The Toxicity and Vitality of Rightness and Wrongness
Much of what keeps us imprisoned in modern civilization amounts to unarticulated webs of shoulds and oughts, rights and wrongs. I’ve written about this before, in terms of the Grave of Right and Wrong (and podcasted too).
But the more I understand my own path of Rewilding, the more I understand a certain process underway in my life. Namely, in order to abandon old models of “rightness/wrongness”, and old uses for the models, I need to create newer ones that affirm life.
If every culture has their own Right way (including healthy indigenous ones), it means that when faced with a “wrong” way, you can meet a dialogue like this:
A: “We just don’t do it that way.”
B: “Why not?”
A: “We just don’t. A sensible person doesn’t do that.”
B: “But have you ever tried it?”
A: “No, only a foolish person would.”
Think of a traditional animist’s reaction to someone saying “hey, try treating everything as unliving, dead stuff, devoid of personhood”. They would probably laugh, walk away, scowl, or shake their head at such a proposal.
This indicates unarticulated wisdom; wisdom acquired through immersion in a culture, not through lectures, information, or questioning. It doesn’t need explaining; you can feel it in your bones.
I can imagine it surprising a reader to discover that I support this kind of almost unreflected “wisdom”, but it would only surprise a member of civilization, the sole culture in human history against which its members must defend themselves by deconstructing its fiendish paradoxes, traps, and devil’s bargains.
Traditionally, you could depend on your culture to unthinkingly protect you, to back you up, because time had tested and shaped it.
Only now do we find ourselves the slave labor force for the cultural monster bent on devouring the world.
My point? Abandon the Rights and Wrongs of this culture, walk away from that way of thinking for a goodly while. Use new measures (”does this action affirm life? create more of what I want - stronger family, healthier land?”) with which to evaluate the results of your actions and behaviors.
At some point, you will naturally discover that you don’t articulate these “new ways” anymore, and I guarantee you that your ways will differ from mine. But embrace these, just as you would embrace the unblinking adherence of an indigenous adult to traditions that affirm life. You will naturally find that you have a “Right Way” for you and your people again, without planning or ideology, and without discussion or enforcement.
Importantly, more and more, I see unarticulated wisdom as the most powerful, and long-term surviving, form of culture. If you participate in a discussion about your deeply held values, experiences, or relationships, you may discover that suddenly they seem less real, less important, less alive. You may begin to doubt them.
You may have already heard of the common tradition of “not discussing sacred things or ceremonies”. This means these things go directly into that realm of protected, powerful, unarticulated cultural forces, that will survive and protect you and your descendants. Articulation with the wrong people, in the wrong environment, can kill this powerful, unarticulated, unintellectualized wisdom. Engaging in a conversation with the colonizer can sound the death knell for a traditional person, whether a new rewilder or one belonging to an animist culture that goes back to the dawn of time.
We live in a bottlenecked time of danger, where we may lose many things, many of us suffer spiritual (once again, I have no better word, still working on it) injury, many cultures and languages will disappear, much rewilding will suffocate or homogenize back into the colonizing power of civilization.
Treat your animist relationships and traditional values as priceless treasure, and sacred things. Perhaps work to someday allow them an unarticulated influence over your life, a silent courtship that provides constant companionship.
For those like myself, foolish enough to articulate the better-left-unsaid, I confess to the danger. Setting aside even that my story may simply not apply to your rewilding in any case, putting out there provides room for critique, the microscope of intellect, the razor of mind.
I’ve adapted to this by no longer “discussing” the reasonableness of my experiences, or relationships. I don’t engage, evangelize, or debate when it comes to the animism side of my rewilding. I’ll tell my Story, but I won’t make time for a critique of it. In this way I do the best I can, because for whatever reason I’ve acquired the passion to wake up as many fellow animists as possible to what they already experience and long for.
July 24th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
“Much of what keeps us imprisoned in modern civilization amounts to unarticulated webs of shoulds and oughts, rights and wrongs.”
Totally! Adorno speaks on this a lot…
and a lot of people see morality and ethics as a sort of compass, a navigation mechanism for their journey through life. But when you think about the fact that these are social constructs, we look like animals circling a pen.
I’ll share a story that my housemate told me.
He had a friend, Jeremy, who was going through this strange period of life where he was “watching Fight Club all the time and not sleeping much”. One afternoon he was sitting at a red light at a busy street in West Olympia. And he got this sudden, uncontrollable urge to just slam on the gas. It built, and built…..and he gunned it….feeling the sort of crazy wisdom, an exhilarating, divine inspiration….
And T-boned a very large white SUV.
And then the feeling of doom set in. The woman got out of the drivers seat and said she didn’t think she was injured. But she wanted to have an X-ray to make sure nothing was out of place. There wasn’t too much damage on the car either.
So she goes and gets an Xray. And this is what happened. They found a rapidly growing malignant tumor in some obscure place in her torso, that would not have been detectable by any other means. They operated immediately, because waiting anymore could very likely have meant a death sentence.
And she was operated on, and is in good health.
And Jeremy….his parents bought him a brand new car soonafter. For no obvious reason.
So the moral of the story is that he could have listened to social convention and NOT slammed on the gas pedal at the red light. Morality would have said you shouldn’t needlessly cause car accidents.
And then there’s the universe speaking and acting through us, which requires intimacy with the crazy wisdom it carries. Morality, ethics…they could potentially interfere with that.
And thus I pledge allegiance to no side of the game, only dedicating myself to the Web of Life and the spiritual ecology we all embody.
July 25th, 2008 at 9:26 am
Renee-
Totally! Adorno speaks on this a lot…
and a lot of people see morality and ethics as a sort of compass, a navigation mechanism for their journey through life. But when you think about the fact that these are social constructs, we look like animals circling a pen.
Genius! Poetry, in fact.
Yes, morality and ethics that don’t take into account the power and demands of the moment, not only interfere, but stand fundamentally in opposition to Life. I do believe indigenous moral systems exist that embrace the dictates of the moment. But the only way to get back to these, for ourselves, lies through abandoning artificiality and the obsession with looking to an authority for direction.