Tools of our tools

“Men have become the tools of their tools”
-Henry David Thoreau

Thomas Lewis, M.D., Fari Amini, M.D., and Richard Lannon, M.D. in their book A General Theory of Love posit that the human nervous system is not a closed loop system but is instead an open loop system wherein we are impacted by our environment. Their consideration is specifice to human relations in that we are impacted by our relations with others (via limbic resonance), which determines the development of our nervous systems and psychology. The complex unconscious this slicing of human language/nehavior (physical, auditory, and otherwise) granted by the evolution of the limbic brain allows for a complex empathic communication. In the developing brain this limbic resonance - empathy forms a neurological/psychological complex wherein certain behavior is normalized. The obvious conclusion from this would be that healthy human contact throughout ones life but especially during development is essential. There is overwhelming supportive experimental data behind this assertion but it should seem obvious from a simple thought experiment. Considering that humans evolved as tribal beings requiring intimately cooperative relations in order to hunt and survive for millennia it should seem likely that a physiological need for intimate relations evolved into our genetic makeup. Simply put, there is an evolved physiological need for human-human socialization. Taking this analysis further it should seem equally likely that given our evolution in a state of intimate relation with the natural world and its diverse inhabitants that our continued relation with them (our non-human neighbors) is also of significant importance to our development.

Richard Louv in The Last Child in the Woods illustrates quite clearly that there is also significant experimental data to support the assertion that people who develop in a state of intimacy with the natural world become more functional adults, especially in terms of their psychic well being. It seems to me, as others have asserted in past, Derrick Jensen for example, that the dominant culture, intentionally or not, has divided us from both human and non-human relations and instead replaced these naturally evolved relations with machines. It seems as though most of us interact with more machines more intimately on a daily basis than we do with any wild non-human neighbors be they trees, mountains, or squirrels. The same can be said for human-human interactions, wherein there is no culturally sanctioned space in which to have intimate regular relations with other humans outside of the curt mechanism of an economical business language. There are few communal spaces and little to no free unstructured time in which to explore these dwindling spaces in which we might meet and interact with others. We seem far too busy relating to our cars, televisions, computers, cell phones, refrigerators, or what have you to spend time with ants, bears, or people. Every material aspect of our lives is almost entirely divorced from the natural world and certainly from our bioregion. All of our human relations are mechanistic and offer little room for human intimacy. We as individuals and as a culture en large are becoming more and more like the tools that we have created to serve us. We, and the culture, which we inhabit, are becoming machines. We are constantly tied to them (plugged into them) and all of our metaphors refer back to them as a baseline reference point (plugged into).

How many people wake up every day to bird song, or even for those who do, pay any attention to bird song? How many hours do we spend indoors shielded from the elements as opposed to outdoors immersed in them? How many people did you feel an actual real connection with today as opposed to those that you did not? How much time did you spend with a tree today as opposed to your’ TV or computer? Where are our values? Where is the dominant culture taking us? How can we call ourselves human when we deny ourselves the very things that make us such? How can we call ourselves human when we both deny and have no connection to the very materials, beliefs, and practices that are responsible for our evolution, the shaping of our minds, and even of our very bodies? What becomes of us when we cast off this evolved inheritance?

We are wild tribal animals and it is essential for our well being and our survival that we find a way to reconnect with that original state. It is imperative that we re-learn to relate to each other as such. It is imperative that we re-learn to relate to the world as such, to spend more time with a patch of dirt than with a car, to spend more candid time with a human friend than crunching numbers or punching the clock or stuck in traffic.

It seems to me that a fundamental assertion of animism is that ‘that which is, is alive, sacred, and connected’. The connectedness of all things in animism is implicit. It should be assumed that we need each other. We need trees and intimate tree relations as much as trees need humans and intimate human relations. If we want to be more than merely the tools of our tools then we need to reconnect with the fundaments of what make us who we are, not on a cultural level but on a biological level. What makes a human, human? By re-asserting primacy into our lives we will make our lives better and the lives of all those around us, both human and non-human, better, all except perhaps the machines.

Our tools have monopolized our culture, our wild inheritance, the quality of our human relationships, our free time, and our lifestyle. We have become tools of our tools. Addicts. Born into a system from which escape is almost impossible not only because of dwindling options but especially because its legitimacy is rarely, if ever, questioned. Born onto a sinking ship, we haven’t the faintest notion that sinking isn’t the natural normative state of the boat. All systems normal, sinking into the Atlantic (SNAFU), just like it’s supposed to be. Is it possible to stop or to reverse? What will we do to free ourselves from our machinations? What momentum does this machine have and how do we break it?

