Returning to humanity’s moral heritages

Abstract

The main arguments of my lecture were how humans are failing themselves and devastating earth’s biosphere, at least in part, because they became uncooperative with two key ecological inheritances: raising the young within the human evolved developmental niche and, as part of this, facilitating the development of a deep attachment to, knowledge of and respect for their local landscape of other-than-human entities. Without humanity’s return to these cooperative evolutionary roots, the species will be doomed, along with many other-than-human beings. The now-widespread mental illness of ‘human supremacism’ that results from these missing pieces has spread around the planet and is destroying ecological integrity. The ‘Sacred Money and Markets’ story (SMM) that David Korten criticizes and I briefly discuss is a symptom of these missing pieces of human inheritance. We must return to a Sacred Life and Living Earth story with lifestyles to match.

Keywords:

• Human nature
• ecology
• flourishing
• indigenous
• evolved developmental niche

Notes

1. Here are some books that are good for self-education about the receptive intelligence and expansive ecological attachment of our cousins: Original Wisdom by Robert Wolff; Ishmael by Daniel Quinn; The Great Work by Thomas Berry; The World We Used to Live in by Vine Deloria; Nature and Madness by Paul Shepard; A Time before Deception by Tom Cooper.