolution only occurs because of the need to adapt; it happens where there is no such need, otherwise the planet would have remained at the stage of green algae. This is the way life is but, for Capra, that is not evidence of purpose.
I believe that Capra's denial of teleology in nature is inconsistent with the general tenor of his thinking and robs his position of a potentially benign influence. It would be strange if the only living system of which we have inside knowledge should be an "atypical" possessor of teleological drives. It is more reasonable to expect that the smaller or larger systems in which we are nested share this quality which, in a world which displays every evidence of progressive development, is the prerequisite of transcendence.
Capra's stance may well be due to the continuing unacceptability of teleology in mainstream scientific circles. His need for credibility in the scientific world limits him to some aspects of old paradigm thinking, e.g. his hierarchical ranking of "higher" and "lower" levels of systems (though he offers "networks and meta-networks" as substitute terminology). I believe that systems thinking must require (and contain) a sense of telos, denied by Capra and by most scientists, if it is to be within a paradigm inclusive of values and ethics, as Capra thinks it is now. If, as Marcuse argues, "science has separated reality from ends and, therefore, truth from goodness, science from ethics.....øso that it... is unable to comprehend any definition of nature in terms of final causes, øthus placing...all value ..... outside science"(1), it follows that values must necessarily be based on something more than expediency. "Ends" worthy of the name presuppose some sense of intention, aim or purpose. The tendency, the intention towards the end, the "good" to which the values refer is what makes it possible to define values at all.
Asked about his response to the discovery that there are interactive energy fields extending throughout the universe and whether that knowledge
(1) Marcuse, H., "One Dimensional Man", Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1964, p. 146.
speaks to him of anything purposeful, Capra says, privately, that he has no difficulty with thinking of the universe as unified, as alive, even conscious, and with associating this cosmic consciousness with traditional religious beliefs and with traditional gods. (Such "consciousness" of the universe is not, for Capra, "self-consciousness" in the systems theory sense). All this is within his personal world-view but it is not something he can present as a scientific opinion because it cannot be supported by logic and empirical evidence.
"Teleology?" said Capra, " No, I disagree with teleology but who knows? Evolution? Some things are viable, some not; it's a sort of development by tinkering. How about the idea of the playfulness of the divine? Creative and playful, that would fit with this view of evolution. So the systems view is not inconsistent with the idea of the divine but very different from the western or muslim idea of a distant clockmaker God. But not teleological: purpose and cyclical doesn't match. Purpose is linear."(1)
SKOLIMOWSKI
For Skolimowski, transcendence is by definition a teleological process. The Anthropic Principle (that there is a universal intention to produce intelligent life) is, he claims, increasingly recognised. Scientists, he says, now admit that little is known; there is a new modesty in their claims. There is an "almost religious feeling" involving awe and wonder in the approach to knowledge.(83) New Physics and traditional religion are converging to produce a new theological situation, a need to rethink the nature of God, the divine and our own place in the universe.(84) For Skolimowski, new science is not a story limited to science but represents a new stage of evolution: "the recognition that we both view and make the film."(86) He claims, invoking the concept of final cause, that the paradigm change will be achieved because of the absolute necessity for it. Human evolutionary capacity will meet that necessity.
(1) Capra, F., the Schumacher College discussions, June, 1993. Tape recordings available.
ROSZAK
For Theodore Roszak, teleology is central to the process of reconnecting the human psyche to the natural world and, hence to sanity. He recognises that the possibility of non-anthropocentric meaning in the natural world depends on the claim for intentionality. The central claim, advanced above, that mental process, the activity of "mind" is to be found in the natural world, itself entails the teleological claim. How can one deny all intentionality in a functioning mind?
Roszak quotes Errol Harris who claims that "Mind at Large øis solidly grounded in good science... and represents ... the argument from design in modern dress øwhich is..... the logical consequence of the very nature of our knowledge and of the structure of the universe as discovered by empirical science."(1)
Roszak sees concepts drawn from religion, such as emergence, teleology and final cause, as "philosophically rich and scientifically useful".(104) It is a feature of the new cosmology that history is a characteristic of everything.(114-5) Evolution by natural selection is itself a system with apparent purpose.(121) These are not new ideas; Plato saw the order and purposiveness of the world as coming from "the indwelling action of an intelligent being" and it is, after all, basic to the very idea of science that it is possible to make sense of the world as an ordered whole, as something subject to a unifying principle.(141-2)
We have thought that mind needed a physical organ to reside in, as we thought waves needed physical media to travel through. The word "wave" was eventually taken as a metaphor and finally liberated from the physical matrix. We are now challenged to do the same with thought.(136) Modern science has found no place to locate mind except in the human skull/brain but the parts within systems act as if they have a sense of the whole.(153) "If we attribute intentionality to nature, first nature has read intentionality into us."(149) There is no way, he claims, that
(1) Harris, E. E., "Cosmos and Anthropos", Humanities Press International, New Jersey, 1991, p. 192.
living systems can be described without employing purposive language, simply because nature is teeming with "purposive links".
Rather than "reading purposefulness out of nature" we would be better to recognise it "beyond human conduct", understanding intelligence in other than human terms - which is precisely what Capra, Maturana and Varela do in their theory of systemic coupling. Systems theory projects its analysis forward from cause to effect in the manner of Aristotelian final causes - "that end state that seems to guide the process toward its completion".(193)
He traces highly intentional expressions from Darwin to Richard Dawkins, denying that these are any more metaphorical than is the concept of "mechanism" in natural beings, so familiar in reductionist science. Why, Roszak asks, is "mechanism" not similarly condemned? And it doesn't solve the problem: mechanisms are purposive.(149-154) Similarly, belief in chance, accident and coincidence is common among scientists; concepts as poorly supported by evidence as that of mechanism.(132)
Roszak mounts an attack on those who dismiss teleological language as "merely metaphorical". He dismisses the claim of Lovelock and Margulis that Gaia is "only a metaphor" - "as if metaphor were not a powerful agency of the mind, one of our most precious ways of understanding the world, and therefore perhaps related to whatever we take the 'truth' to be." If we seek to eliminate metaphor we have to ask what other words will do the job. "A metaphor is a word that stands for other words. It should be possible to say what the other words are; and those words, once given, should communicate our meaning as clearly or even more so." When Margulis writes: "Life regulates the temperature of the planet" - what other words could she use? The result connects sensibly with the activity only if we assume some purposive link between them.(148-153)
All of this, claims Roszak, demands a revision of natural philosophy. The importance of Gaian theory and the Anthropic Principle is that they represent our first faltering steps toward re-connection as participants in the world.(98) A perception of spirit, creative will and intentionality (inherited from animism) could be the "metaphysical scaffolding of a new cosmology".(104)
Those who "rank high on the credulity index" are now those who deny purposiveness to the universe and the natural world: "These are poor words but I thrill when I say that we can no longer doubt that the events that have brought about our cosmos and our world comprise a story."(1)

