What I am is what I am
Are you what you are or what?
What I am is what I am
Are you what you are or

Oh, I’m not aware of too many things
I know what I know, if you know what I mean
Philosophy is a walk on the slippery rocks
Religion is a light in the fog
I’m not aware of too many things
I know what I know, if you know what I mean, d-doo yeah

Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians, What I Am

I had an email exchange today that got me thinking. A rhetorical question “why does she do it?” She being me, it being write about so many extremely personal issues in a wide open forum like the internet.

First, let me say that it is easier than it might be: after all, I write under a pseudonym and, originally I was very careful to keep my anonymity intact. People I knew in RL had no idea I was blogging, I kept my physical locale hidden and I changed subtle details to confound the issue. Over the years much of that has changed. I now have RL friends that read the blog and I have been quite open about where I now live (if not precise) and where I came from before. Real names of people in my life have appeared and I link to sites where I am known for who I am – both by the sites author and regular participants.

So maybe there is a little bit of fearlessness in it, but for me, that very process of learning to be fearless – specifically of honest communication – is a big part of what this blog has become about.

I have been engaging a process for some years now. A process of (re) discovering myself, of learning the most fundamental (IMO) lesson – that being honest about what you feel and hope and aspire to do in your life is always the lesser pain – and beginning to learn what it means to develop real relationship in my life. And I am doing it publicly partially because that is the point of that fundamental lesson, and because at the end of the day, I hope others can gain from my own experiences in doing this.

So far I am being rather vague and ethereal, if you will. Let’s take it down into the real world.

As anyone who has been reading knows, I believe that civilization itself is not long for this world. This gives me a certain measure of hope for the human race and the rest of the community of life. A future, Beyond Civilization, requires that we re-develop the kinds of communities that we as a species are evolved to live in. And that is the catch. For all that we have learned through the auspices of civ, we have lost so much more when it comes to the basic social skills of our ancestral societies.

I have no doubt that civilized humans (at least some percentage of us) can learn to feed ourselves off the bounty of mother earth. I have no doubt we can find shelter, clothing, water (even considering the environmental contaminants). These are all relatively simple skills. Learning to live with one another, comfortably inter-dependant, in honest relationships may well be the much harder task.

Without quite realizing it in these terms before, I find that this appears to be the task I have set for myself. Although on its face, I find this bizarre, on deeper reflection I find it absolutely…. appropriate. Beginning with my high school experiences where I found relationships that were remarkably full for our culture all the way through to my understanding of my role in those relationships then and since, I have come to understand that my common roleplay of mediator, listener, nurturer is very much WhoIAm. And moreover, it has never really been a roleplay, it has been a role-apprenticeship. I have been working to identify and learn and develop those skills that are all but lost to us.

The biggest one, I believe, is absolute openness, honesty… sharing who we are with others through the stories we have lived, holding nothing back from shame or fear or uncertainty. Please take me as I am or take me not at all.* We can pretend all we want in this civilized culture that is dying around us. But if we are to put our lives into the hands of others (even as they put their lives into our hands) – which is fundamentally what a true community is “designed” to facilitate – then trust must be absolute. Which means we can not pretend. Not to anyone else and not to ourselves.

So here, on this website that is only a hollow representation of the real world, I open up my own trust in you – my readers – and I lay it all out. At first to total strangers, because that was easier. How much pain could they cause me if they did not honor what I was offering? More recently, by increasing degrees, opening up to those I do know, and have come to trust, knowing that they could hurt me, but also knowing that at the end of the day, maintaining a lie hurts more.

*A recurring line from my friend Kenny in his song entitled “My Negativity”

Your people, enemy
My people’s hated enemy
What are you, enemy
Though a created enemy
Terminate the, enemy
Eradicate the hated enemy
I am an enemy
My very greatest enemy

Wanting, love life
Needing, kill life
Wanting, love life
Needing, kill life
Enemy

Disturbed, Conflict

There has been a lot of talk, lately, here and elsewhere about violence and it’s place (or lack thereof) in our lives. When is violence appropriate or not, is it ever appropriate? I wrote about ritualized violence previously, and re-reading that article today I find that I still agree with pretty much everything I wrote. But it does not cover the topic as thoroughly as I would now like.

