Sacred Nature. Contemporary Forms of "Green" Spirituality

In contemporary society the emptiness of meanings created by the end of the “great narratives” (Lyotard, 1979) has caused the emergence of replacement narratives. The inextinguishable demand for meaning manifests itself in peculiar forms typical of late-modern society. The contemporary social scenario reveals a fragmentation of the economy of meanings, the supremacy of a true existential market situation (Berger & Luckmann, 1995) based on demand and supply mechanisms: the insuppressible demand for meaning – a feature of human anthropology – is therefore a crucial social incentive toward a renewed arise on one hand of religious movements and, on the other, new forms of spirituality. The trends of neo-spirituality no longer appear, however, exclusively in the shape of the religious – or at least in the canonical forms with which the religious has historically manifested itself. Indeed, “green” spirituality – in my opinion – is one of its most significant contemporary expressions.