Vestigial Connections remain from when we were Earth centered and aware of the heavens as partners in our journeys. Our culture has all but forsaken the vast majority of our time one this planet as human beings. With a single word, primitive, we brand tens of thousands of years as ineffectual, or at least irrelevant. The last hundred years or so, have seen majority culture walk away from all of that. The incandescent light and newer technologies render the vastness of the universe paltry compared to a single photon emitter within arms reach. We all worship the Sun and Moon in our own way. some just do it more directly and in-person (so to speak) with the elemental force. However, in a culture rife with falsehood, based on a giant lie and perpetrated upon us by a select few, who hold virtually all of the world's wealth, power and prestige, we often forget that we are creatures first and that our relationship to what it is to be truly human matters more than the trinkets we have amassed.
In "primitive" cultures, anthropologists have documented that about 20% of native folks lives are spent on fulfilling their housing, clothing and food needs. The rest of their time is spent in contemplation, interaction with others, dance, rites, rituals and storytelling. Even when they are actively attending to achieving their basic needs, they seemed to be appreciating one another, not at all dissolute or estranged from their community of respected friends/relatives. I try to live as primitively as possible among the mayhem of humankind. Although not there yet, I'm working on it.
The connections we feel are only severed since the advent of religion, which has been used as a tool of social control and oppression since it was invented. I suppose you could go back 22K to 24K years and ask the person who made the Venus of Willendorf and ask what religion they were...that concept may not have existed for another twenty-thousand years! Each of us, every single one, since the beginning of time, stood approximately half of each day bathed is Sun and about half wrapped in the arms of moonlight if there was any, but we hide inside concrete and steel, or under a shade of asphalt all of our lives and scurry in the face of wind or rain to the sunless hovels we inhabit, lighting them up at night to scare away any and all contact with the stars. When I spend time, outside, whatever the weather, I get charged up and it invigorates me on a cellular level. I firmly believe that this relationship is what has guided my pagan beliefs as well as informed my understanding of much of how the world actually works.
Understanding the dangers of severing the ties to our ancestors, their sensibilities, ethics, or relationship to the planet without good cause, or with utter disregard to what will be lost is a fool's errand of the most heinous kind. It is well known that when new technologies are developed, it can take several generations to understand he dangers and liabilities of the new technology. By the time we all accept it as "normal" the damage may be done virtually forever.Take the PCBs that flow past my home. They were used in the fifties and sixties in carbonless paper. Over 250,000 tons flushed into the environment, of which 160,000 tons flushed all the way out into the Bay of Green Bay. what is left in river sediments is costing hundreds of millions of dollars to "clean up" which is code for put somewhere else.
Persistent, long lived compounds that we knew were harmful would never have been allowed to take place in a primitive culture. They were too happy being together, enjoying the lives they were living than to ever consider poisoning the place they would play and catch their dinner. I am proud to exhibit "primitive" thinking skills. they kept our species alive for 200,000 years. As far as I know, the Venus of Willendorf represented a sacred and divine feminine that I recognize today, she is as modern as performance art. the creative crucible is sacred. The automobile as well, and the cover up about deadly effects of lead, these are crimes that primitive people would never even consider. Not only are we prisoners of the recurring costs of infrastructure improvements, for the "privilege" of having cars, we also have the taint in the air of toxic and carcinogenic compounds! Yay!
The sacred breath of Mother Earth is a real thing, not to be taken for granted.
Nor are the sacred fires of Father Sun to be taken for granted. 100 years ago whale oil gave a tiny fraction of all the people on earth light to read by at night. 1000 years ago, it was olive oil. Now, much of the population can talk, or see anywhere in the world with a glowing box in their pocket. All this at lower and lower immediate cost, but long term there will most assuredly be repercussions.
I look around me at night and not only are people unaware of the stars that shine, many are looking into their screens so intently as to be night blind to the surroundings the streetlights were meant to reveal. Losing our connection to the elemental forces has taken centuries to become a fully recognized problem, at what cost will we remedy this technological mistake?
