Rudolf Bahro

Michael Pugliese debsian at pacbell.net
Tue Mar 21 21:02:46 PST 2000



> What with Rudolf Bahro, ex-of the Greens, saying good things about the
>Bhagwan Rajineesh... (and some provocative comments on a "green Adolf"!!!
(from a review in The New Statesman in the U.K.) ...

What!?

Say it ain't so, Joe...

Brad DeLong

Cf. The interviews in the Verso book, "From Red To Green, " "Socialism and Survival, " AVOIDING Social & Ecological Disaster (Book)

Source: Third World Quarterly, Mar96, Vol. 17 Issue 1, p170, 2p

Author(s): Dien, Mawil Izzi

Abstract: Reviews the book `Avoiding Social and Ecological Disaster:

the politics of world transformation,' by Rudolf Bahro.

Title: Theology Not Ecology.

Subject(s): BAHRO, Rudolf -- Interviews; GREEN Party (Germany);

ENVIRONMENTAL degradation -- Religious aspects

Source: New Perspectives Quarterly, 1999, Vol. 16 Issue 2, p52, 3p,

1bw

Author(s): BAHRO, RUDOLF

Abstract: Interviews Rudolf Bahro, writer and founding theorist of the

Green Party in Germany. Views on the environmental crisis; Theology as

an alternative to ecology; Comments on eco-dictatorship.

AN: 1732716

ISSN: 0893-7850

THEOLOGY NOT ECOLOGY

NPQ

Awareness of a warming atmosphere, ozone depletion, Brazilian

deforestation and the dying German woods has generated a sense of

environmental crisis. In Germany, the Greens have now formed governing

coalitions with the Social Democrats.

Yet, you have turned away from active concern with Green politics to

questions of the religious imagination.

Why?

RUDOLF BAHRO

Because the crisis is not in the trees, it is in us. The sense of

environmental crisis merely reflects the inner-world crisis of man.

The German philosopher Martin Heidegger says we are alienated from the

cosmos because "we have forgotten Being."

In Faust, Goethe wrote "you understand the spirit to which you are

equal." In our age, we understand concrete but not how the forest

grows; we know the combustion engine but not the pattern which

connects us to the primrose.

NPQ

But doesn't ecology aim at healing that alienation?

BAHRO

Ecology challenges the human spirit to rediscover Being, but it is not

the answer to man's spiritual crisis. In fact, ecology is

anthropocentric; it is man's projection of inner crisis onto the outer

world; it locates the problem not in man, but in the environment.

An ecological definition of "crisis" will inevitably lead to

ecological modernization--the final imperialism of man over nature.

Technological amelioration of crisis may win time against depletion of

the ozone layer, but will only perpetuate the "evil" inertia of the

megamachine. Persisting in the normal life of industrial culture is

enough to destroy the biosphere.

But, ecological modernization, the stage I believe we are now

entering, is a necessary and unavoidable step in the process toward a

break with destructive inertia. In ten years or so, I am convinced, we

will see that the technological answer does not work.

The ozone problem alone implies the need for industrial disarmament on

the order of ten to one. Already, the proposed solutions to this and

other environmental problems are no longer a matter of saving a few

watts, using less plastic or getting the lead out of gasoline; they

are tantamount to a call for freezing the infrastructure. For example,

leaders in the West are telling China and India that they can't have

more refrigerators and officials in Los Angeles are telling commuters

that each family can have only one car.

The fact that we have already arrived at the stage of deep

restrictions means the whole shape of our industrialized lifestyle is

obsolete. Inevitably, an ecological response to the crisis of

industrial culture threatens to transform the West into a gigantic

Rumania, where home heating can't rise above 50 degrees and

electricity is only available two hours a day.

This is the Dark Age promised by an environmental awareness without a

cultural revolution that breaks with the logic of the entire

industrial system.

NPQ

The alternative?

BAHRO

The alternative is theology, not ecology--the birth of a new Golden

Age which cultivates what the Russian novelist Chingiz Aitmatov calls

the "divine spark" of nobility in man instead of the spark plugs in

his beloved German BMW. In effect, the alternative is a spiritual

conversion which abandons the mentality of domination by men over

nature; a submission of the city of man to St. Augustine's "City of

God" where we once again realize that, to cite Augustine, "the frail

and mortal objects of earth here below, the blossoms and the leaves,

could not be endowed with a beauty so immaculate and so exquisitely

wrought did they not issue from the Divinity which endlessly pervades

with its invisible and unchanging beauty of all things."

Such a conversion is not a matter of living in poverty, though it

means answering Tolstoy's question, "how much land does a man need?"

Surely, the whole planet cannot live at the level of the American

middle-class; we must turn, instead, from extensive development to

quality of life.

However, I do not advocate a rejection of technology. The issue is not

man's tools, but man's spirit. "Who is this man that uses tools?" That

is the real question. The spiritual conversion I call for withdraws

commitment from a system built on the fears of technologically

powerful man who, because he has forgotten the Being at his center,

uses science as insurance against nature instead of reconstructing

God, as Einstein wanted. Einstein thought the ultimate task of science

was to establish a trust in the order of the cosmos so that man would

lose his destructive fear.

NPQ

This comment reminds me of something the Catholic mystic Thomas Merton

once wrote: "... without a center, men become little helpless gods,

imprisoned within the four walls of their weakness and fear. They are

so conscious of their weakness that they think they have nothing to

give to another, and that they can only subsist by snatching from

others the little that they have, a little love, a little knowledge, a

little power."

BAHRO

It is precisely the projection of that insecurity onto the natural

world and other men that is so destructive. That is why regaining a

spiritual center is the key question for industrial man. If the planet

is going to survive, humanity has to get off its ego trip and

rediscover Being. He must become "Man in Cosmos," as Teilhard de

Chardin put it.

Meister Eckhart, the Christian philosopher who lived in the now

despoiled Rhine River valley during the 13th century, celebrated the

Logos, or Word of God, as applying to all creatures: "All creatures

are words of God. My mouth expresses God but the existence of a stone

does the same. ... God enjoys all creatures, not as creatures, but

creatures as God." Similarly, Mechtild of Magdeburg, also a Christian

thinker of the 13th century, speaks of each creature--human, plant and

animal--as "a flash of grace." The eternal light of God, she wrote, is

not restricted to humans alone, but is "scattered on leaves throughout

the world."

The recentering of man through the reconstruction of Logos, the

remembrance of Being, is the spiritual conversion I am talking about.

This should not be confused with the normal error of New Age people

who say "I am God," thereby individualizing spirituality. Trees are

God too and maybe more important than I am. Rather, the center of

Being is everywhere. As the anthropologist Gregory Bateson was fond of

saying, God is Logos--"the pattern which connects" the cosmos.

NPQ

Absent this spiritual conversion, ecological modernization proceeds,

driven to deep restrictions if not authoritarianism by the fear of

environmental destruction.

Do you expect eco-dictatorship?

BAHRO

Empty men full of fear, as we Germans know, are the raw material of

authoritarianism. That's why I put so much emphasis on conscious

cultural revolution and the spiritual recentering of man.

Especially in Germany, there is a great readiness for change. Every

German taxi driver will tell you the forests are dying and no one

seems capable of doing anything about it. If someone comes to the

German people and says, "I am the man who will make the pine needles

green again," he will be given a chance.

In the deep crises of humanity, charisma always plays a role. The

deeper the crisis, the darker the charismatic figure who will emerge.

But a charismatic leader is not inevitably a criminal and a charlatan.

Whether or not we will have a green Adolf depends, in my view, on how

far cultural change advances before the next Chernobyl.

~~~~~~~~

By RUDOLF BAHRO

RUDOLF BAHRO ONCE A LOYAL SUPPORTER OF THE EAST GERMAN COMMUNIST

PARTY, RUDOLF BAHRO WAS ARRESTED IN 1977 AFTER THE PUBLICATION OF HIS

BOOK, The Alternative in Eastern Europe, IN WHICH HE CALLED FOR A

GORBACHEVSTYLE PERESTROIKA A DECADE TOO EARLY. RELEASED FROM PRISON IN

1979 AS A RESULT OF PUBLIC-OPINION PRESSURE N THE WEST, BAHRO

EMIGRATED TO WEST GERMANY WHERE HE BECAME A FOUNDING THEORIST OF THE

GREEN PARTY. HIS MOST RECENT BOOK IS ENTITLED The Logic of Salvation.

NPQ EDITOR NATHAN GARDELS SPOKE WITH BAHRO IN THE EIFEL MOUNTAIN

HAMLET OF NIEDERSTADTFELDT WHERE HE MADE HIS HOME UNTIL HE DIED IN

1997.

_________________

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Source: New Perspectives Quarterly, 1999, Vol. 16 Issue 2, p52, 3p,

Cut and paster, Michael Pugliese



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