There are three phases of constructing reality among humans.
The first one is formed in the most basic human bonds to family members - mother, father, siblings. That is where we develop our fundamental relationship to our bodies and emotions; where we develop a sense of self and the interplay between self and other humans, as well as the interplay between self, other humans and the non-human world (the development of this three-way relationship is something we don't pay enough attention to.) This is when we learn the basics of human social rules as well.
The second phase is our more-or-less formal education where we are trained in the more specific social rules and technical skills of our society, such as the 3R's or memorizing sacred texts or craft skills or war-games. We develop our sense of self further and learn how to manipulate material and symbols to construct the shared reality called society or culture. (Here, too, formal education in a conscious relationship to non-human reality is seriously underdeveloped. We learn to do science but this art unfortunately has been warped into a technical exercise in maximizing human exploitation of "natural resources." Needless to say this is a very limited and childish conception of the relationship.)
The third phase is the autonomy that comes after formal education ceases, where we get to become a constructive member of society (or not). One is turned out in the big pasture, with the general population, to sink or swim. And if we are lucky, we get to spend quite a bit of time at it. This is when we really get to make our own lives: to choose what we do, who we spend time with, where we live, and what values we express in the jobs we take, the families we make, the life-worlds we build up. This is also the phase of maximum responsibility, if we are brave enough to accept responsibility.
(There might be a fourth phase, saying good-bye, but I haven't got there yet.)
Within the phases there are very particular things that we do to construct reality.
I say phases, but really they are three faces because they happen simultaneously all through one's life, but one face will be generally predominant during the different periods of a person's life.
Monday, September 19, 2016
Monday, September 12, 2016
Treebeard's comment
I spend way too much time reading stuff on the internet. As a vice, it's only marginally better than watching television. But I did come across this eloquent and fiery comment by "treebeard" as a response to an interview with some very earnest folks building an intentional tribe/community:
A Sign...
of cultural disintegration. It was good hear about a group of people in a committed community, and very important work that is being done, but very sad in a way that we have come to this. That we have had to completely reinvent our cultural structures, invoking tribe as a means to create community that has all but disappeared.
We are just starting to understand the violence that we have done to ourselves based on our current set of beliefs that currently masquerade as "facts", but are still clueless to the cause. I have railed against our current paradigm so often here that I am being to dislike the sound of my own voice. But alas, I cannot stop myself. Survival of the fittest, competition, monetization, all products of a twisted psyche, that projects our own disorder into the world and calls them natural, part of evolution, ecology, economics, and psychology. All facts, "markets are self regulating, therefore corruption is impossible".
We are not immoral but amoral. We have chosen the "rational" over the good, we are all Nazi experimenters on our future generations, fretting over our retirement savings and who did what to whom as the planet burns. So our souls starve as we fill our bank accounts and become more insane. Are we intimate with anything anymore, a friend, our own bodies, the earth beneath our feet, the wind on our face, the blue sky in the morning, a bumble bee resting in a flower as the sun sets, our own hunger, emptiness.
How far into the dark night have we come, have we lost our way altogether. In the darkness, even without sight we can feel the vast emptiness of the abyss yawning open before us. We wake in a sweat in the morning before we drop off the cliff, but we lead the same life, day after day, as if we had all the time in the world. The ultimate illusion.
Strangely, this is one of the most beautiful things I've ever read, minor typos and all.
A Sign...
of cultural disintegration. It was good hear about a group of people in a committed community, and very important work that is being done, but very sad in a way that we have come to this. That we have had to completely reinvent our cultural structures, invoking tribe as a means to create community that has all but disappeared.
We are just starting to understand the violence that we have done to ourselves based on our current set of beliefs that currently masquerade as "facts", but are still clueless to the cause. I have railed against our current paradigm so often here that I am being to dislike the sound of my own voice. But alas, I cannot stop myself. Survival of the fittest, competition, monetization, all products of a twisted psyche, that projects our own disorder into the world and calls them natural, part of evolution, ecology, economics, and psychology. All facts, "markets are self regulating, therefore corruption is impossible".
We are not immoral but amoral. We have chosen the "rational" over the good, we are all Nazi experimenters on our future generations, fretting over our retirement savings and who did what to whom as the planet burns. So our souls starve as we fill our bank accounts and become more insane. Are we intimate with anything anymore, a friend, our own bodies, the earth beneath our feet, the wind on our face, the blue sky in the morning, a bumble bee resting in a flower as the sun sets, our own hunger, emptiness.
How far into the dark night have we come, have we lost our way altogether. In the darkness, even without sight we can feel the vast emptiness of the abyss yawning open before us. We wake in a sweat in the morning before we drop off the cliff, but we lead the same life, day after day, as if we had all the time in the world. The ultimate illusion.
Strangely, this is one of the most beautiful things I've ever read, minor typos and all.
Sunday, September 4, 2016
Nature Red in Tooth and Claw
I was sitting by the window when I heard a bird screeching in distress, and looked up in time to see an 'io (a native hawk) implacably winging its way upward from my garden with a pink cardinal, crying piteously, clasped firmly in its talons.
That was painful, although there are not many things that I like to see more than an 'io balancing on the winds high above.
My own predation is so much more attenuated most of the time.
We had to euthanize a steer that had broken its leg a few weeks ago. Our ranch-hand dropped the steer with one shot in the center of the forehead, just as one is supposed to, and cut his throat, but the steer still took a while to die. Then we had to shackle the steer's hind legs to the forks of a front-end loader with a chain so that we could move the carcass out of the pen. Our ranch-hand's dad and uncle came with a trailer to take the carcass home and butcher it. Then we got back to work.
That was painful, although there are not many things that I like to see more than an 'io balancing on the winds high above.
My own predation is so much more attenuated most of the time.
We had to euthanize a steer that had broken its leg a few weeks ago. Our ranch-hand dropped the steer with one shot in the center of the forehead, just as one is supposed to, and cut his throat, but the steer still took a while to die. Then we had to shackle the steer's hind legs to the forks of a front-end loader with a chain so that we could move the carcass out of the pen. Our ranch-hand's dad and uncle came with a trailer to take the carcass home and butcher it. Then we got back to work.
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