EXODUS FROM ANIMAL PARADISE

The title of this glossary item is a metaphor for an idea that is obvious but became absent in Western cosmologies, in particular in academic/scientific subcosmologies.

The idea that we (Westerners) live in a painful mental/physical state resulting from an Exodus from Paradise can be easely falsified by more ‘objective/reflected’ knowledge.

If we take Darwin and his successors seriously humans developed from other primates and so we are animals.

And if we were still (non-human) animals we would not have this burden of this a suffering ‘condition humaine’.

Or as Buddhists say: if we embrace our mental/physical suffering we are released from our ‘original sin‘ or ‘ancestral sin‘.

In this way we are not expelled the Judaic/Chistian paradise but in some way we ‘exodused’ ourselves ‘out of our wholistic animal existence’. As the Dutch TV series producer Wim Kayzer formulated: humanity is ‘A Glorious Accident‘ (1994) in a very recent stage of evolution.

The conception of ‘MIND’ (mental processing) thinking of anthropologist, biologist and systemthinker Gregory Bateson (1904-1980) is focused on: let us relearn to think (redress our experience) how nature works.

My experience is that in doing so we will be able re-enter our (animal) paradise by Being in Grace regularly in our secular/wordly lives.

I found my way back by re-developing and honoring my ‘artisanal craftsman‘ (blacksmith) traditions of my (great/grand) fathers from both our mothers and fathers families.

My anthropological MA thesis was about the vital importance of learning by crafting for many young men in our Dutch society (in Dutch 1988 download here English summary). Later I published an English paper on the Arts & Crafts Impuls (1994).

We can go home in many ways. Through ‘Arting and Crafting’  we are able to return to our ‘animal homes’.

The title of a more recent paper graps the core of Bateson’s (and mine) claim even more: Beauty and Grace in Making Artefacts (abstract 2017)