As if we don’t already have enough problems in this country, the last few years have seen us slipping closer and closer to becoming a “post-truth society.” Facts just don’t seem to matter anymore.
My thesis is simply this: A comet actually is heading our way. We ourselves set it in motion millennia ago. But only recently have scientists, echoing longstanding indigenous warnings, charted its course and voiced the alarm. Its name is Anthropocentrism and these are the End Times because human-centeredness will prove to be nearly as devastating as the comet in the movie.
The most ancient path I know is the ecological one. Creation is an intricate living system that honors life, death and rebirth within Earth’s natural cycles; where reciprocity is honorable, and all life is sacred. We humans, who happen to be mammals (but also a bit of a virus), have trouble remembering the path of Creation.
There are many questions that mainstream science can’t answer, at least at the moment. Ethical and moral questions, such as: who should get the Covid vaccine first? And how can such a prioritization be made understandable and acceptable to the public? Science provides data upon which such judgments can be made, but ultimately we can’t trust science itself to sort them out.
Many people, if they hear the name Thomas Aquinas at all, may not feel that he has anything to say to today’s “progressive” religious and post-religious movement. They would be wrong; dead wrong.