Book review, "Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World", LawNow, September/October 2010
Date:
August 23 2010
We live in not only a physical but also a cultural environment, the latter always involving relationships between man and the natural environment. For Wade Davis, author of The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World, the "departure points for all inquiry" are the "how and why" of these relationships: "Our entire existential experience as a species over the past 50,000 years may be distilled into [these] two words." This is his embarkation point for a sweeping review of diverse cultural adaptations, from the San of the Kalahari to the Anaconda people of the Amazon to Australian Aborigines to the Buddhists of Nepal. Ultimately, for Davis, the preoccupation of the "rational mind" of the Enlightenment with how ignores the why, reducing "the world to a mechanism, with nature but an obstacle to overcome, a resource to be exploited."
Republished with permission.
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