James Gustave Speth, The Failure Of Science And Cultural Transformation

“I used to think that top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I thought that thirty years of good science we could address these problems. I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy, and to deal with these we need a cultural and spiritual transformation. We scientists don’t know how to do that.”—James Gustave Speth, US Advisor on Climate Change.

In this video I take up metaphysics to diagnosis an illness of modernization. I trace a history from French philosopher Rene Descartes through to pre-Christian Roman—including a brief etymology of Latin ‘veritas’. I conclude the video, by teasing an answer to James Gustave Speth’s call for a cultural spiritual and transformation.

This is the first of a 3-part series on episteme,
Part 2: Metamodernism, The Good The Bad, And The Ugly
Part 3: The Unhealthy Demand to Know

Spiritual Ecology is an emerging discipline which shares the historical critique to modernization taken up in this video. As defined on Wikipedia, “Spiritual ecology identifies the Scientific Revolution—beginning the 16th century and continuing through the Age of Enlightenment to the Industrial Revolution—as contributing to a critical shift in human understanding with reverberating effects on the environment. The radical expansion of collective consciousness into the era of rational science included a collective change from experiencing nature as a living, spiritual presence to a utilitarian means to an end.”

The etymology of “veritas” inspired from Martin Heidegger’s lectures on Parmenides

All words based upon ideas developed in *How to Nurture Truth and Authenticity: A Metamodern Economic Reform Proposal*:

TAGS: James Gustave Speth, Gus Speth, spiritual, cultural, transformation, spiritual ecology, deep ecology, metamodernism