Where the Sidewalk Ends: the Spirituality of Apocalypse, part 2

August 23, 2012Ric Hudgens

Post image for Where the Sidewalk Ends: the Spirituality of Apocalypse, part 2

 

Editors note: the second in a two part series.  Go here for part 1.

Once the sidewalk ends the connection between humans and ground (Latin: humus) becomes primary. To step off the sidewalk is to reconnect with our primal origins as earth creatures created or evolved (take your pick) for life on this particular planet in this particular atmosphere. To step off the sidewalk is to retouch our wild indigenous selves.

The classic Christian spiritual disciplines do serve an irreplaceable role in connecting us with the work of God in the world. They are the necessary but insufficient foundation for Christian discipleship in the twenty-first century. But our relationship with our bodily and earthly identity is conflicted in the classic tradition. In the classic tradition the wild, indigenous self is to be feared and therefore colonized and converted.

Many people today recognize the false promises and destructive impact of modern civilization. We often do not know what alternatives exist.  Most of us have an unsatisfied desire for wildness and mystery that neither school nor church, neither therapist nor pastor can address.  For over two hundred years under the flags of modernity and progress our civilization has been diminishing the biotic capacity of this planet. We have already reached the point of no return. Our ability to effectively respond to our dilemma has been perilously handicapped by dysfunctional political systems and societies that can no longer nurture humans to full maturity and adulthood.

Although human maturity requires direction by both culture and nature our civilization requires that the influence and demands of nature be diminished so that the influence and demands of modern economic culture become primary. In other words, modern civilization discourages true human maturity so that nature will not disrupt culture.

A crucial component needed in contemporary radical Christian practice is the human connection with nature.  Classical Christian thought is at best ambivalent about nature and at worst views nature as a hindrance and an enemy to spiritual life. In the classic view nature is to be disciplined, controlled, subdued, or defeated.

In the radical view nature is a crucial ally and companion to the Christian spiritual life. We must begin to honor nature and our own human bodies as part of nature, sacred vessels for God’s presence. To view nature not as an enemy or hindrance to human maturity, to see nature as an ally and friend of the spiritual life is to lay the foundation for a fundamental rebellion against the dehumanizing force of modern civilization. Spiritual disciplines “grounded” in the natural world embrace both external and internal nature. Instead of choosing between God or nature we entrust ourselves to God and nature.

Here are three spiritual disciplines that the contemporary radical Christians might embrace as a supplement to those that Christians have always embraced (prayer, Bible study, etc). 1

VISION FASTING

Rites of passage are crucial to individual and social psychology. Throughout human history the predominant place for these rites has been in wilderness settings outside the everyday life of the village or town. All three major monotheistic faiths were initially shaped by wilderness rites of passage. 2

This ancient wilderness psychology has much to teach us today. Modern cultures have forgotten these ancient practices and have not found sufficient substitutes that connect us with the rhythms of earth and spirit. People in major life transitions (e.g. mid-life, marriage, divorce, traumatic loss, etc) may seek out a wilderness rite of passage in order to find clarity and renewed direction. A theist may be seeking a closer relationship to God or a spiritualist communing with “the mystery”. Time alone in the wilderness has often facilitated a radical shift in consciousness and marked a significant transformational moment in someone’s life.

Contemporary “vision fasts” attempt to revive the therapeutic effectiveness of indigenous rites of passage. A typical contemporary vision fast has three phases: (1) severance/withdrawal (2) threshold/descent and (3) incorporation/return. The threshold phase is the central period of living in the wilderness for a limited period of time without food, shelter, or companionship. Experienced guides are always essential to this process. Guides help with preparation, oversee the fast itself, and assist in the reincorporation of participants back into their everyday world.

Going cold turkey against our addiction to civilization even for short periods of time has profound affects upon our mental, emotional, and physical stability.  The destabilized ego removed from its normal points of orientation and psychological security must find new and deeper resources and sustenance. Exposure is the key: exposure to a strange environment and terrain; exposure to one’s own insecurities, fears, and instabilities; exposure to one’s idols, temptations, and the ground of one’s faith.

John Davis writes “Making intimate contact with the wild world brings us into contact with our ‘wild selves,’ the parts of us that have not been conditioned by familial and cultural forces. Wild places are those not under our control and not subject to our wills, walls, or arbitrary boundaries. On wilderness rites of passage, as in all forms of deep psychological or spiritual work, we are going into wild places. We are entering realms where the artificial structures and demands of the ego and society have not restricted or walled off our innate guidance, aliveness, generosity, or fascination with the world.” 3

DREAMWORK

Every known human culture until the advent of modernity sought guidance in dreams. Most of us are a bit schizophrenic about dreams, either dismissing them without consideration, or treating them superstitiously. Most approaches to dreamwork differ on the relationship between the nightworld and the dayworld. Some see dreams as mere reworkings of conflicts going on in everyday life. Dreams are ways to work out our own fantasies or anxieties about real relationships with real people. Other approaches see dreams as codes in which every element has a hidden meaning that might be deciphered to reveal some hidden directive.

Perhaps the most helpful model for dreamwork understands that the concerns of the ego’s dayworld are not the dream’s primary theme. In Bill Plotkin’s “soulcentric dreamwork” every dream is an opportunity to learn more about our soul – our primal, unsocialized, indigenous self. Dreams reveal an agenda contrary to that of our everyday world, an agenda that expresses our deepest identity and longing. If heeded our dreams might not facilitate our smooth capitulation to civilization! In this view, dreams are attempts to interrupt our everyday preoccupations so that our deepest desires may be introduced into consciousness in a way that will facilitate our wholeness and maturity. It is not the case that the dreamworld should rule over the everyday world, but the dreamworld should unseat the imperialism of the everyday for the sake of human wholeness. 4

SEASONAL CEREMONIES, DRUMMING AND DANCING

OK, so maybe a vision fast (resembling those of Moses and Jesus) or the interpretation of dreams (mimicking Joseph or Daniel) might have some value in Christian spiritual life. Drumming and dancing under a full moon clearly takes us outside of any biblical precedent and perhaps carries us over the boundary into New Age hokum. This impulse to dismiss such practices is more indicative of our capitulation to modern prejudices than it is a witness to our biblical faithfulness.

Not only do we need disciplines that connect us with the external natural (e.g. wilderness fasts) and the internal natural (e.g. dreamwork) but we need disciplines that connect both external and internal and do so with others on the same quest. Seasonal festivals have always had the potential to nurture our relationship with the natural world and bring deep healing to our nature-based psyches. At a very deep and profound psychological level we need to live in accordance with the rhythms and seasons of nature. Rituals around seasonal festivals are one means of reconnecting us with the natural world. They are essential in revising our self-understanding as creatures immersed in nature rather than creatures in opposition, tension, or mere communion with nature.

Ceremony is about connecting our deep selves with each other and with God through sound and movement. Simple drumming and spontaneous dance can be a place to start. Dancing together in unscripted ways has the power to coordinate the inner and outer and force each to initiate their own movement and to respond to the movement of others. Drumming and dancing together in a natural setting in accordance with seasonal rhythms can be a powerful method for individual, social, and spiritual cohesion. Clearly Christian worship limited by the traditional ecclesiastical expressions will never unseat the domination of civilization, nor liberate our colonized spirits. Seasonal drumming and dancing as an expression of Christian worship just might. 5

CONCLUSION

Sidewalks facilitate movement and provide safety in transitioning from one point to another. But sidewalks also guide and limit our movement. An overly reverential adherence to the constraints of sidewalks is not an expression of true human freedom. The yellow brick road may lead Dorothy to Oz, but that’s the only place it will lead her.

When Christians confess that we are “children of God” created “in God’s image” we are exercising our human imaginations.  Imagination is in fact crucial to spiritual life. It shapes our understanding of God, of ourselves, and of the rest of the created order.

The question “Is that reality or is that your imagination?” presents a false dichotomy. Spiritual disciplines function interactively with human imagination. Imagination shapes what we do and what we do shapes what we are capable of imagining. At present our response to the world’s environmental crisis is underfunded by our limited imaginations. The classical spiritual disciplines do not access all the spiritual resources God has made available to us.

I am not asserting that three more spiritual disciplines (vision fasts, dreamwork, drumming and dancing ceremonies) will do anything substantial by themselves. What I am arguing is that we need Christian communities experimenting with new spiritual practices in a synergistic manner for extended periods of time and reporting out what they are discovering.

If you are looking for a concrete manner by which you can respond to the fear, rage, and compassion you feel about the world we live in, then this is a direction in which to move. We need “soulcentric” Christian communities breaking their addiction to civilization and living out their new liberated identities as those who can embrace both our heavenly calling and our wild indigenous selves.

Notes:

  1. The primary inspiration for my essay comes from the written work of Bill Plotkin and the thirty-year history of the Animas Valley Institute in Durango, Colorado. ↩
  2. See Ched Myers,“Led by the Spirit into the Wilderness: Reflections on Lent, Jesus’ Temptations & Indigeneity” ↩
  3. “Wilderness Rites of Passage”, Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature, edited by Bron Taylor, pp 1150-1151 (London: Continuum, 2005).  For more on vision fasts see the foundational work of Steven Foster and Meridith Little, The Book of the Vision Quest: Personal Transformation in the Wilderness (New York: Prentice Hall Press 1988). ↩
  4. The best introduction to Bill Plotkin’s distinctive soulcentric dreamwork is Soulcraft, chapter 7, pp 128ff. Bill Plotkin, Soulcraft: Crossing Into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche, (New World Library, 2003). It should be noted here that human wholeness is not equated with the dominance of our wild, indigenous selves. The goal is the integration of our interior wildness with the rest of our personality. ↩
  5. Even if it fails it is still a lot more fun! ↩

Tagged as: alternative spiritual practices, christian formation, Spiritual disciplines

  • JamesH

    There’s a lot of good stuff to think about here, thanks for sharing your thoughts.  I wonder to what extent there are already resources within the Jewish and Christian traditions for developing the sorts of spiritual practices you envision?  I think for instance of the Old Testament festival of sukkot, a festival which integrates connection with seasonal rhythms and a distinctive historical, anti-imperial narrative, and involves the relocation to temporary tents for an entire week as a way of reimmersing the nation in the wilderness experience that birthed it.  I began to observe sukkot in different ways a few years ago and found that it had some of the effects that you talk about.  And there’s no reason we cannot incorporate drum circles into sukkot . . . 

    This may be off topic from what you’re trying to address here, but I wonder if you are familiar with Wild at Heart and some of the mens wilderness movements that have been spurred by it?  If so, how would you distinguish what you are envisioning from those sorts of projects?  I know a lot of evangelicals who would do a lot of head nodding to your article . . . they are all about reclaiming wildness . . . they are all about going into nature . . . they are all about new rites of passage . . . but they are also all about a disgusting romanticized patriarchy and the myth of redemptive violence.

    • rdhudgens

      James,

      You make two related points. First, there is no desire on my part to be unique, original, or eccentric. Where there are already resources within the tradition we should revive those practices. The Christian calendar is clearly rooted in prior traditions that were likewise rooted in long-standing seasonal observances. Those linkages could be highlighted in our current practice – reconnecting the Christian calendar with that primal rhythm in order to enrich our celebrations in ways that might also address our alienation from the natural world.

