If we are truly moved by the beauty of the world around us, we would honor the earth in a profound way. We would understand immediately and turn away with a certain horror from all those activities that violate the integrity of the planet. That we have not done so revels that a disturbance exists a more basic level of consciousness and on a greater order of magnitude than we dare admit to ourselves or even thing about. This unprecedented pathology is not merely in those more immediate forms of economic activity that have done such damage; it is even more deeply imbedded in our cultural traditions, in our religious traditions, in our very language, in our entire value system….

This reenchantment with the earth as a living reality is the condition for our rescue of the earth from the impending destruction that we are imposing upon it. To carry this out effectively, we must now, in a sense, reinvent the human as species within the community of life species. Our sense of reality and of value must consciously shift from an anthropocentric to a biocentric norm of reference. (From the book “ The Dream of the Earth” (by Thomas Berry), pages 10 & 21)