This was inspired by a conversation on tribes revolving around the topic of people paying for sweat lodge ceremonies. My thanks to those who are thinking on such lines...
" The box is full of salmon, and a man sits atop of this box. Long ago man hired armed guards to keep any one from eating his fish. The many people who sit next to the empty river starve to death. But they do not die of starvation. They die of belief. Everyone believes that the man atop the box owns the fish. The soldiers believe it, and they will kill to protect the illusion. The others believe it enough and they are willing to starve. But the truth is that there is a box, there is an emptied river, there is a man sitting atop the box, there are guns, and there are starving people."
Low synergy cultures or "aggressive cultures reward actions that emphasize personal gain, even when and especially when that gain harms others in the community."
"Non-aggressive cultures eliminate the polarity between selfishness and altruism by making the two identical: In a 'good' culture, the man atop the box from the parable above would have been scorned, despised, exiled, or other wise prevented from damaging the community. To behave in such a selfish and destructive manner would be considered insane. Even had he conceived such a preposterous idea as hording all of the fish, he would have been absolutely disallowed because the box was held at the expense of the majority, as well as at the expense of future generations. For him to be a rich and influential member of a 'good' ( high synergy culture) culture, he would have had to give away as many or all of the fish. the act of giving would have made him rich in esteem. But he never would have been allowed to strip the river. There would have been no fear with the regard to the 'gift' of fish, for social arrangements would have made him secure in his knowledge that if his next fishing trip failed his more successful neighbors would feed him just as this time he had fed them." Derrick Jensen A Language Older than Words...
Ownership is illusion... and we have been very selfishly working with this colonial and imperial concept of ownership for a long time. Ownership needs to be questioned and alternative systems of living need to be either reclaimed or reinvented to go along side this current economic system. As an animist I cannot own a person, that is akin to slavery, thralldom. As an animist I cannot USE or manipulate someone, buy or sell someone, own someone... or possess someone. I can take care off help, nurture, protect, carry... share with... but can I barter someone or trade someone? Is it my place to give someone to another? Is is my place to be the steward of another person? As Dave Foreman founder of Earth First points out, "The defense of the Earth is not Lord Man protecting something less than himself. Rather, it is a humble joining with Earth, becoming the rain forest, the desert, the mountain, the wilderness, in defense of itself." Is it my place to take someone, or kill someone? How do these relationships get worked out as animists? As an animist I have to look at these relationship dynamics with Other-than-human-persons and interact with great care and awareness, not basing my life ways on assumptions.
The parable of the box is great, but it is some what incomplete, because Jensen is speaking from an Animist world view but is still not really including Animist thought fully into it... this requires a totally different way of thinking and relating. This is difficult, to think in ways that we were not born into, but an Animist way of thinking and relating has to happen, and it can happen over time with persistence and scrutiny. We cannot just pray to the earth mother one day and then sell a part of her or one of her children, a family member to a human person the next. This doesn't mean that we have to put a total stop to our current way of life. But it does require that we start to change the way we look at and interact with the living world. This is the challenge of the integration of this work in Animism and shamanry into our daily lives this is the REAL healing that needs to be done, the real fight that spiritual warriors have to fight, and where our visions and the earth is guiding us I believe...
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment