"I think Segall raises profound and timely questions—particularly about our place in the world, the meaning of human agency, and the spiritual void that modernity often leaves behind. Whether one agrees with his theological framing or not, several key ideas stand out as both thoughtful and worth wrestling with:
Where his argument is strong:
Loss of shared meaning: Many people do feel unmoored in the modern world, untethered from any overarching purpose. Segall’s point that earlier cultures operated with a strong sense of cosmic or moral order rings true.
The dangers of unchecked power: His observation that we are “cosmic toddlers with nuclear weapons” is not just poetic—it’s accurate. Technological power has outpaced moral and spiritual maturity.
A call to responsibility: Framing humans as “sub-creators” rather than sovereign masters is a helpful corrective to both nihilism and hubris. It allows space for reverence, humility, and action.
Where the argument becomes more interpretive:
Theological claims (e.g., theosis, God evolving with us, Holy Spirit as humanity): These depend on one’s belief system. Some will find it a beautiful reimagining of spirituality; others may see it as speculative or metaphorical.
Integration of Eastern and Western ideas: Segall tries to find common ground between Christian process theology and ideas from Taoism and Buddhism. This blending is intellectually rich, but also open to critique if stretched too far.
From a philosophical standpoint, Segall’s synthesis is thoughtful. He’s grappling with how to live meaningfully in a broken world—a question that resonates across religious, secular, and spiritual worldviews. His call to act with love, humility, and imagination is hard to argue with, especially in a time of planetary crisis.
If you're asking whether you should agree—it depends on whether you're drawn more to frameworks of meaning rooted in shared cosmic purpose, or if you’re more comfortable with secular, human-centered approaches. But either way, his challenge to become wise stewards rather than reckless consumers is worth serious reflection.
Wonderful and honest evocation of the possible ways of relating to the current miasma of nihilism, fundamentalism and the emergence of genuinely new visions.
here's another possible vision, from Sri Aurobindo:
Therefore the coming of a spiritual age must be preceded by the appearance of an increasing number of individuals who are no longer satisfied with the normal intellectual, vital and physical life of man, but perceive that a greater evolution is the real goal of humanity and attempt to effect it in themselves and lead others to it that eventually it may become the recognised goal of the race. In proportion as they succeed and to the degree to which they carry this evolution, the yet unrealised potentiality which they represent will become an actual possibility of the future.
Aurobindo, Sri. The Human Cycle & The Ideal of Human Unity: Arya Edition (p. 262).
Therefore the individuals who will most help the future of humanity in the new age will be those who will recognise a spiritual evolution as the destiny and therefore the great need of the human being; an evolution or conversion,—it does not greatly matter which figure we use or what theory we adopt to support it,—of the present type of humanity into a spiritualised humanity, even as the animal man has been largely converted into a highly mentalised humanity.
They will be comparatively indifferent to particular belief and form and leave men to resort to the beliefs and forms to which they are naturally drawn. They will only hold as essential the faith in this spiritual conversion, the attempt to live it out and whatever knowledge,—but the form of opinion into which it is thrown does not so much matter,—can be converted into this living. They will especially not make the mistake of thinking that this change can be effected by machinery and outward institutions; they will know and never forget that it has to be lived out by each man inwardly or it can never be made a reality.
They will adopt in its real heart of meaning the inward view of the East which bids man seek the secret of his destiny and salvation within; but also they will accept, though with a different turn given to it, the importance which the West rightly attaches to life and to the making the best we know and can attain the general rule of all life.
They will not make society a shadowy background to a few luminous spiritual figures or a rigidly fenced and earth-bound root for the growth of a comparatively rare and sterile flower of ascetic spirituality. They will not accept the theory that the many must necessarily remain on the lower ranges of life and only a few climb into the free air and the light, but will start from the standpoint of the great spirits who have striven to regenerate the race and held that faith in spite of all previous failure.
