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Earth Wisdom: John Muir, Accidental Taoist, Charts Humanity's Only Future on a Changing Planet by [Raymond Barnett]

Earth Wisdom: John Muir, Accidental Taoist, Charts Humanity's Only Future on a Changing Planet Kindle Edition

by Raymond Barnett (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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Earth Wisdom charts John Muir’s amazing wilderness adventures and explores the worldview that sprang from them: a way of seeing the world unique in the West, with echoes only in the Taoism of ancient China. So challenging is earth wisdom that the environmental movement has kept it hidden in Muir’s little-known journals for a century. But Muir’s worldview now provides the “new way of thinking” called for by Pope Francis to rescue humanity from the existential threat of climate change; Earth Wisdom shows how and why, touching on the needed changes in our economy, society, and way of life.

Length: 271 pages	Word Wise: Enabled	Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled
Page Flip: Enabled

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About the Author

Raymond Barnett grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma. At Yale University he studied the Chinese language and graduated magna cum laude in Chinese history. After studying theology for a year at New York City’s Union Theological Seminary, Barnett served with the U.S. Army in the Republic (sic) of Vietnam at Long Binh, working in the Surgeon General’s Office at Headquarters, U.S. Army Vietnam. Upon earning his Ph.D. in evolutionary ecology from Duke University, Barnett spent the next three decades on the Biological Sciences faculty at California State University, Chico. During this time he worked with community leaders to found Chico’s Gateway Science Museum. When he retired, the museum Board proclaimed Barnett “Father of the Museum.” Barnett and his wife were among seven founding families of Valley Oaks Village, a cohousing community in Chico, California. Barnett’s interests include snorkeling and tide pooling in Hawaii and California, kayaking California’s coasts and rivers, backpacking in the High Sierra, mystery stories (particularly Sherlock Holmes, Lord Peter Wimsey, and Judge Dee), the culture of traditional China (particularly the tea cult and porcelain), and music of the Baroque in Europe (particularly Antonio Vivaldi and J. S. Bach). Descriptions of his fiction and nonfiction writings can be found at www.raymondbarnett.com. --This text refers to the paperback edition.

Product details

File size : 2074 KB
Publication date : December 14, 2016
Word Wise : Enabled
Print length : 271 pages
Language: : English
ASIN : B01MSZKYFK
Text-to-Speech : Enabled
Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
Page numbers source ISBN : 1532762372
X-Ray : Not Enabled
Screen Reader : Supported
Lending : Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #1,816,606 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #13,082 in World History (Kindle Store)
- #108,962 in World History (Books)

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E. D. Bessey

The Long Journey to Save Ourselves

Reviewed in the United States on February 6, 2017

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This is a deep but very readable book. Author Raymond Barnett first describes the geographic journeys of Sierra Club founder and first American environmental activist John Muir, starting with his trek from His Indiana home to the Gulf of Mexico, then to the California Sierras, the Yosemite valley and finally to the glaciers of Alaska’s southeast coast. He describes in rich detail how Muir’s immersion in wilderness, in particular his rapture with the Yosemite Valley, leads him to a keen understanding of the physical and biological processes that form our earth even today.

Woven through the entire book is its spiritual dimension. As Barnett follows the progress of Muir’s extraordinary explorations of the American wilderness he simultaneously presents, through Muir’s own journals, the development of his understanding of the appropriate role of humanity in these processes. Barnett then introduces the 5,000 year old traditions of Chinese Taoism, which he cogently describes as “… approaches to understanding reality”. He demonstrates that Taoism and Muir’s own understanding share the same foundation.

If an American, through experience in, and careful observation of, natural processes in the American west comes to an understanding of those processes and man’s involvement in them, and this understanding is at its foundation the same as that of the ancient Chinese Taoists, perhaps there are spiritual truths to be recognized in them. Perhaps these are universal truths that are essential to us as 21st century humans living in a world that feels like it is increasingly, and terminally, stressed.

Barnett challenges us to consider that the only possible path to human survival on this earth is the spiritual one, a path founded on universal values and interests that can transcend geographic, ethnic and political/economic interests and be equally understood by the masses as well as the elite.

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E. K. Anderson

This world is all we have.

Reviewed in the United States on February 1, 2017

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The words "immanent" and "transcendent" may not be part of your everyday vocabulary, but you'll think constantly about them whenever you read or hear a news item regarding the environment after you read Ray Barnett's gorgeously written book. In brief, mankind (with the emphasis on "man") has considered this world to be transcendent for the last 2,500 years, with men believing they should dominate the species and the world – but that was all right since there was a better world to come after death. But in the first part of his book, Barnett quotes extensively from the journals of John Muir, the father of the modern environmental movement, who believed that this world was, by observation, immanent – the only world there is, and one that must be carefully guarded and protected. Man is only one part of an interrelated cosmos, but with an equal role for women, must accept the responsibility to turn us back from the tipping point we're now teetering at, if humanity is to survive at all. And if we don't, after a very chaotic period of strife, we may simply become extinct – and the world won't care.

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Marcia A. Moore, M.D.

A Wonderful, More Complete View of an Old Friend Which May Bring Us Hope For the Future

Reviewed in the United States on February 7, 2017

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This is an excellent book. John Muir has been a hero of mine all my adult life and I thought I knew the man from his prolific writings about the outdoors, his life as a “mountain man” and his energetic enthusiasm for the wilderness. But Professor Barnett, in this carefully researched book (using Muir’s little known journals) elegantly depicts a much lesser known side, a softer side, or the Yin side of John Muir which is as compelling as what we have come to know of the Mountain Man – really making him a more complete person. The book’s worth, however, is more than its value as an historical account or a contribution to the rightfully deserved gratitude we owe John Muir for it summarizes very clearly how we have failed in caring for the wilderness he taught us to appreciate. Barnett’s chapters summarizing those failures are exceedingly clear and useful as a resource. He details clearly the “flaws” of many environmental groups which rely on solutions depending only on the profit motive or technical fixes rather than a vision focusing on values. This leads to his chapters referencing spiritual leaders as current as Pope Francis and as ancient as the Taoist tradition. The book is engaging, thought provoking and creative. I highly recommend it as a challenging vision of a possible future of which our hero, John Muir, would very likely approve.

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Albert Vogel

John Muir and the Tao: A Path To Survival

Reviewed in the United States on January 18, 2017

This book offers to readers interesting biographical information and much, much more. John Muir's life was rich. Explorer, nature writer and evironmentalist, he now has what can be called a cult following. A lot has been written about this great man, a founder of the Sierra Club, and defender of Yosemite and all natural places. This book by Ray Barnett, a biologist and Taoist scholar, presents a really expanded view of John Muir. There was another dimension to this man that has not received a lot of attention by biographers. Muir was deeply spiritual and his relationship with nature and the reality of life can seen very clearly from the traditional Taoist perspective. Barnett, with his knowledge of Taoism and environmental issues, gives the reader a foundation on which to build an understanding and appreciation of Muir's life and his work. We face environmental issues today that threaten the future of civilization and perhaps even the survival of the human species. John Muir's spirituality, interpreted from a Taoist perspective, gives us an understanding of why survival is at stake and a philosophical foundation on which to move toward solutions and a sustainable future. While discussing the horrors of our survival crisis makes for grim reading, Barnett gives us a survival strategy, and yes, hope. Technology too offers some solutions, but ultimately our crisis is spiritual. We simply at present do not have a relationship with our environment, the natural world, that is real and sustainable. John Muir, the "Accidental Taoist", offers us a way to correct our misdirected ramblings on life's path.

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