[I am traveling and so taking a break from writing Let’s Go Wild. This is the first half, 9 July will have the remainder. This essay is three years old. Yes, it’s long. It’s complicated….]
Expanding Enlivenment
This essay is inspired by the work of many, but especially Andreas Weber. His writing on this topic, and his use of the word “Enlivenment” as the next step after “Enlightenment”, inspired me to share my experiences on the development of my own view of our world and embodiment in this amazing adventure we call “life”.
Where are we now?
We think we humans are rational, caring beings with a say in what happens in our lives. We praise Science, we (try to) vote intelligently, we make charity donations, we wear crosses (or other religious paraphernalia). Don’t remind me that most of the chemicals used today have not been proven safe, especially when randomly mixed. Don’t remind me that we have used what we observe about gravity to send men to the Moon and return them safely to Earth, without being able to explain what causes gravity. Don’t remind me that we still can’t explain to most people if light is a particle or a waveform. Don’t remind me that medicine is a practice, not a Law of Nature. Don’t remind me of the myriad ways I can be prevented from voting, not the least of which is the sense that my vote doesn’t count anyway, or that the current two-party system is an abomination as both are controlled by corporate campaign money. Don’t remind me that giving your old, faded clothing to Goodwill and feeling proud that you are generous is not actually being charitable. Don’t remind me that requiring an intermediary, be they your pastor or Jesus, to connect us with our true reality is not how humans evolved.
And then…Covid. Pay no attention to the lack of “peer-reviewed” research proving that “social distancing” is effective or that masks prevent illness. Ignore the efforts to downplay the healing effects of a safe medication we have used for 70 years (hydroxychloroquine) that costs pennies per treatment, in favor of an expensive, unverified and barely safety tested, medicine or vaccine. Don’t question the lack of information about reported asymptomatic transmission, or how aerosols routinely spread disease, or how fudged (or outright imaginary) data has passed peer-review, or why it took so long to develop (and manufacture) a deeply flawed, inaccurate testing protocol in the U.S. Process questions about every failure or supposed “division” in terms of opportunities to make a profit and it becomes clear that our belief in scarcity and competition, contrary to how Nature functions, is deeply problematic. Within a society that lacks unbiased, proven information and context; that lacks a sense of a Commons worthy of our protection; that lacks critical thinking skills to determine truth or lie; that lacks any sense that community health is paramount; and that lacks any ability to limit the damage we cause when we value profit over any other human value; it should not be surprising to find no institutions in society that remain ethical, or even functional, today. A recent trend towards degradation is accelerating: government at all levels is being sold to the highest bidder, even as the peoples’ ability to contribute to campaigns is quite limited (demoralizing or driving away many conscientious public servants); imperialism in search of necessary resources continues to expand in both reach and violence; pollution and all-around toxicity increases as health and education quality declines; access to food and housing becomes more precarious for tens of millions; and social interactions become problematic, full of rage and violence. When the novel Coronavirus struck worldwide in 2020, three years into the Trump administration, only a third of the positions a President appoints in the Department of Homeland Security had been filled, a statistic repeated across most federal agencies. This deregulation by avoiding Congressional approval, alongside Congress cutting the budgets of most agencies in order to add to the spending that keeps the military-industrial complex happy, is leading the charge downward. Now many regulatory boards can’t muster a quorum, many watchdog positions are vacant or have been deleted, and whistleblowers are punished while the wrongdoing they reveal goes unpunished. Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and Covid-19 testing programs had to wait until Big Pharma could make a scandalous amount of profit with rushed and inaccurate tests. I hate to break it to you, but Biden is not the antidote to Trump; ending capitalism is. And more importantly, seeing the world as it truly is will be a key to surviving, and thriving, in the midst of all of this chaos.
How did we get here?
Much is made of the “progress” within society and culture that arose because of our “Enlightenment”. Where before we viewed our world through a lens of myth and magic, the birth of science and the insights of Newton and his explanation for how “Laws of Nature” made our Universe into a pile of parts that humans could reorganize and manipulate to fulfill our desires drove us into today’s technology. This was a huge shift in perspective. We transitioned from a view that firmly places humans inside an ever-changing network of relationships, where no single type of energy is exceptional or able to stand alone, to one where humans are the peak of Creation and the world is our sandbox in which we build ephemeral castles. We still seek the tiniest bit of matter that comprises all we see around us, in vain. We use the metaphor of a clock, describing the Universe as lots of intricate, finely-tuned pieces that are assembled to produce a useful tool or outcome. We call this view Newtonian physics, and we think it is the only true way to understand our Universe.
Over a century ago, a few physicists began to explore Quantum Physics (QP). QP posits a different view of our universe, the polar opposite of Newtonian physics. It describes our world as energy, not particles; as relational, not mechanical; and as subjective, not objective. It proves what many have claimed for millennia: that relationships are primary, that we are all connected in the Web of Life, and that humans have a key role to play in our world but are not the golden, exceptional, and dominant capstone on a pyramid of life. In our still-limited understanding of this perspective, the foundation of all existence is energy; some call it the ground of being, others a zero-point field. This is inherently counter-intuitive and difficult to grasp. The chair I am sitting on, the table that holds the laptop I am using to write this essay, the food I ate for breakfast; all of these things appear to be solid, made of matter and not “merely” energy. How can there be no actual tiny, hard “bit of stuff” inside every atom? Adding to the weirdness, the mathematical equations that describe QP do not contain a variable for time, throwing our sense of “progress” and past/present/future out the (seemingly very solid) window. Experiments also prove the concept of “entanglement”, which oddly says that particles once connected in some fashion always stay connected even if at opposite ends of the Universe, reacting instantaneously no matter the distance or limits placed upon information transfer by the speed of light. Calling it “spooky action at a distance”, Einstein was never able to accept entanglement as the way reality works.
