Reading Man and Nature by Seyyed Hossein Nasr

Blowing my f'n mind a little. Obviously, as I never do, I am not agreeing with everything and struggle with some of the phrasing. In some ways the book seems to be written with a theory in mind and collecting facts to fit it, but I agree with the dominant theme of the idea: Man has taken the sacred out of nature; scientific study of a desacralized nature leads to exploitation not stewardship. Man is [the only animal with, not only the opposable thumbs and both a self-conceptual and big-picture intelligence needed to manipulate the planet, but also the only animal capable of being arrogant enough to need to be] capable of being stewards of the earth. Exactly how G-d made us, but we've lost the idea of restraining our internal self-desire while materializing our experience with the world around us, desacralizing nature. Science as an ends to itself. Consumption as a way of life. Both idols in their own respect, as we worship our things and we worship our own knowledge, all the while we take from the world around us in the name of quality of life while the less fortunate suffer.

With all our knowledge and the wealth of the world, there is no reason for people to suffer beyond our own ridiculous nature. We have the power to right OUR wrongs but those who are most able to aid do not. Meanwhile, we keep our heads down and the blinders up: staying selfish because we don't know how to do anything else. Get out of line, rise up, and get sanded down, knocked off or locked away; intellectually ostracized and ridiculed for seeing something beyond the facts of a scientific ideal that rose out of the western renaissance - A worldview. A science. Other people have had other ideas that are not necessarily any less correct, but these views are marginalized and disregarded as superstition at worst, philosophy at best and religion if you must.

Fuck yeah, I can get behind that idea. That idea and the idea that until man as a unit can realize his role as caretaker of the earth, steward of biological life and solve his own spiritual crises, through this process, the natural world can be saved and harmony can be restored.