That Cartesian disdain for feeling and emotion was not, I think, restricted to the non-human world. It found expression in the 'stiff upper lip', the 'weaker sex', mental asylums, the invention and use of weapons that could could kill hundreds or even thousands at a stroke. More recently it seems to have found its apotheosis in the trans humanist cult.
Earlier in my life I used to view the belief systems and stories of indigenous and ancient civilisations as almost childish, wondering how people could believe something so obviously untrue. I had been a child of rationality, curious about how things worked, taken apart and reassembled. It's been very useful for me in mending and making things - I've saved thousands! But I have come to value metaphor and the allegoric which Iain McGilchrist contends is one of the few ways we can transcend the limitations of language to express the otherwise inexpressible. It's very possible that the legends that tribes used were not believed as fact but were accepted as they expressed important values and attitudes to the world around them. Spirits, such as the spirit of the forest, are necessarily vague entities as they deal with the non-corporeal ideas of respect and the complex interactions of the natural world.
I so appreciate this conversation. So much resonates with what I have observed in my book, Being Restorative—to be in right relationship with all beings as co-constituent cells in the body of earth. This conversation elucidates the deep harm that emanates from what I call the Original Wound—the moment when humans cede our belonging to the earth, replacing it with the arrogance that the earth belongs to us. At that point, the commodification and othering begin. We are no longer in right relationship which is to say kinship. We devolve into ownership and possession, supremacy and the deepest expressions of violence.
So much here to notice, wonder, acknowledge, and appreciate—the four verbs of being restorative.
That Cartesian disdain for feeling and emotion was not, I think, restricted to the non-human world. It found expression in the 'stiff upper lip', the 'weaker sex', mental asylums, the invention and use of weapons that could could kill hundreds or even thousands at a stroke. More recently it seems to have found its apotheosis in the trans humanist cult.
Earlier in my life I used to view the belief systems and stories of indigenous and ancient civilisations as almost childish, wondering how people could believe something so obviously untrue. I had been a child of rationality, curious about how things worked, taken apart and reassembled. It's been very useful for me in mending and making things - I've saved thousands! But I have come to value metaphor and the allegoric which Iain McGilchrist contends is one of the few ways we can transcend the limitations of language to express the otherwise inexpressible. It's very possible that the legends that tribes used were not believed as fact but were accepted as they expressed important values and attitudes to the world around them. Spirits, such as the spirit of the forest, are necessarily vague entities as they deal with the non-corporeal ideas of respect and the complex interactions of the natural world.
The Unknowable - but not the Unfeelable.
I so appreciate this conversation. So much resonates with what I have observed in my book, Being Restorative—to be in right relationship with all beings as co-constituent cells in the body of earth. This conversation elucidates the deep harm that emanates from what I call the Original Wound—the moment when humans cede our belonging to the earth, replacing it with the arrogance that the earth belongs to us. At that point, the commodification and othering begin. We are no longer in right relationship which is to say kinship. We devolve into ownership and possession, supremacy and the deepest expressions of violence.
So much here to notice, wonder, acknowledge, and appreciate—the four verbs of being restorative.
We ar not special but our arrogance and and rather large brains makes us assert that we are
From New Mexico.
a place on this planet we all live, on be well
Spinning wool offers a pre-socratic meditative practice that brings us back to the three fates and our common thread with sheep or flax.