Tom Berry, The Great Work: Our Way into the Future. New York: Bell Tower, 1999

Running Head : THE GREAT WORK

The Great Work : Our Way into the Future

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The Great Work : Our Way into the Future

The future of humanity is full of uncertainty and distress (Berry 1999 . This uncertainty is caused by one great factor : ecological imbalance . Ecological imbalance is the result of excessive human consumption . Here , human consumption is not the physical process of consuming the environment for man 's needs , rather on the philosophy which drives such consumption (Berry , 1999 . The idea of human consumption is simple

. The environment was created to sustain man 's daily existence . The main tenet of today 's economics is three fold allocation , degradation , and sustenance . Allocation refers to the general division of the environment for specific human needs and wants Here , the environment is treated as the object rather than the subject of human existence Degradation is the eventual result of allocation . Once the environment is depleted , the chances of human survival become slim . The virtual indifference of the greater part of humanity to the issues of environmental protectionism and more importantly to oriental philosophy of nature can be described as the `conceptual ' root of the problem (Berry , 1999 . The seminal problem of the human hand is not `need ' per se but the lack of power to control such `need ' Here , one does not deal with externalities only , but rather on the Sustenance has many meanings . In western philosophy , it refers to the actual reproduction of daily life . Reproduction...