The Rosicrucians (an occult Christian brotherhood - not much is known of historical members) call the people who abide by the secrets yielded by natural wisdom "the Followers of the Spherical Art". The following passage from one of the anonymously published 17th century Rosicrucian manifestos (The Fama Fraternitatis) succinctly sums it up. I found this paragraph to be a mind-blowing summation of the results of high-order contemplation of the natural world (which includes one's body). Mental contemplation and ascecis—techniques of bodily discipline—are in fact two aspects of the same endeavor. All is yoga.
"King Solomon testifies of himself, that he upon earnest prayer and
desire did get and obtain such Wisdom of God, that thereby he knew how
the World was created, thereby he understood
the Nature of the Elements, also the time, beginning, middle and end, the increase and decrease, the change of times through the whole Year,
the Revolution of the Year, and Ordinance of the Stars;
he understood also the properties of tame and wilde
Beasts, the cause of the raigning of the Winds, and minds and intents of
men, all sorts and natures of Plants, vertues of Roots, and others, was not
unknown to him. Now I do not think that there can be found any one
who would not wish and desire with all his heart to be a Partaker of this
noble Treasure..."
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Monday, November 8, 2010
Why you can't just blame religion: part two
Read the first post in this series here.
Some popular theories of religion focus on defining it as designed to serve some members at the expense of others. But it is not as simple as that. Such theories often reflect political bias and a projection of intention onto founders or religious leaders that simply is not there. I'm always amazed at how many staunch atheists I know who are conspiracy theorists, btw. So the projection of intention onto things is okay when they do it but not when other people do it? Lul.
It would seem to me that "corruption" in or of religious groups (too often referenced in popular discourse) is largely an emergent property—a type of social entropy that naturally unfolds, perhaps revealing "design flaws" in social systems over time. Power and influence accumulate in a small sector of the group and becomes unavailable to the majority of members. Take religious reformation movements, for example. Perhaps they illustrate the need to re-establish "low-entropy" systems through reformation, and the process starts again, though it may be filtered through a different schema. (This is consistent with the definition of entropy as the amount of unavailable energy in a system). David Sloan Wilson writes: "religions not only adapt to their social environments, but also change their social environments, leading to an endless cycle of corruption and renewal..."
So, to all the atheists out there - If religion is 'maladaptive', its 'maladaption' is a function of process, not necessarily intrinsic qualities of a religion! Which leads me to the rather dry, yet tempting conclusion that people are agents of action, not religions. Guns don't kill people, people kill people.
Moreover, such 'corruption' can sometimes be unwittingly helped along by prestige bias - mimicry of prestigous or successful individuals by the laity (animals do it too). This can help explain behavior of members of religious cults, for example, who idolize their leaders. There is a human proclivity to mimic the behaviors of successful individuals - this has been studied in the field of evolutionary psychology and anthropology. In the animal kingdom, we can see "success" as ability to successfully attract a mate - thus the common scenario of young males in a band of chimpanzees, for example, copying the behaviors of an alpha male. On the other end of the spectrum, discussions of egalitarian groups (egalitarian in an intra-group sense, not inter-group) are also interesting. However, even here it seems like there exists a "flat hierarchy" where some sort of active process requiring constant feedback is needed to manage 'inevitable social entropy'.
Social cybernetics takes critical thought to a whole new level.
Some popular theories of religion focus on defining it as designed to serve some members at the expense of others. But it is not as simple as that. Such theories often reflect political bias and a projection of intention onto founders or religious leaders that simply is not there. I'm always amazed at how many staunch atheists I know who are conspiracy theorists, btw. So the projection of intention onto things is okay when they do it but not when other people do it? Lul.
It would seem to me that "corruption" in or of religious groups (too often referenced in popular discourse) is largely an emergent property—a type of social entropy that naturally unfolds, perhaps revealing "design flaws" in social systems over time. Power and influence accumulate in a small sector of the group and becomes unavailable to the majority of members. Take religious reformation movements, for example. Perhaps they illustrate the need to re-establish "low-entropy" systems through reformation, and the process starts again, though it may be filtered through a different schema. (This is consistent with the definition of entropy as the amount of unavailable energy in a system). David Sloan Wilson writes: "religions not only adapt to their social environments, but also change their social environments, leading to an endless cycle of corruption and renewal..."
