This is part 4 of a 7-part series.
Click here for part 1
“In speaking of the “savage” or “primitive mind”, we are, of course, using a very clumsy expression. We shall employ the term, nevertheless, to indicate the characteristics of the human mind when there was as yet no writing, no organized industry or mechanical arts, no money, no important specialization of function except between the sexes, no settled life in large communities.” — James Harvey Robinson, Mind in the Making, Chapter 7: Our Savage Mind
We’ve come a long way from what Robinson calls Our Savage Mind. Gone are the days of having nothing but our impressions of this world to interpret through. Over time and with great struggle, we’ve developed tools and methods of experimentation that give us deeper, more detailed insight into our world and one another.
Despite the slowly-dying cultural meme that “Science” is cold methodology that detaches people from their sense of humanity, turning them into academic robots of some sort, there is no method nor ideology on the planet that has shed more light onto how human beings are so deeply connected with this world and all of life on it.
“You don’t see the plug connected to the environment, so it looks like we’re free, wandering around… But take the oxygen away, we all die…