(1) Roszak, Schumacher College lecture, September, 1991.
THEOLOGY AND THE PARADIGM CHANGE.
While church membership and the direct influence of Christian leaders is undoubtedly diminishing, western societies are so thoroughly impregnated with language, legal systems and assumptions that are based on Judao/Christian teaching that the majority of the population is to some extent sensitive to the proclaimed attitudes of "the church". For this reason it may be that enlightened theological change remains one of the potential forces for rapid improvement of public attitudes.
The thesis that the whole mindset of populations follows from their received spirituality is supported by Skolimowski who claims that different religions create different kinds of human beings who interact differently with the world. Christianity, originating in harsh conditions, thrust into crises of survival before it had time to mature, became a religion of rushing, emergencies, restlessness and combat. The crusades, dogmas, excommunications, the inquisition and holy wars have followed from this genesis. In contrast, Hinduism, originating in the lush plains was able to mature over hundreds of years, resulting, for instance, in attitudes which allowed the leader Shankara, when he wished to bring India back to traditional Hinduism, to go throughout the land simply debating with everybody.(70-72)
Some profound changes are taking place within Christian theology and there are comparable trends in Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and the other major faiths.(1) Within Christianity there is the evolving "process theology" and also the "creation theology" particularly associated with Matthew Fox.(2) One general summary of the Christian trends must suffice.

(1) See, for instance, the World Wildlife Fund series "World Religions and Ecology" dealing with Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism. Cassell, London, 1992.)
(2) Fox, M., "Original Blessing - A Primer in Creation Theology", Bear & Co., Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1983. "Creation Spirituality - Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth", Harper, San Francisco (Harper-Collins), 1991.
STEINDL-RAST AND MATUS:
According to theologians David Steindl-Rast and Thomas Matus in their discussion with Fritjof Capra, the trends within Christian theology embrace some key changes in thinking. There is a new emphasis on belonging, on being at home in the earth household, of being rooted in the physical world. (14,71)(1)
All world religions recognise such belonging as common ground (27) and there is a new openness to learning from other faiths. (122) The new theology is seen as the intellectual process of working with the "belonging experience".(15) From this spring morals: "what it means to behave as a member of the household". This a newly cosmic orientation for theology. (16) and such belonging is two-way: God and the universe belongs to each of us. Faith becomes "courageous trust" in the sense of belonging. (24) Salvation becomes the realising of this belonging. Ideas of man being above or outside nature are rejected. All creation is seen as being "in the image of God", soul is not limited to humanity, immortality of the soul is recognised as a non-biblical idea imported from Greek philosophy, resurrection is seen in terms of cosmic renewal. Death is real but "being in our fullness" outside time at the completion of our lives is to experience "having" all our life at once - we have all that we love in the world. (86-88) To be responsible is to welcome the cosmic process and to act accordingly. Stewardship is responsible tending of "the garden" of the world. "The fall" is estrangement from nature. Humanity is distinct in nature but not separate; each species does its own thing and man's thing is to tend nature with responsiveness, which is defined as the ability to respond appropriately. Purposive consciousness (which is limited to humans) confers the capacity to respond inappropriately, to destroy nature including ourselves. "The gardener's responsibility is to reconnect himself to the garden." (90-94) God can be seen as "the life of the world" (104-5), the "image of God" is properly seen as the couple, male and female, not the man. Many of the "divine"
(111-12)
(1) Bracketed page numbers, in this sub-section only, refer to Capra, Steindl-Rast & Matus, op. cit.
qualities in Christ (compassion, tenderness, mercy, relatedness, attention to the individual) are recognised as primarily feminine characteristics.
In general the move is from structure to process, from fixed articles of faith to interaction with the divine reality of the world. Rather than looking for milestones of revelation, theologians are "walking the road". There is reflection on intuitive, mystical and affective ways of knowing and a new emphasis on dialogue with nature as "the deepest source of everything". (139) Theology is seen by many as complementing the scientific investigation of the working of the cosmos by its own search for cosmic meaning. (157) New theology is oriented to real life social issues. The concept of "the Kingdom" is now explicitly related to environment; sustainability is seen as fitting work for the spirituality in our time. Salvation is no longer seen as private and personal but as a social process of "going from alienation into community". (170-1) Spirituality is now understood as inevitably and necessarily social. (174) We have become co-creators and that places environmental responsibility on us - which becomes religious responsibility. There is much concern with peace issues and liberation theology now applies not only to communities under political repression but in inter-religious contexts, to sexual inequalities and to environmental issues. Liberation theology is ordinary people doing theology about their real life-situation, predicated on the assumption that salvation is a this world objective for the community. (181-189)

