Jean Leidoff - The Continuum Concept
Life lessons from humanity living close to its genetic roots.
How did you happen to find yourself in South America living with a community of Stone Age Indians? Tell me the story.
On my first trip abroad, as a good American girl from New York, I first went to France then to Italy where I was introduced to a blond, blue-eyed Count called Eurico. He was so successful with the girls that he had become extremely conceited. I would not have anything to do with him; except for the fact that he was soon leaving to look for diamonds in the South American jungle and had fascinating stories to tell about his adventures. As he was saying god-buy to his friends he suddenly turned and asked me: "Why don't you come to the jungle with us?"
Even though I found him terribly arrogant the thought of the jungle was thrilling, so I immediately said yes. We had just twenty minutes before the train left, so we rushed to my hotel, threw a few things into a suitcase, rushed across this huge piazza, and jumped on the train, which was already pulling out of the station. It was very dramatic. It all sounds rather exotic, given your prim and proper background.
I guess that being prudish was a crude form of idealism. But five and a half months in the jungle that first trip had its effect and I came out a very different girl. It was quite an experience for a sheltered Manhattanite, hiking through the jungle, meeting snakes and scorpions, sleeping in a hammock. Even though there were jaguars and crocodiles, the worst for me were the things that made you itch.
Of course diamonds were the object- technically speaking. For me the attraction was the word "jungle." There was a kind of rightness that one missed in New York. That was what I was unconsciously seeking. The jungle represented something you felt was missing from your New York background. Can you reach back and help me understand this? As a child I was attracted to Tarzan and everything that had to do with jungles. It seemed to me-and this is, in retrospect, that there was something primal, something right about it. Tarzan represented a pure being, somehow before the fall. It was not the diamonds I came home talking about; it was the Indians and how they lived, what kind of lives they had and what the children were like.
I was so drawn by this first experience that I made four more expeditions and on these we went into unexplored regions. The people we encountered were living in the Stone Age. I suppose I was looking for what I found and shouldn't have been so surprised when I found it, which wasn't until the fourth expedition. It was then I realized that I had unlearned a great many assumptions that I had about human nature. It became clear that we have made a terrible mistake about what human nature is. We are under the misapprehension that we're born bad, or in the official words of the Church of England, innately depraved, and that is simply not true.
How did you happen to find yourself in South America living with a community of Stone Age Indians? Tell me the story.
On my first trip abroad, as a good American girl from New York, I first went to France then to Italy where I was introduced to a blond, blue-eyed Count called Eurico. He was so successful with the girls that he had become extremely conceited. I would not have anything to do with him; except for the fact that he was soon leaving to look for diamonds in the South American jungle and had fascinating stories to tell about his adventures. As he was saying god-buy to his friends he suddenly turned and asked me: "Why don't you come to the jungle with us?"
Even though I found him terribly arrogant the thought of the jungle was thrilling, so I immediately said yes. We had just twenty minutes before the train left, so we rushed to my hotel, threw a few things into a suitcase, rushed across this huge piazza, and jumped on the train, which was already pulling out of the station. It was very dramatic. It all sounds rather exotic, given your prim and proper background.
I guess that being prudish was a crude form of idealism. But five and a half months in the jungle that first trip had its effect and I came out a very different girl. It was quite an experience for a sheltered Manhattanite, hiking through the jungle, meeting snakes and scorpions, sleeping in a hammock. Even though there were jaguars and crocodiles, the worst for me were the things that made you itch.
Of course diamonds were the object- technically speaking. For me the attraction was the word "jungle." There was a kind of rightness that one missed in New York. That was what I was unconsciously seeking. The jungle represented something you felt was missing from your New York background. Can you reach back and help me understand this? As a child I was attracted to Tarzan and everything that had to do with jungles. It seemed to me-and this is, in retrospect, that there was something primal, something right about it. Tarzan represented a pure being, somehow before the fall. It was not the diamonds I came home talking about; it was the Indians and how they lived, what kind of lives they had and what the children were like.
I was so drawn by this first experience that I made four more expeditions and on these we went into unexplored regions. The people we encountered were living in the Stone Age. I suppose I was looking for what I found and shouldn't have been so surprised when I found it, which wasn't until the fourth expedition. It was then I realized that I had unlearned a great many assumptions that I had about human nature. It became clear that we have made a terrible mistake about what human nature is. We are under the misapprehension that we're born bad, or in the official words of the Church of England, innately depraved, and that is simply not true.