Dennis Lanigan wrote:The Wild Roots land project is outside of Asheville, NC if you're interested. I would definitely visit them to step out of the academic talk and meet real folks living a permaculture/hunter/gatherer/scrounger lifestyle. The Firefly Gathering is worth checking out along with the folks at Wild Abundance. Natalie Bogwalker, who's an old friend of mine, is an old resident of Wild Roots, started Firefly Gathering, and teaches with Wild Abundance. I recommend taking classes with her.
leila hamaya wrote:
what i've been thinking is that there needs to be a HUGE umbrella group which links up as many as possible farms/communities/bioregions as possible into a very large network of communities in 100s and thousands of different locations. if you were to join this organization then one could belong to a variety of different projects- given potential access to land and work trade sort of situations, or for farmers/especially permaculturists or other horticulturist...they get labor and assistance, house sitters, and access to a number of different locations where they could also stay.
the idea being using what everyone involved already has, even if its a small extra bedroom, a couch to sleep on, or some unused land to share crop...to a farm with internships, land sharing or whatever else people are willing to open up to gifting/leasing/owning/sharing land. then this organization would have to coordinate between them to place people in different locations, continue to network in as many different places as possible.
with this though i dont think it would fly to make too many rules, or ideas about how the segments operate. each of the places would have to be able to make their own decisions about all the particulars, or none if they didnt want to have any restrictions.
no one could say even that you had to use only permaculture practices or anything...
Many of our wild lands these days are much degraded from their former human enhanced ability to support life, and it will take a long time and many of us working to bring some of our lands back to the beauty and life supporting productivity that our society has sacrificed in the pursuit of money to the exclusion of much else.
The main idea he seemed to espouse was one of animism, like Leila has so capably discoursed on here, as being key to the kind of life many of us would like to live. the idea that spirit is every where, in all of us, and that we would be better off living that way.
Steven Johnson wrote:I have been reading a couple books by Charles Eisenstein, ' The Ascent of Humanity' and 'Sacred Economics'. i'd thought that someone here recommended them, but could not find who it was to thank them, but whoever you were, thank you. The ideas he brought forth seemed very appropriate to this thread, and for many people in the permaculture and organic movements. The main idea he seemed to espouse was one of animism, like Leila has so capably discoursed on here, as being key to the kind of life many of us would like to live. the idea that spirit is every where, in all of us, and that we would be better off living that way.
He also points out that collapse of the current system of constant, accelerating growth is almost certain sooner or later, due to the nature of the limited system we really live in. He does however, not think, if I may be so bold as to speculate on from what I got from it, that collapse will be enough to make the changes, but that it will give us incentive to make the changes needed, away from a growth oriented system.
Robert Sapolsky wrote:"...anthropologists have long known that hunter-gatherers typically solve tensions by taking advantage of the fluid, mobile nature of their cultures: They move on to the next valley instead of escalating things with would-be rivals." - Source*
Andrew Scott wrote:I realize that the non-sedentary component of the OP is perhaps the most difficult to model from our perspective as individuals socialized from birth by consumerist capitalism, but I remain convinced of the importance of pressing against assumptions of sedentism. A new article about the recent Fry & Soderberg paper arguing against the evolutionary roots of war...
Robert Sapolsky wrote:"...anthropologists have long known that hunter-gatherers typically solve tensions by taking advantage of the fluid, mobile nature of their cultures: They move on to the next valley instead of escalating things with would-be rivals." - Source*
*If you get stuck on the wrong side of the Wall Street Journal paywall, Googling the title, "When Were the Dogs of War First Let Loose?", and clicking through the search result usually bypasses it.
So “occupation”. It is occupation that occupies a man. We have our jobs, our occupations. We are occupied. But then, when one country invades another we call that “occupation” too. Occupied France in the Second World War. The Occupied Territories in what were once Palestine. Occupied Iraq. Occupied Afghanistan. The question then is, when we say that the landscape is occupied by humans what do we mean? Occupied as in an occupying army - a band of foreign invaders in the landscape imposing an alien culture upon it, degrading it, destroying it, murdering its inhabitants, exploiting it, marching all over it with storm-trooper boots of oppression? Or as human beings merely working in the landscape, working with the land, being occupied within it?
And when we say we “own” something, how do we own it? You can own a thought. You can own a knowledge. You can “own up” to things. None of these involve a legal relationship. Ownership here is just the acceptance of responsibility. It doesn’t imply possession at all.
It is the same with “belonging”. We can belong to a club, or to a tribe, or to a culture. We don’t say that the club “owns” us. Belonging, in this sense, is a relationship with something, the way we say two people belong to each other, the way a child belongs to a mother, or a man belongs to a women. It is a relationship over time: a be-longing, a being-over-time. A longing. A longing to belong.
All cultures have a sense of ownership in these terms, as relationship, as knowledge, as commitment, as work. But most cultures until very recent times did not have a sense of possession in the way we now have it: of a legalised and exclusive ownership, of an ownership that implies that what belongs to one cannot therefore belong to another. Common ownership was once the norm. This is what has changed. And the joke here, of course, is that when you look at who owns what in these legal terms, most people in the world own very little, or nothing at all, and a very few people own almost everything.
This form of possession is invisible, like a ghost. It is exactly like possession in that other, occult sense. A man does not need to have done anything to have this form of ownership. He does not need to have built a farm, or raised crops, or raised a family. He does not need to have worked the land or to have maintained it, to have tilled the soil, to have built fences, to have planted seeds, to have reaped the harvest. He does not need to have hunted on it. He does not need to know where the wild creatures go. He does not even need to have visited it. He need not know where it is. All he needs is a bit of paper that says he owns it, and when he wants to dispossess the man who is actually living on it, and who has raised crops and a family and built a home, he can. The joke is that we have all been sold into this form of possession, and yet all it has achieved is to have dispossessed us all.
Possessed and dispossessed, all at the same time.
And who, now, truly “owns” the land in which he lives? Who, now, owns it in the form of knowledge, in the form of belonging, in the form of being occupied within it, of being occupied by it? Who, now, can hear the land talking to us? Who can hear its secret words of wisdom, in the wind, in the trees? Who, now, knows the rituals of the landscape, it’s cycles and its seasons, and the potent alchemy that plants perform to turn dirt and air into food? Who knows its secrets? Who knows its charm? And who, now, knows how to charm it and be charmed by it? Who knows its magic?
leila hamaya wrote:to move from one place to the other was not very difficult and there was a lot of open abundant land. we are in a weird context living in a modern world, but i dont think we can act as if we were still in that kind of context, much as i might wish it were so.
actually in the past i have been nomadic, for many years sleep where i lay, something of a free spirit...and lived in seven different states, always moving. i burnt out on that, again the context of what is now needs to be considered, because it would be different if the greater context of the world were different and more supportive of that being a viable lifestyle choice for someone. if you want to encourage that, and deep thought about private property, the "fortress mentality" then i get it, its important to examine, and would applaud you. i just wouldnt be on that wave enough to want to join in, because i would rather settle in good somewhere.
Kevin Tucker wrote:Horticultural Warfare
A longstanding dispute I've had with Derrick is over his portrayal of horticultural warfare. In the decade since I initially brought this up, he's only made flippant mention of it as a minor point in public. But as someone who bases their ideas on facts rather than whims and appeals to personality, I find this sticking point rather irritating.
In Culture of Make Believe, Derrick has a discussion about battlefield warfare amongst horticulturalists in Papua New Guinea. What he says is largely true; battlefield warfare is particularly less lethal than one would imagine. Before the battle, there are large pork feasts, which, if you haven't overloaded yourself with pork before, will tire you out quickly. The weapon of choice is typically large and not horribly accurate or effective arrows, but the tongue is equal as insults are more often shot across than darts. Derrick mentions this to distinguish it from modern warfare for obvious reasons: civilization is unequivocally more violent, faceless, and ruthless.
This sounds nice, but it's not the full truth.
Derrick has no interest in attacking the roots of civilization. This has gotten worse over the years as his focus has shifted in accordance with liberal targets. In my eyes, looking at the consequences of domestication truthfully and honestly is the most telling way to understand how civilization could exist. So horticultural societies, as societies with domestication, but without civilization, are telling. I don't wish to damn them, but it's important to understand them.