      Second, there are some parallels between contemporary men’s movements and Plotkin’s work. The differences though are crucial. Much of the contemporary men’s spirituality movement (esp. in its evangelical versions) is starkly androcentric and patriarchal (as you note). There is also little concern for the aspect of inappropriate native appropriations that Plotkin and his colleagues are clearly trying to address. I hate to be polemical, but perhaps I should append a strong critique of John Eldredge just to make a clear distinction from what Plotkin is doing.

      Richard Rohr is also affirming Plotkin’s work. Rohr’s MALES (men as learners and elders) program is an heir of the men’s spirituality movement. Rohr’s “Franciscan alternative orthodoxy and perennial philosophy” provides a theological breadth that can nurture a Christian version of Plotkin’s work.However, I should acknowledge that female friends of mine still find Rohr too masculinist in spirit.

      Plotkin’s soulcraft derived from female mentors (esp. Elizabeth Cogburn and Dolores Lachapelle) and remains intimately connected to female colleagues (including Joanna Macy and the numerous women working as Animas guides). This must not be missed. The dominance of male voices in response to part one should not be taken as a reflection upon the trajectory of these two essays. Patriarchy is part of the problem not part of the solution.

      Finally, the crucial difference that can’t be skirted is that there is an anti-civilizational critique at work in all of this which does not sit easily with many strands of the Christian tradition nor with hardly any strands of the evangelical traditions. Plotkin is clear about this in my own conversations with him.

      Joanna Macy’s counsel about the threefold response is crucial. There is a systemic crisis that must be addressed. Evangelical men painting their bodies and yelling over drum beats at Christian retreat centers is not going to accomplish a damn thing.

      We need soulcentric Christian communities guided by nature-based practices that encourage soul-full human maturity and sustained and determined responses to imperial formation. We can walk on the sidewalk (i.e. the tradition) as far as it can take us in this direction – but we should never be afraid to keep going once the sidewalk ends.

      • JamesH

        “We need soulcentric Christian communities guided by nature-based practices that encourage soul-full human maturity and sustained and determined responses to imperial formation. We can walk on the sidewalk (i.e. the tradition) as far as it can take us in this direction – but we should never be afraid to keep going once the sidewalk ends.” Good words. Not to taint or manipulate your metaphor, but I wonder if by going beyond where the sidewalk ends we sometimes discover other sidewalks that have long been covered up. In other words, we may not actually be able to revive or recover existing practices within the tradition until we take your advice and step off the path. I guess I’m just affirming that the sorts of explorations you are encouraging should not be seen as some kind of desperate last resort after we have exhausted everything from the tradition, but should be seen as a way to bring the tradition alive in new ways which should be embraced a.s.a.p.

        Your article has caused me to start reflecting on the ancestral narratives in Genesis as a potential resource. The worship of the ancestors seems spontaneous, localized, pluriform, and rooted in nature. Oak trees. Stone pillars. Dream-visions while sleeping in the open air. They encountered God as they went and named and sacralized the places where this encounter occurred. The Deuteronomistic centralization of worship in a temple structure in Jerusalem seems to be a move away from this, and the abolition of the temple seems to be an invitation to re-explore earlier forms of spirituality.

        I’m just curious what it would look like for Christian communities to experiment with these sorts of ancestral practices? I think of my own location in a suburban county outside of Chicago. What if instead of spending a week at a conference in a convention center in a state run by xenophobes members of my community spent the week touring our watershed by foot, expectantly listening and looking for the appearance of God in the persistent vestiges of the natural world that we’ve covered with concrete? What if we sacralized some of the ancient oaks or maples in suburban front yards that preceded and have somehow managed to survive decades and decades of urban sprawl? What if we sacralized the Des Plaines river? What if we named and renamed (perhaps in some cases reclaiming names from the past) trees, fields, parks, streams? What if we came to see and treat these as sacred spaces, sites to be worshipfully returned to with regularity as a community, and sites to be guarded as reverently as a cathedral? I’m particularly drawn in my own area to trees and streams/rivers, since these seem to have exercised some resilience. There are some old trees in my region, and the streams and rivers have forced us to build our roads and bridges around their paths. These trees and the existence of bridges serve as a potent reminder that there was something here before us which has resisted our best efforts to snuff it out and that we are little more than an invasive species whose time is running out. Regularly gathering our worship around deciduous trees and rivers would I think also connect us with seasonality. Instead of changing the colors of vestments and banners our cycles of liturgy would keep step with the growth and changing colors of leaves and the rising and falling levels of our streams and rivers.

        I don’t know if that sort of practice fulfills Macy’s three-fold vision, but it’s the type of thing that captures my imagination.

        By the way, I would love to see that strong, polemical appendix on John Eldredge.

        • rdhudgens

          Thx for this James. Your contribution and John T’s on part two are exactly what I was hoping for in putting my essays forward. Much appreciated.

          I highly recommend this 1976 essay by Gary Snyder on “Re-inhabitation” as an encouragement (
          http://angg.twu.net/LATEX/reinhab.pdf ) [It can also be found in Snyder's 1977 volume The Old Ways published by City Lights.]

  • http://cimarronline.blogspot.com/2004/05/paul-munn.html paul munn

    I agree that exploration in these practices could be helpful to many (and fun). And I like that you acknowledge that similar practices are already a part of our Christian traditions, including the examples in biblical stories you mentioned: Daniel, Joseph, Moses, Jesus.

    I wonder, though, about your claims that these practices are so much better in helping us find liberation: “Clearly Christian worship limited by the traditional ecclesiastical expressions will never unseat the domination of civilization, nor liberate our colonized spirits. Seasonal drumming and dancing as an expression of Christian worship just might.” I know of quite a few people (including myself) who have experienced real liberation from our oppressive culture with the help of more traditional practices, like contemplation, pilgrimage, voluntary poverty, serving the poor, etc.

    But you say “just might.” Does that mean this is a theory? What I wonder is if you have experience (yours or other people’s) that demonstrates how helpful your suggested practices can be in finding liberation?

    The practices you suggest also bring to mind the many cultures that have historically used these practices regularly as part of their spiritual formation. Like many of the indigenous peoples of this continent, as far as I know. It makes me wonder if their use of these practices has helped them resist the encroaching colonizers, or find liberation amidst the civilization that oppresses them. I’m really asking; I have little understanding of their experience.

    • rdhudgens

      Paul, your questions make me wonder if I haven’t communicated as well as I would like.

      The scope of our efforts must include all three of the aspects Joanna Macy noted (1) holding actions (2) sustainable community models and (3) consciousness changing. This two part essay addresses aspects of consciousness change. However, individual liberation is not the point. That bears too much resemblance to the traditional pietism that has contributed to our situation. The practices I recommend here must be part of soulcentric communities. Do we have communities we can point to? Yes and no. Obviously there are not too many communities doing this well or the world wouldn’t be in such a terrible environmental crisis. On the other hand there are many communities that are doing more things better than other communities. Some of those communities are Christian and some are not.

      My concern is always that the enormity of our challenges not paralyze us into passive submission, erratic acting out, or mere pietism. For those of us who feel that the tradition alone will not sustain us there must be alternative directions for us to move. This is one of those directions. It is certainly not a panacea.

      These essays have little to offer to those who are content with the resources the classic Christian tradition already offers.

      • http://cimarronline.blogspot.com/2004/05/paul-munn.html paul munn

        Okay, talking about communities works for me. If people experience liberation in communities then great, I’m impressed; what I’m interested in is seeing real evidence of this liberation in people’s lives.

        So what communities would you like to point to?

        It just seems fair to ask that, so people have a sense of where they may be heading if they follow your suggestions here. Like Jesus showed what following his teaching looked like, what kind of liberation he was offering, and said “follow me.”

        I guess I agree with you that the traditional Christian disciplines are an “insufficient foundation for Christian discipleship in the twenty-first century.” But only because any practices or disciplines are going to be insufficient. I even think any spiritual disciplines can be counter-productive, if they’re seen as something we can do for ourselves, to liberate ourselves (as individuals or communities). Are your suggestions any better in this regard? It seems to me that Jesus didn’t emphasize spiritual disciplines as means to the liberation he offered.

        • rdhudgens

          Why would “where people may be heading” direct us to specific already existing communities? Did any of the church reform movements start out pointing people to already existing communities? I can’t think of one. If there is an arc to this movement of the spirit we are at the beginning of the arc – before the beginning of the formation of new communities that might begin to live this out. There is no argument that can make this attractive to someone who doesn’t already feel the call of the spirit inside them.

          • http://cimarronline.blogspot.com/2004/05/paul-munn.html paul munn

            Every church reform movement started similarly to the “reform” that Jesus led. With an example. Not a theory, but a person (or persons, then more people, and so on) who demonstrated the truth of the message, the reality of the liberation being offered. People practicing what they preached and other people seeing that it was real and good.

            Is that too much to ask for? A couple real examples? I don’t understand why this is so hard, why I keep getting excuses (from you and others) instead of embodiments of the practices and liberation you’re preaching.

          • rdhudgens

            I would love to have heard Francis, Ignatius, Martin Luther (Paul Munn?) respond to this during the first few weeks of their experiments. A few years later? No problem. But early on it would have been pretty difficult if not impossible. Those are the questions that the established church would have asked them though. Fortunately that didn’t stop them from following the leading of the Spirit in their lives.

          • http://cimarronline.blogspot.com/2004/05/paul-munn.html paul munn

            Great examples. So what do you see them doing? Were they preaching their revolutionary ideas to others before they tried them and experienced real liberation? Other people followed their example, because they saw actual human lives that embodied the message, and people admired that example, saw that it was good and possible, and wanted the same for themselves (and their communities). They saw Francis abandon his wealth and influence, saw Ignatius renounce the power of violence for the sake of a greater power, saw Luther risk his life standing up to the oppressive religious power structure. And they saw all these things in Jesus’ life, too. They saw evidence of real liberation.

            Putting an idea into practice is a test of its truth: does it lead to liberation, or more disillusionment? The prophets and leaders you mention (and many others) didn’t ask others to believe them if they didn’t believe it themselves enough to put it into practice and test it, sometimes at the risk of their lives. They didn’t tell people “this is the way forward” until they had some solid evidence, evidence they got through living it. Then they had something to preach that was worth listening to.

            I keep hearing bold (and loudly critical) ideas from primitivist and anti-civ folks, but when it comes to putting it into practice and evidence gained from experience, I just hear excuses about why this isn’t possible. Why not try this stuff first and see how it turns out in real life, then tell us what’s true and possible, and what’s not? I have a feeling the message would look quite different after actually attempting to live by it.

          • rdhudgens

            Paul, I don’t know who you talk to or with. I always feel that I’m being included with a group that I’m not certain I belong to. I speak for myself and whomever resonates with what I write. It’s clear to me that you are not part of that circle. It is not clear to me that the circle you are disturbed with is the same circle that resonates with my own leading.

            God is bigger than all of us and the basileos of God is bigger than any of us can imagine or live into. Therefore we follow the Spirit as we discern the Spirit and bless others who do the same. Bless you.

          • http://cimarronline.blogspot.com/2004/05/paul-munn.html paul munn

            I’ve been speaking to your article and comments here, Ric. Didn’t mean to put you in any circle that you don’t want to be in. If I briefly drew a parallel with others, it’s because you use similar language and seem to be doing the same thing they are, which is making claims without the experience to back up those claims. Bold words and theories without the action and results to back it up (by which others could discern the Spirit’s presence and power). At least that’s how it appears.