So, to all the atheists out there - If religion is 'maladaptive', its 'maladaption' is a function of process, not necessarily intrinsic qualities of a religion! Which leads me to the rather dry, yet tempting conclusion that people are agents of action, not religions. Guns don't kill people, people kill people.
Moreover, such 'corruption' can sometimes be unwittingly helped along by prestige bias - mimicry of prestigous or successful individuals by the laity (animals do it too). This can help explain behavior of members of religious cults, for example, who idolize their leaders. There is a human proclivity to mimic the behaviors of successful individuals - this has been studied in the field of evolutionary psychology and anthropology. In the animal kingdom, we can see "success" as ability to successfully attract a mate - thus the common scenario of young males in a band of chimpanzees, for example, copying the behaviors of an alpha male. On the other end of the spectrum, discussions of egalitarian groups (egalitarian in an intra-group sense, not inter-group) are also interesting. However, even here it seems like there exists a "flat hierarchy" where some sort of active process requiring constant feedback is needed to manage 'inevitable social entropy'.
Social cybernetics takes critical thought to a whole new level.
Friday, October 1, 2010
Why you can't just blame religion
A LGBT-themed blog I follow posted this quote by Harvey Milk today and it inspired me to put some thoughts out there, as a queer person who doesn't have a problem with religion per se, and, in fact counts saints, mystics, and spiritual scientist-artists almost exclusively among my greatest influences. There's somethin' we've gotta reconcile here:
"The fact is that more people have been slaughtered in the name of religion than for any other single reason. That, that my friends, is true perversion."
-Harvey Milk
This is such an interesting topic. For some reason this happened to inspire me to comment. Partially because when leaders of movements, especially representing oppressed groups or minorities that we're part of, say things like this - we hear it.
I hear pithy quotes about religion being an instrument of genocide & hate a lot. While I get it, the religion scholar in me cries out in a tiny voice. In short, humans are social animals, like wolves and apes, who necessarily form groups that must cohere to a certain degree in order to survive. Those groups needs rules for ensuring maximum in group cooperation and minimum "cheating" or free-loading; i.e. doing anything to sabotage solidarity and the ability to "act as one". Acting as one unit, on multiple levels has been essential for the evolution and survival of our species, among other higher primates.
It sucks now, I know, when giant populations in the modern world who DON'T necessarily have to worry about their basic survival "act as one". It's sociobiology and group-psychology gone awry. Anyhow, these rule-systems that were formed by our ancient human (and also non-human) ancestors were none other than ethical systems, and many of those systems were codified within a world-view that could be easily transmitted. A religious belief system. In many cases where religion is accused of many of the wrongs of the world or as the "opiate of the masses", "religion" is only the cover for tribalism, ethnocentrism and xenophobia. If not religion, some other belief structure would justify violence, unfortunately. The point is, we can't blame the messenger - religion is a natural phenomenon. That's like blaming math for political deception.
In our country, for example, I wouldn't worry so much about religion in the raw, quotidean form (people going to church, people believing in God). Believe me, you've got bigger fish to fry! The dear dollar as well as and our neo-liberal world view are the REAL opiates of the masses. This does have theological roots, but it's not religion's fault. Religion is a category of human behavior, not a thing you can make go away.
"The fact is that more people have been slaughtered in the name of religion than for any other single reason. That, that my friends, is true perversion."
-Harvey Milk
This is such an interesting topic. For some reason this happened to inspire me to comment. Partially because when leaders of movements, especially representing oppressed groups or minorities that we're part of, say things like this - we hear it.
I hear pithy quotes about religion being an instrument of genocide & hate a lot. While I get it, the religion scholar in me cries out in a tiny voice. In short, humans are social animals, like wolves and apes, who necessarily form groups that must cohere to a certain degree in order to survive. Those groups needs rules for ensuring maximum in group cooperation and minimum "cheating" or free-loading; i.e. doing anything to sabotage solidarity and the ability to "act as one". Acting as one unit, on multiple levels has been essential for the evolution and survival of our species, among other higher primates.
It sucks now, I know, when giant populations in the modern world who DON'T necessarily have to worry about their basic survival "act as one". It's sociobiology and group-psychology gone awry. Anyhow, these rule-systems that were formed by our ancient human (and also non-human) ancestors were none other than ethical systems, and many of those systems were codified within a world-view that could be easily transmitted. A religious belief system. In many cases where religion is accused of many of the wrongs of the world or as the "opiate of the masses", "religion" is only the cover for tribalism, ethnocentrism and xenophobia. If not religion, some other belief structure would justify violence, unfortunately. The point is, we can't blame the messenger - religion is a natural phenomenon. That's like blaming math for political deception.
