He had not heard from her in almost a year and had no idea where she was. Marie had answered only one message, in a friendly and generic tone, on the morning David had left Windhoek. Since then, it was as if all electronic communication to her was automatically redirected to a black hole.
For too long, David bore a trace of bitterness that only left his chest during his morning runs. With time, however, meditation and cooking eased the pain. He seemed to have his nerves under control until the sight of the charming Scandinavian tourist had thrown him off balance. The encounter, coupled with the excitement of the referendum, left no doubt in David’s mind as to who he wanted to share the moment with.
From a long list of search results of similar names, David, with faith and intuition, clicked on the third page of results. There, right under the curser, was a link to a recently posted video. He clicked on it and the recognizable soft, hoarse voice, speaking comfortably on a talk show, filled his ears and pulled the muscles of his heart. The shorter hair and more rounded face than the one he had seen in the pub erased all doubt. It was his Marie.
“Doctor, in your book Hunters and Foragers: The Children of Eden, you say that the nomadic societies of the Kalahari have a ‘Peter Pan complex,’ and that adults are eternal children. What do you mean by this?” the interviewer asked.
“I mean that entering adulthood does not happen for the San like it happens in the more complex societies that we live in,” Marie said. “In the hunter-gatherer societies, individuals go through puberty without losing their passion for or curiosity about the simpler things and questions of everyday life, of their immediate surroundings. Adults live intensely in the present moment and are satisfied with it, something we observe only in young children in our industrial, post-modern society.”
“It’s as if they perpetuate the playful vision of childhood,” added the interviewer.
“Exactly. And this playful vision can be found even in laborious tasks, such as hunting and gathering fruits. Everything is a sort of game or play. Even adults—whose brains are completely formed, and whose executive functions of the prefrontal cortex, which separates reality from imagination, are already fully developed—perceive it this way.”
“That means they live in Eden?” interrupted the journalist.
“When in their original habitat, without being acculturated and living in poor suburbs of westernized society, for example, I believe that the San are one of the peoples on Earth who live in the most complete state of abundance. They will rarely go to sleep hungry or unsatisfied. Their desires, which are few, are fully met. In modern societies, this hardly ever occurs; a third of the world’s population suffers from hunger, with individual incomes at less than two American dollars a day. If a Garden of Eden ever existed or still exists, it’s the ground upon which the hunter-gatherers walk or once walked.”
“In one of the final chapters of your book, you recommend that the modern homo sapiens rethink their trajectory and perform a ‘reboot’ on their convictions in order to prevent them from bringing about their own end. Do you truly believe that we can go beyond science and religion, as you suggest in your book?”
“I’m not suggesting that we dwell on the historical misconceptions produced by these two paradigms; nothing can come of it. What’s important is to understand the limitations of both in answering the fundamental questions of our existence. Science uses two instruments to reach the truth: logic and reason. Now, considering the vast number of fundamental questions still unanswered, such as, ‘Is the universe finite or infinite? Why do things exist? Why do we exist? Or what was there before the Big Bang or before existence itself? Then we see that logic and reason are poor, almost useless tools. On the other hand, religions, often devoid of reason and logic, but rather based on belief, face an equally enormous constraint: ‘What existed before God, before creation? Or why are humans important?’ I know it sounds strange coming from an anthropologist, but it puzzles me how humans can find themselves special in a world inhabited by more than eight million other species. And we also have to cope with the certainty that it would have been good for all of them if we had already disappeared.”
“What would the alternative be, doctor?”
“I doubt anyone not related to those two paradigms can give you a concrete answer,” Marie burst out laughing. “I just emphasize that religion and science are the two most important cultural and intellectual constructs that we know, and that they are constantly at war precisely because they are similar. Both are founded on beliefs, and so they cannot learn from each other.”
“Seeing as how you will be a mother soon, do you have a recipe or any advice for raising children in such a challenging world?”
“I believe that the best thing for my child—I’m having a boy, by the way; he will be called David,” Marie opened a long smile, “…but for all children as well, is to grow up away from rigid and entrenched belief systems. This will give them the modesty they need to intensely love the world around them, or better yet, to merge with it; praising nature and expecting to be blessed in return. In short, I’d like to see all children as the ‘prodigal son’ returning to mother nature and making amends for the tragedy we’ve made.”