Listening to the whispering breeze I heard a word. The time has come for departure, the setting of a new course and the inhabitation of a new context. Hence these last words in this place.

To each and all I extend the hand of friendship. Some have seen me false, others have seen me true. I know full well that I reveal a mixture of light and dark; each and all between blessed by the divinity which I no longer prefer to name. This in view of the ceaseless war of name against name.

With profound appreciation for each and all who discern the signs of the time and stand forward in compassion and courage to name them, here are my last words in this place:

HOW, THEN, SHALL WE LIVE?

There is mounting evidence to suggest that our world is coming undone at its seams. We may turn in any direction to see the signs of moral and material decay. Our ideas are leading us towards the realization of catastrophe. This though none would ever have thought it could be so.

Francis Bacon may be one of the first to spell out the fateful ideas now being fully expressed as consequential action. He had it in mind to unlock the secrets working in the heart of nature. Opening that lock we would acquire recipes by which we could cook up projects that would liberate us from the oppressive chains of nature.

Thomas Hobbes gave political force to such ideas and we may well attribute the modern social economic order to the thinking of Hobbes. To be fair we could throw in John Calvin, whose thoughts on the nature and duty of man gave theological permit to the scientific enterprise. Herman Melville well summed up the relation of Capitalism and Calvinism as a strange hybrid, new to the history of man.

Progress, if we mark its ideological outset at about the mid-sixteenth century, has brought us in about five hundred years a long way from our mooring in the natural order. On every frontier we have given all effort and resource to the cultivation of ways and means to replace the natural with the artificial. We may take for an example the body’s resistance to diseases.

We are by nature equipped to deal with the assorted bacteria, germs and viruses that present threat to well-being. The body’s immune system generates resistance by which such threat is overcome. This resistance is strengthened by the encounter with that which will compromise well-being. All this is now in question. We have been using an increasing array of disease fighting chemicals to ever increasing effect.

The problem in this is located in the displacement of the natural defences of the body. We are no longer able to resist disease organically. Our natural resistance has been displaced by a dependence on external interventions. Our progress has left us vulnerable to the costly medicines produced by scientific inquiry and manipulation; what we call research and development.

We may turn to other areas of our experience for further examples. Diet was once regulated by the constraints of context. We could eat only what was available in our environment. This changed dramatically with the progressive invention of transportation means by which distance could be effectually overcome. Now we are able to eat foods from the far corners of the earth. This has complicated our diets and de-stabilized our body’s natural functions.

The problem is compounded by the addition of many artificially produced food products. Refined sugar alone accounts for great measures of physical harm at all levels of our physical being. To this we may add the complex fats and other synthetic substances which interfere with normal biological function in the human body. As a consequence we find ourselves experiencing cancers in all the body’s organs, as well as radical breakdowns of the pulmonary and cardio-vascular systems.

While conflict has always troubled human relations we are now able to render ourselves extinct through the use of weapons unleashing atomic energies beyond measure. Many nations now have arms that are capable of devastating massive land areas and their populations.

The destruction is not limited to the immediate catastrophic potential. Use of such weapons will contaminate air, water and earth for many generations to come. This while political power is seized by opportunistic persons and groups who press forward their right to subject peoples and places to arbitrary will. Warfare, always a problem, has become epidemic and its consequences costly beyond measure.

You might take it that all these things, and my survey is not exhaustive, would have persons all over the earth on guard and ready for remedial action. The contrary is much more the case. Persons and groups are consistently and increasingly diverted from coming to terms with the reality of our days by the highly developed propaganda strategies available to those with fiduciary resources to exploit a highly advanced technology of disinformation.

While the world heads towards oblivion, millions of persons are preoccupied with entertainment and sport spectacles. While we should be restraining our impulses to consumption and waste, our governments encourage us to take on debt and squander time and money on the acquisition of more goods and services. This even though our purchases no longer have any power to keep us from the deep feelings of dissatisfaction and disease.

How then are we to live? This question seems to stand in need of some answer. Even while the great majority has no desire to face up to the magnitude of our present dilemma, some of us must exercise our liberty to stand forward with words of warning. This presents us with a remarkable challenge. It is most unlikely that those most directly able to make a difference will be at all interested in surrendering the ideas by which they are driven forward.

Seeing only the advantage of progress these have no inclination to take a radical account of the cost. Such a refusal stands as the primary barrier to remedy. It is comparable to speaking with a person addicted to some toxic substance. That substance provides the experience of a certain condition which the user desires. Warnings about other consequences are ignored as intrusive. The addicted person persists in the addictive behaviour until the costs overwhelm the benefits. By this point the damage is done and remedy is left out of reach.

While the whole wide world rushes to oblivion, we may each step out by faith to discover a place removed and secure. From that imagined distance we may take the good each day offers and enjoy it fully. With a full awareness of all that is on the way, we are still able to appreciate the daily benefits that come where human life is lived on human terms. We break free of the blind adherence to patterns proscribed by persons at a distance to express our own unique response to the unfolding dilemma. Through our peculiar faith we may express compassion and so bring benefit where the costs of human decay are in full force.

Grace and Peace without reservation to those who conform as to those who resist,

George Feenstra