We always have been divided. The more of an outlier you are the more you are aware. We are not supposed to be in heirarchy. Those at the top will do whatever is necessary to subvert our natural state. They will destroy those who can threaten it. They don't even need to do it. They just need to have the potential to do it. This is what neurodivergence is. It is lumping the most brilliant into the defects pile.
You live in captivity. All of what you detail is games they play to make you think you have choices. But until you can actually tell you income source what you really think of them, you are not free. Focusing on the 3 points is like having cancer and only focusing on having unhealthy nail beds.
dance with me in the format of an online interview . I dont bite, and even if in captivity, your mind rambles in brilliant ways that would be fun to launch into the verse of 'where to go from here' to describe the texture, temperature and scent of what comes next.
The title and subtitle alone are so valuable, and the rest of the article provides detail. Thank you for writing this piece Jamie. It brings biology and human nature together to offer a useful lens for deciphering much of the stuff going on. I sincerely appreciate your perspective.
thx mate. for me the so what is just realizing that our civilizational equations have been ignoring those three externalities, (psychosocial, geographic, and temporal) and that's responsible for most of the suffering and imbalances we experience. It also helps tease apart the campus protests and calls for change, b/c many folks just get angry at the whole system, but their diagnosis is clumsy (so their interventions will always backfire).
If you can, this content will help you understand the Indigenous.
Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, The Nature of Religion. The Significance Of Religious Myth, Symbolism, And Ritual Within Life And Culture, copyright 1957, copyright 1959...
Greater Good’s editors pick the most thought-provoking, practical, and inspirational science books of the year. DECEMBER 9, 2022
Restoring the Kinship Worldview: Indigenous Voices Introduce 28 Precepts for Rebalancing Life on Planet Earth, by Wahinkpe Topa (Four Arrows) and Darcia Narvaez
The indigenous civilization is matricentric and by extension economically mutualistic. That civilization generated many cultures and tribes, all sharing the same worldview of the Sacredness of Life.
What you are referring to, relevant to “us vs. them,” is among the classic tactics of fascism. Fascism is the privatization of government by private concerns, be those private concerns secular or theocratic, or both. From that condition of impunity, then, fascist, necrophilic tactics are deployed.
Biological determinism transposes and superimposes its facts upon economic social concerns which is erroneous and pernicious. Your deterministic “deductions” are wildly false and pernicious.
Your view on colonialism is elementary and superficial.
You expect your readers to “tease out” your generalized content.
Capitalism is the means to universal and systemic, economic stratification, which psychologically is necrophilia. I am not surprised that you have not indentified patriarchy as the “root” of, economic and social, conquest and domination. At 73, I only recently began entertaining that subject more fully. (1) However, I integrate that knowledge into the subject of the four civilizational levels, each grounded upon an economic premise.
In large, the way “out from under this rock” is to open a new economic social context, the reconstruction of the Indigenous.
@Reed, Aren’t “temporal externalities” and “seven generational thinking” indigenous concepts? Seems to me that for all that squeezing you’re doing, you’re missing the juice!
Also, acknowledging the ethnocentrism of tribal primates isn’t the same as biological determinism. Tribal drivers can manifest as belonging and as genocide (even in indigenous contexts).
The sword cuts both ways.
Really enjoy Eliade’s stuff, and not doubt the sacred has a key role in the regenaissance that we are in desperate need of.
“Oh if we could all just elevate our consciousness from out of the biology of tribalism!” I hear this voice from this over there in a cuddle puddle surrounded by stuff that capitalism provided.
The tribal biological urge is not a “Game” as you put it, it’s biology! Now I know it’s en vogue to deny biology of late, but surely the starting point in all this mess is to acknowledge each other biology, urges and repulsions? Without shaming each other for it.
Racism wasn’t called racism in tribal days, it was called “that other tribe with those diseases that kill us.” In our sophistication we have become so…. Lost.
So acknowledge the tribal urges, then play the game of collaboration despite my primal animal based impulses, and if shit goes bang just forgive me while I momentarily default to my animal instincts and go and save my family. We can reconvene with the game of collaboration when shit calms down, until then I’m with team Britain.
When trade becomes non consentual, we have a problem. First, it is no longer trade, it seems to be rape and pillage. Second, coercion seems to be the problem for all three of your categories.
