Some weeks back, I wrote a post introducing what I called the “Wittgenstein-Einstein-Sandwich Theory of Words.” For space purposes, I will here shorten this title to, simply, the “Stein-Stein Theory.” If you don’t want to click the link and read (or re-read) that previous post, here it is in a pinch: the Stein-Stein Theory contends that the words we use are always only approximations of private meanings, with varying degrees of accuracy. Essentially, they’re lies. Like large cosmic bodies rolling across the plain of spacetime, words get pulled in by the gravitational pulls of deep, wordless meaning. They spin around and around, sometimes circling closer to the truth, and sometimes whirling off, out to the outer rimmed edges, distant from anything plausibly resembling what’s in that deep dark center (but usually not quite leaving the orbit entirely).
This theory definitely should not be taken too seriously. It leaves so many questions unanswered! Questions like: that’s derivative nonsense. To which I might respond: that’s not a question, Mr.’s Chomsky and Pinker. In any event, at the moment, I’m going to ask a question for the purpose of providing corollaries to this theory: If words are lies, public approximations circling wordless private truths, etc., then where do these words, these rough cages of meaning, come from? What’s their origin?
So here I might posit an addendum to the Stein-Stein Theory. Not only do words circle the dense center, never quite wrapping their thin, straight, curvy, humped, wiry, heterogeneous frames around that pulsing, essentially human desire and need for communication…not only do words strive to find a way to express this meaning, they are also born of this center, derived and expelled into the cosmos. Because the center is also their source.
Like a geyser whose waters are constantly trying to return to their spitting origin.
To really get a feeling for how difficult this is, it might help to tilt your head back and try to hawk a loogie straight up into the air, and then catch it again in your mouth. And then imagine, instead of one unit of loogie, a torrent of cascading streams of them. (…Actually, I don’t recommend doing this. I can say with the wisdom of experience that it is both a potential choking hazard, and a means of just, basically, spitting all over yourself, with all the requisite post-attempt clean-up.)
All of which is prelude to a few more words on a phrase of some particular importance to this project.
“Indigenous Culture” and History’s Sublime Subtlety
At Earthaven, I sat in for a few workshops with the Global Ecology Network’s NextGEN group. This was made up of college students and people in their early-twenties who came together for a crash course in permaculture living, and Community development. (And if any of you are reading, I still plan to send you my reflection on those workshops. I haven’t forgotten).
During one of these workshops, the leaders presented a kind-of grand organization of history into three different periods of culture. There was: “Indigenous Culture,” “Modern Culture,” and “Next Culture.” This was the first time I’d seen this split so starkly and definitively exhibited, but the appreciation of Indigenous groups over modern society is pretty pervasive in thoughtful, especially land-centric, Communities. That said, the introduction of “Next Culture” was indeed new (although it’s hard not to see it a little bit as branding for the organization (NextGen being the organization)).
So let’s break down these phrases some.
First, the word “culture:” The word originally comes from the Latin cultura, which, aha!, means “a cultivating of agriculture.” It drifted into French in the 15th century, when it was used exclusively to mean “tilling of the land.” This land-based origin of this word is certainly of some note. It wasn’t used to mean the collective customs of a group of people until 1867, and even then had to do primarily with the intellectual life of people (this all according to eytomology.com). All handwringing about today’s unfortunate culture of cynicism and public shaming - handwringing that I would otherwise happily indulge - will have to wait for another post, because this etymological lesson just seems too pertinent to let slip away. So keep that in mind as we move to…
“Indigenous Culture.” This then, might refer to those awarenesses, customs, and traditions of Native peoples. These kin-based units were ubiquitous worldwide in the time before society’s grand experiment of self-organization and, in much of the world, before the colonization by European peoples. (The ones who’d already organized into countries and kingdoms.) For Indigenous Cultures, tribes were the arenas of human cultivation, cross-generational learning and interaction was a regular occurrence, and all this was inextricably tied to tribal land, making it a good use of the word indeed. Connection to both the physicality and spirituality of the land did not have to be learned in adulthood, as is so often the case now, but was fundamentally tied to simply being alive every day. Wild stuff (literally, sorta).
“Modern Culture,” is, here, the great behemoth born and living since the end of the heyday of “Indigenous Cultures,” and is usually treated with some varying levels of contempt or disdain by those talking about it, especially in out-of-society Intentional Community. This is usually regarded as the culture of isolation, of aversion to meaningful and healthy confrontation, of rampant materialism and consumerism, of numbness to ourselves, each other, the earth. To the extent that such a designation of this time period is “true” (remember all words are lies), or useful, I’ll raise my hand at least one hearty tick for disappointment in “Modern Culture.” Here’s Saul Bellow in Humboldt’s Gift on the topic, although he doesn’t use that exact terminology: “There came a time (Early Modern) when, apparently, life lost the ability to arrange itself. It had to be arranged. Intellectuals took this as their job. From, say, Machiavelli’s time to our own this arranging has been the one great gorgeous tantalizing misleading disastrous project.”
Great gorgeous tantalizing misleading project. Yeah, I mean, seriously.
A return to this “Indigenous Culture” is not really a practical option at this point. In the NextGen workshop, this is where “Next Culture” comes in. Next Culture seeks to leave behind Modern Culture, maybe pulling a few of the most useful gems and tools off the sinking ship, and build a new Culture with the remnants of the spirit of Indigenous Cultures still extant around us. It’s a nice thought, even if I’m not quite ready to call it quits on Modern Culture.
Of course, this is all kinda nonsense (though that doesn’t make it bad). It's a vast oversimplification, a mythologizing, and I think it’s fairly important to say so. “Modern Culture” and “Indigenous Culture” are not really diametrically opposed forces of what’s-bad-for-us vs. what’s-good-for-us. Tribal cultures, despite our whiggish romanticization, were (still are) often violent. And modernity has brought with it the advances of science, medicine, better tools, philosophy, and complex and beautiful art and music!
BUT, while no five-minute analysis of history is sufficient to understanding the stunning complexities of our past, occasionally thinking in these terms of Indigenous vs. Modern might be useful. If it helps in the struggle towards getting us closer to meaning and love, then let’s do it (sometimes)! And, of maybe more import, if it serves as an introduction that pushes us to buy books and read about the past, or seek out teachers and experiences to learn from, then all the more so! Learning as much as we can of those indigenous peoples who passed down our earliest notions of spirituality only serves our growth and spiritual betterment.
The vital thing, however, seems to be that we ought to be careful not to let those shorthand designations of “cultures” replace the cavernous nuances of history. Studying and meditating on the complexities of lost kingdoms and empires and, certainly, tribes is essential to understanding the complexities of contemporary human life. And this, in turn, is essential to better knowing ourselves, cultivating better Community, and working to heal this broken world. History, that huge preserving basket of humanity’s many trials, failures, and occasional successes, is vitally useful. Maybe the most useful tool we have. Faulkner said, “The past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past!” And this speaks to one of our best talents as human beings: our ability to remember, to learn, to see new angles in our memories with each new viewing, and to glean new lessons from them. There is a vast, maybe infinite (or maybe just really really really big, so big that it’s beyond our conception) number of details in each moment of the present, which means that history (a collection of previous present moments) can never be exhausted as a source of learning.
Many of the religious thinkers I most admire write about how one of the important roles of religion is to keep history present. (This was something repeated to me by one of the pastors at the Root and Branch Church in Chicago, which I’ll be writing about soon). The Ba'al Shem Tov, founder of Hasidism (which, if you've been reading this blog, you know I dig), taught that memory was the key into the lock of redemption. In my experience, too often in religious context, the teaching of history becomes an exercise in repeating the words without enlivening them into the present. Perhaps this is because history requires retelling, rethinking, reorganizing in order to keep pace with our present minds.
So let me end by saying that placing the best aspects of Indigenous Cultures into our present minds may indeed be one way of doing this, of enlivening history. And so, let's do it, so long as we remember to remember all the subtleties as well. (In those subtleties are history's most sublime and necessary lessons, I'm pretty sure). Maybe it'll work to think about it like this: it’s to our betterment to know the history of our lands, the ones we physically live on. And to learn that history, it's incumbent to learn deeply the history of the peoples who've lived on, and with, these lands for thousands of years. This includes the peoples of lands from the Americas to the Caucasus and everywhere in between (Middle East included). Indeed this really includes all of us. We're all indigenous to this earth. We're all the ones who’s spiritual histories and centers sprout from these lands, who’s very words are shot from the geysers of these trodden spiritual paths that we walk on.
