The brutal expansion of humanity’s passion for conquest and accumulation (under the guise of undifferentiated economic growth) has drawn the world into a climatic cataclysm, into social anomie, and the darkness of spiritual impoverishment. A world strongly marked by technocratic policies is increasingly losing direct face-to-face contact. The once very frequent and intimate relationships between man and nature and man and man are now becoming increasingly superficial and abstract, ad majorem hominis degradationem. Planet Earth, our home and “the third pebble from the Sun,” is a living organism, supporting intrinsically valuable biological and cultural diversity – and by no means a storehouse of necessities for unbridled consumption and exploitation.
