Detoxing the Wetiko

I guess there's a positive sense of progress (that is, a non-ironic one) I could talk about.

I feel like I know what's going on in my head. A lot. I haven't really sat meditation regularly for awhile--I was pretty good about it before it got to cold to, you know, be in my room. (I usually sleep with my roommate. We're not sexual together or anything, but we are extremely close friends and it is really nice to have someone to sleep with. Sleeping alone can be fucking depressing! Why do we always do that??) Honestly, I'm very accustomed to meditating in my own space, however I've created it. Now, when I can't have it, it sort of distresses me.

Anyway, the point is that even though I haven't been sitting meditation much lately, I have noticed that I have a much better memory and sense of my own thoughts. People ask me "What are you thinking?" and I can tell them in detail. When I sit down to write something, it's easier to remember my chain of thoughts, to hold onto them, to write them down semi-coherently. And it generally helps me avoid quite so many parenthetical and elliptical statements because I get half a chance to organise my thoughts without worrying about losing them.

But I DO think this is related to the process of meditation. I mean, dropping out of school has helped a lot--my mind is less frantic and cluttered, and is able to deal with new material much more gracefully. It was getting pretty hack and slash there for a while. But I noticed learning while I meditated (I usually practised non-judgmental thought observation, leading into quietness) how to observe, and even somewhat remember my thoughts (an effort thanks to Franz Bardon), which has done great things for my short term memory, my ability to retrace conversations.... all sorts of things. I forget how practical things like meditating are--I know that when I meditate it helps me let go of shit, it helps me concentrate, it can even help me remember and maintain grace and equanimity. I know that if I work out, I will have more energy, I will be more vital and attractive, and that I will sleep less and better and have more time in my day. That doesn't always mean, though, that I make that investment. But remembering how good it feels helps.

I think my perspective is drifting away from that of the civilised human. I'm surrendering notions that create the nasty patterns of which civilisation is symptomatic, and while I can still remember and follow the logic of civilisation, it seems dark and twisted and completely pig-ignorant. I hate how self-righteous I sound (and possibly am), but the feeling is like being the only one who is seeing what is going on--that the evidence is all there, there are people who link the facts together, and the logic of it, to me, is inescapable and leads to many beautiful and frightening conclusions, and just as many beautiful and frightening questions.

Civilisation, Culture, Idleness and even War.

After work today, I wound up watching a bunch of squirrels for a few minutes--two of whom were fighting over a tree and chattering at each other in that distinctive squirrel fashion. (It sounds like a more natural, animalistic version of that styrofoam squeak.) It raised a lot of thoughts.

See, I find it very intersting to watch wild animals fight. Now, I'm not talking about watching a leopard take down a gazelle, and I really don't want to see what happens when a polar bear decides a half-ton walrus looks like lunch. What I'm talking about are those intraspecies skirmishes over territory that are rarely actually violent.

Mind you, they can be. They can even be lethal. (Although I wonder how many cats that do the maiming in fights are victims of human-incurred trauma.) But that is extremely, extremely rare. Hell, even injury in your average territory skirmish is practically unheard of. Of course, there is reason to expect that death is unusual in the intraspecies territory skirmishes of another wild animal--wild humanity.

I don't want to get into that can of worms too deeply at the moment, suffice to say that this really made me consider many of the things I have been made to understand about warfare at the hunter-gatherer level, and about squirrels. If the likelihood of death (or of killing) is low, then doesn't warfare cease to be so terrifying? No wonder people in primitive societies are reported to view it as somewhat fun--without the fear, it becomes a question of intimidating people into staying out of your territory, without actual use of force. (Yes, homicide is more likely in primitve societies than in our own. Unless you take into account our economic system and the fact that most of our diseases are induced by a system that "benefits" only a small and priveleged minority. And most of those homicides are going to probably be killing the adulterous guy in your tribe, or the really annoying fellow you can't get along with. Also, sometimes it's the only real 'punishment' for certain heinous and antisocial crimes.... all this needs to be taken into account.) The idea warfare could be fun seems to clearly be a part of this tradition. Hell, how many of us didn't dream of war as children? I know I often imagined (and thought) myself a warrior. The ability and willingness to defend our territory is normal--the willingness to use violence to kill the undefended in order to somehow profit is not.

