At the dawn of the twenty-first century, we humans find ourselves in the position of having to collectively make some far-reaching decisions about water (e.g., those involving quality and quantity).  Much has been and will be written about the upcoming decision-making process and the factors that are most relevant to our arriving at those decisions.  Some people believe that technology will ultimately provide the solutions we seek, while others maintain that we cannot even begin to solve our current water-related challenges from essentially the same perception of water that initially gave rise to those challenges.  According to the latter viewpoint, a fundamental shift in our perception of water will likely be required to address the water-related challenges that we now face.  How might we alter our collective perception of water?  In order to answer this question, we need to take a brief look at our postmodern perception of water----at least that commonly held by people in the industrialized Western world.

Ancient Knowings

It is frequently argued that the relationship between postmodern humans and water is actually unrelated to water laws, regulations, or management plans.  These rules and guidelines simply reflect our collective perception of water.  In other words, our challenges with water arise primarily out of our underlying perception of water and only secondarily out of the institutions that reinforce such a perception.  For instance, water is routinely bought, sold, stored, and distributed as a commodity because that is exactly how we perceive water.  So, why are so many people outraged by the prospect of the planet's water resources being privately owned and dispensed according to the highest financial gain (as are many other natural resources)?  The answer seems to be that water constitutes a natural resource quite unlike most others.  Why so?  Well, many people feel that water is just simply different.  Similar to air and sunlight, access to water is considered by many postmodern Westerners to constitute a kind of "birthright.” In other words, access to useable clean water is a privilege derived from our being born on Earth.  By contrast, most ancient and indigenous cultures considered water to be a sacred gift that was given them, rather than an inherent privilege that was owed them. Water was neither assumed to be a birthright nor relegated to the stature of a commodity.  

It appears that many ancient peoples intuited or experienced a connection between water and the process of creating the material world. Water was a tangible link between the manifested realm they perceived with their gross senses and the realm of Spirit that they perceived with their hearts.  Their knowing was based neither on an intellectual understanding of water's physical properties nor on its value as a commodity, but instead on an intimate relationship with water's essence.  Most of us postmodern Westerners have an admittedly difficult time even fathoming what is to "know" water's essence.  We acknowledge (intellectually) that water is essential for biological life and is aesthetically pleasing; however, we certainly do not relate to water as animate or sentient or truly sacred.  Did these ancient perceptions of water simply die with their respective cultures or were they somehow carried forward in time?  The answer is twofold.  Many of today's indigenous peoples, especially those with limited exposure to the industrialized world, have retained a perception of water similar to that of their ancestors.  This is not true for most of us postmodern Westerners due, in large part, to a gradual shift in our perception of water that was initiated during the Renaissance period.  

With the dawning of Renaissance era, humans began to look at water in a number of heretofore-novel ways.  While losing little of its mystique as a symbol of the chaos or primordial sea from which everything is created, water caught the attention of artists and naturalists who were intently focused on water's intricate and inspirational movements within the natural world.  Leonardo da Vinci is perhaps the best known of the Renaissance artists who was fascinated with water's vortices and other recognizable flowforms.  Similar to ancient peoples, da Vinci was convinced that water and, in particular, its vortical motion held the key to understanding and utilizing the power of the universe.  At the same time, a new breed of naturalists began to study Nature in terms of aesthetic attributes that could be quantified using simple mathematics.  As such, the naturalists' path (predominantly holistic) was more similar to that of ancient peoples' (predominantly experiential) than to the path of the subsequent scientists (predominantly reductionist), who would soon set out in search of the physical basis for water's uniqueness by studying its component particles and processes.

Five hundred years after Leonardo da Vinci accurately sketched the three-dimensional movements of water, naturalists are still describing water's intricate flowforms and its mediation between the seen and unseen worlds.  Many twentieth-century naturalists have described water in ways that are strikingly similar to ancient insights.  For example, they write of water's wisdom, memory, and versatility, as well as its mediation between both Sun and Earth and material and non-material worlds.  While certainly not science by modern standards, this type of naturalism is generally viewed as a contemporary cross between the enduring metaphors of ancient myth and the evolving explanations of modern science.  During the last two centuries, this type of naturalism was almost completely eclipsed by the only modality that most of us postmodern Westerners have ever known for understanding and describing water----namely the natural sciences.  

