Four Sins – Broken Bonds

Joseph Chilton Pearce spoke and wrote passionately on the way medical-technological birth negatively impacts what was generally termed ‘bonding,’ the continued merging, shared meaning, and reciprocal dynamic imprinted during pregnancy and extended after. Bonding, in this primal meaning, is not simple affection. It is an identity-defining, and self-world view forming “experience,” not something abstracted by the intellect, as a name and social expectations. (see Pregnancy, Birth and Bonding and Bonding and the Intelligence of the Heart.)

Themes: 
bonding
self image
culture

Something Much Deeper

A late lunch at the Getty in Los Angeles. “Enough with all the challenges, Michael. We want solutions,” lamented my brother and sister. Taking a breath, I stumbled, “we are colorblind to the source, and therefore how to get ourselves out of the mess we have made. Offering positive solutions demands seeing the problem clearly. But we are blind, as David Bohm notes;”

Themes: 
culture
child development
technology

Understanding How All The Pieces Fit

It is impossible to understand what happened in 2020, how it changed the world, and its continuing momentum, by looking at the headlines, any more than you can see the big picture of a large jigsaw puzzle by studying one piece, or two or three, especially when the pieces don’t fit together, intentionally.

Themes: 
COVID
culture
freedom

Stepping Out of The Game

Stepping Out of The Game

What Does Freedom Feel Like?

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Natural life will only remain viable if we collectively step out of the game and forge a path towards healing ourselves and the earth.

Alison McDowell

Abstract: What follows, Stepping Out of the Game, What Does Freedom Feel Like? defines culture and its function as a conservative set of relative and abstract filters or beliefs designed to limit and constrain human behavior. Implicit is a biological-cultural conflict between our authentic nature and those behaviors predetermined and accepted by the limited set of behaviors approved by culture. The primary role of enculturation is imprinting each new human being with the approved set of acceptable behaviors. This is accomplished by the child building an internal image of themselves, the social-ego, by comparing and mirroring their degree of conformity. Once created, most effectively with the unfolding and development of verbal language, the internal social image is updated, moment by moment, by parent approval or punishments, and by various cultural institutions, such as compulsory schooling, the church, and other social hierarchies. Understanding the reciprocal and mirroring dynamic between the outer culture and inner image, we discover that they are one process, viewed from two perspectives, inner and outer, micro and macro, and share the same essential function, to predict, limit and control human behavior, at the exclusion of humanity’s vast and unknowable innate capacities. The primary means of cultural control is through the image. Having an insight into the nature and function of the social image, or personal ego is like seeing behind the trick of a magician. The illusion loses its power. This translates into a quality of freedom that few ever experience. Complete attention is given to meeting the challenge de jure, rather than splitting attention between conforming to cultural expectations, winning, for example, or not failing, and pure learning and performance for its own, intrinsic value and pleasure, not prejudged by culture. Athletes call this state of freedom the Zone, researchers call it Flow and children call this state Play. The common factor is freedom from the limitations and constraints imposed by the cultural image. No longer being defined by culture, we reset our default state of consciousness to express our true authentic nature, which is nature in its vast, fullest potential. This fundamental reset to the natural order of the mind, how it redefines thought and imagination as tools in the service of our authentic nature, is now a matter of species survival.

Themes: 
culture
identity

Breaking the Cycle

Following, deepening and expanding the legacies of Ashley Montagu, James W. Prescott, Joseph Chilton Pearce, and many others, Darcia Narvaez, a Professor of Psychology Emerita at the University of Notre Dame, ranked in a 2020 analysis in the top two percent of scientists worldwide, launched The Evolved Nest. https://evolvednest.org/

Themes: 
parenting
culture

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