The world has struggled to deal with the tsunami that has taken so many lives in the countries surrounding the Indian Ocean. The tragedy of the thousands lost is overwhelming.
For me, the questions and issues swirling through my head have involved nature and our relationship and place within it. In our modern world, we have grown so accustomed to thinking of ourselves as a force apart from nature, a separate entity, often in war or opposition to nature.
We seem to live so apart from the environments around us in our need to create our houses and cities. We've isolated and separated ourselves from the planet. That seems to be such a recurring motif in modern life -- separation, the feeling of isolation from others, the world and existence.
One story the Associated Press printed on January 4, available on MSNBC.msn.com, really allows for these thoughts to be thrown into an interesting perspective. According to the AP, "Government officials and anthropologists believe that ancient knowledge of the movement of wind, sea and birds may have saved the five indigenous tribes on the Indian archipelago of Andaman and Nicobar islands from the tsunami that hit the Asian coastline Dec. 26."
The tribes living on the islands are believed to be the most primitive still in existence. They make fire by rubbing together two stones and shoot arrows at outsiders -- like the coast guard helicopter that observed them two days after the tsunami.
One quote in particular struck me: "They can smell the wind. They can gauge the depth of the sea with the sound of their oars. They have a sixth sense which we don't possess," said Ashish Roy, a lawyer and environmentalist who has lobbied for the government to prevent outsiders from interfering with the natives.
Of course, a certain degree of skepticism and acceptance of our inability to truly know (now at least) just what saved the tribes is in order. This is, after all, a culture and people we have not gotten the opportunity to study in depth.
It's easy to theorize, though, that these people have a different relationship to nature than we do -- a greater degree of unity with nature.
Thinking about the opening of the article, describing a naked tribesman firing an arrow at the coast guard helicopter, brings to mind the myth of the Garden of Eden and the fall of humanity. Before biting the apple, humankind was in a state of unity with nature and God. We were one of the animals, more reliant on instinct than knowledge.
With these ancient people, it's almost like they are in a state closer to that pre-apple union with nature, the universe and God.
What's to be learned from these thoughts and events? With our advanced technology, we're moving forward, but what are we moving away from? And what is the cost of that? What is the cost of coming to rely on our own human tools and conveniences? What does it mean that we are further separating ourselves from nature -- from the world that created us?
How startlingly logical that the answer I come to is one of paradox: to survive both physically and spiritually, perhaps as we continue to advance, we must go backwards as well simultaneously and remember that we are not separate from nature, but just another piece of it.
Write to David at
swimminginbrokenglass@gmail.com
http://www.bsu.edu/web/dmswindle
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