The Voice of Knowledge

Before they learn how to speak, children are wild, living in their true nature, like all other healthy animals.  They live in a world of feelings.  Life is very cool for the first few years, until the domesticated culture reduces them to domesticated neurotics.  By and by, domesticated adults teach them names, and then language, and then abstract concepts, like good and bad, trendy and dorky.  Young children believe whatever we tell them, even if it’s irrational or toxic.  In this manner, their minds are filled with knowledge, and innocence gets tossed out the window.

Knowledge is made of words, and can only be shared with others via words.  Knowledge is opinions, stories, or gossip, but never truth.  Truth can only be experienced via feelings, never with words.  Anyone who offers you truth is a liar.  Almost all knowledge is lies, and these lies make everyone miserable and crazy, according to Don Miguel Ruiz, author of The Voice of Knowledge.  We reside in an insane society, and it’s no wonder that our knowledge is faulty.  The elders who load our minds with dodgy knowledge are not evil; they simply pass on what they were loaded with — it’s all they know.

The deity of the Judeo-Christian stories was perfect, and humankind was created in his image.  We are the crown of creation.  But not long after we became fruitful, multiplied, and subdued paradise, the deity experienced an embarrassing bout of creator’s remorse.  “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.  And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.”  (Genesis 6:5-6)  Obviously, the final solution was to drown them all.  He was a complicated deity, and more than a little abusive.

This dark tone dominates the knowledge of our society.  You smell bad.  Your clothes are dumb.  You’re stupid and ugly.  You’ll never succeed.  You’re flawed in every way.  You don’t deserve to be loved.  Ruiz doesn’t explore green issues, but it’s easy to see that our toxic knowledge is the driving force behind the spectacular ecocide of our era.  We never doubt that compulsive shopping is the silver bullet cure for whatever ails us.  People will respect us, and life will be grand, if we continuously accumulate trendy status trinkets.  Yet no matter how hard we shop, inner peace is never achieved.  Sigh!

Our world is swarming with beliefs of self-rejection.  If I choose to agree with a belief, it becomes a part of my story.  “My name is Richard, I live in Oregon, I like to learn and write, and I’m a bad person who will never succeed.”  If I choose not to agree, the unwanted belief harmlessly swirls down the drain.  My story is nothing but software, a collection of agreements.  It’s not carved in stone; it’s always changing as the years pass.

The voice of knowledge is the storyteller inside your head.  The thinker never stops jabbering at you, and it never hesitates to disapprove or belittle.  It’s a common mistake to presume that it’s speaking the truth.  Ruiz warns us: “Don’t believe yourself, and don’t believe others.”  In reality, you are far better than what you imagine.  Listen with great care, have an open mind, and deflect incoming lies with the shield of your skepticism.  “The greatest gift you can give yourself is the gift of doubt.”

The heart of Ruiz’s message is that (1) we are ridiculously screwed up, and (2) we can heal ourselves.  Life does not have to be sad and painful.  All humans are artists, and we all have the power to create a really sweet life story, a masterpiece — and we should.  We change the world by changing ourselves.

There are two types of artists: aware and unaware.  The unaware are oblivious to the multitude of lies that contaminate their lives.  Confronting these lies is unpleasant work.  It’s much easier and safer to just believe in them, because everyone else does, too.  They zoom through life on autopilot.  Artists who are unaware bear a striking resemblance to the living dead.

Artists who are aware understand that the path to healing is a process of unlearning, hurling toxic agreements overboard.  Beneath the sludge of lies is the happy wild animal you were as a child.  Young children have no choice, they uncritically absorb the knowledge they are fed.  Older folks do have a choice.  We don’t have to be dead.  We can create a far better story based on nontoxic beliefs, deleting the self-defeating.  Then we can gird ourselves to thrash the super lies: human superiority, materialism, perpetual growth, the glory of civilization, and so on. 

