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(2018) Human Arenas 1 (1).

Natural inclusionality, indigenous wisdom, and the reality of nature

Jeff Firewalker Schmitt

pp. 37-55

Natural Inclusionality is a new biologically grounded paradigm that challenges several beliefs that underpin Western thought, which are perceived to cause strife, imbalance, and conflict across all scales of Ecological, Biological, and Social organization. We have entered an era, the Anthropocene, where the behavior of one animal species (Homo sapiens) is vastly and adversely impacting all life, making the need to illuminate our complex landscape in a way that inspires awe, co-creativity, and compassion, increasingly vital. This manuscript explores Natural Inclusionality as a philosophical framework that can broaden academic and public understanding of indigenous wisdom, cosmology, and spirituality. Without direct experience, it is difficult, if not impossible to appreciate the vital importance of preserving and learning from these wisdom traditions. Woven throughout Natural Inclusionality and these traditions is a call for a return to a sense of self-immersion in nature; the limited, if not miasmic way we experience the boundary between self and nature in the industrialized world is inherently harmful and false. For example, key tenets of Natural Inclusionality are shown here to reflect foundational concepts of Andean Cosmology, Spirituality, and ritual practice (which I will heretofore call Andean Nature Mysticism) while overcoming critical deficiencies in the holistic Western re-presentations of indigenous wisdom. Specifically, this manuscript explores how the following principles of Natural Inclusionality align with Andean Nature Mysticism: that (1) space is a receptive and continuous omnipresence/all that exists is a mutual inclusion of receptive space and informative flux, (2) there exists no separation of the tangible from the intangible, (3) self-identity and consciousness are a natural inclusion of neighborhood, (4) competitive opposition stalls evolution—and—life and the cosmos evolve through the receptive natural inclusion of what is possible in changing circumstances. Finally, various aspects of Vedic and Buddhist and other wisdom traditions are also evoked where useful.

Publication details

DOI: 10.1007/s42087-018-0008-8

Full citation:

Firewalker Schmitt, J. (2018). Natural inclusionality, indigenous wisdom, and the reality of nature. Human Arenas 1 (1), pp. 37-55.

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