I do not believe, as some of your commentors say, the indigenous have all the answers for our way forward. Much like the young and old, we need both. I’m pretty sensitive to scapegoating and blaming, so I find that I did not take anyone’s land, therefore I do not owe anyone. Governments are coercive and act without my consent. This is a problem.
I wonder if the population control folks feel happy about their successes at slowing growth and potentially destroying most of humanity’s future.
Putting this into Forrest Landry's embodied questions triple -> Tribalism is extraction from the other (who), colonialism is extraction from location (where/geography) and capitalism is extraction over time (when aka compound interest). Hope these abstract questions are useful. What tribes work well together? How does trade between nations increase the potential of each nation, their relationships and the world? Why is payback such a bitch (or why is retribution a dirty word)?
“...Ideology and structure cannot be separated.” (Abdullah Ocalan) (1, p. 36)
Civilization is a condition of integral Art, music, mythology and technology. Anthropocentrism is not part of the Indigenous civilization. The use of the term “tribalism” is a vulgarization of the Indigenous having developed clan and tribe, social economic organization. The Indigenous civilization is composed of matrifocal, empathetic cultures sharing economic mutualism. Economic mutualism is the economic premise of Indigenous civilization, by which means the world view among all of its cultures is the Sacredness of Life. In order to generate that same worldview would require a modern reconstruction of the Indigenous. A given of Indigenous civilization is the self-realization of each person from birth, with community support.
Western ‘civilization’ is unmitigated savagery. It is class based, structured on systemic, economic stratification, which is only maintained by violence at all levels of western civilization. The worldview of western civilization is conquest and domination, which is to say organized crime, criminal insanity, and psychopathic necrophilia.
The aphorism, “We have found the enemy and they are us” applies here.
The reconstruction of the Indigenous is an economic social method. Decentralized economic social organization represents a new civilization antithetical to the former, which is a matter of life and death.
Note, 5: Greater Good’s editors pick the most thought-provoking, practical, and inspirational science books of the year. DECEMBER 9, 2022
Restoring the Kinship Worldview: Indigenous Voices Introduce 28 Precepts for Rebalancing Life on Planet Earth, by Wahinkpe Topa (Four Arrows) and Darcia Narvaez
Jaime, I personally find the frame of temporal externalities extremely useful in helping us zoom out to the larger vision of this planet and the “seed corn” we are planting for our future generations.
I’m also curious how humanity will lean into the power of “the tribe” and get back to being the stewards of the garden, in perhaps a more bioregional fashion as you suggest.
The crux of this problem (meta-crisis) seems to come down to storytelling. Looks like we need better stories (myths, memes, metaphors) that internalize those externalities.
Jamie - thank you for providing useful frameworks for understanding complex issues. This jumped out at me: “And the Global South could have some kind of reset/rebate program where lost capital (financial, human, and natural) from the age of colonies and global development could be credited against all those looming deficits so ingeniously engineered by the World Bank and IMF.” This makes eminently good sense. How would one begin work on such a practical, sane, just, and beneficial policy? Also - What is your take on Gail Bradbrooks pivot towards the global south? I missed last Sunday’s live presentations, and the recording was truncated after her’s.
Great article. My Irish grandfather, Captain Dick O’Neill wanted a United Ireland. I lived in India for 3 years in the Diplomatic community . I feel what you say. I realised the Brits are engrained with a toxic nostalgia. It prevents us from seeing the future . We end up patronising former British colonies, we can’t sign trade deals with this attitude. The British establishment still thinks we have an empire. It means we have a government today that is the equivalent of the East India Company. A bunch of pirates who were so successful we nationalised them so they could run the empire. It didn’t die in 1947. It became the City of London with a global trust network . This toxic nostalgia for empire produces people like Boris Johnson who has an affinity for the other nation that loves empire….Russia. Adam Smith never intended the invisible hand to pick pocket us ! It’s time for the visible heart .( ps. I studied economics at St.Andrews University, just up the coast from the birthplace of Smith. We need a Re Evolution of self, of family, of work, of community, of society and of global politics and economics…it’s why I love Flow ( I call it leadership and high performance). We need to transform rapidly . Like a quantum computer . Let’s have the Quantum Organisation, one that regenerate and evolves around purpose and vision.
Thank you for this beautifully conceived piece. In a pinch-yourself coincidence, I think we wrote the same love-letter to the future from two different perspectives. Mine is a personal journey and language-level up with AI, Art and Spirituality, yours is systems-wide and top-down. The Union where they intersect could use a name. I hope you enjoy this and would love your feedback. Reuben https://open.substack.com/pub/reubensteiger/p/the-dogma-catastrophe?r=3bgxr&utm_medium=ios
We always have been divided. The more of an outlier you are the more you are aware. We are not supposed to be in heirarchy. Those at the top will do whatever is necessary to subvert our natural state. They will destroy those who can threaten it. They don't even need to do it. They just need to have the potential to do it. This is what neurodivergence is. It is lumping the most brilliant into the defects pile.
You live in captivity. All of what you detail is games they play to make you think you have choices. But until you can actually tell you income source what you really think of them, you are not free. Focusing on the 3 points is like having cancer and only focusing on having unhealthy nail beds.
whew! thanks for freeing me from my neurotypical captivity!
dance with me in the format of an online interview . I dont bite, and even if in captivity, your mind rambles in brilliant ways that would be fun to launch into the verse of 'where to go from here' to describe the texture, temperature and scent of what comes next.
- Amelia
The title and subtitle alone are so valuable, and the rest of the article provides detail. Thank you for writing this piece Jamie. It brings biology and human nature together to offer a useful lens for deciphering much of the stuff going on. I sincerely appreciate your perspective.
thx mate. for me the so what is just realizing that our civilizational equations have been ignoring those three externalities, (psychosocial, geographic, and temporal) and that's responsible for most of the suffering and imbalances we experience. It also helps tease apart the campus protests and calls for change, b/c many folks just get angry at the whole system, but their diagnosis is clumsy (so their interventions will always backfire).
Paid to pollute, who isn’t?
The concept of selling cigarettes to pay for cancer treatment.
Money is not gold, that ended in 1972.
Carbon footprint is petro dollar weight in carbon, getting heavier every day.
Put down the wallet and find friends, or remember losing the wallet and begging, same deal, learn to beg (share).
The world needs repair not lecture, money was of a flat earth time to fear the dark, the peoples of burning shit, always ran out of stuff to burn.
GDP has no moral compass, it gloats over the war on nature and the war on the nonexistent citizen, replaced with ‘other’.
A ‘trucker’ is ‘delivery person’ a ‘biker’ is ‘two wheeled transport’ ‘a ‘punk’ is rotten wood, ‘jazz’ is non stop ‘improvement’.
Dear Jamie Wheal,
and for all who are interested in the subject,
If you can, this content will help you understand the Indigenous.
Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, The Nature of Religion. The Significance Of Religious Myth, Symbolism, And Ritual Within Life And Culture, copyright 1957, copyright 1959...
The Sacred and the Profane... PDF:
https://monoskop.org/images/b/b1/Eliade_Mircea_The_Sacred_and_The_profane_1963.pdf
The Interview: Four Arrows, Jan 15, 1:26 PM:
https://audioboom.com/posts/8230302-the-interview-four-arrows
See: "Pre-conquest Consciousness" by E. Richard Sorenson
https://static.wixstatic.com/ugd/91e041_5a4f8d2572cf44ddb5c98905dc1f3957.pdf
Greater Good’s editors pick the most thought-provoking, practical, and inspirational science books of the year. DECEMBER 9, 2022
Restoring the Kinship Worldview: Indigenous Voices Introduce 28 Precepts for Rebalancing Life on Planet Earth, by Wahinkpe Topa (Four Arrows) and Darcia Narvaez
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1623176425?ie=UTF8&tag=gregooscicen-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1623176425
And see: Darcia Narvaez, PhD, Abstracts:
https://darcianarvaez.com/abstracts
Dear Jamie Wheal,
I am glad you have defined your terms.
Your definition of “tribalism “is perverse.
The indigenous civilization is matricentric and by extension economically mutualistic. That civilization generated many cultures and tribes, all sharing the same worldview of the Sacredness of Life.
What you are referring to, relevant to “us vs. them,” is among the classic tactics of fascism. Fascism is the privatization of government by private concerns, be those private concerns secular or theocratic, or both. From that condition of impunity, then, fascist, necrophilic tactics are deployed.
Biological determinism transposes and superimposes its facts upon economic social concerns which is erroneous and pernicious. Your deterministic “deductions” are wildly false and pernicious.
