On one hand, I wouldn't completely dismiss the sociocultural norm of prizing competition and pursuit of individual power and status, since even though these motivators seem superficial and lowly to some, they have historically shown to be powerful facilitators of progress and development of humanity, and completely antagonizing them is unwise. We wouldn't be where we are without socioeconomic competition.
The iPhones and the planes and the supermarkets are not the problem - they are fruits of civilization and represent our progress as an intelligent species, at least in one regard.
Also, I don't think "ego-centric values" will be going anywhere, they seem to be rooted in our biology, from which dominant societal values are ultimately derived.
Of course, biology and basic societal expectations are not the only drivers of human behavior. Intellectual ideas, abstract thought, understanding of nature (in the broad sense), coupled with our faculties of emotion together act as essential motivators, and are often incorporated by society as general expectations and norm.
Obviously, taking a simplistic, power-driven, ego-centric behavioral paradigm to an extreme without incorporating the bigger picture into our perspective is a major mistake. We become short-sighted, basic and ignorant, leading to both practical problems as well as a philosophically undesirable state of humanity.
The concept you distinguished as one of the potential solutions - spirituality - and particularly your example of a physicalist/pantheistic spiritual outlook on the Universe that is not constructed dogma but rather a mental interpretation of scientific fact - is precisely the sort of thing that needs to be more common place. I have a hunch that a philosophy of that exact nature will be embraced in the not-so-distant future.
We are intelligent agents, isn't it common sense that we take as much knowledge as we can into consideration before we act, rather than being exclusively animated by immediate, manifest but somewhat animalistic motivators?
In this light, I guess our curse might be that although we were able to part somewhat from the more prevalent "way of nature" (and strive to do so), we won't be able to completely let go of its inherent mechanisms.
Douglas Adams talks about a theory by Mark Carwadine in Last Chance To See[1] in which he tries to explain why the Kakapo has a terribly slow and inefficient mating habit. The idea is that basically, without mechanisms (like predators) to keep them in check, any population that reproduces too fast will trigger a chaos theory-like strongly oscillating population count (coinciding with the resources available per capita at any previous sample point) and thus, most likely, flatline at zero at some point.
Maybe that's our problem: We were able to remove many constraining factors limiting us as a species, but can't let go of the habits that made us succeed so far. Of course, that doesn't only apply to reproduction, but also to resource consumption as a whole. On top of that, our ability to exploit fossil resources only amplifies this effect, because we were able to continue without more immediate consequences so far.
In that sense, one might argue that even without climate change, we would have to change our ways in order for our lifes to remain sustainable.
The iPhones and the planes and the supermarkets are not the problem - they are fruits of civilization and represent our progress as an intelligent species, at least in one regard.
Also, I don't think "ego-centric values" will be going anywhere, they seem to be rooted in our biology, from which dominant societal values are ultimately derived.
Of course, biology and basic societal expectations are not the only drivers of human behavior. Intellectual ideas, abstract thought, understanding of nature (in the broad sense), coupled with our faculties of emotion together act as essential motivators, and are often incorporated by society as general expectations and norm.
Obviously, taking a simplistic, power-driven, ego-centric behavioral paradigm to an extreme without incorporating the bigger picture into our perspective is a major mistake. We become short-sighted, basic and ignorant, leading to both practical problems as well as a philosophically undesirable state of humanity.
The concept you distinguished as one of the potential solutions - spirituality - and particularly your example of a physicalist/pantheistic spiritual outlook on the Universe that is not constructed dogma but rather a mental interpretation of scientific fact - is precisely the sort of thing that needs to be more common place. I have a hunch that a philosophy of that exact nature will be embraced in the not-so-distant future.
We are intelligent agents, isn't it common sense that we take as much knowledge as we can into consideration before we act, rather than being exclusively animated by immediate, manifest but somewhat animalistic motivators?