STRATEGIES AND VALUES FOR SURVIVAL.
BATESON
There is little direct reference in "Angels Fear" to strategies for achieving ecological sustainability. Bateson believed that his understanding of natural systems and "mind" might, if widely understood, cause people to act differently on such issues as war and ecological balance and he saw enhanced sensitivity to natural systems as depending on both aesthetics and "the sacred".(183)
The "fit" of our beliefs about ourselves and the world is crucial: "What we believe ourselves to be should be compatible with what we believe of the world around us." This ideal, he says, is a religious hope. All science and technology "springs out of and impinges on religion"; it necessarily accepts some system of ethics and subscribes to a mythology.(177) Our myths are the deep ways in which we understand our interaction with the world: it is "part of human nature to learn.... deep unconscious philosophies..... Our myths..... aquire credibility as they become part of us. Such myths become unquestionable.... built into character ....øand below awareness so that they are essentially religious, matters of faith." We are the mythmakers: poets, scientists. politicians, teachers, doctors, lawyers and media. To these myths and the forms they will take, we are responsible.(182)

CAPRA
Capra sees systems thinking as a useful contribution to the paradigm change because it is a different type of science. One type, he says, is Baconian science in which knowledge is power; the purpose is to dominate nature and the method is to measure and to quantify. The new type of science is one in which knowledge is wisdom, and the purpose is to understand nature and to live accordingly, the method being the mapping of patterns which are, (after Bateson) qualitative features. A key point for Capra is that new science treats ethics and values differently from "old" science where such matters were excluded as unreal in comparison with matter, as issues of preference rather than centrality. It does this by perceiving science as within the paradigm, by accepting the paradigm as something real which includes the ethics. To present science as only a search for quantifiable data is just not how science works; it is embedded in a culture, a social and political structure and in a paradigm that contains values.
Capra agrees that, to be effective, a paradigm change would require a deeply felt change of attitude in the population at large, a "change of heart" involving a move away from anthropocentrism towards a disinterested valuing of nature. He suggests that restoring values to primacy in western society requires a public, political campaign. He sees potential in Deep Ecology and a re-admission of the mystical to the realm of "the real". The emphasis in systems thinking on relationships between systems and on the embeddedness and interdependence of different levels of systems may help to move ecology towards becoming a less passive and more directive science, a normative science that might take on the role of steering human action towards sustainability.
VALUES
He denies that there are any values inherent in systems thinking itself. You can, he says, have a perfect understanding of interconnectedness and of environmental damage you are doing and still be selfish, decide that the effects on yourself will be minimal and go on doing the damage. When you move to the experience of deep ecology that is a different story. Systems thinking would support the values of not hurting the environment because it is seen as part of oneself but would not, for instance, say anything about whether one should do things that would hurt one's children. Systems thinking can expose the interconnectedness and the extent of damage and so bring moral condemnation to bear; this could be either a human centred or a deep ecological morality. Systems theory cannot stand on its own in moral or ethical contexts, it was, for instance, invented and is used by the military for very dominant purposes. If you embed systems thinking in ecology then that leads to a value system that is not dominant. The pattern approach and the quantification approach are both part of science but the pattern approach is more appropriate to ecology.

