SACREDNESS & SUSTAINABILITY: A REFLECTION ON THE 2000 CENTURY
The Prince of Wales
This article was provided by LAPIS Magazine
BBC Reith Lectures, May 2000

http://www.garynull.com/Documents/LAPIS/Sacredness.htm

In a lecture that stirred controversy throughout Britain, Prince
Charles argues that we will never achieve sustainable development
without a
rediscovery of the sacred.

Prince Charles gave this talk at the conclusion of the annual Reith
Lecture series, which took sustainable development as its theme this
year.

............

Sustainable development is a matter of enlightened self-interest.
Self-interest is a powerful motivating force for all of us, and if we
can somehow convince ourselves that sustainable development is in all
our
interests then we will have taken a valuable first step toward
achieving it.

But self-interest comes in many competing guises, not all of which -- I
fear -- are likely to lead in the right direction for very long, nor to
embrace the manifold needs of future generations. I am convinced we will

need
to dig rather deeper to find the inspiration, sense of urgency, and
moral
purpose required to confront the hard choices which face us on the long
road to
sustainable development. So although it seems to have become deeply
unfashionable to talk about the spiritual dimension of our existence,
that is what I propose to do.

The idea that there is a sacred trust between mankind and our Creator,
under which we accept a duty of stewardship for the earth, has been an
important feature of most religious and spiritual thought throughout the

ages.
Even those whose beliefs have not included the existence of a Creator
have,
nevertheless, adopted a similar position on moral and ethical grounds.
It is only recently that this guiding principle has become smothered by
almost impenetrable layers of scientific rationalism.

I believe that if we are to achieve genuinely sustainable development,
we will first have to rediscover, or re-acknowledge, a sense of the
sacred
in our dealings with the natural world and with each other. If literally

nothing is held sacred any more -- because it is considered synonymous
with superstition or in some other way "irrational" -- what is there to
prevent us treating our entire world as some "great laboratory of life,"

with
potentially disastrous long-term consequences?

Fundamentally, an understanding of the sacred helps us to acknowledge
that there are bounds of balance, order, and harmony in the natural
world
which set limits to our ambitions and define the parameters of
sustainable
development.

In some cases, nature's limits are well understood at the rational,
scientific level. As a simple example, we know that trying to graze too
many sheep on a hillside will, sooner or later, be counterproductive for

the
sheep, the hillside, or both. More widely, we understand that the
overuse of insecticides or antibiotics leads to problems of resistance.
And we are
beginning to comprehend the full, awful consequences of pumping too
much carbon dioxide into the earth's atmosphere. Yet the actions being
taken
to halt the damage known to be caused by exceeding nature's limits in
these and other ways are insufficient to ensure a sustainable outcome.

In other areas -- such as the artificial and uncontained transfer of
genes between species of plants and animals -- the lack of hard
scientific
evidence of harmful consequences is regarded, in many quarters, as
sufficient reason to allow such developments to proceed. The idea of
taking a precautionary approach, in this and many other potentially
damaging
situations, receives overwhelming public support but still faces a
degree of official opposition as if admitting the possibility of doubt
was a sign
of weakness or even of a wish to halt "progress." On the contrary, I
believe it to be a sign of strength and of wisdom.

It seems that when we do have scientific evidence that we are damaging
our environment we aren't doing enough to put things right, and when we
don't have that evidence we are prone to do nothing at all, regardless
of the
risks. Part of the problem is the prevailing approach that seeks to
reduce the natural world, including ourselves, to the level of nothing
more
than a mechanical process. For whilst the natural theologians of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries -- like Thomas Morgan -- referred to

"the perfect
unity, order, wisdom and design" of the natural world, scientists like
Bertrand Russell rejected this idea as rubbish. "I think the Universe,"
he wrote, "is all spots and jumps without unity and without continuity,
without coherence or orderliness." Sir Julian Huxley wrote in Creation:
A
Modern Synthesis, that "modern science must rule out special creation or

divine guidance." But why? As Professor Alan Linton of Bristol
University has
written, "evolution is a man-made 'theory' to explain the origin and
continuance of life on this planet without reference to a Creator." It
is because of our inability or refusal to accept the existence of a
guiding hand that nature has come to be regarded as a system that can be

engineered for our own convenience, or as a nuisance to be evaded and
manipulated,
and in which anything that happens can be "fixed" by technology and
human
ingenuity. Fritz Schumacher recognized the inherent dangers in this
approach when he said that "there are two sciences -- the science of
manipulation and the science of understanding."

In this technology-driven age it is all too easy for us to forget that
mankind is a part of nature, and not apart from it, and that this is
why we should seek to work with the grain of nature in everything we do.

For
the natural world is, as the economist Herman Daly puts it, "the
envelope
that contains, sustains and provisions the economy" -- not the other way

round. So which argument do you think will win -- the living world as
one, or
the world made up of random parts, the product of mere chance, thereby
providing the justification for any kind of development?

This, to my mind, lies at the heart of what we call sustainable
development. We need, therefore, to rediscover a reverence for the
natural world,
irrespective of its usefulness to ourselves -- to become more aware, in
Philip Sherrard's words, of the "relationship of interdependence,
interpenetration and reciprocity between God, Man and Creation." Above
all, we should show greater respect for the genius of nature's designs
--
rigorously tested and refined over millions of years. This means being
careful to use science to understand how nature works -- not to change
what nature is, as we do when genetic manipulation seeks to transform
the
process of biological evolution into something altogether different. The

idea
that the different parts of the natural world are connected through an
intricate system of checks and balances which we disturb at our peril is

all too
easily dismissed as no longer relevant. So in an age when we are told
that science has all the answers, what chance is there for working with
the
grain of nature?
As an example of working with the grain of nature, I happen to believe
that if a fraction of the money currently being invested in developing
genetically manipulated crops were applied to understanding and
improving traditional systems of agriculture which have stood the
all-important
test of time, the results would be remarkable. There is already plenty
of
evidence of just what can be achieved through applying more knowledge
and fewer chemicals to diverse cropping systems. These are genuinely
sustainable methods. And they are far removed from the approaches based
on
monoculture which lend themselves to large-scale commercial
exploitation, and which
Vandhana Shiva condemned so persuasively and so convincingly in her
lecture.

