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Whence cometh our help?

Summoning our best – a global coalition of science and wisdom
An exploration with Roger Lipsey

Many thoughtful people feel pinned to history, as if to a descent that cannot be remedied. Global warming, mass species extinction, an arms race at extremes of technology, wars and failed states generating mass migration, a persistent romance with violence, the international order shaken, the rights of minorities and women ignored or derided: where are we, what are we? Is this the generation or set of generations that will lose the Earth? Are we so deeply foolish and unconscious that we deserve no better?

There is a vision past this threat. As Václav Havel might have said, it is barely perceptible ‘at the horizon’ – but it calls and invites. To realise this vision asks for everything: seriousness of mind, sufficiently sound leadership, sufficiently principled politics, science and technology that serve human welfare and our planetary home. It calls for wisdom – for the core of self-knowledge, conscience, and a sense of the sacred at the center of every religious and spiritual tradition. The need for wisdom and consciousness is too little understood. We cannot bash our way forward any longer.

We need a global coalition of science and wisdom. The elements are ready. Science and wisdom in our time are equal to the task. It is likely not too late. It is late. Dag Hammarskjöld said of the United Nations that it ‘was not created in order to bring us to heaven, but in order to save us from hell’. Thoughts not only for the UN.

‘From whence cometh my help?’ asks Psalm 121. We must do our part – a grave, marvelous challenge – if later verses of the psalm are to prove true: ‘The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in’.

• Dr Roger Lipsey is a biographer, art historian, editor and translator. He has written on Dag Hammarskjöld, G I Gurdjieff, Thomas Merton, Ananda K Coomaraswamy, and the history and interpretation of 20th-century art. His next book, Politics and Conscience: Dag Hammarskjöld on the Art of Ethical Leadership, a compact handbook of Hammarskjöld’s political thought and practice, will be published by Shambhala Publications in February 2020.

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