Have we been operating as if the Earth was made to serve us? The late historian Thomas Berry believed so and this free-ride seems to have reached a dead end. Berry eloquently posits that the next interval of geological time to follow the current Cenozoic era will be the ‘Ecozoic’ era: a period marking the reintegration of human endeavours into a larger ecological consciousness that is mutually enhancing. “Our difficulty is that we have become autistic. We no longer listen to what the Earth, its landscape, its atmospheric phenomena and all its living forms, its mountains and valleys, the rain, the wind, and all the flora and fauna of the planet are telling us. Since the 17th century we have not heard, we have not understood the inner world about us. We have experienced the external phenomena. We have had no entry into the world of interior meaning. We have not heard the voices.”
Without sentimentally clinging to the hope of recovering the past glory of the planet, he matter-of-factly states that the current Anthropocene age, in which human needs take precedence over the health of the Earth’s forests, oceans, and other living systems, is at its climax: “The Cenozoic period is being terminated by a massive extinction of living forms that is taking place on a scale equaled only by the extinctions that took place at the end of the Paleozoic around 220m years ago and at the end of the Mesozoic some 65m years ago. The only viable choice before us is to enter into an Ecozoic period, the period of an integral community that will include all the human and nonhuman components that constitute the planet Earth.”
Providing a framework for successful transition, he lists the key elements of our participation in the new era, including making the larger ‘Earth Community’ the primary referent for every individual, institution and profession—as there cannot exist a well human on a sick planet. He declares that to survive in the new period we’ll have to unite and not see ourselves as separate from each other (spiritually or otherwise) or from the community of the planet (both human and nonhuman). He proposes that we evolve our language beyond the sterile, scientific and unimaginative to incorporate archetypes of inspiration as well as to propose eco-ethical terms parallel to genocide, homicide and suicide when it comes to crimes against the planet—biocide, geocide—terms that have not yet been accepted into our cultural lexicon, let alone criminal code, but has to be taken just as gravely. He urges for us to not only restrain ourselves, but actively encourage wilderness, withdrawing our terrifying presence and to allow ecology to reactivate itself and for nonhuman inhabitants to enjoy the benefits of the planet’s bounty. “The Universe, especially the planet Earth, is primarily a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects.”