There are many of us working in this field who are troubled by the story of history that we're being
given, that we're being fed, that's taught in the schools and universities, and that's relayed
by the media. This it seems to be a story that is designed to convince us that we're the point
of it all. That the whole human project has been about us, and I think there's a
tremendous arrogance in that, and a failure to learn the lessons of the past, and we should
realize now that if we don't learn the lessons of the past, we are actually doomed to repeat them.
A new religion is being created as we speak by a new generation of people who think they are
non-ideological, who think they're very rational, who think they're past myth,
who think they're past story, who think they're better than any of their ancestors,
and have never bothered to even study their ancestors.
You could say that we got here by enacting a certain kind of story.
Where for most of our history, we lived like any other creature in the world. As hunters
and gatherers living at the mercy of nature, we had very little control over our environment.
We're told that it was a time when life was nasty, brutish, and short. But this would change when we
learned one fundamental manipulation: agriculture. It meant that we could grow our own food.
We no longer had to wander. We could build homes, freeing us to specialize,
trade, and make new technology. This was the turning point. And along with this would come
a dramatic shift in how we saw the world. In time, instead of seeing ourselves as one creature
belonging to a vast community of life, we would see the world as something that belonged to us.
Something we could manipulate and use as we saw fit. This world view is now so widespread that
it's normal to look at nature as nothing more than a collection of resources just waiting to
be extracted, mined, and put to economic use. This way of looking at the world transforms everything
we see, to the point where we begin to look at ourselves and each other in much the same way.
Where it's now common to talk about "human resources" and how to maximize the productivity
of people in the same way we might try to maximize the efficient use of any resource.
This has brought unprecedented growth, but what's the cost of thinking of the world in this way?
The author Daniel Quinn uses the analogy of flight. Try to imagine those early moments
when the first people tried to build and test flying machines. They would pedal furiously,
pushing themselves off the ground, but because these early models didn't comply with the laws of
aerodynamics, they eventually came crashing back to the ground. But in those first moments, just
lifting off the ground was exhilarating. It felt like flying even if they were only falling. Quinn
argues that ten thousand years ago our society began a similar kind of flight, a civilizational
flight. And at first everything seemed fine. We felt the freedom from the constraints of nature,
allowing us to wipe out competitors, change the world's landscapes, and traverse the globe. But
we aren't free from these natural constraints, we're subject to them. And they're catching up
to us. We already see signs of it in things like famine, irreplaceable resources being devoured,
and whole species disappearing every year. And it's not just other animals that are disappearing,
it's other human societies and ways of life. So why is this important?
Because every indigenous culture on this planet is an unbroken chain of knowledge
and understanding that stretches back to the beginning of human life itself. Each
is adapted to a part of the world that has been tested and refined over thousands of generations
through a process that began even before we had the words to describe what they were.
And every time we lose an indigenous culture, a specific form of wisdom that stretches back
to the beginning of humanity disappears from the world. As anthropologist Wade Davis points out,
"it's easy to forget that our particular world view is just one model of reality,
it doesn't exist in an absolute sense, and it's only when we take the time to look at
other cultures in ancient traditions that we recognize that there are many other ways of being,
which if you think about it can only fill you with hope." So what can these ancient traditions
tell us about navigating the challenges of our time? Let's look at a few ideas in this video.
From an economic point of view, we often look at a mountain as a dead pile of rock
and minerals waiting to be mined, or a forest as rows and rows of potential lumber
waiting to be cut down. But from the perspective of many ancient traditions,
the earth is a dynamic and living thing. It's the source of all life on this planet, and it's quite
literally our life support system. But we live as if the world and everything in it belongs to us.
By comparison, the perspective of many ancient traditions is that we belong to the world. We can
see this idea for instance in the traditional approach to Taoism which seeks to cultivate
the self in a way that lives in harmony with the rhythms and patterns of nature. Balancing
the yin and yang. It's the recognition that the universe moves with its own natural ebb and flow
and that we can achieve flow ourselves when we align with these natural cycles.
