B.D. and F.D.

Waterless Mountain by Laura Adams Armer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

As I took the plunge into complete absorption into this long-ago Newbery winner I set aside my Darwinian world view and stepped into my magical world view.

What do I mean by this? In addition to the two time constructs "B.C." (or B.C.E. if you prefer) and "A.D." there is also B.D. (Before Darwin) and F.D. (Following Darwin). A quick google search coughed up this description: Remember that in 1850 virtually all leading scientists and philosophers were Christian men. The world they inhabited had been created by God, and as the natural theologians claimed, He had instituted wise laws that brought about the perfect adaptation of all organisms to one another and to their environment. At the same time, the architects of the scientific revolution had constructed a worldview based on physicalism (a reduction to spatiotemporal things or events or their properties), teleology, determinism and other basic principles. Such was the thinking of Western man prior to the 1859 publication of On the Origin of Species. The basic principles proposed by Darwin would stand in total conflict with these prevailing ideas. https://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...

What we are mostly unaware of today is that Darwinism is the salt in our stew. We do not taste it or see it or feel it or sense it in any way, yet it seasons everything we process. We judge former generations by it. We judge other cultures by it. It elevates us to what we consider a higher moral state of being. It liberates us, we think. Or we don't think. It is just there, within us, about us, and becomes in a way what we are all about.

That is why a book like this is so important, but only if we can objectively see outside of what we have become to what we once may have been and not cast judgement, not harbour ridicule, and open ourselves to something that first appears simple but in reality is complex beyond our ability to comprehend.

Only then can you come to appreciate Younger Brother's journey, observations, musings and perhaps absorb an intangible something that our current frenetic world obscures. It is something like driving along in a car across Younger Brother's landscape and being relieved of the blur of the posts and weeds along the road's shoulder to the magnificent geological structures on the horizon. Hold on, perhaps it's more like stopping time and really seeing and learning from those simple weeds within our grasp that have become nothing but a blur. Ha!


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