So, since this is somewhat based on that, you should take a moment, head over to MorganPDX.com and read “I jaywalk because I’m Jewish.” Go ahead, it’s short, well-written, and will only take five minutes.

I’ll wait.

…

Back? Good. Now the reason I love this post is because it’s a perfect illustration to me of why people will never get along– even while it’s a perfect illustration of why they should. What am I talking about? Subtle, but it showed me that two people can have such similar goals, similar ideals, similar feelings on a subject, and can still arrive at completely opposing outcomes.

Talk about wild!

That’s why the Nazis rose to power

It goes like this, I completely understand and empathize with Morgan’s view. I know that others do too. Morgan mentioned that it might be over the top to equate crossing signals and Nazis, but I was at a Leo Kottke concert where he said “Okay, my guitar’s in tune because the machine said so. That’s why the Nazis rose to power.”

Basically, she has a point, and has internalized that point. Crossing the street when she feels it’s appropriate, whether or not a mechanized sign tells her to, is a way to stay thoughtful. Stay mindful.

What’s interesting to me is this. Staying mindful is exactly why I wait for the sign.

Time, Time, Time is on my side. Yes it is.

It’s about mindfulness, and my stand for mindfulness comes from an anthropological perspective on time. I’ve written and researched quite a bit on time elsewhere, but the basic idea comes down to this. The more accurately a culture can measure time, the more the society becomes dictated by that measurement of time.

My interest in this came when I realized that two parts of my ancestor were ridiculed by the third part because of time. “Colored people’s time” and “Indian time” were chastisements that our great British fore-bearers used quite a bit. I used to think colored-people’s time and Indian time were different, but one day I realized that they were the same thing. More than this, they were the same as “Irish time,” “Island Time” and a host of other “times” that–basically– Northern European colonists were pissed off about.

Modern society– specifically our relationship with time– spawns from British culture, but that’s not “human” or “universal.” In Britain, things were run by the clock. It was the clock that dictated when things happened, what was done. Things, in Britain, ran “on time.”

Take the briefest of moments, and think about how much this has permeated your own life. It is perfectly acceptable to say “I can’t eat now, it’s too early.”

Think about this one: “It’s late, so I have to go to bed.”

Now let’s back up a few hundred years and realize something. People used to go to bed when they were tired. They used to eat when they were hungry. Taken from a specific perspective, it’s absolutely ridiculous to say “I’m not allowed to eat because a clock is telling me I can’t.”

Stop looking at the clock and listen to your fucking body, people.

Moving Fast

There’s another aspect to this that’s even more subtle. Time sensitivity. The more accurately we can measure time, the more we focus on smaller bits of time. We think seconds count. And so we do everything we can to “save” them. We actually think we can “save” time.

You may not believe this, but there are a great many cultures who laugh at us for our ridiculously naïve notion that we can “save,” and “spend” time. For our notion that time is a commodity– that time is money. It’s really quite silly.

Because think of it. While we’re busy obsessing over “saving” those few seconds, are we actually living them? Are we somehow storing them up and using them later in the day? To what? Watch TV? Program a fucking computer?

Of course we are. That’s why we’ve had 50+ years of “time saving” devices and yet have less time today than 50 years ago. It’s justification of effort. If we don’t buy into this whole “saving time” rubbish, then we feel pretty fucking stupid, and we don’t want to feel stupid, so we buy in.

And we do everything fast.

We drive fast, we walk fast, we work fast, we eat fast. We drive to work while we’re eating, hell, we work while we’re driving while we’re eating!

We multi-task. Why?

To save time.

And everything we do get’s faster, and we keep saving more and more time, and we keep moving faster, and then it’s 30 years later and you don’t know why you never bothered to learn how to fucking swim.

Stop!

Here’s the deal, people: There are two dominant signals that Modern Western culture gives us. 1) Be different, and 2) Hurry the fuck up.

No. Put away the judgment and think about that for a minute. Our entire culture is based on “Standing out,” and “Moving fast.” The the more differnt you are, the better. The faster, the better.

Give me a four letter word that is universally symbolic of “stupid” in America…

Slow.

Oop, there it is.

Oh shit, I’m sorry, didn’t you want to talk about mindless adherence to the machine?

One time I found that I was walking fast through downtown Portland, crossing against the light, hurrying to get to someplace. It didn’t even occur to me until I got there that I didn’t need to be there for 15 minutes. I basically hurried all the way across downtown when I didn’t need to. Why? Because that’s just how you move downtown. You walk fast. You hurry. I was just being part of the machine.

Because walking extra slowly felt…

Stupid.

I think about this a lot. Mainly because my dad thought about it a lot, and he made me think about it. Growing up, I never understood why the man walked so fucking slow!

Swimming in Time

The Modern Western perspective on time is just that. The Modern Western perspective. It’s not the only valid perspective. For some cultures, time is not a linear flow of a clock. Believe it or not, there are cultures that see time not as a train, but as a pool in which they swim.

And your perspective can change. Your experience of time can change. You can change time. You can slow it down.

Just wait.

And that’s what I do. I like to wait. Because waiting is– not a pausing of time– but a space that gives me the ability to truly experience it.

Think about it. Waiting is something that we are supposed to universally hate. But what is waiting?

Well, if the clock is driving you, then waiting is “wasted” time. Another monetary term to describe our temporal experience, and another term that is comical to many non-Western cultures. Really, do you honestly believe that you can “waste” time? Time is. It’s not saved, stored, spent or wasted. It just is. It is our perception that’s wasted.

