This article is Sequel 2 to From Homo economicus to Homo ecologicus ~ Cultural Evolution During the 21st Century. The first sequel was about conscious evolution. This second sequel is about anthropocentrism, or human supremacy, as opposed to ecocentrism. It is argued that human beings, unique as they are, must renounce imaginary delusions of grandeur and become more ecocentric, i.e., more attuned to their own embodied nature and their natural habitat, if human civilization is to survive the increasingly pervasive degradation of our common home.
From Homo sapiens to Homo deus to Homo ecologicus
In Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Yuval Noah Harari analyzes the past and the present of the pre-human and human evolutionary journey. In brief:
"Homo sapiens rules the world because it is the only animal that can believe in things that exist purely in its own imagination, such as gods, states, money, and human rights.
"Starting from this provocative idea, Sapiens goes on to retell the history of our species from a completely fresh perspective. It explains that money is the most pluralistic system of mutual trust ever devised; that capitalism is the most successful religion ever invented; that the treatment of animals in modern agriculture is probably the worst crime in history; and that even though we are far more powerful than our ancient ancestors, we aren’t much happier."
In Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, Harari "analyzes" the future:
"Sapiens explained how humankind came to rule the planet. Homo Deus examines our future. It blends science, history, philosophy, and every discipline in between, offering a vision of tomorrow that at first seems incomprehensible but soon looks undeniable: humanity will soon lose not only its dominance, but its very meaning. And we shouldn’t wait around for the resistance, either – while our favourite science fiction trope sees humans battling machines in the name of freedom and individualism, in reality these humanist myths will have long been discarded, as obsolete as cassette tapes or rain dances. This may sound alarming, but change is always frightening.
"Over the past century, humankind has managed to do the impossible and rein in famine, plague and war. Today, more people die from obesity than from starvation; more people die from old age than from infectious diseases; and more people commit suicide than are killed in war. We are the only species in earth’s long history that has single-handedly changed the entire planet, and we no longer expect any higher being to shape our destinies for us.
"Success breeds ambition, and humankind will next seek immortality, boundless happiness and divine powers of creation. But the pursuit of these very goals will ultimately render most human beings superfluous. So where do we go from here? For starters, we can make today’s choices with our eyes wide open to where they are leading us. We cannot stop the march of history, but we can influence its direction."
Harari is right: "We cannot stop the march of history, but we can influence its direction." However, it is hereby suggested that becoming Homo deus is not the best way to go. Letting go of all delusions of human supremacy in both the secular and religious dimensions, and embracing a new ecocentric culture for human civilization, is the best way to influence the future pursuant to flourishing of human life and the well being of the entire community of creation.
Since the inception of the patriarchal culture (ca. 10000 BCE) we have become conditioned to assume that human supremacy over nature is "natural law." But there is nothing natural about human supremacy and derivatives such as male supremacy, white supremacy, and other such ideologies of domination. Just look around. Humans are part of nature and are embedded in the natural biosphere, not the other way around.
Ideologies of dominion are bad for human development. Modern neuroscience confirms that a culture of partnership is more conducive to nurture our humanity than a culture of dominion, especially as it pertains to parent-child and gender relations. Patriarchal gender ideology, and other ideologies of dominion, are also detrimental for human ecology, because the mindset of dominion brings about
population overshoot,
ecological footprint,
toxic pollution,
biodiversity decimation,
resource depletion,
climate change, etc., and humans cannot flourish in a planet devoid of clean air, potable water, and healthy food.
Therefore, it is imperative to evolve our global culture from a mindset of domination to a mindset of partnership. All human institutions must cooperate in fostering this cultural evolution. Religious institutions are not exempt, because religious patriarchy derives from, and in turn exacerbates, the very mindset of domination that is now becoming ecocidal. A patriarchal ecology stinks. Humans may be at the center of the living world, but certainly not at the top. Human body-persons, male and female, are unique in self-consciousness and, therefore, uniquely responsible for the entire community of creation.
Evolving our global culture from an artificial, unnatural mindset of domination to a more natural mindset of partnership between humans, and between humans and nature, is what is meant by Homo sapiens becoming Homo ecologicus. Is there such a civilized animal? Yes, and it is both historical and cosmic. For Christians, these historical and cosmic realities are personified in the historical Jesus and the cosmic Christ.
