Book 2 Post 1

For our second reading assignment, I chose to read The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters

in the Modern World by Wade Davis. As I mentioned in my previous blogs, I’m super busy juggling two jobs plus school, so I wanted to find a shorter book option that was still engaging. The Wayfinders was a compelling option for me due to its length and alluring topics. Ancient history was one of my favorite subjects growing up so the overarching theme of ancient wisdom and cultures immediately hooked me. I also found the more essay-compilation style of this book to be interesting since, although they’re connected, each chapter introduces a new culture of people and intriguing ideologies. Picking The Wayfinders was a complete no-brainer for me, and although the language can be a bit tricky, I’m glad I chose Wade Davis’s work. 

Wade Davis is a Canadian anthropologist who studies Indigenous cultures worldwide. In The Wayfinders, Davis delves into the mindsets and cultures of various groups from the Amazon to Polynesia. I was most interested in learning more about Polynesian culture, especially after Professor Hansen shared about the wayfinding journey that would take place in the book, but I haven’t gotten to that part. I was also pleasantly surprised to learn that the book also discusses Buddhist culture. For context, I am a practicing Nichiren Buddhist and I study the teachings of the Lotus Sutra. I look forward to learning more about the story of the Bodhisattva in Nepal, as I am sure it will be packed with wisdom and some notes for self-reflection. 

I loved the introduction of this book. Again, the complex academic language of this caught me off guard (I literally had to use a thesaurus and Google for some difficult words) but it was a total page-turner. Davis thoroughly discussed the relationship between language and culture, highlighting how ancient languages are on a rapid decline. According to Davis, approximately half of the 7,000ish languages spoken in the world will go extinct in our lifetimes. This book was published in 2009 so yes, that applies to us. As our elders pass, so do their languages, with which comes their oral history and culture. This sort of reminded me about how in the Inuit language, there are dozens of words that describe different kinds of snow, but in English, there’s just “snow.” Our cultures, values, environments, and other factors that impact our day-to-day lives are reflected in our vocabulary. From this, we can infer that–well, obviously–snow heavily influenced the lives of Inuits to the point that they half countless words for it. Davis’s discussion on language made me truly reflect on the importance of studying my native language of Japanese and looking outwards toward other cultures and their rich histories. Although I’m just getting started with this book, I know it’ll be a classic.  

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