It was finally getting around to reading Supernature 20 years after it got trendy that alerted me to how magic works in nature. Lyall Watson followed that up with Beyond Supernature & various other books. Some scientists are capable of thinking outside the square but as far as I'm aware, reductionism still captivates academia.
Holism has only captured part of it, via subversion. The trick is to call it systems theory or the science of complexity. Anything to avoid telling the truth works as well in the academic world as in politics!
Due to my focus in recent years: "What is communication? How does data differ from information?" Plus the relation between form in nature, and informing…
From p10: "one of the largest known living organisms is the underground-growing mushroom Armillaria ostoyae. One specimen covers an area of around 2,385 hectares in an American nature reserve in Oregon… Experts estimate that this fungus is an impressive 2,400 years old."
It’s been known for some time now that trees actually communicate with each other, pass on information, & some even help each other – particularly saplings – to survive.
In one study, Simard watched as a Douglas fir that had been injured by insects appeared to send chemicalwarning signalsto a ponderosa pine growing nearby. The pine tree then produced defense enzymes to protect against the insect. "This was a breakthrough," Simard says. The trees were sharing "information that actually is important to the health of the whole forest."
Yeah, so that's an excellent example of interspecies signalling of a threat. An ecologist would probably cite it as emergence of a commons economy. Sort of like folks in a neighbourhood will disregard their differences to collaborate in response to a natural disaster.
Seems like fungi are colonising the internets. (Star Trek Disco rocks for bringing Paul Stamets name further into human civ). Been seeing a noticeable upswing in sharing about how soil based life forms communicate.
Yeah, you may also recall a conversation we had onsite here around a year ago with We The Bleeple on root fungi ecosystems.
From Gezza's link:
It can take decades for a tree to die. In the process of dying, there's a lot of things that go on. And one of the things that I studied was where does their energy — where does the carbon that is stored in their tissues — where does it go? And so we label some trees with carbon dioxide — with C13, which is a stable isotope — and we watched as we actually cause these trees to die. We stress them out by pulling their needles off and attacking them with budworms and so on. And then we watched what happened to their carbon.
And we found that about 40% of the carbon was transmitted through networks into their neighboring trees. The rest of the carbon would have just dispersed through natural decomposition processes … but some of it is directed right into the neighbors. And in this way, these old trees are actually having a very direct effect on the regenerative capacity of the new forest going forward.
This is a completely different way of understanding how old trees contribute to the next generations — that they have agency in the next generations.
Putting aside how scientists tend to learn by killing other life-forms (I still find that distasteful), what we have in this quote is proof of provision of intergenerational equity – inasmuch as the process of dying initiates a process of sharing natural resources with the young. Humans aren't as good at it.
Just finished a day-long interview/forest-garden film-session with Happen Films on this very topic, weka. I'll send the link when they go to "air". It was an "in-depth" exploration of these issues you've raised here, plus more 🙂
Those who wish to see how a shamanic approach can help advance the scientific understanding of plants need to read this wonderful book. Monica Gagliano opens up new frontiers and her methods deserve broad attention.” – Jeremy Narby, PhD, author of The Cosmic Serpent
I have two books entitled The Cosmic Serpent, and one of them is his. Shamanic investigations of nature are an alt arena that I've not specialised in but do have books by others that have & his was worth reading. My niche in kiwi culture has long been alt Aotearoa but not many even in that niche are adventurous or diligent enough to do practical shamanic research. I dabbled somewhat but never met anyone here who were as enterprising as Narby or John Perkins, McKenna…
I think that "window" has shifted, Dennis, and the interest/expertise in that field has grown remarkably. The title "shaman" is not attractive to everyone, and instead we now see a plethora of authors/scientists/etc. offering materials on the topic, but not claiming esoteric status. Merlin Sheldrake is a good example of someone wishing to be widely accepted, whilst working in a previously peripheral area of investigation.
Young Merlin is less adventurous mentally than his dad. Well, that's the impression I formed but I haven't really investigated him enough perhaps.
It was the generation born in the early 1940s who were the psychedelic pioneers & I'm on the trailing edge of that. Confidence in using one's mind to explore nature via altered states of consciousness is probably inversely proportional to mental health. Well, has often seemed that way to me, at least. The point being that only those sure of their situation & having a naturally resilient psyche ought to do it!