As we experience the pain of being struck by a “solid” object, and “know” that the pain will linger for days, it can be hard to process the lack of any solid matter or sequential time. One key facet of QP holds that nothing “exists” until it is observed. In the old Newtonian view, nothing subjective is real, only objective “fact” makes up our world. In QP, nothing real is objective, existing in space even when unconnected to a subjective experience. Rather QP tells us that awareness, consciousness of some degree, is required for any particular “object” to manifest. Is the Moon still there if no one is looking?
But people raised or living within a paradigm that holds every bit of energy as being connected will understand, or “grok”, these notions more easily. “We are all One” is a trope that many dismiss as lunacy; yet it is the core of QP. In QP it is impossible to be disconnected, to be alone, or to be separate from others. All we have are relationships and embodied experience, always flowing and changing and subjectively felt. Biologists frequently identify rudimentary levels of consciousness and awareness, in essence an “experience of reality”, in plants and animals. Physical, emotional, mental and spiritual experiences are not the sole purview of humans apparently, in our QP Universe. They fall along a spectrum of energy, a spectrum that embraces diversity and fluidity, one that embodies experiences in a universe as a whole, not in human individuals alone.
In matters of matter consciousness matters.
Let’s dig a bit deeper into this idea that plants and animals are, to varying degrees, aware. We now know that:
· African Giant Pouched rats have been trained and have found thousands of unexploded landmines
· Pigs have episodic memory, likely they replay and re-experience past experiences
· Cheetahs are so shy zoos sometimes give them emotional support dogs
· Northern Cardinals are very romantic; they mate for life, travel and sing together, and feed each other seeds, beak-to-beak
· Many animals are social creatures; they mate for life, they get along with, and even help, other species, they mourn when they lose a family member or friend
· Cows have Eureka moments and take pleasure in their accomplishments
· Dolphins have names, and gossip about other dolphins who are not present in the conversation. Adults have been seen attacking sharks, putting themselves in danger of being killed, to save other (especially young) dolphins
· Seagulls stomp on grass, mimicking rain through the vibrations and drawing earthworms and other bugs to the surface
· Whales sing different songs, depending upon their location, and the songs creatively morph over time
· Many other examples of “tool use” have been noted, as have behaviors that show self-awareness and thoughtful planning among species as diverse as whales, crows, and elephants to name but a few
In New Zealand, four swimmers were suddenly surrounded by a band of dolphins who were swimming around them in ever-tighter circles, like a sheepdog herding its sheep. When one of the swimmers tried to break away, two dolphins forced him to rejoin the group. Soon after, one of the swimmers saw a great white shark pass by and realized that the dolphins had been preventing them from swimming into harm’s way. The dolphins didn’t let their charges go until 40 minutes later.
We are not just noticing this behavior in animals, but plants also. Trees send nutrients to neighbors who are in poorer soil, are ill or injured, or have other needs. Plants react with stressful responses when damage or death, in both plants and animals, is occurring nearby. Plants have shown a fear response, when a human who previously pulled off some of their leaves, comes near again. Plants communicate with others by releasing particular chemicals, and can produce other compounds seemingly at will to fight off attackers when messages from neighbors are received or the plant “knows” it is being attacked. Is it possible that plants feel pain?
“We haven’t treated [plants] … with respect that they are sentient beings. My interpretation was the Douglas fir knew it was dying and wanted to pass its legacy of carbon on to its neighbor, because that would be beneficial for the associated fungi and the community,” Suzanne Simard, an ecology professor at the University of British Columbia, told BBC. She experimented with Douglas fir trees, and found they could recognize their own kin when grown in a neighborhood of “strangers” and kin. The trees also seemed to be able to sense when they were dying, and they released carbon into neighboring pine trees.”
And:
A mimosa pudica plant, also called sensitive plant or sleepy plant, can be *taught* not to close its leaves, which it normally does when touched, after being dropped. It can retain the memory of this learning at least 40 days, per research.
And:
Professor Stefano Mancuso at the International Laboratory for Plant Neurobiology at the University of Florence says, “We are convinced that plants are cognitive and intelligent, so we use techniques and methods normally used to study cognitive animals.” He experimented with two climbing bean plants. The plants were set up to compete for a pole. The loser sensed the other plant had reached the pole first and started looking for an alternative. “It demonstrates the plants were aware of their physical environment and the behavior of the other plant. In animals we call this consciousness.”
These concepts and examples lay the foundation for this notion of “Enlivenment”. It might be helpful to think of Enlivenment as panpsychism, the notion that every aspect of our Universe lies somewhere along a spectrum of awareness. Thus all energy has a bit of consciousness, some more than others, perhaps. As we investigate and inquire, we see awareness in astounding ways accomplishing feats that sound like fantasy to an “Enlightened” mind. Can we develop this notion and begin to relate to every corner of our world as if all are aware to some degree? What is different if the world is truly Enlivened? How does that change who we are?
Nature has no place for “ownership”; ecosystems are open-source and abundant, expansive and collaborative, especially in their supply of meaning-making experiences, and their ability to create embodied and unique life-forms. Nature is not linear, it unfolds and blossoms. If human well-being is our goal, then true wealth must lead us to engage with each life-form, not dominate each one. Our focus becomes subjectivity and meaningful experiences in relationships, not the latest Apple product. Science, society, politics and economics today appear uninterested in human lives and experiences, even though this is the core of our life’s purpose, the reason for our very existence. Instead they focus on “dead matter”, “laws” of humans or of Nature, and linear cause-and-effect timelines (that we usually misinterpret or misunderstand). Is it surprising that we face the end of our collective human experience, which our worldview has already dismissed as being “immaterial”, and therefore irrelevant? We can feel Nature’s true essence because we are embedded in Nature also, but only if we seek it. The Enlightenment championed personal autonomy and with it personal responsibility. Enlivenment champions relationships among myriad types of experiences, with a community focus on meeting common needs; or just how Nature operates. We see the Enlightenment mindset everywhere: in our human attempts to control Nature, to grow more food, to have more energy slaves, to take more of others’ labor for “profit”, to extract more “resources”. And all while ignoring the human and Nature-all experience: this is the root of our dysfunction. Just as we break any “material” thing into its supposed constituent parts through analysis and dismiss all that is immaterial, we lose sight of how broken relationships are the true issue.
