Oldal 290 [290]
PROPHETS AND LOCAL ECO¬
COMMUNITIES. THE MICRO-COMMUNITY
PROGRAM AND THE NEW KOMA
NETWORK!
András Takács-Sánta
In colloguial language, a prophet is a future-teller, one who sees into the future.
Nevertheless, the original meaning of the word was very different. In Old Testament
times, those people were termed prophets who could find ways out of critical
times; who tried to guide a society straying in the wrong direction to the right —
the divine — path; who strove to facilitate the evolution of a new social order and
new mentality, that is, a new culture, by criticizing the dominant social establishment
and the prevalent way of thought. In the age of the ever deeper crisis of our culture,
there is dire need for prophets.
The gravest conseguences of this crisis include, for example, extremely unjust
inequalities in wealth, or masses of people being forced by the global capitalist
market economy into soul-killing drudgery for most of their lives, through a
combination of reward and coercion. Still, the most menacing consequences of
the crisis are ecological. About half a century has passed since it dawned upon us
that we were rapidly destroying the ecological bases of our lives (McNeill 2000).
For decades now we have been faced with the ecological crisis, which alone should
be enough to force us to profoundly change the direction of our culture. So far,
however, all we have managed to achieve are minor corrections. Market-based,
consumerist culture is still predominant practically all over the world. We have
managed to cope with environmental problems that could be remedied by relatively
simple technological responses, the mitigation of which harmed few power interests,
and in the meantime the dominant culture did not need to be questioned — for
example, the thinning of the ozone layers or the lead pollution in the air of large
cities. However, global climate change, the mass extinction of species, soil
degradation or the toxic effects of several synthetic compounds cause severe anxiety
throughout the world. A new culture would be needed to stop the decay: the
radical transformation of our thinking and of the social and economic institutional
system. Although such a change does stand a chance (for one thing, lots and lots
of people have realized its necessity all over the world), for the time being this is
only visible at the subcultural level.
Instead of the everyday meaning of the word “institution”, it is used in this paper in
the sociological sense: an institution is what becomes systemic (institutionalized), a
system in a society. Social institutions are those constituents of a society that can
reproduce themselves and exist across generations. There are economic, political, legal,
' Based on Takäcs-Sänta 2019 and 2020, modified at several places.