You live every moment of every day regardless of what time does. When you are waiting, that is not time “wasted” that’s time “lived.” It’s your decision to ignore your experience of it and be frustrated about waiting rather than happy about living.

It’s your choice.

You’re life is not on pause, you are just swimming in a different part of the pool.

But we’re so used to things moving fast, we need super-stimulated sensory overflow. We’re in the machine. Cogs. Moving fast to save of time and promote the efficient transfer of information– of money.

We’re used to fast. We expect fast. We even want fast. So much so that we’d never think of just sitting in a chair and staring at the sky for 6 hours. Or 2 hours. Or a half hour.

Or 30 seconds.

Oop, there it is.

We don’t even think about it. We just do everything fast. We say stupid people are “slow,” we stand out in a crowd, we celebrate individualism, and we save time by not waiting for a 30-fucking-second stop light.

Perspectives

When I came west from the East Coast, I was amazed at the number of people that waited at crosswalks. In the Northeast, you might actually get hit for doing that. Seriously. Here, everything seemed just a bit, well, slower. So I decided that I liked that. After all, it gives me a small space with nothing to do. Nothing to do but “be.”

So I decided to swim in time by waiting for the light, looking at the buildings around me, staring at the sky. It’s only 30 seconds. But it’s a nice 30 seconds. I had to condition myself, of course. And sometimes I fall back into the machine and just hurry along to nowhere. But mostly, I wait.

I don’t jaywalk, because I’m an Indian. And I’m trying not to let this world, this culture, dictate my experience of time. I’m trying not to let a fucking clock tell me when I’m allowed to eat and sleep. I’m trying to remember that my experience is not a linear fast moving train, but a blade of grass in the wind.

I’m trying to be mindful. I’m trying to remind myself that slow is not stupid– despite the fact that everything I see tries to convince me of that fact.

This is why what Morgan wrote is so remarkable for me. Because we feel the same way. We feel the same way, yet we have arrived at two mutually exclusive outcomes. She doesn’t want to listen to a machine, so she jaywalks. I don’t want to listen to a machine, so I wait.

This is why humans will never get along, and this is why we should. Because half the time we want the same thing, just in a different way– and humans get so caught up in the “different outcome” side, they forget to look at the “same desires” part.

Because it’s not about the outcome, it’s about mindfulness. I think it’s beautiful that Morgan jaywalks. I want Morgan to jaywalk. Why? Not because I care one fucking way or another about her jaywalking, but because she’s found a way to stay mindful. She’s found her cue that helps her make a choice. She’s a conscious soul making a conscious decision.

She’s not mindlessly saying “must move fast…” She saying “This moment in my life is a mindful choice, and I am honoring my ancestors by making this choice.”

It doesn’t matter what the choice is. What matters– the only thing that matters to any of us is this:

It is a choice.

And, more importantly, the act of giving itself has meaning. Deep meaning.

When I give a gift, the responsibility of that gift lies with me, the giver. It is my responsibility to know this person, to take the time to seek and to listen. It is my responsibility to find that one thing that they secretly want, but would not share with themselves. That thing they feel they don’t deserve or can’t afford.

Then, having given them this gift, I thus remove their guilt of having this thing.

That is the real gift.

The gift of receiving the thing free of the burden of needing justification. If I gave an expensive but unwanted jewel, I’d be saying “here’s meaninglessness in our meaningless relationship.” If I give a treasured but inexpensive trifle, I’m saying “Here is meaning, in the depth of our relationship.”

Now, this is not to say that this is universally true. There are times when I am obliged to give a gift to someone I don’t know, or haven’t had time to know, or maybe even will never know. How could I accept the responsibility of knowing this unknowable person enough to know what their secret inner desires are?

I can’t.

But what I can do is do my best to find out what I can, and, all else failing, maybe giving this person something that I, myself, would want– or at least that part of me that I feel is most in common with that person.

The underlying goal here, whatever the outcome, is the same: Relationship.

Gift-giving is an act that deepens a relationship by focusing the responsibility of listening and learning on the giver, rather than focusing the responsibility of reciprocity on the receiver.

Thanks as…

And as to thanks, rarely do I want them. That’s another incongruity between myself and Jessica’s family. Rather than fawning with praise and thanks as expected, I want a minimum of thanks. A mere gesture is enough.

Why?

Because if we focus on the thanks that are due me as a gift-giver, then we’re focusing on the wrong part.

I do not give a gift to demand praise, to require acknowledgment. The more you thank me, the more we focus on the praise, and that’s not the point of giving the gift. The reciprocity I expect is not blatant acknowledgment, but subtle depth. The reciprocity is the deepening of the relationship. Don’t thank me, acknowledge to yourself that we share, that we listen, and then deepen that listening.

The giving of a gift in my culture is a strengthening of the relationship, because life centers around our relationships. To us, this is “gift-giving as listening.”

Is there no reciprocity? Don’t be silly. Reciprocity is culturally universal. I expect it as anyone does. But the reciprocity I expect is not based on the value or worth of the gift itself. Rather, the value I place is on the depth of understanding it represents.

It would be a deep insult to me for you to find the monetary value of my gift and give me one of equal monetary value. Once again, if you want to insult someone in my culture, give them a gift that is obviously of the exact same monetary value.¹

That’s it. Gift returned. Value equaled. We are finished.

