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We, all of us, look back over our lives, trying to make sense of what happened, to see what enduring threads might be there. My further desire in planning this book was to create a narrative that would engage a reader intent on discovering a trajectory in her or his own life, a coherent and meaningful story, at a time in our cultural and biological history when it has become an attractive option to lose faith in the meaning of our lives. At a time when many see little more on the horizon but the suggestion of a dark future.
The French poet, diplomat, and Nobel laureate Alexis Léger, in his epic poem Anabase, asks where the troubled world is to find its real protectors, warriors so dedicated to protecting the welfare of their communities that they can be depended upon “to watch the rivers for the approach of enemies, even on their wedding nights.”
Where, today, can the voices of such guardians be heard over the raucous din in support of economic growth?
It will be many years before he understands that this continuous search for meaning is most everyone’s calling.
languages are more than mere words and grammar, that they reveal ecologies and potentialities unrecognized in other languages.
the responsibility of the wisdom keeper is to recognize the early signs of significant change, to look into the past, and to locate, again, a through line to the future.
By putting economic growth on an equal footing with the preservation of human health, by promoting a need to possess and to consume that borders on the pathological, and by permitting industries to run roughshod over landscapes in order to create financial profit, the governments of industrialized nations have supported the changes that are primarily responsible for the befouled and poisonous environment that in many places has become our heritage. What resistance humanity is able to mount to the juggernaut that many call “the economy” is essentially an objection to the indifference toward
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What will prove to be the metaphorical gridwork of latitudes and longitudes, the dependable charts for human navigation that will let us heal the rift between knowing something and feeling something, a chasm the Enlightenment created for us when it privileged the ability to know over the ability to feel?
It seems a person would need both points of view to become fully informed, a knowledge of both the extreme complexity of the local (which Cook had neither the time nor the inclination to acquire) and the unbounded enormity of the grand overview.
The unprecedented age of international cooperation (as opposed to international commerce) that some imagine lies ahead cannot bear the burden of exceptionalism if it is to be realized.
once, not so long ago, our way ahead looked almost clear.
it is dangerous to believe the past is behind us, that a remedy for barbarism has been found.
However well individual people might manage in the face of these changes in the decades ahead, the future of the species remains as open a question as it was for all the other hominins we’re related to, none of whom, it’s important to note, are still with us.
Traveling encourages the revision of received wisdoms and the shedding of prejudices. It turns the mind toward a consideration of context and releases it from the dictatorship of absolute truths about humanity. It helps one understand that all people do not want to be on the same road. They prefer to be on their own road.
The quest for a state of equipoise, of balance in the face of the paradoxes and contradictions that come with chaotic cultural forces, seems to be more valued in times of great stress than the overconfident pronouncements of authoritarian professionals, who too often seem only to encourage or suppress panic or fear in their listeners.
meaningful social change, the kind of change that improves the conditions in which people live, comes about through the work of many people. A charismatic figure might galvanize change and stand as its historical representative, but human beings are social animals. They take care of one another through continuous social interaction. The popular notion that in bad times heroes show up is an enduring literary device, but it is wiser for a population in difficult straits to effect a means of courteous and respectful social exchange—conversation and ceremony—than to wait for a hero to speak.
if the creation and maintenance of effective social networks, a particularly striking human attribute, is necessary to protect individuals against threats to this species’ health, then the ability to listen carefully to one another becomes critical.
Too much of what we expect to see appearing on the horizon with sufficient time to take preventive action has already become a part of our lives, entrenched before we notice that anything has happened.
In my experience, even the most decent people in positions of power believe that ultimately they know best, that their experience, education, intuition, and instincts have made them authoritative. I am forced to object, with my memories of the slums of Jaipur and São Paulo, of ravaged landscapes in the Texas oil fields around Midland or of carbonized air in Beijing, and the sea ice gone from Arctic seas in late summer, to say that perhaps they do not know best.
As the decades passed for me, I began to think that the path many of us now share, a path of self-realization and self-aggrandizement, might eventually leave us stranded, having arrived at the end of exploitation, but with most of us standing there empty-handed. And what is it that we have found through the injustice of exploitation that these Magdalenians at Altamira did not already possess?
cultural ignorance and indifference to human life, both of which lie at the core of colonial expansion.
At some critical point, accommodation and cooperation replace violence and exploitation, or humanity’s fate is delivered into the hands of barbarians.
Whatever one finds in front of herself at the moment, however, is what the given situation is. That other thing, the so-called pristine landscape of a former time, is no longer available; and somehow a person must make peace with that.
altruism, and a related assertion, that compassionate governance and altruistic behavior constitute “socialism” for some on the political right.
the ability to listen carefully to another person’s perspective, rather than summarily deciding what that person means, is in keeping with the behavior one expects of an elder. And the ability to understand what someone else is thinking is the foundation of stable social order.
I’m often fearful, listening to discussions about human fate arranged around the agendas of government and international business, that “the best minds” are infrequently present when critical decisions are being made. If Theory of Mind psychology is correct in saying that minds operating at the higher levels of intentionality have the greatest capacity to be discerning and empathetic, and if it is wise to take seriously the idea that global climate disturbance, ocean acidification, and other planetary environmental problems cannot be successfully addressed without the highest level of
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the elder is not a “follow me” personality. His guiding thought is no one left behind.
the philosopher’s cardinal virtues, the ones that transcend all religions: courage, justice, reverence, compassion.
We assume sometimes that whatever the dying say at the end, or last write down, represents a conscious final thought, but I don’t believe this is very often true.
The world outside the self is indifferent to the fate of the self.
what it means to be human, which is to live in fear in a world in which one’s destiny is never entirely of one’s own choosing.
