In Harmony With Nature

"Man" is too general, Too vague.
"Man who has no knowledge of their true self", would perhaps be more appropriate...
The culture the Dalai lama speaks of is not my culture, my culture has much more substance.

Llama Su wrote: The culture the Dalai lama speaks of is not my culture, my culture has much more substance.

This might offend you and for that I'm sorry. If you live in a place where the Food is under Lock and Key you belong to the same culture. We may differ in many ways but when it comes to getting our most basic need every on in Civilization belongs to the same culture because it is the same culture. If the Food that is under Lock and Key comes SOLELY from a farm you belong to the same culture. No other culture that I know of believes that the food should solely come from a farm and at the same times makes you work for that same food. Is this the culture the Dalai Lama speaks of? Probably since this culture has spread across the entire world.

You could just call this my opinion though.

That food argument always makes me wonder...if we don't have people who grow/hunt/gather/whatever our food then what do you expect doctors, road workers, teachers, and all other professionals to do? I mean, if you're spending your day perfecting your surgery techniques in order to help those in need, then you don't have a lot of time to go out and hunt and gather your own food. The whole monetary or barter and trade system seems to be a pretty handy idea. Pay the doctors for their service so they can spend their time improving, and they'll pay the farmer/hunter/gatherer/whatever for the time they spend growing/collecting the food that they sell.

It's not like you still can't go out and grow/hunt/gather in this society. It's still done...just not by many. Also, everybody has to "work" for food. Either by hunting and gathering or by working nine to five in order to buy it from a farmer. So why is working a job in order to pay for your food a bad thing?

Daniel,

As always, plus one for the Daniel Quinn references. I think he is certainly onto something with his series of books.

Another aspect of this topic I'd like to explore is our relationship with life on earth, with emphasis on relationship. I liked Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game series - Particularly the Demosthenes Hierarchy of Foreignness. Do I 100% agree with all of it? I don't know, entirely. I haven't sat down and really given it a huge amount of thought. But I DO like some of its points.

Hierarchy of Foreignness

Thoughts?

THIS IS WAY OFF TOPIC I'M SORRY but its rude to leave a question unanswered. :whistle:

So why is working a job in order to pay for your food a bad thing?

Working a Job isn't a bad thing. I just feel that its very inefficient and often times the only way to make a living.

if we don't have people who grow/hunt/gather/whatever our food then what do you expect doctors, road workers, teachers, and all other professionals to do? The whole monetary or barter and trade system seems to be a pretty handy idea. Pay the doctors for their service so they can spend their time improving, and they'll pay the farmer/hunter/gatherer/whatever for the time they spend growing/collecting the food that they sell.

Where would workers find the time to prefect their crafts if they're out foraging for food?

Answering that isn't gong to be easy. I'll have to answer a few other questions before I can answer that one so If I Dont answer it right away just hang in there I'll get around to it.

The first thing is that I don't actually have a solid answer to that. There are many ways in which workers could perfect their crafts and forage at the same time. I don't know what would work best though. What I do know is if the fundamental way in which we get food changes so do a lot of other things. If farm workers no longer have to farm for an entire country but instead only work a few hours a day to provide food for just their family than that leaves a former farmer almost a WHOLE day to practice being a Doctor. Also it doesn't take 18 years to become a Doctor. Especially if you no longer have to work a third of a day just to survive. Next...if public schools constantly thought survival(growing/identifying/ hunting) through a students life than every one would not only be able to provide for them selves but there would be no starving homeless. Just like every one in a household doesn't have to work in order to pay the bills not every one in a house hold would have to forage in order to provide the food they need. This would give other people ENTIRE days off of work to practice their craft.

This system isn't perfect but there's no foodstamps, welfare, or soup kitchens in it.

As for the monetary or barter and trade system. Well this system only works well for those on top. In other words it works well for the HAVES, it works ok for the HAVES LESS, it doesn't work very well for the HAVES EVEN LESS, and doesn't work at all for the HAVES NONE.