Toward the end Renaissance period, scientists began conducting rudimentary experiments designed to demonstrate that the four elements (i.e., fire, air, water, earth) could be created from one another and that everything was composed of differing mixtures of these four.  As such, this very early science was built upon the widespread ancient understanding of water as one of the fundamental elements that comprise the material world.  During the seventeenth century, a British scientist named Robert Boyle began to question the physical validity of this ancient dogma, thus paving the way for a host of eighteenth century European chemists to experimentally demonstrate that water was not fundamental (at least not in a scientific sense), but instead was composed of oxygen and hydrogen gases [1].  This discovery marked the beginning of the great age of water-related scientific research and essentially extricated this common substance from its ancient perceptions, which were henceforth understood to be wrong.  Science convincingly posited that ancient wisdom was a rather poor (or at least a grossly oversimplified) descriptor of water.  

Modern Understandings

As the Western world moved into the nineteenth century, scientists understood that water was a simple molecule composed of two very common atoms: hydrogen and oxygen in a 2 to 1 ratio.  During this century, there was a flurry of experiments performed on water in an attempt to explain its bizarre physical properties.  Despite the scientific interest in solving the riddle of water's anomalous behavior, scientists' first real glimpse into the magical workings of water would have to wait for the sophisticated investigative technologies of the mid-twentieth century.  It is this glimpse that would dispel the notion of water's simplicity, which had been interpreted from the earliest scientific investigations.  Water's representation as a simple collection of randomly distributed H2O molecules (forming an amorphous liquid and a crystalline solid) ended abruptly with the discovery of a vast interconnected water network and of geometric clusters formed by individual molecules.  In essence, liquid water consists of a molecular network that is constantly rearranging and reforming geometries as the connections between neighboring water molecules are feverishly shuffled.  Suddenly, the scientific perception of water was transformed from one of a relatively simple substance to one of a staggeringly complex matrix.    

Late twentieth century research emerging from scientific disciplines as diverse as astronomy, climatology, molecular biology, and physical chemistry (to mention only a few) suggests that water plays much more fundamental roles within our universe than could have been predicted as recently as twenty years ago.  We now know that water serves as an essential functioning component of biological macromolecules (e.g., DNA, proteins), a major player in all cellular processes (e.g., transport, communication), the primary mediator between solar cycles and earthly climate regimes, and a midwife in birthing stars from galactic dust and gas clouds.  Even the energy required to build, sustain, and recycle planetary and biological structures is facilitated by water's unique physical properties.  It is water's complex molecular network that is now suspected to facilitate its magic and to give rise to its bizarre physical properties.  Researchers who work at the edges of modern science maintain that water's vast and ever-changing network may serve as a massive information system----not unlike the binary system of modern computers.  While there are no scientifically accepted data to confirm such hypotheses, much of water's magic apparently lies cloaked behind the dynamics of its currently undecipherable network.  

So, of what possible value is naturalism in the scientific age?  It has been suggested that modern naturalism preserves the remaining vestiges of our experiential or intuitional link to water.  Similarly, it has been postulated that Western religion's ceremonies (e.g., baptism) retain what is left of our spiritual link to water.  Over an even longer period than was required for science to supplant naturalism as the predominant modality for studying Nature (including water), an equally monumental shift was occurring in the spiritual realm.  It is generally recognized that most ancient spiritual traditions were built upon a reverence for the physical world, including the Earth and the many components of "her" planetary body (e.g., animals, plants, water, rocks).  Not only did many of these ancient spiritual traditions place enormous import on recognizing, respecting, and thanking these earthly components (often portrayed as sentient and communicative), they encouraged people to commune with and experience their own personal connection to these fellow aspects of creation.  Humans were no more or less important than was any other aspect of the universal whole.  