Young Merlin's playing it safe, for the moment, in my view. I suspect he's plenty smart and saw his dad get pummelled by the fraternity in his early years. In any case, the atmosphere for passionate wonderings has passed along with the hippy movement that gave wind to its wings; it’s all a lot more serious now, but more likely to bring profound change, for all that. We're still morphically-resonating, habitually realising and looking toward the teleological attractor at the end of time 🙂
Hmm. Well, your reference to imagination got me pondering, aware that other mental faculties come into play with psychedelic adventuring.
Cultural framing is a determinant. Hippie was a cultural framing. Science, both practice & theory, is culturally framed. Discovery need not be.
So it's all down to how we interpret discoveries. I still use scientific framing in suitable contexts, whilst being aware that my own preference is for metaphysical framing (more basic, more integrative, more transcendent).
The natural human tendency is to interpret discoveries in terms we already know (self-reinforcing, in-crowd elitism, etc) with the typical consequence that we end up missing the point. The point is meant to pull us out of ourselves. That's according to the original meaning of educate.
What if the human psyche has atrophied as a result of civilisation? In respect of attunement to nature, I mean. What if we a inherently capable of reconnecting to nature at that deeper original level, provided we transcend social conditioning? That was the whole point of why the hippie thing shifted out of city & suburbs in 1968 & became `back to the land'. Well, the experiential challenge of Green authenticity persists, and each younger generation sorts into those who engage the challenge & succeed, those who fail, and the bulk who never try…
"What if we a inherently capable of reconnecting to nature at that deeper original level, provided we transcend social conditioning?"
Quite so, Dennis. Of course, we are and we must. It's a fairly straight-forward process, as described best by Goethe; sit quietly amongst plants, observe closely and at length, draw what you see; the results will speak for themselves. The next stage, achievable after much practice, is to imagine the plant to such intensity that it "is" the plant you practiced on. This not easy 🙂
"…provided we transcend social conditioning…" and our own personal conditioning…
Darwin wrote,
"I strolled a little beyond the glade for an hour and a half… the fresh yet dark green of the grand old Scotch firs, the brown of the catkins of the old birches, with their white stems, and a fringe of distant green from the larches, made an excessively pretty view… a chorus of birds singing around me, and squirrels running up the trees, and some woodpeckers laughing… it was as pleasant and rural a scene as ever I saw and did not care one penny how the beasts or birds had been formed."
Walt Witman suffered a debilitating stroke, but strove on to learn…
"Above all, however, Whitman found vitality in the natural world — in what he so poetically called “the bracing and buoyant equilibrium of concrete outdoor Nature, the only permanent reliance for sanity of book or human life.” Looking back on what most helped him return to life after the stroke, Whitman echoes Seneca’s wisdom on calibrating our expectations for contentment and writes:
The trick is, I find, to tone your wants and tastes low down enough, and make much of negatives, and of mere daylight and the skies.
[…]
After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, love, and so on — have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear — what remains? Nature remains; to bring out from their torpid recesses, the affinities of a man or woman with the open air, the trees, fields, the changes of seasons — the sun by day and the stars of heaven by night."
"Go and sit in a grove or woods, with one or more of those voiceless companions, and read the foregoing, and think.
One lesson from affiliating a tree — perhaps the greatest moral lesson anyhow from earth, rocks, animals, is that same lesson of inherency, of what is, without the least regard to what the looker on (the critic) supposes or says, or whether he likes or dislikes. What worse — what more general malady pervades each and all of us, our literature, education, attitude toward each other, (even toward ourselves,) than a morbid trouble about seems, (generally temporarily seems too,) and no trouble at all, or hardly any, about the sane, slow-growing, perennial, real parts of character, books, friendship, marriage — humanity’s invisible foundations and hold-together? (As the all-basis, the nerve, the great-sympathetic, the plenum within humanity, giving stamp to everything, is necessarily invisible.)"
fungimentally mushrooms have been kept in the dark …far too long.
Mushrooms are the temporary reproductive structures of massive, seldom seen, subterranean creatures more closely related to you than to plants. Fungi. Some are miles wide. Some live thousands of years. Some help trees speak to one another. There’s magic beneath the forests.'