The big questions: what is “life”, where does it come from, and what is my purpose…are still unanswerable using a science that is based on dead matter alone. QP tells us, in essence, that all is energy. This shows us that the old way of Newtonian machinery forces us to ignore the most relevant aspects of life, if we stick to material science alone. The old limits: only objectivity is true or relevant, only matter matters; order how we act and relate “to” our world. Now we ask for a new understanding of subjectivity, energy, and relationships that actually cohere systems and form our Universe. We seek a way to relate “with” our world. We seek a whole, complete paradigm that includes rational, objective observations but adds subjective experience, felt senses, and relationships with the more-than-human world. We include animated and non-animated, less-than-human and more-than-human, living experiences. To accept and support a single human’s needs we need a complete understanding of what it is to be “alive’.
Astonishingly, few humans can truly answer this question. We might ask: why is this core aspect of life denied, ignored, and even ridiculed by culture and science both? It seems questions about life itself, and my role in harmony with all life, are too arcane, too meaningless, or too hidden to answer. We seek to understand not just how Earth’s biosphere is organized, but how it is experienced, not just by humans but within the world of each and every aspect and relationship. We seek to focus not on technical evolution or a reduction of resource usage because of perceived (misunderstood?) problems that wreck our nest. Rather we seek shifting our goal to understanding healthy relationships at all levels and in all aspects of life itself. In this way, sustainable means “supports life” and gains our full attention and agency, while that which harms life becomes our taboo. We seek to relearn the paths that connect inner experience with outer order.
What’s possible now?
Do you see? It’s not about electric versus gasoline-powered vehicles; it’s about changing the need to even have a vehicle. Suicide is a major cause of death; yet we don’t need better mental health drugs or therapies. Staying “sane” in an insane world is no victory. We don’t try to talk the gun out of the hand, or the bottle of pills either. We ask why a person’s feeling of purpose has disappeared. We ask why someone has lost sight of the gift that is their life. We ask how we, as a family and as a community, can help them regain confidence and pride in their unique talents and gifts. We explore what it means to have received this wondrous gift of human life, and how we might return the favor by serving all of Nature. Emotionally experiencing our needs, and then feeling our needs are meet or not, proves we are alive. Nature is constantly moving, experiencing, relating, affecting, and creating. How would life feel if we mirrored Nature instead of addicting, submitting, medicating, distracting, killing or dying? Storm Cunningham writes[1]:
“Nobody will be very impressed if you answer the question, ‘How is your marriage?’ with ‘Oh, it’s sustainable.’ But everyone would turn his or her head if you replied ‘Well, it’s energizing. It makes me feel alive.’”
Any “New Story” cannot be just about a green economy or a Green New Deal if the conflict between human, Nature, and “resources” is not addressed. As long as Nature continues to be seen as something separate from humans, something that humans use without concern or reciprocity, we cannot succeed because we are living in a fantasy, ignoring reality and our place in it. Let’s not continue to ignore another glaring contradiction; Nature seeks balance, a middle way, while our economy must, repeat must, infinitely grow ever-larger, forever, on a finite planet. Between Nature and economy, which is unsustainable? What does continue to grow in Nature is experience and the ever-increasing number of ways diversity adds new experiences. Experiences are the felt sensations of energy, not the energy itself. These can continue to grow exponentially.
Biologists are showing us that sentience and felt sense is part of the reality of every life-form. Life is constantly making and expressing experience. Humans are not the apex, nor the only, life that “feels” embodiment. In his essay “Enlivenment”, Weber ties material, mental and emotional exchange together, but he omits spiritual, that which answers our purpose. Our old views say that the economy is just an exchange of goods or services for money. David Graeber[2] points out that money is not actually a natural or inherent substitute for barter; rather it is a system of control. Second, an economy is actually a “rich set of ongoing flows and relationships” [Weber]. The native First Peoples didn’t “sell” or barter land for trinkets, despite the colonizer’s fables and myths created to exonerate their guilt over theft and genocide. They exchanged gifts as a (misplaced) sign of respect and sharing. They couldn’t have “sold” the land, because they had no concept of “owning” the ground that gave them sustenance. Land and life cannot be separated without detriment to both. Until we experience all that material, mind, emotion and spirit offer us in every moment we are missing much of what is fundamental to this human life. We remain less-than-whole beings. It is not metaphor to call the Universe a Web of Life where a single life is connected to all.
I have already mentioned scarcity and competition. Our current understanding of biology relies upon Darwinism to explain diversity. This is key to competition: “red in tooth and claw” and survival of the fittest. What if the Web metaphor is more accurate? What if life itself has agency and awareness? Language is important because words describe much about an object, situation, or institution. Today there is an assumption, no a demand, that one must “earn” what is needed to pay a “cost of living”. This is a big point of this scarcity mindset; that there’s not enough, it’s hard to get what you need, and it’s your job to care for yourself because no one should be “forced” to help you. This is in contrast to reality: we are born helpless, needing unconditional love to meet our needs for many years before we can “take care of ourselves”. Often, if we live long enough, we circle back to a time when we once more need someone to care for us. How is it that we deny large portions of our life when we can’t care for ourselves, and insist that the community has no role to play in sustaining life?