Let me state for the record, I am not a practitioner of non-violence.

Nor am I a violent person. Very rarely in my life have I had any interaction with overt violence, whatsoever. I am sure I have killed millions of insects, driving down the road in my car, I’ve even killed a couple of deer the same way (I once lived in a county in Wisconsin with the highest deer population in the state. Living there for any time period and not hitting a deer would have been miraculous.) I eat meat. I have had a few occasions of getting caught up in “puff up tough guy” type situations. Generally those never have gone further than the bluff. And then there is that other thing, but we don’t need to talk about that.

In any case, I have been thinking about this a lot. One cannot read Jensen without thinking about it a lot. He challenges our self images, our holier than thou attitudes and most especially, our attitudes about violence both as victims and as perpetrators. I’m still not inclined to go out and blow up a dam. Not really my style, nor my part to play. I still believe that Rebellious Violence (…intentional application of violence to achieve a specific goal, just like Institutionalized Violence, but employed against the state rather than for it.) is generally very easy for the system to deal with. Or more specifically, that it is part of the system, a steam valve, a way for the system to release pressure without losing control. But I have to admit that Jensen does make a decent case for leveraged efforts (violent or not) and so this is something I will need to think on further.

But back to the issue of non-violence. It occurred to me as I began to write that this is always termed “practicing non-violence” and this seems telling to me. It is not a skill you learn, but rather an effort that one must “practice” forever. That, in and of itself, leads me to believe that this is an unnatural behavior pattern for humans. Hell, I would go so far as to say it is an unnatural behavior pattern for all life. Does that make it wrong? Right Wrong, Natural, un-Natural… these are all Bad Words and I hate discussions that center around them, but there is nothing much to be done about it.

Let’s try to re-frame this discussion. How is violence addressed in the world around us, outside of the civilized mindset and Institutionalized Violence and it’s ugly stepdaughters?

An old friend of mine, Ghost, introduced a framework on Ishcon which he termed the Hierarchy of Conflict Resolution and it goes like this:

1-If it’s your territory, defend
2-If it’s their territory, retreat
3-If the territory belongs to no one, contest
4-If there are no other options to that resource, contest
5-Begin all conflict resolution by attempting to come to a compromise
6-If this fails, employ aggressive behaviour designed to make the other party retreat
7-If this fails, apply force
8-If this fails, you may injure your opponent
9-If this fails, you may kill your opponent
10-If this fails, you may exterminate your opponent

The key to this tree of behavior is that at any stage, either participant may withdraw. And in most cases, outside of civilization, one or another combatant will withdraw unless the cause of the conflict is so desperate that withdrawing means almost certain death. Although it is written describing human group behaviors, the same tree can be applied to animal populations: two bull moose meet in a wood, a young wolf chooses to challenge the alpha, and so forth. And the ultimate key to these choices is what works. Or to put it in scientific terms, in a given situation, what is the evolutionarily Stable Strategy?

In civilization, there is no strategy tree. In civilization, the immediate response to challenge is annihilation. I think the practice of non-violence is a reaction to this fact. If the only options are extermination or withdrawal, there are some good arguments for withdrawal to be made. But outside of civilization, there are far more possibilities available. And even within civilization, if there is a conflict that is not directly engaging civ itself, other levels of conflict resolution can be engaged.

So what is the point of all this?

Once more, our civilized system has created a dichotomy. Annihilate or Concede, Violence or Non-Violence. Black versus white. But our real world contains all these wonderful colors of the rainbow, every shade of gray imaginable. I have never seen evil, nor good… my experience tells me that there is some of each in everything and everyone. Violence is just another piece of the dynamic puzzle that is life itself. So we can learn to manage violence or we can pretend that one day it can be eliminated entirely. I think that is a crock. Just like every other utopian ideal. It is an ideal designed to prevent us from dealing with the world the way it really is, in all of it’s luminous shades of gray.

