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Product Description
Quill & Quire
For many years and over many continents, anthropologist Wade Davis has chronicled the lives, languages, and customs of the globe’s last remaining aboriginal peoples. The outlook is bleak on all counts. Of the approximately 7,000 languages presently spoken, 3,500 face extinction in our lifetime. When the last speaker of a given language vanishes, so will the last vestiges of a culture. In The Wayfinders, this year’s instalment of CBC’s Massey Lectures, Davis describes several groups he has come to know, peoples who live so closely with the natural world that they can hardly discern a border between the human and the non-human, animate and inanimate. Their art and myths afford outsiders a glimpse of an alternative to the dominant social paradigm that began with Cartesian thought in Europe and eventually spread around the globe. Today, this way of seeing the world is so pervasive that most people probably aren’t aware alternatives exist at all. Such ignorance could prove damaging to the future of life on this planet. If biodiversity and the peoples best equipped to understand it disappear, alternative sustainable lifestyles may vanish along with them. The earth’s ongoing viability requires a spectrum of wildlife and a wide range of human perception. Or, as Davis puts it, “The ethnosphere is humanity’s greatest legacy.” The author of The Serpent and the Rainbow and The Clouded Leopard, Davis writes powerfully and emotionally. Our materialistic worldview unwisely marginalizes spiritual and intrinsic values, he says. “We take this as a given for it is the foundation of our system.… But if you think about it, especially from the perspective of so many other cultures … it appears to be very odd and highly anomalous human behaviour.” It’s this very behaviour that has created depleted fisheries, toxic pollution, and environmental refugees. Davis argues persuasively that our curent patterns of thought and behaviour could do with input from elsewhere. He urges us to assimilate some valuable lessons from the planet’s ancient cultures before it is too late.
Review
Davis writes powerfully and emotionally. (Quill & Quire 20100110)
In The Wayfinders, Davis presents an eloquent and persuasive case for the contemporary value of these ancient cultures, not least because of what we might learn about how human societies can live sustainably on the planet. (Canadian Geographic 20091101)
This year's Massey Lecturer presents his refreshing view, of examining ancient wisdom and indigenous cultures to help us find our own path, and it demands to be read. (National Post 20091009)
...[Davis] does a solid job of debunking the notion that Western rationalism, espoused from the Enlightenment through to the present, is the only-or even the best-model for humanity. (Walrus )
...cogent, fierce and provocative... (Montreal Gazette )
In The Wayfinders, Davis presents an eloquent and persuasive case for the contemporary value of these ancient cultures, not least because of what we might learn about how human societies can live sustainably on the planet. (Canadian Geographic 20091101)
This year's Massey Lecturer presents his refreshing view, of examining ancient wisdom and indigenous cultures to help us find our own path, and it demands to be read. (National Post 20091009)
...[Davis] does a solid job of debunking the notion that Western rationalism, espoused from the Enlightenment through to the present, is the only-or even the best-model for humanity. (Walrus )
...cogent, fierce and provocative... (Montreal Gazette )
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Most helpful customer reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Cultural and Global Survival,
By Michael Newton (Antigonish, NS) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Wayfinders (Paperback)
The insights of anthropology and human ecology should not be restricted to the learned few. In this work of inspiration, accomplished scholar Wade Davis reminds us not only of the inherently fascinating diversity of humankind but also of the trauma and injustice - and, ultimately, global nihilism - that results in attempting to force a single cultural paradigm upon the peoples of the world in their many environments and historical experiences. The many solutions offered by indigenous cultures to the question "What does it mean to be alive" should tell us that we too can chart a new course for ourselves as we wrestle with the ironic consequences of the scientific and industrial revolutions that now imperil the planet.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Humbled,
By
This review is from: The Wayfinders (Paperback)
We "moderns" with all our technological advances are really arrogant no-it-alls. There are other peoples who have learned to live as families without detroying the earth where they live. They show reverence and hence respect for the land which shelters, clothes and feeds them. They have entered into conversation with all that surrounds them. The folk from modern Hawaii who fashioned an ocean going outrigger and replicated the voyages of their ancient ancestors are very brave indeed. I should like to begin in my old age to try to cultivate the virtues of patience, tolerance, respect and sharing that the peoples of whom Wade speaks have learned over the millenia. And I am going to do what I can do to speak for those people whose cultures are being rapaciously destroyed
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Superb,
By
This review is from: The Wayfinders (Paperback)
I found this to be a deeply engrossing and richly informative book. Everyone should read this one. His words were beautiful descriptive, I felt as if I was on the journey with him.
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