Very much looking forward to listening to the audio with David Abram and Lierre Keith. What a great panel that Orion put together..

Regarding that odd concept of nature, you might be interested in this interview with Tim Morton:

http://www.againstthegrain.org/program/490/id/442328/tues-11-01-11-rethinking-ecology

It’s interesting how your time in wildness has so inspired you toward it’s care and protectection, Paul. This seems to me the classic arc of the, I hate to say it–”environmental journey.” We encounter that which so surpasses us that we are naturally taken over by an overriding inner need to try and protect it. It seems almost archetypal of the spiritual quest. Seeker encounters that which is greater, the sacred Origen, and falls in love and devotion to it.

Yet what the public sees and hears is science and “environmentalism” trying to protect “biodiversity.” The story, which is really an heroic story, perhaps the first heroic story, is lost. Our technocratic language can neither contain nor convey it. Yet it can be reclaimed. “To carry something wild and precious through the storm” is the sort of language that does that kind or reclamation.

And as Ilka said so well, when we speak the truth of nature “we are repatterning our reality.”

In terms of language, a great source is Uwe Poerksen’s “Plastic Words: The Tyranny of Modular Language.” At the behest of Ivan Illich, Poerksen set out to confront and understand modern industrial language. In the process he came up with his theory of “plastic words.” Plastic words are general concept words and terms that have overtaken the common vernacular in a way that ultimatley “disables language.” This language all has a technical. quasi-scientific aspect which lends to the speaker a sheen of expertise and technical authority. They are words that mean nothing yet bahave as if they know everything. “Communication, transportation and development” are all prime examples.” I sent a cd recording of a BBC interview with Dr. Poerksen to Dougald some time back. Maybe he can provide a link as part of the post.

One thing Poerksen points out, is the way these words colonize other languages. Like invasive species, they overwhelm local, indigenous ways of speaking, and soon take over the linguistic landscape. Ilka’s report of the Maori word for water meaning “Who am I” brings this to mind. What an amazing relationship with water such language must engender for the people who speak it. I wonder if the Maori people have since succombed to the pressure for a more detached and scientific relationship with nature, and have been forced to conjure up a Maori translation for “aquatic resources.”

I’m in agreeance that modernity has blanketed the globe and it has proven to be a sinister and seductive adversary. And it is also true as Derrick Jensen states that many Indigenous cultures who practiced ’sustainability’ have been ’slaughtered’ and/or marginalised.

At the heart of what I’m expressing is the critical need to remember. Perhaps it’s possible that every time we stake a ‘truth’ in our language that does not feed modernity – we are re-patterning our reality – we become the offensive not the defensive. We need all the tools we can wield to empower our shift and I believe direct action and language are vital areas of work.

And because I see so many people clamoring to find solutions, I feel reconnecting and deep listening are instrumental; to place, to old cultures, to each other.

Thanks for your time Paul, it’s great to engage questions of strategy.

Thanks for the comment. I agree, and I don’t agree. It is obviously the case that some cultures are far less damaging than others. But it is also the case that those cultures which are almost perfectly adapted to living within wild systems (Snyder would call them wild cultures; aboriginal culture in Australia is an excellent example) have been destroyed or marginalised. The two cultures you mention are clinging on as distressed minorities in industrialised nations.

We have a global culture now, in effect, and it’s not ‘Western’, though it did originate in the West. It’s modernity, and it’s got a powerful grip on Chile, India, China, Australia and just about everywhere else. It’s fossil-fuel powered, accumulative, growth-focused and frighteningly good at enveloping different cultural norms within its consumer embrace.

Bear in mind also that ‘Western’ people were the first victims of this culture, and its first beneficiaries and creators. We have our own indigenous cultures and ways of knowing land and place, which have been all but destroyed (you won’t see this so much in Australia, which is a settler nation, but in England and other places the echoes can still be heard.)

Modernity now reaches across all cultures and brings most people into its fold. There’s no denying this. I think our challenge is to work out if it is possible for all of us to come out of the other side intact.

I am fortunate to be born in the great land down under – home to the oldest cultures on earth – Aboriginal Australia. In respect of language, Aborigines don’t make the distinction between human and nature and the wild doesn’t exist separate to self. I have also observed this in Maori language and culture.

My friend Jo Tito http://www.handpaintedrocks.com/ explains: “The Maori word for water is ‘wai’ and ‘Ko wai au?’ translates as ‘Who am I?’ So water is very much the central part of who am I. This word, this concept, this part of nature which is deeply embedded in our beautiful language and who we are. Waiata is song, music… waiora is life giving waters and because our language is so conceptual, every word tells a story and is not exclusive to itself, always connected to something else somewhere.”

While all the cultures of our species are affected by and often indirectly contribute to our global environmental crises – I think Western people need to work extra consciously to untangle ourselves from damaging binary habits (both biological and cultural)that can inadvertently sweep complexity in to an earnest but romantic and dismissive gesture.

It is our task to remember.

Once we leave the modern roads, leave the cars they were made for, we begin to feel the violence they do to the world and its inhabitants first hand. To them, and to us as we attempt journeys like yours, they show their true colors, not as conduits, but as walls and barriers. They collect a death tribute each time some creature attempts to cross. They fragment the open landscape and carry off the commodified “resources” that generate scarcity and poverty as the lifeblood of a region is sent off to accumulate as “wealth” somewhere else.

Good luck in your travels! Looking forward to more accounts!