David Peat

212 From Certainty to Uncertaintyhuman thought, and the technologies it has produced, acts back onthat world to transform it.Human intervention within the natural world—the environment,our minds and bodies, means of travel and communication, creationof new materials, exploitation of resources, and so on—has had anenormous impact over the past 200 years. This impact continues at anaccelerating rate. Now is the time to take stock. We need to look at ourworld, our different societies, and ourselves and ask where we are going.To do this during the first years of a new millennium seems particularlyappropriate.We must examine the structure of the various organizations wehave created in the social, political, and religious fields. We must investigateour economic systems, the way various forms of governance operate,and the different ways people seek to help each other. We mustask if these structures and organizations continue to serve the purposesfor which they were first created. Are they true to the spirit thatonce inspired them?Earlier in this chapter we made a critical assessment of the Enlightenmentdream. Yet the Enlightenment was also the period in whichthe best minds of a generation looked critically at society and governance.In England, the philosophers Hobbes and Locke enquired intothe nature of human society and the maintenance of its good order.Voltaire and the Encyclopedists did something similar in France, whilein the United States Jefferson and the founding fathers of the Constitutionthought deeply about systems of governance. A similar surge ofcritical creativity is needed today.Times have changed and new perspectives have emerged. Of keyimportance is our realization that we live on a finite planet, so that allour plans and actions resonate across the globe. The implications ofany decision cannot be confined to one group, people, or nation. Whenthe Iroquois needed to make a decision they thought of the implicationsfor the seventh generation to come after them. Today we mustthink not only of the seventh generation of Americans, British, Germans,or Japanese but of peoples all over the world, rich or poor, industrializedor indigenous.The need to pause is vital. The responsibility certainly falls uponthe best minds of the planet, its philosophers, poets, artists, writers,