Natural Insights
What the wild teaches us about ourselves and the world.
Living in the Information Age, it is all too easy to mistake knowledge for wisdom. This is not news, of course, to anyone who pays close attention to cultural trends. Facts increase exponentially, but we spend less time than ever reflecting upon them.
The movement away from reflective, introspective thinking has been going on for a while — a century or two, anyhow. The industrialized mind moves fast; the digital mind even faster. Introspection is the process by which we synthesize information and thereby derive some small insight from it. It’s an intellectual activity best done by ruminating generalists, since truth isn’t the exclusive domain of any particular discipline. But ruminating generalists are few and far between these days.
An ancient Greek philosopher could have been a mathematician, a poet, a scientist and an art critic to boot. Today such intellectual meandering is largely unacceptable — especially in established academic circles. The generalist lacks credibility.
There is way too much information nowadays. No one can possibly digest it all. So modern thinkers focus their energies upon one discipline, perhaps two. They become authorities in one particular field or another. They become specialists and, as a consequence, their work is taken seriously. The modern world is chockfull of specialists such as these and most of them are doing a great deal of useful intellectual work. But with all this erudition, philosophy itself — the love of wisdom — is slowly fading away. The pursuit of truth is gradually being replaced by a preoccupation with the steadily growing mountain of facts.
Introspection versus Gathering Acorns
When I was barely old enough to think for myself, I took to the hills, grabbing a pack full of essentials then walking out the door. I did so out of youthful frustration. I knew that something was amiss in the world but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. So I went into the woods to clear my head and get some perspective on things.
At first I was foolish enough to believe that the secrets of the universe could be found in the myriad details of nature, just waiting for someone like me to come along and…