SKOLIMOWSKI:
Henryk Skolimowski is in no doubt that a paradigm change is both necessary and occurring. Building on his previous outline of "eco-philosophy" in "Living Philosophy",(1) he proposes the development of an ecological religion which must depend on a spirituality that can only be part of a new worldview, an new consciousness. "To make peace with the planet we must change the present mind-set".(10) By an ecological spirituality he means an "underlying paradigm" for the many "cures" required. There are too many facets to the ecological crisis to "administer" the solutions and so we must rely on underlying spiritual attitudes; we need a revolution in consciousness.(23)
I have already referred to Skolimowski's list of the features of technological as opposed to ecological consciousness. The values of ecological consciousness (reverence, holism, quality, spirit, evolution and participation) are not seen as being in a linear relationship but form a network of related influence - each informing and being informed by the others. He believes that these changes are taking place as part of the evolutionary process of humanity and the planet.(21)
Science itself, Skolimowski claims, has already become a religious realm. The new knowledge will itself bring a new worldview.(79-80) He lists the insights of New Physics: objectivity is no longer a possibility, our theories decide what we will perceive, observation affects reality. In the new theory of mind, the mind (he here refers to the individual human mind) moulds reality.(81) In the new understanding of matter there are
(1) Skolimowski, H., op. cit., 1992.
no "things in themselves" but entities are always to be seen in interactive process.(82) Hidden laws of order are emerging: Bohm's Implicate Order,(1), Gaia as a living organism,(2) the universe possibly a living system itself.
VALUES
From this understanding of evolution and God, Skolimowski derives values for the age of ecological consciousness. We need, urgently, to replace technical values. Secular and scientific values are about relationship to objects. Their effect is to detach us from both the human context and the sacred universe.(40) Traditional religious values have lost their appeal and credibility. We have to evolve and adopt ecological values which "emerge" from life, evolution and relationships, they follow from understanding of the beauty, interconnectedness and frailty of life. These values, though they must follow from the situation of the real world are not relativistic but universal because they are the imperatives of survival. The adoption of such values is both natural and reasonable.
(33-4)
Skolimowski's primary value is reverence. Seeing the world as sanctuary dictates an attitude of reverence. Reverence follows from understanding the beauty of the world and is a prerequisite of appropriate behaviour.(7) To offer reverential treatment to the world would be the beginning of our spiritual reconstruction. Reverence demands the further values of responsibility, frugality, justice and diversity.(35) The relationship of these values to each other is, again, an interactive network of influence rather than a linear derivation.
Such feelings of reverence become the foundation of Skolimowski's value system. They are, a necessary consequence of our understanding of evolution. This is not, he emphasised to me, a logical consequence but it
(1) A brief summary of Bohm's theory may be found in Chapter I of Bohm, D, "Unfolding Meaning" Ark (Routledge & Kegan Paul) London, 1987.
(2) See Lovelock, J., "The Ages of Gaia", Oxford University Press, 1988; Joseph, L. E., "Gaia - The Growth of an Idea", Arkana (Penguin), 1991, among many texts on Gaian theory.
occurs because we realise the beauty and complexity and unity of evolution and, appreciating the marvel and the subtlety of all this, our understanding produces awe. The natural attitude with which we acknowledge awe is reverence. He said "Awe is not only comprehending how things are, but you are amazed and intent - and that is what reverence means. You revere it because of its wonderful beauty and because you are understanding that you are part of it, of the spectacle of creation and your understanding is not just "they are there - you are here" but as participant in the act of understanding...... Reverence is ecstasy, not fear."(1)
We have to accept a new conception of responsibility, acknowledging that we are co-creating with the universe, evolution and God. We cannot be passive. We are responsible for the universe. There is no other saviour or redeemer. We have to assume responsibility for ourselves, the planet and the universe. "The universe is thinking through us and wants to take responsibility for its own fate through our wills, understanding and care". To live as a human being is to live in a state of responsibility. This is the first condition of living in grace. Without responsibility we atrophy.(92-3) Skolimowski sees responsibility as an emergent quality arising with self-consciousness. Self consciousness takes on itself the moral cause: the burden of responsibility for the rest. The process is a form of altruism. Responsibility is already built into the human psychic structure as a positive force. The tendency to escape responsibility, egoism, becomes the equivalent of sin: the betrayal of our evolutionary heritage.(94) Such altruistic responsibility cannot be justified rationally. No logical necessity can be adduced. The concept belongs to the religious realm. We are responsible because we care; we care because the universe is sacred. We deem the universe sacred ourselves.(97)
Frugality is defined as "grace without waste" and as "an optimal mode of living vis-a-vis other beings".(2)
(1) The Theologos conversations, 4/9/93.
(2) Skolimowski, 1992, p. 213.
Very different from poverty, it offers a positive experience, a gain in quality of living.(36) The value of frugality is "a positive precept: be frugal and shine with health and grace"."(1) It is a value for the affluent, a mode of being that makes responsibility possible. It is about understanding the rights of others of all species.
Diversity is stressed as a value, not a description, by Skolimowski, following the style of Arne Naess: "promote diversity!".(2) He claims its necessity for vibrant life and living, both for the life experience of individuals and for evolutionary process. Diversity of lifestyle, culture, habitat and ecosystem are all commended as interactive values.
Justice is another ecological value, in interactive relationship with frugality and responsibility. Offering justice to all creatures "enshrines" our own being.(37) Ecological values are the foundation of peace, they will promote lasting peace and justice.(40)
Such values seem idealistic but are vital. We have to seek new strategies and forces.(41) Ecological values are trans-ideological; because they are needed world-wide and do not appertain to any existing ideology they are a potentially unifying philosophy. Such moral values bridge the immediate and the transcendent.(49)
ECOPHILOSOPHY
Skolimowski summarises Ecophilosophy as: being friendly with nature, other forms of creation, our own body, our own mind, our inner God, the great Call of our Destiny - and knowing why.(11) He claims ecological consciousness to be a rational structure.(31) Rationality and divinity are complementary aspects of reality.(56)
(1) Skolimowski, 1992, p. 213.
(2) Naess, A, "Ecology, Community and Lifestyle", Cambridge University Press, 1990, pp. 9-10.
He vehemently criticises contemporary philosophy and environmental ethics. Having mounted a general attack on analytical philosophy in "Living Philosophy"(1) he now alleges that, though environmentalism leads to a search for environmental ethics, this is frequently disconnected from any spiritual quest, being based on expediency or some sort of calculus, often cost-benefit analysis which is "not a foundation for any ethics."(76) Environmental ethics needs a new cosmology and spiritual framework. Our values are a shambles, utilitarianism, relativism and nihilism have taken over. Intrinsic values are marginalised.(127) Our past spirituality is enfeebled. Our present pathologies are loss of beauty, meaning, coherence, spirituality and God.
WAYS FORWARD
Skolimowski claims that we can alter the mode of our action on the world. Religious or spiritual responses to problems are depth responses, in contrast to human secular responses which, though practical are too often superficial.(4) "The environmental movement, the ecological movement is only concerned with the preservation of the earth as earth. It doesn't have much hope, much to offer, if it doesn't have this other dimension, if it is not part of this sacred plan of creation".(2)
He claims that we "can choose another metaphor through which to view the world"(6) To practice ecological religion would involve consciously making sense of a new story of creation, practising reverence for life in daily affairs, finding transcendent purposes in individual lives and co-operating with God as co-creator.(77) If we can come to see service to the planet as the "primary spiritual work" of our time we may yet succeed in averting catastrophe.
Noting a "greening" in all the major faiths, he sees potential in the adherents of these religions. For Christians he offers a renewal of the much neglected teaching of St. Francis: to confront injustice and human
(1) Skolimowski, 1992, see Chapter 2, particularly pp. 31-39.
(2) Skolimowski, the Theologos conversations, June, 1993.
misery directly, to speak out against wrong, to redistribute wealth, being responsible to conscience rather than law, to have the courage of simplicity. To worship and to find God in nature, to love animals, to offer practical social compassion, to recognise the spiritual dangers of affluence.(108-10) We need a strong social movement inspired by spiritual ideals; a Franciscan Socialism (119-20) Skolimowski suggests (perhaps rather naively) a Papal encyclical declaring all creatures sacred, urging readers to work to that end.(117).
He accuses green politicians of being afraid to engage with values. Green politics must become a spiritual crusade. People want a fundamental renewal, not tinkering. Such politics must not become subservient to either religion or technology but must be inspired by humane and spiritual ideals.(45)
Among the emphases of eco-philosophy and eco-theology most relevant to bringing about needed change are hope and courage.(99) The roots of courage are invariably moral. Living by the creed of rationality atrophies courage. We must now find courage to become, to transcend. Right understanding of courage leads to hope. Hope must be restored, this is a way of demonstrating responsibility in action. Hope leads to grace. Faith and hope and reverence are the roots that nurture being, they are ontological necessities not indulgences for the weak. The rational mind forgets this. Hope is a precondition of mental health. It reasserts our belief in the meaning of human life, in the sense of the universe. Endorsing hope is wisdom.(100-2)

