The Olympics, the Olympics – everywhere I turn, it’s all about the Olympics these days. And every time I hear the word, see the marketing gadgets and junk, am confronted by the media madness over this sporting event, I do my best to turn away. Not to react, but simply to refocus my attention elsewhere.
I have no gripe with competitive sporting events per se. The Olympics were designed, after all, as an alternative to war, so that humanity could work out their aggression and desire to dominate in a peaceful forum. The concept is good but, unfortunately, not highly effective considering the current state of armed conflict in the world. As for what the Olympics have become, that’s a discussion I’ll leave to other commentators.
The act of turning away from media imposed mass events, is something I have been practicing for many years. It is the manifestation of my desire to nurture human cultural diversity. On a personal level, I call this choice “intentional complexity”. I invented this term, in part, because the path of “voluntary simplicity” that I was on didn’t quite describe why I was attempting to free myself for the constraints of wage slavery and consumerism. Heading off in the direction of simplicity, I realized was more a method than a desired result. Simplicity is good, but what is it for? What am I after?
What I want is a life in which I can be fully present, of mind, heart and body.
I want to be ready for the adventures that unfold of their own volition as well as the ones I choose. I want to make choices as unfettered as possible by what is expected of me in a culture that doesn’t inspire my enthusiasm. I want, like Luanne, in her Feb. 9 blog entry, to be in service to the Earth. I want the richness of being able to listen, to hear and to respond.
Natural historian David Quammen writes:
“More and more in recent years, we are all thinking about the same things at the same time. Electromagnetic radiation is chiefly responsible; microwaves, macrowaves, dashing and dancing electrons unite us instantly and constantly with the waves of each other’s brain... Too much “conscious unity of souls” is unhealthy, probably even pernicious. It yields polarized thought… with everyone smugly in agreement that such-and-such matters are worth contemplation, and that the rest by implication are not. Such unity is a form of overall mental impoverishment.”
Quammen’s own personal “battle against homogenization of mind”, has lead him to get rid of his television set and to explore nature. He encourages people to take a day or hour every month to think about things that “nobody else deems worthy of contemplation”. Thinking and writing about sense of place and peasant culture fits the bill nicely. Who, except me and a handful of kindred spirits, cares? And what point does thinking and writing about these things have?
But the point is precisely that I care. And I care deeply. At this moment, there isn’t anything else I care about quite so deeply. This must be a luxury in our modern society; to be able to say that I spent the day thinking about the subject that is most vital to me. However, I have no illusion that my mind is entirely my own; mental ruts await the tired wheel of my brain at every turn. Nevertheless, I am on the project of trying to think my own thoughts on both mundane and more elevated matters. This, in turn, leads to the creation of my own works of art and craft, experimentation with food instead of always following recipes, even attempts to transform social interactions.
But then I think: isn’t intentional complexity just another trap to get us to focus on individuality instead of collectivity and interconnection? After all, in peasant and forager cultures, many people must have been thinking about similar things at similar times; the weather, the soil, the animals in the forest, how best to weave the fabric, how to heal the cow’s udder, whether the fisher, the farmer, the hunter, the berry picker, the child, will soon be home. However, they thought these thoughts in their own local dialects, using their own unique internal languages, based in the small, but meaningful variations of plants, animals, landforms and culture that each village represented. Their thoughts were part of an ongoing dialogue, millenia old, with the elements that formed them and the objects they formed. And they did not think only of practicalities and survival, but of innovation and philosophy, justice and spirit. They engaged with the unknown, seeking not definitive answers, but engagement. They spoke with the owl in the tree because it was there in front of them. They gathered in sacred places because it felt good and necessary to celebrate their connection to land, that specific land, with friends and neighbours. Perhaps a few hundred or a few thousand overlapped in their thoughts at any given time, not hundreds of millions, as often happens now.
How did we get from there to here? Using my own Estonian heritage as an example, the cultural awakening in the mid-19th century caused what had been a culture of engagement with neighbours and land, to evolve into a culture with a different purpose. People began to learn the same songs and eventually read the same books. Freedom from serfdom was the point. Homogenization of language began to accelerate with the widespread introduction of schools. The loss of regional Estonian dialects has happened within my generation. My aunt, who was fluent in Mulgi murrak, is now long dead, and though my cousins can understand the dialect, they do not speak it. Her grandchildren recognize a smattering of words and phrases. My father’s murrak is rusty at best. I know only a half dozen words. Worse, I had trouble understanding my aunt, even when she spoke in high Estonian, because her local intonation was so pronounced.
How pronounced is my local intonation? Can it be known from my language, my body, my thoughts, where I come from, which land I belong to? Are my thoughts a link between me and the land, between me and those I share the land with, between us and other diverse peoples in places farther away? Or are they merely manifestations of media mogul manipulations in places that are un-places? Is there room in my life for the wonder of wandering through the recesses of this oft over-glorified human brain of mine, for the pleasure of engaging with the Earth place where I belong, for the magic of giggling with friends from the bottom of my truest self? All of this serves interconnection of the truest kind, the kind that involves self-defined individuals and diverse communities coming together to share the best of themselves. Wasn't this the original point of the Olympics as well?
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Gardening by Luanne Armstrong
In Service to Place
Gardening season in this part of the world begins in February, in the grey time, the cloud lid heavy over the grey flat lake and dim blue mountains, light and heat driven far away. But the snowdrops are pushing push out of the frost; the buds swell, dap, unseen, begins to run in the maples and birch.
I whisper to the sad leggy geraniums; soon I promise them, light and heat will come.
And this week, my friend Kuya came and we did our seed orders together, acknowledging our goofy willingness to fall for words like heritage, Russan, French, in the vegetable descriptions. But we ordered them anyway.