And so, because maybe you haven't heard it before, and these histories are important, here’s a cool youtube video with an Australian Aboriginal Creation Myth told by a guy with an interesting accent:
This theory definitely should not be taken too seriously. It leaves so many questions unanswered! Questions like: that’s derivative nonsense. To which I might respond: that’s not a question, Mr.’s Chomsky and Pinker. In any event, at the moment, I’m going to ask a question for the purpose of providing corollaries to this theory: If words are lies, public approximations circling wordless private truths, etc., then where do these words, these rough cages of meaning, come from? What’s their origin?
So here I might posit an addendum to the Stein-Stein Theory. Not only do words circle the dense center, never quite wrapping their thin, straight, curvy, humped, wiry, heterogeneous frames around that pulsing, essentially human desire and need for communication…not only do words strive to find a way to express this meaning, they are also born of this center, derived and expelled into the cosmos. Because the center is also their source.
Like a geyser whose waters are constantly trying to return to their spitting origin.
To really get a feeling for how difficult this is, it might help to tilt your head back and try to hawk a loogie straight up into the air, and then catch it again in your mouth. And then imagine, instead of one unit of loogie, a torrent of cascading streams of them. (…Actually, I don’t recommend doing this. I can say with the wisdom of experience that it is both a potential choking hazard, and a means of just, basically, spitting all over yourself, with all the requisite post-attempt clean-up.)
All of which is prelude to a few more words on a phrase of some particular importance to this project.
“Indigenous Culture” and History’s Sublime Subtlety
At Earthaven, I sat in for a few workshops with the Global Ecology Network’s NextGEN group. This was made up of college students and people in their early-twenties who came together for a crash course in permaculture living, and Community development. (And if any of you are reading, I still plan to send you my reflection on those workshops. I haven’t forgotten).
During one of these workshops, the leaders presented a kind-of grand organization of history into three different periods of culture. There was: “Indigenous Culture,” “Modern Culture,” and “Next Culture.” This was the first time I’d seen this split so starkly and definitively exhibited, but the appreciation of Indigenous groups over modern society is pretty pervasive in thoughtful, especially land-centric, Communities. That said, the introduction of “Next Culture” was indeed new (although it’s hard not to see it a little bit as branding for the organization (NextGen being the organization)).
So let’s break down these phrases some.
First, the word “culture:” The word originally comes from the Latin cultura, which, aha!, means “a cultivating of agriculture.” It drifted into French in the 15th century, when it was used exclusively to mean “tilling of the land.” This land-based origin of this word is certainly of some note. It wasn’t used to mean the collective customs of a group of people until 1867, and even then had to do primarily with the intellectual life of people (this all according to eytomology.com). All handwringing about today’s unfortunate culture of cynicism and public shaming - handwringing that I would otherwise happily indulge - will have to wait for another post, because this etymological lesson just seems too pertinent to let slip away. So keep that in mind as we move to…
“Indigenous Culture.” This then, might refer to those awarenesses, customs, and traditions of Native peoples. These kin-based units were ubiquitous worldwide in the time before society’s grand experiment of self-organization and, in much of the world, before the colonization by European peoples. (The ones who’d already organized into countries and kingdoms.) For Indigenous Cultures, tribes were the arenas of human cultivation, cross-generational learning and interaction was a regular occurrence, and all this was inextricably tied to tribal land, making it a good use of the word indeed. Connection to both the physicality and spirituality of the land did not have to be learned in adulthood, as is so often the case now, but was fundamentally tied to simply being alive every day. Wild stuff (literally, sorta).
“Modern Culture,” is, here, the great behemoth born and living since the end of the heyday of “Indigenous Cultures,” and is usually treated with some varying levels of contempt or disdain by those talking about it, especially in out-of-society Intentional Community. This is usually regarded as the culture of isolation, of aversion to meaningful and healthy confrontation, of rampant materialism and consumerism, of numbness to ourselves, each other, the earth. To the extent that such a designation of this time period is “true” (remember all words are lies), or useful, I’ll raise my hand at least one hearty tick for disappointment in “Modern Culture.” Here’s Saul Bellow in Humboldt’s Gift on the topic, although he doesn’t use that exact terminology: “There came a time (Early Modern) when, apparently, life lost the ability to arrange itself. It had to be arranged. Intellectuals took this as their job. From, say, Machiavelli’s time to our own this arranging has been the one great gorgeous tantalizing misleading disastrous project.”