Embedded in this is the principle of "Wu Wei" also known as "effortless action" which we looked at in
this video. And implicit in this is the idea that the divine exists within everything and
within everyone. Understanding this encourages a respect for ourselves, other people, and all the
elements of nature. Even if you're a skeptic to these ideas, look at what it means to have these
perspectives. For example, how does a society that views nature as a collection of unused resources
make decisions? How does that lead to the way it treats the environment? It's people? And
how does that compare to a society that views the world as a balance of the material in the divine?
Our society has a way of magnifying the differences between us and fixating on all
the ways we're separate and isolated from each other. But from the perspective of many ancient
traditions, this is very much an illusion. As Alan Watts points out we often use phrases like "coming
into the world" but it's much more accurate to say that we "grew out of the world" much like a leaf
grows out of a tree. And if we imagine ourselves as a vast ocean, our culture encourages us to view
each other as isolated waves of water that appear on the surface, when in reality it's impossible to
see where one wave ends and the other begins. We are part of an entire universe of energy,
responsible for the expression of all the things we see around us. From the perspective
of traditional Taoism, each of us is filled with a flow of energy known as your personal Qi,
a life force that brings with it vital energy. But there's also a concept of a cosmic Qi,
the idea of a life force that connects each of us to each other and to every other part of the
universe. And so the things that happen on the cosmic Qi level also have an impact on us at
the personal Qi level. This is similar to the western maxim "as above so below" which implies
that knowing yourself is to know the universe, and to study the universe is to study yourself.
Our society spends about 39 billion dollars a year in an effort to stay young,
and so perhaps it comes as no surprise that our own views of medicine are based on a clinical
and pharmacological model of health that's deeply uncomfortable with death. But there's
a growing recognition that spirituality is also an important part of health and healing.
And modern medicine often neglects the spiritual dimension and is in some cases hostile towards it.
But many ancient traditions don't just embrace death as a necessary part of life, they see death
as offering a doorway to spiritual growth. We see this for example with the indigenous people of the
amazon rainforest and their use of ceremonies involving ayahuasca, which means "vine of the
dead." It's a combination of plant medicines which creates a psychoactive brew that makes
the chemical DMT available to the gut. And it's intimately connected to their spiritual concepts
about what happens to us when we die. Through ayahuasca, they experience powerful visions and
insights which they bring back with them to inform the choices they make in their everyday lives.
Many of their paintings are otherworldly and feature intricate geometrical patterns that reveal
a system of spiritual ideas that describe what happens to us after we pass on from this world.
What this reveals is an ancient recognition that our conscious alert state of mind
isn't the only one available to us and it's often important to question our current modes of being.
And whether or not you believe these perspectives are true it can't be denied that these cultures
confront death intimately and see it as essential for spiritual growth. And this enriches their
everyday lives and their connection with nature. It deeply informs how they live in the world.
By comparison, in our world, death remains one of the most persistent taboos in western society. And
one of the clearest examples of this is the ways in which we treat the elderly, and our reluctance
to talk about death even though it's one of the most natural and unavoidable parts of life.
In the end we have a choice. What kind of world do we want to live in? This is not a false choice
between traditional versus modern. It's not about going back to some reimagined pre-industrial past.
It's about our right to choose the components of our lives. It's about asking ourselves: how do
we find a way to keep the benefits of modern life without demanding the end of other modes of being?
Because as Wade Davis points out: "the very existence of these alternative ways of living
puts the absolute lie to those in our culture who say we cannot change."
In the next video we'll look at one of the most powerful sources of ancient wisdom
available to all of us, and it's found within our own minds. In what psychologist Carl Jung
called the "collective unconscious," a vast reservoir of ancestral memory, thoughts,
and symbols that are believed to be universal. If this video is available to watch, you'll see it
here on the left. If it's not yet available then i invite you to watch the video on the right,
on the ancient wisdom of Pythagoras, and how four of his principles just might change your
life. If you liked this video please show your support by hitting the like button.
As always thanks so much for watching, take care of yourselves, and i'll see you in the next video.