Things to miss after the collapse

1) A good NY Jewish bagel schmeared with cream cheese and lox

Good god do I even need to explain why? If you think that bagels are just round breads then you have never had a bagel, if you toast your bagel then you have never had a bagel, if your’ bagels come from the freezer or fridge or a plastic bag then you have never had a bagel, if your’ bagel isn’t circumcised then you have never had a bagel and I might even go as far as to say that those of you who did not grow up in the NY metropolitan area let me just say that you have never tasted a real bagel.

2) Israeli falafel, from Haifa, to Abu Gosh, to Tel Aviv, and Eilat.

Jumpin’ jehoosefat! I can honestly say that I have never had good falafel on US soil. My Mizarhim mishpacha know how to do that falafel justice!

3) NYC Pizza

I’m not talking about NY style pizza as it is called all around the states but simply NYC pizza, as in originating in that region. Something magical happens when you leave a certain radius of that filthy grotesque city wherein the quality of pizza drops off sharply and is only retained in very tiny remote and seemingly random locations around the country. But NYC remains the pizza king. Oh how I will miss you!

4) Dairy!

Dairy, dairy, dairy! Feta, chevre, havarti, gouda, provolone, jarlsberg, cheddar, parmesan, mozzarella, yogurt, cream, butter, milk, CHOCOLATE MILK, more chocolate milk, and milk that is chocolaty. Why!? Oh good gravy why!? I will miss you most of all chocolate milk, for you I will shed many tears.

5) NY style old school Jewish kosher deli

I’m thinking here of salami sandwiches stacked so high you can’t see over the top. Pastrami, corned beef, turkey, tuna salad, oh mein kosher moyel butcher and sandwich maker of cold cuts and assorted meats! Truly you are a king among kings! I will miss the side of cole slaw and sour pickle, I’ll miss the fresh rye bread and pumpernickel. I will even miss the busy psychotic atmosphere and old yiddishisms yelled among hanging gardens of salami.

6) Tropical fruit. Anytime. Anywhere. At all.

Mangoes, bananas, coconuts, passion fruit, guava, avocado, orange, grapefruit, lemon, lime, pineapple, plantain. (Tear) For those of us living far enough north I think also of watermelons, honeydew, and cantaloupe

7) Bicycles

Let me refer you to the Queen song, “Bicycle”.

Doctors and modern medicine

I’m the last person to knock native medicine, herbalism, shamanic healing, et cetera but the truth is that that is lost knowledge for nearly all humans and won’t return full force for a good long time. Whoa is us who will have to suffer the consequences. Until then, hurray for antiseptics and surgeons!

9) Ice cream.

I suppose that I should file this with dairy but what the hell. I scream for ice cream, my friends. I scream. Ice cream of virtually any flavor. Praise the gods!!! Praise them I say!!!

That’s all for now, I’ll have to addend this list later on but whoa that’s a lot to miss and man is it making me hungry.

The Great Dance

“When you track an animal - you must become the animal. Tracking is like dancing, because your body is happy - you can feel it in the dance and then you know that the hunting will be good. When you are doing these things you are talking with God.”
- !Nqate Xqamxebe 1998, The Great Dance, A Hunter’s Story