And the angel of the lord came unto me, snatching me up from my place of slumber. And took me on high, and higher still until we moved to the spaces betwixt the air itself. And he brought me into a vast farmlands of our own midwest. And as we descended, cries of impending doom rose from the soil. One thousand, nay a million voices full of fear. And terror possesed me then. And I begged, Angel of the Lord, what are these tortured screams? And the angel said unto me, These are the cries of the carrots, the cries of the carrots! You see, Reverend Maynard, tomorrow is harvest day and to them it is the holocaust. And I sprang from my slumber drenched in sweat like the tears of one million terrified brothers and roared, Hear me now, I have seen the light! They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen? Can I get a hallelujah? Thank you Jesus.

Tool, Disgustipated

There has been an ongoing – or perhaps repeating is more appropriate – discussion on some of the sites I visit regarding ethical veganism. When I bother to comment at all, I always take the opposing position. Not because I in any way support factory farming, deforestation, ground water contamination or any of the other horrors involved in modern meat production, but because I don’t believe that it is a healthy way for humans to live.

I wrote an article, some time back, about my preferred diet, discussing the research that led to it and the reactions I and my then partner had to the change in lifestyle. Primarily, the discussion regarded weight loss and over all health. In the years since, I have gotten off of that diet – mostly because I have been lazy and working in restaurants for the last few years, so I have not been cooking at home nearly so much. Over the last several months I have been getting myself back on track but can still not truly claim that I have fully adapted again. (As I did originally, I am not wasting my time with self-recrimination, but rather doing my best to gradually refocus my energies.)

In any case, all of the discussion has gotten me thinking about the topic once more, and I realize that the other changes I have been experiencing in my life and worldview are part and parcel of this same thing. This has become, in my mind, not simply about weight loss or healthiness but also about ethics and relationship. Our relationship with our food is one of the most fundamental aspects of our day to day lives and I have come to understand, much more deeply, how this particular relationship fits into my relationship with the world around me, as a whole.

American culture, and to a lesser degree all civilized culture, is a meat eating culture. Not because of health, not because of ethics, but simply because putting meat on the table every night is a symbol of affluence. My father’s family was very poor and he talks, sometimes, about eating beans day after day, every meal. As a result, when he began to be successful, not only did he want meat for every meal, he wanted steak. Whether he realized it or not, this was not only a function of taste or texture, but was probably a significant symbolic representation of leaving the poor farmers life behind.

In reading Derrick Jensen, recently, he has made the point a few times that if you challenge someone’s entitlement they are going to react strongly, with rising hatred, perhaps violence to that challenge. (He specifically notes that violence against blacks significantly increased first with the abolition of slavery and again with the rise of civil rights activism. It was only when the perceived entitlement of white man over black was challenged that true hatred arose.)

This weekend, Dave linked to a NYT editorial on the ethics of veganism. In that article, the writer states “By and large, meat-eaters are a self-righteous bunch.” Of course, I have always found the opposite to be true. When discussing food choices with a vegetarian, or worse, a vegan, there have been only a few occasions that I have not felt looked down upon. After all, they are making conscious choices, based on clear ethics while I, supposedly, am not. At the same time, I have seen some of the aggressiveness and rising anger delivered by meat eaters toward veg*ns. Ah ha, she says – it is that challenge on our entitlement, once again. Yes, of course there is going to be some pretty heavy rhetoric on both sides.

So let me state, for the record right here and now – I do not feel “entitled” to eat meat. I am not a superior being, with animals meant to serve me — neither because of our supposedly superior spirit, nor because of our supposedly superior intellect. I don’t hate, nor am I angry with veg*ns for challenging the ethics of my choices, and in fact, we have had some very useful and enlightening discussions regarding food choices. (I have also had some really horrible such conversations, because the assumption is made, by the people I am talking to, that I am following the standard entitlement response, whether the understand the mechanics or not). Further, my dietary choices are not being made blindly, but are, in fact, part of my total ethical view of the world.

And that is exactly what I want to talk about today.