Because we allow this mindset of individual responsibility to form the foundation of economics and culture, we have deflected most spiritual concerns. We accept without question that progress materially in our lives = a better life. Both sides of this equation are wrong. Material “stuff” does not bring true wealth or bliss; these come from healthy relationships, healthy communities, and healthy Nature. A “better” life derives from the same. We might phrase it this way: immaterial progress = a better life. It is part of our programming that the word “immaterial” is used in modern culture to mean “doesn’t matter” instead of “isn’t matter”. We ignore intangible, or immaterial, rewards like bliss, love, and fulfillment in our struggle to gain money. Money itself is intangible. I can’t survive by eating money; it is only a marker that we all agree has value as it represents our labor. Humans did not evolve over a few hundred thousand years by having to labor in order to pay the cost of living. We have accepted the premise that progress is about evolving optimization. Nature, our Mother, defines progress as greater diversity and wider experiences, not greater efficiency. Can we listen to our Mother?
When I “know” objectively that the Universe is dead, is there to be used by the ambitious and/or competitive or those with “better’ genes, then spending too much time with subjective feelings and experiences makes me “unsuccessful” and therefore unfit. If felt sense is second-class consciousness, then the loss of any species is collateral damage and of no objective concern. This is our state of culture, today.
Enlightenment reigns: humans are DNA-controlled fighters and individual consumers. In the last few centuries we endured the theft of Nature, our Commons, for profit. Science perverted biology to separate humans from the web of interconnections, religion perverted relationships to make humans self-responsible, and economics perverted the goal of human life to become consumption, not experience. When resources in Nature become scarce, it impedes diversity, resulting in less freedom and fewer opportunities for, and types of, relationships and experiences. Still, the dogma of Enlightenment has never been stronger. To name it as dysfunctional, to demand its replacement with Enlivenment, is to be seen as a lunatic, one who holds “primitive” beliefs and “discredited” cultures. As always though, change begins to appear along the outer edges of society. And here we are.
It is important to ask, where does knowledge come from? We are taught, by parents and other family, by teachers, spiritual and political leaders, media (including broadcast, theater, song and dance) what is acceptable, civilized, or “developed knowledge” and we are also taught what is taboo, savage, or wild. We process our experiences and learnings and hopefully distill that into the essence of wisdom. My wisdom will necessarily be different from yours; I have a unique set of experiences and knowledge that I use to form my wisdom. Note as you process this concept how it feels inside, how it lands, and where your attention has gone. What can you discern by what is roiling in your body, mind and heart right now? Note how so many today are distracted and do no inner work at all. Note how the fringe, those who remain wild or nearly so, are shunned, deplatformed, removed from the collective discourse and if possible, locked away, drugged into submission, or outright killed.
During this process of gaining knowledge and wisdom, we practice our beliefs. The very acts of dancing, healing, creating, storytelling, parenting, mentoring, growing food and flowers, watering and caring for plants and people, becoming a new friend or visiting with friends we have known for a long time, and constantly paying attention and learning from every experience; these are just some of the ways we embody our wisdom. Practicing ritual makes the act easy; practicing ceremony makes the act sacred. The most aware among us practice both with every breath we take.
We place perspective into three types: third-person, second-person, and first-person. Third is “external objective”; second is “relationship”; and first is “internal subjective”. A child, learning about his world, is all first-person. Teens add a large sense of second-person, adults focus on the third-person view, although the other views factor in to some degree or another. The “material” for thoughts, concepts, and experiences comes from Nature; Nature feeds me objectively and subjectively. Thus reality is not “only” material; in truth, we always have to include the immaterial to be complete, with autonomy and relationships balanced at all levels if we are complete and whole. This is not ‘just” a philosophical reframing of reality. As we build new ways of being that are based on experiences and relationships, new economies, governments, even spirituality blend the needs and interests of each individual into a whole Commons. The new economy can be based on Commoners, not consumers, who initiate debates, deliberations, negotiations, and plans among themselves as part of their process for meeting their collective needs. About two billion humans now live on “less than USD2 per day” because they exist within a Commons economy. Capitalism hates a Commons economy, and hides it from our view in the “developed” nations. Forests, wild game, fisheries, farms, water and more can be, and are being, shared. We see the commons in software, journalism, academia, social activities, currency, blood donations, and more even in our economy today. It is not called out as a commons economy, and indeed, even the American Red Cross accepts the donation of blood with one hand then sells the blood around the world with the other. But mainstream opinion throws the very idea of a shared economy on the rubbish pile. These ways our Commons economy functions would be long gone if not for the fact that we find satisfaction when we participate in these shared activities. Are you a volunteer? There’s something exhilarating about being of service, without concerns of property rights, money, contracts, and a controlling marketplace. A truly sustainable marketplace will maximize the strength of our Commons: participation, relationships, sharing, and solidarity; leaving us all exhilarated rather than worn down. Commoners know our needs and the work required to meet them are deeply entwined within Nature and community. There is no separation between physical needs and our search for meaning in our lives. Key to Commoning is placing constant focus on our myriad relationships. For example, sharing heirloom seeds and using integrative permaculture techniques is enlivening; using GMO seeds, chemicals, and monoculture cropping is not. Our current economic model produces inner emptiness; contrary to what Nature yearns for us to experience. Globalizing our economy narrows and limits diversity in the name of profitability and efficiency. The traits that define us: meaning, belonging, and relationships; are so often less than “efficient”. But activities that leave us feeling fulfilled and supported are the ones that lift up all. In a culture that exists for profit it is realistic to believe our commons is doomed to tragedy. But an Enlivened commons, inhabited by Enlivened life, thrives because meaning, caregiving, and sharing are the foundations of community.
Profit-focused economics ignores the immaterial: our social, moral and even spiritual aspects of human experience; in favor of only the physical. Attending to the immaterial is the heart of Enlivenment and fosters an entirely different economy. Wendell Berry:
“[We are…] …aware that people exploit what they have merely concluded to be of value, but they defend what they love.”
I paraphrase Derrick Jensen here:
“If you know only that your food comes wrapped in plastic from a store nearby, you will defend to your death your right to get food wrapped in plastic from a store nearby.”