Anyway--I'm getting off track.

At work, I was reading about the idleness factor--that is, the idea that life is not fundamentally busy, but fundamentally 'lazy'. The less energy you have to spend to survive day-to-day under normal conditions, the more efficient your lifeway, and the more likely you are to survive when things are horrendously lean. Even bees spend 80% of their time loafing! (And Aesop's story about the ants and the grasshopper is an excellent example of trying to hold one entity up to a standard which is wildly inappropriate for it, but appropriate for another species. The way a grasshopper lives is different from an ant, and in trying to moralise with them for the edification of humans, Aesop fundamentally misses the point.)

Of course, humans are more culturally driven than other animals--being less 'hard-wired' for certain behaviours (what sort of houses to build, what sounds to make and songs to sing) means we get a huge amount of latitude to do nearly whatever we want. But where a beaver trying to be a beaver outside of its natural range is going to fail, humans have access to tools which allow us to use great amounts of power to try to force our own values onto the world around us.

Rather than expanding slowly and evolving as we go (if we aren't adapted for our new environment), we are capable of moving quickly (and, in civilisation, monolithically) forward with non-functional models. Architecture is an excellent example--rather than using the materials we have at hand to build structures which will most provide us comfort in our immediate environs, we cling to traditions which are inappropriate to new climes and require huge amounts of energy/power/force (which translates to effort on our part) to keep comfortable. We move in materials, which means more work, and we endanger the Earth by constantly using more than can be replaced. Obviously, this cannot go on forever, and short-sightedness in this regard undermined Rome, blasted Easter Island, and wiped up the Mayan civilisation.

That is, unsustainable ways of life require much more work to flow 'uphill' and fight against Nature (the Dao, The Way Things Are, etc). Humans are capable of using culture to invert basic principles of life until making a living under normal circumstances is exhausting (agriculture) and under harsh circumstances, impossible. (Famine is a problem for the civilised only.)

Obviously, this isn't meant to be a critique of culture--like symbolic thought, it is inherent to us. It's important to note that for most of human history, culture was capable of working WITH the Way of Life, and of producing people who were generally happier, healthier, and more connected with their communities than any person you or I have ever met. The point is, the thing is intensely malleable, and we must learn to look at our cities as products of our culture. We most reject the civilised culture that is destroying our lives and the planet and begin to create new cultures, rooted in each other, in our experience of the world.

We cannot hope to create a Lifeway in sync with natural rhythms that is not based on actual experience. That is a great problem of civilisation--the insistence on 'one truth' which invalidates and overrides any other experience. It is necessary to have the one truth in order to keep everyone in step and following the rules that are clearly a deviation from a larger order. When we observe the natural world and take our experiences for granted as true, we become capable of creating a culture based on the real world and real human experience.

I think that's what I find disturbing about civilisation--it is a departure from cycles, spirals and organic order in favour of a linear, one-way ticket nowhere. Of course, linear time is subject to a beginning and, thankfully, an end. We will step back into the spiral whether we want to or not.

Some people think squirrels are stupid and forget where they bury their acorns--which has the fortunate side-effect of planting future generations of oak trees. Or the squirrels are very wise, and know to plant seeds as well as to eat them, to ensure that there will always be oak trees and always squirrels. The species evolved together--the issue is not, as decent rational people want to think, the intelligence behind the ordering, but the functionality of the ordering. Whether it is ordained by an intelligence or one of thousands of lucky balancing acts that keeps nature turning so beautifully, it is the fact that it works and continues to work and will continue to work that makes it laudable.

It's time we stop talking about abstractions and start talking about what seriously works, and what's worth investing our time into. I'd rather be poor and have time to spend with my friends and projects than have a ton of money and less time to invest in my community. I am sick of seeing people putting their money where their mouth is--we need to start doing that with our time. Time is like all the things we need to live (or perhaps it is more accurate to say that time is like all parts of the tapestry that makes up livingness)--there is enough. There is not a scarcity, nor is there too much. Nature abhors a vacuum, and she knows no idea of waste. If it exists, it is used, a part of the cycle, spinning together in shocking perfection.

