Culture and Law

Does culture shape law? Or does law shape culture? I say both. It's not an either/or scenario. People sometimes comment and ask this important question when learning about the rights-based Community Right's organizing and lawmaking strategy: You can make all the laws you want, but how are you going to make sure they're enforced?

My answer usually is that depends on the values of our culture. Here is an example, let's say you form a citizen majority and make a law giving a local river rights. If the majority of the people in the culture don't value the health and self-determination of the river the laws will mean nothing. It will eventually be killed or survive until this insane culture kills itself.

So I recommend to those concerned about the dance of law and culture my favorite two booklets available on the subject. They're the best tools that I know of to change both. Here are two quotes from them that I think offer us a good vision.

From On Community Civil Disobedience: "We can choose to be hospice workers to dying planet--seeking to ease its transition--or we can choose to be mid-wives to a different system waiting to be born." (pg. 49)

From The Book of the Damned: "Every creature born in the biological of the earth belongs to that community. Nothing lives in isolation from the rest; nothing can live in isolation from the rest. Nothing lives only in itself, needing nothing from the community. Nothing lives only for itself, owing nothing to the community. Nothing is untouchable or untouched." (Daniel Quinn, pg. 23)

Re-Imagining Us

"Imagine our ancestors [primitive tribal peoples] enacting a different story from ours. Not a story about man mastering his environment. Not a story about man's conquest of the world. Not a story in which products and productivity figured at all."--Daniel Quinn, The Book of the Damned

Quinn Quote Saturday

"Homo magister [Man the ruler of the world] was ultimately forced to overcome his repugnance to the idea that the earth is not the astronomical center of the universe. To get on with his mastery of the world, he was forced to deal with this repellent idea, forced to build a totally new astronomy based on it. If he hadn't, he would have made a fool of himself on the way to the moon.
"But he has not yet been forced to deal meaningfully with the fact that HIS story, the story of man ruler of the world, represents only a half of one percent of the whole story of man.
"He hasn't built a totally new understanding of the story based on that fact. He doesn't want to.
"But if he doesn't, he's going to make an even worse fool of himself than just getting lost on the way to the moon.
"He's going to become extinct.[Daniel Quinn, Pg. 16, The Book of the Damned]

Quinn Quote Saturday

"Every creature born in the biological community of the earth belongs to that community. Nothing lives in isolation from the rest; nothing can live in isolation from the rest. Nothing lives only in itself, needing nothing from the community. Nothing lives only for itself, owing nothing to the community. Nothing is untouchable or untouched.
"Every life in the community is owed to the community--and is paid back to the community in death.
"The community is a web of life, and every strand of the web is a path to all the other strands. Nothing is exempt. Nothing is special. Nothing lives on a strand by itself, unconnected to the rest. Nothing is wasted. Everything that lives is food for another."--Daniel Quinn, Pg.23, The Book of the Damned

The Book of the Damned

I pulled out Daniel Quinn's The Book of the Damned this morning to look for a quote, and found this one:

"Imagine that the gods have a care for everything that lives in the community of life on earth."--Daniel Quinn