“Where I come from,” Paula Gunn Allen says, “we like to think our god is a woman and her name is Thought. We believe that the entire cosmos is thinking.”(OI, Allen, 138) And this true Intelligence we can discern only when we “put our minds together as one mind.”(OI, Nelson, xix) This is why “Communities rather than individuals hold it.”(OI, Settee, 45) Individuals do advance our collective intelligence by reminding us of what we know to be true, but may have forgotten to remember, or simply not seen from relevant points of view. But we need collective dialogue to begin to understand the whole.
“…this is a living knowledge, it can’t be put into a memory bank…”(OI, Martinez, et.al., 101) …“being that this implies action; it implies a practice, it implies centuries of observing what works. What we often think of today as being sacred knowledge is…practical knowledge. This so-called sacred kind of secret stuff is just what works.” (OI, Martinez, et.al., 99)
As Manitonquat put it, “Creation is one great web. All is in relationship, and it all works together. It functions eloquently. It fits.”(OI, p.12) (*connect whole) (The reason why, putting aside the fact that Darwin never used the cliché ‘survival of the fittest,’ “its original usage referred to fitting into the natural order.” The athletic fitness metaphor that dominates our worldview today is a connotation that grew up in an economy that emphasized competition, forgetting that cooperation is the essence of Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’ philosophy.)
And this requires humility on the part of all participants, for “it’s not people who are smart. The real intelligence dwells throughout the natural world and in the vast mystery of the universe that’s beyond our human comprehension.” (OI, Nelson, xxii) “the real intelligence is the property of the universe itself.”(OI, Mohawk, 52)
The Taoists, who grew from the earliest the primal cultures of the east, are remembered for their understanding of the flow of energy through nature (chi), and their insights about the wisdom to be learned by listening to this universal voice of nature.
Like other Indigenous wisdom traditions, the Taoists wisely focused on the lessons taught by nature, and emphasized the best ways to pass these lessons on to our young. Nature knows what it’s doing, has reasons for everything it creates, and its diversity is its strength. Learning from it, we would grow in humility the wisdom to not interfere with its healthy processes.
“Whatever human beings have not created they must respect.”(OI, p.9) “Some other power has caused all this to be.”(OI, p.9) “Because it is a law of Nature, no human force can alter it.”(I Ching, p.216) But we can error in how we treat it. “Anything we diminish or destroy disturbs the whole in ways we cannot predict.”(OI, p.11)
Water was “the source of life.”(I Ching, p.385) “The ancient Chinese believed that no matter how dangerous or dark a situation was, if one was able follow the way of Heaven one could pass through it as safely as water passes through a ravine.”(I Ching, 249-250) “The ancient Chinese accumulated experience in dealing with the yellow River, which flooded once a year for thousands of years.”(I Ching, p.467) And this became the central metaphor for how they lived their lives: “The nature of water is to flow… If there is too much water, one needs to take precautions against its flooding. If there is too little water, one should be concerned about the possible drought. In our daily lives, we should strike a balance between excess and insufficiency and walk in the central path.”(I Ching, p.467)
The ancient Chinese Taoists taught “The way of Nature is always correct.”(I Ching, p.276) “The purpose of the I Ching is to explore the Tao of Heaven and the Tao of Humanity. Heaven is the Chinese term for Nature or God. Following the Tao of Nature and the Tao of God to establish the Tao of Humanity is the ancient Chinese way to guide one’s personal life and to manage one’s social affairs.”(I Ching, p.265) And “the purpose of the [I Ching] is to trace the Tao of Heaven and apply it to human life.”(I Ching, p.256) As Plato put it, “There is a pattern set up in the heavens…” “The beautiful quality of humility is cherished in one’s inner heart, and blooms in one’s outward conduct.”(I Ching, p.154)
It is important to note also (if only because too few have) that there are those in our own ‘western’ tradition who have offered us their understanding of nature’s processes and the potential for ecological backlash, if we err in our actions - the Sanskrit word for which is karma.