Would you reduce our relationship to dollars alone?

Rather, if I were to give you a gift worth thousands of dollars that I knew you deeply wanted, and you were to give me a two dollar token as reward, I would feel honored, as long as that token showed that you understood, that you’d listened, that you took responsibility to seek that which would touch me.

Reciprocity is a reflection of the gift, and the gift is listening, understanding, even removing guilt of ownership. It is that, not money, that is to be repaid.

Giving as…

So, once again, I find myself in the Christmas of Confusion, watching the prairie storm approach and knowing what to expect. I will effusively thank, and I will keep receipts. I’ll give gifts as meaningfully as I can, and I’ll hear too much praise in return, knowing that there is little value attached to the meaning of my gift. I sit watching the prairie storm, and knowing that I will be buffeted by its winds.

And, sadly and most importantly, I know that they probably feel the same way about me.

Because that’s the thing about two cultures meeting. Theirs is always the strange one.

And here, I am they.

I wonder how much my gift-giving culture insults them.

1. I recognize, of course, that this is a dominant practice in Western culture, and thus tend to roll with the punch as I do others. Still, even while I understand that it is acceptable, it is something that always scrapes at my ribs like the thorn of a bush on bare skin.

There is kind of cultural nuance that intrigues me about gift-giving. It is a nuance that I feel every Christmas when traveling home to the culture of my in-laws. It strikes me that every family is a blending of two cultures– whether ethnic cultures as ours, or merely familial cultures. These variations become very pronounced during gift-giving, and Christmas is nothing if not a time of gift-giving.

Coming from a multi-ethnic family, a mixed-race person like me sees these variations from a strange, internal perspective. I’ve seen the nuances of gift-giving from early childhood and never realized them until my training in anthropology placed a lens on the incongruities I’d felt for so long. Though I’d felt the fact as assuredly as I’d felt my own bones and tendons, it was only then that I had words and expression for the fact: gifts have meaning.

Even more importantly: The very act of giving has meaning.

In fact, I realize more and more that it is the act itself that is meaningful, much moreso than the gift.

Giving as…

There are many things that can be expressed as gift-giving, of course. Someone giving a gift of a very expensive car to a relatively poor person might be doing something kind for his fellow man. The gift of transportation. However, if that giver was a mafia boss, we might also have a “gift-giving as dominance” scenario out of any given mob movie.

Reciprocity is the key here. Reciprocity is the catch, the second edge to the sword that is “a gift.” Reciprocity is the culturally universal knowledge that “as they give to me, so should I give to them.”

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that reciprocity is bad. Quite the contrary, reciprocity is the glue that holds most cultures together. It’s the binding thread that ties people, families, and even peoples. Reciprocity is A Good Thing™.

The problem comes when reciprocity is misunderstood. More importantly, when it is misvalued. Such is the main nuance amoung two different gift-giving cultures.

That’s when people start giving out toilet brushes.

Giving as… ?

After nearly 7 years together, I have still not grown comfortable with the gift-giving culture of my Jessica’s family. Like a person watching a prairie storm approach, I’ve grown to know what to expect, yet am still buffeted by the discomfort of it’s coming.

“I don’t know if you like these, but I bought them anyway, just take it back if you don’t like it.”

How much cultural depth there is in this oft-repeated phrase, here. And how much more depth is displayed by the intensity of gratitude and the number of thanks that must accompany each gift. A gift that is unwanted, sometimes even obviously troublesome, must be praised and thanked as if it were the very prize of heaven.

It strikes me that nearly everything that is comfortable to Jessica about that gift-giving ritual is something that makes me the most uncomfortable. I struggled for a while trying to understand the reasons for this, and am only now beginning to understand them.

To me, gift-giving is primarily about listening, about knowing. It’s about sharing not gifts or even gestures, it’s about sharing emotions. It’s a deep game, gift-giving, and thus it is my responsibility as the gift-giver to play that game as deeply as possible.

I could not say “I don’t know if you like these…” because I, as the gift-giver, have a deep and even sacred responsibility to know whether the recipient does. I’m supposed to listen to their wants and desires, to their needs. I’m supposed to listen to their emotions.

The Responsibility Of Giving

For me saying “I don’t know if you like these” is exactly the same thing as saying “I don’t really care enough to find out even the most basic thing about you.” It’s bluntly put, but it’s true. It’s a casting of seeds. Throwing random chaff to the person in hopes that they will find a grain– and laying the responsibility of the search on that person. And after searching, and finding the grain, the person is expected to say “Thank you for giving me the chance to search this chaff.”

I needn’t take any time or spend any thought on who that person is, their wants or wishes. In a way, it’s saying “I have enough money that I can buy anything, and care so little about both the money and you that I invite– even expect– you to return it. I now expect you to thank me for expending even this minuscule amount of effort upon you.”

Sadly, in my culture, if I were going to insult someone, this would be a sure, and almost violently brutal, way to do so.

But cultures are different, and I try not to take offense. This is harder than I want to admit.

So, as Christmas approaches, I prepare myself for the cultural incongruity that is “gift-giving.”

Sometimes, I wish I could have them truly understand what I see as gift-giving.

1. This phenomenon has seen it’s share of study in the anthropological field– a great many anthropologists have studied reciprocity in every culture, most famously Bronislaw Malinowski, who’s pioneering work in the Trobriand Islands led to new understandings of gift-giving, and of the highly complex and subtle cultural nuances of so-called “savages.”