Failures must be originally numerous in everything great and difficult, but the time comes when the experience of past failures can be profitably used and the gate that so long resisted opens. In this as in all great human aspirations and endeavours, an a priori declaration of impossibility is a sign of ignorance and weakness, and the motto of the aspirant’s endeavour must be the solvitur ambulando[13] of the discoverer, by the doing the difficulty will be solved.
The thing to be done is as large as human life, and therefore the individuals who lead the way, will take all human life for their province. They will consider nothing as alien to them and outside their scope. For every part of human life has to be taken up by the spiritual,—not only the intellectual, the aesthetic, the ethical, but the dynamic, the vital, the physical; therefore for none of these things or the activities that spring from them, will they have contempt or aversion. In each they will seek for its own proper means of conversion; for knowing that the Divine is concealed in all of them, they will hold that all can be made its means of self-finding and all can be converted into its instruments of divine living.
They will see that the great necessity is the conversion of the normal into the spiritual mind and the opening of that mind again into its higher reaches and more and more integral movement. For before the decisive change can be made the intellectual reason has to be converted into the intuitive, until that again can rise into the higher revelatory divine mind or supermind, the mental will into the intuitive and into the higher divine will, and all the other members have, mainly by the compelling force and light of these, to undergo a similar conversion.
They will start from and use the knowledge and the means that past effort has developed in this direction, but they will not limit themselves by what is now known of them or cleave only to fixed and stereotyped systems or given groupings of results, but will follow the method of the Spirit in Nature which is a constant rediscovery and new formulation aided by new discovery and a larger synthesis.
The endeavour will be a supreme and difficult labour even for the individual, but much more for the race, and it may well be that, once started, it may not advance rapidly even to its first decisive stage, but will take for that some centuries of effort. But that is not altogether inevitable, for the principle of such changes in Nature seems to be a long obscure preparation followed by a swifter gathering up and precipitation of the elements into the new birth, a rapid conversion.
Even when the first decisive change is reached, it may be that all humanity will not be able to rise to that level, but for some time there will be a division into those who are able to live on the spiritual level and those who are only able to live in the light that descends from it into the mental level. But even that would be a transformation and a beginning; for it would not means as in our present vital living an egoistic domination of the undeveloped by the more developed, but, if a government of the younger by the elder brothers of the race, still also a constant working to lift them up to the greater spiritual level and wider horizons.
Aurobindo, Sri. The Human Cycle & The Ideal of Human Unity: Arya Edition (pp. 264-266).
Your essay brought up a lot of responses my friend. Thank you for sharing with your gifted mind to cut to the chase and at same time to be chaste. I am glad you are breathing light into our darkness.
Yes ~ this is the spirit in which I wrote "Planetary Hospice" in 2014. We are called to become spiritual midwives for what will amount to a transmutation of the human species. I think the true "abyss" that so many have fallen into since is the immense uncertainty over what that looks like in the 'end.' All we are given is the scientific-materialist prognosis, which does not and can not account for the most important variable of all: the fact that we are integral parts of a living organism with it's own agency that is, in a very real sense, reactive. And this, I think, is why Taoism and Buddhism are so much more useful in meeting this age of great uncertainty and shifting baselines than Abrahamic Religions with their "end times" myths that seem to manifest as death cults. So I look forward to your second take on this, hinted at in this piece, from a non-theistic perspective! I'm also curious about your thinking about the linkage b/t theism and scientific-materialism - it has always seemed to me that Descartes & Bacon's thinking was overly theistic, with their human exceptionalism giving rise to the split b/t humanity and nature.
That's a little incongruous, as one is posited on a creator god, and the other refutes the idea of a creator god. As the Dalai Lama points out, it is fine for people from other religions to adopt Buddhist practices, but at some point you have to choose; i.e., you cannot profess to be Buddhist if you believe in a creator god. They are irreconcilable on the point of ultimate truth and reality. Certainly, as a philosopher you must appreciate this. So when you say "my Buddhism" are you talking about something you've appropriated and made into your own? Or am I missing your point entirely?
Like all process theologians I reject the idea of a Creator God and affirm instead a Relator God. I think there is ample evidence for this view in the Bible (see eg Catherine Keller and Tom Oord’s work).
