Books worth reading #10 - 'The Web of Meaning' by Jeremy Lent

Without doubt this is the most influential and mind-expanding book I've read this year. As the cover blurb tells us, this is a book about 'integrating science and traditional wisdom to find our place in the universe'. It's absolutely 100% in my wheelhouse. 

Jeremy Lent is a truly extraordinary thinker. He's spent years trying to reconcile science with traditional thinking and what he's discovered (as, indeed, have I) is that the 'old ways' didn't just pop into people's heads. Traditional beliefs, medicines and wisdom were the result of close observation of the world and being part of Nature, not something separate or 'above' it. Science is now just starting to catch up with what our ancestors knew - they just couldn't explain it at the time without recourse to deities, magic or supernatural causes.

As he writes in the foreword:

'Many people across the globe are realizing that there is something terribly wrong with the direction our world is headed. The inequities are so extreme that a couple of dozen billionaires own as much wealth as half the world’s population. Our civilization is devastating the Earth at an ever-increasing pace.

There has been a 68 percent decline in animal populations since 1970. Greenhouse gas emissions have caused the climate to lurch out of control, creating conditions that haven’t existed on Earth for millions of years. Fires, storms, droughts and floods that used to be called ‘once in a century’ have become a regular staple of our daily news. Look ahead a few decades, and things become downright terrifying. We’re on track, by the middle of this century, to see the annihilation of coral reefs worldwide, 95 percent of arable land degraded and five billion people facing water shortages – and at the current rate, there will be more plastic in the oceans than fish. Without drastic changes, as we approach the later part of the century, the Amazon rainforest will have become a searing desert, the Sixth Great Extinction of species will be well underway, and as a result of climate breakdown, civilization as we know it will likely be tottering on its last legs. 

At our current trajectory, humanity is headed for catastrophe. But it doesn’t have to be that way. If we want to steer our civilization on another course, though, it’s not enough to make a few incremental improvements here and there. We need to take a long, hard look at the faulty ideas that have brought us to this place and reimagine them. We need a new worldview – one that is based on sturdy foundations.'

This new worldview is one in which we call a halt to the separation of humans and the planet we all live on. It also means breaking down the walls between hard, empirical science and folk tradition. After all, science has made wonderful discoveries about how our bodies work, which has resulted in fantastic new medicines and surgical treatments. But the current mental health crisis won't be solved by drugs or operations. So many successful therapies are based on old ideas - family, meaningful human connections, a sense of purpose, being close to Nature. What Lent advocates is bringing all of those things together to make a better and healthier society.

It's a joyous, ground-breaking book and I highly recommend it, along with his previous work The Patterning Instinct. 

Don't get sucked into the dystopian hype.

The world can be a better place.