The seed orders will arrive in a couple of weeks, and then I can crank up the greenhouse, put in lights and heat, start putting seeds in pots.
And then, in early April, the ground will be dug and rototilled, though not by me.
And then finally, will come the first soft day in April when the sun smacks my shoulders with actual heat. The mud has dried. The garden soil crumbles under food.
I will gather a rake, a shovel, string, seed packets, dump them all in the wheelbarrow, and plant a first row of spinach or peas in the dug, raked garden soil. Usually, on such a day, the sun comes and goes as abruptly as someone turning out the lights. Snow squalls barrel across Kootenay Lake; what was sun is suddenly rain or sleet or hail and in fifteen minutes, the squall has chased merrily its tail merrily over the Purcells and faded away.
I will bend and dig until I’m tired, which doesn’t take very long and then retire to the deck to watch the clouds and the sun on the shining lake. And then I go back; I will work like this all day, in small rushes, and stretches of time, until the cold spring evening sets in and I retreat to the house.
And all the while I’m pounding stakes and tying string to make a straight line and digging a trench with the hoe and laying in the seeds, I wonder all over again, what I’m doing and why. I know all the obvious reasons. I believe in growing my own food, in independence, in growing local, in not being dependent on gas and oil for my food. Every spring, I wonder why I am here, doing this, all by myself?
When I step outside on a spring night, the earth reeks of waking; the call of birth, of living, of being dragged out of dark muck and curled sleep by light and heat. There’s cruelty in it. Part of me is exhausted by this call; the demand of all that sweat and stooping and bending.
But I serve my garden. And it serves me. It’s not clear just where this service, these kind of obligations begin or end, Nor am I at all clear who is serving who, or what and how we got into this somewhat mad relationship in the first place.
Still, it feels like a call to service; a call to tending, a call to caring and midwifing seeds into plants and plants into food and food into nurturing people’s lives. It’s the smell of soil warming, of mould and rot and worms and buds breaking. It moves me without any conscious volition to stoop over the soil and see clustered, rows of sprouts, two tiny primary leaves, breaking the crusted soil, heading upwards.
Gardening season in this part of the world begins in February, in the grey time, the cloud lid heavy over the grey flat lake and dim blue mountains, light and heat driven far away. But the snowdrops are pushing push out of the frost; the buds swell, dap, unseen, begins to run in the maples and birch.
I whisper to the sad leggy geraniums; soon I promise them, light and heat will come.
And this week, my friend Kuya came and we did our seed orders together, acknowledging our goofy willingness to fall for words like heritage, Russan, French, in the vegetable descriptions. But we ordered them anyway.
The seed orders will arrive in a couple of weeks, and then I can crank up the greenhouse, put in lights and heat, start putting seeds in pots.
And then, in early April, the ground will be dug and rototilled, though not by me.
And then finally, will come the first soft day in April when the sun smacks my shoulders with actual heat. The mud has dried. The garden soil crumbles under food.
I will gather a rake, a shovel, string, seed packets, dump them all in the wheelbarrow, and plant a first row of spinach or peas in the dug, raked garden soil. Usually, on such a day, the sun comes and goes as abruptly as someone turning out the lights. Snow squalls barrel across Kootenay Lake; what was sun is suddenly rain or sleet or hail and in fifteen minutes, the squall has chased merrily its tail merrily over the Purcells and faded away.
I will bend and dig until I’m tired, which doesn’t take very long and then retire to the deck to watch the clouds and the sun on the shining lake. And then I go back; I will work like this all day, in small rushes, and stretches of time, until the cold spring evening sets in and I retreat to the house.
And all the while I’m pounding stakes and tying string to make a straight line and digging a trench with the hoe and laying in the seeds, I wonder all over again, what I’m doing and why. I know all the obvious reasons. I believe in growing my own food, in independence, in growing local, in not being dependent on gas and oil for my food. Every spring, I wonder why I am here, doing this, all by myself?
When I step outside on a spring night, the earth reeks of waking; the call of birth, of living, of being dragged out of dark muck and curled sleep by light and heat. There’s cruelty in it. Part of me is exhausted by this call; the demand of all that sweat and stooping and bending.
But I serve my garden. And it serves me. It’s not clear just where this service, these kind of obligations begin or end, Nor am I at all clear who is serving who, or what and how we got into this somewhat mad relationship in the first place.
Still, it feels like a call to service; a call to tending, a call to caring and midwifing seeds into plants and plants into food and food into nurturing people’s lives. It’s the smell of soil warming, of mould and rot and worms and buds breaking. It moves me without any conscious volition to stoop over the soil and see clustered, rows of sprouts, two tiny primary leaves, breaking the crusted soil, heading upwards.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
The Nose on Aurora's Face by K.Linda Kivi
What is it that divides humans into those who attempt to live with ecological integrity and those who don’t? A strong sense of place? A compassionate giving nature? The way we are raised (see Jan. 18 blog entry)? A culture of conservation?
This is, of course, the million dollar question. If we had an answer for this one, we could be far more effective in changing the course of environmental destruction currently underway. My time in Aurora, Ontario, has been fascinating in that I’ve been living among people who’s environmental ethic seems to begin and end with filling up many blue boxes worth of recycling a week. These boxes get put out weekly alongside piles of usable appliances, furniture, sporting gear, electronics, toilets, etc., as well as bags and bags of garbage. I really have no idea of where to begin a conversation within my neighbourhood where there seems to be no qualms about waste and consumption, be it in the form of “trash”, gas-guzzling vehicles or monster houses.
