The Western world is in crisis and its very future is "at risk" because of its misuse of new technologies, the former Chief Rabbi warned last night.
Rabbi Lord Sacks, 68, was speaking in London last night at a ceremony where he formally received the Templeton Prize of more than £1 million for his "exceptional" contributions to affirming life's spiritual dimension.
Sacks, who was nominated for the prize by the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey of Clifton, said: "The news that I had won this prize almost rendered me speechless, an event that would have been unprecedented in the history of the rabbinate."
He took the opportunity to outline his concerns about the state of the Western world which he said was at "a fateful moment in history".
He said: "Wherever we look, politically, religiously, economically, environmentally, there is insecurity and instability. It is not too much to say that the future of the West and the unique form of freedom it has pioneered for the past four centuries is altogether at risk."
He blamed "outsourcing", which he said had become the basis of the modern economy, and includes activities such as booking a hotel in abroad through a call centre in a third country such as India.
People were even outsourcing memory through their mobile devices.
"Without memory, there is no identity. And without identity, we are mere dust on the surface of infinity. Lacking memory we have forgotten one of the most important lessons to have emerged from the wars of religion in the 16th and 17th centuries and the new birth of freedom that followed."
Morality itself has been outsourced to the market and ethics reduced to economics. "The market gives us choices, and morality itself is just a set of choices in which right or wrong have no meaning beyond the satisfaction or frustration of desire," he said.
Sacks warned: "The West has, in the immortal words of Queen Elsa in Frozen, let it go. It's externalised what it once internalised. It has outsourced responsibility. It's reduced ethics to economics and politics. Which means we are dependent on the market and the state, forces we can do little to control. And one day our descendants will look back and ask, How did the West lose what once made it great?"
Sacks concluded: "We need to restate the moral and spiritual dimensions in the language of the 21st century, using the media of the 21st century, and in ways that are uniting rather than divisive."
The Prince of Wales hosted a private reception in honour of Rabbi Sacks at Clarence House in London earlier this spring in honour of his Templeton Prize award.
Former winners include Mother Teresa, who received the inaugural Prize award in 1973, and is to be canonised later this year, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and the philosopher Charles Taylor. Last year's winner was Canadian theologian Jean Vanier, the founder of L'Arche, an international network of communities where people with and without intellectual disabilities live and work together as peers. Desmond Tutu, former Anglican archbishop of Cape Town, and the Dalai Lama have also both been past winners.
The prize was established in 1972 by the late investor and philanthropist Sir John Templeton.