You write: "We're cosmic toddlers with nuclear weapons, AI algorithms, and gene-editing tools. I think we're in a moment in history where we have an opportunity for a learning curve, but it's going to be a rocky road for a while yet. In an important sense, the catastrophe has already occurred. It is too late... But the takeaway is not hopelessness or nihilism, but learning to live virtuously in a wounded world." Thank you for your honesty in your assessment of where we are--that is at the point of "too late." The truth is if it is really to late, it will only be too late for humans and other animals. The earth will go on just fine without us...
I literally had the exact same thought in the shower the other day! Specifically, I realized that this is why the quest for the holy grail is so appealing. I wrote a funny little post about it here called The Grail is Coming From Inside the House if you're interested.
"The synthesis is that we don't think of ourselves as prime creators (that way lies only more hubris), but as participant creators with God, or perhaps better, as participants in God's own becoming"
This is close to right. The rest is metaphorical imaginings.
Notice that I said 'close' (italic emphasis) to right. It is hubris to use the term 'participating'. That implies active, knowledgeable involvement. Most never even become aware of the effects they have on the becoming of god and the universe, positive and negative, let alone actively and knowledgeably participate. Of the handful from history that could be named with that capacity, Jesus, Gandhi, and Dr King come to mind. You and I are so busy living we don't have the capacity to participate even if we are aware.
Hmm,yeah, a semantics problem. Becoming in this context means changing, with an implied positive outcome.
Using that context, are you not already existent?(despite what some interpretations of nonduality would have us believe) Are you not always changing, for better or worse. Where did we ever get the idea that god or gods are already perfect, that Heaven, Valhalla, Nirvana, the rest of Reality is utopian? Wishful thinking or a mind virus injected into our phyche most likely.
Why can't god change, evolve?
What if, as we invent, or a magnetic storm in a star makes new anomalies, a new path of possiblity is opened, giving god(s) something new to explore, a novel avenue of change, Becoming more? And shouldn't we attempt to mimick this, as an image of god?
I think that Being, Doing, Creating, and Becoming are interwoven, transrelational fundamental guiding factors of the universe. Which, in my mind, means they apply to god too.
I only asked where we got the idea that god is perfect. Seems highly unlikely though. Nothing in the universe is perfect, unless you subscribe to the nihilistic notion that everything is always perfect as it is. Imperfection is the primary driver of novelty and change, not creativity. And I would hate to be the god of a universe where nothing interesting ever happened, where I already knew everything, could do everything, etc. I think maybe god doesn't want to be perfect, just really, really good, with endless exploration.
Do you have anything good to say about modernity? Or is it always this romanticism for a past that really didn’t exist in the way you paint it? Divine “stewardship” has nothing to do with the past (or modernity). It has to do only with the Enlightened state of being fully human and awake, regardless of historical position, in the here and NOW.
The business and wages of sinners is death Collectively sinners inevitably create hell on earth.
Have you read the news!
Sin or the active dissociation from Reality Truth & The Beautiful is the worst cancer in the universe. It is the worst sickness. It is the most horrific disease. It implications cover the entirety of everyone's life. The world is filled with its symptoms and reeks with its torments and potentials, coming from all directions, most of which people cannot even see.
Unless by Sin you mean the Truth, I have no way of being able to call this anything other than confused. Seriously, as a teacher you have to take more care, as you’re using some very big words in this piece. You yourself are doing the same thing you are accusing others of (in regard to being a cosmic toddler with powerful weapons in their hands). There is no Love without the Truth, Matt. We have to love the truth.
Was curious what ChatGPT "thinks" of your essay:
"I think Segall raises profound and timely questions—particularly about our place in the world, the meaning of human agency, and the spiritual void that modernity often leaves behind. Whether one agrees with his theological framing or not, several key ideas stand out as both thoughtful and worth wrestling with:
Where his argument is strong:
Loss of shared meaning: Many people do feel unmoored in the modern world, untethered from any overarching purpose. Segall’s point that earlier cultures operated with a strong sense of cosmic or moral order rings true.