To defend relationships, we first have to have them. Once we do, it’s obvious we will defend them; they bring far more satisfaction than existing in an economy based on individual action and responsibility.
Commoners have a different, inclusive view that sees the physical world, not as a resource to be used or consumed, but as an element of our community…a relative, a neighbor. We don’t set price in order to maximize profit, we don’t make utility the sole measure of value. For example, think of a community garden. Aside from the nutritious and organic (hopefully!) food produced, which capital values highly, these also produce community cohesiveness through intense and frequent interactions, through including people with differing needs and skills, and by providing participants with a deep sense of collaboration with life and with Earth. Our experiences as we grow food are precious and priceless, steeped in deep and meaningful value beyond mere sustenance.
You might object that subjective has no ultimate relevance to descriptions of reality because it cannot be measured precisely. Let me point out…capitalism is based upon the very real subjectivity that influences “demand” when deciding how much to supply and at what price. And in a world when we know the price of everything and the value of nothing, this is precisely because embodiment is price-less. Nothing is more fundamental to true meaning of life than the subjective, unquantifiable experiences we humans have throughout our lives. Exactly how many calories does it take to dissolve hunger? This is unknowable, and varies from person to person. To be whole, we include the outer objective even as we cherish the inner subjective. Inner is an individual experience. Inner is far more complex than a statistic or measurement; relationship includes but exceeds either. Outer is third person, incapable of including first person and thus ineffective and incomplete. Enlivenment champions all perspectives: first, my experience; then second, defining our connection and sharing the experience; and third, quantifying a small sector of the experience. We need all to be truly whole; enlivenment is not about subjectivity only. We use structure and freedom together. We use felt sense and observation. We seek to heal, knowing some pain is inevitable. We know death, not as an end but as a transformation. We know “other” as indispensable: we are cared for as infants or when ill; we share oxygen, carbon, water and energy. In every moment, life is reciprocal, we are never alone. As both subjective and objective affect all relations, reality is ever-fluid and changing in unpredictable ways. This confounds our human craving for security and certainty, and means we will have more comfort if we can cultivate peace in the midst of chaos. Vaclav Havel:
“Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”
Life is always perfect; not bliss-full, just that it could not be any other way than what it is in this moment.
We live in paradox; how can we use Nature and yet not destroy it? It means truly living with what is given as a gift, and understanding how much is enough. Because energy moves and everything changes, nothing is free of transformation and much change is painful. Even consistent happy thoughts will not eliminate pain. But suffering, that is a choice. Suffering lives on in the stories we choose to tell ourselves about the experience. Healing can happen when we change the story that’s driving us mad.
To be wild once more: what is a poor person to do, being overwhelmed and oppressed by Modern, and yet desperate to find a path that leads back to the Way of our ancestors? Does it start with finding new ways of perceiving the world? Does it rely upon being able to cite where every thought, every fact, every suggestion came from and then discarding all that are untrue? Or do we instead allow a node in the Web, myself for example, to have an urge, a nudge, or a process that turns knowledge into wisdom based solely on what arises from my own inner work? If I write something that feels wrong to you, does it truly soothe you and make it true, despite your own misgivings, if I cite another author or speaker as the source? Does a citation make it true, in other words? Or is it better, is it sufficient, is it acceptable for you to do your own work to test and verify what I profess? Part of the resistance to this Modern Way is to abandon its conventions and expectations. Part of the resurgence of the One Way, the view that we are all connected, is to build it once more, to craft it once more, as it was built and crafted from the beginning of time; one experience, one emotion, one feeling, one thought, all carefully tended and blended into what has happened before. It is not for me to tell you what is real, what is true, or what is sacred; what good would that do? Do you live life through my worldview or your own? Let’s not fear that the world we can create, the world we must create, will not pass a challenge put forward by the same Modern Way we seek to replace. For those, like me, who find myriad fatal flaws in the Modern, let us embrace a Way of being that falls outside Modern and begin to make ritual and ceremony the focus of our attention as we make new wisdom real, together.
I am asking you, much as I would do if we were to gather around a ceremonial fire pit on a moonless night, to share stories as told by wise ancestors or contemporary shamans. We might tell an entire story, or it might be just the essence, the “moral of the story” if you like. See how these stories feel as you taste them, stroke them, or cuddle up next to them in your dream life or in your waking life. Does it resonate as deeply with you as it does me? Does it produce a truth that you know in your heart describes how life could be? Does it leave you craving more?
Storytelling is how we pass along the knowledge that becomes wisdom when subjected to the scrutiny of inner work, of soul work. Some lessons catch the first time, how wonderful! Many slip on by, a seed planted that may sprout after the fourth telling, or after the ninth; and some may never sprout. This is the Way of Nature, as we know from our Indigenous ancestors, and from our own work in tending this Garden of Life, both literally and figuratively. When its time is ripe, the apple will be crisp and sweet. I won’t apologize if what I write here does not change your worldview…that is not my purpose. I do not write to make these concepts palatable to the Modern mind. I write this from my heart, from my experience, and from the wisdom I have concocted by blending tragedy and bliss. I intend to corrupt you to the very dysfunction that allows the separation within Life to continue.
Always we hope
Someone else has the answer…
At the center of your being
You have the answer,
You know who you are
And you know what you want.
There is no need
To run outside
For better seeing.
Not to peer from a window.
Rather abide at the center of your being;
For the more you leave it, the less you learn.
Search your heart
And see
The way to do
Is to be.
Lao Tzu
By now you may be wondering, how does this actually play out in my life? In a more practical way, William Mutch hints at what it means:
“Having lived a somewhat nomadic life for a while, now, the subject of home is on my mind. What makes a place your home? In Permaculture, I teach about the importance of inhabiting a place, getting to know the space and its inhabitants, your neighbors, human, plant, animal, fungi, etc. When you do that, the ties to place become clear and vital. Many of our [recent] ancestors lived, and many of us now live, semi-nomadic lives where we don't have those ties to place. One of the obvious dangers of this is that we may end up caring a lot less for those spaces we pass through on the way from where we sleep at night to where we work, and back. Indeed, that lack of caring and connection is rampant and obvious, in the world.
