Saving The World

"Saving the world can only mean one thing: saving the world as a human habitat. Accomplishing this will mean (must mean) saving the world as a habitat for as many other species as possible."--Daniel Quinn, Pg.6, Beyond Civilization

Tribal Denial

"People are fascinated to learn why a pride of lions works, why a troop of baboons works, or why a flock of geese works, but they often resist learning why a tribe of humans works. Tribal humans were successful on this planet for three millions years before our agricultural revolution, and they're no less successful today wherever they manage to survive untouched, but many people of our culture don't want to hear about it."-- Daniel Quinn, Pg.12, Beyond Civilization

The Food is Locked Up

"Making food a commodity to be owned was one of the great innovations of our culture. No other culture in history has ever put food under lock and key--and putting it there is the cornerstone of our economy, for if the food wasn't under lock and key, who would work?"--[Daniel Quinn, Pg.5, Beyond Civilization]

Our two hanging birdfeeders were raided last night. The black sunflower seeds have been emptied out of one and the brand new suet cake missing out of the other. While walking out to the mail car this morning Annie noticed fresh bear tracks in the crusty snow. So, I'm assuming it was a black bear that had itself a snack last night. The interesting thing is that it didn't knock down any of the feeders or bend over our pole. In other words, no damage was done. I don't think a human could have made less of a mess.

It's the opening day of the Wisconsin fishing season today. There is still ice on a lot of lakes around here. I noticed on the front page of one our local newspapers one of the headlines read "This will probably be one of the latest ice outs ever recorded in modern history."

New Essay And Interview With Daniel Quinn

Daniel Quinn has a new interview and essay coming out. This morning I pulled Beyond Civilization off from the shelf to read the section titled, "The Invisibility of Success," again. It's one of my favorite sections of the book. Below a quote from that section:

"The basic laws of ecology have the beauty and simplicity of a fairy tale, but their existence only began to be suspected a century ago."-- Pg.11, Beyond Civilization

Daniel Quinn Quote Saturday

"It's easy to pick out the people who belong to "our" culture. If you go somewhere--anywhere in the world--where the food is under lock and key, you'll know you're among people of our culture. They may differ wildly in relatively superficial matters--in the way they dress, in their marriage customs, in the holidays they observe, and so on. But when it comes to the most fundamental thing of all, getting the food they need to stay alive, they're all alike. In these places, the food is all owned by someone, and if you want some, you'll have to buy it. This is expected in these places; the people of our culture know no other way."--Daniel Quinn, Pg. 5, Beyond Civilization

Quinn Quote Saturday

"Despite all the indicators of misery we live with--the ever growing incidence of social disintegration, drug addiction, crime, suicide, mental illness, child and spousal abuse and abandonment, racism, violence against women, and so on--most people in our culture are thoroughly convinced that our way of life simply cannot be bettered by any means whatever. Adopting anything different would therefore have to be a comedown, an act of sacrifice."--Daniel Quinn, Pg.86, Beyond Civilization

Programs

"Our culture's river of vision is carrying us toward catastrophe. Sticks planted in the mud may impede its flow very slightly, but we don't need to impede its flow, we need to divert it into an entirely new channel. If our culture's river of vision ever begins to carry us away from catastrophe and into a sustainable future, then programs will be superfluous. When the river's flowing where you want it to flow, you don't plant sticks to impede it." --Daniel Quinn out of Beyo​nd Civilization

Getting Ahead of Myself

Right now I feel rushed, anxious, and overwhelmed. And I've noticed some minor Obsessive Compulsive symptoms happening like pacing and thinking the same thought over and over. I feel like if I just focus and try harder that this feeling will go away (This a big part of the reason I sit Zazen every morning). It's nothing new, I've felt it on and off probably since the beginning of adolesence. In the past I've blamed our culture, school, my parents and so on about this. All of them, of course, play a factor. Anyway, it comes and goes. I've learned how to deal with it and have adjusted my lifestyle accordingly. As a child this was tough to deal with though. I had no idea what the hell was going on.

This all, of course, ties into Daniel Quinn's work. Ever since running across the sentence below it felt like there was a huge weight lifted from my shoulders. Someone had finally recognized my suffering and showed that others were going through the same thing. It also meant that I wasn't a defective product but the system that I was trying to conform to is.

"It's estimated that, since the days of my youth, depression among children has increased by 1000% and teen suicide by 300%."--Daniel Quinn, Pg. 180, Beyond Civilization

Looking back on my childhood it was pretty pathetic I understood what depression and anxiety were well before I was 12 years old. And from my perspective 25 years later I simply should not have been thinking about that at that age.

