Declaration of Dependence
Fearful for the preservation of a future for mankind, we wish to express our concern about the way the current globalizing culture (civilization) is, by means of its expansion, destroying the Earth and any prospects for the lives of future generations. It is demonstrably the case that the Earth is not the property of the human race and that humans are in no way superior to nature. Despite this, our culture is irreversibly destroying the majestic creation that has been shaped by territorial evolution over billions of years; it is exhausting the Earth’s non-renewable natural capital, exterminating living organisms and vast ecosystems that are millions of years old, as well as disrupting the global life system. It is eliminating the natural conditions which witnessed the origin of the human species and to which we are still biologically related. It is high time that the short-sighted and self-satisfied admiration for everything human and cultural was brought to an end and that instead we start to preach both admiration and humility in the face of the fascinating evolutionary complexity of the Earth, which is the only possible host system for our culture. In the age of globalized culture we must abandon the predatory approach to nature that was once so useful for the rapid expansion of local cultures in a healthy biosphere. No biological species, not even our own,which was instrumental in creating culture, is able to conquer nature. The genomes of biological species represent only a fraction of the evolutionary wisdom of life and our theoretical knowledge is incapable of grasping its complexity. The biosphere is the cradle, home and grave of mankind, and human culture has to subordinate itself to it.
Nevertheless, unless we end the conflict between an anti-natural culture and the Earth, the habitability of our planet will deteriorate and the whole human species could be subject, through its own fault, to premature extinction. General intellectual contemplation, which in ancient times focused on wonder, in the Middle Ages on humility and in the modern period on doubt , will now be centered on a fear for our survival. The new, evolutionary-ontological understanding of the world therefore challenges us to acknowledge the imperative value of nature and the nature-dependent, merely instrumental value of culture.
In line with the foregoing considerations,, we would like to emphasize the following:
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