Photo by Jeff C
There is a heavy and insightful discussion of civilization and inner peace in Rediscovering the Wisdom of Human Nature by Chet Shupe. And I’d like to weigh in on it.
As a global society, it’s safe to say that we’ve come a long, long way from our origins in the African savannah banging rocks against one another, trying to make fire and spears, and all that. Just look out the path we’ve made from then to now through our endless advancements in technology and our myriad discoveries about the nature of reality, of the world, and of ourselves as individuals and as a whole species.
Despite our best efforts to prove otherwise, I can confidently say that humans are still the only species that has gained sufficient sentience to establish a civilization.
Of course, while that is something we can pat ourselves on the back for, it is also something that needs–no, demands–a more thorough and more stringent examination.
Rediscovering the Wisdom of Human Nature
What needs to be examined, you ask? How about the wisdom that we’ve lost during our march toward modernity? One of the more serious problems we, as a society, need to contend with is accepting the fact that progress has had its setbacks. For one, we have lost invaluable wisdom to the ravages of time.
Our ancestors have accrued a huge wealth of knowledge and insight through either their personal experiences appropriate to their time or their general ideas of thinking outside the box. This is especially concerning when you come to know that much of this information has been lost. Only a small percentage of our ancient wisdom still exists, from old and traditional approaches to healing to foundational philosophies that built entire societies and civilizations.
Looking Outside the Box
Even if most of them are outdated, just learning and knowing of these helps us learn more about how they viewed the world, which in turn would help us greatly with how we look at the world today. That is the through-line of Chet Shupe’s book on civilization and inner peace entitled Rediscovering the Wisdom of Human Nature.
Lost Medicine
Before we took up modern medicine, there was a myriad of methods that people thought up and relied upon to provide their communities valuable healthcare, from natural remedies to healing practices. These methods were often taught from one generation to another, always changing, altering themselves to refinement from many centuries of trial and error.
But the rise of modern medicine has resulted in the loss of many of these practices, not only because of arrogance and conceit but because of incompatibility with new contexts. This has created a world wherein people have deluded themselves into thinking that healthcare has always been this way and that there is no other way outside the box of pharmaceuticals.
Lost Ideas
Close your eyes and list out as many ancient philosophers as you can. Chances are that you can only count as much as there are many fingers in your hand. There’s probably Confucius in there, Plato or Aristotle. Perhaps St. Thomas Aquinas, if you’re Catholic.
The point is that while these personalities were some of the greatest minds of their generation, there is still an untold number of philosophers, scientists, thinkers, etc., that have been lost to the dredges of time, their ideas never to be engaged with or seen by the light of day.
This is because people are too keen to dismiss ideas that have been labeled as “obsolete” or “outdated,” clearly forgetting that even if ideas have become stagnant, there is still merit to examining them.
This is especially the case when you consider that even the philosophers that I mentioned above are slowly being forgotten, their works accumulating dust in the trash heap of history.
Lost Bonds
Perhaps one of the saddest things we have lost as a civilization has been humanity’s intimate relationship with the natural world. Slowly, we have begun to delineate ourselves from that which we still rely on.
Don’t you see it as odd that human beings are quick to distance themselves from the natural world, even though we humans come from the natural world?
This is an odd view of a relationship that we cannot afford to extricate ourselves from. The natural world, without humans, will continue to exist. The reverse, though: humans, without the natural world, cannot exist.
This persistent view has indirectly led to the destruction that is now being seen more and more via climate change and pollution.
The Happy Hammock 