1 Introduction: The Design of Culture and the Culture of Design Environmentalists are often regarded as people wanting to stop one thing or another, and there are surely lots of things that ought to be stopped. The essays in this book, however, have to do with beginnings. | 1 THE PROBLEM OF ECOLOGICAL DESIGN 1 Introduction The Design of Culture and the Culture of Design Environmentalists are often regarded as people wanting to stop one thing or another and there are surely lots of things that ought to be stopped. The essays in this book however have to do with beginnings. How for example do we advance a long-delayed solar revolution Or begin one in forest management Or materials use How do we reimagine and remake the human presence on earth in ways that work over the long haul Such questions are the heart of what theologian Thomas Berry 1999 calls the Great Work of our age. This endeavor is nothing less than the effort to harmonize the human enterprise with how the world works as a physical system and how it ought to work as a moral system. In the past two centuries the human footprint on earth has multiplied many times over. Our science and technology are powerful beyond anything imagined by the confident founders of the modern world. But our sense of proportion and depth of purpose have not kept pace with our merely technical .
