Culture> Review and Comment

Indigenous qualities exist everywhere

By Peter Buffett ( China Daily ) Updated: 2014-06-20 11:02:42

Over time, we internalized this idea of dominion over things. Because we could harness the power of the seasons, we marveled when we learned to harness the power of water and steam, electricity and the atom. Animals were domesticated and harnessed. People were harnessed as well.

All these things continue today, but in the last 500 years we have also been surprised and impressed by our ability to create artificial versions of the natural world. The horse became the automobile. Firelight became the LED.

As humans, we often seem to question our purpose. We keep trying to "figure it out" even as other species appear to have reached their point of perfection.

Maybe we just haven't been around long enough. Someday maybe I'll feel as sure of why I'm on Earth as my cat seems to.

In the United States, when the country was formed, nearly everyone was a farmer. We all basically understood each other - and our purpose. Life for most has changed very dramatically since our great-grandparents were children. Our sixth president regularly bathed naked in the river near the Capitol Hill. Can you imagine that happening today?

Time may be the most radically changed thing of all. We had no sense of a common time 150 years ago. For nearly all of our existence on Earth, our time was deeply connected to the natural rhythms of the planet.

But with steam and electricity came time. The need to be "on time" became necessary for things to happen with regularity that machines - or men with machines - seemed to dictate.

Over time, progress had to turn a profit. What was better had to be new.

To many, there is something that feels unnatural about what's happening in the world today. Many people don't "fit in" in some way. Or life just seems a lot harder than it should be.