Science-oriented folks may have an impulse to dismiss Ruiz following a quick glance at the cover.  From my point of view, the book is maybe 15 percent sugarcoated woo-woo, but its strengths are the reason why you’re reading about it here.  The scope of the discussion is narrow, focusing on how you can fix your story, extremely useful for some.  But on the far side of the fence, there are other monsters.  (Don’t bother looking for love if you aren’t happily in love with yourself.)

Ruiz presents us with a different model for perceiving reality.  This model reframes the notion of denial.  People who are in denial are not stupid, stubborn, or evil.  They’re just paralyzed by a headful of lies, because they live in a culture foaming with lies, hence they’re perfectly normal.  More importantly, it reframes the integrity of mainstream reality.  “Normal” = crazy.  This is a brilliant and powerful twist.  Luckily, normal is not a life sentence without parole.  He gives you the key to freedom — doubt.  Off with the chains!  Fly away!  Be happy!

Most importantly, Ruiz has found a way to communicate stimulating knowledge in a form that many normal people can hear.  His first book, The Four Agreements, has sold four million copies.  It’s in the top 100 at Amazon.  His books are short, simple, clear, and deep.  For more than a few people, they are mind-altering.  Despite the fact that they will be filed in the New Age box, they are not fluffy, flaky joyrides in magical thinking.  He is not a get-rich-quick quack.  There is power in his words. 

Ruiz, Don Miguel, The Voice of Knowledge, Amber-Allen Publishing, San Rafael, California, 2004.

God Save Me From A Normal Life - Part One

Returning to genuine sustainability in the near future is impossible, because there are far too many people in the world.  There is no way to feed them all without causing deeper permanent injuries to the ecosystem.  Sadly, humankind displays almost no interest in doing what needs to be done to address overpopulation.  It’s much easier to unplug our brains, close our eyes, and assign the unpleasant business to famine, war, and disease.  So be it.

Our extreme overpopulation is possible because we are living in a temporary bubble of abundant energy.  Unsustainable industrial agriculture can produce far more food than the unsustainable muscle-powered farming of earlier times.  But the days of cheap energy are behind us now, which means that the outburst of unusual growth and prosperity will wind down, stop, and reverse.  Sooner or later, industrial civilization as we know it will run out of fuel and collapse.  Industrial agriculture will no longer be possible.  The next 50 years are going to be radically different from the last 50 years. 

We’ve spent our entire lives living in a massively unsustainable, planet-killing way of life.  So did our parents and grandparents.  To our minds, this way of life seems perfectly normal, and we expect it to continue forever.  Actually, it’s a bizarre accident in the human journey, it’s moving into its final stages, and it can never happen again, thankfully. 

A huge obstacle to the healing process is our perception of history.  We’ve all been taught that our industrial civilization is nothing less than a miracle.  It’s always getting better, and the best is yet to come.  Does this sound like a problem that needs to be fixed?  Well, what it sounds like is a history that has little relationship with reality.  Bogus history provides us with a false identity, and it enables self-destructive thinking and living.

Thus, a primary task in the healing process is deliberately unlearning bogus history.  We mistakenly assume bogus history to be the truth, because it has been repeatedly hammered into our brains during many years at school.  It becomes the foundation of our worldview.  Bogus history hides the enormous problems of progress under the bed, and presents us with glorious myths of brilliant achievement.

If we gaze in the mirror and see the reflection of a being lucky to be living at the wondrous zenith of the human journey, then the notion of genuine sustainability is purely absurd, and not worthy of consideration.  But what if we see the reflection of someone who has had the misfortune of inheriting a hideous treasure of mistakes and illusions from 300 generations of well-intended ancestors?  In this case, genuine sustainability takes on the appearance of the antidote, the cure, something precious — a lifesaver.

Unlearning bogus history is like taking a powerful laxative that vigorously cleanses us of our false sense of identity.  Happily, this process has begun.  A growing number of radical thinkers are seriously questioning the value of domestication, agriculture, civilization, and industrial society.  They are coming to appreciate the intelligence and virtues of nature-based societies. 

