The influence of Christianity is apparent from Quinn’s “fundamentally flawed” (is that original sin, Ishmael?) humanity to Berry’s new creation. You can restate the thread developed in this thinking and see a humanity created in the image of a God, passing through cataclysm, transcending its sinful nature, and becoming part of a developing universal (or multiversal ) consciousness.
The question has been raised so we have to ask, is it possible that humanity has arrived at a point in the human project so transformative that past patterns of behavior will be outgrown and we will find ourselves stepping toward a special era such as Berry’s Ecozoic? These authors and their followers are asking a lot of a species that has never demonstrated anything near this capacity and exhibits no substantial tendency to move in that direction now. This is speculative thinking dosed liberally with hope and salted with a bit of bourgeois panic that has become a myth in its own time. We are, however, what we demonstrably are. We have a very long history of being us. We need to encounter that reality and not hope for a mystical transformation. If we’re going to survive what’s coming we’re going to have to start thinking about who we are and not who we wish we were.
There is nothing particularly magnificent or transcendent about humanity. We are, however, a capable species and it is long past time that we apply those capabilities to reversing the environmental shambles we are creating. Ecofantasy is not going to stop Ecocaust (1) , only difficult decisions and very hard work.
1. Ecocaust is a term reportedly coined by Mark Budz in his dystopian novel Clade.
There is nothing particularly magnificent or transcendent about humanity. We are, however, a capable species and it is long past time that we apply those capabilities to reversing the environmental shambles we are creating. Ecofantasy is not going to stop Ecocaust (1) , only difficult decisions and very hard work.