Socrates of Xenophon’s memoirs reminds us that anyone who will pay attention can see that “nature teaches.”(p.352) And “a philosopher’s job is above all to learn.”(p.341)
“The land…freely teaches justice to those who are capable of learning; for it reciprocates in proportion to how well they serve it.”(p.306) Farming, for instance, is “such an altruistic and kind art that one only has to watch and listen for the result to be knowledge of it.”(p.352) For this reason, one learns how to farm without ever having had a teacher in the art of farming.(p.351)
And importantly, “when the land shows something, it doesn’t do so in order to deceive, but…it gives clear and accurate information about what it is and is not capable of. And I think that, because the land makes everything easy to know and learn, there is nothing better at exposing people who are bad rather than good… everyone knows that if you do good to the land, you will achieve good results, so failure on the land is a clear indictment of a bad character.”(p.354)
It is enough to know, Plato says, that natural law “is the mother and nurse of all other arts.”(p.307)[1] And it will teach all who will learn why we get such disastrous results when we try to dominate nature…just as when we dominate one another.
Socrates compares nature’s just ways to those unjust ways of an incompetent parent, teacher, or leader, who practices their authority in such a way that does not earn respect or allegiance from children, students, or constituents, and instead of winning their cooperation, actually elicits a resistant effect, that is, making them evermore “averse and reluctant to obey,” and even has “the effect of making them take pride in disobeying their authority.”(p.353) By contrast, “those who are well looked after turn out to be grateful and to grow in their loyalty.”(p.316)[2]
Nature also shows this resistance to the unjust imposition of authority over it. And for this reason, “fighting against the gods starts to seem inexpedient” when you see that “you’ll gain more produce by sowing and planting what the land readily grows and nurtures than by sowing and planting what you want.”(p.341)[3]
The implications of this lesson for how we ought to educate our young cannot be denied, as studies increasingly show. But for now we can at least see why the Taoists and Socrates show that we should all “try to aim…to make it possible for [the gods = nature] to grant our prayers” for all things “blamelessly earned.”(p.328)[4] It is by experience that we learn that “justice leads to a wealthier and freer life than injustice,”(p.323)[5] and nature too can teach this lesson.
With or without us, the earth and its myriad life forms deserve to carry on, perhaps free of our interference. Learning to listen to the voice of nature and to appreciate the intrinsic worth of all living things, “human and nonhuman individuals in their own right as parts of the whole.”(p.217)[6]
And so we must begin in earnest to help our young remember, “the basic intuition that all organisms…are equal in intrinsic worth.” This is an idea championed by a school of thought called deep ecology, and represents an understanding that the health of nature depends upon nested biodiversity. Consistent with the philosophy of many spiritual traditions, including strands of Christian, Buddhist and Native American thought, deep ecology “recognizes the fundamental interdependence of all phenomena...and the intrinsic value of all living beings,” with humans representing just one of many life forms in a complex web of nested networks.[Capra (1996), p.6-7.]
From its ascendance as a popular approach to the study of the environment in the mid-eighties, there has been a powerful backlash against this idea that humans are just one among many intrinsically worthy species. And given that some traditions emphasize the ‘superiority’ of humanity, this is not at all surprising. And deep ecology might not disagree, in a certain teleological sense, for nature is self-organized in hierarchies, of sorts, and humans are certainly at the ‘top’ of many of these (though what is top and what is bottom depends entirely on point of view). But what this means, fundamentally, is that we have power, and therefore, responsibility, for all those who live within the realm of our influence. Still, we must remain humble about this, for while humans have mixed their labor with nature in such a way that it allows us the illusion of ‘power’ or even ‘dominance,’ the truth is that we too are nested within nature, not the other way around, and this gives nature the final word. So it is in our interest to recognize that “all things in the biosphere have an equal right to live and blossom and to reach their own individual forms of unfolding and self-realization.”(p.217)[7] For nature has a way of expelling ill-fitting parts, so it is in our interest to learn to function in a healthy way within the systems that are home to us.