Derrick's fairytale version of horticultural warfare would be far more pleasant than the resource wars that our civilization currently undertakes, but it's not true. Most people who have taken a Cultural Anthropology 101 course could tell you this.
Battlefield warfare is a part of horticultural warfare patterns. It is, typically, the least fatal method of warfare. The problem is that warfare is a consequence of resource competition. This applies equally to horticulturalists as it does to us, but it's a matter of scale. In having semi-sedentary lifestyles with gardens, granaries, and surplus, you have property, power, and boundaries that simply don't exist with nomadic gather-hunter societies. The response isn't just battlefield warfare, it's warfare culture.
This is where you get the origins of patriarchy. In warfare culture, you see, for the first time, a preference for males (warriors) over females, hence a higher rate of female infanticide (curbing population). In the warfare cycle, battlefield warfare has little on the more important aspect of raiding. In raids, a lot of people can die. Wives and children are taken, villages are burned. It is, after all, warfare, and it's messy.
I don't say this to judge, but this is what domestication does to us: it's a socio-religious justification for an ecological reality. Sedentary life challenges natural means of birth control associated with nomadism. People settle, numbers go up, surplus is finite, numbers need to go down. It's a cycle. - Black and Green Press
Andrew Scott wrote:...individuals develop a unique view of the relation between self and other. It is a view that differs from that in both individualist and collectivist societies. Like those in individualist societies, members of immediate-return societies put a premium on autonomy. Their autonomy, however, does not contrast the individual with the society as it does in individualist cultures. Rather, immediate-return autonomy grows out of repeated, mutually trusting social interactions. Each individual acts with the other person in mind, and can assume that the other person will do the same.
leila hamaya wrote:one of the stories that someone told involved the "honey wars"...where because there was a lot of resentment being built up between the people about people hogging the honey and eating it too fast, it was decided that when the bulk order shipment came in (once or twice a year there were large bulk orders placed) they would all divide up the honey and everyone would have their own honey bear. when their honey ran out that was it, they didnt get no more till the next bulk order came in.
now this sounds logical and like it couldve worked, but it so did not. people were guarding their honey bears like their life depended on it carrying them around so as not to leave them unattended, after several honey bears got stolen! not only that but it became something of a commodity, people were trading honey for other stuff....
hence the "honey wars" which turned into a huge problem. ooo how this weird little stuff becomes epically huge and blown up out of proportion in the microcosm of community!
Dennis Lanigan wrote:...during this lean time while squatting in Cascadia and waiting for clam/oyster season to open, and losing weight rapidly because there wasn't much else, I could see how a system of hierarchy around stored carbohydrates could develop quickly. Simply trying to "unlearn" hierarchy and conflict when you're really "hangry" and exhausted is especially difficult, in my experience.
How would this project avoid this descent into hierarchy?
Dennis Lanigan wrote:What works about Wild Roots is they prepare new people to end up on the same page with them. If people want to live there they need to go through an apprenticeship program of sorts and then check in with the group at six months and then a year to see if it fits for everyone.
Steven Johnson wrote:I have 30 acres with a house and barn, there are woods and cleared areas.
Was producing their own honey that much out of the question? An impossibility? I've known some honey producers, and it really seems more simple, than actually managing a human conflict. >< Hell, if not honey, then dates, or sugar cane... Any sweet replacement, rather than having to handle such a bitter-sweet conflict.
Andrew Scott wrote:This is part of a tangential conversation about Derrick Jensen and DGR, but Tucker's points on some serious potential problems with horticulture relate to some earlier discussion.
Kevin Tucker wrote:Horticultural Warfare
A longstanding dispute I've had with Derrick is over his portrayal of horticultural warfare. In the decade since I initially brought this up, he's only made flippant mention of it as a minor point in public. But as someone who bases their ideas on facts rather than whims and appeals to personality, I find this sticking point rather irritating.
