- Dec 2024
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emergencemagazine.org emergencemagazine.org
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I think the Paleolithic ethical framework is simply—I mean, the hunter-gatherers—having no separation between themselves, no radical distinction between human and nonhuman—thought everything else was kindred. Literally, they thought if you went out to hunt and you’re hunting a deer, the deer is your sister or your brother, or maybe your ancestor, or maybe, more precisely, past/future forms of yourself. Because I think the ethic was you hunted with sort of prayers and sacrifice and humility. You’re asking a deer—a brother or a sister or an ancestor—to give its life for you.
for - food is sacred - why we say prayer for the living being that died so that we may live - samsara - kill others so that we may live - hunting and killing other - from - Emergence Magazine - interview - An Ethics of Wild Mind - David Hinton
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in Vermont, Native Americans lived here—well, like everywhere in North America—they lived here in Vermont for over ten thousand years. The ecosystem was basically intact, and that’s because they had that ethical system built into their fundamental cultural assumptions—the assumptions that guided their lives. They didn’t think about them. They didn’t question them. They were simply the assumptions, the unthought assumptions.
for - philosophy matters! - biodiversity crisis - 10,000 years of preservation vs 100 years of clearcut - David Hinton - comparison - polycrisis - climate crisis - two unthought assumptions - philosophical differences - Indigenous people of Vermont vs European settlers - from - Emergence Magazine - interview - An Ethics of Wild Mind - David Hinton
comparison - polycrisis - climate crisis - biodiversity crisis - Indigneous people of Vermont - vs European settlers - unthought assumptions - unthought assumptions of Indigenous people took care of forests for 10,000 years - unthought assumptions of European settlers clear cut all the forests in 100 years - These are philosophical differences - PHILOSOPHY MATTERS!
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We think of ourselves as this little bubble of obsessions and memories going on in our head that’s detached from everything else. That’s the wound.
for - summary - polycrisis - requires a shift in stories - from little self - to big self - from - Emergence Magazine - interview - An Ethics of Wild Mind - David Hinton
summary - polycrisis - requires a shift in stories - from little self - to big self - from - Emergence Magazine - interview - An Ethics of Wild Mind - David Hinton - We think of ourselves as this little bubble of obsessions and memories going on in our head detached from everything else - THAT'S THE WOUND! - That sounds and IS FELT as bleak, isn't it? - The scientific story of the cosmos is that there are countless solar systems in our universe, countless suns and planets over vast time scales - Our planet evolved life billions of years ago - Some of those life forms became multicellular animals, like us - Some of them developed eyes, nose, ears, skin and a brain and central nervous system - When we look out into the world, it is the cosmos distilled in us looking out at itself - Hence, we are intertwingled and woven into the fabric of everything - the cosmos in human form experiencing the cosmos itself - When we think about our extinction, it is also the cosmos thinking about extinction - When we feel ANYTHING, that's the cosmos feeling it - And WHEN WE DIE that is the cosmos in this human form dying to itself
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I sort of trace out these parallel developments
for - history - connection stories that challenge the Genesis control story- begin with indigenous peoples of North America - then ping pong back and forth between Europe and North America - from - Emergence Magazine - interview - An Ethics of Wild Mind - David Hinton
history - connection stories that challenge the Genesis control story - Indigenous elders of North America share stories with some Westerners in the United States and Canada - These are shared in Europe and become popular, especially amongst intellectuals - It was refreshing to hear an account of nature that wasn't considered evil and that had to be tamed and brought into God's order - Alexander von Humboldt wrote some of these and was widely read - Thoreau, WHitman and Rousseau read Humboldt - British and German Romantics such as Wordworth, Shelly and Coleridge are also influenced by it and see the rediscovery of the wonder of nature as an antidote to the alienation of the industrial age - Completing the circle, American intellects Thoreau and Emerson read the Romantics, in turn influencing Whitman and John Muir
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The Greeks took that material change and they mythologized it into the soul. And then, of course, Genesis—the creation of the world in Christianity—says, the world is here for humans. It was created for humans to use, to dominate, to exploit, you know, in their trial here to see if they’re righteous or not.
for - key insight - roots of anthropomorphism - Greek and Christian narratives - from - Emergence Magazine - interview - An Ethics of Wild Mind - David Hinton - adjacency - existential polycrisis - roots of anthropomorphism in the written language - Deep Humanity BEing journeys that explore how language constructs our reality
key insight / summary - roots of anthropomorphism - Greek and Christian narratives - The Greeks defined the soul - The Genesis story established that we were the chosen species and all others are subservient to us - From that story, domination of nature becomes the social norm, leading all the way to the existential polycrisis / metacrisis we are now facing - This underscores the critical salience of Deep Humanity to the existential polycrisis - exploring the roots of language and how it changes our perceptions of reality - showing us how we construct our narratives at the most fundamental level, then buy into them
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But once you can write things down, then that mental realm suddenly starts looking timeless and radically different from the world around us. And I think that’s what really created this sense of an interior, what became, with the Greeks and the Christians, a kind of soul; this thing that’s actually made of different stuff. It’s made of spirit stuff instead of matter
for - new insight - second cause of human separation - after settling down, it was WRITING! intriguing! - from - Emergence Magazine - interview - An Ethics of Wild Mind - David Hinton - adjacency - sense of separation - first - settling down - human place - second - writing - from - Emergence Magazine - interview - An Ethics of Wild Mind - David Hinton
adjacency - between - sense of separation - first - settling down - human place - second - transition from oral to written language - adjacency relationship - Interesting that I was just reading an article on language and perception from the General Semantics organization: General Semantics and non-verbal awareness - The claim is that the transition from oral language to written language created the feeling of interiority and of a separate "soul". - This is definitely worth exploring!
explore claim - the transition from oral language traditions to writing led us to form the sense of interiority and of a "soul" separate from the body - This claim, if we can validate it, can have profound implications - Writing definitely led us to create much more complex words but we were able to do much more efficient timebinding - transmitting knowledge from one generation to the next. - We didn't have to depend on just a few elders to pass the knowledge on. With the invention of the printing press, written language got an exponential acceleration in intergenerational knowledge transmission. - This had a huge feedback effect on the oral language itself, increase the number of words and meanings exponentially. - There are complex recipes for everything and written words allow us to capture the complex recipes or instructions in ways that would overwhelm oral traditions.
to - article - General Semantics and Non-Verbal Awareness - https://hyp.is/BePQhLvTEe-wYD_MPM9N3Q/www.time-binding.org/Article-Database
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next, I think, was writing
for - new insight - second cause of human separation - after settling down, it was writing! intriguing! - from - Emergence Magazine - interview - An Ethics of Wild Mind - David Hinton
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the sense we have now began when Paleolithic hunter-gatherers started settling into Neolithic agricultural villages. And then at that point, there was a separate human space—it’s the village and the cultivated fields around it. Hunter-gatherers didn’t have that, they’re just wandering through “the wild,” “wilderness.” Of course, that idea would make no sense to them, because there’s no separation.
for - adjacency - paleolithic hunter-gatherer - to neolithic agricultural village - dawn of agriculture - village - cultivated fields around it - created a human space - the village - thus began the - great separation - Emergence Magazine - interview - An Ethics of Wild Mind - David Hinton
adjacency - between - paleolithic hunter-gatherer - to neolithic agricultural village - dawn of agriculture village - cultivated fields around it - settling down - birth of the human space - the village - thus began - the great separation - adjacency relationship - He connects two important ideas together, the transition from - always-moving, never settling down paleolithic hunter-gatherer to - settled-down neolithic agricultural farmers - The key connection is that this transition from moving around and mobile to stationary is the beginning of our separation from nature - John Ikerd talks about the same thing in his article on the "three great separations". He identifies agriculture as the first of three major cultural separation events that led to our modern form of alienation - The development of a human place had humble beginnings but today, these places are "human-made worlds" that are foreign to any other species. - The act of settling down in one fixed space gave us a place we can continually build upon, accrue and most importantly, begin and continue timebinding - After all, a library is a fixed place, it doesn't move. It would be very difficult to maintain were it always moving.
to - article - In These Times - The Three “Great Separations” that Unravelled Our Connection to Earth and Each Other - John Ikerd - https://hyp.is/CEzS6Bd_Ee6l6KswKZEGkw/inthesetimes.com/article/industrial-agricultural-revolution-planet-earth-david-korten - timebinding - Alfred Korzyski
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You describe how foundational stories of our Western, Christian paradigm are based on this idea of “a self-enclosed human realm separate from everything else,” and that this paradigm is a wound—one “so complete we can’t see it anymore, for it defines the very nature of what we assume ourselves to be.”
for - human bubble, ailenated from nature, human world so different from natural world - nice meme - self-enclosed human realm separate from everything else - Emergence Magazine - interview - An Ethics of Wild Mind - David Hinton
Tags
- new insight - second cause of human separation - after settling down, it was writing! intriguing! - from - Emergence Magazine - interview - An Ethics of Wild Mind - David Hinton
- to - article - In These Times - The Three “Great Separations” that Unraveled Our Connection to Earth and Each Other - John Ikerd
- Emergence Magazine - interview - An Ethics of Wild Mind - David Hinton
- history - connection stories that challenge the Genesis control story- begin with indigenous peoples of North America - then ping pong back and forth between Europe and North America - from - Emergence Magazine - interview - An Ethics of Wild Mind - David Hinton
- philosophy matters! - biodiversity crisis - 10,000 years of preservation vs 100 years of clearcut - David Hinton
- summary - polycrisis - requires a shift in stories - from little self - to big self - from - Emergence Magazine - interview - An Ethics of Wild Mind - David Hinton
- adjacency - existential polycrisis - roots of anthropomorphism in the written language - Deep Humanity BEing journeys that explore how language constructs our reality
- key insight - roots of anthropomorphism - Greek and Christian narratives - from - Emergence Magazine - interview - An Ethics of Wild Mind - David Hinton
- new insight - second cause of human separation - after settling down, it was **WRITING**! intriguing! - from - Emergence Magazine - interview - An Ethics of Wild Mind - David Hinton
- to - article - General Semantics and Non-Verbal Awareness
- nice meme - self-enclosed human realm separate from everything else - Emergence Magazine - interview - An Ethics of Wild Mind - David Hinton
- comparison - polycrisis - climate crisis - two unthought assumptions - Indigenous people of Vermont vs European settlers - from - Emergence Magazine - interview - An Ethics of Wild Mind - David Hinton
- adjacency - paleolithic hunter-gatherer - to neolithic agricultural village - dawn of agriculture - village - cultivated fields around it - created a human space - the village - thus began the - great separation
- adjacency - sense of separation - first - settling down - human place - second - writing - from - Emergence Magazine - interview - An Ethics of Wild Mind - David Hinton
- food is sacred - why we say prayer for the living being that died so that we may live - samsara - kill others so that we may live - hunting and killing other - from - Emergence Magazine - interview - An Ethics of Wild Mind - David Hinton
- human bubble, ailenated from nature, human world so different from natural world
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