When I began using the paleo diet it appealed to me on a couple levels. First, as a big proponent of evolutionary theory, I approved of the fact that it was based on how our bodies evolved. I have seen plenty of arguments from the veg*n set that our bodies are fundamentally designed as herbivores. The argument is that because our GT tract is more similar to a herbivore than a carnivore, then we must be herbivores ourselves. Without getting into specific details, using well chosen examples, one can “prove” anything about any animals dietary choices. Particularly when discussing omnivores. Because evolution is not linear, adaptation to changing conditions takes on different forms. Pandas have the GI tract of a carnivore, yet they eat bambo – their adaptation to their diet took a completely different path from other herbivores. We evolved from insectivores turned omnivores (primarily frugivore(fruit)/insectivore. (And I have never heard a veg*n address insectivores at all. I would be interested to see that discussion). In any case, we can and do digest animal products with reasonable efficiency, we can and do digest fruit, nuts and vegetables with reasonable efficiency, we do NOT digest grass or fiberous plants efficiently, at all.

The other reason it appealed to me: I had already embarked on a process of learning how our ancestors lived sustainably in the world before the coming of civilization. I was very much interested in what worked and using that as a basis for developing sustainable cultures in the future. So looking at how those same ancestors ate and using that as a model seemed quite appropriate to me. It still does, as far as that goes.

Once I embarked on the paleo diet I had another reason to become a proponent: it worked for me. As I discussed in the other article, between weight reduction (which I needed), muscle mass increases, and overall healthfulness, I was convinced.

So far, everything I have spoken of has been purely physical. But there is more.

I have been an “animist” all of my life, even before I had any clue what that meant. (I was duped into the civilized definition, which is a pale representation of what it really means). As I read about traditional cultures and spoke with others that had looked even further, I began to grasp what it was really about. Over the last six months I have begun to discover, of my own experience what it really is. First and foremost, and hardest for most people to grasp, animism is a monist worldview. I wrote of this, in three parts (part 1, part 2, part 3) a while back, but at its core, all it really means is that there is no other. When I speak of physical, or I speak of spiritual these are different perspectives of the same thing. Like describing the top of my table, and then changing my view and describing the underside. In fact, very much like that. The easily seen vs the sometimes hidden. But still very much there, very much real and simply waiting to be attended to.

Second, animism is about relationship. And relationship, above all else, requires attention. If you have a friend whom you never pay attention to, then that is really not a friend – the relationship is hollow and meaningless. The same is true of our relationship with the world around us. Most of us have no relationship at all because we do not attend to the world, and its myriad individuals, except in the most superficial ways. But when we begin to pay attention (and this is more difficult than it sounds), we begin to find the world and its myriad individuals paying attention right back, and this is when relationship begins to develop.

So what does this have to do with paleo diet or veg*ism? An ethical veg*n will give all sorts of reasons why one should not use animal products, yet vegetable products are all right. Many of these arguments are well thought out and supported. Yet they always ignore one key point (or dismiss it, or find a way to divert to discussing land usage etc): plants, too, are alive. We do not eat without another dying. Period. So while they might choose to eat off a lower trophic level, they are still engaging in the fundamentally civilized act of taking life without giving anything back.

As an animist, my goal is to accept the responsibility of eating fully. Someone must die that I can live. (Or, someone must never achieve life so that I may eat – eggs and fruit). In accepting that responsibility, I am accepting my part in the circle of life – the debt I owe to the living community I am part of, the responsibility I bear to maintain its health and vigor, and my responsibility to give back.

Of course, intellectually and morally accepting these things is only the first part of the process. Because once this responsibility is assumed, one must still act. For me, that means that my goal is to eventually procure all of my food directly from my community – I don’t mean the town I live in, but the community of life I am part of. It means that I need to reconcile my actions within and toward the civilization that is destroying that community. (Thus, my recent reading of and thoughts on Jensen) It means expanding those relationships to their fullest (my continuing self study of animism). It means discovering more ways to give back: rewilding the land around me, humanure, water purification, mico-remediation, the list goes on. And ultimately, it means giving my life that others may feast of it. (Whether eaten by another carnivore [unlikely], or planted beneath a sapling to be feasted on by microbes, fungi, and eventually the tree itself.)

So please, continue the discussion of food, of ethics, and the damage we are doing to our home, but remember, that those of us that do choose to eat meat are not all lazy, blind, cruel or unethical. There is a valid place for omnivorous human animals. The question is in how it all fits together, not merely what “it” is on its face.