I once had a conversation about the hunt in which I was asked, ‘what do you do to honor the animal?’. I fumbled the answer and tried to satisfy what they (a vegetarian) wanted me to say, which was that I did such-and-such ritual, and this, that, and the other thing - some magic mumbo jumbo. It quickly occurred to me afterwards how ridiculous the question was to begin with. The notion that something special needs to be done in order to honor the animal or the hunt is ludicrous, it asserts the “specialness” of spirituality. As though the spiritual were an aspect exclusive to particular times or places. The honor of the hunt is inherent in the hunt. It is inherent in the attitude of the hunter and in the very act of hunting. Honoring the animal is a matter of simply engaging in one’s contract with the animal. Any native person, anyone who is a part of their landbase, is engaged in a number of contracts with their food, their resources, in which they take what they need and they recognize and respect the sacrifice being made. There is no magic word, “special” spell, or ceremony that is done to honor the animal or the hunt. The honor is in the engaging in the natural lifeway along the guidelines of the evolved ecological contract with one’s relations. The only ceremony that is needed is the single, universal, most basic of ceremonies, which is simply the utterance or enactment of “thanksgiving”. Meister Eckhart, the German Christian mystic said that “If the only prayer you ever say in your’ entire life is thank you, it will be enough.” Thanksgiving is the most basic spiritual act. It is the founding pillar of “spiritual” life. I hesitate to even use the word “spiritual” because to even recognize its existence is almost to presume that anything is not or might not be spiritual. The basic assumption of any spiritualism is the existence of the other, and as far as animism goes that other suffuses everything. E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G. The spiritual is the “invisible” analogue of all that occurs in this our primary reality, our world of primary experience. The only absence or lack of spirituality or the other is in the failure of the experiencer to recognize its existence. The sacredness of the hunt and the kill isn’t sacralized because the hunter dances around in a circle, cuts himself, or spills sand on the meat, or whatever ritual one performs, it’s because he engages in life as he was evolved to live it. He performs his evolved function. He fulfills his contract, his function. These actions are innate; they are built into the physical framework of the body, of the psyche, of the culture, and of the environment. The honor is in recognizing this, in simply saying that “this is holy” in making oneself “transparent to transcendence”, in saying “thank you”, by engaging sacred space, whether by intention or by necessity. Spiritualism, honor, sacredness isn’t something that emerges from a magical incantation or text or what ever else it is emergent from action because it is an emergent principal, it arises from the realization of an evolved function, because, as Derrick Jensen states in premise sixteen,…

Premise Sixteen:

“The material world is primary. This does not mean that the spirit does not exist, nor that the material world is all there is. It means that spirit mixes with flesh. It means also that real world actions have real world consequences. It means we cannot rely on Jesus, Santa Claus, the Great Mother, or even the Easter Bunny to get us out of this mess. It means this mess really is a mess, and not just the movement of God’s eyebrows. It means we have to face this mess ourselves. It means that for the time we are here on Earth—whether or not we end up somewhere else after we die, and whether we are condemned or privileged to live here—the Earth is the point. It is primary. It is our home. It is everything. It is silly to think or act or be as though this world is not real and primary. It is silly and pathetic to not live our lives as though our lives are real.”

Action is the incumbent principal, the primary reality, move in action and the rest will follow, which is not to say that chanting, fasting, praying, etc aren’t going to do anything or aren’t valid and useful practices but certainly they aren’t going to feed your’ village, they aren’t, as Tom Brown says, active meditations - the hunt is and the hunt will feed the village.

As !Nqate Xqamxebe says, “when you are doing these things you are talking with God”. When you are engaged in your’ ecological contract, your’ bliss, your’ function, then you are talking with God. The great dance is the realization of one’s function in action. When one is swept up in one’s bliss one is dancing. Tracking is the great dance, hunting is the great dance, the great dance is part of the human function.

Yisrael

Jacob after wrestling with an angel was named Yisrael, which in hebrew means “to struggle with god”. This has become a defining feature of judaism. It is central to the judaic way to question and develop one’s own path, to take personal responsibility for growth and understanding. Simultaneously it denotes that to be a jew is to be in the mystery, because to ’stuggle with god’ means not be at peace with god or at an end to strife or what have you but to be in limbo, to be in the mystery. It is the mystery that the jewish path immerses its followers and it is mystery that is the central animist principal. Joseph Campbell lists four mythic functions. The first function is the mystical function, which is ‘the universe is an awesome mystery, let us stand in awe of it.’ Judaism specific take or twist on this function is ‘the universe is an awesome mystery, let us stand in awe of it as we experience and struggle to understand what we can of it for our own betterment as individuals and as a tribe.’ When famously boiling down the Torah to one sentence Hillel said “Do not do unto others as you would not have done onto yourself (do not do what is hateful), all the rest is commentary, go forth and study”. That being that there is but one prime directive and one adjuct modifier. Do not do unto others what is hateful then qualified by the understanding the having understood this one central principal it is now incumbant upon you to take personal responsibility for you growth and for your’ place in the world - go forth and study.

We are immersed in mystery and driven by the question. Mystery is the dominant condition and understanding offers us the means or vantage by which to experience that mystery. The jewish condition is about pursuing relationship with god/mystery, not about believing in god - that is not the dominant or even requisite feature, though it is important and occurs for many. Experience is what the follower has not blind faith. Experience of and relationship with mystery as driven by the prime directive - do not what is hateful, be responsible.