And yet we kill them willy-nilly – almost every 'cide known to and made by man, destroys those treasures (and that doesn't even begin to cover concreted cityscapes, asphalted road networks and broad scale industrial pastural farmland that starves and isolates fungi communities into non-existence).
He's his own man – very smart and a man of integrity. They've made a good choice.
With a bit of luck we won't have to watch anymore tacky game shows like the one I watched the other night – the Xmas episode of Give Us A Clue. Having never watched it before I took a punt it might be okay. Charades after all can be fun.
OMG the Xmas bling. The players were lost amongst a gigantic display of baubles, bangles, beads, Santa Claus', reindeers, holly, ivy, silly hats, fairies, elves, and masses of glitter everywhere. In the middle were a bunch of celebrities trying to outdo one another on what was left of the set.
S'pose its some peoples idea of entertainment but sadly not mine. Entertainment with class I say.
The description of the show is largely tongue in cheek Blazer. But I don't resile from my critique. Apart from a few humorous moments (the best one lost among the melee) it was pretty awful.
And I don't hold his former banking position against him.
You have obviously met him somewhere along the line…
Nope. I watched him perform in the House at Question Time and thought his answers were always rational. Didn't necessarily agree with him though and he had his moments debating with the then Labour opposition. But I never saw him resort to rudeness or malice as some in National have been wont to do.
He does wear a suit, however, so folks will be reassured TVNZ remains Dorksville Central. Cultural continuity is critical. The world keeps changing, so the only way mainstreamers can cling onto a semblance of sanity is for such islands of sameness to provide a refuge for them.
Christopher Luxon is every dismal boss who ever made you wince, or roll your eyes, or think to yourself I have absolutely got to get the hell out of this place.Get a load of what he shared with us at his cabinet reshuffle, trying to be all sensitive and gracious.Dr ...
The text of my submission to the Ministry of Health's unnecessary and politicised review of the use of puberty blockers for young trans and nonbinary people in Aotearoa. ...
Hi,Last night one of the world’s biggest social media platforms, TikTok, became inaccessible in the United States.Then, today, it came back online.Why should we care about a social network that deals in dance trends and cute babies? Well — TikTok represents a lot more than that.And its ban and subsequent ...
Sometimes I wake in the middle of the nightAnd rub my achin' old eyesIs that a voice from inside-a my headOr does it come down from the skies?"There's a time to laugh butThere's a time to weepAnd a time to make a big change"Wake-up you-bum-the-time has-comeTo arrange and re-arrange and ...
Former Health Minister Shane Reti was the main target of Luxon’s reshuffle. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāLong stories short to start the year in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, poverty and climate: Christopher Luxon fired Shane Reti as Health Minister and replaced him with Simeon Brown, who Luxon sees ...
Yesterday, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced a cabinet reshuffle, which saw Simeon Brown picking up the Health portfolio as it’s been taken off Dr Shane Reti, and Transport has been given to Chris Bishop. Additionally, Simeon’s energy and local government portfolios now sit with Simon Watts. This is very good ...
The sacking of Health Minister Shane Reti yesterday had an air of panic about it. A media advisory inviting journalists to a Sunday afternoon press conference at Premier House went out on Saturday night. Caucus members did not learn that even that was happening until yesterday morning. Reti’s fate was ...
Yesterday’s demotion of Shane Reti was inevitable. Reti’s attempt at a re-assuring bedside manner always did have a limited shelf life, and he would have been a poor and apologetic salesman on the campaign trail next year. As a trained doctor, he had every reason to be looking embarrassed about ...
A listing of 25 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, January 12, 2025 thru Sat, January 18, 2025. This week's roundup is again published soleley by category. We are still interested in feedback to hone the categorization, so if ...
After another substantial hiatus from online Chess, I’ve been taking it up again. I am genuinely terrible at five-minute Blitz, what with the tight time constraints, though I periodically con myself into thinking that I have been improving. But seeing as my past foray into Chess led to me having ...
Rise up o children wont you dance with meRise up little children come and set me freeRise little ones riseNo shame no fearDon't you know who I amSongwriter: Rebecca Laurel FountainI’m sure you know the go with this format. Some memories, some questions, letsss go…2015A decade ago, I made the ...
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Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park from the Gigafact team in collaboration with members from our team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline. Can CO2 be ...