So, I’ve been following the local story of the Nokaiidaa Trail and one woman, Heidi Stoecklin’s, campaign to keep the trail from going through the local McKenzie Wetlands with curiosity. As someone from rural BC who is accustomed to large areas of wilderness, I’ve asked myself, what’s the big deal? Why is Heidi so passionate about this one little patch of swamp? And where does she get the energy and patience to attempt a conversation of this kind with clearly clueless politicians and public? Or perhaps it would be fairer to say that they are not clueless so much as holding values that have little to nothing to do with ecological or social integrity. Part of me thinks: why bother talking to these people anyway?
With that attitude, it was easy for me to dismiss the McKenzie Wetlands campaign as a waste of time. It’s just a tiny remnant of an ecosystem anyway that has been battered and fragmented beyond viability. Like some of Aurora’s residents and politicians, I asked myself what difference would a little boardwalk through a tiny wetland make, the whole area is surrounded by the suburbia of World Wreckers anyway?
The letter to the editor of the local Auroran newspaper that I finally wrote and sent, more as a tribute and encouragement to Heidi than anything else, outlines the ecological services provided by wetlands and pointed out, the obvious, that humans are part of that greater ecology. But surely these people know that? Then why don’t they live as if they understood the implications of their behaviour?
Equally puzzling, though more laudable, is what motivates Heidi to keep on attending the meetings, write letters to the editor each week that basically say: look, you have a nose on your face? And: look, how much money are you spending trying to convince your face it doesn’t have a nose? Meanwhile, the politicians seem to be unwilling to look her in the face, nose or no nose.
I’ve come to the conclusion that Heidi is a gift to Aurora. Every community needs its Heidi, someone who’s willing to take the time and put in the energy it takes, with such grace and respect, regardless of the outcome. Heidi is starting where she is. She’s starting where the people of Aurora are at. She’s starting with a microcosm of the larger ills and insisting that people listen. We can only hope that some of them will hear. One thing is certain: if she doesn’t speak up, nobody will hear. And at this point, until we figure out what the magic formula is, simple, heartfelt, insistent communication is still all we have to go on. Maybe the act of speaking to one another is what creates a common language.
Where does that leave me? Not sure. My investment in this community is small. My commitment here is to caring for my ailing parents. All my actions, prior to this letter to the editor have been small and covert. The one conversation I had with an Auroran – a very nice, smart man in my meditation group - about the state of waste in the neighbourhood was met with: oh, I haven’t noticed. And: you can’t sell used furniture any more, so we have to put it out in the garbage. Sigh. But what happens to me and my integrity when I choose not to engage, but simmer in my disgust and despair instead?
Any ideas?
This is, of course, the million dollar question. If we had an answer for this one, we could be far more effective in changing the course of environmental destruction currently underway. My time in Aurora, Ontario, has been fascinating in that I’ve been living among people who’s environmental ethic seems to begin and end with filling up many blue boxes worth of recycling a week. These boxes get put out weekly alongside piles of usable appliances, furniture, sporting gear, electronics, toilets, etc., as well as bags and bags of garbage. I really have no idea of where to begin a conversation within my neighbourhood where there seems to be no qualms about waste and consumption, be it in the form of “trash”, gas-guzzling vehicles or monster houses.
So, I’ve been following the local story of the Nokaiidaa Trail and one woman, Heidi Stoecklin’s, campaign to keep the trail from going through the local McKenzie Wetlands with curiosity. As someone from rural BC who is accustomed to large areas of wilderness, I’ve asked myself, what’s the big deal? Why is Heidi so passionate about this one little patch of swamp? And where does she get the energy and patience to attempt a conversation of this kind with clearly clueless politicians and public? Or perhaps it would be fairer to say that they are not clueless so much as holding values that have little to nothing to do with ecological or social integrity. Part of me thinks: why bother talking to these people anyway?
With that attitude, it was easy for me to dismiss the McKenzie Wetlands campaign as a waste of time. It’s just a tiny remnant of an ecosystem anyway that has been battered and fragmented beyond viability. Like some of Aurora’s residents and politicians, I asked myself what difference would a little boardwalk through a tiny wetland make, the whole area is surrounded by the suburbia of World Wreckers anyway?
The letter to the editor of the local Auroran newspaper that I finally wrote and sent, more as a tribute and encouragement to Heidi than anything else, outlines the ecological services provided by wetlands and pointed out, the obvious, that humans are part of that greater ecology. But surely these people know that? Then why don’t they live as if they understood the implications of their behaviour?
Equally puzzling, though more laudable, is what motivates Heidi to keep on attending the meetings, write letters to the editor each week that basically say: look, you have a nose on your face? And: look, how much money are you spending trying to convince your face it doesn’t have a nose? Meanwhile, the politicians seem to be unwilling to look her in the face, nose or no nose.
I’ve come to the conclusion that Heidi is a gift to Aurora. Every community needs its Heidi, someone who’s willing to take the time and put in the energy it takes, with such grace and respect, regardless of the outcome. Heidi is starting where she is. She’s starting where the people of Aurora are at. She’s starting with a microcosm of the larger ills and insisting that people listen. We can only hope that some of them will hear. One thing is certain: if she doesn’t speak up, nobody will hear. And at this point, until we figure out what the magic formula is, simple, heartfelt, insistent communication is still all we have to go on. Maybe the act of speaking to one another is what creates a common language.
Where does that leave me? Not sure. My investment in this community is small. My commitment here is to caring for my ailing parents. All my actions, prior to this letter to the editor have been small and covert. The one conversation I had with an Auroran – a very nice, smart man in my meditation group - about the state of waste in the neighbourhood was met with: oh, I haven’t noticed. And: you can’t sell used furniture any more, so we have to put it out in the garbage. Sigh. But what happens to me and my integrity when I choose not to engage, but simmer in my disgust and despair instead?
