Re: Fully integrated 21st century ....."new tribalism"

Polar bears don't eat salmon.  Polar bears eat seals.

And is hoarding among humans really such a problem?  Yes, we have too much stuff, but I think the stuff we keep is less of a problem than the stuff we throw away… the opposite of hoarding.

Re: Fully integrated 21st century ....."new tribalism"

Actually Polar bears do eat salmon but the seal is a much better feast for the energy investment….We can agree to substitute “Bear” though and be more accurate for the analogy I suppose.
Is hoarding a problem? I surely think so…but I also agree throwing away is as much the problem. Both sides of the same coin. You can’t throw away lots of stuff without first having lots of stuff.
So, Booner–help us to flesh out this new thread– What is your particular issue with ‘tribalism” ( better word thread coming next…;) )

Re: Fully integrated 21st century ....."new tribalism"

Re hoarding: yes, of course I have to have stuff to throw away stuff.  However, there is a limit to how much stuff I can hoard; I only have so much space.  There is no limit to how much stuff I can buy and throw away.  Therefore, waste (the opposite of hoarding) is potentially a much greater problem than hoarding.

Re my particular issue: Quinn is a master storyteller.  I think he has chosen to tell a somewhat inaccurate and incomplete story in order to reach a larger audience.  It's a warm and fuzzy story about the Community of Life that glosses over the infanticide and shortened life expectancy in hunter/gatherer societies.  Just as I question the products that I consume, so too do I question the stories that I consume.  I hear something like “hoarding is a problem” and I wonder “what is the opposite of hoarding?” and “which is a greater problem, hoarding or its opposite?”  Quinn does what he does, namely tell a great story, and I do what I do, namely pick apart the details.

Re: Fully integrated 21st century ....."new tribalism"

And certainly we should read everything with a very healthy 'skepticism'.  Ishmael though isn't just a 'story', it is based on paleontology…If you want to read the drier version of this, get The Chalice and the Blade by Riane Eisler…she is a french paleontologist who did an amazing 'rewrite'–esssentially busting the mother culture interpretation of facts of archeological research–showing that while tribal cultures were far from perfect…they had some key 'assets' that made tribal model successful for anywhere from 40,000-120,000 years.  Many of these 'assets' we ditched as population explosion had tribes bumping into each other and beginning to compete for food…..

Yes, hunter/gatherer societies missed a lot of other knowledge…for instance, not knowing about germs (which of course were invisible)…much of their young death can be attributed to the awareness of cleanliness. In fact, up until about 1900…infant mortality was extremely high–a very high percentage of kids died before 5…if you made it past 5 however, you had a good chance at making it into your 50's…. So, was it really that the tribes were so ignorant–or were we just as ignorant too?

Interesting thing happening…in the US life expectancy keeps going up…but ironically, it is plummeting in Russia…..like down around the level of, um, pre-1900's.  What's that about?

Re: Fully integrated 21st century ....."new tribalism"

I heard about “Chalice and the Blade” but never read it…thanks for the reference–it is now on my reading list.

Ann, do you have any links to the Russia life expectency information?…that is extremely interesting–especially in light of the recent “capitalistic” changes in Russian life which promised a better life for all–including modeling our system which in part, supposedly provides an environment and resources for longer lives.

Re: Fully integrated 21st century ....."new tribalism"

Ann, please forgive me, but Riane Eisler, the “French paleontologist”, is neither French nor a paleontologist.  She was born in Austria, grew up in Cuba, and has degrees in sociology and law from the University of California.

Re life expectancy in Russia:

http://www.lshtm.ac.uk/ecohost/projects/mortality-russia.htm

Re: Fully integrated 21st century ....."new tribalism"

Oop, my bad recall…thanks for the clarification….Still have you read her books?  I'm not sure whether its Ishmael or My Ishmael that he makes this reference to Chalice and the Blade…but its there somewhere.

The data on life expectancy….anything more recent because if I read it right (though I went through real quick), this is data from about 10 years ago….

Re: Fully integrated 21st century ....."new tribalism"

I haven't read her books, but they sounded so interesting that I just had to look up the author.

On the Russian data, I believe the big decline in life expectancy was in the aftermath of the collapse… which would be about 1990 to 1995.  I keep seeing references to the “Russian mortality crisis of the 90s”, so maybe things have improved since then.  In any event, neither the Former Soviet Union nor modern Russia is a poster child for sustainability.

Re: Fully integrated 21st century ....."new tribalism"

I am “picker” as well Booner…a critical approach is often best these days with the rampant number of self proclaimed guru’s out there…

You will get no argument from me that waste is worse than hoarding. But I do think that the mentality involving waste comes from a “hoarding philosophy”. Hoarding is WANTING–regardless if the want is kept ( hoarded) or thown away. Our “disposable society” was birthed from the desire of MORE- which to me is hoarding of a different type. If you curtail your waste you change your approach to your wants. Even the desire for “convenience” changes when you are concerned about what you throw away.

Quinn is certainly a storyteller but it seems to me ( not trying to be a Quinn apologist here) that his style wasn’t so much to build a fanciful story to sell books but to frame a new understanding using story. We all know of the effective use of parable/myth to explain more complicated lessons. An anthropological history book would never reach the majority of us and even if it did, it would probably be less understood. He painstakingly re-tells his same story in all of his books–in an obvious effort ( to me) to find different ways to illustrate it.

Is it all accurate? I for one have my doubts as well…How do we REALLY know anything for sure regarding human history spanning tens of thousands of years? I also don’t believe that our tribal ancestors lived an idylic life that we should seek to emulate. The fact that it worked for them doesn’t give me any license to believe it will work for me thousands of (consciousness) evolved years later. Perhaps there I diverge from a stricter interpretation of what Quinn is teaching/saying.

I read Quinn with an eye more toward the foundational issues of respecting the community of all species and the wisdom in a tribal approach to our human affairs. Food grown/distributed locally, diverse cultures and traditions, localized support systems–things of that nature.Polar opposites of the “One World Order” and the homogenization of human peoples. Less is more, bigger is not best and “affluenza” serves only to cause more stress and less purposeful, happy existences.

Which I like to think is the real story Quinn is telling us…So keep picking apart the details to help us get to an authentic expression of a “fully integrated 21st century tribalism”. Pick freely–we need to.

Re: Fully integrated 21st century ....."new tribalism"

I agree Sean….I think Quinn's real contribution is the way he's opened the lens on mother culture and forced us to look at the current 'meme' or story–and make us ask, “Is this working”….his going back to tribal/leaver cultures and showing the foundation of those cultures isn't his trying to say 'let's go back'–in fact, he says over and over and over again–there's no going back–ever.

But what we can do it look at 'what worked from those cultures',(the basic laws of the Community of Life( integrate it into what's working in our cultures–certainly plenty of good things we're doing too, and 'create' a new flow. 

That's what the book, Cultural Creatives, how 50 million people are changing the world' showed too….all of us in this pod are Cultural Creatives–trying to figure out what's good from previous culltures, and what's need for the future and merge that into a  new way of living on this planet.  To me, it is all wonderfully filled with potential–

Re: Fully integrated 21st century ....."new tribalism"

I agree… despite my quibbles with a few details, Quinn has made an enormous contribution. 

I have another question, which I will start in another thread.