            If I’m wrong about that, I’m willing to be corrected. I keep asking, but just get more excuses and evasiveness.

            Why?

          • rdhudgens

            I’m baffled that the word “experiment” was overlooked in your reading of my article. If those who founded Reba Place (for example) had listened to you they would have stayed in Goshen (or Zurich or Jerusalem or Nazareth or Ur of the Chaldees) until someone else could demonstrate that what they were feeling led into had already been done before.

            I’m glad they didn’t.

          • http://cimarronline.blogspot.com/2004/05/paul-munn.html paul munn

            You know enough of my life to know I don’t avoid risk-taking or discourage launching out in faith. I’ve conducted many faith experiments, and often encourage others to do so. But scientists don’t tend to publish until after their experiments, so they can tell others what they have learned by the experience.

            I’m not against you experimenting. Please do, if you feel led. Then write an article about what you have learned through the experience, so that others can benefit. As I said, I think your message would be considerably different after actually living your experiments for a while and seeing what kind of liberation you can find through them. But whatever the outcome, I’ll respect you for actually experimenting with your own life and preaching from your own experience.

            As for Reba Place, I’m sure you’re aware of the damage that was done to many lives through untried theories that the group bought into, which later (by sad, wrenching experience) proved to be quite wrong.

          • rdhudgens

            You advise me to “write an article about what you have learned through the experience, so that others can benefit” which is exactly what I asked for in the last part of my essay when I wrote “What I am arguing is that we need Christian communities experimenting with new spiritual practices in a synergistic manner for extended periods of time and reporting out what they are discovering.” In light of that I am declaring of us in agreement – at last.

          • http://cimarronline.blogspot.com/2004/05/paul-munn.html paul munn

            No complaints with that. As I said, I’m challenging your preaching of these particular spiritual practices and experiments, apparently without trying them yourself for extended periods of time. You suggest they will be more helpful than other traditional Christian practices in finding liberation in our society, yet seem to have little or no experience to back up that claim.

            Jesus taught us to lead by being witnesses. Which is, sharing with others the truth that we ourselves have experienced.

          • rdhudgens

            Actually I am trying (and my wife too) all of them (and many others) with guidance from those who are very experienced in this. I’m sorry that my writing displease you so. I can’t think of anything that I’ve written on JRad these past two years that has ever gotten an affirmative word from you. I wish we could just agree to disagree and leave it at that rather than have you persistently dissent from every single thing I post on here. My last word to you: Peace.

          • http://cimarronline.blogspot.com/2004/05/paul-munn.html paul munn

            Sorry, no personal offense intended, Ric. Just a public rebuttal to your public preaching here. I don’t feel offended that you’ve argued against my preaching too. It’s just a way of testing what is put forward, and gives the author a chance to defend and further elaborate on what is presented.

            I don’t think you’re a bad guy or a bad writer (quite good, really). I just think your attempts to legitimize and apply anti-civ theories are misguided. Maybe your experience will prove me wrong. I’m open to hearing about it when you’re willing to share.

  • Chris Grataski

    Ric,
    Thanks for the work you’re doing. I affirm it and am interested in hearing more of what you’ve been learning. One of the questions I’ve personally been chewing on with regard to all this is: How can we exercise an appropriate measure of self-interrogation with regard to learning from or apprenticing ourselves to more ancient and pre-civilizaitional lifeways? I get that we’re all indigenous to somewhere and also that we can “become native to this place,” as Wes Jackson has said, but I’m also pretty hesitant with that language, given that some folks have a much more appropriate claim to those terms that I do not. In other words, what practices must we engage in to prevent cultural theft, what must we do to stiff-arm the violence of making the native person the subject of our spectatorial and consumerist gaze? Where is the line between “learning from” traditional cultures and commoditizing the practices of traditional cultures for the sake of appeasing the endless proliferation of our market/civilization produced appetites for the exotic?

    None of these questions are rhetorical. I am a permaculturist and herbalist, so I’m engaging and learning from traditional cultures all the time. But as one who’s actively engaged in anti-racist work, and who’s interested in putting aside any colonialist tendencies, I often find myself puzzled on this.

    Also, if anyone can locate within my questions themselves some screaming blindspot, please feel free to speak up.

    • rdhudgens

      Hey
      Chris,

      Thx
      for these questions. They deserve answers that I don’t feel equipped
      to give; nevertheless . . .

      One
      of the first red flags that went up for me in regard to the work of
      Plotkin was about misappropriation. My superficial impression was
      that it was all too “new agey” and by that I mean not just
      loopy, colonialist, and symptomatic of the
      civilizational system that I’m wanting to resist – but that it was
      irresponsibly mimicking “ancient and indigenous lifeways” that
      deserved recognition and respect. As I got further into Plotkin’s
      work and then met him and the other Animas guides it was clear that
      this was one of their major concerns as well.

      For
      example in Soulcraft Plotkin writes: “I
      have been neither trained nor authorized to offer a Native American
      version of the vision quest. Nor is that my desire. My goal has been
      to create a ritual structure that works best for contemporary
      Westerners. Given that soul encounter is about authenticity if it is
      about anything, it is best not to imitate another people or era on
      the path to soul. It is also disrespectful, I believe, to employ
      without permission the ceremonial forms of another culture –
      disrespectful of both the other culture and oneself.”
      (Soulcraft, page 337, chaper 10, footnote 1).

      Now
      whether Plotkin is succeeding in this would require some criteria by
      which to evaluate him. Plotkin himself has indicated some of those
      self-chosen criteria in this quoted passage: (1) self-awareness that
      appropriation is a question to be asked; (2) being clear about what
      you are trying to do and not do; (3) clear distinctions about what
      you are doing when it resembles some indigenous tradition or
      practice; (4) being respectful and open to being called out where
      your blind spots inevitably cause you to err.

      A
      few years ago at the Unhewn Stone conference in Philadelphia (2009?),
      Jennifer LeBlanc gave a powerful presentation on just this issue. I
      know for certain there are others on JRad who can address this much
      better than I and I encourage them to do so.

      What
      I think Plotkin and others such as Gary Snyder, Dolores LaChapelle,
      David Abram, Joanna Macy, Calvin Luther Martin, Chellis Glendenning,
      and others recognize is that the templates for “ancient and indigenous lifeways” are still latent within
      our own subconscious. Therefore even though “we” are all
      alienated from “our” aboriginal tribes perhaps we are not cut off from
      access to our aboriginal instincts. Perhaps reconnecting with those instincts is part of “salvation”.

      In pursuing practices
      like fasting, dreamwork, or ceremonial dancing we are not mimicking
      ancient ways. We are suspecting that our
      ancestors had figured out something that was significant and crucial
      to our flourishing on this planet. Therefore in this day and age
      equipped with what we know (and don’t know) we are trying to step out
      of centuries of malformation and build a new world in the shell of
      the old. If we believe (as I do) that the Hebrew people were closer
      to the indigenous mind than the modern mind, and if we believe (as I
      do ) that Jesus himself was closer to an indigenous sensibility than
      a modern one, then we have a challenge before us to figure out how to be Christian. By apprenticing ourselves to “ancient and indigenous lifeways” as learners/disciples we are in a sense recapitulating what our European ancestors (for those of us who had them) should have been doing when they landed on the shores of Turtle Island five hundred years ago. And ironically we are also trying to come closer to a better understanding of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, whom the Apostle Paul called The Aboriginal Man (1 Cor 15:47 roughly translated)

    • John T.

      I would like to have a go at addressing Chris’s questions regarding mimicking or expropriating indigenous culture. I don’t claim to have complete answers but I certainly affirm Chris’s questions as being central to this whole issue.

      1/ It is important to be able to distinguish between form and content, between style and substance.

      When John the Baptist, a priest by bloodline in accordance with the Levite laws of Moses, baptized people in the sacred and wild River Jordan he was facilitating a very deep spiritual process that has its context and meaning in the whole of Hebrew tribal law, especially in relation to place (the river). However Christendom has replicated the form of this ceremony – getting wet by sprinkling drops from a bowl or submersion in a stage-bath – and imbued a very different meaning to the wild and place-specific rituals of John the Baptist. Similarly, Jesus instructed the disciples to continue the passover festival – the celebration of liberation from Egypt and return to the sacred tribal lands, yet Christendom has replicated a part of the form of the ceremony, eating and drinking together (and even that is symbolically tokenised by most churches), and refashioned the ceremony to a very different meaning.

      So while water is common to biblical and christendom baptisms and bread and wine are common to biblical and christendom eucharists, the meanings are very different.

      I hope you can see where I am going with this – the replication or mimicking of indigenous ceremony by non-indigenous people is an affirmation of non-indigenous world view and culture, just as the church has done to the Hebrew Jesus tradition, and not an embrace with integrity of the essence and substance of the indigenous ceremonies.

      When Australian Aboriginal boys are initiated – when they go through the traditional rite of passage to manhood, they are removed from the community and from the women. They spend several months with old men and law givers, usually traveling along a dreaming pathway (“walkabout”). Along the pathway are various ceremonies at specified places and at the end there is a ceremony with the whole community including women where the event of initiation occurs.

      The purpose of the ceremonies along the journey and the big one at the end are to embed, reinforce and remind the initiates of the things they were taught along the way by the old men and lawgivers – the secret initiated men’s business. The ceremonies of themselves are meaningless – the women and young boys who participate in the final community ceremony do not know the things that the initiates were taught.

      Ceremony is the tip of the iceberg, it is that small portion that is visible but represents the bulk of the reality that is invisible. The essence or purpose or meaning of the ceremony is to teach the broader reality.

      So, if we have not been taught the depth of indigenous culture then any attempt to replicate its ceremonies is just play-acting in ignorance.

      2/ I strongly disagree with those who say migrants can become indigenous in their new land – this is just wishful thinking and does not make sense within the indigenous framework of ancient bloodlines to territory or descendant covenants with God. However when a migrant has children with an indigenous person, their descendants are certainly indigenous – and there are many examples in the bible of such a process, e.g. Ruth the Moabite, a landless slave, married Boaz and became King David’s great grandmother. This is the process of a family’s assimilation into indigenaity, not any decisions or rituals. I heard an interview once with an old Maori woman who was asked what was her strategy for reclaiming New Zealand as sovereign Maori land. She replied that she wanted all the Maoris to marry Pakiha (white folk) so that their children will be Maori. Eventually everyone will be Maori and there will be no more Pakiha.

      Migrant/colonial world views simple cannot connect to the ancientness of country because we are recent arrivals. If we are to construct ceremonies about land then it is itself a colonial imposition – a re-writing of the ancient reality. If we desire to have ceremonial or other kinds of connection to land then we should seek out and join the existing indigenous ceremonies and law rather than making up our own. This of course is not simple and there is no universal template to do it, but I suggest making a connection with real indigenous people has much more integrity than trying to copy them without a connection. We must learn about the ancient land, the ancient people and the ancient ceremonies – there are no short cuts through mimicry. We cannot build any ceremony beyond our own consciousness.

