1970 Geloof en Wetenschap : Orgaan van de Christelijke vereeniging van natuur- en geneeskundigen in Nederland - pagina 112

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FROM TERRITORIAL IMAGE TO CULTURAL ENVIRONMENT

ranee during those important times when we must make crucial decisions. For our species can survive and the cultural evolution progress only if we can modify the animal images of territory, dominance and aggression which cause our wars. That is just a beginning. The abolition of war would make physical survival possible, but we want to go beyond that and thrive in living together. For this task too, we need a preponderance of new cultural images over animal images. Our animal images interfere with many other necessary conditions for human evolution. We are trying to curb population growth, but we do not protest, say, the growth of our industrial capacity to produce cars. The animal images of survival through progeny and the feeling of possession — isn't the car often „his world" to the adolescent? — combine to strengthen one of the industrial roads to profit and make sure to produce ever-increasing quantities. Or again, we are concerned with increasing pollution through waste products; but nobody is against increasing the number of one-family dwellings which are scattered independent pollution sources. In this case, it is technology which has accomodated and made possible an extreme form of privacy, which is in part a remnant of the territorial image. As René Dubos stated in his recent book „So Human an Animal," we must see to it that the experiential forces shaping the physical and mental characteristics of each newborn infant, will be of quality and significance, and not directed just to the enjoyment of luxury or technological novelty (4). All these considerations force us to examine the nature of the dichotomy and the results of the clash between our animal origins and our cultural future. One way of entering this problem is to ask the age-old question: Does our environment shape our actions, or do our activities shape the world around us? In the final analysis, this is of course a pseudo-question, for, naturally, both conditions prevail. We would find too passive the Roman „Tempora mutantur, et nos mutamur in illis" — times change and we change with them. Our century would be better characterized by saying that man, by changing his self-image, is changing the world. Thus, there is a constant interaction between man and his environment, be this social or physical, living matter or inanimate substance. But, in our distant past, this interaction was a more spontaneous process than it is today, since we have now learned to plan and design many components of our life's activities, to be deliberate in our actions.

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