Your view on colonialism is elementary and superficial.
You expect your readers to “tease out” your generalized content.
Capitalism is the means to universal and systemic, economic stratification, which psychologically is necrophilia. I am not surprised that you have not indentified patriarchy as the “root” of, economic and social, conquest and domination. At 73, I only recently began entertaining that subject more fully. (1) However, I integrate that knowledge into the subject of the four civilizational levels, each grounded upon an economic premise.
In large, the way “out from under this rock” is to open a new economic social context, the reconstruction of the Indigenous.
You be well and be in Good Spirits!
Note, 1: Women’s Revolution, by Abdullah Ocalan
https://www.freeocalan.org/books/downloads/EN-brochure_liberating-life-womans-revolution_2017.pdf
Note: Ruben Nelson’s presentation:
https://canadiancor.com/ruben-nelson-transcending-our-mti-form-of-civilization-exploring-the-new-core-work-of-the-21st-century-cacor-2022-06-2/
we have a Word Salad Winner!!!
You betray yourself.
You betray yourself.
@Reed, Aren’t “temporal externalities” and “seven generational thinking” indigenous concepts? Seems to me that for all that squeezing you’re doing, you’re missing the juice!
Also, acknowledging the ethnocentrism of tribal primates isn’t the same as biological determinism. Tribal drivers can manifest as belonging and as genocide (even in indigenous contexts).
The sword cuts both ways.
Really enjoy Eliade’s stuff, and not doubt the sacred has a key role in the regenaissance that we are in desperate need of.
“Oh if we could all just elevate our consciousness from out of the biology of tribalism!” I hear this voice from this over there in a cuddle puddle surrounded by stuff that capitalism provided.
The tribal biological urge is not a “Game” as you put it, it’s biology! Now I know it’s en vogue to deny biology of late, but surely the starting point in all this mess is to acknowledge each other biology, urges and repulsions? Without shaming each other for it.
Racism wasn’t called racism in tribal days, it was called “that other tribe with those diseases that kill us.” In our sophistication we have become so…. Lost.
So acknowledge the tribal urges, then play the game of collaboration despite my primal animal based impulses, and if shit goes bang just forgive me while I momentarily default to my animal instincts and go and save my family. We can reconvene with the game of collaboration when shit calms down, until then I’m with team Britain.
I love the food for thought!
When trade becomes non consentual, we have a problem. First, it is no longer trade, it seems to be rape and pillage. Second, coercion seems to be the problem for all three of your categories.
I do not believe, as some of your commentors say, the indigenous have all the answers for our way forward. Much like the young and old, we need both. I’m pretty sensitive to scapegoating and blaming, so I find that I did not take anyone’s land, therefore I do not owe anyone. Governments are coercive and act without my consent. This is a problem.
I wonder if the population control folks feel happy about their successes at slowing growth and potentially destroying most of humanity’s future.
Putting this into Forrest Landry's embodied questions triple -> Tribalism is extraction from the other (who), colonialism is extraction from location (where/geography) and capitalism is extraction over time (when aka compound interest). Hope these abstract questions are useful. What tribes work well together? How does trade between nations increase the potential of each nation, their relationships and the world? Why is payback such a bitch (or why is retribution a dirty word)?
Dear Christian,
“...Ideology and structure cannot be separated.” (Abdullah Ocalan) (1, p. 36)
Civilization is a condition of integral Art, music, mythology and technology. Anthropocentrism is not part of the Indigenous civilization. The use of the term “tribalism” is a vulgarization of the Indigenous having developed clan and tribe, social economic organization. The Indigenous civilization is composed of matrifocal, empathetic cultures sharing economic mutualism. Economic mutualism is the economic premise of Indigenous civilization, by which means the world view among all of its cultures is the Sacredness of Life. In order to generate that same worldview would require a modern reconstruction of the Indigenous. A given of Indigenous civilization is the self-realization of each person from birth, with community support.
Western ‘civilization’ is unmitigated savagery. It is class based, structured on systemic, economic stratification, which is only maintained by violence at all levels of western civilization. The worldview of western civilization is conquest and domination, which is to say organized crime, criminal insanity, and psychopathic necrophilia.
The aphorism, “We have found the enemy and they are us” applies here.
