the shadowed wonder and wildness.........

       The hyper-rational objectivity behind a great deal of contemporary techno-science could only have arisen in a civilization steeped in a dogmatic and other-worldly monotheism, for it is largely a continuation of the very same detached and derogatory relation to sensuous nature.  If in an earlier era we spoke of the earthly world as fallen, sinful, and demonic, we now speak of it as mostly inert, mechanical, and determinate.  In both instances nature is stripped of its generosity and prodigious creativity.  Similarly, the utopian technological dreaming that would have us bioengineer our way into a new and "more perfected" nature (or would have us download human consciousness into a "better hardware"), like the new-age wish to spiritually transcend the "physical plane" entirely, seems calculated to help us hide from the shadowed wonder and wildness of earthly existence.

-David Abram, Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology