Frank Forencich Asks – Where’s My Habitat?

Posted on June 28, 2010 by Josh

Frank Forencich of Exuberant Animal points out an issue with the way we approach ourselves in the world in a recent blog post.

His complaint is that we (as individuals, and culturally) separate ourselves from our habitats to such a degree that we’ve lost touch with reality.

I couldn’t agree more.

However, I wonder how to go about changing this. And in this post, I ask for your feedback.

Below is my response to Frank’s blog post. Please let me know your thoughts on how to do this – how to get people reconnected with their habitat, with the land that gives them life, in a visceral way.

The oil spill in the Gulf is at least in part a result of our society’s (societies’) addictive use of oil…we can’t separate the drillers from the people for whom they are drilling.

People are so distracted from anything real (habitat)…what will bring them back to awareness? How does one engender awareness?

Science is a process of thought that relies on separating things. It takes dynamic systems and “analyzes” them – breaks them down into “constituent parts” – which is a fallacy. Once you’ve killed and dissected a dog, where is the dog? It isn’t there anymore…a bunch of “parts” are.

We extend this tendency (or habit, whatever it is) into philosophical, religious, economic, and political thinking…

That is, it always comes down to – “This piece is wrong/bad, we must fix it.”

Thus, from the get-go, we’re off on the wrong foot. If we interfered, and that’s what “broke” it, how can we “fix” it by interfering again?

Better to stop doing.

Massive Oil Spill

Posted on May 27, 2010 by Josh

The massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico continues to pump oil out into the sea.

My friends are dismayed, and want action to remedy this problem, and its cause(s).

When I see the pictures, my heart drops like a stone, and I’m unable to really think clearly, without sadness and pessimism clouding my mind.

Worse still, after my mind begins to wonder at this devastation, it moves on immediately to similar environmental disasters that human beings are committing all over the world right now.

Can we change this? How? What is the source of this?

I see one source in the dissociation of people from their “tools.” From everything they use, they are further and further removed. Things become “mere things.” We suddenly are no longer connected in a cycle of creation and destruction. We stand outside of it and look on…passersby, observers, voyeurs of our own self-destruction.

Don’t look at the images anymore. Look into your heart. Find it there. Where did that self come from? What sustains/sustained it? That is the path out of this mess.

To “go under,” as Nietzsche once said…

Seriously?

Posted on May 19, 2010 by Josh

I’m not sure what the source of human seriousness is, but it is strange indeed.

I understand being serious in life-and-death situations. Yes, that’s good. Grave, no, but serious, yes.

I understand being serious as “meaning business.” Like “s/he means business! S/he is SERIOUS!”

But serious as in gravity, or as in a constructed deep meaning to something that, really, probably doesn’t have any meaning other than what you’re ascribing to it…?

That I don’t understand.

Can anyone help?

All Animals Are Animals – Morality

Posted on April 2, 2010 by Josh

After my recent post on communication (or “training” as its called in certain circles, or “teaching” as its known in still other circles), I was pleasantly surprised to see Bernie DeKoven’s recent post on the DeepFun blog.

Bernie doesn’t say much, rather, he quotes extensively from an article written by Jessica Pierce and Marc Bekoff, titled “Moral in Tooth and Claw.”

Pierce and Bekoff are also the authors of the recently (last year) published book “Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals“

Just wondering if they got approval from that Wolf to use his image on their book cover...

Bekoff and Pierce’s argument is that all animals have “morality,” it just looks different for different species.

I don’t see why not!

I’m still working on this idea, and appreciate your feedback on it, or any sources you may know of, but basically – emotion, morality, “justice,” or any other ABSTRACT name we give something, is a representation of an event.

In animals, that event is, specifically, a physiological event. Every action is an outward expression of something occurring within the animal.

“Morality” is a word (an abstract symbol) that we have created to capture a host of physical attitudes and emotions that we associate with a certain quality (“being moral”). That is, “morality” (the word) is an abstract symbol that stands-for (in language) a variety of physiological happenings that we think are interrelated.

Another "sign" - actually, two signs in one...

The Problem With Symbols

I think this area of learning is called “semiotics” – the study of signs or symbols. I’m not too familiar with it, but will read up on it soon. If you know about it, please add to the discussion.

In the time being, I’ll make some general statements about what I observe as being “the issue” with this type of approach to “animal” behavior.

First, let me say that I think that human beings are animals. Specifically, human beings are mammals. Just like dogs, cats, mice, cows, etc. As mammal, we have things in common with every other mammal that exists on this planet. Granted, there are things that separate us from one another – capabilities, physical attributes, etc. – but we are also very very similar in many ways.

Most folks don’t think in these terms. In fact, if you go to Pierce and Bekoff’s article and look at the comments, the very first comment says:

“Do not compare animal with man.Animal have not developed brain just like man.They are innocent compare to man.Developed brain is more selfish.Just watch child she had also innocent brain compare to adult.”

This is, I think, highly indicative of the problem with language.

Hang ten

Origins and Insertions

First off, we must agree that every animal communicates.

The definition of “communication” is “a process of transferring information from one entity to another.” Though single-cell and multi-cellular organisms may use different forms of communication, it still occurs.

Human beings, thanks to certain evolved structures, developed the capacity to communicate in a different way than other mammals. We probably began communicating the same way that they do – through body language, vocalizations, tonal qualities, etc. But eventually, we figured out that we could make certain things (tones or hand signs) represent other things.

The birth of symbols.

Once that occurred, we probably started to experiment with a variety of symbols to represent different things. Initially, it would make sense if we just used very easy representations – representations of communications we were used to hearing or seeing already. For instance, if we were hungry, we might make a sad face and grab our bellies, as we do when we get TRULY hungry. If we saw a buffalo on our trip, we might make horns on our head with our fingers when we got back to the tribe.

Things became more advanced with more advanced mimicry. We may have begun to use the sounds we associated with certain things – sounds alone. For instance, when the sun warms you, as you lay on a hot flat rock and relax, you make a certain sound with that feeling in your body. “Aaaaaah.” Feels good, right? If you get hurt, that “aaaah” might turn into “AH!” or “OH!”

Further along, the abstraction became more and more complicated.

At some point, something happened where we realized that we could represent certain things with drawings. In the beginning, it may have been exact replicas, precise drawings of the things we had seen.

Cave paintings from Chauvet, France. 32,000 years old.

The Birth of Alphabets

During this period, maybe we figured out that a simple circle could represent the sun. The Chinese ideographs are full of direct-pictorial representations of the physical things they stand for. Their language is not “alphabetic,” but symbolic, purely.

Other languages abstracted those symbols further, into individual symbols representing certain sounds.

Now, remember, those sounds represent certain physiological experiences – certain bodily experiences. At least, they did at first.

Once we could do that, we could begin to make words. But how do you make words? Have you ever thought about it?

One theory, which I agree with, is that the sounds (the physiological experience) come first, and then the letters that represent those sounds (those physiological experiences) are put into order, and a word is made.

Once we have words that we can agree on – in the beginning, likely very simple things, very accessible things, and not too many of them – we can begin to string those words together to form more detailed communications.

Dekooning - Almost Abstract

Distraction by Abstraction

We get to a place where we can reference words (abstractions, or symbols, of physiological occurrences) with other words.

We are referencing symbols with symbols. We are modifying meanings of symbols with the use of other symbols. This is “meta-symbolism.”

But what happens when we do that?

I think things become very confused. Our attention spans are very short, and we tend to focus on one or two things at a time (maximum, whether we try to convince ourselves that we’re “multi-tasking” or not).

Eventually, we forget that those words stand for something physical. We forget that they are representations. We believe that the symbol is real.

But it is not. It’s just a symbol.

At this point, we’ve taken the land, put it on a map, and then moved to outer space.

We begin to modify our words, our symbols, and their meaning, through convenience, through culture, through geography. Which is great, don’t get me wrong!

Get to the Point, Leeger

Alrighty, then.

Here’s the point – the meaning I give to a word (a symbol) may be a completely different meaning from the meaning you give to that word.

Even if we do agree on the meaning of the word, the associations you have with that word may be very different from the associations I have with that word. If you’ve experienced physical abuse firsthand, and I have not, when I say the word “abuse,” a very real and very different physiological event will occur in you than will in me – and it will lead us to different (more or less “emotional”) forms of communication about that word.

But the real point is this – “morality” is a word. It is a symbol that we have created to represent a series of actions, of visible communications, abstracted into words. “Justice,” is a similar word. It represents an “idea,” which represents a physiological experience.

Why does any of this matter? I think that this is one of the keys to expanding human potential. We have to admit that we are animals, first. Then, we have to admit that our modes of communication (our dominant mode – spoken or written language) are actually hiding us from the experience of our animal-ness.

Why does that matter? Take a look around you. Look at the “obesity epidemic,” or “non-communicable diseases,” or “global warming.”

None of those terms, those phrases, has any direct meaning to you (unless you are obese, or have a non-communicable disease). Yet these terms are bandied about as if they are meaningful. They become “hot topics,” and nothing changes.

Why does nothing change? Because we are divorced from the physical experiences that those words represent.

I’m not saying “do away with language.” Instead, I’m saying – understand it better. Learn language more clearly. Feel it in your body.

As my Sensei, Mick Dodge says – “We should quest for the most direct sensory touch that we can endure in order to awaken our animal, our animus, our spirit.”

Find your “morality” in that.

The Best Exercise Includes a Dose of Nature

Posted on March 31, 2010 by Josh

The British Ecological Society’s blog posted about a recent research article titled “What Is The Best Dose of Nature and Green Exercise For Improving Mental Health?”

The article is a meta-analysis (that is, it synthesizes research from many previous research studies about the topic), and sums up its results with the following statement:

“This study confirms that the environment provides an important health service.”

And I have only two questions…

1. REALLY?!!! and,

2. AND?!!!

First, this information is anything but new. Anyone who has every gone hiking, who has ever taken a vacation in the mountains, or in the woods, or who has ever played in a creek behind their house, knows firsthand the difference between “exercising” (moving) outdoors in a natural environment versus doing the same or similar activity indoors or in a “built” (human-made) environment.

I’m talking here, not only your own first-hand experience, but also about the incredible amount of scientific research that shows the benefits of moving in a natural environment. The paper quoted above used a lot of that research to make its own (redundant) point!

I’ve pointed out at least one piece of this literature in previous posts (here, here, and here). So…it’s not even new to this blog!!!

However, even with that knowledge, and even with the rapidly mounting evidence, and my (and others’) incessant blog postings on the subject, it continues to be an “issue.” That is, people continue to choose Wii, and to choose justifying their Wii time, to actually going out into the woods and taking a hike.

I want to say one thing before I finish this post up with a final point, and that is this -People seem to have a tendency to feel better once they talk about something. That is, they feel little compulsion to do anything about a problem once it’s been aired, once it’s out in the open. In fact, on a few occasions I’ve seen this behavior up close and in person. Let me give one example:

There was a family that I spent a lot of time with. Everyone was overweight in that family, and they were aware of it. In fact, they would almost always say things like “We’re all fat in this family.” Or “We need to lose weight.” Or “We need to throw out all of that junk food in the pantry, and just have a bowl of fruit out for snacks.”

One time, I actually offered to help with the clearing of the pantry. I said “Ok, that’s a good idea! Let’s do that now!” Well, the younger children of the household weren’t home, and the adults decided that it would be too traumatic to just throw everything out all of a sudden. So we didn’t clear out the pantry.

There is a reason we are not connecting to nature. That we are not making this connection. That we don’t go out into the woods and take a hike. There is a reason you don’t do it. What is that reason?

My final point is this – The above question seems a good question for science to ask. Why isn’t science asking that question?

Here’s my answer(s) to that question:

1. It’s not the job of science to do anything about it. It’s the job of science to ask questions and get answers. But science is not a field of activisim. It is a field of questioning and answering. That’s all. Expecting action based on gathered knowledge is a bad habit (one which I’m trying to get rid of).

2. Science doesn’t want to ask a question that invalidates itself. I think part of the answer, of why we are not connecting to nature, in spite of overwhelming evidence that we should, has to do with the fact that our culture is largely based in a scientific approach to things. That is, nature and science (at least, the way we’re accustomed to doing science) are largely contradictory. So, science might find its own relativism, and find its own value being questioned, were it to ask “Why aren’t we connecting to nature.”

A couple of possible answers…what do you think?!

Bare Feet, Language, Saxons and Celts

Posted on November 30, 2009 by Josh

A recent article in Discover online describes the discovery of an English podiatrist that:

“Traditional English feet, Jackson says, tend to be broad and somewhat pointed–the toes form a steep angle from the first to the fifth. The Celtic evacuees, in contrast, had toe tips that were almost level with one another, and their feet tended to be longer and slimmer–except for a bulge at the base of the big toe, where bunions form.”

This led to the formation of plenty of bunions in those of Celtic descent.

What interests me here is that the article title, “Human Origins/Language/British Feet,” uses the word “language” in it, though there is no reference to language in the article.

I don’t think it’s incorrect, however!

As the Barefoot Sensei told me during my stay with him, language and walking are very intimately connected.

Since then, I’ve been doing some digging of my own.

More soon!

Your External Organ

Posted on November 17, 2009 by Josh

Ok dirty birds, before you get any ideas, let me tell you what “external organ” I’m talking about:

The environment.

Yes, I said it! But I don’t mean “the environment,” as in what you try to save by driving a Prius, or by recycling. Well, I sort of do, but I think the word has been cheapened by those things a bit.

The environment is everything external to you. Yes, it is the “natural” world – trees, earth, dirt, grass, birds, animals, etc. It is also your house, the street you live on, your friends neighbors and enemies, your children, your parents, the airplane flying over your house.

Again, “the environment” is everything external to your body.

The “internal organs” of your body are these:

Adrenals — Appendix — Bladder — Brain — Eyes — Gall bladder — Heart — Intestines — Kidney — Liver — Lungs — Esophagus — Ovaries — Pancreas — Parathyroids — Pituitary — Prostate — Spleen — Stomach — Testicles — Thymus — Thyroid — Uterus — Veins

The internal organs of the body are “collection of tissues joined in structural unit to serve a common function.” More importantly, they are the functional units of your body. They work in harmony to allow you to live. Without any one of them, you die.

Your “external organ” is the collective “thing” outside of you, that similarly supports your life. Without any part of your external organ – without plants and animals for food, or plants and sunlight and water for air, or dirt, or the people around you, or the birds, or anything else – you die.

The "Carbon Cycle" - Your External Organ Breathes

Now consider your actions in relation to this external organ of your body. For the people who are so detached from their own body that they cannot feel it or relate to it, this won’t mean much – but it might be a path back to the body. It might be easier for them to first understand their relationship to their external organ.

Another Cycle of Your External Organ

Cults

Posted on September 30, 2009 by Josh

Posted this reponse to John Sifferman’s latest blog entry about Crossfit. While I agree with John about Crossfit, I think it’s important to find the deeper needs that people are trying to fulfill through their actions, and speak to those, instead of battling on the surface all the time.

Here it is:

Hi John,

Good post. I encounter this in many areas of my life on a daily basis. Trainers are often just as (if not, at times, more) guilty of “cult-following” as any trainee. Trainers in the cults of Chek, Verstegen, Sonnon (no offense intended!), Pavel, etc., only look at training through the lens of their leader’s viewpoints.

I think the bottom line with these cults harkens back to the definition of the word. Cult means “religion,” in Latin, and, as such, a cult is a “community of like-minded individuals.”

By the very nature of this type of structure, it is exclusive, and exclusionary – it seeks to pit itself over/above/against any other group.

Does that make it right?

Not at all. But for the people in the cult, all they see is their cult-ure. Their fellow cultists are constantly there to back them up.

It’s kind of a useless battle to fight.

Instead, I’m always interested in the background for the cult’s beliefs. What is/are the need/s that is/are being fulfilled by/through the cult, through membership in it, and also through the exclusivity of the cult?