In our country, for example, I wouldn't worry so much about religion in the raw, quotidean form (people going to church, people believing in God). Believe me, you've got bigger fish to fry! The dear dollar as well as and our neo-liberal world view are the REAL opiates of the masses. This does have theological roots, but it's not religion's fault. Religion is a category of human behavior, not a thing you can make go away.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
"This is Not a Farm"
Below I'm pasting my girlfriend's most recent blog post on her rehabilitated Tumblr account!
She definitely speaks for both of us with her core sentiment - that we are seeking to do something that perhaps isn't as accurately described by "farming" as we once thought.
She definitely speaks for both of us with her core sentiment - that we are seeking to do something that perhaps isn't as accurately described by "farming" as we once thought.
SourceI thought it was, but I was wrong.
What I’m doing, and what I want to do, is not the same as farming. I thought it was, but I was wrong. To me, farming is production agriculture. The activity of farming is to seek to extract profit from the soil, in the form of food products. When I began this journey I thought that’s what I wanted, and so farming was a stand-in for any sort of profit-seeking activity. It was my job.
It’s a hard job. For a year I worked as an intern or apprentice on small farms that were operating at (and beyond) the limits of what can be extracted from the soil by human energy with a minimum of fossil-fueled assistants. So I hoed a lot, I crawled a lot, I scratched the soil with my own two hands. A lot. I baked in the sun and shivered in the morning frost. By the end of the 13 months I was understandably burned out on the whole farming thing. My back developed a very painful protest to the action of bending, lifting, weeding, and especially to walking on my knees while lifting.
I had learned a lot about vegetable production in the only way I really like to learn: through experience. But I also had decided it was not a feasible career for me. It wasn’t just because it hurt so much. I figured a good routine of weight-lifting and yoga could fix that. It was also because I deeply felt that the acts of farming, unless accompanied by near-religious composting, were detrimental to the soil. At the end of my farming summer in Vermont I could see the tired, compacted, dried up naked earth complaining. I could see that the tons of crops we had extracted from this soil had not left the place better than when we found it (and as this is the golden rule of girl scouts, I don’t take it lightly!).
For the past year I’ve been mulling over my gleeful exodus from the “farming” of production ag. Since May my partner and I have been playing with the land in a new way, and now as the growing season comes to a close, I feel the need to articulate what’s meaningful about this leg of my journey with the earth.
I’m not the only young person I know who is engaged on a similar path. Many still call what they do “farming”, and this name remains meaningful to them. But to others I know, the models of production agriculture are not satisfying. They’re not enough.
We may be growing edible plants and raising livestock animals for food, but we’re not seeking to extract profit from the land. We are seeking something else, and we are doing so through an ever-deeper relationship with the land and natural processes. But it is the seeking something else that really matters, and it is, I think, what guides our work—more than the desire to grow food to sell.
So what are we doing? What are you doing? What does it look like? What does it bring you beyond delicious meals? I want to know. Let’s put images and thoughts into this framework. Help flesh it out.
Perhaps if we do so, we’ll help create a new set of options for other seekers. You don’t have to be a “farmer”, there are many ways to seek nativity to the land, to a place. But seek for answers from the land itself, instead of just from culture.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
How fire helped us evolve...
There's a new book out by Harvard biological anthropologist Richard Wrangham on how the harnessing of fire by our ancestors nearly 2 million years ago catalyzed a new phase in human evolution. It pivots around the changes in our physiology enabled by the fact that cooking food, especially meat, essentially pre-digests it for us and helps cut way down on chewing time. In addition to affecting our digestive system, this also precipitated changes in our jaw and face physiology, and allocated more space and energy for our brains, the author argues. Despite this landmark study, the topic remains controversial - for good reason. What does the author have to say about the shrinkage of the human brain... over the last 10,000 years - as discussed in recent studies? ( see http://www.livescience.com/history/091113-origins-evolving.html ) How much does this undermine the raw food movement, and the dietary choices we make? Is there such a thing as too much cooked food? With obesity at an all time high, there probably is...
It's called Catching Fire: How Cooking Made us Human
It's called Catching Fire: How Cooking Made us Human
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Jedi training in the hundred-acre wood
The pivotal moment of my week-long wilderness survival class occurred a little more than halfway through the week.
