Is Civilization losing its meaning of soul? And should we care?

"The problem is no longer simply the philosophic one of understanding history, but the practical one of controlling it.... By sheer numbers the world is ripe for famine and degradation on an undreamt-of scale.... That being so, we must bootstrap ourselves out of our animality in new ways, and quickly, or face better than even odds of becoming an evolutionary casualty…"

This was written by Charles F Fair in 1969, in The Dying Self in which he also warned us that when a civilization loses its meaning of soul it is coming to an end.

I have felt that we lost our sense of soul and sacredness in very many ways quite some time ago and I have written elsewhere in some detail about this malaise and what we might be able to do about it.
Whilst trying to find the source of the Charles Fair quote I also stumbled upon a terrific essay on the internet: The Recovery of the Soul in the Wreckage called Western Culture, by Pat Frantz Kery, and for which she won the prestigious Alexander Imich Award (as far as I know Alex Imich is still alive at 109).

The essay is on the site of the Ashville Magazine, "going beyond green to nourish body, mind and spirit," written from Ashville North Carolina for Cultural Creatives both there and everywhere. 

Do read the essay in full. There's some terrific material in it.