      3/ Engagement with indigenous people and reality does not give us the depth of knowledge that indigenous people hold in their culture. However what engagement does give is knowledge that there is another type of human, another way of being human. We can see and be inspired by a bigger more holistic consciousness. For me, this has not meant mimicking indigenous culture but rather using it as a standard to measure my own life and consciousness. I see people with a connection to land – I become aware of my own alienation to land. I see people living lives of sharing – I become aware of my own individualstic posessiveness. I see tribal extended families and become aware of my own alienated nuclear family heritage. etc. Just because I do not have what indigenous people have does not mean that I can get it, just that I have knowledge of my own lack. The starting point of a new consciousness is acknowledgement of the brokenness of my own culture, not an embrace of somebody else’s.

      4/ Making new ceremony (trying to make sense of points 1, 2 and 3)

      a/ I would suggest that instead of trying to adopt or adapt or mimic archetypical (stereotypical) tribal peasant culture such as seasonal festivals that do not reflect our own lifestyles or consciousness, we should ritualise and celebrate those aspects of our own community life together that we are proud and confident of. For example, instead of having a harvest festival, we might have food co-op or dumpster diving ceremonies. Instead of winter or summer solstice festivals we have festivals to celebrate the beginning of the school or academic year – or maybe the annual JR conference, instead of having drumming ceremonies we have hip hop festivals, etc. These new festivals should be the visible tip of the iceberg that represents the underlying life of our communities – and an opportunity to embed, reinforce and remind (teach) participants the basic ideas of our life together. Let us learn of the essences of tribal and biblical life and interpret these essences to our own life and circumstance – rather than mimicking the exotic other.

      It is not a matter of “what” but of “how”. If we replicate indigenous ceremony in the same fashion that the church has replicated Hebrew ceremony, then we are being just as colonial as the church. However if we re-interpret our own life and circumstance from a different paradigm than the church, state and mainstream consciousness – and begin to manifest our own lives outside of that paradigm by organic ritual and ceremony with an underlying platform of teaching, then we are being more like indigenous people than any new age impersonators.

      However, if we desire to incorporate the land into our ceremonies then we cannot do this of ourselves, we have to join the pre-existing ancient people and tradition of land (one way or the other). We cannot separate the land from the people of the land. A land ceremony without indigenous people is a colonial ceremony.

      My comments are from the perspective of an Anglo/Irish person in Australia – where the indigenous people are not me. However the following link is Alistair McIntosh’s website that gives a deep and broad Scottish indigenous perspective well worth considering, especially for people still in their traditional homeland as well as for those of us in the antipodes wondering about our own heritage, check it out -

      http://www.alastairmcintosh.com/

      • John T.

        Another relevant link -

        “What is (or is not) dreaming”

        http://unlearningtheproblem.wordpress.com/2008/12/29/what-is-dreaming/

        You will notice that this does not fit in with Zerzan’s ideas on art.

        • John T.

          Anti-civ and tribal ceremony -

          I would just like to point out that Zerzan considers art and tribal ceremony to be alienations. “The Case Against Art” http://www.primitivism.com/case-art.htm

          I think this is a key area where Zerzan is wrong and perhaps one day I will write a proper critique of his critique but for now, I say, the development of collective consciousness is a liberating consciousness and some art (but definitely not all or any art) are mechanisms to catalyze liberating consciousness – including basic wholistic senses and perception such as Zerzan speaks of as a characteristics of pre-tribal, pre-art society. The extra-ordinary abilities to see smell hear and feel than some people in today’s tribal indigenous society have are a result of teaching and culture (such as I mentioned about teachings in boys/men walkabout process), they are not just a lingering biological remnant from pre-tribal times.

          I think “band society” is an ideological construct and has never existed, it does not even describe the tribal or clan nature of non-human animal society. The closest thing to a “band society” is when clan/tribal society is extinguished (through colonization and war) and unstructured bands form in the void. If the society is free of war, this social structure only exists for a generation or two until the natural tribal structure re-emerges. In the non-human animal world, band society is the nature of domesticated herds. The most complex non-human animal societies – such as ants and bees (read Kropotkin’s zoology) are anything but “band” societies.

          Zerzan sees the social functions of collectivity (and collective consciousness) such as art and culture, especially mythology, as centrally connected (as a chicken to an egg) with social hierarchy, domination and alienation. But to the extent that Zerzan promotes detachment from the collective, he promotes existential human alienation. Collectivity (love) is the nature of the organism, not a symptom of its disease.

          Some (not all) art and ceremony is the manifestation of love.

          • rdhudgens

            Uh oh, here come the Zerzanites . . .

            : )

          • lewi andis

            Uh oh, here come the neo-tribalists. . . .

          • rdhudgens

            What I meant was that I thought someone who knows something about Zerzan might want to engage with John T about this.

          • travis

            From listening to the radio show, he enjoys steely dan and leonard cohen and is very positive to his friends who go to greece for a month to paint. He has that pro-abstract-expressionism essay. I don’t remember the points of it. When I read it I thought about harsh noise the whole time.

          • benjamin

            Steely dan is really what’s being neglected in this conversation, get back jack, do it again…

          • http://www.facebook.com/people/Mark-Van-Steenwyk/510258769 Mark Van Steenwyk

            Can you explain what you mean by “neo-tribalist”? I’m not trying to be cute here…I get that you’re probably using it as a slam, but it would honestly help me if you could articulate what you mean by “neo-tribalist” and how that differs from your perspective.

          • SLAM JAM

            Tribes is different from bands, tribes= higher level of social complexity, less egalitarian.
            band society = nomadic hunter gatherers. John T. believes in Tribal society, not egalitarian band society. I’m an anarchist, I believe there is an egalitarian basis to social structure. John is a neotribalist, he believes hierarchy is inherent to human social structures and not that bad.
            boy oh boy…..

          • John T.

            There is nothing “neo” in tribalism.

            There is hierarchy inherent in humanness, the most obvious and profound hierarchy is age. The human species is unique in that our babies are born much more immature and unformed than any other species – some of which have full maturity and competency at the time of birth, yet humans take a decade or more before the baby can live independently.

            Another human attribute, though not unique to us, is that we love our children – probably a biological safeguard to deal with the long slow infancy. We put children at the centre of our priorities (unless the state or economy prevents us from doing so).

            The relationship between adult and child is the most profound human hierarchy where adults have absolute control over dependent children.

            The consequence of the biological nature of human infancy is a collective social structure and specialisation – some people look after children and others do the rest of the work.

            The second most profound human hierarchy, and shared by many non-human animals, is knowledge and memory – skills and experience. Those who have skills and knowledge are not politically or economically equal with those that do not.

            That which makes parenting and education oppressive is not the inherent nature of human hierarchy or intra-family relationships, it is the structure of the nuclear family, the institutionalised education system and the mode of production.

            There is a basic flaw in most anti-civ anthropology that it shares with modernist colonial anthropology such as social Darwinism and Eugenics – that is it sees human evolution occurring as an unfolding of stages based on pre-existing elements of the previous epoch. e.g. starting with hunter gatherers who developed their own inherent hierarchies that lead to centralised agriculture which itself lead to more complex social and economic life which itself evolved to industrial and urban civilisation. Anti-civ attributes a different value paradigm to these things but the theory is the same Euro-centric colonial social Darwinism.

            That which forces hunter gatherers into agricultural peasantry and peasants into urban workers has always been war, occupation and colonisation by forces outside the hunter gatherer/peasant society. It is war and colonisation that has determined social evolution, nothing inherent in tribal or allegedly pre-tribal society.

            “Band” and “tribe” are labels that white civilized anthropologists use to describe exotic other societies, the words themselves and the academic traditions behind them inform the meaning of the anthropologist’s perspective, not the world view of the tribes and bands themselves. The anthropologist has a firm and definite idea of what a band or tribe is and goes looking for these archetypes amongst their objects of study.

            I prefer to use the term “extended family” which is a social formation that arises naturally through the process of procreation. The extended family is the natural form of social life and as such is the most appropriate location of political and economic power. This is the radical alternative to the bureacratic/militaristic state.

            And finally, lets get real right here right now….. If anarchism is a standard by which citizens of civilisation, even the rebels, judge and condemn the cultural heritage and social form of tribal indigenous people then it is no less a colonial ideology than the christianity of the missionaries who condemned tribal culture because it deviated from the colonial value norms. The ideological rejection of mens and women’s social roles, the authority of elders and the possessory claim to land represent a racist dismissal of the perspective of indigenous people – a similar racism has been most clearly highlighted in the global women’s movement in the conflicts between western feminism that sees family structure as the chain of oppression from which women must be liberated, whereas women of the third and fourth worlds, especially indigenous women identify traditional family structure including the role of women as the liberation from colonisation and the cultural genocide of the empire.

          • andihfu

            Colonial ideology is inherent in the medium John… we’re on the fucking internet!!! If we get real, I acknowledge that you support indigenous rights and I respect you for that… that this is an argument about rights vs liberation…

          • John T.

            No, I don’t really support indigenous rights, I find the notion of rights too problematic.

            What is a right? Is it something the government gives us, or perhaps some license that God gives us? Some assumed social contract? The notion of rights including human rights is inherently tied up with the notion of democratic citizenship that is itself a paradigm of empire and foreign to tribal consciousness. There seems to be more emphasis on obligation rather than rights in indigenous tribal laws, e.g. obligation to land rather than rights to exploit it, obligation to family rather than right to exploit it. This transition of consciousness from collective obligations to individual rights is a far more serious devolution of egalitarian society than any family hierarchy. The psychological shift pollutes and corrupts the inherent hierarchy, it is not born of it.

            To return briefly to the topic, this is the importance of sacred ceremony – it is the socializing rituals and associated teaching processes to maintain a collective consciousness of sharing and obligation and eliminate the egoic consciousness of rights and possession. Zerzan claims the motivation for culture and solidarity was emergence of social alienation and hierarchy, but the need for solidarity and collectively came a long time before that – no species survives without directly engaging in collective processes (again I refer to Kropotkin and bees and ants and survival of the most cooperative as the golden rule of evolution). Culture and solidarity is a mechanism for survival in the wild world, not a stepping stone to domestication. Humans simply cannot raise children without a collective solidarity. Every single human ever born was born into an inherent adult/child hierarchy at the centre of social hegemony, without it the children die.

            The transition from the consciousness of obligation to egoic rights comes as a direct result of alienation from place – where security no longer comes from a stability of land and family but now from “rights” negotiated with others such as landlords, employers, traders, the king, etc.

            What is liberation? Who defines it, the oppressor or the oppressed? Is it some legal, historical or ideological standard that we can say liberation is achieved, a time when some agreement is honoured at a certain point and up until that point oppression exists?

            Liberation is that point when an individual or a collective asserts sovereignty over their own life and land, not when they conform to any ideological template.

            I do not really support indigenous rights, they seem to be just crumbs that colonial society throws to them, but I do support indigenous perspective and world view. I believe that world view is a path to liberation – it is the key to self managed human society without a state. It just happens to be the world view of the bible too which is a convenient coincidence.

          • differentstrokes

            you’re right about rights,… Maybe this isn’t an argument at all.. Maybe this is about being an and-archist. as in affirming third ways and multiple contexts, identities, experiences etc.. rather than constructing divisive binaries such as bands vs tribes and rights vs liberation.. And-archy seeks to affirm rather than to cast violent aspersions. In the end the love we make is equal to the love we take and a rolling stone gathers no moss unless the stone is Chris Haw and the moss is him welcoming cops to his neighborhood as “valuable community members.” ps what do you think about Wendell Berry

          • John T.

            Are all these people you Andy? If so, Hi.