Aristotle built his entire philosophy on this prescription. As a physician and a biologist, Aristotle was concerned with bio and logos, which is literally the ‘logic of life’. Living things are always changing, that is, either getting better (toward health and proper function) or worse (away from it), moving closer to or further away from realizing their ideal condition, their ‘best self’ so to speak, that is, their highest purpose.(Psy, Book IV)
And so to understand nature, we must understand the nature of change. From a human scale, there are only two sources of change – that which nature causes, and that which humans cause, what the ancients called artiface. Human artifact includes all that the human mind creates, much of which is based on what it discovers in nature. While inanimate or human made objects are changed from outside of themselves (what we study in the form of physics, Euclidean geometry, etc.), living things change from within – by way of what some ancients called psyche, soul, spirit or mind. They have an indwelling potentiality, a unique ‘form’ which is the highest potential present within it, as an acorn has within it the potentiality of becoming a great oak. They are certainly affected by changes outside of themselves (as an oak grows to fit the forest around it, or without sunlight, soil, and water, will not grow at all), but the changes themselves come from within according to its form or intrinsic pattern, as adapted to the natural environment it is nested within.
To 'know', Aristotle said, is to grasp this form, which is the primary cause of that which changes against a background of that which lasts (Phy, Book II 3 194b15; Meta Book I/Chap 1&2; Meta Book II/Chap 2; Meta Book VII/Chap 17). Thus, living things are difficult, but not impossible to ‘know’ – for to know them, especially as individuals, we must understand them from the inside looking out.
In this way, Aristotle's took it as his purpose to explore the nature of the changing world,[i] and he did so with a sensitivity to telos, or purposeful development and nested associations. Because, if you see the proper function of the whole, he argued, you can see there is a function for every part. And so, if you want to understand something, simply ask, What it is good for? What is its proper function? To do this, we must ask the right questions, beginning with what is its cause? Causality is complex – so to get at it, we need to ask four related questions. What is its formal cause (What is it good for?) What is its material cause (What is it made of?) What is its efficient cause (How was it made?). And what is its final cause (why was it made?) When you know these, then you know its telos, its purpose, its proper function. Then, if you want to improve something, you can compare its actual existing state (its real) to its best potential state (its ideal). When we compare its current function to its ideal or healthy function, then we can navigate in that direction.
As Socrates and Plato emphasized, the idea or form of our potentials may be perfect, eternal and unchanging, but humans beings and other living things are not.(Parm 129b-c) They are individually adapted, and so ours is to navigate toward the form of our own unique best self and highest purpose - our own mind causing our own development by our own choice from within.
This is why ideals are so important, because ideals are like targets, and we can hit the mark, or miss it. And the important thing for humans to understand is that we are responsible for that which is in our power – including what could actualize in our lives. We cannot be responsible for that which we cannot change (which was true of nature then, at least, if no more), but we are responsible for that which we can change (by creativity), and that which we could change (by foresight). And for this reason, we must be self-critical, self-directing, and self-improving, moving from what actually is, toward what could be.
Hence, the value of intelligence and the importance of the mind’s eye. For while Aristotle's philosophical motive was to understand nature, equally strong was his desire to understand humanity’s place in nature. For this, we need intelligent and deliberate navigation through the world we are nested within toward our higher potentials. While human beings (like health) are never perfect, once and for all, we can – by way of learning - be, individually and collectively, self-perfecting over time, by way of intelligent and idealistic action.
The problem is, we have since learned, that it is not longer true, as it once was, when we lived on a smaller scale, that what is human made can be human changed. For at this point we have set changes into motion that we cannot undo. And so we must come to understand the mind inside nature better than we have, if we wish to self-improve our relationship with nature.
