Planetarity: Ecology Redefines the Concept of the Sacred
Contemporary ecology of the sacred is not a return to archaic cults, but a recognition that the destruction of ecosystems destroys the fabric of our shared life. The weight of the sacred is shifting from traditional religious artifacts to living systems—a hierophany (revelation of the sacred) can flow today from a restored river. The papal encyclical on our "common home" becomes a new normative cartography, where home is neither a private cathedral nor a landfill of meaning. In this article, you will learn how ecology, technology, and collective memory are creating new technologies for navigating the world.
The Category of Provisio and the Risk of Public Sphere Polarization
The foundation of the "third sphere" is provisio—a space for actions that are not absolute but carry a meaning transcending utility. These are everyday liturgies of care: shared breakfasts, tending to rivers, or open repositories of knowledge. Provisio creates a bridge with a low barrier to entry, allowing for the building of community without a profession of faith.
However, the return of the sacred to the public sphere carries three risks: fetishization (the sacred as an alibi for violence), inflation (when everything is sacred, nothing is protected), and kitsch (turning wonder into a product). The response must be to link holiness with responsibility and to nurture selfless practices that elude the logic of transaction.
Sites of Trauma, Civil Religion, and the State of Exception
In a secularized world, collective memory has taken over the role of religion. Sites of trauma, such as Holocaust museums, serve as secular altars where a minute of silence becomes a "negative liturgy." According to Durkheim, the sacred consists of walls protecting what is precious, while for Eliade, it is the axis mundi—the axis that orders chaos. Today, these mechanisms operate within civil religion.
Parliament as a "temple of democracy" and the Constitution as an "ark of the covenant" are not metaphors, but anthropological structures. Yet every state casts a "theological shadow"—the state of exception. This is the moment when the sovereign suspends the law, which requires special oversight to ensure that liminality (the state of transition) does not become a permanent form of governance.
New Liturgies: Technology, the Market, and Urban Space
The stock exchange and shopping malls are the contemporary sacred centers of capital, complete with their own calendars and initiation rituals. Parallel to this, a technological liturgy is emerging: algorithms manage our attention like impersonal priests, and AI becomes the axis technologicus. It evokes the numinosum—a mixture of fear and fascination toward the "wholly Other."
In opposition to "non-places" stands the genius loci—the spirit of a place that teaches us how to inhabit space meaningfully. Cultural institutions and schools should become laboratories for rites of passage. Practicing silence and wonder is not a luxury, but a foundation of the human condition, allowing us to cross the threshold of self-presentation and build authentic communitas.
Summary
The division between the sacred and the profane is a practical technology for navigating the social world. Contemporary challenges require the design of "thresholds" that allow these spheres to be translated without violence. Provisio works in an anti-spectacular way, measuring the quality of institutions by their ability to generate communal meaning, rather than just efficiency.
Only at the boundary of these worlds can the whisper of an old couple be heard. The sacred says to the profane: "Without you, I have no body." The profane replies: "Without you, I have no meaning." And we—people in motion—build the bridges upon which this transition can finally take place.
📄 Full analysis available in PDF