            I have no motivation to read Berry and most of what I know about him comes from conversations with people about him and commentary about him, so I admit my critique of him may be very shallow as well as very broad.

            Berry has achieved infant consciousness – he has noticed his environment but has not a very deep understanding of it. He is like peace activists (in fact he is one) who embrace platitudes like “peace” “ non-violence” and “justice” and preach that the world would be a better place if we were all just a little bit more nice and co-operative, yet has no systemic analysis of war and even less strategic direction to stop it, except to perpetually whinge about it from atop the self proclaimed moral highground. In terms of ecology, he relies on concepts such as sustainability, organic, communal, etc in his analysis and prescriptions but, like the anti-war platitudes, these are just very basic simplistic notions padded out by academic verbage and religious poetry and do not come near the magnitude of either indigenous connection to land or the sort of land management revolution that is necessary to even take organic sustainability seriously.

            Berry, a migrant agriculturalist, is an arrogant colonist to the extent that he claims a native connection to the land. He gleans some native platitudes to embellish his own world view but he has relegated Indian sovereignty to a thing of the past, a manifestation of cemeteries and museums, an inspiration to the emergence of the new nativity fashioned in the mold of organic agriculture, not the ancient dreaming stories and pathways or the ancestors that made them, as native American (or Australian Aboriginal) people understand their native-ness.

            If we migrant folk, people who are not indigenous to the land we live on, are to take the challenges of history seriously we must make a very basic decision about whether we are citizens of empire or human beings on land. If we reject the imperial option and recognize our basic nakedness as humans in our environment then we are faced with another choice – do we assimilate into the pre-existing patterns and rhythms of the land (indigenous culture and knowledge) or do we create our own new utopian vision over the top of indigenous land and culture – as the Mennonites and others did in South America. Berry, the Mennonites, even the Pilgrim Fathers (although I don’t know much about American history) all share a common basis – they lived their lives according to an imposed and imported framework of the land and not in harmony with the land or those people already living in harmony with it. Berry’s ideology is by definition a colonial imposition onto the land he occupies.

            A parable (or an artificial symbol as Zerzan might describe it) -

            If we want to re-grow a forest on land degraded by cows and corn and things, we do not just plant any tree in any place, we do not just fill the void with trees. The first thing we must do is locate and identify any remnant of the old forest still surviving, then we select plant species to plant around the old remnant, protecting its own integrity and expanding the re-growth area out from there. Apart from getting seed-stock from the old remnant for further expanding regrowth, the ecologies of that system such as animals, cross pollination systems, algae and fungi and bacteria and things also expand out. As the re-planted areas expand out from the old systems they become one with it, it is not just the trees that are planted but the whole network of systems, especially water retention, expands with it. That, so I am told by experts, is how you re-grow a forest. (end of parable).

            As analogy to the parable (symbol upon symbol upon symbol?) – Berry’s social, economic, political and most importantly spiritual vision is simply a recognition of the need for trees and an agenda of planting any trees anywhere. Inherent in the forest is human society, the human at one stage before colonisation was a species in the forest that determined the nature of the forest as much as any other species. To re-grow the forest properly we must re-grow it with the human anthropology as a part of it, in the case of the U.S., the forest must be regrown with native American culture alive and intact in it. Berry on the other hand plants his crops on the graves of native human ancestors and then claims himself to be native.

            The challenge is to connect to and become one with the indigenous people, to reinforce the native reality by our presence on the land, not to try and independently replicate and expropriate symbols of nativity. We might even end up learning ancient songs, dances and wisdom through our connection to indigenous people, but such knowledge is excluded to us if we are trying to build nativity on our own terms, as Berry seems to.

          • http://www.facebook.com/people/Mark-Van-Steenwyk/510258769 Mark Van Steenwyk

            How do you become “one with the indigenous people” in an authentic way that isn’t itself a sort of dismissal of the very real challenges of “white privilege” and colonialism? This seems like an ideal that has very real practical challenges in its implementation. What sorts of practical steps have you taken to connect and become one with indigenous people(s)?

          • John T.

            Hello Mark,

            I will avoid giving detail of my connection to indigenous people in order to protect the privacy of those people. What I will say is that my perspective comes from grappling with the issues of direct engagement. But it all started in providing political support to particular Aboriginal struggles in Australia, and that is something that I suspect can be done easily in the US. You could start with joining the campaign to free Leonard Peltier and see where that leads you. Is there a local indigenous community organisation near you? That would be a good start. The first step of engagement is like anyone else – you have to meet the people.

            White privilege is a big issue and is one of the first things that a white person encounters when engaging with non-white people. All I can say is that using white privilege as an excuse not to engage with non-white people is cop out. There are obvious and very difficult issues to confront, not so much about personal power and things like mastery of the english language as these white things are handicaps in non-white society, they are the exotic peculiarity not the safe and familiar framework of white society. White cultural power only works in white society. But the real issue is wealth – access to personal resources. Jesus said for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven he must sell all he has and give it to the poor. Acts tells us that the disciples held a common purse – they were economically equal. I do not want to get too dogmatic about giving everything away but Jesus vision of economic redistribution and existential equality is the key to overcoming white privilege. Therefore, it seems to me, the obvious method of engagement for non Aboriginal people is to give financial and resource support to Aboriginal people who, in Jesus terms, are amongst the poorest of the poor – at least in Australia and America (the two countries have different slave histories and I do not want to understate the significance of Afro-American reality, just my thinking comes from Australia).

            For those who “own” land. By what authority do you “own” it? Whose name is on the title deed, Caesar or the indigenous tribal owners? This is a pretty basic thing, we pay land taxes and things to Caesar for the privilege of being on his land but ignore those with an ancient covenant to that land. You could pay the rent to traditional owners.

            How do you “become one with” anything? How do we become one as church, as a family, as a community? It is easy to become one with people who are already the same as us but the basics are the same when engaging with Aboriginal people – personal equality, respect, a common purpose and a program of common action – and relationships develop, this is what catalyses one-ness. It is certainly much more difficult to cultivate such oneness with exotic others but that I am afraid is the basic problem.

            If we are to assume a hypotehtical “one-ness”, then its frameworks would be indigenous not imperial, tribal/clan/family centred not democratic process centered, sharing centered not welfare/charity centred. All these things can be done by anybody. As I stated earlier, a migrant can never become indigenous (though their children could) but a migrant can live in harmony with, and help defend and expand indigenous culture, land and spirituality, they can be an agent of the land within indigenous tribal frameworks. (not speaking hypothetically, this does occur).

            All this is complicated and challenging and there is no one size fits all plan, but life is like that.

          • John T.

            The key concept I am getting at is direct “support” as a different paradigm to either mimicry or charity.

          • http://www.facebook.com/people/Mark-Van-Steenwyk/510258769 Mark Van Steenwyk

            Gotcha. I think I over-read your idea of being “one”. To me, the concern I would have is something I’ve seen from time to time, where folks forget or minimize their “whiteness” and privilege in their desire to become allies. I agree that we shouldn’t let our own privileges keep us from connecting , learning, and submitting to indigenous people and their struggle. For me, that begins with owning my own “privileges” as I enter in relationships honestly with folks who have experienced marginalization and oppression in this empire.

          • John T.

            Mark,

            What do you mean by “owning my own privileges”? Does this mean you accept responsibility for them or you just simply accept them as if they were an inevitable given?

            How do you have an honest relationship with the marginalized while owning your own privilege? I can’t see how that would work, it seems more to be the sort of moral justification a cop or social worker might have for their engagement with marginalized people.

            How do we own our male privilege? Do we just accept that we are powerful males and avoid engagement with women as equals or with women’s culture on its own terms (support)?

            I should let you answer those questions before commenting further but my concern is you appear to be using white guilt to reinforce white privilege and insulation from marginalized people – a recipe for the maintenance of the status quo.

            I try as hard as I can to minimise and even eliminate my whiteness. I claim some success in some areas and profound failure in others. I am not white, I am English and Irish, I proudly own that. “Whiteness” is the dysfunctional global (catholic) culture of capitalist imperialism – the culture that smashed my English and Irish indigenaity and I certainly do not want to own it, I resent the fact that it claims ownership of me. My goal is to repent of it. This is not easy but it is not impossible or illogical.

            Again to briefly return to the topic, consciousness is at the centre of all this – and the techniques and mechanism for the transition of consciousness – baptism by the holy spirit as the bible would say while others might speak more generally of shamanic healing.

            Can the consciousness of empire be transcended by citizens of empire? This is the key question. You seem to be suggesting that they cannot, that they must own their imperial status. The bible tells us that gentiles were baptized and a Roman centurion had more faith than anyone in Israel. I know of white-skinned Australian men and women who have been initiated (full walkabout teaching and ceremony) into Aboriginal land, law, song and dance. They did not become “as one” with the indigenous people through their own merit, they “became one” through sacred ceremony and the manifestation of indigenous law – where their white ego-child was killed and a new fully conscious man and women was born of the song and dance – the psychological transformation is a massive dimensional shift (as was baptism by the holy spirit in bible times). But even when these white skinned Australians become ceremonially one with the indigenous extended clan, their dreaming, ancestors and traditional lands remain where they always were – somewhere else.

            There is nothing inherent in whiteness that provides either the motivation or the value framework for honest engagement with marginalized people. Marginalization is a construction of whiteness, a necessary precondition to white privilege. A key aspect of whiteness is guilt, the ability to recognize the injustices, inequalities and cruelties and even our place in it, while maintaining a comfortably numb detachment from the pain and suffering of it all, to objectify and philosophize (and pray) about suffering to ease the inner torment.

            The solution to white culture, in particular the zombifying phenomenon of social guilt, is wholistic psychological healing. White culture has no mechanism to eliminate the central pillar of its own security, we must look outside of our cage to find the path to liberation (our own and the marginalised).

          • http://www.facebook.com/people/Mark-Van-Steenwyk/510258769 Mark Van Steenwyk

            Owning the responsibility requires a certain level of confession and a learning posture, it seems to me.

          • John T.

            I am not sure what you mean Mark. “A certain level of confession”???

            Confession is central to this process and it is not just “a certain level”, it is taking it seriously. Furthermore, confession is just the first step of repentance. Confession (at any level) without repentance is just self obsessed guilt.

            What is a “learning posture”?

          • http://www.markvans.info/ markvans

            I’ll be blunt: I’m finding you to be a bit dismissive and pedantic. Perhaps your misunderstanding of my statements is cultural, but for some reason you keep asssuming I’m looking for an easy out or am trying to get off the hook. You misunderstand me without, it seems to me, even really trying to ask anything about me or what I’m saying.

            I’m talking about an ongoing pentitential posture. A learning posture means that I don’t get to call the shots in my doing of justice. I don’t get to call myself an ally; I am called an ally when I learn how to be one and am trusted. I have no desire to wash my hands of the legacy of genocide in my country. I’m very interested in living more deeply into solidarity. But such things are easy for folks to talk about; I meet all sorts of self-described allies who feel like it is their own place to claim solidarity without earning the trust of those with whom they claim to be allied. My questions were trying to get at the practice of being an ally without doing it in a way that is easy and cheap.

          • John T.

            Well let me be blunt too, though I am sorry that my dismissal of colonial paradigms has upset yet another moderator.

            I have answered your questions about practical steps to connect with Aboriginal people and I am sorry you find it pedantic.

