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Wade Davis Speaking on the Ethnosphere

Morgan Maher
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Acclaimed author Wade Davis is the National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence. His new television series Light at the Edge of the World celebrates the wonder of humanity's greatest legacy, the ethnosphere. It delivers a comprehensive and profound description of the ethnosphere and what it means to us as a people across the globe.

Davis argues that we should not only be concerned about preserving the biosphere, but also the "ethnosphere," which he describes as "the sum total of all thoughts and dreams, myths, ideas, inspirations, intuitions brought into being by the human imagination since the dawn of consciousness."

Though four years old, this lecture is every bit as relevant today. It is incredibly shocking when you grasp that not only are trees, oceans, wildlife and ecosystems facing extinction, but also the languages, dreams, myths and imaginations of so many people, so quickly.

"Just as the biosphere is being severely compromised, so too is the ethnosphere, only at a far greater rate of loss. No biologist, for example, would dare suggest that 50 percent of all species are moribund or on the brink of extinction, because it simply is not true. Yet this, the most apocalyptic projection in the realm of biological diversity, scarcely approaches what we know to be the most optimistic scenario in the realm of cultural diversity."

 

Light at the Edge of the World

Wade Davis speaking on the Ethnosphere

 


Morgan Maher is an artist, designer and explorer. Born in Cala-ghearraidh, Beach of the Pasture, he currently resides in Toronto.

Comments

Teilhard De Chardin called

Submitted by Tom C on Fri, 05/25/2007 - 13:27.
Teilhard De Chardin called it the "Noosphere" - "the earth's thinking envelope. . . . .the organic unity of the living membrane which is stretched like a film over the lustrous surface of the star which holds us. Around this sentient protoplasmic layer, an ultimate envelop was beginning to become apparent to me, taking on its own individuality and gradually detaching itself like a luminous aura. This envelop was not only conscious but thinking, and from the time when I first became aware of it, it was always there that i found concentrated, in an ever more dazzling and consistent form, the essence or rather the very soul of the earth.. ."