The essential question is this: What will man let the world be, and how will this affect man?
We do not realize the power of our own "letting be." We often feel victimized by pain, troubles, hardships, loss, sorrows, cruelty, injustice, selfishness, lust, jealousy, etc... We feel powerless before evil, and perhaps even more so before "cosmic fate."
But what do we mean by all of this? Who taught us such blatant passivity? Where did we learn to be swayed in the wind?
I think we stopped letting the world be the world, and in turn, we stopped knowing how to be in the world.
Little boys spend significantly less time learning about the growth of plants by getting their hands in the dirt these days than all of their predecessors.
Man is supposedly the crown of creation, and one could call him a microcosm of the universe. All of the intricate operations and processes, systems and communications that build together in some amazing symphonic relationship to be the walking, talking, acting and feeling man are not so very different from the processes and communications that hold the earth in orbit or cause the oak to grow.
I am not saying that man is not the unique and ultimate creature he is, but that man has always learned of himself from his encounter with the rest of creation.
In our day and age, this encounter is becoming more and more limited. I see many who still exercise, who still venture out-of-doors after the long hours in the cube. What I speak of is the medium of this encounter between man and the world. He does not go outside to see what outside is. This is a simple child's mentality, like the two-year-old who first discovers what sand is, and is perplexed. Yet, man is not supposed to set aside all childish things, and this loss of vision is a serious blindness for modernity.
Man still goes outside, but why? Because he must exercise. A bike, shoes, a kayak, roller blades, a bathing suit, a boat, a skateboard, a snowboard, skis, etc... there is always something to accomplish. Man has an hour, and must burn 500 calories. So, he will bike X miles at X pace, and go home to dinner feeling pacified. Or perhaps he exercises for competition, in which case he must cover X miles in X time to beat the other man.
These are not bad things, of course, nor bad reasons to do things. But they are also not enough, at least not always. If man is not going out to exercise, perhaps it is to learn a skill, or sport, or to be part of a group or club. Again, worthy causes. But does man join a group or play a sport for or of discovery? Oh, so sadly, I fear he does not.
No sitting still and observing for us! Too much to do, too much to do.
There is no time for the sitting and even if man so disciplined himself to sit and observe, what would he glean? There are trees. There is grass. There is a house. There are some cars. There is a deer. The observe-and-identify game is not the same as an encounter.
The Greek word paedeia means "to educate," but more literally means to "draw forth," or to "call forth," or to "unveil" what is already present. To go to the world, specifically to nature, to learn from it, rather than of it, may be a novel idea; though it is just as old as history, which is also becoming a novel idea to modern culture.
"What on earth could nature teach us? We've exhausted it already! We've been to the moon, we've de-planatized Pluto. We know why the leaves change color and what makes the rainbow. This isn't a mystery anymore." Bah! There you have it; modernity's definitive attitude about life itself. Life is not mysterious and it is exhausted.
Does this not terrify you, oh reader? Oughtenit?
There should most certainly be little alarm bells going off when the "living world," when "living creatures," when "life" is assumed to be already and thoroughly known! Could we be more naive?
Living. It implies growing. Breathing. Moving. Changing. Becoming. Going from certain potential into actualizing those potentials. Seed... tree. Seed has potential to be tree-producing-more-seeds, but as it is, it is a seed. Do we dare see it as it is?
Oh modern man! You have built up false walls around you! You have willingly donned black glasses to keep your eyes from the light of the sun! You have sought protection from what a living, breathing world might mean to all of your power and domination! Too risky is the truth for the confines of your little false kingdom.
You simply cannot let the world be!
But what on earth, really, on earth, does that mean for you? You, who are this microcosm, this crown, this epitome? If you willingly strip the real down to a "safe" non-real, what are you to do with yourself? You, man, are real. You cannot un-real yourself, even if you are determined to un-real the world.
It is a joke, and a very sad one. The Lord's words to the pharisees of being "blind guides" because they would not see reality is the truth of our entire modern culture. Nihilism, solipsism, you pick a name. Disenchanted confusion. Jaded disillusionment. Contented distractedness. Extreme fear.
Whatever the cause, the end is without a doubt the collapse of human society. Nietzsche gets some credit for noting that once man closes himself to God, he closes himself to life. There can only be one throne in the heart of man, and only one King can reign there.
The challenge begins with each of us, stepping out into the grass with our bare feet. Literally and figuratively, it will take us stripping down the techno-modern-walls of culture to get to the literal world that awaits us. What we shall learn cannot be predicted. Certainly, others will have learned it before us, to some extent. But never as we have learned it. Never as we see it. Not with our eyes, and not with our hearts. The encounter will be entirely new, and we could do the exact same thing tomorrow, and that encounter would be entirely new. Ah! The living world will not sit still. We must. We must greet it, and contemplate it. We need to understand that mystery is not dead, and neither is man.
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