            I have asked you what you mean by “owning your own privilege” and “a learning posture” but you have not been able to explain what you mean yet you accuse me of not asking you about what you are saying. What is “ongoing penitential posture”? That sounds more obscure than “a learning posture” and sheds no light on what you might mean. You have not explained what “owning your own privilege” might mean if it involves taking responsibility for it.

            You will never be an ally if you cannot conceive of yourself being an ally. Of course you cannot appoint yourself an ally and the things you say about trust and acceptance are true (which is why I am not giving any details) – they are real factors not impossible ideals. But if the social barriers are so strong that you cannot even imagine crossing them then they will never ever be crossed – even if you wait for the second coming of Jesus to do it for you, too late by then.

            And at this stage of the conversation I do indeed consider that you seem to be looking for a cheap and easy way to be an ally, or more accurately you seem to be disturbed by what i have said and tried to offer up some kind of rational alternative to it with words like “owning privilege” and “penitential posture” but these are just meaningless words, things that are easy and cheap for folks to talk about – the very thing you are accusing me of doing.

            Where the heck in your bible does it say anything about owning your privilege? Get real!

          • http://www.facebook.com/people/Mark-Van-Steenwyk/510258769 Mark Van Steenwyk

            I don’t take issue with you wanting clarity. I take issue with your assumptions about me. I’m not sitting off on my own, unwilling to cross social barriers. That is your assumption about me based upon absolutely zero of anything I said. Stop making assumptions about me. To me, “pentitential posture” means never thinking I’m off the hook for the legacy of imperialism. And so, it means that I have constantly ask “how can I go deeper into relationships with folks who have experienced oppression? How can I link my life and actions with theirs without presuming I get to call the shots? How can I learn from those who have been oppressed so that I can participate in their actions and desires for liberation?

            “Owning my privilege” may seem vague. But it means (since you so politely asked) that I don’t get to some how wash my hands of the status I have in society by virtue of being a white Christian heterosexual male. I can’t automatically put myself in teh category of “oppressed” as though I were just joining a new team. I have to work at doing justice and take nothing for granted.

            If that sounds like “meaningless words” to you, then I don’t know what you consider meaningful.

            And, for the record. I accused you of nothing. I only stated (if you go back and read what I actually wrote) how often such things are often talked about by others. I was very careful to accuse you of nothing because I don’t know you or assume anything about you. Except, perhaps, that you seem interested in making me into some sort of posture child for colonial thinking.

          • http://www.markvans.info/ markvans

            I’m sorry for getting “snarky” in my last post. I’m tired and cranky. But, here’s the thing: this isn’t just academic for me. I’m trying to get more involved on the ground, but certainly have a ways to go. So my questions were initially in earnest. Yet it seems to me as though you’ve jumped to conclusions about my supposed desire to self-justify. Which is not at all the case. I’m deeply interested in practical solidarity and have taken some steps in that direction with hopes of going deeper as trust is built with Dakota and Anishinabe groups in my area.

          • John T.

            Hello Mark, I associated your comments with Andy AB’s abuse including his accusing me of being dismissive just as you did, and Paul’s suggestion that I should answer your question to respond to Andy AB ’s abuse. I felt under siege and I perceived your comment in light of those other people’s comments and I should not have.

            You have however raised many concerns in response to my posts – denying whiteness and privilege, self appointed allies, calling the shots in doing justice, claiming solidarity without earning trust, cheap and easy ways, join oppressed as joining a team and being just academic. While it is true that you have not directly accused me of anything I question why you chose to raise all these concerns in response to my posts if you were not referring to what I had said? I may be a bit paranoid after the other moderator’s attack but that is how I have interpreted your comments.

            I am not singling you out as a poster child, your notions of penitential posturing seems a very familiar meme in the institutional church’s response to disadvantage.

          • http://www.markvans.info/ markvans

            I can see how you felt ganged up on. I should have been more careful. Because my intent was not to add to the pile-up. And, to clarify, my reason for raising those concerns was to get your thoughts on how to address them. I was looking for your insights, not trying to challenge you. My goals was to think through the issues better. And then I got a bit defensive because I felt dismissed and stereotyped.

            I get that what I may be saying sounds like a “familiar meme.” But I’m not sure I’m advocating that meme. I’m still, to be honest, not exactly sure what our actual disagreement is.

            So, if it is at all possible to start over. My questions really come down to how we can discern the balance between the sort of guilty disengagement on the one hand, and an overly-eager engagement on the other that often fails to recognize the baggage we may be bringing into our attempts at solidarity. Does that make sense? If you find that way of framing it unhelpful, perhaps you could offer another?

            Alot of my own questions along these lines began when I interviewed a Dakota scholar named Waziyatawin on the Iconocast. http://www.jesusradicals.com/the-iconocast-episode-3/

            Since then, I’ve made some helpful first steps–learning more of the stories of the Dakota and Anishinabe in Minnesota, participating in some actions, attending workshops, and doing a CPT delegation to an Anishinabe community north from where I live that is losing some of their freedoms due to logging, and am hoping to continue to go deeper into solidarity. I say that not because I think these things are adequate. Rather, I want to show that I’m honestly trying to grow and have already made at least some preliminary efforts.

            I hope that clarifies things a bit. And if you want to challenge me, I’m open to that…but I hope you can challenge what I’m saying rather than what someone else said.

          • andarchy

            hi john, yeah you hit the nail on the head in regards to Wendell Berry.. He’s basically the standard for peace and justice/ eco-minded Christians over here. Even biblical scholars like Ted Hiebert use Wendell Berry as their basis for an agrarian theology.
            I disagree with you about the emphasis on ritual, myth the symbolic etc.. I think you’re line of reasoning basically follows Joseph Campbell in emphasizing culture as the prime mover. I would say culture is secondary to an individuals sensory experience, this I think is what culture, including ritual, myth etc.. is essentially pointing to. The critique of the symbolic realm isn’t necessarily a condemnation, but a way of seeing the layers… andarchy is similar, it’s not about binaries, its about saying ritual is mediating and it is revitalizing.. since I became an andarchist I always look on the bright side… or I mean I look on the bright side and the dark side…

          • andarchist

            as an andarchist I accept your criticisms and affirm you Andy.

          • John T.

            Andy AB,

            I challenge you to identify where my life does not live up to my own standard. If you cannot then I seek an apology just as public as your unsubstantiated abuse. I don’t know what annoys me most, the personal attack or the lack of substance to it.

            I do call colonial society hypocritical and I am sorry that it has distrubed you so, however Jesus did too so I figure it is OK.

          • http://cimarronline.blogspot.com/2004/05/paul-munn.html paul munn

            Or you could just answer Mark’s previous question, “What sorts of practical steps have you taken to connect and become one with indigenous people(s)?” That would answer Andy as well and could be helpful to others.

            If you want to protect the privacy of people it seems you could easily leave out identifying details while offering a bit more than “my perspective comes from grappling with the issues of direct engagement.” Instead of telling others what to do, why not just share what practical actions you have found helpful and inspiring in our own experience?

            For example, have you tried “pay the rent to traditional owners”? Most of us probably don’t see how that is possible, so how have you seen it work? You speak of wealth as “the real issue” (and I think I agree), common purse, economic redistribution–so what have you tried, and has that been a good experience for you and others? And what does being “sharing centered” (vs. charity centered) look like, in your life, for example? Or the tribal, or “extended family,” model you recommend? That’s not seen often in our modern society, so could you share to what extent you’ve been able to experience it, that others might see what’s possible?

            These are some of the same questions I’ve been asking primitivists/anti-civ folks from the beginning, and I’m not hearing any answers. Many of the recommendations just don’t seem possible, and people (including you) aren’t sharing their own practical experience, even when asked. Or some readily admit that their recommendations aren’t currently possible. So Andy’s assumption comes naturally: “your own lives don’t live up to your own standards.” If you don’t want people to make this assumption, you need to share a little about your own life.

            And as I said to Ric, the sharing of personal experience and real, lived example will back up your advice and claims. Then we’ll have a reason to believe that you know what you’re talking about.

          • justice

            John, just say you make pizza and watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer… that’s the only thing that will satisfy Paul’s inquisition.

          • http://cimarronline.blogspot.com/2004/05/paul-munn.html paul munn

            :)

          • John T.

            Paul,

            If you read between the lines of some of my anecdotes you may find glimpses of my own story along the way. But I would have to get to know you before giving any details.

            I did mention that my journey began with providing support to indigenous political causes and I suggested supporting Leonard Peltier in the US would be a good first step. Is this too vague an idea for you?.

            Pay the rent – first you identify the traditional owners of the land you live on – the surviving relatives of those who were massacred or infected with smallpox or exiled to reserves in order for the land to be colonised. Then you withdraw money from your bank account. Then you give it to the aforementioned person/people. I wouldn’t think this is any more complicated than paying rent to a landlord that people seem to be able to figure out how to do. The hard part is honestly acknowledging the land theft, not working out the logistics..

            Here is an Australian example of paying the rent – http://treatyrepublic.net/content/nt-uniting-church-pays-rent-indigenous-people

            Here is a more developed program on the same principle, based on personal treaties with traditional elders – http://treatynow.wordpress.com/ (I’m involved in this one)

            Here is a transcript from a speech by Rev Peter Adam called “Australia, Whose Land?” that provides a biblical rationale for returning stolen property and he ventures to make some specific proposals in his conclusion. http://www.surrender.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Dr-Peter-Adams-Lecture.pdf

            And finally a video from another “very small-minded and bigoted” person “who mirror(s) the worst tendencies from right-wingers”….. who puts a bit of flesh onto the ideological bones. – “African Anarchism and Communalism” by Sam Mbah

            http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihf1iitACAk&feature=plcp

            Hope that helps if you are interested in the ideas rather than assessing and derogating my personal integrity.

          • http://cimarronline.blogspot.com/2004/05/paul-munn.html paul munn

            That helps, John. I couldn’t gather much of what’s practically going on in the program you said you’re involved with, besides giving money. Is there more? Maybe you could explain a little? And what is your experience so far with this program, has it been beneficial, liberating, healing to you, others?

            What you provided only seems to address my first question, about rent. And, honestly, I don’t see most of us being able to get into contact with relatives of the indigenous people of the land we reside on. What about the others questions I asked about (which address more day-to-day economic and social practices), what are your experiences with those things?

            The main value in sharing these things, as I’ve said before, is to give others a clearer sense of what specifically you are promoting, i.e. practical examples. And also perhaps offer inspiration, by showing people what is possible when some of these teachings are put into practice. Jesus did this, didn’t he? I’ve been frustrated by primitivists that seem to have not attempted to live by the theories they preach, but just talk about them, and they keep dodging questions about practical experience. But maybe it’s different in your case.

          • John T.

            “I don’t see most of us being able to get into contact with relatives of the indigenous people of the land we reside on”

            Why not? Have you tried or does it just seem impossible because it is outside of what you consider to be normal?

            It is true that in some areas the genocide was pretty extensive but the nature of the extended family that interlocks different tribal groups is that there is always a relative. Start at the top – with peak indigenous bodies such as tribal councils and seek their advice.

            My guess is you U.S. folk might need a similar process for the descendants of African slaves too, who added economic value to the land yet got no reward for it.