The Historical Jesus, the Cosmic Christ, and Homo ecologicus
There is abundant historical evidence about the bad consequences of fanatical religious dominion. In the Christian world, the crusades and the inquisition come to mind as repulsive examples of religious violence. Similar examples abound in the history of other religious traditions, and recent atrocities by the ISIS caliphate show that humans still have a propensity to use God for ungodly purposes. The Catholic Church is the largest and most influential religious institution in the world. Crusades and inquisitions have now morphed into a more benign institutional ethos. However, the hierarchical structure of the church retains a rigid patriarchal semblance that conveys male supremacy and is, therefore, an obstacle to cultural evolution from domination to partnership, socially and ecologically.
For over fifty years now, the Vatican has been evading coming to terms with the fact that religious patriarchy is cultural, artificial, unnatural; an accretion of the patriarchal culture that emerged long before the Bible was written. This is understandable, given institutional inertia and resistance to change after millennia of Judeo-Christian patriarchy. However, religious doctrines based on patriarchal gender ideology are no longer credible. Patriarchal gender ideology is an anthropological falsehood rooted in the misconception that men and women are essentially different as human persons (thus implying that there are two substantially different human natures, male or female), whereas the Theology of the Body clearly explains that man and woman are somatically homogeneous and jointly constitute the full image of God as a communion of persons. There is but one human nature in two incarnations, male and female.
It is time for all religious institutions to let go of patriarchal gender ideology. In the Catholic Church, the issue is not going away, and it is not just a matter of "cultural movements that question the place of women in the Church" (see this announcement). It is a fundamental issue of theological anthropology that pertains to ministerial vocations. Indeed, "changes cannot be dictated by cultural pressures, but neither should they exclude the fact that in the issues that prompt change, there is a call to free the faith from encrustations of the past" (same announcement). The patriarchal priesthood is a cultural accretion, not divine revelation. It is doing much harm by perpetuating ideologies of male supremacy. It is time to ordain women to the priesthood and the episcopate. Else, the credibility of appeals such as Laudato Si' and Fratelli Tutti is compromised.
The Theology of the Body is a source of hope. It is a theological anthropology that radically transcends the patriarchal gender ideology of male supremacy, female oppression, and the exploitation of nature that has deformed most religious traditions until rather recently in human history. Consider the following points, based on
textual analysis of this theological anthropology, that can be extended to all human/human relations as well as human/nature relations:
1. Jesus Christ is the Redeemer, God made flesh, not a patriarch.
2. God the Father is a person, but not a male.
3. God the Son is a person, but was not a male before the incarnation.
4. God the Holy Spirit is a person, but not a male.
5. The Trinity is a communion of persons, not a patriarchate.
6. The "Son of Man" is God made flesh, not a patriarch.
7. All men and women are fully consubstantial in one and the same human nature.
8. Bodiliness and sexuality are not simply identical.
9. Being a body-soul is more fundamental for human nature than sexuality.
10. The body is a sacrament of the entire person, but is not the entire person.
11. The priest acts in the person of Christ, not in the masculinity of Christ.
12. All men and women are ontologically homogeneous in their whole being.
13. All men and women are of the same flesh in their somatic structure.
14. The complementarity of man and woman is enabled by their consubstantiality.
15. All men and women are fully consubstantial with Jesus Christ as to his humanity.
16. For the redemption, the masculinity of Jesus is as incidental as the color of his eyes.
17. Jesus Christ is the Bread of Life, not the male of life.
18. The substance of the Eucharist is BODY, not XX or XY chromosomes.
19. The substance of the Eucharist is FLESH, not testosterone.
20. The Church is "one, holy, catholic, and apostolic," but not necessarily patriarchal.
21. Patriarchy is a disordered attachment to the supremacy of masculinity.
22. The Church is a communion of persons, not a patriarchate.
23. The Church is the body of Christ, not a woman with a male head.
24. The Virgin Mary is the "type" of the Church, not a woman with a male head.
25. The Virgin Mary precedes the sacramental economy as Mother of the Eucharist.
26. The Marian dimension of the Church precedes the apostolic dimension.
27. Apostolic succession is contingent on redeemed flesh, not on masculinity.
28. The nuptial mystery of Christ and the Church is not a patriarchal marriage.
29. Canon 1024 is an artificial contraceptive and abortifacient of female priestly vocations.
30. Catechism 1577 reduces the priesthood of the New Law to priesthood of the Old Law.
31. Catechism 1598 declares that ordaining only males is a choice, not a dogma.
32. The exclusively male priesthood makes invisible the "feminine genius" in Christ.
33. The Christian/Catholic/Orthodox faith is not intrinsically (dogmatically) patriarchal.
34. The conflation of patriarchal gender ideology and Christian doctrines is a disgrace.
35. Institutionalized ecclesiastical patriarchy is an abuse against Christ and the Church.
36. It is time to discard the patriarchal scaffolding that obscures the Catholic faith.
37. Male headship is an ancient but entirely artificial cultural custom, not natural law.
38. After the resurrection, nothing requires that apostolic succession be exclusively male.
39. The first "transubstantiation" in history happened in the Blessed Virgin Mary's body.
40. Transubstantiation can happen via women ordained to act in persona Christi.
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The mud color background is meant to remind us that we are all made of dust (see Genesis 2:7). There is an ontological connection between humans and the biophysical world whence humans emerged. There is no biblical mandate to "dominate" nature by brute force, as Pope Francis clearly explains:
"The creation accounts in the book of Genesis contain, in their own symbolic and narrative language, profound teachings about human existence and its historical reality. They suggest that human life is grounded in three fundamental and closely intertwined relationships: with God, with our neighbour and with the earth itself. According to the Bible, these three vital relationships have been broken, both outwardly and within us. This rupture is sin. The harmony between the Creator, humanity and creation as a whole was disrupted by our presuming to take the place of God and refusing to acknowledge our creaturely limitations. This in turn distorted our mandate to “have dominion” over the earth (cf. Gen 1:28), to “till it and keep it” (Gen 2:15). As a result, the originally harmonious relationship between human beings and nature became conflictual (cf. Gen 3:17-19). It is significant that the harmony which Saint Francis of Assisi experienced with all creatures was seen as a healing of that rupture. Saint Bonaventure held that, through universal reconciliation with every creature, Saint Francis in some way returned to the state of original innocence. This is a far cry from our situation today, where sin is manifest in all its destructive power in wars, the various forms of violence and abuse, the abandonment of the most vulnerable, and attacks on nature." Laudato si', 66
Genesis 3:16 should have been included, because 17-19 follow from the same "original sin" and is tightly coupled to male supremacy over women and human supremacy over nature. But this would beg the question as to why women are still excluded from holy orders; a question that has no answer other than women being "unfit for ordination" (Aquinas), an ideology that comes to us as heritage from Greek philosophy and religious patriarchy under the Old Law. Never mind that "all things were created through Christ" (Colossians 1:16). Never mind that the historical Jesus explicity limited his temporal ministry to patriarchal Israel, and for that limited mission chose 12 men to represent the patriarchs of the 12 tribes. Never mind the Cosmic Christ. Never mind that the Theology of the Body dismantles the inadequate anthropology of religious patriarchy. In the Roman Catholic Church, it is still "politically incorrect" to even mention the issue. This is a significant obstacle for outgrowing Homo economicus and becoming Homo ecologicus. It is an obstacle to integral human development, and makes an integral ecology practically impossible.
From Human Supremacy to an Integral Ecology
"No one can face life in isolation… We need a community that supports and helps us, in which we can help one another to keep looking ahead. How important it is to dream together… By ourselves, we risk seeing mirages, things that are not there. Dreams, on the other hand, are built together. Let us dream, then, as a single human family, as fellow travelers sharing the same flesh, as children of the same earth which is our common home, each of us bringing the richness of his or her beliefs and convictions, each of us with his or her own voice, brothers and sisters all." — Pope Francis, Fratelli Tutti, 3 October 2020, #8.
Industrial ecology is about the flow of natural resources (materials, energy) through the industrial economy, and how such flows (from the point of extraction to the point of disposal) affect the environment in terms of resource depletion, supply chains, toxic pollution, ecological dynamics, etc. The cartoon above is an image of the ecocidal human propensity to abuse natural resources when they are abundant, accessible, and cheap. The myth of infinite growth in a finite planet is leading us to catastrophic destruction of the human habitat. It is hard to find people willing to take the antidotes of frugality (Laudato Si') and fraternity (Fratelli Tutti). As long as we don't reach peak oil, peak food, peak water, and peak everything, most humans seem to be incapable of moderation in human reproduction and consumption. Why is this so?