ROSZAK
Roszak presents a structured set of insights about the ways forward to a sustainable human relationship with the planet, though he offers little guidance on how these changes are to be instituted.
The key need, he claims, is to bring about psychological transformation. This could lead, through three interrelated strands of influence, to the adoption of new values and modes of living.
Firstly, current human neuroses and emotional suffering, caused by the stress we have produced in the natural world and reflected in the collective ecological unconscious, may influence science (Gaian theory, the Anthropic principle) and also non-scientific groups (mystical, pagan, ecofeminist) and through these stimulate a move towards green politics and economics.
Secondly, there is hope for the recovery of our longstanding but at present unconscious affinity with nature.
Thirdly, a change of majority attitudes may be brought about by a shared and newly non-alienating cosmology, a new sense of identity, the re-direction of legitimate human "passions and longings" and the progressive recovery of the "personhood" that has been submerged in modern times in the interests of industrial dominance.
All this may lead to the adoption of values such as those imagined in some literary utopias, founded on aesthetic and religious understanding and reflecting the real needs of people integrated into their world.
Roszak holds that changes cannot come from reason alone but require psychological transformation. "What the earth requires will have to make itself felt within us..... Facts and figures, reason and logic...cannot motivate. They cannot teach us a better way to want to live."(49)
"Ecopsychology" is claimed as the route to change. In summary:
The core of mind is the ecological unconscious. Its repression is madness, open access to it is the path to sanity. It is the record of cosmic evolution. Ecopsychology tries to make this real to experience. The goal is to reawaken the "sense of environmental reciprocity" - to heal the breach between person and natural environment. It recovers the child's animistic sense of the world for adult experience, using among other techniques, traditional healing, nature mysticism in religion and art, the experience of wilderness and the insights of Deep Ecology. It experiences planetary responsibility as responsibility to other people. It seeks to re-evaluate some excessively masculine character traits and to use some (not all) insights of ecofeminism and feminist spirituality. It promotes small scale social forms and personal empowerment without rejecting the true benefits of technology. It holds that there is a synergistic interplay between planetary and personal wellbeing. "Synergy" is a term deliberately chosen to suggest that the human and the divine øworld are linked in the quest for salvation.(320-21)
Roszak suggests that the present widespread psychological stress in industrial societies may be a systemically produced impetus towards change, originating in the ecological unconscious. Given that we have intelligence, culture and language to filter our responses and that we are skilled in inhibiting direct responses to stimuli, he asks how such a system might seek to influence our conduct. It may be that it is done through our intelligence (e.g. Gaian theory produced by Lovelock/Margulis as prompted by Gaia) but this would be unreliable because scientists may resist such influence and delay responses.
Nevertheless, the way forward must integrate with modern science. Nothing else will qualify as honest intellectual effort. "If human conduct were governed by reason alone, what science has taught us about the great ecological patterns and cycles of the planet might be enough to reform our bad environmental habits" and science is the closest we have to a universal culture. Now that "scientists are fashioning a picture of the world as alive, intentional, creative.... though they may be the last to admit it.... what is demanded is a revision of natural philosophy.(97-8)
One possible route forward is suggested by the way that some non-scientific and religious groups (pagan, mystical, ecofeminist) have adopted Gaia. These confer on the idea the "emotional and moral force it may need to become politically relevant". This would be reminiscent of the adoption of Newtonian physics by liberal democratic politics or of Darwinian biology by Social Darwinists or Marxists in the past.(157-8) If Gaia is providing a planetary feedback system it may be that Gaian politics is a way it finds expression by our species. "The poetic licence and religious fervour of these efforts may even be among the planet's most effective means of self defence."(159-60)
However, Roszak claims, we need more than this. "Something more comes into play: an ecological unconscious, the 'savage' remnant within us, that rises up subjectively to meet the environmental need of the time." Hence the importance of Gaian theory and the Anthropic Principle as faltering steps toward re-connection to the natural world.(98) He cites Paul Shepard's thesis that there is a long established sense of kinship with nature that can be recovered.(1) Roszak asks what it would mean to prescribe nature as therapy. Psychiatrists can't do it; there is not the time or resources. The necessary agenda is: scale down, slow down, democratize, decentralize. "I think how warmly, often wistfully many people, though hopelessly enmeshed in our industrial society, continue to respond to the wild things of the world as if some deeply submerged loyalty bound them in fellowship to these creatures." How do we begin to regain scale? Not by fear or guilt or self-denial but from within, meeting a genuinely personal need for new quality of life. Gaia may be working to produce this. If it is true that we evolve within a greater sentient and self adjusting system we can expect our animal intelligence to be intrinsically life sustaining and enhancing.(311-314)

