An Endangered Planet

To be a man is to be limited and mortal. To be on earth is to live within a finite and restricted environment. Life is sustained by a thin belt of atmosphere above a skin of earth crust. The life-support system based on air, earth, and water is delicate, subtly intertwined, and remarkably intricate.
The Need for Limis. The rise of the industrial state, and with it, science and technology, has led us to overlook these conditions of finitude and fragility. We have come to accept theories of progress and of inevitable development that look toward an indefinite improvement of the human condition by continuous economic growth made possible by an endless sequence of technological improvements. We have identified growth and expansion with progress, and we have not acknowledged the existence of any limitations on progress. The decline of an active religious consciousness in our century has reinforced this habit of inattentiveness toward the limits and contingencies that surround our individual and collective presence on earth. In earlier periods of history the active presence of religious thought helped keep alive the distinction between the finite and the infinite.