Any ideas?
Sunday, January 24, 2010
January Journal by Luanne Armstrong
January diary:
For too much of January, I felt like bad old sad old country song; lost my dawg, lost my car, lost my dear old Mom…plus it’s deep dark miserable January and it’s raining and so on and so on…and so on.
But mostly, in amongst the various griefs, I was (and am), also relieved; so hard to watch the dog get old, and older and struggle with keeping his dog dignity, running, barking, peeing and shitting outside. How do dogs understand old age anyway?
And all fall, going in to see my mom as much as I could manage, trying to be with her and watching her decline and decline. In some odd way, her death has given her back to me, my lovely, laughing, always busy Mom, who was never quite the shrunken white haired woman in the wheel chair watching the door for me to come in.
And the car is now fixed and spring will come and a whole week of family and visits and people and phone calls and organizing is over—over—over. Now can I have my nice dull writing life back, I hope. Before Christmas interfered, I was having a dull and boring life for the first time in my EVER and I liked it! Didn’t expect to and I was always only a hair away from boredom but it was all so manageable instead of chaotic. And I was getting work done, and keeping up with teaching and even having odd moments to go for a walk. Lovely! Amazing. Who knew order and lack of crazy busyness could be so liberating.
So tonight here I am again, alone, (except with a shiny new floor) rain on the roof and the deck, silence and darkness outside, only one dog snoozing on the rug, and the revisions to the new book sitting beside the computer.
It is ridiculously and unseasonably warm and I am paying no attention to the whispers from the greenhouse, the trees and plants. My brother was out pruning trees briefly today but we both know in our bones it is too early to pay any attention to the garden, even when the false and lying sun pokes out from behind the clouds with actual warmth in it. It isn’t warmth but light that triggers growth. For me, it is the smell of earth, when I am outside on a cold spring evening and I can smell the ground, a smell of cold and mold and earth and anticipation. But right now, the light is still telling me, sleep, sleep, and Sunday night, after the kids left, after the funeral was over, after the house was clean and quiet, after I emailed all my students, after a week of decisions and dinners and the jangling and jostling and banging of various people, emotions, sensibilities and ideas, I let it go, I curled under a heap of blankets back in my own bed, and slept and slept.
But then of course, the next day, and the next and the next, there are the banalities of the ordinary, bills, money (and the lack thereof), letters, emails, revisions, chores. I need a new thought, or a new project, or a new something, but as always, gotta finish off the old before the new will wander in the door.
But spring will wander in soon -- time to get those seed orders done!
For too much of January, I felt like bad old sad old country song; lost my dawg, lost my car, lost my dear old Mom…plus it’s deep dark miserable January and it’s raining and so on and so on…and so on.
But mostly, in amongst the various griefs, I was (and am), also relieved; so hard to watch the dog get old, and older and struggle with keeping his dog dignity, running, barking, peeing and shitting outside. How do dogs understand old age anyway?
And all fall, going in to see my mom as much as I could manage, trying to be with her and watching her decline and decline. In some odd way, her death has given her back to me, my lovely, laughing, always busy Mom, who was never quite the shrunken white haired woman in the wheel chair watching the door for me to come in.
And the car is now fixed and spring will come and a whole week of family and visits and people and phone calls and organizing is over—over—over. Now can I have my nice dull writing life back, I hope. Before Christmas interfered, I was having a dull and boring life for the first time in my EVER and I liked it! Didn’t expect to and I was always only a hair away from boredom but it was all so manageable instead of chaotic. And I was getting work done, and keeping up with teaching and even having odd moments to go for a walk. Lovely! Amazing. Who knew order and lack of crazy busyness could be so liberating.
So tonight here I am again, alone, (except with a shiny new floor) rain on the roof and the deck, silence and darkness outside, only one dog snoozing on the rug, and the revisions to the new book sitting beside the computer.
It is ridiculously and unseasonably warm and I am paying no attention to the whispers from the greenhouse, the trees and plants. My brother was out pruning trees briefly today but we both know in our bones it is too early to pay any attention to the garden, even when the false and lying sun pokes out from behind the clouds with actual warmth in it. It isn’t warmth but light that triggers growth. For me, it is the smell of earth, when I am outside on a cold spring evening and I can smell the ground, a smell of cold and mold and earth and anticipation. But right now, the light is still telling me, sleep, sleep, and Sunday night, after the kids left, after the funeral was over, after the house was clean and quiet, after I emailed all my students, after a week of decisions and dinners and the jangling and jostling and banging of various people, emotions, sensibilities and ideas, I let it go, I curled under a heap of blankets back in my own bed, and slept and slept.
But then of course, the next day, and the next and the next, there are the banalities of the ordinary, bills, money (and the lack thereof), letters, emails, revisions, chores. I need a new thought, or a new project, or a new something, but as always, gotta finish off the old before the new will wander in the door.
But spring will wander in soon -- time to get those seed orders done!
Monday, January 18, 2010
Mothers, Others and the Giving Place by K.Linda Kivi
I have long been fascinated about fear, fears about the natural world in particular, since those fears very much colour our sense of place and our interactions with the natural world. Which of our terrors – be they of heights, snakes, spiders, mice, bears, falling trees, etc. – are rooted in ancient instincts and which are outgrowths of our current cultures? Obviously, our places of discomfort have been used by modern media and political interests to manipulate us but I’d assumed that the answer to my question about the root of our fears was largely unanswerable. Wrong.