When I look at it from that perspective, I become more empathetic. I understand that the person is trying to feel connected to something, they want to achieve an image of themselves that they feel the cult offers, they want to belong to something that supports them, etc.

If I can offer them those feelings from my own heart, then we can have a meaningful dialogue about it. Till then, though, we just butt heads.

Josh

Culture – Don’t Say I Didn’t Warn You

Posted on September 24, 2009 by Josh

Remember history class? At any point. High school, college, prison…wherever you took a history class. Remember?

Remember what you studied? Yeah, dates, events, blah blah blah. But the important stuff, the stuff that grabbed your attention?

For me, there were two things. The first was the great leaders in history. Usually, they were the “conquerors” – Alexander, Caesar, Genghis Khan, etc.

Then, it was the great cultures. The rise and fall of civilizations – the Babylonians, the Greek, Roman, Aztec, Mayan, Mongol, etc.

The great leaders either represented the pinnacle of the culture they led, or became the representation of that pinnacle – the goal to reach for, for that culture (Jesus is a good example of this latter type).

I’ve been thinking a lot about culture recently. Ever since I read Rene Dubos’ book, “So Human an Animal,” back in the Spring.

An article in “Trends and Updates” laments “The Culture of Getting and Spending.” Which is part of our American (US) culture. The author highlights this culture by quoting from William Wordsworth’s poem ”

There are other aspects of that culture, such as:

Ignorance of one’s own feelings (lack of self-awareness)
Self-denial (“needy” people are looked down upon)
An inability to communicate feelings
Obsessive Compulsive tendencies
Tendencies to Hyperactive/Attentional disorders
Unconscious mythmaking/Idolatry
Sloth and gluttony (lack of self-awareness in relation to one’s surroundings)
Lack of general awareness (of surroundings)
Disdain and/or lack of awareness of nature

There was an article published in the New York Times on September 10th called “Are Your Friends Making You Fat?”

The answer, in short, is YES.

Researchers have found that there is a direct connection between fitness levels/mortality indicators and…friends.

Your culture determines largely what you will engage in or not. Do all of your friends smoke? If yes, than you are likely a smoker as well. Does everyone in your neighborhood play soccer all the time? If yes, then you probably will as well.

Does your culture believe in faith healing? If yes, then most likely, you will as well – and not only that, but you will likely be healed by a faith healing at some point in your life.

Sure, you might also die. But what does that say about you?

The secret here, is to do something. Thinking about what your culture does is fine, to get better at thinking (specifically, to get better at thinking about what your culture does…maybe not better at “thinking in general”).

If you want to get better at doing things, you have to do. You cannot get better at doing things by thinking about them.

If you want to get thin – make friends with thin people. If you want to be more active – surround yourself with people who are active (preferably, who’ve been where you are now, and are now active).

The age of the craftsman has almost entirely vanished. But in that practice, there was the concept of apprenticeship. If you wanted to learn a craft, you went and lived with the master. This used to be true of the martial arts, as well (and still is, for some). You made sacrifices of your personal liberties in order to learn what the teacher had to teach you.

Mythmaking

Posted on July 24, 2009 by Josh

After a great conversation with one of the people I play with at the foot-camp today, I have quite a bit to say about control. I’ll try to make it as cohesive (and brief) as possible.

First, many (if not all) of our beliefs and ideas about control are myths.

The word “myth” means “story.” Human beings have used stories to relate things to one another, probably as long as we’ve existed as a species.

As a story, a myth is always a subjective storytelling. It is always perspectival – it is always based on the individual opinion or worldview of the person telling the myth.

The source of our myths, or what we accept as a “valid” mythology, has changed in different eras. However, there has almost always been an individual, or “type” of individual (an office, of sorts) whose stories we agree to believe unconditionally.

This office is different depending on our culture. It is culturally dictated. In some cultures, we only believe the myths our shaman tells us. In others, we only believe the myths told us by our politicians. In others, those told to us by warlords. In others, it is the scientist who has myth-telling authority. It depends on the culture you make yourself a part of.

