…we are supposed to act with great deference to natural rhythms and patterns when it comes to nature “out there,” but extend—by government fiat, if necessary—the greatest possible technological control over human reproductive rhythms and patterns. We should learn to live with and in nature out there, but conquer nature in here. To what can one attribute this fundamental contradiction?
Peter J. Deneen, “Forward” Into a Sterile Future” (emphasis in original)
This fascinating piece from today’s First Things column by Patrick J. Deneen (whose work I’m used to seeing at Front Porch Republic) highlights something I’ve also commented on in some of my pieces on ecology, that left-environmentalism is ultimately a misanthropic philosophy. But it also points out that the true aim of the combination of the contraception/environmentalism culture is really just unbridled indulgence. Human desire is to be limited by nothing at all, not even human nature. The dark thread connecting these two philosophies together is human sterility, which will “liberate” both man and nature from our fellow man.
One of the things that I believe Orthodoxy has to offer the culture is what we might term a “consistent green ethic,” in which all of nature—including mankind—is held in reverence as having the potential to be a vessel for the divine presence. With this attitude toward man and the rest of nature, violence becomes an impossibility.
Never grasped that contadiction till now. Thanks for posting.