Lent After the Anthropocene By Rev. Dr. John G. Mathews, priest of the Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian Church, India
W
e are living in a decisive period of history where geologists term it as an Anthropocene age. Anthropocene is not a neology rather it has become a hot topic for the last two decades. In simple terms, it conveys a condition of the significant influence of a single species on the planet. In recent times, the Anthropocene has become the broader context and the Covid pandemic the immediate context for human engagements. To address these issues are vital because it unravels the role and vulnerability of human community. Anthropocene depicts the human domination whereas pandemic unravels the human vulnerability and emphasizes the entangled nature of human with the non-human entities. The recent pandemic exposed the deleterious power of a tiny virus creating irrevocable changes in human lives. It not only deciphered the interconnectivities beyond species level but also made our lives constrained with various complications. This forced us to rethink and rediscover new ways to address the current situation. Practices such as wearing mask, social/physical distancing, hand sanitisation have in a way become new rituals in our lives to keep us safe. Thus, it points us to rethink our traditional rituals like spiritual practices to be a means to address multiple issues of the new situation. Through this paper, I discuss the need for refounding lent in an epoch of the Anthropocene. Lent is a spiritual practice of all religions and this has the potential not only to touch the transcendental realm but also to engage in the mundane realities.
After the Anthropocene Anthropocene takes the central role in many recent studies. It is said that, in the geological time scale we are living in the Anthropocene age where human beings play a decisive role. The term Anthropocene was popularised by Paul Crutzen to distinguish the present age from the Holocene. In 2000, during a meeting at Mexico to a growing frustration of human induced changes in the Holocene, Paul Crutzen said that we are no longer in a Holocene age, rather, in an Anthropocene age. In his article Geology of mankind he writes, “it seems appropriate to assign the term ‘Anthropocene’ to the present, in many ways human-dominated, geological epoch, supplementing the Holocene — the warm period of the past 10–12 millennia. The Anthropocene could be said to have started in the latter part of the eighteenth century, when analyses
1 3
of air trapped in polar ice showed the beginning of growing global concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane.” 1 He further interconnects the date with the design of the steam engine by James Watt in 1784. There are multiple views regarding the beginning of the Anthropocene age. Some consider a period tracing back to 12,000-15,000 years when agricultural revolution and sedentary human societies occurred, and others claim a time of atomic bombing in 1945. But the suggestion of Crutzen brings more rationale to the term because it connects to the events that accelerated geological changes, i.e., the innovations in industrialisations and radical changes through European Enlightenment. Even though Crutzen emphasized the shift of Holocene to Anthropocene, it took some time for its wider acceptance. More clarity and conformity emanated for the word in the last decade. Scholars who discussed the decisive role of humans in the creation of Anthropocene narrates that, “the earth, which at a certain moment of its history produced a being that seemed at first more or less insignificant, but became more and more important, this Earth becomes now the pure object of the activity of this totally oversized being, which recognises no limits to himself.”2 Now the oversized being took the central role and objectifies the earth, creating radical changes more than unprecedented ways on the Earth. The human-induced changes brought forth unpredictability on the substrata making it evident the transition of the Holocene to the Anthropocene. Thus, the Anthropocene era is the radical influence of humans on the geological substrata causing uncertainties and irreversible changes. In other words, the earth which is interwoven with a spider like human and their secretions impacts the earth surface with deleterious effects. One of the deleterious effects is the environmental change that became unequivocally huge. The changes impacted all the physical, chemical and biological realms. Some of the major features of the environmental adversities are increase in oxides, hydroxides, widespread pollution, inorganic crystalline compounds, concrete (the signature rock of the anthropocene age), carbon dioxide, mass extinction of species and evolving of many new mutated biological strains. These changes in turn aggravated the global temperature, glacier melting and loss of biodiversity. In recent times, the dominating impacts are permeating to all life systems and it creates huge havoc and contributes to the Sixth Extinction as emphasised by Elizabeth Kolbert.
Crytzen, Paul J. “Geology of mankind,” in Nature, VOL 415|3, January 2002, 23 Nature; London, Vol. 415, Iss. 6867, (Jan 3, 2002): 23. DOI:10.1038/415023a. Hans-Christoph Askani, Human responses to the global environmental crisis. (Why not? Part II), Yonsei University: 2018 UNIGE-Yonsei Theological Conference – Eco-theology: Contemporary Challenges in Interdisciplinary Perspective, 2018 June 26-27, 93.
36 INSiGHT MARCH 2022
