Environment and Sustainability

Questions about the state of the natural environment and certainly also about the situation of our global society have become more and more important in recent decades, and everything indicates that this importance will increase in the coming decades.

The blind faith of the ’Western’ in particular, but now also of other cultures, in industrialisation, which has certainly improved human life quantitatively and qualitatively, is currently being held back by an awareness of the catastrophic effects of industrialisation on the environment.

The natural environment is not something else than humanity. We are what we breathe, what we drink, what we eat. Our body is nature, it is the environment of our soul, but it is also part of the more general environment of nature. We as humans are like a spark compared to fire. When the fire stops burning, for example because it runs out of wood, the sparks gradually become smaller until they disappear completely. This is the drama that hangs over humanity.  

The fear that we are all experiencing today, above all of course the young people who have a whole life to live and who do not want to extinguish this fire of which they are the sparks, comes from the fact that the danger hanging over humanity is not only that of a decline in well-being or in life expectancy – factors which, on the contrary, are currently increasing – but that of a global catastrophe, even the extinction of the species Homo sapiens sapiens.

The dangers that are looming above all for humanity will be examined in depth in the individual contributions in the various rooms. Here it is enough to mention just one thing: the possibility of a nuclear catastrophe. Both an accident, as has already happened, and a nuclear war are possibilities that can occur every day in a completely unexpected way. Because the progress of nuclear weapons technology, which is currently held by only a few states, will certainly be supported in the future by other states and will sooner or later also be held by terrorist groups. This thought is enough to understand the very dangerous direction in which human history is currently moving in an uncontrolled manner.

This is not the only danger to the natural environment, the balance of which would be completely destroyed by an accident or a nuclear war. Precisely what is happening these days, the coronavirus pandemic, is another aspect which makes us understand that today it is essential and inevitable that philosophy and science, that is, the theoretical aspect of life, should fully guide the political organisation of humanity, that is, the ethical aspect of life. It is not possible for a virus to completely block the life of humanity on earth, apart from the deaths it causes. Humanity must therefore organise itself in such a way that this is no longer possible on a global level.

Essentially, what is needed is philosophical and scientific control of the environment, as Toynbee, among others, clearly expressed in 1976. Politics needs to adapt to the philosophical-scientific guidelines and implement them for the survival and well-being of all humanity now and in the future.

Politics has no choice but to follow what reason, philosophy and science, understand and express. It should be nothing other than the practical application of knowledge. Politics should not represent the interests of national, ideological or economic power groups, but only the interests of all humankind, and these interests are examined, understood and determined by philosophy and science in a purely rational and logical way.
 

Environment and Sustainability - ROOMS AND INTERPRETATION 
If you like to suggest a room on the topic of ’Environment and Sustainability’, please contact us by e-mail.