MOST PRUDENT ACTION (PART 3)

So it’s true that some people today eulogize the primal tribal societies because of their “ecological wisdom” or their reverence for nature” or their “no aggressive ways.” But the evidence does not support any of those views in a sweeping and general fashion. Myself, I eulogize the primal tribal societies for entirely different reasons: We are all sons and daughters of tribes. The primal tribes are literally our roots, our foundations, the basis of all that was to follow, the structure upon which all subsequent human evolution would be built, the crucial ground floor upon which so much history would have to rest.

The Ecomasculinists (deep ecologists) are particularly fond of the period of the foraging tribes, the pre-agriculture hunting and gathering societies, because they were ecologically sound. Some primal societies were ecologically sound , and some definitely were not. Some tribes practiced cut and slash and burn, and some were responsible for the extinction of numerous species, so a “sacred” outlook toward nature did not in any way guarantee an ecologically sound culture. Men and women, everywhere and at all times, have despoiled the environment, mostly out of simple ignorance. Even the highly revered Mayan culture disappeared largely through depleting the surrounding rain forests. Modernity’s ignorance about the environment is much more serious, simply because modernity has many more powerful means to destroy the environment. Tribal ignorance, on the other hand, was usually milder; but ignorance is ignorance, and is certainly nothing to emulate. The lack of means in foraging societies does not simply equate with the presence of wisdom.

Today’s existent tribes, and today’s nations, and today’s cultures, and today’s accomplishments — all would trace their lineage in an unbroken fashion to the primal tribal whole/parts upon which a human family tree was about to be built. And looking back on our ancestors in that light, I am struck with awe and admiration for the astonishing creativity — the original breakthrough creativity — that allowed humans to rise above a given nature and begin building a psyche, the very process of which would bring Heaven down to earth and exalt the Earth to Heaven, the very process of which would eventually bind all peoples of the world together in, if you will, one global tribe.

But in order for that to occur, the original, primal tribes had to find a way to transcend their isolated tribal kinship lineages: they had to find a way to go trans-tribal, and agriculture, not hunting, provided the means for this new transcendence.

I don’t eulogize either foraging or horticultural because, well, evolution keeps moving, yes? Who are we to point out to one period and say everything past that period was a colossal error, a heinous crime? According to whom, exactly? If we really are in the hands of the Great Spirit or the Great Mother, do we really think She doesn’t know what She’s doing? Tell you the truth, that seems like arrogance to me, especially when we’re three or four major technological epochs down the line, and it’s doubtful evolution will run backward for us.

The dialectic of progress, that every stage of evolution eventually runs into its own inherent limitations, acts as triggers for the self-transcending drive. These inherent limitations create chaos, and the system either breaks down (self-dissolution) or escapes this chaos by evolving to a higher degree of order (self-transcendence) — so called order out of chaos. This new and higher order escapes the limitations of its predecessor, but then introduces its own limitations and problems that cannot be solved on its own level.

There is a price to be paid for every evolutionary step forward, and our epoch will pass too. No epoch is finally privileged. We are all tomorrow’s food. The process continues. And Spirit is found in the process itself, not in any particular epoch or time or place.

It is modern science, and modern science alone — the ecological sciences and systems sciences, for example — that can directly show us how and why our actions are corroding life itself. If the primal tribes knew that by cut and burn they would ruin their habitat and endanger their own lives — if they actually knew that with a scientific certainty — then they would at least have thought about it a little more carefully before they began their bio-destruction. If the Mayans knew that in killing the rain forests they were killing themselves, they would have stopped immediately, or at least paused considerably. Bur ignorance is ignorance; whether innocent or greedy, sacred or profane, ignorance destroys the biosphere.

However, now the means have changed. Ignorance backed by primal or tribal technology is capable of inflicting limited damage. You can only do so much damage to life with a bow and arrow. An atomic bomb is something else. The same ignorance backed by industry is capable of killing the entire world. So we have to separate those two issues — the ignorance and the means of inflicting that ignorance — because with modernity and science we have for the first time in history, a way to overcome our ignorance, at precisely the same time that we have created the means to make this ignorance absolutely genocidal on a global scale.

And so if the entire internal dimension is ignored and devalued — if we ignore interiors and just rivet our eyes on an exterior “global” map of the world or systems nature — we will ignore the actual path of getting people to that global or world centric stance. We will have a goal with no path. And we will have a map that denies and condemns internal transcendence, which is the actual path itself!

It’s good news, bad news. The predicament of modernity. Finally we know better. At the same time, if we don’t act on this knowledge, then finally, we all die.

Interesting times we’re living in.

To be continued……

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