In Culture of Make Believe, Derrick has a discussion about battlefield warfare amongst horticulturalists in Papua New Guinea. What he says is largely true; battlefield warfare is particularly less lethal than one would imagine. Before the battle, there are large pork feasts, which, if you haven't overloaded yourself with pork before, will tire you out quickly. The weapon of choice is typically large and not horribly accurate or effective arrows, but the tongue is equal as insults are more often shot across than darts. Derrick mentions this to distinguish it from modern warfare for obvious reasons: civilization is unequivocally more violent, faceless, and ruthless.
This sounds nice, but it's not the full truth.
Derrick has no interest in attacking the roots of civilization. This has gotten worse over the years as his focus has shifted in accordance with liberal targets. In my eyes, looking at the consequences of domestication truthfully and honestly is the most telling way to understand how civilization could exist. So horticultural societies, as societies with domestication, but without civilization, are telling. I don't wish to damn them, but it's important to understand them.
Derrick's fairytale version of horticultural warfare would be far more pleasant than the resource wars that our civilization currently undertakes, but it's not true. Most people who have taken a Cultural Anthropology 101 course could tell you this.
Battlefield warfare is a part of horticultural warfare patterns. It is, typically, the least fatal method of warfare. The problem is that warfare is a consequence of resource competition. This applies equally to horticulturalists as it does to us, but it's a matter of scale. In having semi-sedentary lifestyles with gardens, granaries, and surplus, you have property, power, and boundaries that simply don't exist with nomadic gather-hunter societies. The response isn't just battlefield warfare, it's warfare culture.
This is where you get the origins of patriarchy. In warfare culture, you see, for the first time, a preference for males (warriors) over females, hence a higher rate of female infanticide (curbing population). In the warfare cycle, battlefield warfare has little on the more important aspect of raiding. In raids, a lot of people can die. Wives and children are taken, villages are burned. It is, after all, warfare, and it's messy.
I don't say this to judge, but this is what domestication does to us: it's a socio-religious justification for an ecological reality. Sedentary life challenges natural means of birth control associated with nomadism. People settle, numbers go up, surplus is finite, numbers need to go down. It's a cycle. - Black and Green Press
[bold emphasis mine]
Like Tucker, I neither wish to damn nor judge horticultural societies, but it's important to learn as much as we can from the result of human experiments in horticulture just as it is with agriculture.
Assaf Koss wrote:What do you guys have in mind, when having to handle internal conflict? Whether between members of the same community, such as when neither member wishes to leave the place, or between communities in the society, such as when a dispute causes for a breaking in the free movement ideal. What sort of social pressures do you have in mind?
Dr. Robert Sapolsky wrote:"anthropologists have long known that hunter-gatherers typically solve tensions by taking advantage of the fluid, mobile nature of their cultures: They move on to the next valley instead of escalating things with would-be rivals. -Source
Dr. Peter Gray wrote:Theory 1: Hunter-gatherers practiced a system of "reverse dominance" that prevented anyone from assuming power over others.
The writings of anthropologists make it clear that hunter-gatherers were not passively egalitarian; they were actively so. Indeed, in the words of anthropologist Richard Lee, they were fiercely egalitarian. They would not tolerate anyone's boasting, or putting on airs, or trying to lord it over others. Their first line of defense was ridicule. If anyone--especially if some young man--attempted to act better than others or failed to show proper humility in daily life, the rest of the group, especially the elders, would make fun of that person until proper humility was shown.
One regular practice of the group that Lee studied was that of "insulting the meat." Whenever a hunter brought back a fat antelope or other prized game item to be shared with the band, the hunter had to express proper humility by talking about how skinny and worthless it was. If he failed to do that (which happened rarely), others would do it for him and make fun of him in the process. When Lee asked one of the elders of the group about this practice, the response he received was the following: "When a young man kills much meat, he comes to think of himself as a big man, and he thinks of the rest of us as his inferiors. We can't accept this. We refuse one who boasts, for someday his pride will make him kill somebody. So we always speak of his meat as worthless. In this way we cool his heart and make him gentle."
On the basis of such observations, Christopher Boehm proposed the theory that hunter-gatherers maintained equality through a practice that he labeled reverse dominance. In a standard dominance hierarchy--as can be seen in all of our ape relatives (yes, even in bonobos)--a few individuals dominate the many. In a system of reverse dominance, however, the many act in unison to deflate the ego of anyone who tries, even in an incipient way, to dominate them.
