A Functional Cosmology for the Crisis of the Anthropocene

Abstract

As our world enters the human-induced Anthropocene epoch, we are faced with crises on a scale never witnessed before by humanity. Our desire for material goods through continued economic growth, exacerbated by an increasingly global neoliberal worldview, is fundamentally unsustainable and is wreaking devastation on Earth. A number of thinkers posit that we are in need of an ecospiritual relationship with Earth, while the great Catholic Geologian Thomas Berry believes that nothing less than framing a new story of our relationship with the universe itself is able to change our course into the future. Berry and others provide profound insights into understanding our situation, and offer a way forward through the conceptualising of a functional cosmology for our times through the appreciation of three moments of grace.