Page 8 - Introducing The Gratitudes

8
INTRODUCING
THE GRATITUDES
Field Guides to Learning and Living Everyday Values
The second – abetting the creation – is difficult at any time, no matter how talented, wise, or capable we are. What we do, and how we do it, and why we do it, defines our character. It too often turns out that if indeed we are here to abet creation, we surely need to be better equipped, and and need to be more robust, than most of us will prove out in our lifetimes, sad to say.
The writer Robert Heinlein, in his 1973 novel Time Enough for Love issued a challenge: “A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a
“Our ancestors needed to know how to grow foods of all necessary kinds, how to tend the domesticated animal from birthing to tending to slaughter, harness draught animals for plowing, find water and manage it for consumption, build dwellings for people and animals, plant and harvest crops, chop trees and make fires, hunt and trap, fish in all weather, make clothing from scratch, cook and preserve food of all kinds, treat ailments.”
– Peter Denton, Live Close to Home
computer, cook a tasty meal, fight effi- ciently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
Our forebears were required to be, in order to survive, let alone thrive, capable of a wide and intimidating range of physical, intellec- tual, social and spiritual aptitudes. Cana- dian writer Peter Denton, in his 2014 book Live Close to Home, reminds us that not more than three generations ago, our ances- tors, arriving into the colonial invasion of aboriginal territories in the middle of the North American continent, needed to know “how to grow foods of all necessary kinds, how to tend the domesticated animal from birthing to tending to slaughter, harness draught animals for plowing, find water and manage it for consumption, build dwellings for people and animals, plant and harvest crops, chop trees and make fires, hunt and trap, fish in all weather, make clothing from
scratch, cook and preserve food of all kinds, treat ailments.”
It’s more than just physical skills, aptitudes and attitudes we need in the ever more complicated world we live in. We need men- tal, emotional, social, and spiritual tools as well, and in fact as we intend to prove in the present volume and others, they are criti-
cal to our survival as a species.
That is the reason this present Field Guide, and those that will
follow, exist. To define the terrain, to map the routes, to identify the destination, to outfit ourselves as voyagers, to equip our minds and spirits, and to push us out the door, with the tools, attitudes and spirit we need to carry us forward into the great, and hope- fully wonder – if not awe – filled, unknown.
A Field Guide is a book designed to be brought into the “field” in order to assist with navigation, identification, classification, interpretation, and edification – to help the reader identify items of interest and inspiration, to compare them to others that may prove instructive, and to inspire individual pathways on the road of discovery. This is increasingly important in the ever more com-