The doddering drooling defenders of the mainstream work hard to keep these new thinkers safely locked away in the lunatic fringe cage, but their efforts will fail.  These new thinkers are displaying the first signs of powerful wisdom to emerge in the entire history of civilization.  They announce that our way of life is a mistake, and it’s rapidly destroying us.  Comprehending this essential idea enables and encourages clear thinking, intelligent change, and great healing — beautiful breakthroughs long obstructed by the idiotic old myths of progress and perpetual growth.

We must have history.  We cannot live with vision and power if we don’t know who we are, and where we came from.  After we’ve thrown bogus history overboard, we’ll need new histories that have deep roots in reality.  At the foundation of the healing process are learning, thinking, discussing, simplifying, and exploring nature (rewilding).  This work can be pursued at low cost, with greater freedom, outside the realm of formal institutionalized education, by people who want to make meaningful contributions with their lives.

Once upon a time, Carl Jung said, “I am not what happened to me, I am what I chose to become.”  This is why many nature-based societies encouraged people to discover their calling via vision quest ceremonies.  Living with a vision provided us with a direction and purpose in life, and helped us avoid getting lost and wandering aimlessly.

Societies also need a vision to live well.  In nature-based societies, vision was provided by the time-proven traditional culture.  The way to a good life was to carefully follow the path of the ancestors.  In today’s disaster-based societies, the guiding vision enshrines perpetual growth — a dead-end path of infantile excess that fuels catastrophic ecocide, and pandemics of mental illness and degenerative disease. 

Our disaster-based culture is bloated with fantasies of unsustainable science fiction futures, like the Jetsons, Star Wars, or colonies on Mars.  Nature exists outside the walls of these bleak humans-only prisons.  We dream that tomorrow will be a technological wonderland — robot-driven electric cars, smart highways, smart grids, high-speed trains, Internet everything, windmills and solar panels, and on and on — nothing sustainable, and nothing that is necessary for a healthy and enjoyable life.  This vision has no future, because the temporary bubble of abundant energy has no future.  Perpetual growth on a finite planet is impossible, and pursuing it is insane.  It’s time for a new vision.

To be continued.

Unlearn, Rewild

Are you glowing with inner peace?  Is your journey healthy, balanced, and joyful?  Do you believe that the world is close to perfection because of technological progress?  None of the above?

Miles Olson is a young man with an old soul.  He has never felt at home in modern society, even in childhood.  The only people who made sense to him were the Native Americans, because they lived with respect and reverence for all things.  When he was 17, he spent the summer living alone on a remote island.  Solitude in wildness is powerful medicine.  In a week or so, he could barely remember his name.

He struggled to find his life’s vision and calling.  There was no integrity in pursuing a career that injured the family of life.  There was no integrity in eating food produced in an atrocious manner.  There was no integrity in devoting his life to robotic consumption.  The “normal” mode was wacko. 

The proper way to live in industrial civilization was to plug into the system, obey the rules, and never ask questions.  But this was not a path with integrity, and Olson refused to submit to a dishonorable life.  So, he commenced thinking.  If the system was destroying the future, then the system was insane.  If the system was insane, then so were its rules.  Therefore, the virtuous choice was to disregard the rules, listen to his heart, and purse a life of integrity, by any means necessary.  He did just that.

He’s been squatting for almost a decade on the fringe of a large unnamed city in British Columbia.  He hunts, traps, forages, and gardens.  He gets profound satisfaction from reducing his dependence on the machine, and reducing the harm he causes.  He wrote Unlearn, Rewild to describe his life as an outlaw with high principles.  (Well, he’s an outlaw to the system, but consumers are outlaws to nature, and nature bats last.)

Unlearning is a process of throwing civilized illusions overboard, of cleaning our minds.  Rewilding means “to return to a more natural or wild state; the process of undoing domestication” — to become uncivilized, to reconnect to place.  The bottom line is that “without genuine, raw connection to wild nature we, as creatures, go insane.” 

All of us have hunter-gatherer genes.  When we were born, our souls expected to spend life as wild and free creatures in a sacred world.  What went wrong?  Olson sees domestication, agriculture, and civilization as being catastrophic mistakes in our journey.