Our most eminent scientists accept that there is still a vast amount
that we don't know about our world and the life forms that inhabit it.
As Sir
Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal, points out, it is complexity that
makes
things hard to understand, not size. In a comment which only an
astronomer
could make, he describes a butterfly as a more daunting intellectual
challenge than the cosmos! Others, like Rachel Carson, have eloquently
reminded
us that we don't know how to make a single blade of grass. And St.
Matthew, in his wisdom, emphasized that not even Solomon in all his
glory was
arrayed as the lilies of the fieldS.

Faced with such unknowns it is hard not to feel a sense of humility,
wonder, and awe about our place in the natural order. And to feel this
at all
stems from that inner, heartfelt reason which, sometimes despite
ourselves,
is telling us that we are intimately bound up in the mysteries of life
and
that we don't have all the answers. Perhaps, even, that we don't have to

have all the answers before knowing what we should do in certain
circumstances.
As Blaise Pascal wrote in the seventeenth century, "it is the heart that

experiences God, not the reason."

So do you not feel that, buried deep within each and every one of us,
there is an instinctive, heartfelt awareness that provides -- if we will

allow it to -- the most reliable guide as to whether or not our actions
are
really in the long-term interests of our planet and all the life it
supports?
This awareness, this wisdom of the heart, may be no more than a faint
memory
of a distant harmony rustling like a breeze through the leaves, yet
sufficient to remind us that the earth is unique and that we have a duty

to care for
it.

Wisdom, empathy, and compassion have no place in the empirical world,
yet traditional wisdoms would ask, "Without them, are we truly human?"
And
it would be a good question. It was Socrates who, when asked for his
definition of wisdom, gave as his conclusion, "knowing that you don't
know."

In suggesting that we will need to listen rather more to the common
sense emanating from our hearts if we are to achieve sustainable
development,
I am not suggesting that information gained through scientific
investigation
is anything other than essential. Far from it. But I believe that we
need
to restore the balance between the heartfelt reason of instinctive
wisdom
and the rational insights of scientific analysis. Neither, I believe, is

much use on its own. So it is only by employing both the intuitive and
the
rational halves of our own nature -- our hearts and our minds -- that
we will live up to the sacred trust that has been placed in us by our
Creator or our "Sustainer," as ancient wisdom referred to the Creator.

As Gro Harlem Brundtland has reminded us, sustainable development is
not just about the natural world, but about people too. This applies
whether we are looking at the vast numbers who lack sufficient food or
access to
clean water, but also those living in poverty and without work. While
there
is no doubt that globalization has brought advantages, it brings
dangers,
too. Without the humility and humanity expressed by Sir John Browne in
his
notion of the "connected economy" -- an economy which acknowledges the
social
and environmental context within which it operates -- there is the risk
that the poorest and the weakest will not only see very little benefit
but,
worse, they may find that their livelihoods and cultures have been lost.

So if we are serious about sustainable development, then we must also
remember that the lessons of history are particularly relevant when we
start to look further ahead. Of course, in an age when it often seems
that
nothing can properly be regarded as important unless it can be described

as
"modern," it is highly dangerous to talk about the lessons of the past.
And are those lessons ever taught or understood adequately, in an age
when
to pass on a body of acquired knowledge of this kind is often considered

prejudicial to 'progress'? Of course, our descendants will have
scientific and technological expertise beyond our imagining, but will
they have
the insight or the self-control to use this wisely, having learnt both
from
our successes and our failures? They won't, I believe, unless there are
increased efforts to develop an approach to education which balances
the rational with the intuitive. Without this, truly sustainable
development is doomed. It will merely become a hollow-sounding mantra
that is repeated
ad nauseam in order to make us all feel better. Surely, therefore, we
need
to look toward the creation of greater balance in the way we educate
people so that the practical and intuitive wisdom of the past can be
blended with
the appropriate technology and knowledge of the present to produce the
type
of practitioner who is acutely aware of both the visible and invisible
worlds that inform the entire Cosmos.

The future will need people who understand that sustainable development
is
not merely about a series of technical fixes, about redesigning
humanity, or re-engineering nature in an extension of globalized
industrialization
-- but about a reconnection with nature and a profound understanding of
the
concepts of care that underpin long-term stewardship. Only by
re-discovering the essential unity and order of the living and spiritual

world -- as
in the case of organic agriculture or integrated medicine or in the way
we
build -- and by bridging the destructive chasm between cynical
secularism and
the timelessness of traditional religion, will we avoid the
disintegration
of our overall environment.

Above all, I don't want to see the day when we are rounded upon by our
grandchildren and asked accusingly why we didn't listen more carefully
to the wisdom of our hearts as well as to the rational analysis of our
heads; why we didn't pay more attention to the preservation of
biodiversity
and traditional communities or think more clearly about our role as
stewards of creation. Taking a cautious approach, or achieving balance
in life, is
never as much fun as the alternatives, but that is what sustainable
development is all about.

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