The old bastard left his ties and his suitA brown box, mothballs and bowling shoesAnd his opinion so you'd never have to choosePretty soon, you'll be an old bastard tooYou get smaller as the world gets bigThe more you know you know you don't know shit"The whiz man" will never ...
..Thanks for reading Frankly Speaking ! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.The Numbers2024 could easily have been National’s “Annus Horribilis” and 2025 shows no signs of a reprieve for our Landlord PM Chris Luxon and his inept Finance Minister Nikki “Noboats” Willis.Several polls last year ...
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It’s Friday and time for another roundup of things that caught our attention this week. This post, like all our work, is brought to you by a largely volunteer crew and made possible by generous donations from our readers and fans. If you’d like to support our work, you can join ...
Note: This Webworm discusses sexual assault and rape. Please read with care.Hi,A few weeks ago I reported on how one of New Zealand’s richest men, Nick Mowbray (he and his brother own Zuru and are worth an estimated $20 billion), had taken to sharing posts by a British man called ...
The final Atlas Network playbook puzzle piece is here, and it slipped in to Aotearoa New Zealand with little fan fare or attention. The implications are stark.Today, writes Dr Bex, the submission for the Crimes (Countering Foreign Interference) Amendment Bill closes: 11:59pm January 16, 2025.As usual, the language of the ...
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We are concerned that the Amendment Bill, as proposed, could impair the operations and legitimate interests of the NZ Trade Union movement. It is also likely to negatively impact the ability of other civil society actors to conduct their affairs without the threat of criminal sanctions. We ask that ...
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This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Asheville, North Carolina, was once widely considered a climate haven thanks to its elevated, inland location and cooler temperatures than much of the Southeast. Then came the catastrophic floods of Hurricane Helene in September 2024. It was a stark reminder that nowhere is safe from ...
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This might be the longest delay between reading (or in this case re-reading) a work, and actually writing a review of it I have ever managed. Indeed, when I last read these books in December 2022, I was not planning on writing anything about them… but as A Phuulish Fellow ...
Kia Ora,I try to keep most my posts without a paywall for public interest journalism purposes. However, if you can afford to, please consider supporting me as a paid subscriber and/or supporting over at Ko-Fi. That will help me to continue, and to keep spending time on the work. Embarrassingly, ...
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Hi,If you’ve been reading Webworm for a while, you’ll be familiar with Anna Wilding. Between 2020 and 2021 I looked at how the New Zealander had managed to weasel her way into countless news stories over the years, often with very little proof any of it had actually happened. When ...
It's a long white cloud for you, baby; staying together alwaysSummertime in AotearoaWhere the sunshine kisses the water, we will find it alwaysSummertime in AotearoaYeah, it′s SummertimeIt's SummertimeWriters: Codi Wehi Ngatai, Moresby Kainuku, Pipiwharauroa Campbell, Taulutoa Michael Schuster, Rebekah Jane Brady, Te Naawe Jordan Muturangi Tupe, Thomas Edward Scrase.Many of ...
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This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Jeff Masters and Bob HensonFlames from the Palisades Fire burn a building at Sunset Boulevard amid a powerful windstorm on January 8, 2025 in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. The fast-moving wildfire had destroyed thousands of structures and ...
..Thanks for reading Frankly Speaking ! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.The Regulatory Standards Bill, as I understand it, seeks to bind parliament to a specific range of law-making.For example, it seems to ensure primacy of individual rights over that of community, environment, te Tiriti ...
Happy New Year!I had a lovely break, thanks very much for asking: friends, family, sunshine, books, podcasts, refreshing swims, barbecues, bike rides. So good to step away from the firehose for a while, to have less Trump and Seymour in your day. Who needs the Luxons in their risible PJs ...
Patrick Reynolds is deputy chair of the Auckland City Centre Advisory Panel and a director of Greater Auckland In 2003, after much argument, including the election of a Mayor in 2001 who ran on stopping it, Britomart train station in downtown Auckland opened. A mere 1km twin track terminating branch ...
For the first time in a decade, a New Zealand Prime Minister is heading to the Middle East. The trip is more than just a courtesy call. New Zealand PMs frequently change planes in Dubai en route to destinations elsewhere. But Christopher Luxon’s visit to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) ...
A listing of 23 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, January 5, 2025 thru Sat, January 11, 2025. This week's roundup is again published soleley by category. We are still interested in feedback to hone the categorization, so if ...
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This is a re-post from the Climate BrinkGlobal surface temperatures have risen around 1.3C since the preindustrial (1850-1900) period as a result of human activity.1 However, this aggregate number masks a lot of underlying factors that contribute to global surface temperature changes over time.These include CO2, which is the primary ...
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2024 was a tough year for working Kiwis. But together we’ve been able to fight back for a just and fair New Zealand and in 2025 we need to keep standing up for what’s right and having our voices heard. That starts with our Mood of the Workforce Survey. It’s your ...
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Everything is good and brownI'm here againWith a sunshine smile upon my faceMy friends are close at handAnd all my inhibitions have disappeared without a traceI'm glad, oh, that I found oohSomebody who I can rely onSongwriter: Jay KayGood morning, all you lovely people. Today, I’ve got nothing except a ...
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The Green Party has welcomed the provisional ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, and reiterated its call for New Zealand to push for an end to the unlawful occupation of Palestine. ...
The Green Party welcomes the extension of the deadline for Treaty Principles Bill submissions but continues to call on the Government to abandon the Bill. ...
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Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says people with diabetes and other painful conditions will benefit from a significant new qualification to boost training in foot care. “It sounds simple, but quality and regular foot and nail care is vital in preventing potentially serious complications from diabetes, like blisters or sores, which can take a long time to heal ...
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https://twitter.com/cryptonature/status/1471400767227666432?s=21
https://twitter.com/cryptonature/status/1471448574001127425?s=21
It was finally getting around to reading Supernature 20 years after it got trendy that alerted me to how magic works in nature. Lyall Watson followed that up with Beyond Supernature & various other books. Some scientists are capable of thinking outside the square but as far as I'm aware, reductionism still captivates academia.
Holism has only captured part of it, via subversion. The trick is to call it systems theory or the science of complexity. Anything to avoid telling the truth works as well in the academic world as in politics!
Coincidentally, one of the books I brought home from the library this afternoon is this: https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/7455612/listening-to-the-endless-cacophony-of-nature/
Due to my focus in recent years: "What is communication? How does data differ from information?" Plus the relation between form in nature, and informing…
From p10: "one of the largest known living organisms is the underground-growing mushroom Armillaria ostoyae. One specimen covers an area of around 2,385 hectares in an American nature reserve in Oregon… Experts estimate that this fungus is an impressive 2,400 years old."
It’s been known for some time now that trees actually communicate with each other, pass on information, & some even help each other – particularly saplings – to survive.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/05/04/993430007/trees-talk-to-each-other-mother-tree-ecologist-hears-lessons-for-people-too
Cool, thanks.
Yeah, so that's an excellent example of interspecies signalling of a threat. An ecologist would probably cite it as emergence of a commons economy. Sort of like folks in a neighbourhood will disregard their differences to collaborate in response to a natural disaster.
Seems like fungi are colonising the internets. (Star Trek Disco rocks for bringing Paul Stamets name further into human civ). Been seeing a noticeable upswing in sharing about how soil based life forms communicate.
https://twitter.com/cryptonature/status/1435683422425559045?s=21
Curiously enough, our filming was interrupted, in a nice way, by a friend arriving with Winecap mycelium, for me to trial in my forest 🙂
Yeah, you may also recall a conversation we had onsite here around a year ago with We The Bleeple on root fungi ecosystems.
From Gezza's link:
Putting aside how scientists tend to learn by killing other life-forms (I still find that distasteful), what we have in this quote is proof of provision of intergenerational equity – inasmuch as the process of dying initiates a process of sharing natural resources with the young. Humans aren't as good at it.
Just finished a day-long interview/forest-garden film-session with Happen Films on this very topic, weka. I'll send the link when they go to "air". It was an "in-depth" exploration of these issues you've raised here, plus more 🙂
😎 might even put up a post.
Please do. Pleeease!!
Will your post focus on fungi…or imagination?
I was thinking of a post about the film when it comes out. Unless you would like to write something?
Oh, I see what you meant.
You're very welcome to do that, weka, but I have to say, I went far beyond anything I've said on film before 🙂
Of course, it all depends on the editor.
They might consign my flights of imagination to the cutting-room floor, but the film-makers seem confident that I'd make the cut 🙂
We'll see.
there's another post going up tomorrow that you and Robyn might be interested in 😉
Ooooh! Okay.