Going back and re-reading a lot of the stuff that Ran Prieur has said in the last couple of months. One thing I like is his current interest in the idea of Core Civilised, Core Primitive, and Edge Civilised & Edge Primitive. You can see what he has got to say on his blog, but basically he's pointing out that the edge, the place of contention between civilised and primitive is the ugliest place, with the core civilised being more or less nice folks (the people we know who wouldn't have the constitution for gung-ho Conquistadore nonsense) and the core primitives really having their shit together, but being very fragile.

Ran has talked about it before, but I think we might really be innoculating ourselves here from this wetiko disease. (To borrow from Jensen borrowing from Jack Forbes.) Perhaps we are now learning to face the abuse to which we have been subjected, as a culture, so that we can finally learn to stand up strong against the abuser. People who have never seen real abuse before may not even be able to recognise it, may not know how to fight it. If you raise a person in that context, it will paralyse them. But people are waking up, they are smelling the coffee and sharpening the knives.

Maybe we will learn how to spot the wetiko disease. As a gay guy, I generally find it pretty easy to spot a closet case--the say and do (and often think) all the same bullshit I said and did and thought when I was engaged in a multiple-year frenzy of self denial and lying. The nonwild mindset isn't all that different--it is a programme of denial and rationalisation and fear. Perhaps this will be our lot--we have borne this painful yoke, and now we know how to fight it, for we have fought it in ourselves. Proselytisation is not uncalled for--without outreach, I doubt I would have the sort of perspective I do now. We must be careful not to hide up in comfortable radical enclaves where everyone agrees--we must maintain friendships with people who disagree, and we must (for the sakes of both parties involved) be willing to be open and honest.

Ultimatley, as Ran has intimated, I think we can be hopeful that we might, once and for all, start to really understand the real magnitude of anthropogenic devastation. Our society has enough historical memory and scientific knowledge and raw power that our capacity for destruction is all but obvious, and certainly massive. If we play our cards right, we could make this the last time we are all afflicted with the wetiko plague. (And, like all things civilised, that is what it is.) We can learn that deforestation to build an empire is a bad idea, as is the destruction of topsoil and all available energy resources.

Or we could fail, and the cycle will continue, on a lower but no less tragically absurd level, indefinitely. I'd like to see this particular cycle broken, and replaced with one more stable, more rooted in the world, more constructive to life and wild nature and humankind. I want to die out of a better world than I was born into.

A Wiccan friend of mine posted recently on her livejournal, bitching about a mass she cantored this morning, in which the Priest encouraged everyone to love God and their neighbour, and to vote Republican because gay marriage and abortion are both violations of this injunction, sins akin to slavery.

She commented, astutely:
"When the *HELL* are people going to realize, that when you take peoples' rights away, *YOU MAKE SLAVES OF THEM*!!!!"

This is a very valid point. But I should say that I have some reservations about this statement.

I agree with Ran that one problem we have at present is a drastic excess of rights. Where these two lines of thoughts began to really converge was in a comment by another friend...

"Then mom took the good old "but...but...retirement benefits...insurance...your tax money!" Okay, seriously- how many of us have friends and relatives whose marriages we disapprove of? For heaven's sake- if more married couples actually mean more of a strain on the insurance system/corporate benefits/whatever, then let's stop EVERYBODY from getting married- and that doesn't work, but moral approval of the relationships is the deciding factor on who can and can't, can I please nullify a few heterosexual marriages? It'll be great!"

This, I think, is a really, really important newish, "practical" new take on being opposed to gay marriage: that is, marriage is a priveleged economic status, and one we may not be able to afford to give to everyone. (I really doubt that, even in our system, the economics behind this are justified.) This "argument" exposes a lot of unconscious knowledge of how things work: that, ultimately, our system is built upon a system of scarcity and denial--without the emiseration of portions of the population (independent of how even The System measures "worth"), the "rights" (read: priveleges) we all enjoy would have to go away. We need people to go blind making us fancy wal-mart clothes so we can have a "thriving economy" and have a high rate of wardrobe turnover. We need foods shipped from all over the continent so we don't have to eat squash all winter. We need the destruction of Wild Nature so we can have roads and big backyards that we spend a few hours a month in... when we mow them. (Have you ever tried intentionally creating social space in your yard or garden? Suddenly people are hanging out in bedrooms, the living room, on the porch, in the yard, in the garden... your available socialising space goes up drastically, and people are spending time staring at the sky and realising how hard light pollution really does suck.) We need to raise animals knee-deep in their own shit in cells no bigger than they are, because we need multiple portions of meat at every meal. We need starving people in Brazil to provide us the soya to feed those animals, since they certainly will never graze outside. It makes veal seem ethical--putting the little fucker out of his misery early on.

