Sometimes the way we educate children at home just reproduces the skewed values we should be educating against – especially as the world struggles today against a perilous ecological crisis. Children are taught to study hard so that when they grow up they can get a good job and buy all the things they want – or contribute to all the things the family wants. Even in homes where parents must budget expenditures to make ends meet, they are encouraged in desiring the good things the culture of consumerism offers them: the latest cellphone, their own car, their own condominium, eventually, their own house. Just study hard, and all these things will come. They are coached and assisted in ambitioning high-paying careers and in cultivating the friends and the life partners who would advance them in these ambitions. That is how their schools are chosen, that is how their professions are cultivated. Grown children are praised and admired when the quantity and quality of their consumption attest to their refinement and taste as successful persons.
Raised from the family into a culture of consumerism, people live and work in an ecological abstraction.
In Laudato Si,[1] Pope Francis addresses the ecological crisis the world is now in. He points to critical problems with climate change, pollution in a "throw-away culture", the diminishing supply of fresh water, the loss of biodiversity, the decline in the quality of human life and the breakdown of human society due to environmental issues (e.g. subdivisions vs. slums [LS, 45], the "noise and distractions of an information overload" [LS 49]) and global inequality (how global environmental excesses adversely affect especially the poor, who are the "collateral damage" of the consumerist paradigm).
Meanwhile, the Stockholm Resilience Center of Stockholm University has independently developed the concept of planetary boundaries, of which there are nine: climate change, biosphere integrity (biodiversity loss), biochemical flows (nitrogen and phosphorus cycle), land-system change (human living space, agricultural areas, mining projects vs natural forests, mountains and rivers), novel entities (man-made products like plastics introduced into the planet), freshwater change (diminishing supply of fresh water), ocean acidification, atmospheric aerosol loading, stratospheric ozone depletion. Once these are breached, the stability of the earth is compromised; its ability to sustain life is destroyed. That includes human life. Today, of the nine boundaries the first six (in bold font) are already breached. Of these six, the most serious are climate change and biosphere integrity; on their own, just these two breached boundaries can already bring the planet and the life it sustains into crisis.[2]
For Francis, the response to the climate crisis after Laudato Si has been weak. In a follow-up Apostolic Exhortation on the environment, Laudate Deum,[3] he says, "With the passage of time I have realized that our responses have not been adequate, while the world in which we live is collapsing and may be near the breaking point" (LD, 2). The latter clause is a dire warning. Our world is near the breaking point. Consumerism continues to fuel the technocratic paradigm[4]; this refers to human beings exploiting technology to satisfy their unlimited consumer needs in their consumer-driven cultures. In so doing, they pillage and increasingly devastate the earth (e.g. through increased global temperatures due to carbon emissions from production processes, poisoned rivers and agricultural lands due to mine spills, loss of biodiversity due to the destruction of species' natural habitats). With the satisfaction of needs creating new often obsessive needs, human beings create new technologies which more efficiently exploit and abuse the earth, enriching the owners of the production processes, richly rewarding the technical persons running the production, but discarding those who do not know or no longer know the relevant technologies. Consumerism, never satiated, demands another round of production, exploitation, enrichment of owners and technicians, the development of new technologies, and discarding human beings irrelevant to the production process. The addictive technocratic paradigm determines life endlessly for as long as consumerism empowers it. The footprint of humankind's production machine is gargantuan, dirty, destructive and heartless.
Keenly observing how the technocratic paradigm operates, Francis says, ironically, it "leads people to believe they are free as long as they have the freedom to consume." The belief is: only if one can acquire all one needs is one free from need. So those "really free [ironically] are the minority who wield economic and financial power" (LS, 203). They are those who are "free" from want, discomfort, and pain because they have the financial wherewithal to consume food, housing, human labor, medical care and the intellectual property that is in the consumers' market. But they have no freedom to fathom the ill effects of their production on the planet; or, if they do, they are unaware of their freedom to change their lifestyle and consumption in order to address the climate crisis. Their "freedom" masks an enslavement to the dictates of consumerism while the technocratic paradigm continues to wreak havoc on human society and the environment that supports human being.
Significantly, Francis states, "Amidst this confusion, postmodern humanity has not yet achieved a new self-awareness capable of offering guidance and direction, and this lack of identity is a source of anxiety,"(LS 203). He is describing humanity of today as "postmodern humanity," recognizing the profound effects that postmodernism has had on humanity. Briefly, postmodernism has questioned universal truths (e.g, the nature, purpose and finality of the human being), suggesting that truths are subjective, shaped only by social cultural and personal contexts (so truth is not one, but fragmented). It recognizes identity (gender, sexuality, ethnicity) fluidity. It is skeptical of metanarratives – overarching stories that try to explain the world such as religion, Christianity, Marxism, liberalism – and promotes a multiplicity of perspectives and narratives. It deconstructs traditional social, political and cultural norms, including hierarchies of power an authority, and the boundaries between high and low culture. Finally, it allows globalization and technology – including the technocratic paradigm which he exposes as a bane to humanity and the world – to challenge conventional boundaries, creating hybrid identities, diverse cultural identities, and new ways of interacting with the world.[5] Francis shows himself sensitive not only to the confusion of freedom and unfreedom of humanity in a consumerist world, but to the confusion of humanity in the postmodern world – all in a situation of ecological precariousness. But how does one raise the warning of real danger when in a postmodern world "facts", "Christianity," "religion," "norms" are profoundly questioned? Who or what is the human being in this world that is tortured by the dialectic between modernity and postmodernity? How does one reach a "self-awareness" that is appropriate?