According to Boehm, hunter-gatherers are continuously vigilant to transgressions against the egalitarian ethos. Someone who boasts, or fails to share, or in any way seems to think that he (or she, but usually it's a he) is better than others is put in his place through teasing, which stops once the person stops the offensive behavior. If teasing doesn't work, the next step is shunning. The band acts as if the offending person doesn't exist. That almost always works. Imagine what it is like to be completely ignored by the very people on whom your life depends. No human being can live for long alone. The person either comes around, or he moves away and joins another band, where he'd better shape up or the same thing will happen again. In his 1999 book, Hierarchy in the Forest, Boehm presents very compelling evidence for his reverse dominance theory.
Dr. Peter Gray wrote:Theory 2: Hunter-gathers maintained equality by nurturing the playful side of their human nature, and play promotes equality.
This is my own theory, which I introduced two years ago in an article in the American Journal of Play.[3] I will not go into detail about it here, because I have presented bits of the theory in other posts (see, for example, my post of June 11, 2009). Briefly, however, the theory is this. Hunter-gatherers maintained their egalitarian ethos by cultivating the playful side of their human nature.
Social play--that is, play involving more than one player--is necessarily egalitarian. It always requires a suspension of aggression and dominance along with a heightened sensitivity to the needs and desires of the other players. Players may recognize that one playmate is better at the played activity than are others, but that recognition must not lead the one who is better to lord it over the others.
This is true for play among animals as well as for that among humans. For example, when two young monkeys of different size and strength engage in a play fight, the stronger one deliberately self-handicaps, avoids actions that would frighten or hurt the playmate, and sends repeated play signals that are understood as signs of non-aggression. That is what makes the activity a play fight instead of a real fight. If the stronger animal failed to behave in these ways, the weaker one would feel threatened and flee, and the play would end. The drive to play, therefore, requires suppression of the drive to dominate.
My theory, then, is that hunter-gatherers suppressed the tendency to dominate and promoted egalitarian sharing and cooperation by deliberately fostering a playful attitude in essentially all of their social activities. Our capacity for play, which we inherited from our mammalian ancestors, is the natural, evolved capacity that best counters our capacity to dominate, which we also inherited from our mammalian ancestors.
My play theory of hunter-gather equality is based largely on evidence, gleaned from analysis of the anthropological literature, that play permeated the social lives of hunter-gatherers--more so than is the case for any known, long-lasting post-hunter-gatherer cultures. Their hunting and gathering were playful; their religious beliefs and practices were playful; their practices of dividing meat and of sharing goods outside of the band as well as inside of the band were playful; and even their most common methods of punishing offenders within their group (through humor and ridicule) had a playful element.[3] By infusing essentially all of their activities with play, hunter-gatherers kept themselves in the kind of mood that most strongly, by evolutionary design, counters the drive to dominate others.
Dr. Peter Gray wrote:Theory 3: Hunter-gatherers maintained their ethos of equality through their childrearing practices, which engendered feelings of trust and acceptance in each new generation.
...
Dr. Peter Gray wrote:In sum, my argument here is that the lessons we have to learn from hunter-gatherers are not about our genes but about our culture. Our species clearly has the genetic potential to be peaceful and egalitarian, on the one hand, or to be warlike and despotic, on the other, or anything in between. If the three theories I've described here are correct, and if we truly believe in the values of equality and peace and want them to reign once again as the norm for human beings, then we need to (a) find ways to deflate the egos, rather than support the egos, of the despots, bullies, and braggarts among us; (b) make our ways of life more playful; and (c) raise our children in kindly, trusting ways.
Assaf Koss wrote:Myself, having a fascism-phobia, it is harder to ask about how you would handle external conflicts. How is your society designed to handle the notorious abstract assaults "the government" likes to deal to alternative groups? This is without even the justification of a court of law, such as in the case they just decide to bring in the tractors and police, and remove everything immediately! Naturally, the following question is how you plan to handle the legal assaults against your society, or each community?