Watch out you might get what you’re after
Cool baby strange but not a stranger
I’m an ordinary guy
Burning down the house

Hold tight wait ’til the party’s over
Hold tight we’re in for nasty weather
There has got to be a way
Burning down the house

Talking Heads, Burning Down the House

I’ve been reading Derrick Jensen’s Endgame. Part one is subtitled The Problem of Civilization. I still have another hundred pages, or so, left to read but there has been something bothering me since I started and I think I have finally pinned it down. (In fact, I noticed the same thing when I read A Language Older Than Words, but it was even vaguer then)

There is a disconnect. Derrick goes to great pains to prove (and I think he does) that ours is a culture of abusers, and that we are abusers because we have been abused ourselves for our entire lives. It is well known that children that have been abused grow up to become abusers more often the not – the trauma being too great for most people to overcome. Not that it is impossible, just that the process of healing from trauma takes a lot of luck (in having people around you that can and will help), a lot of strength of will (to face the abuse and the emotional damage it creates), and a lot of time and willingness to let-self-heal.

On the other side of this is the language of stopping that abuse: stopping them, specifically. And the repeated rejection of the idea of our own responsibility, our own complicity, in this culture of destruction.

If we are all abused and therefor we are mostly abusers ourselves, then who are they and how can we be so arrogant to point our fingers at this supposed other that is to blame?

I have always been very comfortable with pointing at “the system” — and acknowledging that some people embrace the system even as others of us have begun to spurn it. Hell, my parents embrace it, as does my sister, so how can I point at them and still face my own life and loved ones?

But last night I realized two things. First is the shamans mind. One of the defining characteristics of a traditional shaman is the he (sic) can simultaneously hold two contradictory ideas in his mind at one time. More precisely, as I have come to connect more and more with the community of life I have come to see: what our western ethnology sees as conflicting ideas, are in fact not in conflict to the shaman – but rather different facets of the same vista.

So how does this apply?

We ARE all responsible, we are all complicit. Our every action has an impact on the overall destruction of our landbases. There is NO way around this. We are, all of us, victims of abuse and fundamentally damaged as a result. So we are all, forgivable, in that we understand the trauma we have been forced to endure. And, as Dave discussed today, we are all constrained by the system that is civilization. Whether homeless man on the street, peasant in China, businessman in Rome or President of the United States, there are only so many options that we can take in a given situation. If Obama were to announce tomorrow that the dismantling of industrial civilization were to commence on Monday, you can be certain that he would no longer be president by Sunday.

The second thing I realized, that nonetheless, there IS a valid they to point at and reproach. Most of us are constrained into inaction, or simply numbed to the systemic reality of our day to day actions. We don’t know what to do, so we allow ourselves to forget, we refuse to see, we make our excuses and take our daily soma. But there are some, and we probably each know a few, that do not need soma. They are so damaged, so incapable of normal, human empathy, so inured to personal responsibility that they can and do pursue the fundamental goals of the civilizational system with relish. They are, in every meaningful sense of the word, sociopaths. They are not redeemable, they are not curable, and most often, their psychosis leads them into positions of power, simply because they are quite willing and able to use the system as any borderline sane person cannot.

Now, I think Derrick is quite correct that we are all insane. But for most of us that means we are delusional, emotionally unstable, mildly narcissistic, and abusive. But what do we do about those that DO cross over into psychosis? The only answer to that is another question. What does our culture normally do with sociopaths? Or, to be even more blunt, what do traditional societies do with their sociopaths (as rare as they are) if they are determined to be unreachable, unmanageable and dangerous to the community?

Now, I am in no way suggesting that eliminating a few psychotics will “save the world.” In this civilization with billions of humans there are certainly millions that are too damaged to be salvagable. But understanding this is useful in that we can be responsible for our own actions, our own collusion, our own part in the matrix while at the same time understanding that we, also, are not responsible. We can choose to apply our own unique gifts and passions to unmake what has been made, to do less harm, to live as “harmless as a lion”, to create something new and functional and native to our landbases. And we can do all of this without carrying the guilt and hopelessness that civilization offers as our heritage. Because we didn’t do it. But we do bear the responsibility for the choices we make moving into the future.

