When I have shared Quaker insights with them they have looked sideways in surprise at me. They are the people nearest to hunter-gatherers who I have known very closely. Conclusions For 3 million years our immediate and distant ancestors were hunter-gatherer apes, hominids and humans. Only in the last 10,000 years have we given up that long-evolved way of life. We have not had time to evolve to fit the urban lives we now lead.
Urbanisation is a late, uncontrolled, uncertain experiment.
Quakerism seems to me to reach back very sensibly, in many ways to the natural dynamics we have evolved to near perfection. Quakerism can become hell, though, when we try to hold together groups of a size to naturally split, gather for longer than is natural and try to dictate rather than simply share naturally our varied and diverse spirituality. But then any society which lives contrary to our 3 million years of evolution can become hell. Let's take notice of our evolutionary and our Quaker heritages. Let us see the strongest, most enduring wisdom where they coincide.