Humanity grows more and more intelligent, yet there is clearly more trouble and less happiness daily.
How can this be?
It is because intelligence is not the same thing as wisdom.
When a society misuses partial intelligence and ignores holistic wisdom, its people forget the benefits of a plain and natural life.
Seduced by their desires, emotions, and egos, they become slaves to bodily demands, to luxuries, to power and unbalanced religion and psychological excuses.
Then the reign of calamity and confusion begins.
Nonetheless, superior people can awaken during times of turmoil to lead others out of the mire.
But how can the one liberate the many?
By first liberating his own being.
He does this not by elevating himself, but by lowering himself.
He lowers himself to that which is simple, modest, true; integrating it into himself, he becomes a master of simplicity, modesty, truth.
Completely emancipated from his former false life, he discovers his original pure nature, which is the pure nature of the universe.
Freely and spontaneously releasing his divine energy, he constantly transcends complicated situations and draws everything around him back into an integral oneness.
Because he is a living divinity, when he acts, the universe acts.
-#77 Hua Hu Ching: The Unknown Teachings of Lau Tzu, as translated by Brian Walker
For more on this topic, listen to this podcast episode:
36. Grandmother Wisdom: Indigenous Elder Speaks on Climate & Nature’s Intelligence - Carol Dana
When I asked her how she wanted to be introduced, Carol Dana told me she is a mother and a grandmother - “that’s what really matters, not the credentials.” Carol is from the Penobscot tribe in Northern Maine. “The Wabanaki Confederacy (Wabenaki, translated to "People of the Dawn") are a First Nations confederation of four principal Eastern Algonquian tribes: the Miꞌkmaq, Maliseet, Passamaquoddy and Penobscot.” In our conversation, she shares what her grandfather told her when she was young, about the coming of climate change, and what she has come to see, in her own life. She also shares the limits to our knowledge and need to listen to the guidance from the natural world.