“Where, then, do we gain our feeling of home? In our memories of more stable existences? In our own heads? In the elusive present moment? How would the world be different if we spent more time inhabiting it than commuting through it? What if we lived more in the wilds than in our computers and televisions, vehicles and offices? Do you know what bird is speaking outside your window? Do you know what he or she is saying? What do you know about his or her home, family, and community? How much do you inhabit where you live, or know your neighbors? How about the ones who look or speak differently from you? Do you know how that dandelion is helping your soil, and how it could benefit you, or is it just a weed? What about all of the folks who depend on that dandelion for their lives?
“What says "home" to you? The smell of food cooking? A warm, safe place to sleep? Family? Friends? Housemates? Gardens overflowing with food? Soil which smells alive and healthy? Birds talking? Animals leaving signs of their presence? Different folks have different ideas, memories, and thoughts of home.”
This is my invitation to you to return home, home to our Nature-all world from which we came, and to which we will return. Shamans didn’t work their way through the rainforest, eating every plant in sight, in order to determine which would heal and which might kill their ill companions. Rather, they carried on conversations with the energies, which we call animals and plants, which they encountered. The plants and animals themselves offered the knowledge of what gifts they could give to the humans.
What does it look like, this different, Primal, connected worldview?
· An anthropologist tells recently of being escorted to a small village by two members of a rainforest tribe in Ecuador. They traveled the footpath, and the anthropologist was amazed by the myriad life around him. Suddenly one of the men paused, knelt down, and closely examined a small flowering plant by the side of the path. He asked the other tribesman to look as well, and then they continued on their way. Upon arriving in the village, the two men called everyone together, and over the next hour, they described the flower they had seen, and the fact that it appeared to be sick and would likely die. They facilitated a discussion that led to the decision that the tribe would no longer use that footpath, as it seemed clear that their travel was impacting the flora badly.
· April 4, 1998; London Daily Telegraph: Two illiterate Kaiapo tribesmen were called in from 2,400 kilometers away to break the five-month long drought in the northern Amazon region Roraima. A wildfire there raged out of control: hundreds of firefighters were battling the flames and weather forecasts based on NOAA-14 satellite imagery predicted the next rain would take weeks to develop. Upon their arrival, the two men had a leisurely dinner at a three-star hotel in the local capital of Boa Vista, “We will make water fall” they promised, asking that they be allowed to work alone; their only *tools* were cipo leaves and taquara branches. After thirty minutes they returned from the banks of the Curupira River, and saying “It will rain” they retired to their room to sleep on beds, a novelty since they normally sleep in hammocks. Less than two hours later, the first reports came in to the fire emergency center: “It has started raining!” More reports came in, and by dawn, Boa Vista was in the midst of one of its heaviest downpours in living memory; so heavy that the airport, which had been closed frequently due to the heavy smoke from the fire, was now closed because of the lack of visibility caused by the rainfall. The fires petered out and the humidity rose to its normal 97%. All the tribesmen ever said was that they had talked to Becororoti, a famous ancestor with divine power, who had gone to heaven when he died and was turned into rain.
· Terry Tempest Williams wrote, ''Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert''. In the NY Times article, “In the Shadow of Extinction” published February 02, 2003, she wrote in part:
“Prairie dogs create habitat, not only for themselves, but for other grassland inhabitants. With their mounds and extensive burrowing systems, their home is home to myriad other creatures. One study of black-tailed prairie dogs identified more than 140 species of wildlife associated with prairie dog towns, including bison, pronghorn antelope and burrowing owls, as well as carnivores like rattlesnakes, coyotes, and black-footed ferrets. Prairie dogs create community. Destroy them and you destroy a varied world. Barre Toelken, a folklorist in the American studies department at Utah State University, tells the following story:
In 1950, government officials proposed getting rid of prairie dogs on parts of the Navajo Reservation to protect the roots of the sparse desert grasses and thereby maintain some grazing for sheep. The Navajo elders objected, insisting that ''if you kill all the prairie dogs, there will be no one to cry for the rain.''
The officials carried out their plan, and the desert near Chilchinbito, Ariz., became a virtual wasteland. Without the ground-turning process of the burrowing animals, the soil became solidly packed, impervious to rain. The result: fierce runoff creating devastating erosion.”
[My comment: It turns out that the burrows were vital: as the Moon’s gravitational pull moved water in underground aquifers up and down, it pumped moisture-laden, ion-charged air out of the earth and into the atmosphere, which fed the grasses, which the prairie dogs then ate. The burrowing also allowed moisture to penetrate and nourish the roots of the grasses. The prairie dogs weren’t *takers*: they were an integral part of the harmonious, interconnected ecosystem in which they lived.]
Terry concluded: “…As we find ourselves on the eve of war, why should we care about the fate of an invisible animal in remote Western grasslands that spends half of its life underground? Because the story of the Utah prairie dog is the story of the range of our compassion. If we can extend our idea of community to include the lowliest of creatures, we will be closer to finding a pathway to empathy and tolerance. If we cannot accommodate them, the shadow we will see [on Groundhog Day] on our own home ground will be a forecast of our extended winter of the soul.”
