Futuristic writers talking about the ”New Age” to come, often describe the dawning of a new age as the eschatological fulfillment of astrological or Biblical events. Sometimes writers describe the age of intuition coming in with the “Sun moving into Aquarius.” Sometimes writers talk about a paradigm shift in man’s relationship to the Universe relating to the end of the Mayan Long Count Calendar cycle. Sometimes writers talk about the 1,000 years of peace or the age of the Messiah in which the lion and the lamb will dwell together in peace, as fulfillment of Biblical prophecy. No matter how people reach the conclusion that a new age is coming, their expectations are in actuality, not so different from logical assumptions any reasonably intelligent person might make about the changes mankind must undergo in the future to survive the byproducts of our increasingly technological society.
As technology has grown and continues to grow at a faster and faster pace, modern man has become more and more estranged from nature. The estrangement, which began in its most rudimentary form when man began to farm the land, now proceeds at a breakneck pace. Before farming, man did little to alter environment. Tribes of gatherers and hunters were only one step above the Great Apes that lived in an Eden like existence in the trees. Apes merely stretch out their hands to the nearest banana or green leaf to find nourishment. They give little or no thought, as far as we know, to the future, other than to migrate periodically from tree to tree. Hunters and gathers migrate from place to place in search of berries or animals to eat. While moving about in pursuit of their needs, these primitive men did little to alter the environment.
With farming, all that began to change. Farming the soil, and gradually learning to domesticate crops, was the first real effort man made to change and shape nature so as to make life safer, more productive and more pleasant. With that change, came the problem of fields losing their nutrients from continued farming. However, this was merely an early complication of man’s growing interest in taming nature. Mankind began living in tents instead of caves, began creating more and more complex instruments to manipulate their environment, and instruments of travel such as the wheel, etc.
Jump ahead now to the Industrial revolution and then ahead to our own age, in which mankind works at a feverish pace to create newer and newer forms of technology, every day, to improve the quality of life, to improve personal safety, and to increase longevity. In the process of manipulating nature, we have generated byproducts of our evolved science that actually harm the natural ecosphere. It is as if, at this stage, mankind has become so intoxicated with his ability to control the world around him that he has neglected to worry sufficiently about the deleterious effects progress is having on Mother Nature. At the same time, we still think of nature, at least on an emotional level, as a vast limitless reserve, the source of unlimited sustenance. When confronted with individual problems of environmental depletion, such as species extinction or scarcity of resources, we still have trouble putting all the pieces together, and appreciating the responsibilities of living on a “smaller and smaller” planet.
Not so enlightened scientists, Professors, and futurists. They appreciate and inform us that mankind cannot continue to live in a mode of natural domination and even rape of Mother Nature. To survive into the future, we must become responsible dwellers on the planet, and learn to use its resources in a fashion that won’t deplete them. Problems arising from the most extreme pollution and abuses of the environment, such as Global Warming, already threaten to severely change the Earth’s ecosystem in as little as 100 years, and serve as obligatory wakeup calls to even the dullest earthling, whose grandchildren or great grandchildren may be forced to migrate North to survive temperature extremes, that something must be done to preserve our planet as a safe habitat.
The changes in our relationship to nature are in essence a dialectical process not unlike dialectical materialism. That philosophy talked about an equilibrium that would grow out of economic extremes; the current dialectical alienation of man from nature must necessarily lead to drastic future changes in which man will learn, once more, to live in harmony with the environment. For example, if we cannot curb the use of harmful emissions from fossil fuels, futurists predict that a time will come when extreme environmental changes will force a reduction in emissions. Extreme temperature changes in a 4 degree world, for example, will make parts of the Earth uninhabitable, and within 200 years polar melting will cause coastal flooding that will inundate many large urban areas. A new equilibrium must be achieved whereby surviving human production will have so diminished in scope and so changed in nature that it will no longer cause depletion of the ozone layer. The process of Global Warming will have ended. At that point, we can conclude logically, civilization will, by necessity, be living in a deeper harmony with nature.
Given the possibility of this future scenario, it is not surprising that far seeing writers talk about the need for mankind to connect to the universe, to love the Universe and to learn how to relate to it, even in the midst of our highly technological world.