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ANCIENT AND INDIGENOUS WISDOM

Why should we care about ancient and indigenous wisdom? What could we, in this high-tech age, learn from native communities or people who lived so long ago? Why does it matter?

Never, in the history of humanity, have we had so much knowledge at our fingertips. Nor have so many of us ever had so much material wealth. And yet it could be said that simple happiness has never been so elusive and our great knowledge has not prevented us from endangering the survival of the very planet we inhabit.

Without the balancing nature of wisdom knowledge can be a destructive and dangerous force. Wisdom looks at knowledge only in terms of how effectively it serves the whole. It takes a 'whole-system' perspective. And that is exactly how tribal societies and our ancient ancestors had to view the world. Not because they were any more clever than us, but because their very survival depended upon actions that did not threaten the natural environment in which they lived.

So we suggest that wisdom is all about living in harmony with natural systems. And an understanding of the nature and flow of the natural world has been an essential focus of ancient and indigenous societies for millenia.