(1) Shepard, P., "Nature and Madness", Sierra Club Books, San Francisco, 1982, pp. 7, 9, 128.
The third strand: the potential for attitude change in the majority depends initially on the effects of the new cosmology. General awareness of the universal and planetary story as one of purpose and meaning with intelligent life as a key factor may provide the context in which perceptions can change.(41, 47) The development of a new sense of interspecies identity is possible. "Concern arising from shared identity .... When experienced deeply, we call it love.... more coolly, ... compassion. We have to decide if this link exists...and change as only love can change us. We have to listen for the passions and longings which underlie people's motivations." There are good motives for bad actions. This last is a strong theme with Roszak: if legitimate motives can be redirected to more worthy ends then much may be achieved. The pursuit of happiness includes the claim for discretionary spending power. To buy a luxury is to feel freedom and dignity - a legitimate experience. "The craving for specialness, distinction, personal worth... must be uncovered, examined, re-shaped."(254) Many of the best human qualities are made evident in threatening situations; we need the "moral equivalent of war" to mobilise the best human qualities. It may be, he suggests that Greenpeace has found it in "interspecies chivalry".(255)
"Personhood" is a persistent theme in Roszak's work. He means, not individualism in the modern competitive senses, but the full flowering of the uniqueness of each individual. He now invokes the Socratic project of self-knowledge for all, claiming that this, increasingly pursued, may provide the balance our planet needs, surviving into later life as legitimate concern for sensual pleasure, even an erotic response to all of nature. The demand for personhood is the making of Marcuse's "Great Refusal", the "rejection of the mad world's dehumanising values."(1)
Deeply embedded in our culture is the idea that freedom, pleasure or self-indulgence have to be earned, hard-earned. In a culture based on the assumption of human unworthiness, of sin and the need for redemption, self-knowledge has been equated with self-castigation. We have been subordinating our deep personal needs to the project of industrialising the earth for two centuries. Since the sixties, however, we have had a
(1) Marcuse, H., "Eros and Civilisation", Beacon Press, Boston, 1955. Ch. 8.
generation that tried to cast all this off. A therapeutic turning inward had to take place, resisted as it was by manipulation of shame (not true guilt) which is about not being what society expects us to be. This discipline, claims Roszak, needs to be broken.
"Whatever Gaia may be, impersonal system or immanent divinity, she speaks to that within each of us that wishes to be known peculiarly and personally, the self that fits no mold, the 'me' that cannot be made interchangeable." Sung by a sufficient number, this "song" is sufficient to halt the machine. "We become what the planet needs: creatures with some more urgent calling, some greater joy than comes of waging war upon nature."(274-280)
Shared affluence and leisure have become real options. If they are not available this is "surplus repression", politically imposed, not biologically or psychologically denied.(267-9)
Endangered species and the biosphere, cannot speak for themselves. When we speak for our own personhood we speak for them because both are endangered by the same forces. We have to take our personhood, "Work with it, strive to educate it, shape it into the tool the planet needs..."(282-3) Increasing personalism, enhanced self-discovery, creative disintegration into difference and diversity can answer our ecological need. Political causes are generated in individual, hurting, psyches. Cities regiment physical and mental energies, our capacity for self-enslavement must be broken. Gaia summons us back to appreciation of the wealth of the individual personality. We are confronted by the oldest philosophical task: "know thyself".(316-8)

VALUES
Roszak makes a case for the feasibility of "utopian values". He endorses Lewis Mumford's recommendation of plenitude as a new value and category of economic thought: a sense of "enoughness" identified by asking "wealth for what?"(1) Plenitude challenges people to take rewards as leisure not money, to think out real needs, personally and socially. Conventional economics, however, will not respond to it and we must look elsewhere.(256)
Roszak notes the varying ideals of a range of literary utopias ranging through austerity for Plato's philosopher kings, the emphasis on life-long learning in Thomas More's "Utopia", the life of labour, prayer and ecological sustainability of the monastic systems, democratic abundance in Bacon's New Atlantis, William Morris's "Nowhere" with its emphasis on aesthetic quality and the valuing of leisure and conviviality in Ernest Callenbach's "Ectopia".(2) Plenitude seeks to moderate and synthesize these utopian ideals within a sustainable environmental context. The goal is not cathartic suffering but pleasure of a superior order.(260)
Something more is required, Roszak feels, than is offered in any of these. In Aldous Huxley's "Island" utopia,(3) understanding of deep systems forms the basis of both religion and ethics, a bringing together of religion and science. The religion of the society (a sort of Vedantic mysticism) provides its sustainability and gratifies mind and body. Spirituality assists the move to plenitude.(263) Citing some figures on the fringe of mainstream Christianity (St. Francis and Brother Juniper, the long suppressed "Green Man", Matthew Fox, Thomas Berry, Rosemary Reuther) Roszak asserts that "a nature mysticism embodying all that Deep Ecology has to teach us.... will find in plenitude greater rewards that the machines can ever offer".(264).
There are human characteristics that offer hope. Roszak instances Kropotkin's studies of tribal societies in Siberia(4) which suggest that human nature is fundamentally ethical, kinship and moral concern "come as naturally to it as song to the bird". Conscience is native to us, forming the foundation for the higher moral feelings. If an innate ethical conscience did not exist we would be in chaos now; no police force or
(1) Mumford, L., "The Pentagon of Power", Harcourt Brace Johanovich, New York, 1970. p. 402.
(2) Callenbach, E., "Ectopia", Bantam Books, New York, 1977.
(3) Huxley, A., "Island", Bantam Books, New York, 1962.
(4) Kropotkin, P., "Mutual Aid", Knopff, New York, 1914.
bureaucracy could control an amoral population. The social ecology of family, clan, tribe, guild, village or town is spontaneous and real. As Gestalt psychology assumes, the mind is innately healthy, people are naturally convivial. It is only the "politics of domination" that teaches people that the body, the psyche, the community, and nature at large are unreliable, incompetent, hostile and therefore in need of top-down supervision.(230-2)