The current explosion of social media outlets sure has its problems. Well, more correctly, it has issues that we have not yet had time to process in such a way that those issues are truly incorporated into our culture.¹

Witness, for instance, the Facebook phenomenon. We can now choose to have a lifelong inability to distance ourselves from people. No longer do you have the opportunity to, say, naturally grow apart from a high school friend whom you haven’t seen in 20 years. Now they follow you forever. The problem here is that we, as a human species, have had roughly 1.5 MILLION YEARS of saying “you know, it’s alright if we don’t see each other anymore.”

The lifelong friendship is something that’s going to take humanity more than a year or two to figure out.

Another issue that I see is that it’s just really-super-incredibly-easy to start A Cause.² These days, it’s possible for any random shut-in with internet access to have a blog and speak their Cause to millions of people. The problem here, of course, is that (and I know I sound like I’m yelling “get off my lawn” when I say this) most of these Causes are, well, just really stupid.

I mean, some are good, or at least not horribly inane. There are good Causes, ones like “help fight leprosy in small towns in the far eastern provinces of Turkmenistan!” But there are also really dumb ones like “Join the fight to make the Linux mascot be a fox instead of a penguin!”³

I see things like this and I think “Really? You have that much damn time?”⁴ This is an issue that we as a species need some time to digest. There was a time when starting a Cause took things like “planning” and  “forethought.” Now, it’s just a matter of hitting “send” or “tweet.”

Now, it seems that the word “Cause” may have lost just a bit of their former punch. I think that starting a Cause has gotten way too easy.

The Twitter Retweet

Alright, the background, in a nutshell. There’s this thing called Twitter. It’s something that roughly 98.3% of the global human population have never heard of. On this thing, people basically communicate as if they were digitally hooked up to a college keg party. There are one or two really good conversations going on, but roughly 98.3% of it amounts to “Hey, I like that movie too!”⁵

So, one of the cool things about Twitter is that you can repeat what other people post. Someone can post “Star Wars is the greatest movie ever!” and you can, basically, post “He said ‘Star Wars is the greatest movie ever!’ I think so too!”

I know, it sounds like I’m joking, doesn’t it?

Recently, the Twitter engineers changed how that function works. Now you have a choice of just re-sending that post, or editing it so that you can say “I think so too.” And even more recently, people have freaked out that this new re-tweeting functionality is going to ruin Twitter. From all the traffic, you’d think that it was also going to ruin the internet, make sea level rise, and help support the resurgence of Osama Bin Laden.

The RTFail Manifesto

So, in all this hype, I send out a retweet, and forget that it’s a choice to say “I like Star Wars too!” Very soon, I get a post from a guy who started a new Cause called The RTFail Manifesto. The manifesto states:

That’s right – if we follow you, and you use the auto RT function 3 times (you will be warned) then you’re unfollowed. Love ya, but no exceptions. The new RT’s are Twitter spam, and until they are fixed, they shall be scorned in streams and in apps (looking at you Tweetie2).

Now, this is one of those things that reads like an Onion article about George W. Bush; you just can’t really decide whether he actually said that or it’s a joke. I mean, it would make such a good joke that I really really want it to be one.

Sure, like everyone, there were a few seconds when… I mean, I tend to get swept away with things. Anyone who’s read some of my ridiculous posts about ridiculous topics will know that. So I have to admit that my first initial 5 second reaction was “Yeah!”

But then I thought again, and my second thought was “Wait, seriously?”

I mean, really? A manifesto?

“You will be warned?” You’re actually writing “you will be warned?”

Seriously?

Yup, seriously. He’s serious. I asked.

Can we look at this in perspective? Isn’t a “manifesto” something that might very possible result in, say, 20 million people losing their lives?

And, even more than that, are we talking about something different, or are we talking about Twitter? I mean, this is a thing that nearly the entire human race knows absolutely nothing about, and even that the majority of the people in my particularly technologically savvy field don’t use.

Seriously, are either of us important enough that it would matter at all if you stop reading about how much I like Star Wars? And just because I don’t feel like saying “I like Star Wars too?”

Really? Are we really that important that it actually matters?

Well, maybe we are.

The RTFail ManifestoFail Manifesto!

So, I’m jumping on the bandwagon. Realizing the power of the internet and my ability to instantly reach millions of followers (or at least the 35 people who read this stupid blog), I’m starting my manifesto against the RTFail Manifesto. It’s called The RTFail ManifestoFail Manifesto!

The conditions of my manifesto are as follows:

We will probably use the new re-tweet function sometimes, and may possibly use the old style retweet function sometimes. It all depends on what we feel like for the 0.6 seconds that we actually spend thinking about how we are going to retweet a given Star Wars Quote. If we use the new style retweet three times, you will be required to unfollow us. When you unfollow us, we will probably not know about it, because chances are we don’t know who you are. However, there is a greater chance that you are not following us anyway, and therefore you will not be warned when we don’t notice you unfollowing us. There are no exceptions to this manifesto. Seriously, we will not notice your unfollowing of us completely without warning!

There. The gauntlet is thrown!

Coda

Alright, alright. Look, I’m a comic, or at least I have delusions about being funny. Also, I know that some people may see this as me picking a fight, which I’m not actually trying to do. I’m not actually laughing at any one person in particular. My goals are far too lofty. I’m actually laughing at humanity, and our tendency to jump on things before we even think about them. We all do it. I do it. Hell, I wrote a post discussing US security policy in the middle of the night while I was completely trashed. Talk about stupid!