Really it comes down to what you value. Money or Less Labor.

I always have to question when people compare hunter/gatherers from 5000 years ago with modern people. Why not compare modern sustainable people with modern unsustainable people? You won't see it on the news or in any mainstream journals, but there are entire communities of people with sustainable practices and they're doing quite well. Some of them have their own currencies while others don't even use currency. Some use labor to keep score while others don't keep score at all. Some use all the latest technology while others don't use anything from the last 100 years.

In almost all of them, they practice permaculture. In almost all of the unsustainable communities they practice monoculture which involves big machines, pesticides, herbicides, GMO, soil depletion, animal cruelty, etc. One group respects the pigness of the pig while the other views the pig as a pile of inanimate protoplasm and minerals that can be manipulated to be bigger, fatter, and yield maximum profit.

Anyway, one system is holistic. The other... We have this very mechanistic view in our Greco, Roman, Western, Reductionist, linear, fragmented, compartmentalized, disconnected, democratized, individualized, parts-oriented, thought process we never think about the whole. Because what I’ve found out, serendipitously, my success is tied to the cumulative effect of everyday stories and faithfulness to injecting sacredness and nobility into every little action of my day. And when we put that kind of ministry – ours is a ministry of healing the land – and when we allow that kind of sacredness and that kind of nobility to permeate every one of our actions the world will be ennobled. The world will indeed rise up to meet us as we leave our legacies and the stamp of our life and life’s story as it becomes our stories for our children and grandchildren.

What will they tell about us? He or she was a person of sacredness and nobility in every aspect of their life, we will have raised a great legacy for our families and our heritage.

Wow beautiful practical, present application . . .yes . . .many modern communities . . . . demonstrating . .
give all to all from a whole center personally and . . . by that which they have to give specifically (to their circles and to all)

It is by their purpose and principles for doing so . . that it is so . . .

that it inherently protects the weak . .
by strengthening (both educationally and in specific ways, by demontration, and by the way humans and all living things are equally valued)

it also unravels naturally . . the egoic thought systems (the suffering of the individual self centeredness and the exoteric manifestations in current systems (not limited to religious and governmental institutions . . . . )

Ego here meaning . . . the nature of the self centered isolated condition of man (the common suffering budda talked about)

And that which Watts addresses (although The Book) . . is a somewhat victim oriented apporach to the nature that all men suffer the self centered condition . . because he puts cause outside and then leaps outside as a solution . . . . He isn't a very holistic demonstration by the way he lived his life either. . same thing with Tolle . . 6 books . 6 different publishers . . (wowser). . .

Great philosophers . . . practice . . another story. .

True spiritual living. . .inner world devotions applied to outer situations equally . . . it is the most natural, harmonistically and compassionate manner of living . raises awareness. .heals . . unifys . . protects, serves . . .

sacred. . .an ancient practice in fact. . .

Whether or not one knows the five aspects studied in martial arts . . or the five aspects in traditional chinese medicine . . .or whether or not one can embrace metaphyics or alchemy . . . (which all can be useful and helpful, each in its own way) . . . . . . . there is powerful cause and effect (relationship and oneness) in the joint practice of inner journey combined with an individual's (or a groups) personal relation policy (giggle) to all living things and to ALL his/her practices

Whyte Horse wrote: I always have to question when people compare hunter/gatherers from 5000 years ago with modern people. Why not compare modern sustainable people with modern unsustainable people?

I don't disagree with any particular point. What I'd like to ask is where have the hunter/gatherers from 5000 years ago gone to? Are they extinct? Did they leave the planet? :huh:

When I point out the fact that Civilization does not represent humanity as a whole its because of hunter/gatherers of the present.

In harmony with nature. Humans already achieved this though they hardly had to conquer the world to do this.

Daniel L. wrote:

Whyte Horse wrote: I always have to question when people compare hunter/gatherers from 5000 years ago with modern people. Why not compare modern sustainable people with modern unsustainable people?

