Discuss: Playing for Keeps

While mastering the language of “our nonhuman neighbors takes effort, humility, and patience”, learning to listen can be accomplished by anyone with an open heart and sincere desire in a matter of minutes. I know, because I’ve guided many into that space. They always return amazed at (and often transformed by) what they heard.

Those who wish to delve more deeply into the language of the Earth might read Stephen Harrod Buhner’s books, particularly The Secret Teachings of Plants.

The first half of that book describes the cutting-edge science that has revealed the heart as the orchestrator of health, the organ of holistic perception, and the doorway through which we communicate with all of Life.

The second, more poetic section presents this mode of perception as not exclusive to first peoples, but also shared by the likes of Henry David Thoreau, Goethe, Luther Burbank, and Masanobu Fukuoka, author of The One Straw Revolution. Buhner teaches how one might relearn to listen with the heart and find healing of body and soul in the wildness of the world.

I am a Japanese-Irish Canadian who has been very integrated and given a Special Liaison - Two Row Wampum - treaty outreach task in the matrilineal 5 Nations Iroquois - (Kahnawake) Mohawk Traditional Council. The article is good (sent to me by friend at Concordia U - Montreal)and I can help a bit with this feedback. The Ga ee en gay ha ga (People Who Spark the Mind Like Flint)not the Dutch word Mohawk nor French word Iroquois, did farm and farmed extensively (corn, beans, squash) for centuries. This and the Great Law of Peace and Understanding truly, democratic, consensus based Constitution (modeled after physical make up of universe)is what distinguishes them from all other Peacemaking spiritual systems I have encountered to date and especially from the Dutch, French, British, American and Canadians who never really respected post Colombian N Americas first intl treaty. It is still valid - in effect but why. Since the native and other parties were not to interfere with each others business one can easily prove the white man never held to this agreement but especially because the agreement also meant joint stewardship of the environment where the treaty functions. Finally, the Great Law like the ceremonies are not metaphors but scientific emulations and reminders - done regularly, constantly (to not do so is against the Constitution) otherwise the people, especially the men (always in check by the women)become extremely destructive (but females accepting the male dominant behavior also)  Stone Iwaasa

A powerful article. I was brought up to listen to nature. I’m trying to do my part in its preservation.

Derrick - good job.  You know from reading my own thoughts on the subject (The Recovery of Ecstasy) that I agree we have lost much of our ability to hear and to touch.  So again, I say great job.  But, I believe the most important piece in your article is the opening paragraph.

“Okay, so it’s clear you don’t like this culture, but what do you want to replace it?” The answer is that I don’t want any one culture to replace this culture. I want ten thousand cultures to replace this culture, each one arising organically from its own place. That’s how humans inhabited the planet (or, more precisely, their landbases, since each group inhabited a place, and not the whole world, which is precisely the point), before this culture set about reducing all cultures to one.

sandy

Jensen means well and I can sense his anguish. Still, he errs in citing a “White culture” that, in reality, does not exist. Perhaps what he implies is more along the lines of a white-capitalist culture that calls destruction “development” and proclaims that greed is indeed good.
He ignores the agricultural achievements of North and South indigenous Americans who developed the foods that feed most of the Earth’s people. Jensen also ignores the self-destruction of the ancient Maya culture that failed to maintain sustainability with the land.
Jensen succeeds in presenting the issues and may some day be able to propose some solutions.

I like Derrick because, at the heart of his writing, he is saying, “face it folks, there is no hope”.  He is the only person who has the balls to say it.
Let’s face it…......our corporate controlled world is not going to make a significant change in the next ten years.  Species are dropping like flies, and oil is on the downward spiral.  Global warming is now unstoppable, and the population will probably reach 12 billion.
THERE ARE NO SOLUTIONS!
I have hoped and hoped, and gotten excited by this idea or that, but I finally came to the realization that we are going to collapse as a civilization and a species, and we will bring a lot of the rest of nature down with us.
There simply is no other way to be realistic about it.
We can wax on and on about love or spirituality or how important it is to try or to be positive, but, folks, it IS COMING DOWN.

Paul,

Yes, it is coming down. Yes, there are no “solutions”. Yes, hope is an exercise in denial and wishful thinking.

But there are an infinite number of positive, creative responses to the perfect storm we’ve brought upon us. Millions of rapidly-evolving people are engaged in crafting and living such responses. A new paradigm is being birthed, and a new story being written for this next phase of human habitation on Earth.

If all you can see is the sky falling down, then you won’t be of any help in building the bridges to the new age of humanity.

While we need some Chicken Littles to draw attention to the falling sky, what we need far more are those who have the vision and the determination to drum up the sun for a new dawn.

Sun dancer
Dance into the night.
We give our whole being
To open up our sight,
That we might see the vision
Every landscape unfurled,
That we might dance through
The crack between the worlds.

Sundancer:
I do agree with much of what you say, and agree that a whole new world of ideas about transition cultures and living after the crash are developing and may be helpful.
But, unless you are ignoring the world at large, you must realize that we are a very, very tiny minority.  Most people on earth are sure things will continue to go on as they have.  A few feel that we must make some big changes.  I now realize all of these people are wrong.  They are living a lie.  They believe our civilization and industrial culture will continue, at least in some adequate form that will allow them to live on pretty much as before.
What we need is for some of us to spread the world that when we say our culture is unsustainable, it means it can’t be sustained.  That means it will end.  And changing lightbulbs and riding a bike instead of a car only sidesteps the reality:  the crash is coming.
Now, once you realize that, THEN we can move on to transition culture and survival skills for those who listen and understand what is coming.