We had gotten into nuances of stalking and camouflage - the art of movement and the skill of blending your form into the baseline pattern of the woods. Not only these, but almost every art and science that we'd studied that week finds consilience in the hunt. The hunt requires you to recollect the primordial language of animal tracks and signs - deciphering scratches on trees and snapped twigs and turning them into meaningful propositions; it requires you to be wary of the wind, temperature and humidity, and note when they change; it requires you to recognize patterns at ever-expanding concentric levels of existence - to know the earth like you know your mother, and to feel her beating heart wherever you sit or step.
The scope of 'the hunt' goes beyond looking for animals - it also includes foraging for plants that are edible or useful in some way - or searching for water, or looking for the right stone, or tree that for some reason the situation calls for. The hunt is a 'geomantic' state of mind wherein you are on a search for some soon-to-be aspect of yourself. It is both curious and intent, playful and somber. It is realizing that you belong in the web of life - you are welcome there if you practice humility and patience. Yes, you belong there - it's your birthright.
Most of us didn't grow up learning traditional ways of questing in the wilderness - whether for visions or for resources - so for me at least, that space feels distinctly, indubitably sacred. I felt that same dark, visceral enchantment when my partner and I slaughtered our lambs last fall, or when I went to a primitive hide-tanning gathering for the first time and spent a day scraping a cow hide that I'd brought with me - becoming absorbed in navigating the miniscule landscape of the creature's skin with my scraping tool. The power in such experiences can feel downright profane when you aren't prepared for them. I've experienced such 'profane illumination' myself, where I feel that I've stepped into a river of mana that is almost too swift and strong for me to bear - so I simply forge ahead, putting one foot in front of another (and this is where protective rituals and spell-casting come in!) and am left bewildered as Pan disappears back into the forest...
This past week, however, I never got the sense that I tumbled or crashed into that holy wild space… I slipped into it, like dozing into hypnagogia. And in that dream-time I found nothing like the Revelations of St. John, but rather a sort of mundane sacredness, characterized by such a subtle change in vibration that I can see how easily it can go untapped.
It is in the most quotidian aspects of modern living - things like conjuring calories and warmth - that in the wild are clearly times of high alchemy. Those are the times when we feral sorcerers oversee the transubstantiation of one element into another. They are when energy and matter trade places. Friction turns into fire, and other organisms give their life-energy to us. It is at those times of creation and participation that, if we were to lift our heads and look around us, we would see the gods seated there in a semicircle, silently watching with broad elfin smiles and half shadowed faces.
There's something about that mundane vanilla holiness that makes it so much more preferable to the contrived, liturgical holiness that only occurs at set, formal times. The latter abounds in the modern world. What if a ritual is there but there is no spirit inside it, no god? Indeed, I think this is how many people experience various organized religions. They see (and feel) an aesthetically pleasing vessel - but it is empty - it contains no nourishment. And many of them know that there is something missing. I fear that we aren't routinely empowered to ask the questions necessary to dismantle the distraction of dead ritual - and we definitely aren't empowered to create our own rituals - to fashion vessels for our own gods. (And I think "our own" gods are the gods of us all - the gods of fire, food, thunder, sex, death…) People ask me what studying religion has to do with farming (because those are the two things I pursued as an undergraduate) - and I often find myself talking about rites-of-passage and vision quests… our society suffers a lack of such traditions, that really reveal to us personally how much stardust and energy goes into supporting the life and well-being of our bodies and minds. Moreover, we lack even a grammar for such things - which prevents us from hacking new rites, rituals and myths - we've forgotten that they are [open-source] things that can be parsed and recompiled. They're not supposed to be static… or at least, only as static as Mama Nature herself.
There was a point in the week where I did hear a couple of angels sing, though. We had practiced transforming our gait, widening the angle of our vision, and using one of the simplest weapon-tools known to primates; a throwing stick. All these things we had approached independently earlier in the week, with accompanying lectures, demonstrations and anecdotes. On Thursday, we did an exercise that gave us a context for combining these sensory and kinesthetic skills - we were to go into the woods wielding a stick (a solid, wrist-thick piece of wood about a foot and a half long) and practice stalking, approaching and throwing at targets as soundlessly and seamlessly as possible - using trees or stumps in place of actual woodland critters.
I had been at a slow fox walk for about 20 minutes - periodically sliding up to large trees and crouching in their shadows for a few minutes to motionlessly observe the forest. I concealed the stick behind the arm that was holding it and kept both arms close to my body - at times I was almost at a crouch.