I don't disagree with any particular point. What I'd like to ask is where have the hunter/gatherers from 5000 years ago gone to? Are they extinct? Did they leave the planet? :huh:

When I point out the fact that Civilization does not represent humanity as a whole its because of hunter/gatherers of the present.

In harmony with nature. Humans already achieved this though they hardly had to conquer the world to do this.

Well the remaining hunter/gatherer civlizations are pretty rare and unique in that they are either geographically isolated or isolationist by choice. The oldest may be in Africa followed by South America. Nevertheless, they survived just fine.

I believe most of the other hunter/gatherer societies were eradicated by force. It's not as though they met people from advanced civilizations and said "yeah hunting sucks, I'll go be a peasant to the King of England" or "hey fishing sucks, I'll go be a slave for the Japanese Emperor instead". If you've ever played age of empires you can see the technology tree that gives one army an advantage over another but it's all pretty historically accurate... If you didn't have a stone castle with a trebuchet, cannons, archers, etc then the British could sail up with an army and conquer you. It gets really funny too if you look at all the ways the Native Americans defeated the US Army with bows/arrows vs rifles... although that wasn't always the case and about 100million Natives were lost to war and disease.

Modern permaculture is a planned form of hunting/gathering. Many of it's proponents now claim they get higher yields per acre than monocrop farms and use a fraction of the energy, no pesticides, no fertilizers, etc. I personally have seen it on my own property. We have an egg-mobile that goes around fertilizing our lawn, removing bugs, and aerating the soil while it produces 6 eggs/day and uses minimal food because the chickens like eating bugs and grass rather than rice or chicken feed from China with added melamine .

So to answer your question, yes the hunter/gatherers have all been wiped out to an extent they are more of an academic area rather than a societal system practiced by large numbers of humans. That being said, there is a huge new crop of permaculture farmers exploding all over the world and rewilding/regenerating the land to a point where it could sustain hunter gatherers in large numbers.

Mareeka wrote: Wow beautiful practical, present application . . .yes . . .many modern communities . . . . demonstrating . .
give all to all from a whole center personally and . . . by that which they have to give specifically (to their circles and to all)

It is by their purpose and principles for doing so . . that it is so . . .

that it inherently protects the weak . .
by strengthening (both educationally and in specific ways, by demontration, and by the way humans and all living things are equally valued)

it also unravels naturally . . the egoic thought systems (the suffering of the individual self centeredness and the exoteric manifestations in current systems (not limited to religious and governmental institutions . . . . )

Ego here meaning . . . the nature of the self centered isolated condition of man (the common suffering budda talked about)

And that which Watts addresses (although The Book) . . is a somewhat victim oriented apporach to the nature that all men suffer the self centered condition . . because he puts cause outside and then leaps outside as a solution . . . . He isn't a very holistic demonstration by the way he lived his life either. . same thing with Tolle . . 6 books . 6 different publishers . . (wowser). . .

Great philosophers . . . practice . . another story. .

True spiritual living. . .inner world devotions applied to outer situations equally . . . it is the most natural, harmonistically and compassionate manner of living . raises awareness. .heals . . unifys . . protects, serves . . .

sacred. . .an ancient practice in fact. . .

Whether or not one knows the five aspects studied in martial arts . . or the five aspects in traditional chinese medicine . . .or whether or not one can embrace metaphyics or alchemy . . . (which all can be useful and helpful, each in its own way) . . . . . . . there is powerful cause and effect (relationship and oneness) in the joint practice of inner journey combined with an individual's (or a groups) personal relation policy (giggle) to all living things and to ALL his/her practices

That's a great way to tie everything together.
Ego/Self->Selfishness->Isolation->Suffering->Anger->Hate->Dark Side
Replace -> with "leads to" and you get some Jedi stuff like Ego leads to Selfishness, Selfishness leads to Isolation...etc

So maybe the "harmony with nature" thing is a symptom that we need an ego-check, lol.