“Sustainability” has become a meaningless word, hijacked and disemboweled by greedheads, nutters, universities, and shameless marketing hucksters.  Nothing is unsustainable anymore.  Our world is totally awesome.  We just need to burn a bit less fossil fuel, make a few minor tweaks, and our way of life will become utopia.  Olson disagrees.  He’s become a revivalist who preaches a fiery message about “radical sustainability” — good old-fashioned fundamentalist sustainability, the genuine article, the most important word in our language today.

One of his sermons illuminated the grave misconceptions that torment vegans and vegetarians, and lead them down a dark path into the valley of malnutrition, impaired health, and prickly self-righteousness.  He was once a vegan, until he saw the light, and returned to the normal omnivorous diet that everyone’s ancestors had enjoyed for a million years.

Yes, of course industrial meat production was abominable, cruel, and ecologically foolish.  The dim-witted domesticated livestock and poultry certainly suffer for it.  But why does no one grieve for the thousands of wild creatures murdered by every pass of the plow and combine?  Why do we ignore the blood gushing from our tofu stir fry?  “There are precious few humans that hear the screams of the Earth….”

Olson recommended that we stop feeding grain to animals, and use it to feed hungry folks.  But this would require continued soil mining to produce the grain.  Instead, in the spirit of big dreaming, I would suggest that we cease growing grain for animal feed, and convert that cropland back to grassland, restore the soil to good health, and give it back to the indigenous wild life — let it heal.

He wondered if hunting with firearms was ethical.  How much technology is too much?  When the Cree replaced bows with guns, they killed more caribou.  But “…the ones truly being victimized by this technology were not the caribou.  The caribou were still free, the people had entered a trap.”  This chapter began with a Ran Prieur quote: “Every technology begins as a key and ends as a cage.”  Well said.

Obviously, the turd in the swimming pool is the way we think — our insane culture.  If our civilization burned to the ground today, we’d start rebuilding it at dawn tomorrow.  “If humans had clean minds, like grasses and thistles, we would return to a state of balance when the forces of domestication ceased.” 

It is at this point that the two sacred verbs “unlearn” and “rewild” summon immense power.  Are we capable of firing up our brains and envisioning humankind living in balance with the rest of life?  Yes, if we try.  Are we capable of escaping from our cage?  Yes, with patience and determination.  Is it possible that sanity is contagious?  Let’s find out!  Olson concludes that we would be wise to make some effort to evolve.  It will take generations to create cultures that win the Radical Sustainability seal of approval, but all we have to lose is an insane way of life.

The book has two parts: ideas and endangered skills.  The ideas section describes his philosophy of life.  The skills section is a sampler of essential knowledge for squatters: making traps and snares, skinning and gutting game, medicinal plants, food preservation, sex without pregnancy, tips for cooking earthworms, slugs, and maggots, and so on. 

I learned some new tricks here, but this is not the last book you’ll need to read.  Chestnuts are good food, but horse chestnuts are toxic.  How do you tell the difference?  Camas is good food, but death camas, which looks the same at harvest time, is not mentioned.  Why is it called death camas?

Olson doesn’t write like a dusty scholar surrounded by piles of musty books.  He writes like a cheerful outlaw who has created a rewarding career in harvesting roadkill, foraging for nuts, roasting grasshoppers, and feasting on dandelions.  It’s a loose and feisty tome with strong opinions and a strong sense of hope and enthusiasm.  It’s not flawless and polished — it has some squeaks, leaks, and rattles — but it still works.

Olson has not given us “The Solution” here.  Obviously, this week is an inconvenient time for seven-point-something billion to become squatters.  But the rising cost and scarcity of energy may turn us all into squatters before long, ready or not.  Nevertheless, he is fully engaged in the most important work of our era — finding the path to genuine sustainability.  Truly, every week is a perfect opportunity for unlearning, rewilding, thinking, and living with greater integrity.

Olson, Miles, Unlearn, Rewild, New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island, British Columbia, Canada, 2012.