{"id":997,"date":"2007-01-17T07:59:19","date_gmt":"2007-01-17T15:59:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp\/2007\/01\/preserving_the_ethnosphere\/"},"modified":"2007-01-17T07:59:19","modified_gmt":"2007-01-17T15:59:19","slug":"preserving_the_ethnosphere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/main\/preserving_the_ethnosphere.php","title":{"rendered":"Preserving the ethnosphere"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There are lots of compelling thoughts in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ted.com\/tedtalks\/tedtalksplayer.cfm?key=w_davis\">Wade Davis&#8217; short speech to the TED conference<\/a> from 2003, exploring the complexity and fragility of the world&#8217;s cultural ecosystem. With fabulous photos, and tales of his global travels, he spins out the idea of an &#8221;ethnosphere&#8221;: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>&#8230;the sum total of all thoughts and dreams, myths, ideas, inspirations, intuitions brought into being by the human imagination since the dawn of consciousness. The ethnosphere is humanity&#8217;s great legacy. It&#8217;s a symbol of all we are and all we can be as an astonishingly inquisitive species.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Davis suggests that the ethnosphere is just as important to the earth&#8217;s health and well-being as the global natural ecosystem we call the &#8221;biosphere,&#8221; but he claims the former is degrading far more quickly than the latter. No biologist would suggest, for example, that half of all species on earth were on the edge of extinction. And yet the number of world languages has dropped <i>at least<\/i> by half in our lifetime. Every two weeks, he claims, &#8221;some elder dies and carries with him into the grave the last syllables of an ancient tongue.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>While some might say such attrition in the world&#8217;s cultural diversity is the inevitable result of globalization and a shrinking world, Davis makes a compelling argument that we should be concerned. The loss of language is just an indicator of the larger loss of stories, insights, metaphors, world views, and entire civilizations that threatens the richness and sustainability of our ethnosphere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are lots of compelling thoughts in Wade Davis&#8217; short speech to the TED conference from 2003, exploring the complexity and fragility of the world&#8217;s cultural ecosystem. With fabulous photos, and tales of his global travels, he spins out the idea of an &#8221;ethnosphere&#8221;: &#8230;the sum total of all thoughts and dreams, myths, ideas, inspirations, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-997","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/997\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}