Human Life - Nature – Technique in the Perspective of Agenda 21 by Dr. Arnd Hollweg, Editor’s
Note: In the previous edition of this Journal, the Page One Featured Paper presented
a selection of opinions of readers of this Journal regarding a UN program called
Agenda 21. The paper presented below offers a more detailed opinion piece
regarding the implications of this controversial and far-reaching program. -JP In The first English translation was
“sustained field”. It points to the economic law that we must not get more wood
out of the forests than living trees will grow again in them. Only if we
realize and accept these limits, the growth of nature will go on. Otherwise the
living structures in nature will collapse. But this is also a problem in modern
sciences: we must distinguish between the structures of our life on earth and
the functional structures of instrumental and technical thinking by which we
try to control our life. In this thinking life becomes an object for us and we
ourselves become subjects. But this is a contradiction which implies many
conflicts and much inconsistence in the sciences today. Reality
is mediated by our life In the instruments and machines in
industrial society today other powers are at work than in nature. They are
mechanical ones. As media they can produce information of all kind. But how to
distinguish them? The airplanes called drones for instance don’t need a human
person as a pilot in them. They are flown by electrical management carried out
by people on the earth. They can transfer bombs to all places on earth without
risk of the own life. In killing people technical instruments seem to be much
more effective than bodily strength. Why do we need them? To protect ourselves?
But what happens to the other people? We are not alone in the world. Our life
has a social character. The Agenda 21 is a theoretical
document, a mental program for 100 years. We cannot see into our future. We
don’t know what will happen in it. How much has changed in the last 100 years!
A plan for the future can only be mental. The empirical life I think, act,
experience, feel, observe in is another reality. But this is also a problem of
modern sciences in their relations to the reality mankind on earth is living
in. There doesn’t exist any reality in itself, isolated from human beings who
experience reality in their life. What we call reality is mediated by our life
where it has its relevance and meaning. A mental reality can only become a
lively one, when we accept that our brain is a part of our living body as a
human being. Therefore we cannot stay any longer in the mental tradition of
Descartes: I think, therefore I am. It is just the opposite: I am, therefore I
think. I am not in the world as a thing, an object or an instrument I can use
or misuse. I am a living I who can think, see, listen to other people or do
something in life. Without relating to myself as a living person I cannot
become conscious of myself in hearing, seeing, realizing, feeling, speaking,
doing etc. in my life. That is of immediate relevance for
the present problem of ecology, because Descartes intended to control and rule
the life of the nature we are living in. This claim to power is the reason of
loosing contact to reality. Today we become conscious about these problems. But
is it already too late? Is the destruction of the nature by our human thinking
and acting irreversible? Therefore an urgent question is hidden in the Agenda
21: How can it be interpreted into the concrete life of human mankind on earth?
Controlling the nature also means controlling all life on earth and what is
happening on the ground of the earth. But that is not free to our disposal. Today
already rich people try to invest their money in buying earth ground in the
underdeveloped countries. The world trade concerns already own grounds in all
countries and therefore can influence the community life at different places. What does it mean for our scientific
thinking today? It has to be interpreted into the concrete life situation of
mankind today on earth. That is also valid for the natural sciences. Their
thinking of facts keeps empty, as long as it is not intermediated by the life
of human beings. In life we cannot start with the
future. It is ahead of us in time. We don’t know about it. What will happen in
the future will depend on what the next generations will do with their life. We
can only help them by our doing in the limits of our time and strength in our
present life. Millions of children nowadays die of starvation, by wars or lack
of education, and we could do much more against that.[1]
But we cannot say what will happen to us tomorrow. Many events can intervene or
interrupt present developments. We don’t know what will emerge out of them. We
can’t define it by our ideas, theories, concepts, mental models. Industrial
revolution as begin of a new age We have to understand the problems
of the Agenda 21 in the context of history. Otherwise we are not conscious
about the relations between forests as regions on earth, economy and
techniques. The region on earth and the history we are coming from is shaping
our present experiential world of life. We all have made different experiences
on our place on the earth we call “globe” today. But in the global world of
today the separations of the historical traditions fixed by the historical
states and nations disappeared to a big extent. We are living in a time of
universal migration and ambivalent mix of cultures. The problem is that we try
to manage the different organizations which emerge out of this world-wide
process by the technique, while it requires a new kind of social integration in
a pluralistic social world. For this a technical-instrumental management is a
permanent danger, because it has its own autonomous laws which are in conflict
with human social life in history. So we need global exchanges between our
different histories and cultures. We should try to inform each other
about the history out of which our present life is growing and shaped in its
self-understanding. Therefore another turn in our thinking becomes necessary:
we cannot longer explain our human history starting with families, tribes,
kinship, groups, nations, states and empires. We have to think into the
opposite direction in starting with the population on earth in relation to the
different histories of mankind in their religious, cultural, and linguistic
backgrounds at their place of living on the earth. What do I think about the Agenda 21
in relation to the history and culture of my own country? Here in former times
wood was the central issue in the relations between social, economical,
political and certain religious aspects. The well known economist and
sociologist Werner Sombart (1863-1941) regarded wood as the central resource in
the time before the industrial revolution which he called the “wooden age”.[2]
Wood and coal were still fuel in Agenda 21 is related to all areas of
life: climate, environmental protection, raw materials, oil, transformation of
energy, poorness, illness, nourishment, education, increase of the population
on earth, migration, discrimination, terrorism, gender problems, labor,
minorities, corruption, economical problems of all kind, techniques, methods of
doing, human rights and dignity, values, depreciation etc. etc. This concept 21
is total. Nothing seems to be left. But I don’t see any living connection
between all these items. They keep isolated from each other. They are just put
together in the paper. Who speaks by it?
