In the next 20 years we will experience a revolution against capitalism – one that needs to recognise that “all life is connected”. That is according to Rev Peter Owen-Jones, who addressed the topic, ‘A New Humanity: The Quest for Well-Being in the 21st Century’ at Eco-Congregation Ireland’s recent inaugural conference.
The Anglican vicar, who is well-known for his BBC series, Around the World in 80 Faiths and How to Live a Simple Life, said: “A system that sets each individual human being against each other is never going to create, or more importantly engender, a sense of communal, or individual, well-being,” said Owen-Jones. “There is surely a tipping point where the demands of the system become heavier than any benefits it might happen to offer.
“When societies approach that point, the resulting stress on the individuals who make up that society begins to show itself. We are, perhaps, much closer to that point as a society than we are really being honest about and, once that point is passed, there is always revolution.”
Rev Owen-Jones reckoned that at some point in the next two decades “the new generation” would wake up and realise the true extent of the social manipulation they had been subjected to.
“I don’t like the roads revolution take,” he said. “They are, for the most part, journeys into the brutal, the vicious and the bloody. This is because they are power battles … what kind of peace can ever be built on blood?”
“We cannot have a revolution based on happiness and well-being until, first of all, we connect with the first truth, and it is that all life is connected. We exist with, and are utterly dependent upon, the myriad forms of life that we share this planet with. In that sense, we are many beings; we are not the individuals that we imagine we are.”
Rev Owen-Jones believed we were in the “perilous position” we faced because we had not acknowledged the first truth – “the connectedness of all life”. “We cannot ever have peace on earth until we make peace with the natural world,” he said. “Christianity needs urgently to embrace a bigger vision of peace on earth.”
He said that a revolution would not be about our physical existence but human identity. The deep ecology movement invited us to see our humanity differently – through our relationship with the natural world – and into a vision where we were not predators, despoilers and eradicators, but nurturers and guardians where we existed in a state of communion with the environment.
None of us had any idea of the true cost of the manner of our existence; we languished in illusion until we faced that truth. “That truth will reveal how disharmonious our current form of existing is in our relationship with the natural world,” he said. “Just imagine what it might be like to be a nurturer, a guardian: what manner of beings might we become, 
celebrating all life, carrying one life, and living in a manner where we recognise one life carrying all life. That is the revolution we need: to awaken to that reflection of ourselves as nurturers and guardians, to be conscious that our well-being is intricately linked to the well-being of all life on this beautiful planet that we share.”
The full text of Rev Owen-Jones’s talk can be read here – well being.