It didn't take long for me to notice that being 'armed' (or thinking of myself as armed) exerted a very potent psychological influence. It was nearly subconscious - my posture registered in my limbic system as being one poised for attack and this went straight to my muscles and senses - causing me to slow down and enhancing the precision of my movements. I felt like a cat. This way of moving felt strangely familiar and simultaneously alien. I let these feelings register as thoughts and swirl around my head, and did my best to feed them back into my body - I didn't want my 'thinking' mind to be in charge.
The stick was like a magic wand, I realized - it was acting as a conduit and guide for my awareness. Magicians often speak of magical items used in spellcasting and ritual as being devices for amplifying the 'signal' of our intention. I suddenly had the experience of what that meant.
I sat down in front of a large tree and savored this body-buzz. I looked forward into the forest with all its dimensions and textures and felt that my vision was different - as if I was suddenly seeing in high-definition. I didn't feel anxious at all, or like I was 'waiting' for anything - a rare state, I think, compared to the humdrum of everyday civilized life. I knew that when I moved a muscle next it would be a totally intentional movement, not hasty, because I wouldn't be trying to get anywhere - I would just be continuing a kinesthetic conversation with the woods, with perhaps just curiosity as my guide. I knew that by the time I stood up, I would be part of this forest. And when I did stand up, I felt all the hairs on my body raise - as if in praise. As I continued on my stalk, I decided to try my hand at some target practice. And miraculously, my aim was radically improved from when we'd practiced throwing at targets back at camp. The targets I chose were further away, too. It made all the difference for the throws to be in the context of a meaningful activity. My solitude helped too - I didn't feel like I was performing in front of anyone, and was able to approach my targets and get into position slowly and deliberately. At one point I found the precision to hit a mushroom off a tree trunk from 20 feet away!
Being a human can be fun again when you realize you're a special kind of animal with a unique and wonderful skill-set. It is, indeed, something to be admired - just as we so admire our beautiful hooved, winged and pawed brothers and sisters.
We had gotten into nuances of stalking and camouflage - the art of movement and the skill of blending your form into the baseline pattern of the woods. Not only these, but almost every art and science that we'd studied that week finds consilience in the hunt. The hunt requires you to recollect the primordial language of animal tracks and signs - deciphering scratches on trees and snapped twigs and turning them into meaningful propositions; it requires you to be wary of the wind, temperature and humidity, and note when they change; it requires you to recognize patterns at ever-expanding concentric levels of existence - to know the earth like you know your mother, and to feel her beating heart wherever you sit or step.
The scope of 'the hunt' goes beyond looking for animals - it also includes foraging for plants that are edible or useful in some way - or searching for water, or looking for the right stone, or tree that for some reason the situation calls for. The hunt is a 'geomantic' state of mind wherein you are on a search for some soon-to-be aspect of yourself. It is both curious and intent, playful and somber. It is realizing that you belong in the web of life - you are welcome there if you practice humility and patience. Yes, you belong there - it's your birthright.
Most of us didn't grow up learning traditional ways of questing in the wilderness - whether for visions or for resources - so for me at least, that space feels distinctly, indubitably sacred. I felt that same dark, visceral enchantment when my partner and I slaughtered our lambs last fall, or when I went to a primitive hide-tanning gathering for the first time and spent a day scraping a cow hide that I'd brought with me - becoming absorbed in navigating the miniscule landscape of the creature's skin with my scraping tool. The power in such experiences can feel downright profane when you aren't prepared for them. I've experienced such 'profane illumination' myself, where I feel that I've stepped into a river of mana that is almost too swift and strong for me to bear - so I simply forge ahead, putting one foot in front of another (and this is where protective rituals and spell-casting come in!) and am left bewildered as Pan disappears back into the forest...
This past week, however, I never got the sense that I tumbled or crashed into that holy wild space… I slipped into it, like dozing into hypnagogia. And in that dream-time I found nothing like the Revelations of St. John, but rather a sort of mundane sacredness, characterized by such a subtle change in vibration that I can see how easily it can go untapped.
It is in the most quotidian aspects of modern living - things like conjuring calories and warmth - that in the wild are clearly times of high alchemy. Those are the times when we feral sorcerers oversee the transubstantiation of one element into another. They are when energy and matter trade places. Friction turns into fire, and other organisms give their life-energy to us. It is at those times of creation and participation that, if we were to lift our heads and look around us, we would see the gods seated there in a semicircle, silently watching with broad elfin smiles and half shadowed faces.