Global organizations of all kind, state and civil organizations as well
as the mankind on earth as a collective whole – they all are addressed. The
Agenda demands social justice and an unlimited growth of economics in all
regions of the world without relating to the human beings in their social life.
Who should carry out these mental requirements? Of course, it is nothing to say
against them, as I see it. But what is their place in our social life in which
we act day by day and make our experiences? From this point of view the Agenda
21 participates in the deficits of scientific thinking: it isn’t related to the
life time of human beings in the limit of history in which we live in
connection with each other. My life as a person cannot be turned into an object
of mental thinking. Rational
realizing and consciousness in life We have to distinguish between
realizing by our brain and our awareness of life in our consciousness. Recently
I saw an advertisement for the newest modern fashion with the slogan: conscious
of fashion. They defined it by the word “sustainability”. But this is
originally related to preserve the grounds in the fields on earth in rainy
regions in which the forests are growing more than in others. In figurating to
other facts this ecological term becomes unclear in itself as to its meaning in
the different languages.[4] Completely wrong, as I see it, is
its use in an account with a bank. The liquidity of money cannot be controlled
in the one-way-thinking of today. Its management is arbitrary, an object of
uncontrollable rulers. They are reigning today in economy, in industry and
commerce. Their processes have directly nothing to do with the growing forests
which are connected with each other by the organic life in nature. Our problem
is just that we have lost the contact to it. Nature is not run by instruments
or techniques by which we manage the stream of money in industry and economy.
It regenerates by the living dynamics in itself. All capitalists in the world
would enjoy, if their money would regenerate by itself. But actually they
pretend that this would happen. They don’t realize the limits, for instance as
to oil. In our human life and in the life of nature limits are self-evident. We
don’t need methods or techniques of abstract thinking in sciences to realize
them. We know them by our experience in the daily social life. At present most people in Each householder knows that you
cannot spend the money you don’t have. You cannot use what you don’t need. You
cannot know what you don’t experience yourself. All knowledge is related to
life. But what I do can destroy or sustain life. How can we distinguish this,
if we have no consciousness of the life we act in? What kind of awareness is
happening in my life? It is not static, because it is flowing in my living time
in which I think, realize, act and behave. It is not isolated from the other
life in the world, because it is flowing in organic, social and spiritual
relations. They are different from the functional relations of instruments and
machines. The latter belong to my work in life and can make it easier, but they
cannot replace my life in the world I am born in. There we make our experiences with
each other by which we find orientation in life. We are growing by education
and learning in social life. Surely we have to plan, but with many
uncertainties already as to the next days. It cannot be the main issue in life
to govern over it and control it. We lack the ability to do so. By constructing
a mental world in our brains we lose the contact to life and to ourselves. Then
we are not involved in what we are thinking, perceiving, recognizing, and
doing. In our sciences today we recognize by definitions and conceptual methods
we are not involved in as living persons. God
– humankind – nature in life But I myself am the one who is
thinking, realizing, acting I am responsible for, because it influences my life
and the life of my fellowmen and the communities I live in. I cannot recognize
anything without the consciousness of myself as a living person in my spirit
and body. Both belong together. But in the mental thinking of European
tradition we separate both from each other in the metaphysical and in the
physical thinking. This is different from the There is a lot to reappraise
critically in the history of sciences between Europe and the When today theories of pragmatic
techniques govern us in constructing instruments or machines, we shouldn’t
reduce our thinking in life to such aims. There is much more to discover in our
human life than that. It is much more valuable. Maybe the technical things make
our work easier, but we cannot apply them to life. On the other hand we also
cannot turn back the hands of time in history. We cannot ignore the industrial
society and the media in it which have already changed the conditions of life
in the whole world. We must accept the historical development and make the best
of it. Especially more than ever before we have to distinguish our instrumental
work and the life on earth our work shouldn’t destroy. That would occur, when
our thinking will lose its relation to ourselves in life which is rooted in
God. Our body isn’t an apparatus, but a living organism. It does not function
mechanically. We are not a function of ourselves. Therefore we have to be
conscious also as to what we do as living persons in spirit and body. We don’t live together only with our
fellowmen, but also in the non-human organic life of nature. When we are
conscious of this, then we know by ourselves that we cannot see nature only as
an object of thinking and doing to exploit it. We ourselves take part in the
organic life on earth, but we are more than living bodies or material things.
For Christians our identity as human persons is rooted in the presence of God
by his Holy Spirit in Christ. In our human empirical reality we take part in
the spiritual eternal life of God, in the interpersonal social life with our
fellowmen and the organic life in nature. These are different realities in our
human life on earth we have to distinguish. But this is only possible, if we
are conscious of our place on earth. We don’t have any alternative to it. This
is not a question of a program or choosing special methods or techniques. It
does not depend on special factors in life. Therefore we cannot remain in our
mental dogmatic and scientific traditions of thinking in realizing the reality
(cf. excursion 3). Then we would stay blind for the life we are in since our birth.
We live in the cosmos only on the living earth within all life on it we see
with our eyes. As to the cosmos itself we don’t see what is occurring in its
happening. We can experience it in our life by breathing the air, in the
climate, in rain or sunshine. All this is influencing our life on earth. We
also don’t know all that happens in our life. Maybe our ignorance about it is
more extensive today than before. But there are also experiences which are
self-evident in life. Thereby we can get an orientation we find our way in.
Much in life still keeps open, for Christians open to God. Therefore the
central issue is that we don’t live by ourselves, but by the eternal God who
created human beings to be his earthly images. Dynamics
in the social structures of human life If I do something or not or even do
wrong, the time in my life keeps running. We live in a fluid time on earth. We
cannot stop it as long we are living. It belongs to our life. The instrumental
and technical work by my reason, when separated from life, is timeless and
lifeless. It implies nothing than itself. It cannot help me in life. It is
jumping over it as if it would not exist. We cannot determine it. It is God
himself who will rule it (cf. excursion 4). In the abstract sciences themselves
I don’t see any way to overcome these contradictions. There is no hope of
change as long we don’t turn back to the experiential knowledge in our
empirical life all thinking, realizing and acting of us as living persons takes
place in. In the mental world of logical thinking all differences are
abolished. All becomes equal. Then the only request will be that all comes into
a perfect balance. But all is different on earth, also geographically. A
geometric measuring cannot avoid it. It depends where we live on earth: in a
waste, in green areas, close to the ocean or in the mountains. in a big town or
in a rural area etc. The conditions of the ground, the utilization of it,
mineral resources are all different. Today the land speculation is booming
everywhere. When some people want to get the same, hostility and even wars may
arise. When we are confronted with each other in a one-way-street, we crash
together in our automobiles, if there is no place to turn around. That is not different in a
one-way-thinking mental world. There is always a competition to be the first
and the best one to come to power, whatever it costs. The U.N. Agenda 21 is a
scientific construction with many important questions and analyses, but that is
not enough. We have to question about what is going on in our modern scientific
thinking in the western world and what it helps in other regions of the world.
The problem is that in our technological thinking our life itself becomes a
technical one so that we cannot distinguish any more between technical sciences
and cultural life on the one hand and the industrial society and social life on
the other. That has consequences as to our responsibility for the future of the
next generation. As I see it, this becomes conscious in a field of thinking we
call “teleological ethics”.[5] We
have to work out new ways of living, thinking, and acting if we want that
mankind will survive. There are new chances and new limits. Thereby we are also
challenged ourselves in our interdisciplinary, international, and intercultural
Journal of Global Issues and Solutions.
We have to find new ways in the future of our earth.