Virtue is highest potential of anything, and those potentials we call human virtues are the qualities of good judgment and character (temperance, courage, justice & wisdom, among others), that are the means between the extremes of deficiency and excess. So how do we live a good life? There are no shortcuts. The fact is, moral self-evaluation is sufficiently complex that there can be no once-and-for-all set of rules or decision procedures, no code or commandments to follow. We must learn to think as we go, choose as wisely as possible, “all things considered,” as Socrates said. Listening and watching for the signs, as the ancient Taoists taught. For the only way to become a good person is to become a good person.
An understanding of this golden mean was shared by ancient cultures across the world, east and west alike. They knew that the proper function and highest potential of the human mind was to actualize these virtues - that we might learn to do the right thing, at the right time, for the right reason. This they called practical wisdom (phronesis). An art we would do well to remember, but it requires a better understanding of that nature within which we are nested, indeed, the nature of change itself.
Here’s what the Book of Changes, the I Ching, says about that. The ancient Chinese Taoists taught “The way of Nature is always correct.”(I Ching,, 276) “The purpose of the I Ching is to explore the Tao of Heaven and the Tao of Humanity. Heaven is the Chinese term for Nature or God. Following the Tao of Nature and the Tao of God to establish the Tao of Humanity is the ancient Chinese way to guide one’s personal life and to manage one’s social affairs.”(I Ching,, 265)
“The true spirit of the I Ching is to do what is proper at the proper time in the proper way. Good fortune and misfortune are the consequences of one’s actions,”(I Ching, 218) but when and how that will play out cannot be predicted, only trusted.
“The principle of the waxing and waning of yin and yang,” teaches that “when the influence of the yin grows, that of the yang declines. When evil runs rampant, it is sure to affect what is good,” and some will act to correct the situation. “A situation that is out of balance…requires extraordinary action.”(I Ching,, 244) And “Taking extraordinary action is not an easy task, one should be extremely cautious, employing the theory of balancing the yin and the yang.”(I Ching, 245) “The truth of adjustment between the strong and the weak, the excessive and the deficient. If one masters the principle of adjustment, no matter how difficult the situation, any problem can be solved.”( I Ching,, 245)
“The ancient Chinese believed that no matter how dangerous or dark a situation was, if one was able follow the way of Heaven one could pass through it as safely as water passes through a ravine.”(I Ching, 249-250) “Remain calm, and establish a positive attitude… Consider how to prevent the situation from worsening, then find a way to solve the problem.“(252) Even when “not able to overcome the difficulty or danger totally…by being cautious and self-confident and understanding the situation, one can strive to make little changes.”(I Ching, 253) With intelligence, “One can always transform bad situations into something positive. This is the core spirit of the I Ching.”(252) “If one knows to amend one’s mistakes at the very beginning, it is not too difficult to make a fresh start. There is nothing to regret.”(I Ching, 217) With this self-correction, one “quits the darkness and happily returns to the light…returns to the proper path,” which brings “good fortune.”(I Ching, 218)
But without intelligence, when “that person has lost her way and missed the opportunity to turn back from error. There will be calamities, even after a long period of time the disaster will not be repaired.”(I Ching, 218-219) If “at the turning point – if one obstinately sticks to the wrong course and refuses to turn back – there will surely be danger.”(I Ching, 219)
“A sage who live in accordance with the will of Heaven” is creative.”( I Ching, 280) “Heaven is creative power.” (I Ching, 280) “Confucian scholars advocate that one should…be creative and propagate without ceasing. But the Taoists embrace a different view.”(I Ching, 216) If the situation cannot be helped, then “cease struggling and wait for a favorable time and set of circumstances.”(253) Perhaps “It is not the appropriate time to demonstrate creative power, but to accumulate it. Accumulation of energy is preparing for release,” just as “Accumulation of knowledge is preparing for dissemination.”(I Ching, 230) “Retreat is not flight…but retreating can also be aimed at preserving one’s strength, waiting for the time for future advance. A wise person uses strength properly.”(I Ching,, 281)
And it may be that the best that can be done is to simply “let things take their natural course.” (I Ching,, p.225) At which point, we must be careful not to make things worse. “The secret of success is to walk the central path, that is, never overreact.”(I Ching,, 276)
“In Chinese culture, the Confucian and Taoist schools constitute a yin-yang compliment. The philosophy of the Confucian school is moving and doing. That of the Taoist school is retreating and doing nothing. Yet both philosophies originate from the I Ching.”(I Ching, 216-217) “The secret of proper timing is hidden in one’s physical and mental balance with Nature. “(I Ching,, 270) “One has to adjust one’s deeds and perspective in accordance with the situation. Any excess or insufficiency of action is not correct, walking the central path is the way to succeed.” (I Ching,, 278)
Sometimes we do simply have to “submit to the will of Heaven and resign ourselves to our fate.”(I Ching, 224) As Socrates put it, “the mind has the power to keep the body as well as possible,” but that’s not perfect, after all, for living things do decay and die. Live or die, we should live in a way that will allow good to return.