So we each have to decide, now and in the future, what choices those are going to be.

mr. mr. you make me sick
i ain’t gonna fall for that same old trick
won’t you turn around and take a trip back
to the other side of town you drip buttercup
buttercup you’re all washed up
get out of my face and shut the fuck up
no business cards or that fake ass stuff
bouncer’s on your ass so you better hurry up
take a look don’t you know i don’t care about you
not a one thing you won’t do
to get attention from the ones who ignore
now don’t cast all your friends away
there’s only one thing i can say
hey man you’re sick and rotten to the core
hey you’re all washed up
would you please shut up
take a walk that way
hey you’re all washed up

The Urge, All Washed Up

Uggh.

Went out to the bar again last night. It was fun, played some pool, flirted a lot, came home late and slept too little.

And now I think I’ve had enough of that for a while. Just feeling kinda grungy and worn out. Maybe I’m getting to old for this shit.

Nah…. it’s more than that. Fun is fun, but when it comes down to it, I am well aware of who I am and what I am about, and I am decidedly not about the same things that drive the bar scene in this (or any) town. So while it can be mildly entertaining and, lately, massive food for my ego, I’m really far more interested in people who like me for whoIam rather than those that (think they) like me for howIlook.

And quite frankly, I do have a little down time for the next few months so I can spend a little bit of it just playing and having fun, but I have no interest in that as a lifestyle. And the people I know at the bar – that IS their lifestyle. Phooey.

The good news? It only took me a couple of weeks to put this all together… or remember it, or whatever. I dunno… maybe it shouldn’t have even taken that long. Maybe I’m just rambling… but I feel better about it all now that I stopped and looked at the other side of play time.

Balance. Balance is good.

This is the story of a girl
Who cried a river and drowned the whole world
And while she looks so sad in photographs
I absolutely love her
When she smiles

How many days in a year
She woke up with hope but she only found tears
and I can be so insincere,
Making the promises never for real
As long as she stands there waiting
Wearing the holes in the soles of her shoes
How many days disappear?
When you look in the mirror so how do you choose?

Three Doors Down, Story of a Girl

This morning I spent some time listening to an interview with Doug Elliott. Doug is a naturalist and professional storyteller, and he was speaking about how to use and develop story in the context of nature-based education.

It was a great interview on all different levels. They covered a number of different topics and interspersed throughout were Doug’s stories and anecdotes. If you have half an hour to spend, I highly recommend checking it out.

A couple of things struck me. The first was on the negative side. Brother Wolf (the host) asked Doug how people that do not have exposure to nature do… whatever. So wait. How does one not have exposure to nature? It is the air we breathe, the food we eat, it is, quite literally, all around us whether deep in the barrio or on the side of a mountain. Walking down a city street it takes a certain perpetuated blindness to not see the weeds pushing up between the blocks of cement in the sidewalk, the crow or pigeon feeding by the roadside, the insects, rats, and raccoons feeding on human detritus. Granted, many people have learned this blindness, but that simply means that they need a little help to see once more. If they are willing to leave the city to “find nature” then first they should be reminded that they don’t need to leave the city to find “nature.”

Doug did not address the question this way. He spoke instead about how simple a day trip into the countryside can be, of how many people take the time to do so and how rewarding it can be for them. All true, but perpetuating the myth that nature is other.

The more important thing I took out of the article relates to story creation. They discuss how heavily environmental and nature education relies on Native American stories and the problems inherent to this. A few months ago, I began thinking about creating stories around the native plants in my area. Stories that would help explain and remind of their appearance, their properties, their uses and so forth. Jason and Giuli had done this years ago with some of their native plants. They created mythological tales, with anthropomorphised characters, and human drama. Its a brilliant memory technique and it helps in re-integrating oral techniques and skills back into a community.

Listening to Doug’s responses, however, I realized that this was a hollow representation of what we really need. What we need, if we are to re-embrace orality, is true stories. The stories of how we (I) first discovered a plant, how I learned more about it, the mistakes I made and the lessons I learned. Stories do not need to be mythological. But they do need to be true. Mind, I am not dismissing native mythological tales… because these tales developed in concert with the cultures they are a part of: they are true. No one sat down and created them of whole cloth, as Jason and Guili did, or as I had envisioned myself doing.