For Francis the anxiety of the human being distressed by the technocratic paradigm in the postmodern world leads to instability and uncertainty. How can I be sure I can acquire what I need in this world? How can I be certain I will not be ejected from the production process? Where is my human dignity if I can no longer be compensated for relevant contributions to production? Is there human dignity at all? Is there a point to human travail? This uncertainty leads to people becoming self-centered and self-enclosed, where their collective greed increases. "The emptier a person's heart is," Francis says, "the more he or she needs to buy, own and consume." (LS, 204)
In the darkness of postmodernity, Francis asserts truth in a renewed modernity: "All is not lost. Human beings, while capable of the worst are capable of rising above themselves, choosing again what is good, and making a new start" (LS, 205). It becomes possible "to accept the limits imposed by reality" to recover "a genuine sense for the common good" (LS 204). It becomes possible "to take an honest look at ourselves, to acknowledge our deep dissatisfaction, and to embark on new paths of authentic freedom" (LS, 205) – free esp. from the mendacious freedoms of consumerism. This calls forth a "change in lifestyle" that would challenge the consumerism driving the technocratic paradigm causing environmental degradation; it calls forth acceptance of "social responsibility on the part of consumers" (206). What is purchased cannot be judged on its benefit for the individual alone, but also for its social impact in further fueling or diminishing consumerism and all its ill effects on the environment. Where the endangered earth requires less consumerism, Francis urges – hopefully - that the new self-understanding of the human being, one's understanding of freedom, one's new lifestyle, must be capable of responding appropriately to the cry of the earth.
For Francis, environmental education must support a new covenant between humanity and the environment. Education must bring awareness of the environmental crisis to fore and lead to new habits that protect the environment.
But it must go beyond just providing people with scientific information, consciousness raising and the prevention of environmental risks.
Environmental education must critique "the modern myths grounded in the utilitarian mindset (individualism, unlimited progress, competition, consumerism, the unregulated market)" (LS, 210). The "utilitarian mindset" is a worldview focused on maximizing efficiency, productivity and individual benefit often at the expense of other values like the common good, community and ecological responsibility. Against the "modern myth" of "individualism," environmental education must stress the rights of society and responsibility for the common good. Against "unlimited progress" environmental education must stress the finite nature of the Earth's resources and the environmental degradation that unchecked progress brings. Against "competition" as the primary method of social advancement, environmental education must protect against an environment of inequality, where the success of one comes at the expense of others, and the worth of an individual is judged in his ability to outperform another. Against consumerism, environmental education must show that the acquisition of things does not fill the human heart and how it fuels the technocratic paradigm which destroys the environment and discards people. Against the unregulated market, environmental education must show how such can lead to social inequality and environmental destruction.
For Francis, environmental education must stress that amassing things and pleasures do not give meaning and joy to the human heart.
Environmental education must facilitate "the leap towards the transcendent which gives ecological justice its deepest meaning."
Environmental education must seek to restore "the ecological equilibrium, [i.e.] establishing harmony within ourselves, with others, with nature and other living creatures, and with God" (LS, 210). It opens us to reconciliation of ourselves with the Creator Father, ourselves with other human beings, and ourselves with the environment. Here it can be seen that "ecological equilibrium" includes not only God, but also the reconciling and redeeming Lord: "for it was the Father's good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in him, and through Him to reconcile all things to himself, having made peace through the blood of the cross" (Col 1:19-20).
Such environmental education, wherever it takes place, needs "educators capable of developing an ethics of ecology, and helping people, through effective pedagogy, to grow in solidarity, responsibility and compassionate care" (LS 210). A tall order. Francis is himself already founding an ethics of ecology in LS which goes beyond the relationship between human beings and their surroundings. But educators must be able to build on this, themselves achieving insight into what ought to be done due to the ecological crisis and how that "ought" is based in a profound experience of being created and provided for in creation in love, and how in love the care for creation, the solidarity with sisters and brothers in creation, and the responsibility to creatures and God for the welfare of creation is part of our necessary response to God's love. Here the depth of love is shown in deeds not in words.
And how the human being is most free in owning this necessary response.
In my next posting, we will discuss "ecological conversion" and how this must necessarily start with the family in the home.
[1] Laudato Si', Encyclical Letter of Francis on Care for our Common Home (Vatican: 2015).
[2] This important study was presented by environmentalist, Fr. Ray Raluto, Academic Dean of St. John Vianney Theological Seminary, in a special conference to incoming theologians of San Jose Seminary on July 20, 2024.
[3] Apostolic Exhortation, Laudate Deum, of Pope Francis on the Climate Crisis (Vatican: 2023). https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/20231004-laudate-deum.pdf. Published eight years after the publication of Laudato Si. Normally Vatican documents following up the publication of a previous magisterial document waits for a round number of years. But the urgency of the climate crisis could not wait the extra two years.
[4] The technocratic paradigm is a central concern of Laudato Si (cf. LS, 106-114).
[5] Remarks on postmodernism with the assistance of AI through CHAT GPT.
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