We would not normally ascribe *consciousness* to an octopus, yet Katherine Harmon Courage tells us an interesting story in her book, “Octopus! The Most Mysterious Creature in the Sea”:
“On the way to feed her [Jean Boal, a behavioral researcher at Millersville University] octopus subjects one day, she suspected they might not like what was on offer: they preferred the very freshest of frozen squid, but the stuff she bore was a bit stale. She doled it out anyway, walking down the line of tanks, dropping a subpar serving into each one. When she finally finished, she walked back to the first octopus to see if it had gone for the meal. The food was nowhere to be seen, but the cephalopod was waiting for Boal – waiting and watching. This octopus locked eyes with her and moved slowly sideways to the drain in the front right corner of its tank. Pausing above the outflow, it shot the stale squid out of its arms and down the drain, continuing to stare (or was it glare?) at Boal, who got the message.”
In an odd sort of way, this story fills my heart with joy: we are not alone! There are other-than-human, conscious beings in our midst! How many are there? How can we begin to connect with them, and to relate with them in ways that do not center on making them our food? In what other ways might we see the world differently if we are open to the world with all of our senses?
To our Western minds, the notion that someone might notice a sick flower along a path is merely amazing, but the statement that the tribe would abandon such a useful path is beyond our comprehension. We see prairie dogs as useless vermin, and we eat octopus without a thought given to this form of life might be aware and conscious. We have no frame of reference that would indicate a need for such communication or responsibility; and we lack the compassion for life that would generate this amount of concern for the well-being of something as *small and insignificant* as a single flower or octopus. We can’t imagine that someone can speak with the dead and bring rain to a land un-shadowed by cloud, or how a lowly nuisance of a prairie dog can actually be a lynchpin of an entire ecosystem. We think that Nature must meet our needs; and that we are doing *good* when we pass laws protecting endangered species and all of that. But do we truly know how everything fits together, how it blends and harmonizes, how life connects and depends on one another?
We are the first few generations who have been conditioned by an incredible sequence of wonders and marvels to expect *progress* to go on forever, and for the pace of that progress to continually speed up. Despite the fact that we were told technology would make life luxurious and carefree (which it hasn’t) and that we would have lots more leisure time (which we don’t), the latest iPad is not going to grow your food or power your heater or air conditioner or raise your children or care for your parents when they approach their death. We also have been allowed, through the manipulation of the media messages and control over what issues are acceptable to explore and discuss in public, to ignore one essential fact: whatever convenience we may gain through technology, someone somewhere pays a price. That may be in the loss of their land, their clean air or water, time with their family, their freedom, their labor, or their chance to be educated. This is the ultimate way we have become separate and disconnected. No one should have to die so that I can: have food to eat, have clothes to wear, can drive a car to get to work, have technology in my life, or have a home. And yet, as just one example, what is involved in making the clothes we wear? Cotton takes up 2.5% of our farmland, but accounts for 24% of agricultural chemical use; exposing workers and consumers to toxic products, if proper attention is not paid to procedures and safety. As many as 8,000 chemicals can be used to make one piece of clothing; and 1400 gallons of clean water for one pair of jeans or 800 gallons for a t-shirt, at a time when millions, just in America, still lack access to safe drinking water. Here, the average life of a piece of clothing is six months; then it is thrown into a landfill in someone else’s neighborhood or incinerated, polluting the air we breathe. In some parts of the world a lack of clean water kills people; but since we don’t get a nightly count of the dead on our TV news, we don’t think about it when we shop.
Is this the human condition then? To drift away from what our heart knows is right in order to try to stay safe; to live tame and small, unchallenged and unenlightened; and to stay locked away, hiding from any real experience, blocked from feeling emotion or connection by our need to limit our own personal suffering, even at the expense of others? Because I am locked behind walls of protection, I am blind to the ways I perpetuate injustice, the ways I go along to get along and stay silent, the ways I hurt others with my choices and my consumption, the ways I take my luxury for granted. Recovering my sense of connection takes great awareness and effort. I focus every day: may I remind myself to pay attention, to spot those habits and beliefs that blind me to the cultural milieu that makes getting by at the expense of others seem almost natural?
Of course the real issue is this: any call for equality or democracy depends upon equitable distribution of goods and services; and that means cutting out 80% of American consumption of the world’s resources[3]. Even cutting 10% will devastate and collapse our current economic system, and likely our political one as well[4]. During Covid lockdowns, it has been unbelievably scary to contemplate what the first months of that collapse will look like, once the store shelves stop being replenished due to a shortage of oil for the trucks and planes that come from hundreds of miles away. More personally, are you ready to give up four out of five trips you now take in your car; four out of five of the shirts hanging in your closet; and to trade four out of five of the meals when you eat meat for a vegetarian plate instead? If your *future happiness*, like the modern American *dream*, depends on ever-increasing control, ever-increasing wealth, ever-increasing comfort, and an exponential growth in our ability to use energy, it is impossible to see how we reach that future given the limits and problems we face today. This is what freezes us into inaction, into distraction, and into self-medication as ways to cope with overwhelming change. Personally, I share the sentiment expressed by Lierre Keith and paraphrased here:
“I hate that what stops me from making the necessary changes to stave off collapse is that I actually benefit from the comfort and privilege I was born into.”
This is emblematic of the bind we find ourselves in today. We have to hold multiple needs and perspectives, usually contradictory, in our mind at the same time while making any necessary and meaningful decisions. We used to think of aspects of our culture: science, religion, technology, economics, politics, morality, progress, and laws as all being separate. One chose to believe in religion, but maybe not science. One kept religion and finance out of politics. Laws, both spiritual and secular, tried to enforce morality. And chiefly, progress was about mankind becoming emancipated from the tyranny of Nature. Our increasing use of oil and its byproducts has given us super-human abilities[5] and supposed control over our environment; and as science was informing us how Nature worked, we thought we would *naturally* be able to rid ourselves of the dangers Nature thrust upon us through weather, illness, predation, and resource limitations. But today, we increasingly see these artificial boundaries being eroded and compromised: finance corrupts politics; science does not know everything, or even enough to give us the tools we need so we can “control” Nature; technology gives the false sense that we can thrive while becoming increasingly isolated from one another; laws are being passed or ignored in order to perpetrate immoral acts; and religion, if it is considered to be relevant or useful, is used to dominate and exploit believers, and even to kill non-believers. These changes, loosely defined as *progress*, leave us feeling impotent to affect the world and fearful of being outside, immersed in our natural environment. We feel guilt and shame that we ever thought we could control our environment completely, or that we have managed to make such a mess of things through our hubris and our ignorance. We seek to salve our consciences by shopping for products that claim to be environmentally friendly, signing online petitions to save polar bears from the loss of their natural habitat, or blogging and tweeting to lead others to feel a similar angst over our future as a species.
