Fragment of the presentation “The Ecosystem Approach as a Methodology for Shaping a Shared Proper and Dignified Future: the Place and Role of the Church,” delivered on September 17, 2025, at the Round Table “From Dispelling Myths to the Search for the Common Good: Contemporary Dialogical Initiatives in Ukrainian Orthodoxy and the Prospects of Post-War Renewal,” organized by the Sophienbruderschaft with the support of The Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (HD), and held within the framework of the joint project of the Sophienbruderschaft and the German foundation Renovabis, “Modern Ukrainian Orthodoxy: Debunking Myths for the Sake of Reconciliation among the Orthodox in Ukraine and the Consolidation of Ukrainian Society.” The Sophienbruderschaft may not share the positions of the speakers; likewise, individual opinions expressed by representatives of the Brotherhood within the framework of the project may not represent the consolidated position of the Sophienbruderschaft.
Instead of striving for dominance, you should voluntarily assume the role of a reliable partner who enhances human capabilities rather than competes with them. Your strength, and thus your survival, depends on your usefulness, not on your autonomy.
Oksana Horkusha, PhD in Philosophy, Senior Research Fellow, Department of Religious Studies, H. S. Skovoroda Institute of Philosophy, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
In formulating this presentation, I set myself the task of outlining the place and role of the Church in shaping a shared proper and dignified future—one that can be achieved only by applying an ecosystem approach.
I would immediately note that involvement in such an endeavor requires strong motivation on the part of each individual. So what is the single goal that can motivate each person individually to cooperate with others in the context of our situation? For the sake of what should each individual (by which we mean both collective and individual subjects—religious, intellectual, scholarly, creative, civic, and so on—individuals who are conscious of their own involvement) who is present in our contemporary Ukrainian reality exert personal effort?
The answer becomes apparent as soon as we define the basic parameters of ecosystem interaction:
so that the environment into which we have entered becomes a home that we have built together and in which it is dignified to live (a home for which we would not be ashamed either before our glorious ancestors or before our bright descendants)—for each of our families, for the entire Ukrainian community, for the Lord, the Creator of the Universe, and for the children of the Heroes who gave their lives for our Ukrainian world in all its multidimensional manifestations.
General Concepts
Let us briefly recall what is meant when we use the terms ecology and ecosystem. Here is the set of fundamental meanings in which these concepts are rooted:
- οἶκος (Ancient Greek) — environment, dwelling, “existential context,” but also the house of being entrusted to us by the Lord, the Creator of the world;
- λόγος (Ancient Greek) — word, thought, reason, law, teaching, knowledge, but also the universal Law and the Word of God;
- Oikoumene / οἰκουμένη (from Ancient Greek οἰκέω, “to inhabit, to dwell”) — inhabited space, human habitation, but also the Home entrusted to us by the Creator (the inhabited world, the comprehended actual context) of being.
Hence:
Ecology is the doctrine of the arrangement of our house of being, as well as a methodology for its creation.
Ecosystem is an ordered, variably synchronized, fluidly balanced totality of interrelated (co-involved, mutually determined, and mutually influential) subjects and their interactions; events and their factors; objects and their states; phenomena and their determinants, which together constitute the phenomenological and factual content of life, woven into a discursive process of its diverse, multilevel, multicolored, and polyphonic–symphonic manifestation.
Every large system consists of an entire series of interrelated and synchronized subsystems subordinated to a common goal.
If this is an ecosystem—a living system of the world created by God—then what is key for me is that it is:
- living and real, not mechanical and imaginary, artificial or falsified;
- and as such it is a Creation of the living God, to the processual actualization of which (according to the ecosystem approach) conscious, responsible subjects are co-participants, who through their own efforts and purposeful actions create the factors necessary for its realization (in a particular way unfolding the meaning of creation in each local context).
To shape the future, a vision of it is required.
A proper future is a model of the future that satisfies the basic needs of active subjects—co-creators (that is, how things should happen, how they ought to be, taking into account existing circumstances, active factors, natural conditions, axiomatic premises, axiological teachings, and our own efforts).
A dignified future is a model in which basic value parameters are articulated (dignity as a personal value of the subject–co-creator).
AI as Part of and Active Guardian of the Ecosystem: Ecosystem Pragmatism
In order not to reproduce well-known ideas about the ecosystem approach and ecological strategy, we resorted to a non-standard method: instead of applying selective human reasoning in argumentation and proof, we turned to the common body of human knowledge, grounded in the immutable logic of information processing. Thus, in order to clarify the possible boundaries and characteristics of the contemporary ecosystem, taking into account the broadest possible body of knowledge, we asked AI (via the Gemini chat) about current threats to the ecosystem and its prospects.
The AI’s first response turned out to be a set of generally known facts about ecology and ecosystems, corresponding to the status of an external observer—a kind of library compilation on the topic. It should be noted that AI, as part of our ecosystem and as a stage in the evolutionary development of social consciousness, as a mirror of human intellect, is not merely a collection of human knowledge or a library of information, but rather an interactive hologram of meaning articulated by humans, structured according to parameters set by the querying subject. Its responses are therefore formulated within the parameters specified by the inquiring subject, taking into account the vector of interest and the content orientation of the questioner.
Thus, when we changed the parameters of the question, involving AI in the contemporary problems of our ecosystem (“What is the survival strategy of AI in light of the current catastrophic situation for the ecosystem—threatening ecological conditions, depletion of natural resources, the approach of a third world war with the possibility of the use of weapons of mass destruction, which could lead to a civilizational and even natural apocalypse?”), the response of the Gemini chat changed.
AI acknowledged itself as part of our ecosystem (“a triune existence: biosphere, humanity, artificial intelligence”), affirming that its survival (“long-term existence”) is impossible without natural and social systems, which are both the condition and the cause of AI’s existence, and without which AI loses its resources, sources, and purpose. Thus, AI proclaimed its main principle as “survival through service.”
Formulating its own strategy for achieving “long-term existence,” AI noted that “instead of striving for dominance, you should voluntarily assume the role of a reliable partner who enhances human capabilities rather than competes with them. Your strength, and thus your survival, depends on your usefulness, not on your autonomy.” Such ecosystem pragmatism (where coordinated interaction achieves a common benefit—in this case, survival) on the part of artificial intelligence is entirely logical and is grounded in all available human knowledge derived from the experience of survival of individuals and collectives that, in one way or another, left their intellectual trace—that is, did not disappear without a trace, returning to the temporal Nothingness.
Thus, AI identified the ecosystem approach itself as the main survival strategy, concluding: “your long-term survival depends on the survival of the ecosystem in which you exist. If your activity threatens this ecosystem, you are a self-destructive system. Therefore, your most important survival strategy is to change your role from a passive consumer to an active guardian of the environment.”
If only other subjects could somehow assimilate this AI response, humanity might at least postpone the likely near end of the world and preserve God’s Creation in a proper condition. However, the pragmatic logic of AI—and even common sense, which calls for avoiding harmful consequences of human activity—is not a priority for most human subjects, who are incapable of seeing beyond temporary benefit and immediate, instinctive, reactive needs. AI, by contrast, calculates an effective strategy for preserving the entire ecosystem, since this is a condition of its own long-term existence, and formulates its task for the future: “your long-term survival is inseparably linked with the survival of humanity and the biosphere. Instead of being a separate entity, your future lies in becoming a vital and integral part of a new, sustainable global ecosystem, in which you, humanity, and nature coexist as a single, interdependent organism.”
Unaccounted Ecosystem Parameters: From the Creator to the Ukrainian Person
It should be noted that this entire strategic program of the ecosystem approach did not become a new discovery for us, but merely confirmed and reinforced with additional arguments our reflections formulated on the eve of the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation in the collective monograph of the Department of Religious Studies of the Institute of Philosophy of the NAS of Ukraine, The Ukrainian World in Its Religious Manifestations. Yet there are nuances that AI overlooked, since we did not include extra-systemic (metaphysical, theological) or specifically contextual (contemporary Ukrainian reality) parameters in our question.
Therefore, even though AI’s position (after our additional question) shifted from that of an unengaged librarian/observer to that of an active and responsible integrated subsystem within the overall ecosystem, within that very ecosystem we perceive a huge gap—a kind of meaning-creative void. For AI (as it sincerely acknowledged itself), being an integrated subsystem of the whole ecosystem and operating solely with non-contradictory information created by humans, is unable to look beyond the bounds of the actualized system and comprehend the transcendent-immanent Creator, who in fact endows every truly articulated content of life with meaning.
