{"id":10266,"date":"2024-09-16T12:00:35","date_gmt":"2024-09-16T11:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.co.uk\/?p=10266"},"modified":"2024-09-13T17:29:11","modified_gmt":"2024-09-13T16:29:11","slug":"reflection-ecology-shapes-our-destinies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.co.uk\/index.php\/2024\/09\/16\/reflection-ecology-shapes-our-destinies\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflection. Ecology Shapes Our Destinies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sustainable development should focus on the needs of people and communities and involve them in the endeavour. The effort towards sustainability has to be holistic, involving social, spiritual, moral, and environmental consciousness and resources.<\/em><\/p>\n

Voices are growing louder every day, crying hoarse, that the planet is facing an environmental crisis. We hear of global warming, acid rain, ozone depletion, climate change, biodiversity loss, topsoil erosion, tropical deforestation, desertification, underground water depletion and pollution.<\/p>\n

We pollute the earth with unimaginable indifference. Garbage accumulates in cities worldwide. Millions of tons of rubbish, toxic chemicals, medical wastes, fertilizers, and crude oil are dumped accidentally or deliberately into the ocean. The rubbish that we empty into oceans, rivers, and seas moves around the world in currents, depositing the waste as far as the Antarctic and Artic, and on coral reefs.<\/p>\n

The \u201cUnruly growth of cities\u201d is leading to visual pollution and noise, chaotic neighbourhoods, and spaces inundated by cement, asphalt, glass, and metal (Laudato Si, n. 43). It is time for science and technology, which are considered ultimate authorities today, to become self-critical.<\/p>\n

We tear down mountains for minerals, humiliate rivers, insult lakes, mow down forests, exhaust the soil, bring down the fecundity of the oceans, and threaten every living form. The atmosphere is under constant attack from \u2018greenhouse effect\u2019 depleting the ozone layer. The poisoning of springs, lakes and ground-water systems continues unabated. Over-exploitation of soil interferes with the self-renewing processes of life-systems.<\/p>\n

Life-sustaining energies are being depleted and degraded. Everything is sacrificed to the modern Divinity, which we call the Economy. William Rees and Mathis Wackernagel exclaim, \u201cHowever brilliant its economic star, every city is an entropic black hole.\u201d<\/p>\n

People are so excited about acquiring the most modern gadgets and other consumer goods that they have oriented all human life to earning and owning. There is no room left for growing more human: cultivating human sentiments, compassion of heart, understanding the mind, or gentleness in dealings.<\/p>\n

And suddenly, we discover that we are no more than mere robots at the service of an economy without heart and mind. \u201cModernity devours its own children,\u201d says Rasmussen. The export-oriented \u201ceconomy of exaggeration\u201d reduces hundreds of thousands of people into the slavery of cheap labour.<\/p>\n

Our economic progress is immense, but it has developed an inhuman face. Its focus is not \u201chuman beings and peoples\u2026but merchandise and the market\u2026\u201d When we speak of \u2018economic miracles\u2019 and boast of economic leadership, we forget that there is a human price to be paid for every step forward, a burden that reduces weaker persons and communities to the status of victims of the so-called \u2018national development.\u2019<\/p>\n

The manner in which impersonal modern technology is regulating our lives has something to do with the development of macho philosophies and bullying attitudes that we have developed towards each other and nature. The consequences have been disastrous. The \u201cvision of \u2018might is right\u2019 has engendered immense inequality, injustice and acts of violence against the majority of humanity, since resources end up in the hands of the first comer or the most powerful: the winner takes all\u201d (Laudato Si, n. 82).<\/p>\n

As industries advance in a nation, cities become coated with grime, covered with clouds of smoke and disease. Today, they are fast falling lower, degrading individuals, communities, entire societies, the environment, and all life forms. We are betraying humanity. When we are hurting our \u201csister earth,\u201d we are hurting our common home, something that we have been doing in a big way during the last two hundred years. \u201cThe establishment of a legal framework which can set clear boundaries and ensure the protection of ecosystems has become indispensable\u201d (Laudato Si, n. 53).<\/p>\n

Land is taken from people for the sake of \u2018development\u2019. Whose development?\u00a0 And at what cost?\u00a0 Time has come even for Big Businesses to judge their goals and become self-critical of the corporate culture that they have accepted as absolute. Many of them do not manifest any grief when they leave behind in developing countries \u201cgreat human and environmental liabilities such as unemployment, abandoned towns, the depletion of natural reserves, deforestation, the impoverishment of agriculture and local stock breeding, open pits, riven hills, polluted rivers\u2026\u201d (Laudato Si, n. 51).<\/p>\n

We speak today more of the \u2018needs of development\u2019 than the needs of peoples and of communities, even less of their participation in this endeavour. Sustainability of development projects cannot be calculated merely in economic terms. It calls also for spiritual motivation and religious-cultural energy that build up consistency and commitment. Thus, the effort towards sustainability has to be holistic: involving social, spiritual, moral and environmental consciousness and resources.<\/p>\n

We need to sing with all hearts: \u201cBe glad, earth and sky! Roar, sea, and every creature in you; be glad, fields, and everything in you! The trees of the woods will shout for joy, when the Lord comes to rule the earth. He will rule the peoples of the world with justice and fairness\u201d (Psalm 96:11-13).
\n(Thomas Menamparampil\/Archbishop Emeritus of Guwahati, India) \u2013 (Photo 123rf)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sustainable development should focus on the needs of people and communities and involve them in the endeavour. The effort towards sustainability has to be holistic, involving social, spiritual, moral, and environmental consciousness and resources. Voices are growing louder every day, crying hoarse, that the planet is facing an environmental crisis. We hear of global warming, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10267,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10266\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}