There's something about that mundane vanilla holiness that makes it so much more preferable to the contrived, liturgical holiness that only occurs at set, formal times. The latter abounds in the modern world. What if a ritual is there but there is no spirit inside it, no god? Indeed, I think this is how many people experience various organized religions. They see (and feel) an aesthetically pleasing vessel - but it is empty - it contains no nourishment. And many of them know that there is something missing. I fear that we aren't routinely empowered to ask the questions necessary to dismantle the distraction of dead ritual - and we definitely aren't empowered to create our own rituals - to fashion vessels for our own gods. (And I think "our own" gods are the gods of us all - the gods of fire, food, thunder, sex, death…) People ask me what studying religion has to do with farming (because those are the two things I pursued as an undergraduate) - and I often find myself talking about rites-of-passage and vision quests… our society suffers a lack of such traditions, that really reveal to us personally how much stardust and energy goes into supporting the life and well-being of our bodies and minds. Moreover, we lack even a grammar for such things - which prevents us from hacking new rites, rituals and myths - we've forgotten that they are [open-source] things that can be parsed and recompiled. They're not supposed to be static… or at least, only as static as Mama Nature herself.
There was a point in the week where I did hear a couple of angels sing, though. We had practiced transforming our gait, widening the angle of our vision, and using one of the simplest weapon-tools known to primates; a throwing stick. All these things we had approached independently earlier in the week, with accompanying lectures, demonstrations and anecdotes. On Thursday, we did an exercise that gave us a context for combining these sensory and kinesthetic skills - we were to go into the woods wielding a stick (a solid, wrist-thick piece of wood about a foot and a half long) and practice stalking, approaching and throwing at targets as soundlessly and seamlessly as possible - using trees or stumps in place of actual woodland critters.
I had been at a slow fox walk for about 20 minutes - periodically sliding up to large trees and crouching in their shadows for a few minutes to motionlessly observe the forest. I concealed the stick behind the arm that was holding it and kept both arms close to my body - at times I was almost at a crouch.
It didn't take long for me to notice that being 'armed' (or thinking of myself as armed) exerted a very potent psychological influence. It was nearly subconscious - my posture registered in my limbic system as being one poised for attack and this went straight to my muscles and senses - causing me to slow down and enhancing the precision of my movements. I felt like a cat. This way of moving felt strangely familiar and simultaneously alien. I let these feelings register as thoughts and swirl around my head, and did my best to feed them back into my body - I didn't want my 'thinking' mind to be in charge.
The stick was like a magic wand, I realized - it was acting as a conduit and guide for my awareness. Magicians often speak of magical items used in spellcasting and ritual as being devices for amplifying the 'signal' of our intention. I suddenly had the experience of what that meant.
I sat down in front of a large tree and savored this body-buzz. I looked forward into the forest with all its dimensions and textures and felt that my vision was different - as if I was suddenly seeing in high-definition. I didn't feel anxious at all, or like I was 'waiting' for anything - a rare state, I think, compared to the humdrum of everyday civilized life. I knew that when I moved a muscle next it would be a totally intentional movement, not hasty, because I wouldn't be trying to get anywhere - I would just be continuing a kinesthetic conversation with the woods, with perhaps just curiosity as my guide. I knew that by the time I stood up, I would be part of this forest. And when I did stand up, I felt all the hairs on my body raise - as if in praise. As I continued on my stalk, I decided to try my hand at some target practice. And miraculously, my aim was radically improved from when we'd practiced throwing at targets back at camp. The targets I chose were further away, too. It made all the difference for the throws to be in the context of a meaningful activity. My solitude helped too - I didn't feel like I was performing in front of anyone, and was able to approach my targets and get into position slowly and deliberately. At one point I found the precision to hit a mushroom off a tree trunk from 20 feet away!
Being a human can be fun again when you realize you're a special kind of animal with a unique and wonderful skill-set. It is, indeed, something to be admired - just as we so admire our beautiful hooved, winged and pawed brothers and sisters.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
other greenpunks n' some farmpunk news
"The arts are well placed to lead an ecological insurrection by again valuing food as contiguous with cultural production"
This quote is from an article by the author of Permapoesis - thanks @ socialfiction for the link to this blog!
Word!