Grandma Moon will embrace you, but you have to let her in to your life. We are only a half dozen generations from the days when you could see the vastness of space with the unaided eye in profound ways, the skies literally had the power to move you. The ancient pantheon of heavenly partners with whom humanity developed are still there for us. Perhaps discovering just this, is a way of coming home. to a more authentic and ancient "self" that we are each entitled to. I don't like most feelings of entitlement, but I do believe that we have the right top live far more primitively that we are trying to do today. The opposite has been tried unsuccessfully for all this time and it has not done anything but created an oligarchy. Reaching back to communal living and creating abundance from local resources may be the only way to reclaim our freedom.
In "primitive" cultures, anthropologists have documented that about 20% of native folks lives are spent on fulfilling their housing, clothing and food needs. The rest of their time is spent in contemplation, interaction with others, dance, rites, rituals and storytelling. Even when they are actively attending to achieving their basic needs, they seemed to be appreciating one another, not at all dissolute or estranged from their community of respected friends/relatives. I try to live as primitively as possible among the mayhem of humankind. Although not there yet, I'm working on it.
The connections we feel are only severed since the advent of religion, which has been used as a tool of social control and oppression since it was invented. I suppose you could go back 22K to 24K years and ask the person who made the Venus of Willendorf and ask what religion they were...that concept may not have existed for another twenty-thousand years! Each of us, every single one, since the beginning of time, stood approximately half of each day bathed is Sun and about half wrapped in the arms of moonlight if there was any, but we hide inside concrete and steel, or under a shade of asphalt all of our lives and scurry in the face of wind or rain to the sunless hovels we inhabit, lighting them up at night to scare away any and all contact with the stars. When I spend time, outside, whatever the weather, I get charged up and it invigorates me on a cellular level. I firmly believe that this relationship is what has guided my pagan beliefs as well as informed my understanding of much of how the world actually works.
Understanding the dangers of severing the ties to our ancestors, their sensibilities, ethics, or relationship to the planet without good cause, or with utter disregard to what will be lost is a fool's errand of the most heinous kind. It is well known that when new technologies are developed, it can take several generations to understand he dangers and liabilities of the new technology. By the time we all accept it as "normal" the damage may be done virtually forever.Take the PCBs that flow past my home. They were used in the fifties and sixties in carbonless paper. Over 250,000 tons flushed into the environment, of which 160,000 tons flushed all the way out into the Bay of Green Bay. what is left in river sediments is costing hundreds of millions of dollars to "clean up" which is code for put somewhere else.
Persistent, long lived compounds that we knew were harmful would never have been allowed to take place in a primitive culture. They were too happy being together, enjoying the lives they were living than to ever consider poisoning the place they would play and catch their dinner. I am proud to exhibit "primitive" thinking skills. they kept our species alive for 200,000 years. As far as I know, the Venus of Willendorf represented a sacred and divine feminine that I recognize today, she is as modern as performance art. the creative crucible is sacred. The automobile as well, and the cover up about deadly effects of lead, these are crimes that primitive people would never even consider. Not only are we prisoners of the recurring costs of infrastructure improvements, for the "privilege" of having cars, we also have the taint in the air of toxic and carcinogenic compounds! Yay!
The sacred breath of Mother Earth is a real thing, not to be taken for granted.
Nor are the sacred fires of Father Sun to be taken for granted. 100 years ago whale oil gave a tiny fraction of all the people on earth light to read by at night. 1000 years ago, it was olive oil. Now, much of the population can talk, or see anywhere in the world with a glowing box in their pocket. All this at lower and lower immediate cost, but long term there will most assuredly be repercussions.
I look around me at night and not only are people unaware of the stars that shine, many are looking into their screens so intently as to be night blind to the surroundings the streetlights were meant to reveal. Losing our connection to the elemental forces has taken centuries to become a fully recognized problem, at what cost will we remedy this technological mistake?
Grandma Moon will embrace you, but you have to let her in to your life. We are only a half dozen generations from the days when you could see the vastness of space with the unaided eye in profound ways, the skies literally had the power to move you. The ancient pantheon of heavenly partners with whom humanity developed are still there for us. Perhaps discovering just this, is a way of coming home. to a more authentic and ancient "self" that we are each entitled to. I don't like most feelings of entitlement, but I do believe that we have the right top live far more primitively that we are trying to do today. The opposite has been tried unsuccessfully for all this time and it has not done anything but created an oligarchy. Reaching back to communal living and creating abundance from local resources may be the only way to reclaim our freedom.
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