Categories
In the eighteenth century there was a French philosophical genius, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. It was Rousseau who provided Europe with slogans for a return to nature during the time of the industrial revolution, when everyone was excited about machines and their power. Rousseau advocated a shift from trusting in the head (that’s why) to a shift towards the heart, pure nature, and the simple life. Rousseau called human beings who are genuine in a genuine world. He advocated and ignited a novel appreciation of natural beauty, wildlife, forests, landscapes, mountains, and valleys.
Natural life, Rousseau argued, is spiritually fulfilling, enchanting, and nurturing of people.
Rousseau found the dominant culture and philosophy of Europe too cruel and materialistic. His idea of happiness was sentimental, quiet, social, and private. The dominant philosophy of Europe or Western tradition and civilization is that happiness is something you earn, deserve and conquer. According to Western tradition, there are no individual rights to happiness: you can only be happy if you succeed in living in luxury. Take into account the fact that to live in luxury you have to fight, beating people on the way (and sometimes making slaves of them), pushing them away and winning in life. Happiness and success is something you deserve and earn according to Western tradition. You can only access happiness by being successful in life. In this way, people’s lives are in a state of war, fighting to achieve, planning, controlling, strategizing and managing is the order of the Western way of life.
Rousseau is backed by one of the modern philosophers, Robin Sharma. Robin Sharma in his book The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari talks about a gentleman lawyer who was probably the most successful lawyer on planet earth. This lawyer at the age of 53, while arguing a high powered case in court, had a heart attack and collapsed right in the middle of the courtroom. And what follows may be that he went into a near-death experience and went into his life review. The life review is the process we enter shortly before we die. In this process, nature presents us with a comprehensive review of our lives. The purpose is to see for ourselves whether we were good or bad while living here on earth.
However, in the end, this particular attorney survived the heart attack and came back to life here on this planet called earth. But he becomes a completely changed person after having a near death experience. He abandoned the legal profession and gave away all the luxuries of it. He travels to India to live in the mountains of India away from people and civilization. Living in the mountains of the forests of India, where there is no technology or so-called advances that come with the Western tradition. There this former lawyer mixes with people, who in the modern sense of Western civilization can be called savage and primitive and uncivilized, spending time in communion with nature, walking in the forest a life completely opposite to the great life he lived in big cities as a prominent lawyer.
This former lawyer who goes beyond appearances meets people with impeccable wisdom, a wisdom based on compassion, natural justice and kindness as opposed to the traditional Western wisdom of having a strong will and achieving happiness and success.
Leo Tolstoy also wrote a story called How Much Land Does a Man Need? The moral of the story in this tale is that in the end all the things we spend the best days of our lives chasing in the name of success really don’t matter that much. All we really need once our lives are over amounts to no more than two meters of dust and dirt.
“Society has become a messy place to be. We have neglected what it means to stand for something larger than our lives and have lost our priorities by focusing solely on ourselves to win instead of passionately helping everyone around us win.” also in a gesture of kindness and encouragement”. -Robin Sharma