Also, check out this article in the Telegraph about the influx of the farmpunk/eco-punk meme in urban Japanese culture.
And for some quality mind candies visit Greenpunk on Wordpress, who, in their words
I like, I like!
(This manifestoid sentiment reminds me of something I articulated as Re-Sourcery in a previous ramble!)
My prime partner in justice, who works at Chelsea Green (some serious farmpunk headquarters, there!) is the author of Underground, which gives you just a glimpse of her ecologically-inclined and organically-articulate intellect.
***
Well, that's all the jewels I've got in the bag today. I'm currently shacked up at the Tuckerbox in White River Junction, VT - finishing the LAST paper of my undergraduate career. Hooray! This cafe has it all going on - good coffee, great atmosphere, right across from the train station, and it even has a chic website. What's up, White River Junction? Luckily this paper is incredibly fun to write - it has me waxing neurological about group dance rituals. Basically, I had to find a way to write an academic paper about psytrance and doof parties, and now I can consider it done. Woooooot.
I finally get the ol' bacheloroid degree on May 23rd. In the next few weeks my girlfriend and I will be settling into our new place in Woodstock, Vermont (my hometown) on an amazing and magical piece of land that is mostly conserved by the Vermont Land Trust. We live in the bottom floor of a quansit-style renovated dairy barn. Our bedroom is the old milk room. The building is bermed into the hillside so we've got max thermal mass - the place is going to be cool as a cave in the summer heat. Basically you couldn't get much more farmpunk, for a building.
In a nutshell, we gon' do some farming. And BTW, we want to come up with a different word to use in place of "farming", because we want to avoid trying to define ourselves as farmers. We feel that to do that for us is to make a false identity claim that people of our priveledge perhaps should not make. Being a farmer is NOT like being queer, for example, because not everyone who is a farmer considers themselves to be part of any punk, counter or sub culture. Makes me feel like a hipster, or a fraud. I like "food producing", although that is kind of a mouthful. "Resourcery" could work, I s'pose. Farmpunkery? Hmmm. So stay tuned. This blog's about to get hands (and paws) on!
This quote is from an article by the author of Permapoesis - thanks @ socialfiction for the link to this blog!
Word!
Also, check out this article in the Telegraph about the influx of the farmpunk/eco-punk meme in urban Japanese culture.
And for some quality mind candies visit Greenpunk on Wordpress, who, in their words
"Envisions a world in which the detritus of consumer culture as propagated by the Elite is appropriated and repurposed by the masses toward the reconstruction of a devastated ecology and the address of social ill.”
I like, I like!
(This manifestoid sentiment reminds me of something I articulated as Re-Sourcery in a previous ramble!)
My prime partner in justice, who works at Chelsea Green (some serious farmpunk headquarters, there!) is the author of Underground, which gives you just a glimpse of her ecologically-inclined and organically-articulate intellect.
***
Well, that's all the jewels I've got in the bag today. I'm currently shacked up at the Tuckerbox in White River Junction, VT - finishing the LAST paper of my undergraduate career. Hooray! This cafe has it all going on - good coffee, great atmosphere, right across from the train station, and it even has a chic website. What's up, White River Junction? Luckily this paper is incredibly fun to write - it has me waxing neurological about group dance rituals. Basically, I had to find a way to write an academic paper about psytrance and doof parties, and now I can consider it done. Woooooot.
I finally get the ol' bacheloroid degree on May 23rd. In the next few weeks my girlfriend and I will be settling into our new place in Woodstock, Vermont (my hometown) on an amazing and magical piece of land that is mostly conserved by the Vermont Land Trust. We live in the bottom floor of a quansit-style renovated dairy barn. Our bedroom is the old milk room. The building is bermed into the hillside so we've got max thermal mass - the place is going to be cool as a cave in the summer heat. Basically you couldn't get much more farmpunk, for a building.
In a nutshell, we gon' do some farming. And BTW, we want to come up with a different word to use in place of "farming", because we want to avoid trying to define ourselves as farmers. We feel that to do that for us is to make a false identity claim that people of our priveledge perhaps should not make. Being a farmer is NOT like being queer, for example, because not everyone who is a farmer considers themselves to be part of any punk, counter or sub culture. Makes me feel like a hipster, or a fraud. I like "food producing", although that is kind of a mouthful. "Resourcery" could work, I s'pose. Farmpunkery? Hmmm. So stay tuned. This blog's about to get hands (and paws) on!
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