Seen from another perspective, while it seems that we are now liberated from our connection to Nature by our technology, we actually have merely switched our connection to technology. This technology story promises us that we can control Nature, that we can insulate ourselves against Nature, and that we do not even need Nature. This salvation was a critical selling point: we did not even think about our separation from the *environment* until the environment began to fail. Primal people did not have a word for environment that meant something separate from their own milieu, some *thing* or *resource* that could be used and polluted without consequence. We must understand however, how the concept of technology has so overtaken our sense of what is important that in order to change that fundamental part of our world view we need some idea that is even more powerful to take its place. It is impossible to conceive of a technology that will further enhance our separation from that which sustains us, Nature, yet does not carry with it an inherent set of unintended consequences that will end up killing us. We exist because of Nature: Nature is not something we can use and discard. Over 90% of the food in the produce section of my local market would disappear if bees and other pollinators did not exist to do their work, work that goes unrecognized, unappreciated, and unpaid. All of the food would disappear if there were no sun or rain, both provided for *free*. We eat the bounty of Nature to stay alive; part of the bargain is that we too, become food for organisms after we die. Even if we are cremated, our constituent parts return to the common pool, to be used in building other life in some cases, or dirt in others. Living on a planet like Earth means we are in a bubble, a closed system; we only have a certain, finite amount of energy and atoms within this biosphere, and although it *felt* infinite for most of our evolution, it is in fact limited. The same parts keep joining and dividing, creating and destroying the many varied aspects of matter. Each and every part is dependent upon another, and influences the whole. Any notion that we can step out of that system and live independent of Nature cannot succeed for long. This understanding makes the belief that technology will only get infinitely better and may someday save us from ourselves, ludicrous. As long as technology encourages or demands that we see ourselves as separate from where we originate and tap our power, it is not our friend.
How do we resolve these issues? How can we fashion a way of being in the world, of seeing the world, that enables us to step off this path that appears to be leading us to extinction? Is there a way of being that heals mankind, or are we only able, at this point in our evolution, to find ways to accept the destiny we have wrought through our unconscious decisions? This is what is so exciting about the notion of Enlivenment; it is a re-bonding between humans and all other life, within the bounds and ways of Nature, recognizing not the power of religions, economies or technologies that disconnect us, rather the wonder and awe of our original Mother, Earth, and the life she spawns, the experiences she provides for those who look, and the unconditional love she pours onto us, her children. Enlivenment is greater than any of the artificial, man-made systems we depend upon today.
She Sat on a Tiny Stool
She sat on a tiny stool, not a foot high, knees to chest, just outside a stall that sold woven baskets. A baseball cap, adorned with spangles and English letters she could not possibly understand, was pulled down low over her forehead, hiding most of her face as she bent over her handwork. She pushed a needle, trailing a long, thin strip of plastic tarp through the larger pieces; she was sewing two tarps together to make a bag that would be wider than she was tall. The air was still in the aisle of the outdoor market; the afternoon’s approaching thunderstorm had yet to spawn the breeze that would cool the air below 100°F. Sweat glistened on the back of her hands and forearms as she bent to her task. It was late April, 2013, and we were on the border between Thailand and Cambodia, in the Thai town called Poipet, a few hundred yards from a crossing point between the two countries, inside the smuggler’s zone.
Maybe it was the whiteness of my legs, showing below my knee-length shorts, or maybe it was just the fear of someone approaching too close: she raised her head, tilted slightly so that just one eye could peek out from under the bill of her cap. Her gaze traveled quickly up to focus on my eyes, and then just as quickly she lowered her head and focused even harder on making her stitches. In that one moment when our eyes met, I knew this for sure: I could not possibly know what her world was like, nor she mine. To be 14, female, and born on the border was a life fundamentally different from anything I experience. To be 58, white male, and born in America was a life she could only imagine through the warped lenses of her culture’s stories about foreigners. Yet we have something in common: human. I moved a few dozen meters further along the aisle, paused to wonder over the origins of a small wooden totem, and after a few minutes found myself drifting back towards where she sat on her plastic stool. Now a friend squatted close by her, and the two talked quietly together. She smiled at something her friend uttered, and then her head jerked to the left and an older woman, walking as if her left hip were fused and unable to bend, came out from behind the baskets that hung across the front of the stall and into the aisle. The woman began to berate the child, and her friend scampered away, ducking as she passed by the old woman as if dodging an expected blow, and disappearing among the crowd of people moving along the aisle. The girl on the stool cringed, as if she could fuse with the ground and thus not be hit, though the only blows raining down on her head were verbal. This time. I wondered; slave, kin, employee? I will never know the answer. But you might buy the purse that will be shipped in that bag that she was sewing, some day. And you’ll only buy it if it is cheap enough. This vignette is a peek into one aspect of how they are so cheap, these things we buy.
[1] “ReWealth”, 2008
[2] “Debt: The First 5,000 Years”
[3] Today, Americans, as 5% of the world’s population, use 25% of its resources and generate 30% of its waste.
[4] Written a few months after the 2020 lockdowns that cut at least this much; and at the time I write this, we are still months or years away from seeing the ultimate results of the economic devastation wrought by them.
[5] One gallon of diesel, costing less than $4 (2018), can move 80,000 pounds a mile uphill in 5 minutes, equal to 80 days of labor by a single man.