My friend Karen Warkentin, professor of Biology at Boston University, gifted me with a wonderful book recently. Evolutionary anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy’s Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding is a compelling and informative exploration of the theory that cooperative breeding among humans has given rise to both our current morphology as well as our cultures as distinct from the other great apes. The book is chock-a-block full with fascinating comparisons between our child rearing practices and those of other primate and mammalian species as well as how the influence of multiple caregivers affects human psycho-social development. I was particularly captivated by the information on the role of grandmothers and post-menopausal women in the survival rates and development of children in a community.
Following on my observations about the fearful children of “the World Wreckers” in my previous blog entry, I was delighted to encounter a mention of how our relationships with other humans might affect our relationships to the natural world. Synthesizing the work of a group of psychologists led by Barry Hewlett, the team found that, “the way children interact with their caretakers influences their sense of belonging and shapes how they feel about the environment they live in.”
The children of traditional foragers (as well as the adults), tended to “view of their physical environment as a “giving” place occupied by others who are also liable to be well-disposed and generous.” In contrast, the children of other subsistence folk such as farmers or those of upper middle-class Americans, were more likely to be fearful of strangers and of their environment. Yet even among farmers and post-industrialites, “children who were accustomed to multiple caregivers grew up less likely to fear strangers.”
If indeed the isolation experienced by infants in the nuclear family unit has given rise to people less positively connected to their environment, how in turn does that lack of connection play out in their lives? Are they likely to behave in more destructive manners towards the environment? Are they prone to be greedier, less concerned about their impact they might have on others with whom they share the finite resources of the planet? If there is even an inkling of these behaviours being rooted in our upbringings, wouldn’t that suggest the most radical act for the future of the planet would be to ensure that children are indeed raised by a village instead of just one mother and maybe a father?
Hrdy notes somewhere else in the book that the US government earmarked $1.6 billion for educational campaigns to reinforce the nuclear family; she comments that if that sum was put into better childcare options for working families, a culture that was more caring and compassionate might begin to re-emerge. The point here is that it is no coincidence that the greed of the wealthy is running rampant, destroying life support systems for all the inhabitants of Earth. Everyone’s tax moneys are being funneled into propaganda to maintain a system in which humans might evolve away from our origins as an empathetic, interactive species. She posits that “compassion and the quest for emotional connection will fade away as surely as sight in cave-dwelling fish” And without that curiosity and empathy for others, just what will our relationship to the natural world become?
So, are you game? Ready to trade in the nuclear family and return to our origins of communal care? By letting whole villages raise our children again, we might create the pre-conditions for the survival of our species and the planet we call home. Stay tuned as I look further into Hewlett’s research. In the meanwhile, read Hrdy’s book and learn something new about what makes us human.
My friend Karen Warkentin, professor of Biology at Boston University, gifted me with a wonderful book recently. Evolutionary anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy’s Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding is a compelling and informative exploration of the theory that cooperative breeding among humans has given rise to both our current morphology as well as our cultures as distinct from the other great apes. The book is chock-a-block full with fascinating comparisons between our child rearing practices and those of other primate and mammalian species as well as how the influence of multiple caregivers affects human psycho-social development. I was particularly captivated by the information on the role of grandmothers and post-menopausal women in the survival rates and development of children in a community.
Following on my observations about the fearful children of “the World Wreckers” in my previous blog entry, I was delighted to encounter a mention of how our relationships with other humans might affect our relationships to the natural world. Synthesizing the work of a group of psychologists led by Barry Hewlett, the team found that, “the way children interact with their caretakers influences their sense of belonging and shapes how they feel about the environment they live in.”
The children of traditional foragers (as well as the adults), tended to “view of their physical environment as a “giving” place occupied by others who are also liable to be well-disposed and generous.” In contrast, the children of other subsistence folk such as farmers or those of upper middle-class Americans, were more likely to be fearful of strangers and of their environment. Yet even among farmers and post-industrialites, “children who were accustomed to multiple caregivers grew up less likely to fear strangers.”
If indeed the isolation experienced by infants in the nuclear family unit has given rise to people less positively connected to their environment, how in turn does that lack of connection play out in their lives? Are they likely to behave in more destructive manners towards the environment? Are they prone to be greedier, less concerned about their impact they might have on others with whom they share the finite resources of the planet? If there is even an inkling of these behaviours being rooted in our upbringings, wouldn’t that suggest the most radical act for the future of the planet would be to ensure that children are indeed raised by a village instead of just one mother and maybe a father?
Hrdy notes somewhere else in the book that the US government earmarked $1.6 billion for educational campaigns to reinforce the nuclear family; she comments that if that sum was put into better childcare options for working families, a culture that was more caring and compassionate might begin to re-emerge. The point here is that it is no coincidence that the greed of the wealthy is running rampant, destroying life support systems for all the inhabitants of Earth. Everyone’s tax moneys are being funneled into propaganda to maintain a system in which humans might evolve away from our origins as an empathetic, interactive species. She posits that “compassion and the quest for emotional connection will fade away as surely as sight in cave-dwelling fish” And without that curiosity and empathy for others, just what will our relationship to the natural world become?
So, are you game? Ready to trade in the nuclear family and return to our origins of communal care? By letting whole villages raise our children again, we might create the pre-conditions for the survival of our species and the planet we call home. Stay tuned as I look further into Hewlett’s research. In the meanwhile, read Hrdy’s book and learn something new about what makes us human.
