On meaning

A four day break from writing has been refreshing, and I am happy to say that there are so many thoughts running through my head that there is plenty to write about for the next few weeks.

I went to the Michigan Social Justice Conference yesterday - there were several fascinating panels and discussions, with issues ranging from divestment and sex trafficking to the power of allies and workers' rights. There was also a workshop on the social justice issues of trash and waste, which Sherri and I were grateful to help with. The keynote speaker was writer and activist Derrick Jensen, whose essays I have been reading in Orion. He has written more than a dozen books and has thought deeply about issues of social injustice and the environment. He talked at length about the root causes of all social justice issues - as I have tried to articulate previously, most all of the problems we face in the world stem from the same moral and ethical deficiencies. One of the key roots he said, was the issue of meaning.

Jensen is influenced highly by Native American cultures and traditions. These cultures had survived for several thousand years in harmony with their environment (let's avoid discussion about the ecologically noble savage here). He talked about how having lived in a place, these people assigned meaning to everything around them, from the trees to the salmon. The meaning that is assigned to these different sides of nature shape our perceptions of what it is that promotes harmony and unity. For example, while walking through a forest, someone who thinks that trees fill a pivotal niche in the environment, by providing habitat for birds and animals, will treat it differently than someone who sees trees as a way to make paper and money. In one case, the broader environment is at the centre of consideration, and in the other case, the economy may be at the centre of consideration.

Jensen mentioned that what organised religion has done (one of them in particular he dislikes) has been to take meaning away from the visceral and tangible to the arcane and unphysical, i.e. god. This, he feels, has led to a meaningless worldly presence, and the domination of nature because of it. In the same way, he feels as if science has had that same domineering quality, which allows us the ability of violence against nature. This is interesting, because it wasn't even a few days ago that I heard on an episode of Being that before the very notion of god existed, only the notion of the other existed. What dominating notions of god and science have done have taken away the nuances of understanding of place and time, and the consequent designation of meaning to them. The constructs of science and many organised religions have embedded in them the notion just two things - right and wrong.

This past year has made me think a lot about place and time and the meaning of everything that surrounds me. Each one of us will assign different meanings to different sides of nature. That is okay. I just hope that there is a convergence of the outcomes resulting from these meanings.

Speaking of meaning, how much this past weekend has meant is immeasurable and beautiful.

The ecologically noble savage

The Hadza appeared in the December 2009 issue of the National Geographic. In the wonderfully scripted article, Michael Finkel writes about one of the surviving hunter-gatherer tribes in Tanzania, the Hadza. This is a group that lives in the present. They do not have words for numbers greater than three, they "work" (i.e. hunt for food) four to six hours a day, and sleep when they want to. Finkel contends that they haven't adopted agriculture because it is so contrary to their present state of mind. Agriculture requires planning, and is inherently future-oriented. Yet, this group has survived for tens of thousands of years, and the Hadza speak an "isolated" language, Hadzane, one that has no relationship to any other language that exists in the world. Everyone eats the catch, and so the group can support no more than thirty or so members. The group is non-hierarchical. Members are free to leave and join other groups, and members of other groups are free to join theirs, but there seems to be population control as a function of the catch. Below are photos (by Martin Schoeller) I grabbed from the National Geographic's website. First is Onwas, the eldest member of the group. Next are some women working with baobab fruit, more important than the catch that men get. Last is Sangu, a young girl in the group. It seems to me that if these so-called "living fossils" are still surviving, tens of thousands of years on, eating bountifully and diversely (more so than say the average American), they have an understanding of their landscape, not only ecologically, but also as conservationists. The Hadza seem to fit almost all of the characteristics of a non-impactful people, or should I say a "non-trashing" people. Without a worry in the world, they don't have control over tomorrow, and don't want to think about tomorrow. If they want honey, they get honey from the beehives. If they want to eat a baboon, they find one, and make full use of it. They have resisted attempts by the government to "educate" them, and give them housing and "normal" jobs. Indeed, people from outside the bush have come to spend time with them during times of famine in Tanzania.

While having a conversation with Melissa last summer, I wondered out loud whether people of the past (or even of the present, like the Hadza) conserve the nature around them. Melissa mentioned that these people, that are potentially a figment of our imaginations, are termed "noble savages." Of course, it is clear these noble savages are/were more in tune with a particular landscape than a non-native, but does this understanding of their complex ecosystem compel them to make sure future generations enjoy the same bounty? We would all like to think so, and think of days when humans were one with nature. However, in the case of Native Americans, it seems like there is no evidence that they were any more conscious of conservation than the Europeans that killed them off. Krech claims that Native Americans were ecologists, but not conservationists. Indeed, the only conservation that did happen was "epiphenomenal," or conservation because people didn't have the means to not conserve. Since natives know (or knew) more about their surroundings, they used less of more, while non-natives used more of less. Yet once technologies from Europe, including guns, were introduced to Native Americans, they started over-harvesting, decimating local animal species, excluding beavers.

What do you think?