All I can say is that it seems pretty funny to me to create a manifesto over something so trivial as whether someone edits a retweet or not. But, maybe it’s not. There’s probably a lot of issues here that I haven’t thought of because, well, I do it too. I saw something and then jumped right on it and started a Cause without thinking.

I know I’ll probably get hit hard for this one, and I shouldn’t go joking about the causes of people who are important enough to set international economic policy, but that’s the thing about this internet and social media. We don’t have to take the time to think about our actions.

After all, why should I bother with “planning” and “forethought” when I can just hit “publish?”

1. Anthropological aside: “Culture,” as used here, is a fairly nebulous, since social media as we use it spans multiple cultures. However, I’m reserving the right to speak of “human” culture in this instance, just as we can speak of, say, Western culture while ignoring the cultural differences between Western peoples or even families.
2. I use Cause here with a capital C because, really, does anyone who starts a cause NOT want their cause written with a capital letter?
3. Seriously, people, this happened. I was there.
4. And then I think “Really? I have this much time?” Because, after all, I’m freakin’ writing about it!
5. Disclaimer: I say that a lot, I sort of dig on the movie conversations. Just search Mettadore and Star Wars.

Having visited Germany, having read of such beauty in Pre-Christian Germanic culture, I felt that I wanted to honor those ancestors as well. So much of what Native people here cherish is tied up in stories of Salmon, Raven and Wolf. It’s interesting to know that what Native people in Northern Europe cherished was so similar. Salmon, Raven and Wolf show up a great deal in the stories of Northern Europe. Universality, commonality.

Humanity.

"Haida Dog Salmon" (1974) Bill Reid (Haida)

I started looking at the art of Pre-Christian Northern Europe in a new way. Once again, it began to hold a strange familiarity. Looking at NW art, we see so much embellishment. It’s as if the artists make a conscious effort to fill in all the open space with something. An open space near Raven’s claw gets filled with a curve of black, or a swath of red, or a filled circle, or a hollow circle with a curve of black within it. Space. It’s all used, filled with the embellishments of the culture.

Oseberg Ship Head

It’s a similar story in Northern Europe, it’s only the embellishment that differs. We see this in the filling in of Celtic and Norse art with knotwork. If there’s a bare space, there’s a knot put in, or a vine, or a flower. It’s so different from NW art, yet so similar.

And thus my decision was made. I would make my art use both of the embellishments. I would fill the space in both ways. As soon as I did, and interesting pattern emerged.

Foreground and Background: The German Indian

The full design of my tattoo

In the Northwest art, the background was white, the embellishment had color. Foreground and background were thus defined. But in the knotwork, it was the white part which became the foreground. White knotwork on a black background. As the design progresses, the foreground shifts, and our perspective shifts with it. What was once merely something background becomes important and what was once important becomes merely a background. Suddenly our attention is drawn to what was once ignored.

And thus it is in culture. Perspectives. Foreground and background. Importance and attention. So different. One an incongruous negative of the other. Yet they can live together.

In fact, bringing them together helps us appreciate a hidden beauty that we had formerly missed. What is new in another culture can help us appreciate things in our own.

Things that, previously, were mere background to be ignored.

That’s what I wanted for my tattoo. I wanted to honor these views of art as embellishment, but I also wanted to honor the view of body art as embellishment.

Most of all, I wanted to honor this coming together of cultures, the coming together that can create so much beauty, so much perspective, so much depth.

That was the coming together that also created me.

Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of historical research on Pre-Christian Germanic culture. Much of this is what people think of as “Viking” culture, but that topic is such a jumble of confused ridiculousness that I try to avoid it. What I’m looking into is not “Vikings.” In fact, it’s a few hundred to thousands of years before that particular subset of Germanic travelers. What I’m seeking is an understanding of the underlying philosophical and spiritual framework of the Germanic peoples… before Christianity.

What I’ve been finding is, to say the least, mind-blowing. The long story is a topic for another post, or another blog, or a book, or even a series of books. It’s vast, as the universe of any culture is vast. One of the most interesting things, however, is that the early Germanic people– far from being the barbaric brutes of movies– were very deeply spiritual, philosophical, and thoughtful.

Hindu Hippies

Here in the Northwest, we have no lack of prayer flags. Hell, I even have some flying on my house. Ashrams, Buddhist temples, everything to cater to those neo-new age practitioners who are looking to The East for spiritual inspiration, many as a reaction to Christianity. There are countless descendants of Western Europe here, and around the globe, who recognize the wisdom of cultures like those of Northern India.

Truthfully, my own path passed through this landscape. I was seeking something closer to what was in my heart, closer to the words of my father. All through growing up, people would tell me that I “must be a Buddhist” or I “talk like a Buddhist.” This started in High School, where teachers and others whom I looked up to would tell me this. Thus, I wanted to know why they were saying it. In my head, I knew that I wasn’t a “Buddhist,” whatever that was. I was Indian. The words of my father were my blood, as we all are the blood of Great Spirit. But I wanted to know more, so I studied.

Fast forward a couple decades, and I decide to look into the religion of Pre-Christian Germany, partially because of a book that I’m working on, but mostly because I’m a mixed race person. My mother’s family is German, and some time spent in Germany during my thesis showed me, despite my attempts to believe otherwise, just how much of a home that was.