            Ninety five percent of indigenous social business is private family business. When public statements are made they are usually not made for the purposes of explaining themselves to white people. In the case of Oodgeroo circles there is probably more stuff on explaining white people to white people than explaining ABoriginality. I know this is difficult for curious white people, but inherent in a decentralised non-state anthropology is a notion of privacy – of a clear distinction between in-house business and public proclamations. You do not learn about in-house business of an oral culture by reading the appropriate texts. Much Aboriginal knowledge comes through pain, sweat and suffering through ceremony or just lived experience, it cannot be transmitted easily or cheaply.

            The Oodgeroo treaty circles process has clothed the naked, fed the hungry, housed the homeless and freed the prisoners – all literally. It grew out of an Aboriginal prisoners organisation. It is responsible for the reclamation of about 20 acres of land from government departments where two extended families live and where people have been buried – all without official white title to land. From time to time this land is also used for cultural education camps. While relationships with the police in that community are very tense at present the Oodgeroo circles have from time to time negotiated a peace in that area whereby young Aboriginal people arrested by cops would be delivered to tribal elders rather than a jail cell and courts. This connections to land and the associated social power of tribal organisation and its connections to the white community (through the treaty circles) has been responsible for preventing or ending various mining operations and a bridge (it is on an Island).

            At present the Oodgeroo circles is concentrating on legal challenges and defenses based on the pre-existence of Aboriginal sovereignty and the illegitimacy of British sovereignty – similar to the present US challenges and campaigns around the “doctrine of discovery” (google it if you haven’t heard about it).

            real power – not just proclaiming slogans publicly or getting the ideological settings correct.

            Matthew 6:1 “Be careful that you don’t practice your religion in front of people to draw their attention. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.

            2 “Whenever you give to the poor, don’t blow your trumpet as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets so that they may get praise from people. I assure you, that’s the only reward they’ll get. 3 But when you give to the poor, don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing 4 so that you may give to the poor in secret. Your Father who sees what you do in secret will reward you.

          • rdhudgens

            An effective place for North Americans to connect is with the Christian Peacemaker Teams Aboriginal Justice Projects:
            http://www.cpt.org/work/aboriginal_justice

          • http://cimarronline.blogspot.com/2004/05/paul-munn.html paul munn

            I can respect much of the action you describe, John, and support it. I can see how those efforts are actually helping people. And it seems to me that the more activist-inclined folks here would find much in common with those efforts as well.

            So is the practical thrust of your primitivism (sorry if that’s not the right word for it) restitution and personal connections with indigenous peoples? Support not mimicry, as you say? Or are you also trying to shape your life to be more like the lives of indigenous peoples? And if so, in what practical ways?

            I do see parallels with my efforts to both support and become more like the poor, though I’m not focusing on the indigenous poor.

          • http://cimarronline.blogspot.com/2004/05/paul-munn.html paul munn

            Nothing more to say, John? That seems very unusual for you…

            How about these lines earlier in that same sermon? “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”

          • John T.

            Paul,

            In answer to your question about shaping life to be more like indigenous people I refer you to my first comment in this thread, responding to issues Chris raised, that deals specifically with that issue.

            The sermon on the mount is about humility, mourning and repentance and you are misusing it to suggest that it means we should boast of our good deeds.

            The sermon is delivered to a collective, a multitude, he speaks of a city. Jesus is speaking of the light of the Israelites (the indigenous people including the exiled diaspora, the lost sheep) and the light of that nation shining on all the others – just like Isaiah’s prophecy. There are many other issues as well including what is the light that Jesus is talking about. The light in the temple – on top of Mt. Zion, the city of David – is what was extinguished by the Greek invasion and renewed by the Hanukuh festival, the festival of light, this is the light of the city on the hill. Also, if we look at how Jesus uses this saying in Luke 11, he speaks of a mystical/shamanic healing force that illuminates the body – 11:34 “Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light. But when your eye is bad, your whole body is full of darkness.”

            So, whether we see the sermon on the mount as directed to the Hebrew collective or to individual persons – or a fusion of the two through ceremony (such as the Tish B’Av mourning festival that I believe the sermon on the mount is based on), whatever the light of christ is it is not gossiping about good works.

            I could also get into an Zerzan-esque epistemological analysis of the difference between “seeing” good works and hearing or reading about them and the implications of represented knowledge, but i won’t.

          • http://cimarronline.blogspot.com/2004/05/paul-munn.html paul munn

            Yes, I read that, but I don’t understand how it would look in practice, so I’m asking how you’re trying to embody it, what good experience you’ve had with it, etc. I don’t see why I should even have to ask this question. If these theories are so good and true, I would think you’d be experiencing real, practical liberation and want to share with people the good news of that. Tell people the amazing things God does when we follow these truths. What’s possible, what good can we find if we listen to you and try to put it into practice?

            You don’t have to take any credit for it, just describe the real good you’ve experienced, as a gift from God. That’s not boasting, that’s letting others “see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”

            That’s exactly what Jesus did. When John asked about Jesus, he sent word: “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them.” And when he was challenged, Jesus said, “If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me; but if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.”

            So if what you’re saying is the truth, what has been your experience trying to live it, embody it? You don’t have to boast. Just tell what you’ve seen and heard God doing.

            I have to say, the resistance of primitivists and anti-civ folks to answer any question about example or experience definitely makes it seem like these are theories that don’t stand up in real life (at least not for our modern-day lives). All I hear are more and more excuses and evasions. Endless arguments and theory and little or no lived experience. It makes me think the description from one primitivist I know is accurate: “Really, it’s just a thought-experiment.”

          • John T.

            Paul I am sorry I am unable to satisfy you but repeating the demand will not make any difference. “I don’t see why I should even have to ask the question” – You seem to believe that you have some right to receive the answers you expect from those you interrogate, but I think you are just voyeuristic and have no real interest in confronting the implications of living on stolen land or exploring the relevance of indigenous spirituality in our own lives.

            You seem determined to see me and Ric as well as examples of “primitivists and anti-civ folk” and as such it seem you already know all about the issues and have formed a pretty definite opinion about it. You have no need for any more questions and I have no desire to entertain you..

          • http://cimarronline.blogspot.com/2004/05/paul-munn.html paul munn

            I’m satisfied, John.

            Mostly I wanted to draw attention to the importance of lived experience, not just scholarly arguments and theory. People believe it when they see it. If it’s the truth, the truth that will set us free, then we should see some evidence of real liberation. That’s how it was with Jesus.

          • justice!!

            Andy A-B should be banned by the moderators!

          • rdhudgens

            Hey John T, Sounds to me like you are wanting a debate on Zerzan. I am not very familiar with Zerzan’s work and certainly can’t discuss him intelligently. I know there are others on here who are up to speed on Zerzan and usually can’t resist the type of fight you’re trying provoke. Perhaps not. I’m sure there are others on JRad who dread another round of feuds about Zerzan and/or anarcho-primitivist theory. Once again I’m happy to let boys be boys (and it is almost always a male discussion for reasons that might be interesting to probe).

          • http://www.facebook.com/people/Mark-Van-Steenwyk/510258769 Mark Van Steenwyk

            Yeah. If it offered new insights, I’d love to see a debate. But I feel like it wouldn’t. It is just a re-argument on already discussed premises.

          • John T.

            I think Zerzan is brilliant, he is a prophet I respect. He is just wrong about art. I am not trying to provoke an argument, I just wanted to point out that the discussion of ceremony and culture goes in a direction different from Zerzanism. This is probably not relevant to anyone not inspired by Zerzan.

            I did not raise anti-civ issues, others did in the form of critique of Ric’s articles and my comments. As Ric has already pointed out, the anti-civ movement is a broad church not a monolithic ideological position – this is the point of my comment.

            viva la Myersites!

      • rdhudgens

        Thx John. This is full of insight and wisdom.

      • travis

        This
        has me thinking about ol’ Abraham. I wonder if his story is trying to
        answer this question at all. The way I remember it, he went (was called
        out) from city life to life in the land, seemingly displaced some locals
        and ended up with a covenant of his own.

        • John T.

          Hello Travis,

          The only people Abraham displaced were foreign colonisers from the Egyptian proto-empire. He backed up Melchezidek, the prince of Salam (traditional native owner) against imperial/city invasions by philistines etc. – colonisers from the Mediteranian sea with its shipping routes connected to the Nile cities. Abraham settled in the promised land by way sharing bread and wine with Melchizidek – by appropriate ceremony with the pre-existing indigenous people.

          The Abraham story is a foundation myth for Hebrew nationalism – the genesis of the people of Israel. Abraham’s covenant is a fulfillment of the pre-existing covenant – Malchezidek’s legitimate claim to the land. Moses covenant and Joshua’s tribal divisions of land is a fulfillment of Abraham’s covenant. Jesus’ covenant fulfill’s Moses’ covenant, in proclaiming the Jubilee. and, The new testament tells us, Jesus was a high priest of the order of Malchezidek – his priestly function is based not on Moses or Abraham but on the pre-existing covenant of Malchezidek.

  • Frank

    To Mr. Hudgens:

    I am interested in whether you consider all civilized life to be evil.

    I do not personally agree with the idea that all hierarchy is bad, and rather believe certain forms of intelligence (spiritual intelligence) are better promoted by hierarchies. I believe hierarchies are natural. God, archangels, angels, etc. The Sufi’s say one who does not recognize the different paradisal realms (plural is important)
    is lost to the world of faith. These realms are hierarchical, and I believe they are what Jesus meant when he said there are many mansions in his fathers house (Medieval mystics talked about ascending through spiritual mentions). Also, heavens in the plural is used, when it is said even the heavens cannot contain our Father. Spiritual hierarchies are also part of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. Obviously Confucianism is hierarchical as well. Jesus mentioned the “Kingdom”. Hierarchy on Earth, like the hierarchy of the beautiful pre-invasion Tibetan society, can represent the hierarchy that transcends this Earth, and that is the value of such a society.

    Personally, I reject most modern scholarship, because it is totally anthropocentric (and I think most of the scholarship on this site is as well). Rather than seeing hierarchy as formed from God and given to humans, i.e. as being in the nature of reality, it says “No, that it is all a cultural formation”. If religion supports hierarchies, in this view, then it is because society inserted them into religion. I know some smaller societies have little hierarchy, but I see this as just because small numbers need less of it – pretty simple. I know, at any rate, that Frithjof Schuon, who said that even the worst King was better than the best President because the King represents an archetypal reality, was also adopted by several Native American families, and wrote extensively and authoritatively on their Spirituality (I am more read on the large faiths at this point – but if I believe correctly Thomas Yellowtail considered all of Schuon’s associates as honorary members of the Crow tribe). I also know the Austrailian Perennialist/Traditionalist, Harry Oldmeadow, has written on Aboriginal Spirituality from a Perennialist/Traditionalist perspective.

    Besides my belief that hierarchies are not necessarily evil, I also believe that civilizations can be sustainable – it is not only nomadic hunter gathering that is sustainable (and hunter-gatherers may have caused the extinction of some species in N.America). The civilization of Tibet, for example, did fine before the Chicom invasion.
    Medieval Persian Islamic cities were sustainable, even with large populations, being built of local mudbrick.

    I am sure many more examples could be found.