Great gorgeous tantalizing misleading project. Yeah, I mean, seriously.
A return to this “Indigenous Culture” is not really a practical option at this point. In the NextGen workshop, this is where “Next Culture” comes in. Next Culture seeks to leave behind Modern Culture, maybe pulling a few of the most useful gems and tools off the sinking ship, and build a new Culture with the remnants of the spirit of Indigenous Cultures still extant around us. It’s a nice thought, even if I’m not quite ready to call it quits on Modern Culture.
Of course, this is all kinda nonsense (though that doesn’t make it bad). It's a vast oversimplification, a mythologizing, and I think it’s fairly important to say so. “Modern Culture” and “Indigenous Culture” are not really diametrically opposed forces of what’s-bad-for-us vs. what’s-good-for-us. Tribal cultures, despite our whiggish romanticization, were (still are) often violent. And modernity has brought with it the advances of science, medicine, better tools, philosophy, and complex and beautiful art and music!
BUT, while no five-minute analysis of history is sufficient to understanding the stunning complexities of our past, occasionally thinking in these terms of Indigenous vs. Modern might be useful. If it helps in the struggle towards getting us closer to meaning and love, then let’s do it (sometimes)! And, of maybe more import, if it serves as an introduction that pushes us to buy books and read about the past, or seek out teachers and experiences to learn from, then all the more so! Learning as much as we can of those indigenous peoples who passed down our earliest notions of spirituality only serves our growth and spiritual betterment.
The vital thing, however, seems to be that we ought to be careful not to let those shorthand designations of “cultures” replace the cavernous nuances of history. Studying and meditating on the complexities of lost kingdoms and empires and, certainly, tribes is essential to understanding the complexities of contemporary human life. And this, in turn, is essential to better knowing ourselves, cultivating better Community, and working to heal this broken world. History, that huge preserving basket of humanity’s many trials, failures, and occasional successes, is vitally useful. Maybe the most useful tool we have. Faulkner said, “The past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past!” And this speaks to one of our best talents as human beings: our ability to remember, to learn, to see new angles in our memories with each new viewing, and to glean new lessons from them. There is a vast, maybe infinite (or maybe just really really really big, so big that it’s beyond our conception) number of details in each moment of the present, which means that history (a collection of previous present moments) can never be exhausted as a source of learning.
Many of the religious thinkers I most admire write about how one of the important roles of religion is to keep history present. (This was something repeated to me by one of the pastors at the Root and Branch Church in Chicago, which I’ll be writing about soon). The Ba'al Shem Tov, founder of Hasidism (which, if you've been reading this blog, you know I dig), taught that memory was the key into the lock of redemption. In my experience, too often in religious context, the teaching of history becomes an exercise in repeating the words without enlivening them into the present. Perhaps this is because history requires retelling, rethinking, reorganizing in order to keep pace with our present minds.
So let me end by saying that placing the best aspects of Indigenous Cultures into our present minds may indeed be one way of doing this, of enlivening history. And so, let's do it, so long as we remember to remember all the subtleties as well. (In those subtleties are history's most sublime and necessary lessons, I'm pretty sure). Maybe it'll work to think about it like this: it’s to our betterment to know the history of our lands, the ones we physically live on. And to learn that history, it's incumbent to learn deeply the history of the peoples who've lived on, and with, these lands for thousands of years. This includes the peoples of lands from the Americas to the Caucasus and everywhere in between (Middle East included). Indeed this really includes all of us. We're all indigenous to this earth. We're all the ones who’s spiritual histories and centers sprout from these lands, who’s very words are shot from the geysers of these trodden spiritual paths that we walk on.
And so, because maybe you haven't heard it before, and these histories are important, here’s a cool youtube video with an Australian Aboriginal Creation Myth told by a guy with an interesting accent: