The Study of All Existence Toward Global Symbiosis

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Published: Sep 20, 2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.22339/jbh.v6i2.6203

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Barry Rodrigue
Symbiosis School for Liberal Arts, Symbiosis International University

Abstract

There is a long history of stories about events that threaten the end of the world or about life after a major catastrophe. The Naxi Annals of Creation and the Mesopotamian Gilgamesh Epic tell of floods that all but end life on Earth. H.G. Well’s 1897 story, War of the Worlds, is about Martians invading Earth, but who themselves are killed by a terrestrial epidemic. The 1954 Japanese film, ゴジラ (Godzilla), is about a marine reptile mutated by nuclear radiation that attacks humans. We love to be horrified by such fantasies, but these stories also grab our attention because there is a strong element of truth in them: Human life is precarious.

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Issue
Vol. 6 No. 2 (2023): Journal of Big History Vol 6 No 2 2023
Section
Articles
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Author Biography

Barry Rodrigue, Symbiosis School for Liberal Arts, Symbiosis International University

Barry H. Rodrigue is a geographer, archaeologist, and professor of anthropology at the Symbiosis School for Liberal Arts, Symbiosis International University in India. He was a founding member of the International Big History Association, the Asian Big History Association, and the Indian Association for Big History. Along with Andrey Korotayev and Leonid Grinin, he compiled the three-volume collection, From Big Bang to Galactic Civilizations: A Big History Anthology, which includes chapters by one hundred scholars from two dozen nations. Barry serves on the editorial boards of History, Archaeology and Ethnography of the Caucasus (a journal of the Daghestan Scientific Centre, Russian Academy of Sciences) and on that of the first anthropology journal in South Asia – Man in India. He sees the use of Big History’s micro / macro lens as an important tool for humanity’s understanding of its place in the cosmos as well as a key to our survival as a species on Earth. He may be contacted at <rodrigue@archinets.org>.