Have you seen this?
https://www.odt.co.nz/rural-life/rural-people/southland-foodies-battle-reconnect-community
Based on Peter Wohlleben's book The Hidden Life of Trees.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Peter+Wohlleben
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/afternoons/audio/201828427/the-hidden-life-of-trees
The work and words of Monica Gagliano are very, very useful for understanding this field of endeavour.
I have two books entitled The Cosmic Serpent, and one of them is his. Shamanic investigations of nature are an alt arena that I've not specialised in but do have books by others that have & his was worth reading. My niche in kiwi culture has long been alt Aotearoa but not many even in that niche are adventurous or diligent enough to do practical shamanic research. I dabbled somewhat but never met anyone here who were as enterprising as Narby or John Perkins, McKenna…
I think that "window" has shifted, Dennis, and the interest/expertise in that field has grown remarkably. The title "shaman" is not attractive to everyone, and instead we now see a plethora of authors/scientists/etc. offering materials on the topic, but not claiming esoteric status. Merlin Sheldrake is a good example of someone wishing to be widely accepted, whilst working in a previously peripheral area of investigation.
Young Merlin is less adventurous mentally than his dad. Well, that's the impression I formed but I haven't really investigated him enough perhaps.
It was the generation born in the early 1940s who were the psychedelic pioneers & I'm on the trailing edge of that. Confidence in using one's mind to explore nature via altered states of consciousness is probably inversely proportional to mental health. Well, has often seemed that way to me, at least. The point being that only those sure of their situation & having a naturally resilient psyche ought to do it!
Young Merlin's playing it safe, for the moment, in my view. I suspect he's plenty smart and saw his dad get pummelled by the fraternity in his early years. In any case, the atmosphere for passionate wonderings has passed along with the hippy movement that gave wind to its wings; it’s all a lot more serious now, but more likely to bring profound change, for all that. We're still morphically-resonating, habitually realising and looking toward the teleological attractor at the end of time 🙂
Hmm. Well, your reference to imagination got me pondering, aware that other mental faculties come into play with psychedelic adventuring.
Cultural framing is a determinant. Hippie was a cultural framing. Science, both practice & theory, is culturally framed. Discovery need not be.
So it's all down to how we interpret discoveries. I still use scientific framing in suitable contexts, whilst being aware that my own preference is for metaphysical framing (more basic, more integrative, more transcendent).
The natural human tendency is to interpret discoveries in terms we already know (self-reinforcing, in-crowd elitism, etc) with the typical consequence that we end up missing the point. The point is meant to pull us out of ourselves. That's according to the original meaning of educate.
What if the human psyche has atrophied as a result of civilisation? In respect of attunement to nature, I mean. What if we a inherently capable of reconnecting to nature at that deeper original level, provided we transcend social conditioning? That was the whole point of why the hippie thing shifted out of city & suburbs in 1968 & became `back to the land'. Well, the experiential challenge of Green authenticity persists, and each younger generation sorts into those who engage the challenge & succeed, those who fail, and the bulk who never try…
As the Maharishi said….'that's ..real ..groovy..man'!
Woulda learnt it from the Beatles when they flew to India to check him out. The grooves were in the vinyl…
Lennon then wrote a song with no tune called Instant Karma. I was not impressed.
Shoulda stayed with this formula: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uq0aeEYLkIE
Lennon's tribute to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tSk5U4oHhu0
"What if we a inherently capable of reconnecting to nature at that deeper original level, provided we transcend social conditioning?"
Quite so, Dennis. Of course, we are and we must. It's a fairly straight-forward process, as described best by Goethe; sit quietly amongst plants, observe closely and at length, draw what you see; the results will speak for themselves. The next stage, achievable after much practice, is to imagine the plant to such intensity that it "is" the plant you practiced on. This not easy 🙂
"…provided we transcend social conditioning…" and our own personal conditioning…
Darwin wrote,
"I strolled a little beyond the glade for an hour and a half… the fresh yet dark green of the grand old Scotch firs, the brown of the catkins of the old birches, with their white stems, and a fringe of distant green from the larches, made an excessively pretty view… a chorus of birds singing around me, and squirrels running up the trees, and some woodpeckers laughing… it was as pleasant and rural a scene as ever I saw and did not care one penny how the beasts or birds had been formed."