Monday, January 4, 2010
Time among the World Wreckers by K.L. Kivi
When I walk among them, the children of the World Wreckers in Orchard Heights do not reply to good morning greetings in the street. Against the backdrop of 4000 square foot houses, three car garage, one acre Orchard Heights properties, the ten-year-old girl and the twelve-year-old boy just behind her seem oddly afraid. The blank windows of the luxury prison homes stare silently at us all, as if in mute indifference to the children’s furtive gazes. The tinted-glass SUVs and 8-cylinder sedans squat like sinister ornaments among the ubiquitous, landscaper-groomed front yards. Except for the scurrying children in the street, the place looks sterile and uninhabited.
This was, once, a place of work and food, not a chilled hideaway for the ultra rich, but a hillside orchard, a farm habitat interspersed among woodlots, a place know for its productive soils and vibrant agricultural culture. Here once stood row upon row of trees, providing myriad varieties of apples to Torontonians just south of here. The apples now consumed in Toronto and here come from as far away as Aotearoa (New Zealand). Gone is a culture connected to soil and weather and neighbours, a life known for its ups and downs, good times and difficult ones. This place is anathema to the rural community I come from in the Kootenays.
Here, the culture of the land has been replaced by the culture of wealth, a blank-faced neighbourhood and the spawn of the good life. But why do they not say good morning, or even nod, from their place of supposed security? Is it that economic security has not amounted to a sense of security in the world for them? Or is it perhaps that when economic security is actually excessive wealth, their fear is well justified. On some level, the people who consume far more than their fair share of the Earth’s bounty must know that they are purchasing and consuming and polluting at the expense of others. They must know that their lives that are grounded in the accumulation of stuff, none of it from here, are unsustainable. How could they not?
Noted climate activist and writer George Monbiot wrote in a recent article in The Guardian that the very wealthy are responsible for the majority of greenhouse gases currently generated on the planet. He challenges the notion that population growth is the key issue in the climate change debate. “It’s time we had the guts to name the problem,” he writes, “It’s not sex; it’s money. It’s not the poor; it’s the rich.” Where those of us who have the cash to drive hybrid cars and dutifully fill our blue boxes fit into this picture is debatable but the places where 63% of the world’s population growth happens produce negligible greenhouse gases. These are the majority of the planet’s denizens who never even dream of owning a vehicle much less live in a culture where anything packaged is ever purchased.
It is the mega-rich among us who create the problems the rest of us must live with: those who head up tar sand extraction industries, who jet about in private planes or at least with private rooms, who move money in perpetual quest of the financial bottom line, who heat, air condition and provision dozens of far flung monster houses, who cruise around in yachts that consume 3,400 litres per hour and send their children to exclusive private schools.
The ten-year-old girl, blond braids bobbing against her shoulders might not know why she is afraid; even her parents might not be aware how afraid they are. Fear is part of the culture of wealth. It seeps into every decision they make. Acquiring wealth is one thing, but hanging on to it is another. They must be constantly on the look out for anyone who might envy their riches a little too much. Who knows what guise they might take! Part of the problem with cultivating a consumer culture is that people end up wanting what the rich have. That is, of course, part of the point: to create want alongside creating the illusion that wealth is possible for anyone who has the smarts to go after it. This is what is called the free market economy of the so-called democratic world. A lot of money goes into convincing the masses that this system actually functions freely and that the only reason you and I are not rich is because we’re stupid or lazy. And if we reject that whole story, we must be stupid and lazy or criminal and deluded.
The poor are afraid, but of different things. They have little need to barricade their doors, hide in gated and alarm-ridden neighbourhoods and cower in heavily guarded countries. The poor have no need to lock up their potential enemies or send armed forces against them. Mostly, the poor are too absorbed with surviving their lives to bother with the rich. And in our increasingly economically segregated communities, few of us brush up against the truly wealthy. The bastions of the world’s filthy rich are well removed from our feeble protests. Long forgotten are the slogan’s of sixties leftists like “Eat the Rich!” Monbiot asks, “So where are the movements protesting about the stinking rich destroying our living systems?” Perhaps those few of us who live among the World Wreckers, in their neighbourhoods and in the countries that provide them haven, have still too much to lose. We cuddle up to the few of the public perks that haven’t yet been eroded by privatization and parallel private services – the occasional good public school, some well-funded hospital or other public facility.
Yet, their excesses threaten to swamp us wholesale. As I turn a corner and head toward the two-car-garage, 3000-square-foot neighbourhood that cosies up against the flank of wealth, I see no signs of more consciousness. The first week I witnessed garbage day in Orchard Heights I thought it was a special, large item pick-up day. I made a mental list of what was being thrown away in this one square kilometre of suburb: three couches, three computers, two end tables, three stools, many toilets, enough plastic lawn furniture to seat a celebrity wedding, computers, a photocopier, fridges, sports gear, enough carpet to do Buckingham Palace, etc. Then, two weeks later, it happened all over again. More plastic lawn furniture – it seems people here think it’s a disposable item, like menstrual pads – more toilets, office chairs, desks, goalie nets, more carpet, always computer monitors, lamps (which look very nice in my basement with the gold-rimmed lamp shades I picked out later), tobogannes, a Bosch hammer drill, slide projector…
But no, I can’t keep listing. Some garbage days, I can barely go out, I’m so appalled by the unadulterated waste. These people don’t even donate their off-casts to charity. The children stroll past this excess every two weeks, just like I do. It is no wonder they are afraid. There is the man in the red van who is perusing for a bicycle for his son; there is the man with the pushcart who picks through their blue box for returnables; there is the middle-aged woman (me) who carts pedestal sinks and mint condition, state of the art office chairs home. These scavengers must remind the children that their families have too much, other families have less and that they waste unnecessarily. These children must know that they are watched.
