Wisdom of our ancestors 2

The word Dominion as it is emphasized in the English language, influenced by orthodox Christianity, not surprisingly has come to be accepted as a type of rule over others.  Whether this is by a monarch, or by humans over nature, it implies absolute power over.  If you look at Dominion as it can be understood through ancient languages, then its meaning becomes more flexible – even to being equated to stewardship rather than control over something.

Today, we see how our lifestyle and the myth of civilization with its separation from the natural world has created a Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Pestilence, War, Famine, and Death kind of outcome.  More and more people around the world recognize that our civilized worldview is leading us down a road to perdition.  It is here that we find ourselves today in a problem.  Where can we escape to in order to leave such a worldview behind?  Daniel Quinn again has some ideas that encapsulate this quandary.  A German of 1936 who couldn’t accept Hitler’s Germany had an option in that they could leave Germany.  Today, we don’t have that option anymore because our cultural story framed from the economic worldview we take for granted is almost everywhere in the world.  Even the beaches of what were Pacific paradises (like Bali) are piled high with plastics and modern industrialize waste.  In past ages when civilizations fell, the people could always go back to the forest.  But today, that option no longer possible.  There is no back, we can’t stay put, so there is only forward.  I have said this several times in this blog, we must take the best of the past and the best of now and walk into a future that benefits everyone and the natural world.  Understanding this is one of the reasons I decided to do this blog in the first place

In 1964, the USA did something very few countries could still do, and that was to set aside land as wilderness that was still relatively untainted by modern development.   When President Johnson signed into law the Wilderness Act of 1964, he had this to say:

“If future generations are to remember us with gratitude rather than contempt, we must leave them more than the miracles of technology.  We must leave them a glimpse of the world as it was in the beginning, not just after we got through with it.”

But this natural wilderness is absent of any people that once lived within it.  While there may still be some vague signs of Indians who once lived there a mere century ago (if you know what to look for), it is evident that how they lived there was not destructive.  It has been estimated that if humans were to disappear today, the signs of our technological time here would be slow to collapse.  Most signs of our cities will be vague by 10,000 years, while fragmented plastic and glass will still be here in 50 million years.  After a hundred million years there will be little evidence that technological humans ever lived on Earth.

Daniel Quinn breaks down modern humanity into two simple categories: The Leavers (indigenous peoples) who live within nature – they take what they need and ‘leave’ the rest. And the Takers (the euro-centric mindset) – they ‘take’ everything from nature and return nothing but waste and a wake of destruction.   It is interesting to think about the teachings of the great prophets and what they tell us about how we ought to live.  It is certainly not like greedy ‘Takers’ but more like gentle ‘Leavers.’  The success of Leavers is how they live within nature, but we are quickly eliminating that knowledge as almost every year, yet another indigenous group succumbs to the onslaught of modernization into what were relatively pristine forests and wildernesses.  Quinn points out a major difference between Leavers and Takers in a simple way.  In the mind of the Takers, Gazelles and Lions are natural enemy’s (predator-prey).  Yet, think about what a Lion does with a herd of gazelle.  The lion will take down one of the older, slower, and weaker members of the Gazelle herd, then settle down to eat it. The lion will defend its carcass against hyenas, but it will not prevent the hyenas from hunting their own food.  The rest of the gazelle herd will then just go about grazing again and only be concerned in another day of so.  The lion takes what it needs and then relaxes.  But what do Takers (humans) do?  Takers “kill off direct competition (predators), kill off our competitors twice removed (weeds), and kill off anything that doesn’t feed what we eat.”  And we do it with messianic zeal.

Quinn points out another odd feature about modern humanity.  If people living in a westernized society found themselves homeless, out of work, with no skills, no-where to turn, facing a hopeless future, were given a magic box to transport them back to pre-Agricultural days with ready-made survival skills, most would reject the box.  Our modern Taker cultural story is so engrained in us as the acme of human achievement, we cannot comprehend living like a Leaver.  But the success of the ancestral Leavers is not hunter gathering (that was just how they made a living) so much as their worldview towards about how they lived.  Yet we label Leavers as primitive, savage, simple, unsophisticated, and people that are to be scorned because they do not live like us.  Our Taker impression is that Leavers continually live on the edge of starvation and are always busy trying to survive.  The reality is quite different.  There are accounts of American Indians being educated to become farmers like the Europeans.  The Indians were appalled that these Europeans worked so hard and worried so much because a year’s work in the fields could still result in crop failure because of fickle weather, plagues of pests or crop diseases.  The Indians thrived because they understood the ecosystems in which they lived and how to adapt.  Yes, fickle weather and other mishaps also affected them, but the key point here is that the worldview they had allowed them to adapt and be resilient.  That is the story of their success, not hunter gathering per se.  So, what are the attributes of this Leaver worldview?  To Be Continued…….