I wanted to know more about these people, my people.

My Humanity and My Germanity

I’ve spent the better part of my spiritual life reacquainting myself with the words of my father, with the relationships I built on and off reservations– from the Santee in South Carolina to the Colville in Eastern Washington. I’ve spent the better part of my spiritual life reading about Eastern religions to figure out why everyone kept calling me Buddhist. My life, as anyone’s, has been a quest to find the truth of the me.

And yet, through all of that search, I’d ignored the family that was closest to me in so many ways. They are my mother’s family. The family I grew up with. In some ways, the family I ran away from as a child.

So I find myself in adulthood, and find that I feel more and more that they are the family that is closest to my heart. They are, in ways that I did not have the wisdom to appreciate before, my family.

And so, just as I took trips to Germany and found a place that was comfortable and familiar, a place like home. So I see the family that I left– the ancestors that I had forgotten– and I see a spirituality, a humanity, that is so familiar. It is a humanity that is so much a part of me.

And so, I set out to learn about my forgotten ancestors.

The Old Gods

Like I do with everything in my spiritual life– I sought information that was outside of the context of Christianity. The true roots of these people lie not in the church, but in Pre-Christian Germany. Just like one can never understand Native American culture by going to a Christian church, I wanted to know what the spiritual landscape of these ancestors of mine was prior to this “great stirring of the pot” called Christ.

What I found stunned me. After so many years reading Mid- and Far-Eastern philosophy, what began to emerge was a sense of familiarity. It was almost as if I were walking through a forest that I’d known in my childhood. Features had changed, the trees were different, paths had been formed and disappeared, but the landscape was the same! It was, it still is, breathtaking.

The beauty, the depth, overwhelms me. Gods, heavens, depths. Spiritual and philosophical contexts. So vast, so universal, and so familiar. This was a people that were so strong, yet so thoughtful. When necessity called, they could exhibit the violence we see in movies, but most of their focus was on thought, on wit, on spiritual and philosophical transcendence. I found a religion that had all of the aspects that so many people seek when they look to India and the East, but I found it within our own cultural context.

Of course, there are great differences between this early Norse/Germanic religion and religions of the east like Hinduism and Buddhism. There are gulfs of time and space, as there are with any two cultures. But it was the universal truths that resonated with me. It was the connections between such different peoples that I held on to– because my ancestors were also different peoples.

In so many ways they are all the same, all of these old worldviews. We are all humanity. We are all of the same blood. We just have to be brave enough that we can look back on our history far enough to see that. In this looking, I found that the wisdom and religion, the spiritual landscape of Hinduism and Buddhism was incredibly similar to that of Northern Europe.

It’s interesting to note that many of the roots of Hinduism and Buddhism lie in the same soil as Pre-Christian Germanic culture. This is not surprising, given that these people are all Indo-European. The cultures, after all, did arise from the same place. Yet it’s not something that seems evident to most people. We look at our European ancestors and we see Christianity. But in the context of the vast sweep of humanity, that’s a very recent, and a notably foreign, religion.

What gives me pause is that so many European descendants in our time turn to Buddhism and other Eastern worldviews as a reaction to Christianity, when there is such breadth and wisdom in their own culture and they just don’t know it. You must dig deep, the Christian church demonized it for over a thousand years.

Hel became Hell, a place not of peaceful end in quiet snow, but of eternal torment in fire. Loki was once a trickster god, like all trickster gods– including Coyote in America– he was a positive figure who forced us to focus on the message, rather than the deity. Yet he became a demonic figure of evil under the Christian pen. The Seidkona and Völva, female figures of power, magic, and– most importantly– wisdom, became witches– in fact, many symbols of the feminine power and wisdom in European culture came to symbolize evil. The entire concept of witchcraft became synonymous with this foreign concept of “The Devil.” Thus, what was once an earth-based philosophy of peace and fertility because demonic.

You must dig deep for the wisdom of the old gods, but it’s there. It’s there. It’s feminine and it’s strong, it’s wise and it’s brutal, it’s witty and it’s foolish, and it’s so incredibly beautiful that it breaks my heart.

The word Lugnasað is Gælic in origin and hearkens the Gælic god Lugh:¹

In Celtic mythology, the Lughnasadh festival is said to have been begun by the god Lugh, as a funeral feast and games commemorating his foster-mother, Tailtiu, who died of exhaustion after clearing the plains of Ireland for agriculture.

The word is Gælic, but the time is universal. Every culture that noted the path of the sun knew this time, because it is the cross-quarter day, the midpoint between the summer solstice and the autumnal equinox. The Anglo-Saxon celebration is called Lammas, Loaf-Mass day, the first wheat harvest of the year.

This is the beginning of the harvest season, and Lughnasað is a time for celebration and thanks. The first fruits of the harvest are here, and the warmth of the late summer sun will begin to wane into the golden glow of autumn. In fact, this is autumn. Harvest season. The summer solstice denotes Midsummer.

Each day, we feel the warmest part of the day in the afternoon, yet the sun is at it’s most powerful at solar noon. Just as the warmth of the day falls after midday, so does the warmth of the season fall after Midsummer. In agrarian societies, this cross-quarter day marks autumn, the season of harvesting.

And the season of celebrating! For we are full with the fruits of Earth as well as the fruits of our family and friends, so greet them, share food and wine with them!