    Also, the anti-hierarchy/abolishment of Civ. perspective can be oppressive in itself. Basically, from this perspective, anyone who is not arguing for anti-Civ. is on the wrong-side. So, if Tibetans want the Traditional hierarchical and priest ruled Tibetan society restored they are wrong. If Muslims, like the eminent Muslim
    Perennialist/Traditionalist Scholar Seyyed Hossein Nasr (if you want to know what Islam is really about, skip the Western scholars and start with Nasr) want to restore Traditional Islamic Civilization – they are wrong.

    If Hindu’s want to restore caste society (which is misunderstood by Westerners, and even Gandhi was not an enemy of this – look up the Perennialist/Traditionalist authors on this point, I know Professor Harry Oldmeadow for one has written on this, and I am sure Guenon, Schuon, the Coomaraswamy’s and others have as well) to restore their religion – they are wrong.

    The only people who are right are anti-Civ. absolutists like Zerzan (UGH!!) (though I realize you may not be so extreme).

    I think many people on this site are far too sure of what is right (anti-Civ., anti-hierarchy) and what is wrong (Civ., hierarchy). I suppose I could be said to be too sure on the opposite side, but I think my Traditionalist/Perennialist view mitigates this.

    On the question of Good and Evil I will quote a Taoist story as related in Huston’s Smiths “The World’s Religions”. Some here may have read it, as Smith is rather popular. I would consider Smith a “soft” Perennialist/Traditionalist. I am relating the story from memory.

    A farmers horse ran away one day and his neighbor came to commiserate with him over the loss
    The farmer said “How are we to know what is good or bad?”
    Eventually the farmers horse returned and brought a pack of wild horses with it
    His neighbor came to congratulate him – the farmer said “How are we to know what is good or bad?”
    Soon thereafter, the farmers son fell off one of the wild horses in trying to tame it and broke his leg
    When the neighbor came to offer condolences the farmer said “How are we to know what is good or bad?”
    Next the Chinese army came to town looking to draft young man – they skipped over the farmers son because of his broken leg.

    ***I do consider modern Civilization to be evil. However, the farther back you go the more benign Civ. becomes***

    • rdhudgens

      Frank, Thx for your input. It sounds a bit more like an editorial than a question so I’ll just leave it at that. One quote from Edward Abbey “A civilization which destroys what little remains of the wild, the spare, the original, is cutting itself off from its origins.” That’s about the best I can do with a reply.

      • Frank

        You are correct about my post being an editorial. I am preaching. I guess I am responding to my feelings of the anarcho-Christian movement (and its Puritanism) in general more than simply your post.
        I think your quote nails it – a civilization WHICH destroys…I do not see all civilizations as destroying the wild, or cutting one off from ones origins – modern civilization is qualitatively different than the Golden Age of the great religious civilizations (Rome of course was like a precursor of modernity, as many here recognize, but we should NOT associate all civilization with either Rome or modernity)
        The great civilizations were not cut off from origins, of course. Our origins are in that Absolute which in its highest sense is not even nameable, and beyond-being – Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, many Shamanistic religions (I know especially of Native N. American), Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Taoism and Confucianism, all provide a link with our origins in the Absolute, whatever outer differences may appear between them. It is not only nomadic hunter-gatherers that have a link with our origins – neither is it only such people who can live the Right Life.

        • rdhudgens

          Frank,

          I appreciate longish editorial from a perspective not often seen in
          these pages. Thank you.

          I’m wondering if the question of whether all civilized life is evil
          is a very helpful question. I don’t believe that an anti-civ critique
          requires a dogmatic position on this. For me the issue of an anti-civ
          critique is about perspective and background.

          For example, “civilization” is used as a comprehensive term for
          the inevitable development of human life on this planet. Humans
          evolved from bands and tribes into nations and states and (inevitably
          in this narrative) civilizations. In this narrative civilization
          becomes the backdrop beyond which there is no other backdrop. It
          simply renders any alternative view impossible.

          What I value in anti-civ critiques is the attempt to get a
          perspective outside the narrowing confines of the civilizational narrative. The anti-civ critique says “Let’s suppose that this
          narrative of an inevitable civilizational narrative is not absolute.”

          The dilemma for an anti-civ critique (which you allude to here) is
          that that alternative backdrop is either going to be founded in
          another another historical narrative, a mythical fiction, or a
          utopian fantasy. Ivan Illich thought that as a westerner himself the
          twelfth century was the furthest he could get from the contemporary
          world in order to establish some perspective on it. Contemporary
          anthropological studies of gatherer-hunter societies provide the raw
          data for other backdrops.

          As a follower of Jesus I want to argue that the basileos of God
          should be the backdrop by which we gain perspective on civilization.
          The problem here though (as John T pointed out in his comments on
          part one) is that “the church” has been so corrupted that as
          Christians shaped by that church our understandings of God’s basileos
          are also corrupted.

          So what the anthropological research has helped me do (for good or
          ill depending on your perspective) is begin to view the basileos of
          God from a perspective that does not assume “civilization” as
          normative. I find it a provocative lens and it seems that many others
          do as well. Questions about civilization as absolutely evil, or hierarchy as
          always wrong are interesting perhaps but not initially helpful in
          teasing this out. (In fact, I think the gospel argues against letting these kinds of principles determine our actions – but that is a different discussion).

          My concern about the perennialist perspective would be that it can
          concede too much ground to the civilizational framework and lose any
          leverage for the alternative consciousness that is needed to salvage
          biotic life on this planet. That is not a question about the integrity or sincerity of those who hold to perrenialism. Nor is it an argument against any truth within its fundamental convictions. It is however a question about its utility as a faith that can adequately reveal our condition.

  • travis

    Felt like I should mention, I have been working through Soulcraft because of something you wrote here, so… you’re not just providing space for internet pissing matches.

    • rdhudgens

      Thx for letting me know that Travis. That’s great!

  • rdhudgens

    I’m realizing that these two essays are really lacking from the absence of a song or a dance that would better express what needs to be communicated. But here’s something almost as good (and in this written context perhaps better) which is a poem from Rilke:

    How surely gravity’s law
    strong as an ocean current,
    takes hold of even the smallest thing
    and pulls it toward the heart of the world.

    Each thing –
    each stone, blossom, child –
    is held in place.

    Only we, in our arrogance,
    push out beyond what we each belong to
    for some empty freedom.

    If we surrendered
    to earth’s intelligence
    we could rise up rooted, like trees.

    Instead we entangle ourselves
    in knots of our own making
    and struggle, lonely and confused.

    So, like children, we begin again
    to learn from the things,
    because they are in God’s heart;
    they have never left him.

    This is what the things can teach us:
    to fall,
    patiently to trust our heaviness.
    Even a bird has to do that
    before he can fly.

    • http://cimarronline.blogspot.com/2004/05/paul-munn.html paul munn

      A good example of what I was pointing to before. It’s unclear what Rilke means about trusting “gravity” and “heaviness” and letting ourselves “fall.” But the words sound inspiring. They take on a whole new appearance, though, when seen in the context of his life and actions, including an affair with a married woman around the same time this poem was published. And she wasn’t the only one.

      Rilke’s later enthusiasm and support for Mussolini’s fascism should also make us less inclined to trust his words discouraging us from “pushing out beyond what we belong to for some empty freedom.”

      We show what our words mean when we embody them in our actions. That’s why experience and example are so important.

      • rdhudgens

        . . .

  • Josiah Keen

    In the New Testament, Jesus and the Apostles warn against false teachers. In a “beyond the sidewalk” Christianity that embraces and experiments with alternatives what danger is there, if any, of people falling into serious and damaging errors?

    • rdhudgens

      Josiah, This is an important question. I share your concern. It is one followers of Jesus have always struggled with (as the New Testament indicates). Chris Haw’s contribution in the comments on part one certainly addresses one approach.

      I’d don’t believe there is a foolproof way for any of us to avoid possibly going wrong. For example, would strict adherence to the teaching of the Vatican or the Heidelberg Catechism guarantee our safety?

      From my own anabaptist perspective I would rely upon the covenanted community of disciples, empowered by the Holy Spirit, guided by the scriptures, and deeply engaged with our local context.

      But there are no guarantees other than the saving grace of God through Jesus Christ.

      It seems to me that this is how it should be.

      But, of course, I could be wrong.

      What do you think?

      • rdhudgens

        One more point, periodically there have been those who have charged that the church(es) have already gone astray leading people into “serious and damaging error” (see John T’s side of the debate with Chris Haw in part one). Every church is wrong in its own peculiar manner. So what are we to do? The anabaptist “remedy” (community, Spirit, scripture, mission, God’s grace) seems to me the only way to go.

  • rdhudgens

    A final thanks to those who
    respectfully interacted with the material in these two essays. I recommend Bill Plotkin’s book Soulcraft for those
    who would like to know more. Soulcraft describes over forty
    nature-based practices illustrated by stories from the personal
    experience of Plotkin, his mentors, his colleagues, and those who are
    learning from his example. It is a great place to start and provides
    a fascinating foundation from which to begin reviving the Bible’s
    indigenous root system. For a more comprehensive vision of which soulcraft is only one part see Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone’s Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re In Without Going Crazy (2012). Peace.

  • Stephen

    Love, love, love this piece, Ric, thanks for writing it! My favorite sentence might be “At present our response to the world’s environmental crisis is underfunded by our limited imaginations”. Without having read the rest of the extensive comments section, I’ll throw my reponse here:

    1. I see your piece touching on something that I have been wrestling with for some time now, namely, that if we look at our faith and at the anti-civ critique, I think we find that much of our religious tradition, in theory and practice, is a response to the distress of domestication and civilization’s domination paradigm…that being said, what do we gain by a consciousness of this dynamic? For example…the story of Noah’s Ark I see as an ancient working out of the theme of Collapse, an ever-present imaginitive-psychic-material reality to people groups subjected to civilization. If this working out of the inevitability of collapse leads to a theology of a God of redemption post-collapse (both real and spiritual/psychological, the inner mental collapse of a commitment to the dominant order), then in its original context the ark narrative functions along with domestication as a component of a religious order which perpetuates civilization’s institutions (for the most part- the role of the story in minds/communities of resistance would look different, but those communities are always fleeting and marginal in history, cropping up like weeds only to be mowed down and arise again next spring), for better or worse. In my view, the wisdom of scripture and tradition is in preserving spiritual well-being and the potential for human wholeness through the duress of domestication, and this tradition may function with or without a precisely reasoned scholarly account (civilization critique) of the evil which threatens what it defends, but that does not give us the option of resistance to that evil per se, and a more or less intentional blindness to that evil’s inner workings may leave us prey to its ever more insidious mechanisms of eliciting complicity; in other words, our tradition, which grows as a response to the attempt of civilization to dominate our bodies/souls, will be co-opted by that civilization unless we combine that tradition with a critical practice (prophetic ministry) which is able to recognize and call out that civilization’s latest tentacles. What do we do with this new consciousness or discourse (primitivism) which seems to transcend the paradigm of domestication-response which may describe the formulation of our religious tradition?

    I think your piece hits the nail on the head in terms of answering this question. We need to look outside of the tradition. The prophets were always outside of their historical moment and its traditions, denouncing religious practices of the day and reminding the people of their deeper consciousness, an experience of a God who dwells in the wilderness of Exodus.

    But where does Jesus fit into this? Certainly he participated in this prophetic tradition and the spiritual practices which you suggest for the 21st century. And the effect was striking: he became an enemy of the state and sparked the generation of a slew of new resistance communities in the region which became such a problem for the reigning regime it had to co-opt its sentiments for its own recuperation. The battle continues…

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