Walt Witman suffered a debilitating stroke, but strove on to learn…
"Above all, however, Whitman found vitality in the natural world — in what he so poetically called “the bracing and buoyant equilibrium of concrete outdoor Nature, the only permanent reliance for sanity of book or human life.” Looking back on what most helped him return to life after the stroke, Whitman echoes Seneca’s wisdom on calibrating our expectations for contentment and writes:
For Robert and Dennis..
https://youtu.be/94bdMSCdw20
"Go and sit in a grove or woods, with one or more of those voiceless companions, and read the foregoing, and think.
One lesson from affiliating a tree — perhaps the greatest moral lesson anyhow from earth, rocks, animals, is that same lesson of inherency, of what is, without the least regard to what the looker on (the critic) supposes or says, or whether he likes or dislikes. What worse — what more general malady pervades each and all of us, our literature, education, attitude toward each other, (even toward ourselves,) than a morbid trouble about seems, (generally temporarily seems too,) and no trouble at all, or hardly any, about the sane, slow-growing, perennial, real parts of character, books, friendship, marriage — humanity’s invisible foundations and hold-together? (As the all-basis, the nerve, the great-sympathetic, the plenum within humanity, giving stamp to everything, is necessarily invisible.)"
fungimentally mushrooms have been kept in the dark …far too long.
Mushrooms are the temporary reproductive structures of massive, seldom seen, subterranean creatures more closely related to you than to plants. Fungi. Some are miles wide. Some live thousands of years. Some help trees speak to one another. There’s magic beneath the forests.'
And yet we kill them willy-nilly – almost every 'cide known to and made by man, destroys those treasures (and that doesn't even begin to cover concreted cityscapes, asphalted road networks and broad scale industrial pastural farmland that starves and isolates fungi communities into non-existence).
That said (breathlessly), we can put it all back.
And we must.
I have to admit..I am guilty of eating them…had a mushroom omelette ..today.
You only ate their sticky-outy-bits – no harm done 🙂
while the world is spinning,spinning,spinning…Boris and co…will carry on…wining,winning…
Lockdown party inquiry could expand to cover No 10 garden event | Coronavirus | The Guardian
A former national party cabinet minister taking on an important public post:
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/458375/ex-cabinet-minister-simon-power-to-replace-kevin-kenrick-at-tvnz
This time I applaud the decision.
He's his own man – very smart and a man of integrity. They've made a good choice.
With a bit of luck we won't have to watch anymore tacky game shows like the one I watched the other night – the Xmas episode of Give Us A Clue. Having never watched it before I took a punt it might be okay. Charades after all can be fun.
OMG the Xmas bling. The players were lost amongst a gigantic display of baubles, bangles, beads, Santa Claus', reindeers, holly, ivy, silly hats, fairies, elves, and masses of glitter everywhere. In the middle were a bunch of celebrities trying to outdo one another on what was left of the set.
S'pose its some peoples idea of entertainment but sadly not mine. Entertainment with class I say.
Do me a favour Anne!
How more elitist could you get ..and Westpac exec on his C.V!
The description of the show is largely tongue in cheek Blazer. But I don't resile from my critique. Apart from a few humorous moments (the best one lost among the melee) it was pretty awful.
And I don't hold his former banking position against him.
Forget the…show…
'He's his own man – very smart and a man of integrity. They've made a good choice.'
Where's a..bucket.
You have obviously met him somewhere along the line…and he was a 'lovely person'!
You have obviously met him somewhere along the line…
Nope. I watched him perform in the House at Question Time and thought his answers were always rational. Didn't necessarily agree with him though and he had his moments debating with the then Labour opposition. But I never saw him resort to rudeness or malice as some in National have been wont to do.
That's a big leap to 'a man of integrity'….bankers have no moral virtue..period..prove me ..wrong.
Piss off Mr Knowall.
I can't argue with…that.
Being polite is not a qualification to run a cultural institution. Nor is banking. What a strange appointment.
He does wear a suit, however, so folks will be reassured TVNZ remains Dorksville Central. Cultural continuity is critical. The world keeps changing, so the only way mainstreamers can cling onto a semblance of sanity is for such islands of sameness to provide a refuge for them.
heh