あらすじ
Much of the trouble brewing in modernity can be attributed to our inability as a species to properly communicate with each other and the natural world. Medicine Without an Expiry Date contributes to a growing awareness that such wisdom, and the forms of ritual which have perennially tied communities together, is a native human ability which can return from an "oasis-like" status, and invade the "desert" of modernity. Ritual is a literacy, and a human inheritance that is still effective as a sorely needed "technology of community." The book argues fiercely for the reclamation of our own indigenous intelligence and shows where to look for it and how to revivify it. Weaving an intricate fabric of perception, melding personal experiences with indigenous ritual, stories of initiation, and a deep exploration of what Jones calls StoryCarrying, the author takes us on a Tour de Force critiquing modernity from a unique perspective. He includes discussions of the wisdom of the body, emotional intelligence, the nature of education, and a look into the practical value of the wild mythic imagination. A combination of "teaching harangue," poetry, field notes, and guidebook, it defies simple categorization: it is sui generis, without genre, "of its own kind." This didactic methodology is undertaken by design, to address the deep issues of translation between modern and indigenous world views. Some time is devoted to the defence of such a methodology, and the reader may find themselves "leaping," as Daniel Deardorff has called it, back and forth between philosophy, anecdote, biography, anthropology, argument, and description. It can at least be said with certainty that anything which began to look like a standard training manual as we have come to know it in modernity, with descriptions of procedural certainty, would not be the right approach to explain indigeneity. Medicine Without an Expiry Date is a walk between two worlds, authored by one who received the name "Calls Forth Voices" from the Dreamtime, contributing an understanding and deep connection with the elemental knowledge of the indigenous into the personal, social, and environmental domains of the modern.