“Go forth” similarly are the first words that god speaks to Moses on Mount Sinai when he says “Lekh lekha” - go forth/get up and move. You must act, no one will act for you. Again returning to Hillel “If I am not for myself, who will be? If I am only for myself, who am I? If not now, when?” If I am not for myself, who will be - no one. Responsibility is incumbant upon you. This is one of the major functions of initiation rites as we see in the Bar/Bat Mitzvah - you are now a man, you can now study torah and take personal responsibility for all of your’ actions.

Again returning to the condition of mystery when god reveals himself to Moses god only reveals his back side saying “You will see my back, but my face must not be seen.” Rabbi Daniel Gordis speaks about this saying “God suggests that there are many ways to know God. Even if Moses cannot see God’s face, he can still experiene God’s “back.” Even if modern Jews cannot “know” God in a purely rational way, there are other ways to experience God and, ultimately, to know God. The Jewish spiritual search is about discovering those other approaches.” God’s face cannot be seen but he can be experienced indirectly, his back can be glanced. The mystery can be grasped in part but it’s condition is mystery and thus cannot be grasped otherwise but as mystery. Heinrich Zimmer speaks about the best things being incommunicable, the second best being symbolic, and the rest being drivel. The best things - the mystery, the archetypes, the experience, being - can only be experienced it cannot be respresented via symbolism, the second best things are communications of the best things which are by their nature symbolic - they represent the best things, and the third best things are everything which does not even refer to the experience.

It seems to me that we should be immersed in mystery, granting ourselves but a leg to stand on in the auditorium of the unknown, while we forge a path upon which to travel.

Go forth and study, Noah

10,000 hours to 10,000 BC

Here (http://www.newyorker.com/online/video/conference/2007/gladwell) Malcolm Gladwell talks about genius and the supposed 10,000 hours/10 year rule. My understanding, assuming that the rule is true, is that, prodigies aside, it generally requires 10,000 hours of study in order to truly master a craft. In considering the generic “craft” of being a “cave man” it should take approximately 625 days to master the state of being wild assuming that you get an average of 8 hours of sleep per day. This mastering wildness concerns only the general state of living wild but not any specific craft of a wild life such as hunting Elk, animal trailing, stalking game, herbal medicine, bowery, midwifery, tribal relations (which is in and of itself varied and multi-dimensional), flintknapping, etc.

So, how many hours have I logged? How many have you? How many more hours to “master” the craft of wildness? Would anyone like to schedule a couple hundred hours of say… wildness? Count down to 10,000 BC

10,000… 9,999… 9,998…

Keep it wild, Noah

Picasso & Cezanne

Malcolm Gladwell’s speech “Age Before Beauty” (http://www.davidgalenson.com/malcolmgladwell-lecture.pdf) concerns the nature of the creative process. He posits that it is possible to divide the creative process into two primary modes. Experimental (or lets say chaotic) creativity and Prodigal (or conceptual, formulaic) creativity. In one mode, chaotic creativity, the creative process is an non-formulaic process, seemingly random, experimental. In the prodigal mode the creative process is driven not by a chaotic trial and error but by a cohesive patterend formula. Picasso vs Cezanne. The Picasso creates z because it follows logically from x, y, whereas Cezanne creates z because z. This is at least my over simplified possibly wrong interpretation of what Gladwell is saying. Perhaps I misinterpreted his meaning or perhaps he is simply wrong in his analysis. Regardless there is certainly a good deal of weight to his argument and the relevance of this creativity dyad is that we are culturaly inculcated to favor Picasso over Cezanne, and in doing so we are missing out on Cezanne entirely. We need to integrate these creative principals, these two creativity vectors to better ourselves. To fully unleash our creativity as both are valid means of expression. To miss out on all of the Cezanne in our communities and in our own psyches is a major loss. This leads me to wonder what is the creative process and how would creativity be experienced in a truly and purely wild state by wild humans. What is creativity? Does our creative output fall into the mode of either Picasso or Cezanne? Does it contain both and express itself alternatively? Is there a dominant expression of one form over the other or do we fall into one category alone? Is this categorical dyad an accurate means of analysis? Are there other categories or is the Picasso/Cezanne dyad non-applicable altogether?

It does occur to me that consciousness of these modes of thought/expression prime us to consciously apply the alternative form to our life/behavior to that which is dominant in us when applicable. So are you a Picasso or a Cezanne?