The dangers of unchecked power: His observation that we are “cosmic toddlers with nuclear weapons” is not just poetic—it’s accurate. Technological power has outpaced moral and spiritual maturity.
A call to responsibility: Framing humans as “sub-creators” rather than sovereign masters is a helpful corrective to both nihilism and hubris. It allows space for reverence, humility, and action.
Where the argument becomes more interpretive:
Theological claims (e.g., theosis, God evolving with us, Holy Spirit as humanity): These depend on one’s belief system. Some will find it a beautiful reimagining of spirituality; others may see it as speculative or metaphorical.
Integration of Eastern and Western ideas: Segall tries to find common ground between Christian process theology and ideas from Taoism and Buddhism. This blending is intellectually rich, but also open to critique if stretched too far.
From a philosophical standpoint, Segall’s synthesis is thoughtful. He’s grappling with how to live meaningfully in a broken world—a question that resonates across religious, secular, and spiritual worldviews. His call to act with love, humility, and imagination is hard to argue with, especially in a time of planetary crisis.
If you're asking whether you should agree—it depends on whether you're drawn more to frameworks of meaning rooted in shared cosmic purpose, or if you’re more comfortable with secular, human-centered approaches. But either way, his challenge to become wise stewards rather than reckless consumers is worth serious reflection.
Wonderful and honest evocation of the possible ways of relating to the current miasma of nihilism, fundamentalism and the emergence of genuinely new visions.
here's another possible vision, from Sri Aurobindo:
Therefore the coming of a spiritual age must be preceded by the appearance of an increasing number of individuals who are no longer satisfied with the normal intellectual, vital and physical life of man, but perceive that a greater evolution is the real goal of humanity and attempt to effect it in themselves and lead others to it that eventually it may become the recognised goal of the race. In proportion as they succeed and to the degree to which they carry this evolution, the yet unrealised potentiality which they represent will become an actual possibility of the future.
Aurobindo, Sri. The Human Cycle & The Ideal of Human Unity: Arya Edition (p. 262).
Therefore the individuals who will most help the future of humanity in the new age will be those who will recognise a spiritual evolution as the destiny and therefore the great need of the human being; an evolution or conversion,—it does not greatly matter which figure we use or what theory we adopt to support it,—of the present type of humanity into a spiritualised humanity, even as the animal man has been largely converted into a highly mentalised humanity.
They will be comparatively indifferent to particular belief and form and leave men to resort to the beliefs and forms to which they are naturally drawn. They will only hold as essential the faith in this spiritual conversion, the attempt to live it out and whatever knowledge,—but the form of opinion into which it is thrown does not so much matter,—can be converted into this living. They will especially not make the mistake of thinking that this change can be effected by machinery and outward institutions; they will know and never forget that it has to be lived out by each man inwardly or it can never be made a reality.
They will adopt in its real heart of meaning the inward view of the East which bids man seek the secret of his destiny and salvation within; but also they will accept, though with a different turn given to it, the importance which the West rightly attaches to life and to the making the best we know and can attain the general rule of all life.
They will not make society a shadowy background to a few luminous spiritual figures or a rigidly fenced and earth-bound root for the growth of a comparatively rare and sterile flower of ascetic spirituality. They will not accept the theory that the many must necessarily remain on the lower ranges of life and only a few climb into the free air and the light, but will start from the standpoint of the great spirits who have striven to regenerate the race and held that faith in spite of all previous failure.
Failures must be originally numerous in everything great and difficult, but the time comes when the experience of past failures can be profitably used and the gate that so long resisted opens. In this as in all great human aspirations and endeavours, an a priori declaration of impossibility is a sign of ignorance and weakness, and the motto of the aspirant’s endeavour must be the solvitur ambulando[13] of the discoverer, by the doing the difficulty will be solved.
The thing to be done is as large as human life, and therefore the individuals who lead the way, will take all human life for their province. They will consider nothing as alien to them and outside their scope. For every part of human life has to be taken up by the spiritual,—not only the intellectual, the aesthetic, the ethical, but the dynamic, the vital, the physical; therefore for none of these things or the activities that spring from them, will they have contempt or aversion. In each they will seek for its own proper means of conversion; for knowing that the Divine is concealed in all of them, they will hold that all can be made its means of self-finding and all can be converted into its instruments of divine living.
They will see that the great necessity is the conversion of the normal into the spiritual mind and the opening of that mind again into its higher reaches and more and more integral movement. For before the decisive change can be made the intellectual reason has to be converted into the intuitive, until that again can rise into the higher revelatory divine mind or supermind, the mental will into the intuitive and into the higher divine will, and all the other members have, mainly by the compelling force and light of these, to undergo a similar conversion.
They will start from and use the knowledge and the means that past effort has developed in this direction, but they will not limit themselves by what is now known of them or cleave only to fixed and stereotyped systems or given groupings of results, but will follow the method of the Spirit in Nature which is a constant rediscovery and new formulation aided by new discovery and a larger synthesis.
The endeavour will be a supreme and difficult labour even for the individual, but much more for the race, and it may well be that, once started, it may not advance rapidly even to its first decisive stage, but will take for that some centuries of effort. But that is not altogether inevitable, for the principle of such changes in Nature seems to be a long obscure preparation followed by a swifter gathering up and precipitation of the elements into the new birth, a rapid conversion.
Even when the first decisive change is reached, it may be that all humanity will not be able to rise to that level, but for some time there will be a division into those who are able to live on the spiritual level and those who are only able to live in the light that descends from it into the mental level. But even that would be a transformation and a beginning; for it would not means as in our present vital living an egoistic domination of the undeveloped by the more developed, but, if a government of the younger by the elder brothers of the race, still also a constant working to lift them up to the greater spiritual level and wider horizons.
Aurobindo, Sri. The Human Cycle & The Ideal of Human Unity: Arya Edition (pp. 264-266).
Your essay brought up a lot of responses my friend. Thank you for sharing with your gifted mind to cut to the chase and at same time to be chaste. I am glad you are breathing light into our darkness.
Yes ~ this is the spirit in which I wrote "Planetary Hospice" in 2014. We are called to become spiritual midwives for what will amount to a transmutation of the human species. I think the true "abyss" that so many have fallen into since is the immense uncertainty over what that looks like in the 'end.' All we are given is the scientific-materialist prognosis, which does not and can not account for the most important variable of all: the fact that we are integral parts of a living organism with it's own agency that is, in a very real sense, reactive. And this, I think, is why Taoism and Buddhism are so much more useful in meeting this age of great uncertainty and shifting baselines than Abrahamic Religions with their "end times" myths that seem to manifest as death cults. So I look forward to your second take on this, hinted at in this piece, from a non-theistic perspective! I'm also curious about your thinking about the linkage b/t theism and scientific-materialism - it has always seemed to me that Descartes & Bacon's thinking was overly theistic, with their human exceptionalism giving rise to the split b/t humanity and nature.
Personally I cannot imagine my Buddhism without Christianity or my Christianity without Buddhism.
That's a little incongruous, as one is posited on a creator god, and the other refutes the idea of a creator god. As the Dalai Lama points out, it is fine for people from other religions to adopt Buddhist practices, but at some point you have to choose; i.e., you cannot profess to be Buddhist if you believe in a creator god. They are irreconcilable on the point of ultimate truth and reality. Certainly, as a philosopher you must appreciate this. So when you say "my Buddhism" are you talking about something you've appropriated and made into your own? Or am I missing your point entirely?
Like all process theologians I reject the idea of a Creator God and affirm instead a Relator God. I think there is ample evidence for this view in the Bible (see eg Catherine Keller and Tom Oord’s work).
Maitreyabandhu and I discussed the idea of a personal God and Buddhism toward the end: https://open.substack.com/pub/footnotes2plato/p/reality-is-process?r=2at642&utm_medium=ios
Thank you for this beautiful and timely articulation, Matt.
