Thomas Berry on deep cultural change and self-reflection as a species

When we are faced with change at this order of magnitude we find that we are dealing with a profound reversal in our perspective on ourselves and on the universe about us. This is not a change simply in some specific aspect of our ethical conduct. Nor is it merely a modification of our existing cultural context. What is demanded of us now is to change attitudes that are so deeply bound into our basic cultural patterns that they seem to us as an imperative of the very nature of our being, a dictate of our genetic coding as a species. In clinical language we are into a deep cultural pathology. We can no longer trust our cultural guidance in any comprehensive manner. In this situation we must return to our genetic structure and rethink who we are, where we fit into the community of existence and what our proper role might be within this community.
— The Rev. Fr. Thomas Berry, C.P. in his paper “Ethics and Ecology” (PDF) presented to the Harvard Seminar on Environmental Values at Harvard University on April 9th, 1996.