Our Mission

We three Baldwin brothers – Ian, Michael, and Philip - were born immediately before, during, and after World War II. Over time, the war and its mythos brought us together in a quest to comprehend the root causes of human cruelty. Also, the pronounced post-war disrespect and disregard for nature – the wellspring of our identity as beings here on Earth – ignited in us a passion to understand the root causes of this peculiarly unique aspect of our human condition.

Humans did not begin to organize themselves in civilizations because they suddenly discovered agriculture a few thousand years ago. Nor did civilization begin at Sumer. Our future is clouded because our understanding of the past is misinformed and thus obscure to us. We are cut off from our origin stories. As evidence emerges that human civilizations existed before and during the end of the last ice age, 11,000 years ago, we remain blind to this emerging reality. As well, we ignore the challenges such evidence might pose to our current worldview, which permits war and ecocide to relentlessly continue.

If humans possessed highly sophisticated astronomical, botanical, mechanical, and psycho-spiritual understanding 15,000 or more years ago, what might become today of our myth of “progress”? Of our perceived invincibility?

Despite their differences, the great religions of our world have been united by one profound concern and value: human kindness, compassion, and love. To this day, indigenous cultures possess complex cosmologies that point to the same wisdom.

Why have these religions failed us for most of history, and especially now, in our so-called modern or “scientific” times?

How might the ultimate values of our world religions and the varied cosmologies of our world’s indigenous tribes be reinvigorated to guide us in our struggle to change our behavior toward one other and to nature?

We explore these two questions through our conversations here at Three Brothers Quest.