Environmental expert calls for a return to a spiritual view of nature
According to Josep-Maria Mallarach, we are living a crisis of civilization that is due, in part, to the expansion of materialistic faith.
The School of Science at the University of Navarra visit consultant Josep-Maria Mallarach, who emphasized the need to recover a spiritual vision of nature. In his view, this is achieved “by confronting the monopolistic pretensions of the materialist and relativist mindset, whose limitations—in terms of a lack of values and an inability to give meaning to existence—have led to the development the global environmental crisis.”
For Mallarach"the earth has gone from being the "sister and mother" to a simple natural resource to be bought and sold in a system obsessed with maximizing material benefits, without scruples towards our less favored contemporaries and ignoring the rights of our descendants". According to him, 20% of the world's population consumes 80% of the planet's resources: "confronting errors of this magnitude requires profound changes, an authentic 'ecological conversion', which must be assumed by everyone and by every institution", he pointed out.
The expert gave at the University of Navarra the lecture "From Rio to Rio+20: progress towards unsustainability seen according to the great spiritual traditions", where he referred to the setback that global sustainability has suffered in the last two decades. He also analyzed this phenomenon in the light of the great spiritual traditions, such as Christianity, Hinduism or Islam, and defended that "they all teach that a wise relationship with nature is based on respect, love, compassion, frugality and, deep down, a sense of the sacred".