Celebrate Lughnasað!

1. From Wikipedia

Our soldiers should die in war.

Now, before you fly off the handle and send one of Insitu’s unmanned aircraft to bomb my house, I’m going to lay a bit of foundation.

I’m a disabled veteran who’s served proudly in two branches of the U.S. military. I was in the Army– on the ground– in Operation Desert Storm. My unit was a combat hospital, and I have first hand experience with the stomach sickening experience that is war. So no, I’m not coming at you with some crazy disconnected viewpoint from an Ivory tower. I’m coming at you from the view of someone who was wearing those “boots on the ground.”

And yet, I’d say something at stupid and ignorant as “our soldiers should die in war?”

Yes. Because without that single fact, the toll of war will be so much worse, both physically and spiritually.

To wit, an article from the BBC News: Australia seeks new army robots

Australia has launched a multi-million dollar competition to build a new generation of military robots. The winning design must help soldiers fight by remote control in urban combat zones, defence officials say. The aim is to reduce casualties in urban areas where fighting is unpredictable and treacherous. The competition is being run by Australia’s Defence Science and Technology Organisation in partnership with the US military.

‘Dirty work’

The government wants to develop an “intelligent and fully autonomous system” capable of carrying out dangerous surveillance missions. Senior officials in Canberra have said they hope that unarmed robotic vehicles will do some of the army’s “dirty work” in such hazardous theatres.

There are a few other articles on robotic warcraft such as this one, and there is even news of a robotic war vehicle that consumes things that it drives over as a way to fuel itself. My own community, in fact, is the home of Insitu, the creator of  most of the “autonomous drone aircraft” you often hear of in the news. It is arguably my community’s largest employer.

Disconnection

While it’s easy to sit in a room somewhere and discuss the merits of building autonomous vehicles to do the “dirty work,” I’m very disturbed by the trend. In fact, it quite sickens me.

I feel that we are at a time when we should be seriously seeking to understand the humanity of each other. Other peoples, other cultures, other ways of being. Looking at the news, it may seem that often, the only thing that we have in common with a person on the other side of the planet is that we are both human.

But, I feel it’s important to remember that this commonality is the only thing that is important. The most important thing we have is our humanity, and humanity means that with makes us human.

Sitting in an office, safely controlling a machine that will extinguish the lives of human beings is not going to connect us to another human. It is not going to give us the chance to learn about that person’s worldview, nor is it going to give us the chance to describe ours. There is no conversation. There is only death.

And this is death at no cost to ourselves.

How disconnected do we want to be? Will we accept war without a price?

How difficult is it to kill another person when that person is merely a dot on a computer screen? How difficult is it to kill others when there is no cost, no threat, no danger to yourself? What incentive is there to diplomacy– to the hard work that is conversation, discussion, acceptance of another’s point of view? What incentive is there for the difficult road of human to human communication when the “dirty work” of just killing them is done by a machine?

We, America and the Western World, talk so broadly about freedom and human rights. But to believe in human rights, we must first be human. Humanity does not lie in making machines do the dirty work. For humanity, the most obvious cost of war may  eventually become merely financial. This is terrifying.

Our soldiers should die in war.

In fact, it is imperative that they do. It is, quite possibly, one of the main things that will keep our humanity safe. Because if there is no cost to war– no cost to ourselves– then war will not only continue, it will grow. It will be far too easy.

War should be devastating. War should be painful. War should be the hardest thing we can imagine. Because war should be something that we avoid at all cost. Imagine the world if diplomacy was easy and war was something that absolutely sickened every living human.

Never should we think– as we have already– that war is simply a line item, a checklist, a thing to be “mission accomplished” in a couple months as a way to swing public opinion. War should not be a financial item. It should be the most spiritually, physically, and emotionally difficult thing we have ever done.

War has already become far too easy, and yet, rather than becoming more difficult, I fear it is now only becoming easier.

Access to the internet is a human right, claim France’s most senior lawmakers.

The web was ‘an essential tool for the liberty of communication and expression’, according to the Constitutional Council. (via Internet access is a fundamental human right, rules French court | Mail Online)

This is very disturbing because, in international law, definining something as a “human right” has specific implications, the major one being that governments are then required to ensure that all people have access to that right.

Do I really care about this from an internet perspective? No. But it does say alot about how the developed world views economic development, economic power, and the developing world.

A story of water

Years ago, when I was in grad school, I learned that water, specifically access to fresh water, had been defined by international consensus as a “human need” instead of a “human right.” The class in which I learned this (U.S. Water Law and Policy) discussed the politics of the issue and decided that considering water a human right would mean that all governments– and specifically the governments of the developed world– would require that they figure out ways to create access to fresh water for all people– specifically the people of the developing world. Defining it as a human need had much fewer consequences: it basically allowed governments to say “Hell, that’s important… you should probably do something about that.”

Basically, the governments of the developed world think that it’s just plain too damned expensive to care about those people. Oh, you could argue that it truely is too expensive, but that’s not really the case, there’s plenty of money, we just have to decide whether we want to spend it. We don’t.

This was years ago, and a large part of me thought (i.e. hoped) “there’s no way that’ll continue to be the case, how could we keep that view in a modern, civilized society.” I was wrong. The major powers of the world have still defined water as a human need, rather than a human right:

Twenty countries have officially challenged the Ministerial Declaration released Sunday at the close of the week-long World Water Forum because it defines water as a human need rather than as a human right.

