Nomos, Physis, and Eco-theology

Imagine Germany, or England, or Japan, or any country. What comes to mind? What does your imagination take hold of? For most people, the first thing they think of is the culture of those countries. They think of art, music, aesthetic style, food, buildings, names, or any number of things that differentiate one country from another. They might also think of the weather, how warm or cold it is there. For others, the image is one of long historical narratives interweaving and clashing with one another, perhaps also of various cities and the attractions they offer.

In short, the images or concepts that come to mind are usually bound up in Nomos, in the human world. The concept of differentiated countries as political entities with boundaries (boundaries which, incidentally, do not exist outside of human concerns), with respective cultures and languages, makes no sense outside of Nomos. These things all take human be-ing into account, but they go no further than that. Their scope begins and ends with anthropological concerns; even thoughts of the weather are entertained only insofar as they relate to human coming and going, whether the snow will affect the train's scheduled arrival, whether summer or winter clothes are more appropriate/stylish, whether the landscape is aesthetically pleasing or not on a given day.

What people are less likely to think of are things like the character of the landscapes, conceived of independently of human involvement or concerns; what the overall weather patterns are like, what sort of creatures live there and what their behavior says about them, whether or not these creatures can be befriended and lived alongside as neighbors, whether or not the land itself wants you there at all. The world outside Nomos is Physis, a larger and more fundamental realm governed by laws that transcend the laws of Nomos. When Nomos is stripped away and there is only Physis, what do places like "Germany," "England" or "Japan" feel like? What sort of experience is it to walk the forest paths in Himmelreich without a sign of human habitation? What holy places reveal themselves then? How does the land itself speak when Nomos is hushed or humbled? What kind of spirit and personality is revealed under these conditions?

The simple truth is that most people are not concerned with such questions. They are not concerned with Physis because Nomos has become the beginning and end of their world. Tourists will no doubt  be awed by the naturally beauty of some places, but it is unlikely they will venture far, unless appreciation of nature itself was their goal to begin with. Unless someone already hears the land whispering, they will not notice it above the din of Nomos.

When a landscape is muted by Nomos, when human coming and going demands attention to human convention and not nature's conventions, when the entire Puget Sound area increasingly resembles a suburb of Seattle and not a land with the freedom to express itself independently of human habitation...then Nomos becomes everything, and anyone living in that bubble will be caught up in the delusion that nothing meaningful exists outside Nomos. The personality of the land will be unapparent, and the earth there will die a little more.

To make the point more succinctly, eco-theology is not simply a matter of being more ecologically aware or proactive. It isn't purely a matter of environmentalism and making efforts to protect local habitats. It also isn't about some radical move to abolish Nomos, which has its proper place tertiary to Physis. Eco-theology means embracing a deeper metaphysics of relationship, in which the voice of the land is not only heard, but actively listened to. It means treading softly through a living, breathing earth with a comportment of humility and awe, regarding it as an other and not a means to and end, but as an end in itself. This necessitates a worldview that perceives keenly the rights and limitations of Nomos as an individual member of a larger village. Eco-theology means making effort to see the earth through God's eyes; it means loving the earth precisely because it is a beloved of God.

Individuals as the cells of artificial intelligence; Humanity attempting to give birth to God

Jürgen Moltmann, in a piece of writing on Perichoresis, argued that modern individualism treats us like individuals and not persons.

This distinction between an individual and a person has serious implications in modern society. An individual, which, like the Greek for "atom," cannot be divided any further, has been broken down to its most isolated and basic elements. The problem is that when something can no longer be divided, it has no relationships at all. It is isolated and by itself. There is no knowing others and no knowing oneself. An individual is anonymous, without characteristics or family. It is a human being stripped of all community. An individual, so understood, is not a person. The implication is that in a society where we grow more isolated and competitive over and against one another, we are enslaved, not freed. We cease to be "Thou's."

While we have arguably become more connected with one another with the advent of the internet and social media, we have undeniably become more isolated from one another in the physical space. Cities are not communal spaces so much as they are environments for individuals to navigate as they go about their business, which ideally profits only the individual. We are not yet fully enslaved, but we are on the path to being individuals. In the eyes of the system that profits by our isolation, we aren't people so much as we are sources of precious data, by which the system may profit even more.

Complicate the picture even more by remembering that this data, extracted from billions of people, is being poured into the creation of artificial intelligences, which evolve ever faster and faster. A.I. will one day surpass human beings in complexity, just as they have already eclipsed us in terms of efficiency. Individuals become data resources in a grand project that will reshape everything. A world of isolated individuals is no longer a community of persons so much as it is a nursery. We are no longer persons in ourselves, but are broken down and converted, distilled as data, into the individual cells that will one day comprise artificial intelligence.

Fascinating, isn't it, how humanity suppresses its sense of the divine while devoting herculean effort towards creating beings of near infinite intelligence and immortality? We embrace a world of individuals and reject a world of persons. We deny the Imago Dei in ourselves as we simultaneously labor to create a technological Imago Dei. We deny God even as we try to give birth to God.