Publisher's Synopsis
The book combines philosophical depth with a wide and deep discussion covering the essential existential challenges humanity is currently experiencing. Russia's brutal aggression, which has shaken the world and is trying to destroy Ukraine, has led to a new wave of the global arms race, increasing and multiplying the problems caused by climate change. Thinkers, philosophers, and scientists of many countries are thinking about what awaits humanity if it does not wake up‑if it does not begin to rethink its path of civilizational development fundamentally. What can help to throw off the shackles of the ideology of economic growth and expansion of consumption? What can help to realize that humans are not the arbitrary rulers of the planet, eating irresponsibly and suicidally its juices, without gratefulness to the earth and sky for the opportunity to settle, live, and bud? Wars and plagues, in their own way, "postpone" the possibility of such a universal vision because it is necessary to deal with daily challenges with existing "means", including weapons. Still, at the same time, they are increasingly pointing to the necessity of a systematic civilizational transformation. Therefore, ecology is not simply caring for nature and the environment in this book but a broad philosophical and cultural anthropological approach that calls for new thinking and promotes civilizational transformation. The book calls for resurrecting and actualizing the global awareness, spirituality, and holiness that lies in the cultural heritage of humanity, which has been overshadowed by modern scientific and economic rationality, forcing nature, man, and life with countable recyclable resources. The book highlights the civilizational significance of primary awareness (planetary, cosmic, spiritual). It shows in various aspects how important ritual human activity based on the understanding of holiness and divinity is, guaranteeing social order and harmony in the world, society, and the human spirit. The people of earlier civilizations knew how to communicate with the gods and the powers of nature. The knowledge they accumulated must help us overcome the entrenched nature-culture divide that supports the illusion of man's arbitrary technical omnipotence. The manifestations of such knowledge revealed in the book are concretized in their own way by considering the current problematic nodes in the plane of integral consciousness or integralism, taking into account the logic of modern capitalism. Algis Mickunas and Zilvinas Svigaris play their philosophical instruments, surprisingly harmoniously complementing each other in such a way that they inevitably involve the reader‑no matter what his or her philosophical or cultural powers of imagination and life experience are, each will inevitably refer to his or her own topic of reflection. After all, global challenges and problems are already in each of our homes.