CONCLUSION.
THE CONSENSUS:
The thinkers and writers considered, along with many others, share common ground in their understanding of some changes that are taking place in the contemporary worldview. Important among these are the following:
The new science shows that the understanding of truth and reality posited by Newtonian deterministic science is inadequate; the assumption that the only true knowledge is that derived from quantifiable experience by means of logical deductive reasoning is false; deductive logic is only one way of knowing a limited class of knowledge. The Cartesian dualisms such as those between body/mind, matter/mind, physical/spiritual falsely suggest that only the material is real.
There is a new understanding of mindlike or mental processes within living systems at all levels. It is particularly significant (though none of the thinkers considered specifically make this point) that where the human mind is seen as nested within larger ecosystemic minds the latter are seen as the higher level system - the opposite of the "man above nature" stance of the old paradigm.
There is increasing evidence to suggest that the universe shows purpose and intentionality and so can be understood as meaningful process. This is important in influencing the human worldview towards a sense of meaning and significance in life.
There is acute need for redirection of human activity to avoid terminal damage to the living systems of the earth. For this to take place it would be necessary for humanity to develop a radically changed attitude to the natural world.
These thinkers hold persuasively that a qualitative change of attitude is occurring. This includes attitudes to concepts and processes we have called "religious". These processes are seen as transcending, though they may include, "religions". The new understanding emphasises that there is no need to invoke the supernatural or to abandon rationality in order to accept a reverential view of the world. They recognise a new understanding of the intentional, creative process of the universe as "mindlike" and recognise that this process may be what people have in the past understood as the action of deities.
Thus, environmental philosophy is beginning to rediscover common ground with a radically changing theology by finding meaning and purpose in the cosmos. From this new perspective, humanity may lose its sense of alienation and recover a sense of belonging that could drive the change from exploitation to sustainable co-existence. New understandings of the nature of "religious process" as not separate from the world of "material" phenomena are emerging. An ethic based on reverence towards the universe may be replacing the exploitive ethic. All these writers endorse the insights of Deep Ecology. This evolving set of understandings provides religious processes with a new ontological status and validity.

From the work of the thinkers discussed in this paper, it seems evident to me that:
1) Belief in an influence that is guiding the progress of life is possible and reasonable without recourse to the supernatural. Teleology is abundantly evident in cosmic and biological processes. Acceptance of the Anthropic Principle (at least in the version that states that cosmic development has proceeded, within very narrow parameters and against high odds, to produce the precise conditions in which life and intelligence could develop, thus suggesting some intentionality in the cosmic process) is also reasonable. Such beliefs give to human life a sense of purpose, meaning and dignity; the rational response to this is to treat the world with reverence. These views are supported by Bateson's theory of "mind", most aspects of the theory of living systems as synthesised by Capra, Skolimowski's and Roszak's understanding of teleology and Skolimowski's identification of evolutionary process with deity.
2) Any adequate response by the general public to planetary need will have to be driven by "a change of heart", by essentially "religious" values and processes. Such religious process involves the experiencing of immersion of the self in a greater meaning, a sense of the self as significantly related to the world, of security, of being at ease, of fitting the environment. From this may follow attitudes of concern for the needs of the planetary environment, other people and other species. Thus, there would be a merging of individual identity with the larger entity: society, ecosystem, planet and universal mind. All this is similar to deep ecology's concept of "self realisation"(1) but it provides new understanding of how the deep ecological stance may be reached.
3) Only such religious processes are likely to operate in time to avoid early ecological catastrophe. Particularly, since major decisions affecting global environment are made in the context of multi-national corporate and military power where economics and even national politics are secondary, any change must be widespread and populist enough to override these forces. Profound and rapid changes in societal attitudes have, in the past, been brought about by religious processes.
4) There is much to be learned from study of metaphorical forms of communication and experiencing. This may, if better understood, yield tools for development of new and sustainable ecological attitudes.