Latin American states played a key role in gathering signatures on a counter-declaration that recognizes access to water and sanitation as a human right and commits to all necessary action for the progressive implementation of this right.

Countries that signed the counter-declaration are: Bangladesh, Benin, Bolivia, Chad, Chile, Cuba, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Honduras, Morocco, Namibia, Niger, Panama, Paraguay, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Uruguay and Venezuela. Switzerland has declared its support although a formal signature is expected to take months to finalize.

The U.S. delegation, led by Daniel Reifsnyder, deputy assistant secretary of state for environment and sustainable development, took the position that “there is at present no internationally agreed right to water or human right to water, and there is no consensus on what such a right would encompass,” according to State Department spokesman Andy Laine. (via Access to Water: A Human Right or a Human Need?)

So, what does this say about the world?

France is notably absent from the list of contries that have signified that water should be a human right. The US had other arguments against it as well (read the article).

By designating internet access as a right, and water as a need, France (and, likely, the majority of the developed world) have once again placed easy economic development (which the internet makes possible) ahead of humanity.

Are we all comfortable prioritizing the world this way? While people in the developing world lack the resources to find fresh water for survival, we in the developed world would protect access to Google with some of our highest legislative powers?

And we wonder why so many look to the developed world as a symbol of excess, and even evil.

I’m sure that I’m making too much of this. There are, after all, very complicated proceedures that the international community would have to go through if water were declared a human right. There’s no understanding of the global cost, or consequences– and truely no proof that the developed world necessarily wants more influence from the G20 in this area. Furthermore, it is only France– in national court– that defined the internet as, in essence, more important than water.

Still, caveats considered, it seems that this is a pointer that there are some serious priority changes needed in our world. All the issues and complexities involved with defining water as a human right could be handled if we, the rich of the world, honestly cared enough to put our minds to it. ]]> http://positivelyglorious.com/anthropology/internet-access-more-important-than-water/feed/ 0 http://positivelyglorious.com/anthropology/righting-stories/ http://positivelyglorious.com/anthropology/righting-stories/#comments Wed, 25 Feb 2009 01:45:10 +0000 john http://positivelyglorious.com/?p=1169 For many people, writing is a therapy. I know that I’m one of those people and I always feel somewhat better when I find other people for whom that’s true as well. Reading the words of people like Morgan makes me feel more normal.

One thing I’ve learned about myself as time goes by…I write WAY more when I’m down and feeling crappy and bleh and stuff. When things are going right, I don’t ..well..write. I guess only one right/write can I handle at any moment. But I feel kinda remiss about not writing about the rightness, or increase of rightness at least, that’s going on for me. Especially when I’ve unloaded so much wrongness in this space!

We write more when we needs therapy than when we don’t. It’s a normal way to be.

Of course, it’s my brain telling me that it’s normal, so I’m not entirely sure that it can be trusted.

I don’t know about her assessment that she has “unloaded so much wrongness.” That’s a bit harsh of an analysis. One reason we all read, is to feel that we are connected with people who can understand our experience. To find that connection. Of course, if  our writing is all negativity, then it’ll likely be discarded. A little negativity, or even 50%, or even more than 50%, however, is not only accepted, but probably desired.

Of course, I’m feeling a strong need to write about depressing things right now, and it’s my brain that’s telling me to write about them, so when my brain tells me that writing about depressing things is desired, I’m not entirely sure that it can be trusted.

Righting Humanity

I heard recently that the only difference between human brains and the brains of all other animals is our ability to construct stories. The example was somewhat funny– and illustrative– it goes like this:

Put the picture of a canary in your head. Got it? Good. Now, make the canary’s feathers red. Got it? Picture of a red canary in your head? Good. Now, give the canary purple stripes. Purple stripes? Got ‘em? Good. You’re looking at a picture in your head of a canary with red feathers and purple stripes.

Now, realize that there is no such thing– anywhere in the world– as a purple striped red canary. It does not exist. Only we can do that. Only humans.¹

The implication of this, for me, is that fiction is humanity. It means that stories are a distinctly human experience. More than that, stories are the only think that we think we have separating us from the rest of the Goddess’ creation. Stories are, in fact, the very thing– the only thing– that make us human. Stories define our humanity.

That’s big. No, that’s just downright fucking huge-o-mongous! And you thought words were important before knowing that? Is it any wonder why some of us feel stories are so important? Is it any wonder why we seek stories out, in so many forms, as if they are air or water? Think about it? If stories were not important, they’d have gone away– but they can’t, because we are human.

We are stories.

I have friends who denounce fiction. They feel that it is not important and that they will only read non-fiction because fiction is “a waste of time.” That never sat right with me, and now I know why. Fiction is our humanity, but not just fiction, all stories. Good stories, real stories, fake stories, and even bad stories.

Stories are what make us people.

When you think of it this way, it’s probably no surprise that we write more when we are feeling “wrong” than when we are feeling “right.” I suspect that is because those are the times when we need to connect more to our humanity. When we need to right ourselves. When we need to “right” our human stories.

Those are also probably the stories that others in our tribe, other humans, want to read the most. They are the stories that connect us.

Of course, my brain needs to “right” about some pretty serious things currently, and it’s the one telling me that all this is important, so I’m not entirely sure that it can be trusted.

1. so say the scientists, I’m not sure if they actually asked the dolphins this, yet, since they don’t speak dolphin.