四川外国语学院考研(8)

基础英语(2004年)

represented by business.

As we approach the 21st century and incrementally experience the inbreaking of the Age of Global Consciousness, inter-religious dialogue will be an increasingly indispensable tool for charting our course. Consider some of the basic presuppositions that have emerged from decades of successful inter-religious dialogue. From the outset it affirms the positive value of diversity, and acknowledges the wisdom of the world‘s religious systems as a valuable resource for discovering and working together toward common goals (and it tends to enhance the personal faith of each participant-in-dialogue). Through decades of constructive dialogical experience, we have discovered that these presuppositions – coupled with the inclusive methodology of open listening, so that we may learn – initiate a process that opens the possibility of engaging one another in a manner that is as profound and integrative as that which is evident in the integration of a living ecosystem.

When we examine that the sublime and enduring wisdom of long established ecosystem, such as the Barrier Reef off the west coast of Australia, or an old growth forests, we find that these living ecosystems are excellent examples of maintaining unity in-and-through diversity. Thus, living ecosystems provide an apt analogy of what may be accomplished within the ecology of mind that emerges when humankind‘s religious and cultural traditions meet in dialogue. As with any ecosystem in the natural world, pluralism and diversity increase the system‘s flexibility, and therefore its viability. In the natural world, a sustained pattern of balance or steady-state is characteristic of all healthy and enduring ecosystems. This ―balance of nature‖ (an incessantly evolving steady-state) is bonded via a dialogical exchange of ―information‖, a process that is indicative of the ecosphere‘s(1) holistic knowledge and its innate wisdom.

Nature‘s ―steady-state‖ balance is maintained within an elegant dance of multiple variables, and sustained through a sublimely eloquent dialogue among each ecosystem‘s diverse, yet profoundly interconnected participants. This procession of an enduring, dialogically calibrated(2) steady-state is evident even in the most elemental ecosystems. Moreover, ecosystems of whatever size—from the most elemental, up through and including the global ecosystem—exhibit a capacity to evolve new patterns of interrelationship. This ability to re-evaluate and alter habituated patterns of interaction optimizes an ecosystem‘s flexibility, its viability, and also, the flexibility/viability of each form of life within the overall system.

In short, a dialogical co-evolution among (and within) an ecosystem‘s ―participants‖ serves to maintain the system‘s balance, while enhancing the ability of differentiated individuals within the system—along with the unified system as a whole---to learn, adapt and evolve. Learning and adaptation are both qualities of mental process, or mind. Therefore, it should not be too much of a ―stretch of the imagination‖ to envision the global ecosystem as the embodiment of a holistically

(3) emergent global ecomind. Consequently, if we are going to successfully meet ―the greatest challenge that has confronted the human race in its entire history,‖ and ―solve the common problems that threaten our future on the earth,‖ our modes of envisioning a global ethic---which will serve as the template (4) for humankind‘s newly emergent global ethos—will have to reflect and cooperate creatively with the knowledge and wisdom evident in the patterns that sustain the global ecomind.

We must develop an ethos that is informed by the fact that all living creatures are part of a profoundly interconnected holistic system, the global ecomind of this living planet. From this perspective, humankind must begin to evoke a sense of humility—envisioning and responding to a

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