More importantly, I realized that by telling true stories, however hum drum they may seem to us – we are setting down the foundations that will lead to creating new culture(s). So often we want to jump right to the point of complete culture, but that can only be a cheap imitation of the real thing. Real culture: culture with depth and complexity and resilience can only come about through generations of experience. So I think we need to embrace taking those first steps, allow those first steps to be simple — hum drum, even –, and always, always true. (True does not mean without embellishment, it means based upon our real life experiences, meaningful in context of our real lives, and useful and interesting in the re-telling)

Hey you, Whitehouse,
Ha ha charade you are.
You house proud town mouse,
Ha ha charade you are
You’re trying to keep our feelings off the street.
You’re nearly a real treat,
All tight lips and cold feet
And do you feel abused?
…..! …..! …..! …..!
You gotta stem the evil tide,
And keep it all on the inside.
Mary you’re nearly a treat,
Mary you’re nearly a treat
But you’re really a cry.

Pink Floyd, Pigs(Three Different Ones)

So yesterday I mentioned a new animal. I am temporarily, indefinitely, cat-sitting for Eddie. His current pad does not allow pets, and he will be moving again soon, don’t yet know where or what the rules will be.

Jungle Kitty

Her name is Bast (yeah, yeah, I know) and she is six months old, a little bit on the mean side and not quite sure how she really wants to deal with anything.

Kitty identity crisis.

But she is also a beautiful cat, and young enough that she is quite capable of getting past all this.

Angel, in the meantime, loves the idea of having a new playmate. She just doesn’t understand why Bast is so reluctant to play. On the up side, I’m already seeing that Bast does want to play, but as soon as she starts, she gets suddenly nervous, realizing what she’s just done. Already, Angel has learned to back off and wait for the cat to come to her. And Bast is realizing it, even if she doesn’t yet trust it. I give it a few more days before her intellectual response catches up with her instinctive – and then the two of them will become fast friends.

In the meantime, if they are both awake and about, there is a constant background hum of kitty growls and occasional explosions of puppy barking. Really, only the barking is bothering me – Angel has been really good about not being a barker, so I am working hard on making certain that this experience doesn’t screw that up.

We lost ourselves in these bright lights and cigarettes.
We became our charade.
A classic primetime tragedy, so skin graphed, a romantically hopeless war path.
Statistically the cameras said.
That lovers like us die, in car wrecks.

Mathematically incorrect, you fuckers ain’t seen nothin yet.
And baby tonight we’ll be the robots in the spotlight.
We lost ourselves in these bright lights and cigarettes.
We became our charade.
A classic primetime tragedy, so skin graphed, a romantically hopeless warpath.
Statistically the cameras set.
And lovers like us die in car wrecks.

Odd Project, Statistics Like Cigarettes

I have a new animal in the house today…. I’ll talk more about that tomorrow. To tide ya over….

I read another article today that paints our future pretty much hosed. Of course, it was written from the perspective of someone who wants to save civilization and specifically the “american” way of life. And, of course, statistics can be made to say anything. Nonetheless, it covers the whole gamut of what is going in the American Economic system, the ecological crisis, and so forth. Read it if you like, just keep in mind the perspective and assumptions beneath the “call to arms.”

This was an email sent to me… about a wealthy man showing his son how poor people live… I couldn’t help myself… I had to play with it a little and re-present it in it’s modified form

One day, the father of a civilized family took his son on a trip with the express purpose of showing him how primitive people live.

They spent a couple of days and nights visiting an aboriginal tribe.

On their return from their trip , the father asked his son , “How was the trip?”

“It was great , Dad.”

“Did you see how primitive people live?” the father asked.

“Oh yeah , ” said the son.

“So , tell me , what did you learn from the trip?” asked the father.

The son answered:

“I saw that we have one dog and they had a whole pack.

We have a pool that reaches to the middle of our garden and they have a creek that has no end.

We have imported lanterns in our garden and they have the stars at night.

Our patio reaches to the front yard and they have the whole horizon.

We have a small piece of land to live on and they have forests and prairies that go beyond our sight.

We have servants who serve us , but they serve one another.

We buy our food , but they merely have to pick it up.

We rely on our occupation and money, they rely on the Earth to provide.

We have walls around our property to protect us , they have friends to protect them.”

The boy’s father was speechless.

