Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
109-200, 1996
Pubhshcd by Elscvier Science Ltd. Printed in Great Britain
UOl6-3287/96 $15.ClO + 0.00
BOOK REVlEW
Re-humanizing
the future
Richard Slaughter
Path to Gang Zhi
Katsuhiko Yazaki
Kyoto, Future Generations Alliance Foundation,
124 pages, free
Ways of Enspiriting: Transformative
Practices
for the Twenty-first Century
Warren Ziegler
Denver, FIA International, 1995, ix + 277 pages,
US$14.95
Edge of the Sacred: Transformation
in
Australia
David Tacey
Melbourne, HarperCollins, 1995, xv + 224 pages,
A$1 9.95
A familiar
polarity
within
the futures
field
is that between
those who
see the future
in external,
instrumental
terms and those
who see it in deeper human terms. Of course,
in the end these two perspectives can be
productively fused into a richer overall view.
Still, the dynamic of technical change shows
no sign of slowing,
so it is heartening to
see that a broadly humanistic
perspective
remains vibrant and strong. Although the three
examples considered here are very different
(coming, as they do, from three different
regions), they all help to further ground and
elaborate a view that the future can and must
be subject to higher-order human influence.
9 819
0876;
199
Book review
writers.
However,
in Taceys
hands,
this
exploration
is not merely
literary.
He has
provided the clearest diagnosis I have yet seen
of the spiritual vacuum
underlying
Australian
culture
and experience.
By extension,
this
applies to the whole Western world. However,
what makes this book so outstanding
is that he
has also seen where the deep solutions
lie:
in the emergence
of an authentic
spirituality.
At the outset, Tacey takes the view that
despite the fact that Australia
appears to be
one of the most secular and godless societies in
the modern
world,
there is good reason to
suppose that an authentic
rediscovery
of the
sacred is already
in preparation
here.
He
suggests that an unconscious
compulsion
toward
sacrifice
exists
in the Australian
psyche, and explores this through the works of
Joan Lindsay,
D H Lawrence
and Patrick
White. Here the landscape is a key player: no
matter how we attempt to package or construct
it, the land will always break out of whatever
fancy dress we foist upon it. The only way out
is not to ignore the landscape by huddling
into
cities on its fringes, but to enter more into
the psychic field of nature; to shamanize
ourselves
in the image of nature.
Here the
taboo subjects of Aboriginal
degradation
and
spirituality
emerge and are treated with great
economy
and skill. As one who grew up in
Alice Springs, Taceys account bears the stamp
of lived experience.
The process of re-sacralizing
our experience emerges as a social and political
necessity. According
to Tacey, the ecological
crisis
is at bottom
a psychological
and spiritual
crisis. These deeper
roots to the problem
will have to be explored
if there is to be any
lasting change.
Hence, this is an outstanding
book
that goes right to the core of our
major concerns:
meaninglessness,
avoidance,
violence.
Society becomes a demonic parody
of sacred
reality
when
society
no longer
recognizes
the divine sources from which
its
own life springs. The more people who will
read this book and reflect on it deeply,
the
better. There are few richer and more reward-
200