I only can briefly mention in which
direction I am looking for such ways. In doing it we also have to learn from
the histories of the different nations until today, but we cannot continue
them. In my book Theologie und Empirie
I have tried to explain one dimension.[6] I
was concerned with the point that the government of human beings individually
or collectively intends to get power and to gain thereby as much as possible.
That isn’t the way the eternal God deals with us in his government. He will
guide us by his divine love and truth in which we find our personal identity in
life so that we can accept ourselves as we are and our fellowmen and -women as
they are. When he reigns in our social life, we learn not to dominate social
life, but to guide people in it in a way of learning self-responsibility and
social attitude to fellowmen and-women. That implies many aspects, especially
to learn a human kind of awareness and organizing groups of all kind (cf.
excursion 5). A technocracy in management leads
into centralistic fusions, entangles and destroys social relations. We have to
ask: what is dominating our life? On the one hand we are already in a dichotomy
between technique and nature in which the nature and the organic life become an
object of technical thinking and doing. On the other hand there is a conflict
between individualistic thinking and a technocratic industrial society which
prohibits the continuing emergence of interpersonal relations between human
beings, groups and nations by the lack of transpersonal spiritual relations to
the eternal God. We have to distinguish between social conforming to each other
and adapting mechanisms in management of our life. Techniques are helpful in
doing special things, but not for orientation in social life. The systems of
thinking belong to another reality than the concrete structures of human life
(cf. note 3). The chapter 28 of the Agenda 21
contains a survey about the so-called “Local Agenda”: the local administrations
are challenged to start a dialogue with the citizens, the local organizations
and the private economy in order to decide on a Local Agenda. The motto is:
“global thinking and local acting”. But this is against the human nature: we
all have to think in social life, also at the local level. However, the concept
is due to the fact that the Agenda 21 can only be converted into sustainable
practice at the places where people are living, thinking and acting. This
doesn’t mean that the social commitment in life becomes destroyed or a great
mix would happen between religions and cultures, a cross-over-reality, as many
people fear. Quite reverse: a pluralistic social life will arise in which also
the inner life can develop its dynamics. People can join each other by their
faith and inner values in their life, when they feel to belong to each other.
My congregation is situated in a region of Since 1997 in Excursions 1.
In his philosophy of transcendentalism Immanuel Kant
tried to get an access to the empirical thinking in natural sciences. Georg
Friedrich Hegel was asking for a way of relating metaphysical thinking to the
materialistic world. Thereby he had to abolish the interrelation between the living
spirit and body in his mind. John Dewey was right in refusing the contradictory
mental thinking of Hegel. He started with a pragmatic view which was centered
on doing and experiencing in human life, not on thinking. It was not necessary
for him to deduce empirical life from mental constructions. So his instrumental
thinking in his outward direction was also open for the inward perception on
life. 2.
I will only notice one problem: the abstract thinking
in German tradition led towards a dichotomy between one’s reason and between
one’s senses. When Germans say: You should come to reason (“du solltest zur
Vernunft kommen”), Americans would say: You should come to senses. Rational (in
German language used for abstract thinking) means in the American English: “sensible”
(in German “feinfühlig” which would mean in English: sensitive).[7]
What people see, has a priority against what they think. This is opposite to
the judgments of Germans about reality. The cause of this difference is the
metaphysical background in German history and the one of natural sciences in
the 3.
As an example how much we still are involved in the
metaphysical thinking also in relation to the natural sciences I want to have a critical look on the book of
Ulrich Grober: “Die Entdeckung der Nachhaltigkeit. Kulturgeschichte eines Begriffs“,
in English: „Sustainability – a cultural
history,“ Totnes UK 2012. Grober’s book is written in a style as it is used in
feature articles of newspapers criticizing culture and art life related to the
contemporary history. But Grober makes a journey into the history of literature
in order to discover how the concept of sustainability has been used in it.
Actually his thinking is related to the intellectual history of Goethe’s time.
It is idealistic, timeless and abstract. What has his cultural history of a
scientific concept to do with the social history of mankind on earth we live in
today? We cannot return from our present reality into the ancient time. That is
only possible in our thoughts. They can jump through the history where we want.
The reality does not come out of a definition of sustainability in the form of
the “most original world heritage of culture” (p.14).[8]
That is an ontological thinking of metaphysic. A scientific concept is
something else than the content of human culture in the whole. How can a
scientific word contain all that is necessary in the life of human beings?