You write: "We're cosmic toddlers with nuclear weapons, AI algorithms, and gene-editing tools. I think we're in a moment in history where we have an opportunity for a learning curve, but it's going to be a rocky road for a while yet. In an important sense, the catastrophe has already occurred. It is too late... But the takeaway is not hopelessness or nihilism, but learning to live virtuously in a wounded world." Thank you for your honesty in your assessment of where we are--that is at the point of "too late." The truth is if it is really to late, it will only be too late for humans and other animals. The earth will go on just fine without us...
Man’s whole mission on earth is trying to find an object that he has fundamentally lost
I literally had the exact same thought in the shower the other day! Specifically, I realized that this is why the quest for the holy grail is so appealing. I wrote a funny little post about it here called The Grail is Coming From Inside the House if you're interested.
"The synthesis is that we don't think of ourselves as prime creators (that way lies only more hubris), but as participant creators with God, or perhaps better, as participants in God's own becoming"
This is close to right. The rest is metaphorical imaginings.
In what way are we participating in Gods becoming? What sort of hubris is this?
Notice that I said 'close' (italic emphasis) to right. It is hubris to use the term 'participating'. That implies active, knowledgeable involvement. Most never even become aware of the effects they have on the becoming of god and the universe, positive and negative, let alone actively and knowledgeably participate. Of the handful from history that could be named with that capacity, Jesus, Gandhi, and Dr King come to mind. You and I are so busy living we don't have the capacity to participate even if we are aware.
I see, but what does “Gods becoming” mean? Is God not already existent?
Hmm,yeah, a semantics problem. Becoming in this context means changing, with an implied positive outcome.
Using that context, are you not already existent?(despite what some interpretations of nonduality would have us believe) Are you not always changing, for better or worse. Where did we ever get the idea that god or gods are already perfect, that Heaven, Valhalla, Nirvana, the rest of Reality is utopian? Wishful thinking or a mind virus injected into our phyche most likely.
Why can't god change, evolve?
What if, as we invent, or a magnetic storm in a star makes new anomalies, a new path of possiblity is opened, giving god(s) something new to explore, a novel avenue of change, Becoming more? And shouldn't we attempt to mimick this, as an image of god?
I think that Being, Doing, Creating, and Becoming are interwoven, transrelational fundamental guiding factors of the universe. Which, in my mind, means they apply to god too.
What makes you think it was we invented the idea that God is perfect?
What if it’s true?
I only asked where we got the idea that god is perfect. Seems highly unlikely though. Nothing in the universe is perfect, unless you subscribe to the nihilistic notion that everything is always perfect as it is. Imperfection is the primary driver of novelty and change, not creativity. And I would hate to be the god of a universe where nothing interesting ever happened, where I already knew everything, could do everything, etc. I think maybe god doesn't want to be perfect, just really, really good, with endless exploration.
Do you have anything good to say about modernity? Or is it always this romanticism for a past that really didn’t exist in the way you paint it? Divine “stewardship” has nothing to do with the past (or modernity). It has to do only with the Enlightened state of being fully human and awake, regardless of historical position, in the here and NOW.
The business and wages of sinners is death Collectively sinners inevitably create hell on earth.
Have you read the news!
Sin or the active dissociation from Reality Truth & The Beautiful is the worst cancer in the universe. It is the worst sickness. It is the most horrific disease. It implications cover the entirety of everyone's life. The world is filled with its symptoms and reeks with its torments and potentials, coming from all directions, most of which people cannot even see.
Wow!☯️
Humans (les petits êtres)(insignifiants) are mere steps in an ‘’inexorable’’complexification……✌🏻
“sin is the source of our salvation”
Unless by Sin you mean the Truth, I have no way of being able to call this anything other than confused. Seriously, as a teacher you have to take more care, as you’re using some very big words in this piece. You yourself are doing the same thing you are accusing others of (in regard to being a cosmic toddler with powerful weapons in their hands). There is no Love without the Truth, Matt. We have to love the truth.