What will it take to stop the World Wreckers? What will be required to topple the culture of World Wrecking? And if substantive change to the world of the wealthy ever did occur, what would become of the miles upon miles of mansions that accommodate one small family each, sometimes one small bloated person? Would the sprawling fields of the mega-estates that surround Orchard Heights with their thoroughbreds be returned to the agriculturally productive state they once knew? Will ten-year-old girls smile and reply to their neighbours when they wish her a good morning?
This was, once, a place of work and food, not a chilled hideaway for the ultra rich, but a hillside orchard, a farm habitat interspersed among woodlots, a place know for its productive soils and vibrant agricultural culture. Here once stood row upon row of trees, providing myriad varieties of apples to Torontonians just south of here. The apples now consumed in Toronto and here come from as far away as Aotearoa (New Zealand). Gone is a culture connected to soil and weather and neighbours, a life known for its ups and downs, good times and difficult ones. This place is anathema to the rural community I come from in the Kootenays.
Here, the culture of the land has been replaced by the culture of wealth, a blank-faced neighbourhood and the spawn of the good life. But why do they not say good morning, or even nod, from their place of supposed security? Is it that economic security has not amounted to a sense of security in the world for them? Or is it perhaps that when economic security is actually excessive wealth, their fear is well justified. On some level, the people who consume far more than their fair share of the Earth’s bounty must know that they are purchasing and consuming and polluting at the expense of others. They must know that their lives that are grounded in the accumulation of stuff, none of it from here, are unsustainable. How could they not?
Noted climate activist and writer George Monbiot wrote in a recent article in The Guardian that the very wealthy are responsible for the majority of greenhouse gases currently generated on the planet. He challenges the notion that population growth is the key issue in the climate change debate. “It’s time we had the guts to name the problem,” he writes, “It’s not sex; it’s money. It’s not the poor; it’s the rich.” Where those of us who have the cash to drive hybrid cars and dutifully fill our blue boxes fit into this picture is debatable but the places where 63% of the world’s population growth happens produce negligible greenhouse gases. These are the majority of the planet’s denizens who never even dream of owning a vehicle much less live in a culture where anything packaged is ever purchased.
It is the mega-rich among us who create the problems the rest of us must live with: those who head up tar sand extraction industries, who jet about in private planes or at least with private rooms, who move money in perpetual quest of the financial bottom line, who heat, air condition and provision dozens of far flung monster houses, who cruise around in yachts that consume 3,400 litres per hour and send their children to exclusive private schools.
The ten-year-old girl, blond braids bobbing against her shoulders might not know why she is afraid; even her parents might not be aware how afraid they are. Fear is part of the culture of wealth. It seeps into every decision they make. Acquiring wealth is one thing, but hanging on to it is another. They must be constantly on the look out for anyone who might envy their riches a little too much. Who knows what guise they might take! Part of the problem with cultivating a consumer culture is that people end up wanting what the rich have. That is, of course, part of the point: to create want alongside creating the illusion that wealth is possible for anyone who has the smarts to go after it. This is what is called the free market economy of the so-called democratic world. A lot of money goes into convincing the masses that this system actually functions freely and that the only reason you and I are not rich is because we’re stupid or lazy. And if we reject that whole story, we must be stupid and lazy or criminal and deluded.
The poor are afraid, but of different things. They have little need to barricade their doors, hide in gated and alarm-ridden neighbourhoods and cower in heavily guarded countries. The poor have no need to lock up their potential enemies or send armed forces against them. Mostly, the poor are too absorbed with surviving their lives to bother with the rich. And in our increasingly economically segregated communities, few of us brush up against the truly wealthy. The bastions of the world’s filthy rich are well removed from our feeble protests. Long forgotten are the slogan’s of sixties leftists like “Eat the Rich!” Monbiot asks, “So where are the movements protesting about the stinking rich destroying our living systems?” Perhaps those few of us who live among the World Wreckers, in their neighbourhoods and in the countries that provide them haven, have still too much to lose. We cuddle up to the few of the public perks that haven’t yet been eroded by privatization and parallel private services – the occasional good public school, some well-funded hospital or other public facility.
Yet, their excesses threaten to swamp us wholesale. As I turn a corner and head toward the two-car-garage, 3000-square-foot neighbourhood that cosies up against the flank of wealth, I see no signs of more consciousness. The first week I witnessed garbage day in Orchard Heights I thought it was a special, large item pick-up day. I made a mental list of what was being thrown away in this one square kilometre of suburb: three couches, three computers, two end tables, three stools, many toilets, enough plastic lawn furniture to seat a celebrity wedding, computers, a photocopier, fridges, sports gear, enough carpet to do Buckingham Palace, etc. Then, two weeks later, it happened all over again. More plastic lawn furniture – it seems people here think it’s a disposable item, like menstrual pads – more toilets, office chairs, desks, goalie nets, more carpet, always computer monitors, lamps (which look very nice in my basement with the gold-rimmed lamp shades I picked out later), tobogannes, a Bosch hammer drill, slide projector…
But no, I can’t keep listing. Some garbage days, I can barely go out, I’m so appalled by the unadulterated waste. These people don’t even donate their off-casts to charity. The children stroll past this excess every two weeks, just like I do. It is no wonder they are afraid. There is the man in the red van who is perusing for a bicycle for his son; there is the man with the pushcart who picks through their blue box for returnables; there is the middle-aged woman (me) who carts pedestal sinks and mint condition, state of the art office chairs home. These scavengers must remind the children that their families have too much, other families have less and that they waste unnecessarily. These children must know that they are watched.
What will it take to stop the World Wreckers? What will be required to topple the culture of World Wrecking? And if substantive change to the world of the wealthy ever did occur, what would become of the miles upon miles of mansions that accommodate one small family each, sometimes one small bloated person? Would the sprawling fields of the mega-estates that surround Orchard Heights with their thoroughbreds be returned to the agriculturally productive state they once knew? Will ten-year-old girls smile and reply to their neighbours when they wish her a good morning?
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Land and Being: by Luanne Armstrong
Land and Being:
Writing about love is hard. A love story tends to always veer into romance, or sentiment, or lyrical grandiloquence. And yet a love story is impossible to avoid. It wants to be told. It trumpets its own eloquence. How can I avoid it?
And yet, I have no idea if that is what I am writing. It's like walking in my own Zen Koan; I go around and around inside this story. What do I love here about this place, and why? How many ways do I see this place? And how many eyes here, also see me? What do they see? How do we see each other? Is this even a relationship? Is it all a one way emotion, and me, the odd human stalker, wandering around wanting to be loved?
I ask myself at odd and various moments, what am I doing here? While I bend over the garden, plantng. In the spring, breathing on tulips. Or listening to a lone frog, both of us awake on a March night; or in August, listening to the Northern harrier crying over the burned-to-golden summer field as I sit peeling peaches in the hot slanting sun. Watching my foolish farmer self, at harvest, harried by nature, wild turkeys in the grapes, deer eating the apple trees, voles eating the garden, small lost bear in the pears. Around and around we go, a palimpsest of footprints telling an infinite number of stories, over my lifetime, over so many lifetimes.
If I put my ear to the ground, if I lie down, can I hear the past banging its way under the grass roots, the tree roots? Can I hear the banging of all those other feet coming by? Can I hold eternity by the hand, like a child with almost no sense of myself, listening, at last, inside this place and so end in dreaming? If I wasn’t walking here, I would be walking somewhere, my head in the sky and my feet shuffling in grass, in leaves, in multitudes. And wondering how to grasp it. The intricate complexity of a field, a patch of moss, a flower opening. What do I really know?
Walking here, listening, every day I grow smaller and larger. Raven comes by on my solitary mornings in the winter, as I throw hay to the cows, which stand ankle deep in yellow mud and manure. At night, the dogs and the coyote yell challenges, or greeting or some other complexity. What do I know? This fall, I missed the swallows leaving and felt an acute sense of loss; I was interrupted by inattention, my being busy. No excuses. And the ospreys left as well, without saying goodbye. No, it was me that didn’t say goodbye, stomping around picking apples and preparing for my own winter. Another year going around; all year we chase each other, the seasons and I, round and round, I am lost inside and lost outside and occasionally, glad to be so lost.
The elements bind me together; fire inside my belly, fire in the sleepy animals, fire in the woodstove, lake always glinting in its cleft home between mountains, my feet banging, banging on the earth while I listen, In love with here, with land and being. And late at night, I curl under many covers, listening to snow hissing at the windows, wind banging the tree branches together, in an odd syncopation, in my bed house, my bed-balloon, my bed cocoon, tethered to the night sky, swinging and whirling in the wind,
Travelling all night; never lost.
Writing about love is hard. A love story tends to always veer into romance, or sentiment, or lyrical grandiloquence. And yet a love story is impossible to avoid. It wants to be told. It trumpets its own eloquence. How can I avoid it?
And yet, I have no idea if that is what I am writing. It's like walking in my own Zen Koan; I go around and around inside this story. What do I love here about this place, and why? How many ways do I see this place? And how many eyes here, also see me? What do they see? How do we see each other? Is this even a relationship? Is it all a one way emotion, and me, the odd human stalker, wandering around wanting to be loved?
I ask myself at odd and various moments, what am I doing here? While I bend over the garden, plantng. In the spring, breathing on tulips. Or listening to a lone frog, both of us awake on a March night; or in August, listening to the Northern harrier crying over the burned-to-golden summer field as I sit peeling peaches in the hot slanting sun. Watching my foolish farmer self, at harvest, harried by nature, wild turkeys in the grapes, deer eating the apple trees, voles eating the garden, small lost bear in the pears. Around and around we go, a palimpsest of footprints telling an infinite number of stories, over my lifetime, over so many lifetimes.
If I put my ear to the ground, if I lie down, can I hear the past banging its way under the grass roots, the tree roots? Can I hear the banging of all those other feet coming by? Can I hold eternity by the hand, like a child with almost no sense of myself, listening, at last, inside this place and so end in dreaming? If I wasn’t walking here, I would be walking somewhere, my head in the sky and my feet shuffling in grass, in leaves, in multitudes. And wondering how to grasp it. The intricate complexity of a field, a patch of moss, a flower opening. What do I really know?
Walking here, listening, every day I grow smaller and larger. Raven comes by on my solitary mornings in the winter, as I throw hay to the cows, which stand ankle deep in yellow mud and manure. At night, the dogs and the coyote yell challenges, or greeting or some other complexity. What do I know? This fall, I missed the swallows leaving and felt an acute sense of loss; I was interrupted by inattention, my being busy. No excuses. And the ospreys left as well, without saying goodbye. No, it was me that didn’t say goodbye, stomping around picking apples and preparing for my own winter. Another year going around; all year we chase each other, the seasons and I, round and round, I am lost inside and lost outside and occasionally, glad to be so lost.
The elements bind me together; fire inside my belly, fire in the sleepy animals, fire in the woodstove, lake always glinting in its cleft home between mountains, my feet banging, banging on the earth while I listen, In love with here, with land and being. And late at night, I curl under many covers, listening to snow hissing at the windows, wind banging the tree branches together, in an odd syncopation, in my bed house, my bed-balloon, my bed cocoon, tethered to the night sky, swinging and whirling in the wind,
Travelling all night; never lost.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)