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DOI 10.24412/2713-1831-2024-2-3-4
EDITORIAL. ECO-HUMAN PERSPECTIVE: WORLD TRADITIONS AND CONTEMPORARY VISIONS
There is a complex turmoil taking place in the world in this historical moment: violence in Gaza, and war in Ukraine involved the whole world community and revealed the fragility and dysfunctional nature of the current state of affairs. Ukraine as any other 'hot point' on our planet is never far from mind, since all of them are facets of the same situation. The so-called capitalist world ecology (Jason Moore) appears to be at the core of the current dramatic state of affairs, impacts the living matrix of cultures and ecosystems and drives the whole logic of actions and policies of the world hegemon in its struggle for control.
Attempts to overcome the current systemic crisis of civilization will be ineffective as long as humanity is captured by the anthropocentric picture of the world and the prevailing system of relations that are characteristic of industrial civilization, the culture of a modern globalized market. To overcome the crisis affecting the environment, economy and the human state of being and self-perception, the world community is required to come to a different stance in the world.
The ideas of this stance in the world are in the air and are currently formalized in a holistic program that could affect the fate of humanity and nature in their unity with each other. The civilization of the exploitation of nature and the human community, unbridled and destructive consumption, should be replaced by a new mode of existence based on ecological thinking, redefining the relations between humans and nature.
These ideas present a real 'counterforce' to an-thropocentric 'annihilation' of human beings and their living environment and have different historical predecessors in the cultures of the West and East. Worldview positions, very close to the ideas of ecological, or the eco-human stance in the world, can be found, for example, in the philosophical systems of the East related to Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism and Sufism, in the spiritual heritage of St. Francis of Assisi which impacts the position of the Catholic Church on environmental issues, in indigenous cultures around the world.
The ideas of American environmentalism, Russian Cosmism, and the more recently, ideas associated with the Gaia hypothesis, each recognizing the reality and significance of the biosphere and the noosphere, can be regarded as components of the eco-human perspective and what is now called 'ecological civilization'.
Currently, the design of post-capitalist world ecology and ecological civilization is facilitated by both world environmental traditions and new ideas in ecology. All of them are contributing to a new eco-human approach to understanding the world and humanity. The constructiveness of the eco-human approach or a paradigm is determined by systemic environmental thinking. "Ecology" is a radical system-forming concept necessary to rethink the entire cultural practice of humankind and realize new opportunities to solve the problems of preserving humanity and the planet.
The ideas of natural and cultural ecology united with human sciences and the arts are able to withstand the disintegration of modern knowledge about humans, the dehumanization of culture and undermining its fundamental values, to form the platform that serves the understanding of the present and revealing the ways of moving into the future. The eco-human approach can hardly be successfully implemented without relying on different forms of artistic and aesthetic comprehension of nature and human beings.
The present issue of the journal, again, presents an internation network of people and ideas that help to recognize and further develop the 'coun-terforce' to the anthropocentric worldview. In the article "Practicing ecological spirituality with a Franciscan-artistic sensitivity," Br. William Ng ofm, a Franciscan friar, with training in landscape architecture, town planning and theology pays his particular attention to the influence of the spiritual heritage of St. Francis of Assisi on the position of the Catholic Church on environmental issues. He reveals the concept of ecological spirituality and emphasizes the important role of the arts and aesthetic experience in the spiritual heritage
© Ecopoiesis, 2024
Ecopoiesis: Eco-Human Theory and Practice. 2024, Volume 5, № 2. ISSN 2713-184X
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of St. Francis. The correlations between the phenomenology of the creative process, considered from the standpoint of expressive arts and therapy and the structure of Lectio Divina (divine reading in Latin) are shown.
In the joint article "To moisten the heart: Reflections from community art," the group of co-founders and teachers at TAE Peru institute, including Marin Zavala, Odette Amaranta Velez Valcarcel, Monica Prado Parro, and Ximena Maurial MacKee, recognize themselves as living in a particularly difficult time for peaceful coexistence between countries, cultures and with nature. Presenting themselves as part of this system and complex fabric, they ask themselves about a way to live healthily in a hostile environment. They describe the experiences of faculty, students, and alumni at Estudios en Artes Expresivas (TAE) in Lima, Peru, in hosting creative activities. They welcomed the events present in their reality by making art in community, to imagine different ways of responding to it, finding the possibility of transforming pain and responding aesthetically, in community.
In the article "Memories of the future: Speculative fabulations on the future of the Opuntiae Cactus & the Cochineal Insect" by Roseline de Thelin, an iterdisciplinary artist, expressive arts teacher, creative coach and art therapist, presents an eco-poietic project, "Memories of the Future," which is aiming to raise awareness on the disappearance of the Prickly Pear cactus, in the Balearic Islands and mainland Spain due to a plague of Cochineal. Inspired by Donna Haraway's writings ("Staying with the trouble", in particular) the artist created surreal scenes as "speculative fabulations" from a mix of artificial intelligence, digital and
analogue manipulation, with the aim of fostering new narratives and perspective shifts in the face of ecological issues.
This issue also touches on our relationship with the Moon, an exceptional celestial body which established complex connections with our planet and human beings. "The Poetic Anthology of Eco-Human experience: Poems About Moon" section presents poetry from different ages, dedicated to various facets of human relationship with the Moon as a natural object. Poetic works allow us to comprehend the eco-human, ecopoietic nuances of our ability, together with this celestial body, to generate new facets of subjectivity, to discover new forms of experience and meanings revealed on the threshold of human and more-than-hu-man reality. The selection includes poems by Du Fu, Konstantin Balmont, Mina Loy, Edward Es-tlin Cummings, Robert Frost, and David Bowie.
Alexander Kopytin's essay further brings to forth the great value of human physical, mental and spiritual connections to the Moon and the significant role it plays for life of our planet and culture. Considering the enormous influence of the Moon on the biosphere and noosphere of the Earth and humans, it is not surprising that, since ancient times, people have paid increased attention to this celestial body and used various mythological explanations and sciences to explain the role of the Moon in their lives, and applied the arts as an effective tool to explore their relationship to the Moon.
"In Resonance with the Earth" section of the journal includes an essay by Vadim Ryabikov, "One day in a flock with wolves. Lessons ofwoldness," and a poem by Alexander Kopytin, "Steppen She-Wolf."
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Ecopoiesis: Eco-Human Theory and Practice. 2024, Volume 5, № 2. ISSN 2713-184X
© Ecopoiesis, 2024
