Why Traces of the Ecozoic?
Ecozoic is a term proposed by Thomas Berry (1914-2009), C.P, Ph.D., a Catholic priest of the Passionist Order and a scholar of cultural history and world religions. Berry intended Ecozoic to indicate a new era where humanity can choose to live in greater harmony with the earth than it has in recent centuries. Ecozoic is less a scientific term identifying a past geological age (e.g., Cenozoic) than one offering a hopeful vision for our current and future time. According to Berry and his co-author Brian Swimme in their book The Universe Story, the Ecozoic is “a new mode of human-Earth relations, one where the well-being of the entire Earth community is the primary concern.” (The Universe Story, p. 15)
More information can be found on the web about what might be meant by the Ecozoic Era (see Ecozoic Times for example). Posts on this blog will explore various forms of contemporary human thought and action which contribute toward realizing the kind of earth community envisioned by Berry and others. Berry wrote of a fourfold wisdom that “is available to guide us into the future: the wisdom of Indigenous peoples, the wisdom of women, the wisdom of the classical traditions [of religion and philosophy], and the wisdom of science.”[1] By drawing on these and related ways of knowing, humanity can begin to experience its deep relationship with the earth. Realization of this relationship is necessary before it can address the challenges of climate change and loss of biodiversity in any meaningful way, and there are many signs or traces suggesting that such an understanding is beginning to emerge.
The posts on this blog will seem more like a collage of descriptions of unrelated events, activities, experiences, ideas, and projects that may seem unconnected, but I believe they can be seen as traces of the Ecozoic, the beginning of a new sense of an Earth Community where all beings on this blue pearl of ours interact in a fabulous complexity of relationships.
Header photo: Nemunas River and surrounding countryside in Lithuania, taken from the Seredžiaus I piliakalnis (Seredžius I hillfort – 14th cen. CE). Kaliningrad, a region of Russia, lies on the river’s opposite bank.
Traces of the Ecozoic 