Cultural Research
As a cultural researcher I explore forms of science which, going beyond the mere intellectual, seize the whole person and encourage a development of consciousness.
My starting point is thus an expanded concept of science as well as an expanded concept of art.
Already in the early seventies the economist Ernst F. Schumacher wrote in his legendary book Small is Beautiful that when the “culture of the inner human being” is neglected, selfishness remains the dominant power, especially in the economic system. Erich Fromm also explained back then in To Have or To Be that for the first time in history the physical survival of humanity depends on “radical transformations in the soul of the human being”.
In general the sustainability debate is not concerned with the “culture of the inner human being”. It follows economic, technical and regulatory priorities, as well as the premises of natural and social sciences. Undoubtedly, all this is absolutely vital and indispensible.
Yet sustainability also needs a soul. For however active we might be: as long as our consciousness fails to evolve, no amount of action will bring about anything new.
In the same way that salt forms through separating itself from liquid, thinking too tends to separate itself from the physical, social, living world. Spirit becomes mere intellect. This cold, lifeless mode of thinking - increasingly coming to dominate all over the world - risks the spoiling of our societies as well as our relations with one another and the world at large (in German, a process of versalzen, literally an ‘over-salting’).
But salt is also soluble and (dis)solves. Could it be possible to move beyond what has become stiff and rigid, towards a way of thinking and collective action that is carried by a living spirit?
Photo: George Steinmann