breakdown or breakthrough

The Native American cultures, like those of all primary peoples, revere Nature and perceive humanity as co-creators in a vast web of life. Not only the creatures who share the Earth with us, but also the Earth herself is seen and experienced as a living being to be honored and with whom to live in harmony. This intention is given voice with a traditional prayer of blessing addressed to "all our relations."

In contrast, the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries seemed a more realistic idea at the time. In fact, it came about piecemeal as entrepreneurs and inventors tried to solve problems and create or respond to opportunities in a time of huge cultural changes that, like a tidal wave, engulfed everything in its path. From religious beliefs to social structures, ideas about the universe and our place within it underwent upheaval as the so-called age of reason was birthed. As the new worldview grew to maturity, it came to consider humanity as the pinnacle of creation and science as the emerging orthodoxy, where human ingenuity could - and indeed was viewed to have the right to - tame and control a separate, passive and limitlessly resourceful Nature.

The scientific methods of this revolution were, however clever and expedient in the short term, profoundly limiting and ultimately dangerous. For in perceiving the world as merely a mechanistic backdrop to human activity and a resource to be plundered, technologies and industries separated us from Earth and our fellow creatures. At a still increasing pace, the systems of production spawned by this approach continue to deplete the Earth's natural resources; destroy Her ecosystems; and spill vast amounts of toxic materials into the atmosphere, oceans, and soils. The associated economic system stubbornly proceeds in the view that the Earth's resources are effectively limitless. It not only accepts but industrially designs for huge amounts of waste on the mistaken assumption that her resources are unlimited. And by economically counting pollution and warfare as viable contributors to national activities, it support vicious rather than virtuous ongoing cycles of development and behavior in contemporary societies.

- Ervin Laszlo and Jude Currivan, "CosMos, A Co-creator's Guide to the Whole-World"