You know we both aim for the same result, just about, so I emphasise that these questions and hypothesis are not critique, but rather practical questions with, supposed, practical answers.
Andrew Scott wrote:Anyone joining the community is expected to understand and agree to these principles.
leila hamaya wrote:anything sugary is major rare and precious....
Steven Johnson wrote:write to me Assoff [Assaf]. Are you still in the area?
There is nothing permanent in a culture dependent on such temporaries as civilization.
www.feralfarmagroforestry.com
There is nothing permanent in a culture dependent on such temporaries as civilization.
www.feralfarmagroforestry.com
There is nothing permanent in a culture dependent on such temporaries as civilization.
www.feralfarmagroforestry.com
Matt Ferrall wrote:I have been looking at the nature of the horticultural issues for 15yrs now.I looked at pre contact indigenous people in my area who were horticulturalist...
There is nothing permanent in a culture dependent on such temporaries as civilization.
www.feralfarmagroforestry.com
There is nothing permanent in a culture dependent on such temporaries as civilization.
www.feralfarmagroforestry.com
Matt Ferrall wrote:First I will reply to the issue of there being a hunter gatherer vs horticultural dichotomy.I am not the one who created this.Folks like Kevin Tucker are quick to lump horticulturists with agriculturists because in some places the former led to the later.
Matt Ferrall wrote:Here where I live,the indigenous folks have explicitly stated that being horticulturist was an ideal endpoint for them not a transitional phase.
Matt Ferrall wrote:If we instead,spent some time as horticulturists we could actually create a hunter gatherer paradise.All this would take hundreds if not thousands of years to create and form stable ecological equalibriums.I see your zoning idea as similar but perhaps my timeframe for those transitions would be longer.I do value the understanding of what makes each cultural choice unique but lets not put the cart before the horse.
Matt Ferrall wrote:if it isnt obvious already I think horticultural society IS the peak experience.That is because Im a novelty hound and will take greater increase in diversity over anarcho purity any day.I can honestly say that I would rather have the tastier apples of today than eat the sour little crab apples that survive on their own here in little clearings by the river.I dont want to be reduced to the native plants only.I think having more food choice and freedoms is extremely valuable.If you were to graph food choice numbers,horticultural living is the peak experience and that is what the permaculture appeal is.
Matt Ferrall wrote:Hopfully truths can be gleaned here and I can spare some poor horticulturist permi from getting too mixed up with dogmatic hunter gathers and like wise perhaps get some of the hunter gatherer purists to lighten up a bit on those of us trying to create a paridise that might help hunter gatherers actually have a more enjoyable and diverse experience.
There is nothing permanent in a culture dependent on such temporaries as civilization.
www.feralfarmagroforestry.com
There is nothing permanent in a culture dependent on such temporaries as civilization.
www.feralfarmagroforestry.com
Matt Ferrall wrote:Is it possible that hunter gathers had a high life satisfaction because they didnt know any other possibility?
There is nothing permanent in a culture dependent on such temporaries as civilization.
www.feralfarmagroforestry.com
Matt Ferrall wrote:Glad the bushmen in the tropics have some nuts without mangement.
Matt Ferrall wrote:Our climax forest here turns to conifers... Even crab apples here get shaded out eventually.
There is nothing permanent in a culture dependent on such temporaries as civilization.
www.feralfarmagroforestry.com
Matt Ferrall wrote:Glad the bushmen in the tropics have some nuts without mangement.Our climax forest here turns to conifers and we have only hazels and they only produce if burned around.I do enjoy the charts but could you provide some more cold climate examples?(Obviously the inuit would have zero to gain from horticulture or any cultural change given the lack of genetic availability suited to that enviroment)Even crab apples here get shaded out eventually.Rarely even see them producing or thriving in our vast national park since its been protected and no longer managed.Its really sad to see a food forest that took thousands of years to create get over grown but hey,I guess thats a good thing on the path to hunter gatherer?
Matt Ferrall wrote:Is it possible that hunter gathers had a high life satisfaction because they didnt know any other possibility?
There is nothing permanent in a culture dependent on such temporaries as civilization.
www.feralfarmagroforestry.com