The modern myth of infinite growth in a finite planet is rooted in the ancient myth of human supremacy, whence many other nefarious ideologies derive, including male supremacy and white supremacy. Religious patriarchy further exacerbates the human propensity to seek dominion over others, and to do so in the name of God. Modern technology, based on the power of fossil fuels, has enabled the myth of human supremacy to induce the great acceleration in food production, population growth, and monetary economic indicators such as GDP. But humans are responsible for eroding the resource base. Mother Nature is innocent. However, Pope Francis recently reminded us of an old saying: "God always forgives, we forgive sometimes, but nature never forgives." If human supremacy leads us to resource depletion and climate disruption, the human species may go the way of extinction like any other species, because we are utterly dependent on nature to survive. So, what can we do?
The pervasive dominion culture of human civilization must change. In a seminal article published in 2009, entitled Overcoming Systemic Roadblocks to Sustainability: The Evolutionary Redesign of Worldviews, Institutions, and Technologies, a team of scholars analyzed the global system whereby culture (worldviews), institutions, and technologies interact in response to the cheap surplus of fossil energy that triggered the industrial revolution. The role of culture is decisive. Cultures shape institutions (culture shapes gender, and gender shapes the world). The culture of human supremacy, manifested as both secular and religious patriarchy, has permeated the collective human mindset to the point of forgetting that we must take care of our common home. There is no way in the world that humanity can survive (let alone flourish) as long as GDP is king. Ergo, the culture must change. Technology is morally neutral. It is the human institutions that must evolve from dominion to partnership. If human institutions fail to move from dominion to partnership, from patriarchy to solidarity, there can be no social/ecological justice, and we might as well forget about exploring other planets.
Biophysics trumps all artificial ideologies, both secular and religious. However, evidence is emerging to the effect that, while human evolution cannot be governed, it can be influenced via human actions, human agency, and conscious cultural evolution (behavioral evolution via acting persons, not techno-utopian illusions). Consider, for example, the following:
- Cultural evolutionary theory: How culture evolves and why it matters, Nicole Creanza, Oren Kolodny, and Marcus W. Feldman, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 25 July 2017.
- AI has taken over our cultural evolution, Mikko Alasaarela, Medium, 6 March 2019.
- What Misspellings Reveal About Cultural Evolution, Helena Miton, Sapiens, 28 July 2019.
- The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, David Graeber & David Wengrow, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021.
- Glory of the Logos in the Flesh: Saint John Paul's Theology of the Body, Michael Waldstein, Sapientia Press, 2021.
- Fighting the Patriarchy to Save the Planet, Jeanne Burgart Goutal & Laury-Anne Cholez, Green European Journal, 17 August 2021.
- The Ecological Crisis is the Climax of Patriarchy and Religious Patriarchy – What’s Next?, Luis T. Gutiérrez, Countercurrents, 2 November 2021.
- The co-evolution of genes and culture is revolutionizing policy, Nitin Pai, Mint, 16 January 2022.
- Revolutionizing Sustainability Education: Stories and Tools of Mindset Transformation, Edited by Ekaterina Ivanova and Isabel Rimanoczy, Routledge, 2022.
- No Longer Male and Female: Why Do We Still Separate by Gender in Church?, Vanessa Bickle, CBE International, 19 January 2022
Going forward on the evolutionary the journey, the encyclicals Laudato Si' and Fratelli Tutti are good guidance for conscious evolution by all men and women of good will. The Laudato Si' Action Platform and the Laudato Si' Movement are recommended as a most effective means, especially for 1.2 billion Catholics, to play a part in conscious cultural evolution for the renewal of humanity and human civilization:
Study the encyclicals Laudato Si' and Fratelli Tutti.
Another good resource is the Laudato Si' Research Institute.
Click the image for more information about the Laudato Si' Action Platform.
Consider becoming active in the Laudato Si' Movement.
Goals of the Laudato Si' Action Platform:
(1) Hearing the Cry of the Earth
(2) Hearing the Cry of the Poor
(3) Ecological Economics
(4) Adoption of Sustainable Lifestyles
(5) Ecological Education
(6) Ecological Spirituality
(7) Community Resilience and Empowerment.
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