The thing is, this argument realises that. It makes it clear that the real reason to deny gay marriage is the same reason we deny everything else--it's to silence the victims so we can continue to enjoy our "rights".

Thank God this lifestyle isn't sustainable.

Rewilding without wild nature?

Hm, right.

I've got to say, I'm pretty sceptical about this whole rewilding scene. I don't have any qualms with the ideal. But the rewilding enthusiasts are leaving something out: the Wild.

From the perspective of an animist or deep ecologist, we have to remember that humans belong in Nature, but also that what we now conceive of as "nature" is nothing compared to what Nature is outside of the restrictive bounds of civilisation's sterilising touch. That is--the Wild is mostly dead. The rewilder has very little to turn to, and will (must?) always remain non-native. Not to say one cannot be, eventually, "Naturalised", but I think that the time and conditions necessary are going to be afforded very, very few of us.

What, then, do I see as feasible? Honestly, I think there IS one form of technology that is going to rescue us from this mess: permaculture.

Well, okay, "rescue" is a very strong term. That sentence should probably read more like, "there is one form of technology that is likely to be able to turn the complete collapse of the world into something relatively survivable by a decent number of people who might even be able to have a decent quality of life afterward: permaculture."

Still--I think that's the idea. I have been trying to imagine my ideal future. It's a pretty one; I would like to see land, perhaps recovered from prolonged agricultural rape, restored in a permacultural/forest gardening context: humans using our ability to engineer to help Wild Nature restore herself, and, of course, what is good for mama is good for us.

So, I don't see the collapse being complete and immediate. There are still a lot of resources and a fair bit of knowledge, and a lot of people desperate to avoid starving. Jason at anthropik, believes that, after the crash, our agricultural bases will have been so destroyed that any level of complexity "above" foraging is unlikely. I'm not sure how soon this will happen, but I tend to imagine that there will be an interim with a strong focus on more permacultural techniques--but whether that will start now and provide us with a rough water landing, or whether it will only really begin too late (if ever) and really just give those of us who manage it a chance to bounce a bit and maybe survive when we hit bottom. (And, of course, we could give ourselves headaches distinguishing between horticulture as practised by hunter-gatherers and the exact techniques of permaculture.)

Still, I think it's how we are likeliest to feed ourselves and our children while giving back to Gaea. Which means that, while rewilding is a goal, it's an unlikely thing to see realised, but we must be careful not to adopt an agricultural mindset and mythos. We must be careful to realise we are simply acting as the planet's healers, perhaps accelerating what she would do with time anyway. We must also remember that Wild Nature is our bosom, to be in exchange with, not to exploit. I think permaculture lends itself to this mindset--although we must still be careful.

I suspect this is where the modern paganisms could come in handy--providing us a new symbol set that can replace the old (nature abhors a vaccuum) and avoids the vilainisation and fear of Nature common to the civilised.

I read most of a book once, "The Urban Primitive", a Craft book to help city Witches treat the city like their countryside. Aside from the fact that a city is simply different from Nature, it was executed in a clumsy fashion--contrived Urban gods and totems, trite ideas for magic spells and tools. I'm not necessarily opposed to the idea (and the willingness to constantly recieve new inspiration in developing our own traditions of life and religion), but it MUST be done organically--it must make sense. That is, inspiration is the key as we struggle to live in community on this planet. Not trying to measure up to a paleolithic standard--the conditions are poor for it--but creating, from the same animist understanding, a new world view and approach that will help us achieve a new stability with the planet. I sometimes wonder if a utopian confederation of ecovillages is possible, but I tend to expect we will wind up, long-term, restabilising in a functional but not quite idyllic foraging lifestlye, and that is plenty good enough for me.