- “Western culture is very brief when measured against one time-transcending bison corpse, or the wandering calligraphy of a river down the Yukon flats, or the archaic circumpolar cosmopolitanism of the traditions that connect with the Kuuvangmiut people. EuroAmerican humanism has been a story of writers and scholars who were deeply moved and transformed by their immersion in earlier histories and literatures. Their writings have provided useful cultural—rather than theological or biological—perspectives on the human situation. The Periclean Greeks digested the Homeric lore, which went back to the Bronze Age and before. The Romans enlarged themselves by their study of Greece. Renaissance seekers nourished themselves on Greece and Rome. Today a new breed of posthumanists is investigating and experiencing the diverse little nations of the planet, coming to appreciate the “primitive,” and finding prehistory to be an ever-expanding field of richness. We get a glimmering of the depth of our ultimately single human root. Wild nature is inextricably in the weave of self and culture. The “post” in the term posthumanism is on account of the word human. The dialogue to open next would be among all beings, toward a rhetoric of ecological relationships. This is not to put down the human: the “proper study of mankind” is what it means to be human. It’snot enough to be shown in school that we are kin to all the rest: we have to feel it all the way through. Then we can also be uniquely “human” with no sense of special privilege. Water is the koan of water, as Dogen says, and human beings are their own koan. The Grizzlies or Whales or Rhesus Monkeys, or Rattus, would infinitely prefer that humans (especially Euro-Americans) got to know themselves thoroughly before presuming to do Ursine or Cetacean research. When humans know themselves, the rest of nature is right there. This is part of what the Buddhists call the Dharma.”
“The perfect way is without difficulty. Strive hard!”