By contrast, many of Western religion's tenets are cited (correctly or incorrectly) as contradicting fundamental aspects of ancient spirituality.  Mythologist and historian Joseph Campbell suggested that ancient spirituality focused on putting people in accord with their own human nature and the natural world, while today's Western religions advocate subduing one's human nature and controlling the natural world [2].  In the former, man is perceived as only one aspect of an integrated world; while in the latter, man is perceived as separate from and dominant over a segregated world.  Campbell suspects that difference between nature-oriented and human-oriented spiritual systems may have developed out of agrarian and nomadic lifestyles, respectively.  Whatever the genesis of this dichotomy, it probably behooves us to be aware of how such an anthropocentric view affects our actions toward and decisions regarding water.  Just as we seem to have substituted our personal experience of water for a scientific understanding, we may have also substituted our personal kinship and spiritual connection with water for the ceremonies that were meant to honor that kinship and connection.  

Postmodern Possibilities

Even in the midst of today's materialism, many humans seem to know somewhere deep within their psyche that water is more than it is routinely acknowledge to be.  We postmodern Westerners are incredibly fortunate in having access to the best of all possible worlds when formulating (or reformulating) our perception of water.  The natural sciences provide us with the most powerful tool for intellectually understanding water that humans have ever known.  Moreover, we have access to the insights of modern naturalists and, through their teachings, to methods of accessing and understanding Nature that date back to the Renaissance era.  Through many spiritual and religious traditions, we have access to both non-technical explanations of water and non-intellectual practices for connecting to water (e.g., meditation, prayer, sacred ritual).  Finally, anthropological and archeological studies provide us with some inkling of how ancient peoples perceived and revered water.  Although we face some challenging decisions regarding water, we postmoderners arguably possess more tools at our disposal than we ever have for meeting these challenges.  The question is how to transform these sundry techniques and diverse understandings into a twenty-first century perception of water----assuming, of course, that we desire to do so.   

Cosmologist Brian Swimme suggests that our transitioning into a new postmodern era might include acquiring an experience of the universe at the same time that we learn scientific facts about it [3].  Writer Dirk Dunbar refers to this combination of intellect and intuition/experience as integrative knowing, which he defines as an understanding or knowing that is rationally based, insightfully perceived, and experientially verifiable [4].  Our balancing between the two ways of "knowing" water may grant us a perspective that is more valuable than that from either one alone.  So, why bother reviving an experiential or intuitive connection to water?  The most compelling answer relates not to what we know about water, but instead to what we don't know.  Similar to ancient peoples, we postmoderners recognize that Nature's design is both mysterious and more intricate than we are able to interpret from our intellect and senses.  The paradox is that many of our modern-day actions lack the humility inherent in such a recognition.  In other words, we act as if we understand more about Nature (including water) than we actually do.  We think little of damming or changing the course of rivers, pumping carbon dioxide into the ocean depths, altering local precipitation patterns, and draining wetlands----all performed under the erroneous assumption that we can forecast, assess, and (if required) undo the consequences of our actions.  

Absent a personal connection to or reverence for water, we make decisions solely from an intellect that is often lacking in both knowledge and humility.  What may be required at this point in history is our discovering a postmodern connection to water that will supplement our intellectual perception of water.  Such an integrated connection to water will probably not include adopting ancient beliefs, most of which are simply not appropriate at the dawn of the twenty-first century.  Instead, our postmodern connection to water will likely emerge from a combination of science, naturalism, spirituality, art, sound, and any other modalities that we employ to rediscover water.  Can we utilize the gift of water and, at the same time, know that water is far more than that represented by its mundane uses?  How will this “knowing” change the way that water is managed?  Perhaps, the emphasis will change from managing (i.e., something we do to water) to working in concert with water and its natural cycles.  Does this mean that man-made water collection and conveyance systems will be eliminated? No, it means that the design for such systems will be influenced more by a respect for water and the intelligence of Nature than by a need to appease short-term political and financial interests.  It is our collective choice as to whether we broaden the perspective from which we make decisions regarding water.  As we ponder this choice, it might be worth each of us exploring an experiential or intuitive connection to water through whatever modalities intrigue us.