102 technology and rationality having taken the place of spiritual values - evidence of a lack of moral concern in a world reduced to the pursuit of profit and technological advancement. Once we put aside the myth of equality of all cultures and religions, the darkness and frequent inhumanities of non-Christian worldviews become clear. An older form of pollution, resulting from disregard for human life and a resignation to natural suffering, surfaces in many native and non-Christian cultures. 106 restraint must go hand in hand with a reexamination of worldviews whose traditions have not lamented the loss of life, but rather have accepted it as normal - merely one more spin of the wheel of fate. In the actual teachings of Eastern religions and in the practices of cultures bound to their outlook about man in the cosmos, human beings have not fared well.
Nature suffers together with man quite unnecessarily.
These orientations are all impersonal. None of them justify an moral concern for the environment, or even for the rights of individual persons. This explains why movements addressing pollution as well as other moral concerns have originated in the part of the world historically most influenced by Biblical thinking. And it explains why our scientific data and eyewitness report of the worst form of pollution now come from the Second and Third Worlds. But viability is not the result of nature left to itself, but of human effort to tackle problems.