The reconstruction of the Indigenous is an economic social method. Decentralized economic social organization represents a new civilization antithetical to the former, which is a matter of life and death.
You be well and be in Good Spirits!
Yours always, Reed
Note, 1: Women’s Revolution, by Abdullah Ocalan
https://www.freeocalan.org/books/downloads/EN-brochure_liberating-life-womans-revolution_2017.pdf
Notes for learning and perspective:
Ruben Nelson’s presentation:
https://canadiancor.com/ruben-nelson-transcending-our-mti-form-of-civilization-exploring-the-new-core-work-of-the-21st-century-cacor-2022-06-2/
The Interview: Four Arrows, Jan 15, 1:26 PM:
https://audioboom.com/posts/8230302-the-interview-four-arrows
See: "Pre-conquest Consciousness" by E. Richard Sorenson
https://static.wixstatic.com/ugd/91e041_5a4f8d2572cf44ddb5c98905dc1f3957.pdf
Note, 5: Greater Good’s editors pick the most thought-provoking, practical, and inspirational science books of the year. DECEMBER 9, 2022
Restoring the Kinship Worldview: Indigenous Voices Introduce 28 Precepts for Rebalancing Life on Planet Earth, by Wahinkpe Topa (Four Arrows) and Darcia Narvaez
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1623176425?ie=UTF8&tag=gregooscicen-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1623176425
And see: Darcia Narvaez, PhD, Abstracts:
https://darcianarvaez.com/abstracts
Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition
https://books.google.com.mx/books/about/Pedagogy_of_the_Oppressed.html?id=oKQMBAAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y
PDF of Pedagogy of the Oppressed
https://envs.ucsc.edu/internships/internship-readings/freire-pedagogy-of-the-oppressed.pdf
Jaime, I personally find the frame of temporal externalities extremely useful in helping us zoom out to the larger vision of this planet and the “seed corn” we are planting for our future generations.
I’m also curious how humanity will lean into the power of “the tribe” and get back to being the stewards of the garden, in perhaps a more bioregional fashion as you suggest.
The crux of this problem (meta-crisis) seems to come down to storytelling. Looks like we need better stories (myths, memes, metaphors) that internalize those externalities.
Meaning 3.0 would be clutch right now.
Jamie - thank you for providing useful frameworks for understanding complex issues. This jumped out at me: “And the Global South could have some kind of reset/rebate program where lost capital (financial, human, and natural) from the age of colonies and global development could be credited against all those looming deficits so ingeniously engineered by the World Bank and IMF.” This makes eminently good sense. How would one begin work on such a practical, sane, just, and beneficial policy? Also - What is your take on Gail Bradbrooks pivot towards the global south? I missed last Sunday’s live presentations, and the recording was truncated after her’s.
Thanks. I enjoyed your take.
Great article. My Irish grandfather, Captain Dick O’Neill wanted a United Ireland. I lived in India for 3 years in the Diplomatic community . I feel what you say. I realised the Brits are engrained with a toxic nostalgia. It prevents us from seeing the future . We end up patronising former British colonies, we can’t sign trade deals with this attitude. The British establishment still thinks we have an empire. It means we have a government today that is the equivalent of the East India Company. A bunch of pirates who were so successful we nationalised them so they could run the empire. It didn’t die in 1947. It became the City of London with a global trust network . This toxic nostalgia for empire produces people like Boris Johnson who has an affinity for the other nation that loves empire….Russia. Adam Smith never intended the invisible hand to pick pocket us ! It’s time for the visible heart .( ps. I studied economics at St.Andrews University, just up the coast from the birthplace of Smith. We need a Re Evolution of self, of family, of work, of community, of society and of global politics and economics…it’s why I love Flow ( I call it leadership and high performance). We need to transform rapidly . Like a quantum computer . Let’s have the Quantum Organisation, one that regenerate and evolves around purpose and vision.
Jamie Wheal,
You betray yourself.
Dear Jamie,
Thank you for this beautifully conceived piece. In a pinch-yourself coincidence, I think we wrote the same love-letter to the future from two different perspectives. Mine is a personal journey and language-level up with AI, Art and Spirituality, yours is systems-wide and top-down. The Union where they intersect could use a name. I hope you enjoy this and would love your feedback. Reuben https://open.substack.com/pub/reubensteiger/p/the-dogma-catastrophe?r=3bgxr&utm_medium=ios