“When decaying has reached its extreme, a turning point comes. Then the light shines in the darkness, and the bright situation begins again.”(I Ching, 213) “After darkness comes the dawn.”(I Ching, 210) “A new cycle begins... Light and truth finally overcome darkness and evil and bring about a new phase of change.”(I Ching, 210) And this too will “go around and begin again,”(212) “in endless cyclic motion. This is the way of the Book of Changes.”(I Ching, 213)
“In the course of history, many great empires have decayed and fallen away.”(209) And when they do, “a new cycle began – after the falling away, a turning back followed.”(I Ching, 209)
For “the truth of changing” is that, “When things proceed to their extreme, they alternate to the opposite… The change is not brought about by force – it accords with the law of Nature. The turning back comes spontaneously, like a bright spring returns after a severe winter…due to the appropriate time and situations. Because it is the law of Nature, no human force can alter it.”(I Ching, 216) All we can do is read the signs and react with intelligence.
And “Now we learn that everything changes.”(p.7) Ideally, it changes “slowly, in harmony with all Creation.”(p.7) But now “We have gotten in trouble… Changing too fast, without the slow development of evolution.”(p. 7)
“Indigenous cultures have always had to adapt to changed conditions – remember the ice ages, great floods, warming and cooling climates.”(OI, Martinez, et.al., 112) “For centuries and centuries they fought against climate change in place after place and culture after culture.” (OI, Mohawk, 135) Some, like the Hopi and the Maya “lost the war over climate change,” (OI, Mohawk, 135) but others have shown “the marvelous capacity of our species to survive.” (OI, Mohawk, 135) “It was our cumulative knowledge and shared, passed-down knowledge that made long-term survival possible. It’s what I [*] like to call our collective human heritage, which is the knowledge of our relationship to plants,” (OI, Mohawk, 129) gathered over “sometimes hundred of generations.” (OI, Mohawk, 171) Each culture inhabit a unique place, and the stories that emerge from that place are “the traditional knowledge for how to live in dynamic equilibrium” with that place. (OI, Nelson, 12) “For at least ten thousand years”…traditional Indigenous farmers “have interact with the weather and the whole landscape,” and like Andean farmers, who “ask permission from the protecting hills, which they call Apus (sacred and protective hills),”(OI, Rivera, 196) traditional people have carried on conversations and worked out contracts with their natural relations. Through “careful observations of natural cycles and time tested practical cultural responses and accommodation,” (OI, Martinez, et.al., 88) It is a “subtle conversation” and the farmer must listen carefully.” (OI, Rivera, 198) But in this way, “Indigenous Peoples developed a symbiotic relationship with nature.”(OI, Settee, 44) In this way, “People know that each plant and animal has a use as well as a purpose in the natural order of existence.”(OI, Settee, 44) “Extensive knowledge of the medicinal properties of plants, fungi, and even insects within their territories has provided a sort of pharmacopeia for Indigenous peoples around the world.”(IO, Adamson, 30)