Week 4: Christina Lukban

Week 4

In a Western world where our culture is constantly being overran by science and technological thinkers, do you think we really are advancing as a society because of this? Since we now have created this lifestyle to always strive for understanding how the world works, does this make us wise or better than how our ancestors lived? Many people believe that what makes humans so unique compared to other living species is our ability to want to make sense of everything and our consciousness of the world around us, but I feel that this can sometimes actually be a weakness in humankind. We are so inclined to finding the right answer all the time and limit ourselves to only tangible truths proved by science that we fail to seek for answers in things that we don't fully understand ourselves. Our society looks for close-minded answers we want to hear/know and are always trying to understand things rather than stepping back and simply accepting and embracing certain truths about our reality. Our ancestors were deeply interconnected to the natural world before science became such prominent way of life in our society and had beliefs beyond our understanding of the world through spirits. And the fact that our ancestors, many cultures, and people today still have such strong beliefs and connections towards spirits throughout generations all over the world, there must truly be a reason and an underlying truth for it all that people of the Western world lack and keep trying to overlook. 

In this week's reading from The Scientific and Medical Network "We Are Not Alone" The Shamans of the World Tells Us, we discuss the theme of the spirits being all around us through the presence of our ancestors trying to guide us and also through wisdom beyond humans; such as creatures and the Earth itself. When looking at the natural world, everything and everyone coexists in this life are all interconnected as one. Technology and our want to understand a scientific truth has created a detachment barrier of this interconnectedness and we continually lack so much wisdom from the world because of how we live in this ignorant, damaged mindset of everything being separated. Throughout this reading, I kept thinking about the song "Colors of the Wind" from Pocahontas and how although yes, wind may technically be invisible and the natural world may not seem as "alive" as humans are, but you can certainly feel the life, beauty and the spirit of the world all around us and there is truth and answers in there waiting for us to find.