Quinn Quote Saturday

"As developed in Ishmael, the 'story' we're enacting in our culture is this: The world was made for Man to conquer and rule, and Man was made to conquer and rule it; and under Man's rule, the world might have become a paradise except for the fact that he's fundamentally and irremediably flawed. This story--itself mythology--is the foundation for all our cultural mythology, and I said in Ishmael that it isn't possible for people simply to give up living in such a story. They must have another story to be in." [Daniel Quinn, Pg.183, Beyond Civilization]

Backing Up a Bit

Yesterday I mentioned that I like the part in Diamond's quote about anthropologists searching for human possibilities. But I think before anyone becomes interested in human possibilities one must come to a place where they feel and think there is something wrong.

Did you know that Daniel Quinn had a different title in mind for Beyond Civilization? It was: The Manual of Change. In his words here is why:

"I thought of this because there's nothing the people of our culture want more than change. They desperately want to change themselves and the world around them. The reason isn't hard to find. They know something's wrong--wrong with themselves and wrong with the world."

Those words ring as true for me today as they did when I first read them ten years ago.

Kamana Reflection

It's been almost four years since I signed up for the Kamana program. There is four levels to it, and for some who are really dedicated it can take just over a year to complete. I'm over half way through it and not particularily proud of it. I told myself that after we moved into our cordwood house I was going to start visiting my sit spot again. Well, we've been living in here for almost a month and I haven't visited it yet. So I've been thinking a lot about why I'm stuck in this program. I figure if I can help build a house from scratch and remain debt free (except for a few credit card bills) I should be able to complete this program.

Last week I asked what the definition of vision was. I quoted Daniel Quinn out of Beyond Civilization trying to come to some kind of understanding what this invisible thing we call vision is. I find myself going back to the section about vision in Beyond Civilization trying to understand why I'm having a hard time finishing this program.

Every year, without fail, we outlaw more things, catch more people doing them, and put more of them in jail. The outlawed behavior never goes away, because, directly or indirectly, it's supported by the strong, invisible, unrelenting force called vision. This explains why police officers are much more likely to take up crime than criminals are to take up law enforcement. It's called "going with the flow." pg.17

Like the police officers in Quinn's example, perhaps I'm going more with the flow of our culture at this point in time. There really is no external reward (Like getting paid to do it.) for doing what is required in the Kamana program. To put it simply, the program doesn't pay the bills. This makes me wonder how much different this Kamana journey would be for me if I got paid for my time doing it?

What is Vision?

This question has been on my mind since reading Daniel Quinn's Beyond Civilization almost a decade ago. I know there are visions in mission statements and personal visions and so on, but I don't think I've fully grasped what vision means. Here is the excerpt out of BC that I keep going back to when I think about vision:

Vision is like Gravity

Vision is to culture what gravity is to matter. When you see a ball roll off a table and fall to the floor, you should think, "Gravity is at work here." When you see a culture make its appearance and spread outward in all directions until it takes over the entire world, you should think, "Vision is at work here."
When you see a small group of people begin behaving in a special way that subsequently spreads across an entire continent, you should think, "Vision is at work here." If I tell you that the small group I have in mind were followers of a first-century preacher named Paul and that the continent was Europe, you'll know the vision was Christianity.
Dozens or perhaps even hundreds of books have investigated the reasons for Christianity's success, but not one of them was written before the nineteenth century. Before that nineteenth century it seemed to everyone that Christianity no more needed reasons to succeed than gravity does. It was bound to succeed. Its success was sponsored by destiny.
For exactly the same reason, no one has ever written a book investigating the reasons for the success of the Industrial Revolution. It's perfectly obvious to us that the Industrial Revolution was bound to succeed. It could no more have failed than a ball rolling off a table could fall toward the ceiling.
That's the power of vision.

I'm looking for personal definitions of vision or what other authors have said about vision. Any help would be appreciated.

Thank you.

A Sense of Urgency

I wonder if the words below, that came from this interview, make people feel like that undermining the very foundations of our civilization is doable and rewarding?

Many people can get behind the idea of a cataclysmic revolution that will reduce civilization to a smoking ruin overnight, and many others can get behind the idea of a day-long festival of prayer and meditation that will make civilization melt away into nothing like the Wicked Witch of the West. But the idea of undermining civilization's foundations and sapping its titanic strength incrementally as a rewarding, lifelong process is a bit of a shocker.

My high school physics teacher, when talking about mass, said that if you should ever confront a locomotive creeping down the tracks at an inch a second, your intuition will tell you that you can stop it easily just by sticking our your hand. But, even though it's traveling only an inch a second, your intuition is wrong, because its enormous mass will keep on moving forward as if you weren't even there. This is the way it is with our civilization. It has the momentum of two hundred human generations behind it. Its crushing forward movement isn't going to be stopped in a moment, but every hand pressed against it reduces its momentum infinitesimally--and the more hands that are applied to the task, the sooner it will be stopped in its tracks.