THE PROCESS OF ATTITUDE CHANGE
It is necessary to ask, in the light of the above claims, what processes might bring about the needed changes in general attitude. What can cause us to change our ways soon enough?
(1) Interestingly, the deep ecological terms "self-realisation" and "identification" were initially proposed as active terms derived from Norwegian verbs by Arne Naess and are thus seen as processes rather than as concepts. See David Rothenberg's introduction to the English edition of Naess, A, "Ecology, Community and Lifestyle", Cambridge University Press, 1990, pp. 9-10.
From past experience it seems probable that the unifying influence of perceived threat and fear is the likeliest agent of change. Actual ecological disasters causing famine, drought, sickness, poverty or war about ecological resources may have to occur before we are forced to rethink our ways of living.
Alternative possibilities seem to be those of governmental influence, education, example, societal pressure or religious processes. Governments could legislate appropriately but this must depend on widespread public support, particularly in the face of multi-national commercial, economic and military forces. Education has a vital role to play but there is risk that its processes may be too slow. The wider dissemination of understandings of cosmology and mental systems offering a sense of significance, purpose, security and ecosystemic identity may produce profound changes. Another hopeful, though slow, process is the "microcosmic" one of individuals and small groups illustrating sustainable practices in their own lifestyle and offering the example to others.
More powerfully effective (but also dependant on some sort of kick-starting of general awareness) would be societal pressures. Widely accepted ecological ethics would create and maintain change but these must depend on widely accepted values. It is possible to see some of the necessary values (e.g. love of animals or wilderness, nostalgia for rural life or, more generally, altruism, goodwill, sympathy, empathy, pity or fellow feeling) as remaining submerged but recoverable in current human attitudes.
Given the accuracy of my claims about the new ontological status of religious processes and a consequent re-acceptance of them into the general epistemology, these might become merged with societal influences. Again, the critical factor is the time it may take for this to occur. The existing trend towards "greening" in the major religions may accelerate the process, as may change at the individual level as proposed in Roszak's Ecopsychology.

PROCESS VALUES
The new emphasis on process rather than on relationships between objects makes possible a new approach to ontology and epistemology. With the emphasis on "verbs" rather than "nouns" the relevant questions become, not whether things exist, what their nature is and how we can know them, but whether processes are effective and whether their results are desirable. The link to value becomes obvious. There may be no logical link between factual object and value but the very concept of process relies on an understanding of "ends" and the value inherent in the purpose attaches to the process. A purposeless process would be a sequence of random events producing random outcomes.
The understanding of teleology is changed by this: processes, whether acting to produce stability or change are, by definition, purposeful. Their purpose is the essence of their existence, their effects are the only evidence for their presence. The purpose is evidence of meaning and significance. Since the nature of processes is to be purposeful, values such as "going with the process" can reside in them. If the meaning of a process is its aim, intention or end, then the aiding or hindering of the process has positive or negative value. If the purpose of the process is good in terms of some higher level value, there is "good" in going with the process.
Processes thus carry value that may make such responses as reverence or awe appropriate. I suggest that this is necessarily true of natural processes because they are part of the evolutionary process of life. Life is proposed as a supreme value because humanity, along with all other organisms, is nested in the largest living systems. Processes in human political and social systems that seem, by any definition, "bad" (e.g. genocide or annihilation of species) contravene the superior value of "life".
Since processes can only be experienced directly by people in terms of their evident effects, it can be held that the present denigration of "subjective" (as opposed to "objective") experience is irrelevant and false. If ontological primacy is transferred from objects to processes their experiencing by a subject may be the most meaningful evidence for their existence.

OPPORTUNITIES FOR ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHY.
I suggest that there are profound implications for philosophy in all this. Philosophers are being challenged to confront a new breadth of enquiry; the emerging ontological understanding may offer to the discipline a return to the centrality presently enjoyed by physical science.
Environmental philosophy is offered many tasks: enquiry concerning the relation of religious process to other strands of philosophical discourse, a search for the processes by which values are adopted by populations, the further development of the theory of mind, particularly about the ontological status of mindlike activity within systems, study of the implications for value theory of the suggested ontological primacy of process, further study of teleology in the light of new knowledge and an examination of the new cosmology and of systems theory seeking ways in which they may be made widely comprehensible. If processes become a primary focus of study and if, as I suggest, the only evidence for their nature and existence is direct experience of their effects, there will be important implications for phenomenology.
Important projects would be enquiry into metaphorical forms of communication within life processes, the operation of mental systems, and intelligence evident in other that human mental process.
There should be interdisciplinary enquiry, involving religious studies and theology, into the way the operation of systems has been seen as the activity of divinity and a similar interdisciplinary study of the nature of religious processes. It may be valuable to study the processes that have generated the previous worldviews of societies.
There must be many more implications of the paradigm change for environmental philosophy but these immediately apparent opportunities are enough to suggest that the prime emphasis in future ecological thinking may be on a philosophy of process.

SUMMARY
I have argued (assuming the expediency of accepting the "worst case" environmental scenario) that, since prevalent values largely determine the attitudes and actions of societies, and since those current in the dominant Western culture appear to be antithetical to environmental needs, that a major change in values is required. Values and attitudes are influenced by the prevalent world view so an adequate understanding of our relationship with the world should help to generate new and effective ones. Hence, a new and effective mindset could be expected to produce beneficial change.
I have shown that a significantly changed worldview is emerging from recent discoveries in the areas of cosmology, particle physics, the nature of mind in natural systems, evolution and teleological process. I claim (and support from the work of Bateson, Capra, Skolimowski and Roszak) that the new knowledge is providing ontological status to mental and religious processes in the natural world and that this may effect the generation of appropriate ecological values, thus encouraging action which may, if taken soon enough, avert the possible ecological disasters. I have finally attempted to suggest some ways in which environmental philosophers may become involved in the evolutionary process.
I would like the last words to lie with a better wordsmith than myself, the process of poetry interacting with the processes of ourselves and our world:
I believe the first living cell
Had echoes of the future in it, and felt
Direction and the great animals, the deep green forest
And the whale's-track sea; I believe this globed earth
Not all by chance and fortune brings forth her broods,
But feels and chooses. And the Galaxy, the firewheel
On which we are pinned, the whirlwind of stars in which
our sun is one dust-grain, one electron, this
giant atom of the universe
Is not blind force, but fulfils its life and intends its course.
Robinson Jeffers, "De Rerum Virtute".

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Noel Charlton 
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