You can probably have more than one official myth-teller in your culture, but the more you have, the more confusing things become. When you are part of a political-myth culture, but you have developed strong religious-myth beliefs, you have to find a religious-politician, or a political-religious leader, whose myths you can believe in.

Also, at times, we create our own myths about ourselves, and listen to no one else – “I am not good enough,” or, “I am better than everyone else,” or, “My nose is too big,” etc. Those are stories we tell ourselves.

All of the stories we tell ourselves, or choose to believe, serve a purpose. There may not be a single purpose underlying all myths – but on the other hand, there might. At least in the sense that all of the myths that we choose to believe, as individuals, define who we are or who we can be as individuals. Not only that, but they also usually define who we are or who we can be within the culture(s) to which we claim membership.

As I mentioned in my last post, much of the dietary information available today is mythology. It is storytelling, done, sometimes by scientists, but more often by “pop-culture” writers. Neither telling is the whole truth. As I mentioned above, any storyteller can only tell the story as they see it…which usually also means that they tell it as they want it to be – for them.

Coming up with solutions to perceived problems usually grants power in most cultures. One problem might be – “Where do I go when I die?” The religious storyteller solves this problem with their myth, and they are rewarded accordingly.

Another might be – “Why am I fat?” Here, the scientists or writer myth-maker tries to solve the problem. They offer their solution, in expectation of appropriate reward for their effort.

But the story is incomplete. It is a splinter from the log. It is the reflection off of a facet of the jewel that is the problem.

In the most recent Exuberant Animal blog post, Frank Forencich cites a report from Robert Sapolsky, noted stress researcher:

“In Scientific American, December 2005, Sapolsky writes:
‘individuals are more likely to activate a stress response and are more at risk for a stress sensitive disease if they…

feel as if they have minimal control

feel as if they have no predictive information

have few outlets for their frustration

interpret the stressor as evidence of worsening circumstances

lack social support’”

Indeed, this is much of what our mythmaking seeks to combat. It is actually the most important “risk factor” – unhappiness, stress, despair.

All disease is stressful. Stress, undue stress that we cannot deal with, is a disease state. For Sapolsky, stress is a primary concern. It’s what he studies. It’s his area of myth officialdom.

While all of these perspectives are important, valuable, and enriching, we need to make it a regular habit to step back from our mythologies and look at the gem itself. Even though we can’t take it in (because, ultimately, it is All That Is), we can move back and play with the interrelationships between the myths we’ve chosen to believe in.

In this sense, taken together, all of the risk factors we hear about – dietary cholesterol, fats, refined or processed (re-pro) products (for instance, re-pro products like high fructose corn syrup, or re-pro products like car exhaust), stress (of any sort that we cannot resolve – emotional, psychological, physical, environmental), lack of movement, excesses and deficiencies of any sort – are equally to blame, and play an equal role in mortality.

The degree to which we can mitigate those risk factors is the degree to which we can live a healthy human life. That life will go through developmental stages, cycles of growth and degeneration, of vitality and illness. That process includes birth and death, creation and dissolution. Depending upon how many of those risk factors that we have to deal with, over what duration and in what quantity, we’ll live, on average, 75-100 years.

This hasn’t really changed that much since the beginning of the human species. In Ancient Greece, for instance, Aristotle lived to be 62. He died in 322 BC. That was 2300 years ago. Sophocles, the playwright, lived to be 90. That was in 400 BC. Plato was about 76 when he died, in 348 BC. Cicero was 63, in 43 BC. Most of the “upper class” of Ancient Rome lived to be in their mid sixties or beyond – if they weren’t killed before then (cultural/environmental risk factors).

While the global averages for lifespan have increased in the past two centuries, thanks to the advent of available medicine and hygiene, the human lifespan has remained relatively unchanged. If we live in an area low in risk factors, we live a good while. The greater the risk factors, the lower our lifespan.

Most important is this – Understand that you choose the myths you participate and believe in. Then change the ones that aren’t conducive to your health, happiness and longevity.

Find an environment that’s not just “not-stressful,” but that actually makes you feel exuberant! Find a culture that supports your exuberance, and take part in it as often as possible. Understand your myths, and get rid of the ones that are harmful.

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