(p.14, 286) How can it have gravity, elasticity? As an art scholar Gruber gives
a theory of combination of all ideas which exist in the life of human beings in
relation to one scientific concept. Where does he touch the reality of human
life at all? He is captured in pictures and models of thinking where the
concept of heat becomes identical with the concept of brotherhood and
cooperation (p.291f). Can one mental metaphor explain the other without being
intermediated by a real living and thinking person? Since
the classic period until today there happened the collapse in Germany by the
ideology of National Socialism with the genocide to the Jews, the rapid growth
of nuclear sciences, the rapid centralization in the fight of political powers
to gain the dominance in the social history of mankind, several genocides on
some places on earth etc. etc. At the same time the industrial society in its
global perspective emerged we are in today. Grober fades out this whole
history. He is concerned with the history of arts in the German idealistic classic period in the 4.
Kant has shown in his history of sciences that since
its beginning there is a controversial problem in it which never has been
solved. Kant calls it the problem of antinomies, that means the contradictions
which are in a law itself and between laws. The main problem was in the
question of time in life: does it have a beginning and an end or is it without
both. Then it is endless. It has no limits in it. However, in my empirical life
it is clear. When I am dead, I have reached the end of my life on earth. Then I
can no longer think, realize, hear, see, act nor do anything. This fact makes
it self-evident that in our abstract logical thinking and mental realizing we
have lost our relation to the time human life is involved in. We are not
conscious about. Therefore our thinking, realizing, sensing, and acting gets
empty. It isn’t worth all the trouble we put in it. I cannot explain here, how
Dewey has critically dealt with the thinking of Kant and Hegel. I only want to
emphasize: if we project our abstract mental thinking on ourselves as living
persons, then we see ourselves in our timeless and endless way of thinking. But
also then our life is a mortal one which goes to an end. 5.
As to the history of Christian faith the 18th
century was the time of the inner secularization of the Christian church from
the pneumatic life ground in Christ. Its thinking was governed by a rational
hodgepodge of monotheism and theism in a linguistic confusion between
adjectives and substantives similar to the ancient metaphysics. But now it was
not related to the metaphysical world of ideas, but to the theoretical world of
natural sciences. Christian faith and its theological thinking became split in
themselves. Secularism was dominating the church life more and more until
today. (cf. my essay: Christian Faith,
Philosophy and Science Against the Background of the Present Ecumenical
Discussion, ‘Front Page’ Feature in the Journal
of Global Issues and Solutions Nov./Dec. 2007) [1] According to the report of UNICEF in 2012 still seven millions of children less than five years died of birth complications, diseases, malnutrition etc., especially in the poor countries. Although the figure is declining, it is still terribly high. [2] Wood as fuel was
only producing poor energy. In earlier centuries 90% of wood was taken for
heating, only 10% was used as material for working with it. Wood became more
and more expensive which caused social problems. The whole culture was infected
by it. In the church it became a religious duty to save wood. The priggishness
of wood and money was judged as criminal. The wood as main resource of life was
combined with the virtue of thrift and economizing. This became internalized by
a long tradition in the history of continental [3] In this short time the developmental speed increased in an unconceivable way. Dr. Manfred Broy, physicist and information scientist at the Technical University of Munich/Germany gives an explanation we have to think about: After the periods of steam engine, production line and IT Systems we experience a forth industrial revolution today. It implies the total integration of all life by computer networking of millions of systems. Never before human beings could experience another reality more directly and immediately than it happens today by the total digitalization which is out of being controlled. (cf.: Manfred Broy: agendaCPS. Integrierte Forschungsagenda Cyber-Physical-Systems, Springer Verlag 2012). The global social fusion is one of the symptoms of this development in modern societies. [4] So for instance the term is applied to pedagogic: “nachhaltiges Lernen” (sustainable learning) means: children are educated by ways and methods they like so that they don’t forget 90% of what they have learned at school. Cf. Richard David Precht: Anna, die Schule und der liebe Gott, 2013. With his pedagogical concept of sustainability Precht intends to revolutionize the German school system. [5] The teleological ethics points to the consequences of individual and collective doing in the history of mankind. [6] Arnd Hollweg: Theologie und Empirie. Ein Beitrag zum Gespräch zwischen Theologie und Sozialwissenschaften in den USA und Deutschland, Stuttgart 31974 [7] Cf. Langenscheidt Collins: Großes Schulwörterbuch Deutsch-Englisch, Berlin, München, Wien, Zürich, New York 2006, und Englisch-Deutsch 2007 [8] The pages follow the German edition. [ BWW Society Home Page ] © 2013 The Bibliotheque: World Wide Society |