Then his son added , “Thanks Dad for showing me how primitive we are.”

I’ve got your picture, I’ve got your picture
I’d like a million of them all ’round myself
I want a doctor to take your picture
So I can look at you from inside as well
You’ve got me turning up I’m turning down
I’m turning in I’m turning ’round

I’m turning Japanese
I think I’m turning Japanese
I really think so
Turning Japanese
I think I’m turning Japanese
I really think so
I’m turning Japanese
I think I’m turning Japanese
I really think so
Turning Japanese
I think I’m turning Japanese
I really think so

The Vapors, Turning Japanese

In the ongoing discussion with Vera a few more things have occurred to me (thanks Vera!)

Agriculture… Horticulture… Cultivation… whatever really does not matter. Sure, it is good for communication to be using terms that everyone understands in the same way (which was the originally premise of the other article), but the simple fact remains that for every rule there is an exception. So no matter the means of subsistence, the true, key factor isn’t a factor at all. It’s the total system.

I questioned, in our discussion, whether Egyptian agriculture was, in fact, agriculture at all by the terms of diminishing returns. And now that I really think about that, it may honestly be a valid question. But there is no question, whatsoever, that the Egyptians were civilized and subject to all of the issues of sustainability that are at the core of the discussion. Alternately, there is no question that the salmon based northwestern US tribes were foragers, yet they had the population and population dynamics (emergent hierarchy etc) that would be classified as a chiefdom and therefore, perhaps well on its way to becoming civilized. We’ll never know if their limitations were sufficient to prevent such a thing from happening, because Europeans stepped in and did what colonizers always do.

So if there is no one thing that can be pointed to as a baseline, where does that leave us?

I’m going to attempt to draw a correlation here, and we’ll see, once I am done if it works.

My friend Jason did a presentation at the Three River’s Bioneers conference last month? Two months back, maybe. In it, he discussed the fact that Europeans, as “colonizers,” have never become native to their place. Specifically, he was talking about North America. His family, after nearly four hundred years of habitation, is no more native to this place than the recent immigrant. Instead, we have tried to recreate Europe on American soil. And, to a certain degree we have succeeded (if you want to call what we have done “success”.)

Let me suggest a furtherance of that thought. European culture is no more native in Europe than it is in America. Bear with me.

If we look at native american civilizations: the aztec and inca, the mississipians, etc…. all of these cultures were native to the place where they existed. Many were well known for leaving local culture intact, even as they imposed outside economic control. So whether one was looking at the core, or the outliers of these civilizations, the inhabitants were very much a part of their land and traditional culture. Screwed up, violent, hierarchal, absolutely. But still, fundamentally, native.

In contrast, European culture, from the time that agriculture arrived, was fundamentally not native for one very specific reason: the food stuffs they were growing were not native. In order to embrace these new plants, new techniques, new life strategies the people needed to separate themselves from the natural ecology of their place. Civilizations were not born in Europe, they were imported. The agricultural system itself was the original “colonizer” of Europe.

What I don’t know – and I am too lazy to research at this point in my life – is how this idea relates to the other regions of the Earth where agriculture developed: primarily China (yellow river) and India. How much of their systems were indigenous, how much was imported? Specifically, did peoples in these regions walk away when their agricultural systems failed, or did they press on no matter the cost? Europeans always pressed on. Perhaps partly due to luck, but also, largely, because they could not imagine that any other way of living was acceptable. Is this true in other places, with indigenous civilizations? Obviously in the Americas, native civilizations led to sustainable after-cultures. (The mayans, the pueblo peoples/anasazi, the mississippians) What about the rest of the world?

If anyone knows – or is interested in taking the time to find out, that would be fabulous. I would be interested in the answers. But for myself, I am far more interested in trekking out into my backyard for further education than I am in delving into ancient history.

One final thought. Although I am proposing another possibility for “the thing,” this also comes with a realization on my part that there is no “thing” that can be pointed to as the end all be all of sustainable vs not. Looking at systems is more useful than looking at items, but systems, themselves are merely nested sets of greater systems. So looking at one, by itself, is simply another form of reductionism. And our answers won’t be found with reductionism. But perhaps this particular “thing” I am proposing is another piece of the puzzle.