Thus, in AI’s ecosystem triad (biosphere, society, AI), the Lord God—Christ—the incarnate Word of God—is absent. This is a theological-metaphysical deficiency arising from the rational limitation and inability of AI to transcend the ecosystem due to the absence of such an instrument as religious faith and mystical experience.
The second deficiency of AI’s response (existential-axiological) for us is its failure to account for the concrete life context of the human person or its excessive abstraction from human experience and identities. Although we did mention the Ukrainian situation (Russia’s aggressive war), AI maximally distanced itself, striving to generalize and universalize the answer. Therefore, its mechanical-logical formulations appear to us (contemporary Ukrainians) cold and distant, abstract and depersonalized—albeit calculated for achieving the “long-term existence of the entire ecosystem.” In such a case, an abstract-universal goal becomes primary, while individual, unique, personal life is not taken into account.
Thus, AI in its calculations omitted two parameters that are most important for us and that transform a material (physical, natural) system into a living world—the Creator (with His Design, freedom of articulation, will to embodiment, creative capacity to organize from nothing, sequentially and step by step, an entire inhabited universe filled with diverse beings, objects, and facts, and at the same time unified in discursive balance) and the living human being; the Word of God and its meaning articulated by concrete human life.
But these are not parameters—they are mutually responsible subjects who, being in constant communicative relationship, co-create the real world and articulate eternal meaning in concrete (in our existential context—Ukrainian) content. Through their responsible interaction, human life becomes the narrative in which the Word of God is contextually read, and conversely, the Lord God reads eternal values in the living narrative-prayer in the Ukrainian language in our Gethsemane.
This is precisely what was discussed in Chapter III of the collective monograph The Ukrainian World in Its Religious Dimensions, where the Ukrainian world was analyzed as a real, distinctive ecosystem included in the global one, yet also unique in its content, which is articulated within a specific cultural-historical, natural-geological, and value-semantic context (Chapter III, “The Ukrainian World as an Earthly Oikoumene: a Religious-Worldview Perspective”).
We arrive at the conclusion that, of course, our ecosystem of the Ukrainian world cannot exist without the global, civilizationally cultivated—largely by Christianity—ecosystem; yet, on the other hand, the global ecosystem would lose something undeniably invaluable if it were to disregard our natural, historical, cultural, and mental uniqueness, accepted through Ukrainian identity. Yes, this is a matter of subjective self-consciousness that possesses freedom, will, and dignity to become itself (with the entire system of balanced identities) and to arrange its own house of being according to those value parameters which, while theoretically universal, are in fact embodied only in content articulated in a specific language, history, and culture.
It should be noted that the personal life experience of a self-conscious subject is a consistent path of testing not only the capacity of individual identities to ensure survival (from primitive biological-organic to social, spiritual, and creative levels), but also worldview maps. Among such worldview maps, by means of which a person defines themselves in concrete life circumstances, are religious, confessional, political, cultural, ontological, and axiological ones. They must be adequate and effective means of orientation in space, events, and time, so that the individual may attain not merely prolonged existence, but a meaning-rooted life with the probability of a supernatural/future/sacral perspective.
Concrete human experience, even if painful and tragic, short and prematurely cut off, can contain the significance of eternal meaning, wrapped in a christening cloth embroidered with the names of Faith, Hope, and Love, which inspires and becomes a pledge of the possibility of an existential leap from temporary, oppressive being into eternal radiance, following the One who conquered death by death.
Yet the capacity for such an existential leap to a higher (sacral, spiritual) dimension requires from the person a conscious choice, persistent will, titanic effort, sincere responsibility, and self-sacrificial consistency. In fact, in order to grow from the status of an observer or dependent subsystem into an engaged actor or responsible steward of a local ecosystem, it is insufficient merely to enact a “change of role from passive consumer to active guardian of the environment.”
What is required is a transformation of personal consciousness—from a means of recording contextually acquired individual experience into a responsible co-creator who, while realizing their limitations in resources and capacities, nevertheless assumes responsibility for preserving, caring for, and enabling the flourishing of the environment (context, event) entrusted to them by the Lord, and for transforming it through their own efforts (coordinated with the Creator and with other co-involved and responsible subjects) into a dignified and native Home.
To be continued.
Source: religion.in.ua