The Wayfinders

Why does ancient wisdom matter in the modern world?  This is a question that I ask myself frequently as an anthropologist.  What can we learn from these ancient societies that would benefit our daily lives today.  I recently read, then re-read, The Wayfinders by Wade Davis.  If you have yet to read this (or anything by Wade Davis) I highly recommend you go out and get a copy of any of his works.  The Wayfinders directly addresses this notion of ancient wisdom.  I could post any number of quotes from the book that I feel strongly about, but the following stuck with me the most:

"We too are culturally myopic and often forget that we represent not the absolute wave of history but merely a world view, and that modernity - whether you identify it by the monikers westernization, globalization, capitalism, democracy, or free trade - is but an expression of our cultural values.  It is not some objective force removed from the constraints of culture.  And it is certainly not the true and only pulse of history.  It is merely a constellation of beliefs, convictions, economic paradigms that represent one way of doing things, of going about the complex process of organizing human activities.  Our achievements are sure to have been stunning, our technological innovations dazzling.  The development within the last century of a modern, scientific system of medicine alone represents one of the greatest episodes in human endeavour.  Sever a limb in a car accident and you won't want to be taken to an herbalist.

But these accomplishments do not make the Western paradigm exceptional or suggest in any way that it has or ought to have a monopoly on the path to the future.  An anthropologist from a distant planet landing in the United States would see many wondrous things.  But he or she or it would encounter a culture that reveres marriage, yet allows half of its marriages to end in divorce; that admires its elderly, yet has grandparents living with grandchildren in only 6 percent of its households; that loves its children, yet embraces a slogan - 'twenty-four/seven' - that implies total devotion to the workplace at the expense of family.  By the age of eighteen, the average American youth has spent two years watching television.  One in five Americans is clinically obese and 60 percent are overweight, in part because 20 percent of all meals are consumed in automobiles and a third of children eat fast food every day.  The country manufactures 200 million tons of industrial chemicals each year, while its people consume two-thirds of the world's production of antidepressant drugs. The four hundred most prosperous Americans control more wealth than 2.5 billion people in the poorest eighty-one nations with whom they share the planet.  The nation spends more money on armaments and war than the collective military budgets of its seventeen closest rivals.  The state of California spends more money on prisons than on universities.  Technological wizardry is balanced by the embrace of an economic model of production and consumption that compromises the life supports of the planet.  Extreme would be one word for a civilization that drives plants and animals to extinction on a scale not seen on earth since the disappearance of the dinosaurs; that damns the rivers, tears down the ancient forests, empties the seas of fish, and does little to curtail industrial processes that threaten to transform the chemistry and physics of the atmosphere.

Our way of life, inspired in so many ways, is not the paragon of humanity's potential.  Once we look through the anthropological lens and see, perhaps for the first time, that all the cultures have unique attributes that reflect choices made over generations, it becomes absolutely clear that there is no universal progression in the lives and destiny of human beings.  Were societies to be ranked on the basis of technological prowess, the Western scientific experiment, radiant and brilliant, would no doubt come out on top.  But if the criteria of excellence shifted, for example to the capacity to thrive in a truly sustainable manner, with a true reverence and appreciation for the earth, the Western paradigm would fail.  If the imperatives driving the highest aspirations of our species were to be the power of faith, the reach of spiritual intuition, the philosophical generosity to recognize the varieties of religious longing, then our dogmatic conclusions would again be found wanting.

When we project modernity, as we define it, as the inevitable destiny of all human societies, we are being disingenuous in the extreme.  Indeed, the Western model of development has failed in so many places in good measure because it has been based on the false promise that people who follow its prescriptive dictates will in time achieve the material prosperity enjoyed by a handful of nations of the West.  Even were this possible, it is not at all clear that is would be desirable.  To raise consumption of energy and materials throughout the world to Western levels, given current population projections, would require the resources of four planet Earths by the year 2100.  To do so with the one world we have would imply so severely compromising the biosphere that the earth would be unrecognizable.  Given the values that drive most decisions in the international community, this is not about to happen.  In reality, development for the vast majority of the people of the world has been a process in which the individual is torn from his past, propelled into an uncertain future, only to secure a place on the bottom rung of an economic ladder that goes nowhere."

Wade Davis's works were one of the reasons I pursued anthropology.  He as a unique ability to understand different cultures and elegantly transcribe their stories into books that anyone would benefit from.  If you are looking for your next read, I highly recommend any of his many works.