Ariadne and the Minotaur: A Thread Winding through the Labyrinth

Abstract

Readers of this book will find several visions and perspectives on the topic of ecology, on religion and faith, and the political quandaries involved in “saving” the earth and the well-being of its inhabitants. Take a kaleidoscope: a finite number of fragments combines into a great variety of successive “images,” depending each time on who happens to be “slanting” the instrument. Likewise, images are conjured up by the participants of the Dialogue in the pages you are about to read: ill-fated Pandora and her box; the engineer Victor Frankenstein and the monster who escapes from his laboratory (Figure 5.1); the Amerindian’s Amazonian forest full of “human” jaguars; the “cosmic” vision of the planet as a “blue orange” (Figure 7.1); the city of Venice itself, saved from the flood by human ingenuity; Noah in the Ark, cupping his hand for God’s dove; the bread and the cup of wine of the Lord’s supper; the watchmaker who eyes his creation; Shakespeare’s Caliban, and Macbeth. The Dialogue is not unlike Grayson Perry’s contemporary tapestry Map of Truths and Beliefs (Figure 2.1). For all their passionately held differences, the participants share at least the conviction that their desire to confront ecology and theology will have political consequences. The question recurred: “who can save?”