Post-religion? I mean: seeing the world as it is. There’s no need to explain where we came from, really, nor where we’re going. It’s all right here, as we once knew but forgot as we left the wild wandering world and settled down. Divorced our neighboring Others, the animals and plants. Began to fight them, conquer their homes, began to regard the world as a giant pie to carve up and eat.
Regarded Dominion as our right.
Religion keeps us separate, and of course organized…you might say subdued.

Speaking of Religion; Happy Groundhog’s Day! It’s only groundhog’s day, I hear, because the PA Germans who settled there found no bears, which were the original subjects back home. It’s a reincarnation myth. The bear, a powerful thing, appears dead. No breath. No heartbeat. It wakes, midwinter, and emerges for a moment from it’s den. If it sees it’s shadow; it hasn’t died yet, and must return. If no shadow, it’s dead and can proceed to rebirth.

What do you mean by becoming post-religion?

Here at home I’ve been ‘managing’ a return to half-wild; letting things go as they will in areas, planting food flora among the wild stuff, and providing for as many things as this plot will allow. Multiflora rose is an invasive species that also provides winter food, shelter and nesting spots for birds and insects, and shelter for the NE bunny which is dying off due to competition and lack of habitat . For one instance. So I let it live, mostly.
Given the climate flux we’ve entered, I’m considering most anything “native” if it thrives here and interacts with others. And I’m thinking we’ll have to learn to live within the natural community, not just dominate it. Hell, we should anyway, even if we weren’t about to make the planet uninhabitable.
Which means also becoming post-religion.
Lots of work to do for a species that can’t see itself for what it really is.

I’m still thinking about what you said. I think you are completely right in your conclusion. We cannot expect the cavalry to come riding to the rescue. They are the problem, not the solution.

Michael Irving

Whatever Guy’s take is on your comments, you’ve certainly got my brain working. Your ideas sent me off in six directions at once. Let me share one of them with you.

I think we are different from other life. I think you put that point on it when you noted that “science” won. Getting back to first principles, we changed from being just like other life when we began building technologies we could use to enhance our ability to survive. Fire, tools, language, social structures, agriculture, were all technologies that improved our chances to live longer and produce more offspring than we would have had we continued to be just like the other animals. The “science” you are referring to is just the latest step on a 3 million year-old path. The story of indigenous people conquered by modern technology is simply a retelling of a very old story in which the new replaces the old. We are different from other animals in that our brains are set up to allow us to pile one technology on top of another. We can change the rules as we go along. While I understand that some other animals use tools I think you’ll grant that the matter of degree is important.

So, I’m disagreeing with you about our similarity with other life. Of course we are the same in most respects. However, there are some things about people that are different and it is those very things that are causing our problems. We seem to be hard-wired to keep tinkering with things, looking for improvements. Unfortunately we never had an ultimate plan. We’ve just kept moving along the path of better technology until now, suddenly, we’ve come to a wall. A zebra might just turn and go a different direction, but we’re different and our particular hard-wiring is making it hard for us to back up, to return to a simpler technology.

Michael Irving

No poem here. A quote from Virginia Satir, though – The most basic instinct of humnan beings is not survival, it is the experience of the familiar.

I agree with you, and have been in this debate for a long time now, with myself and various others.

Science “won,” over indigenous peoples and their technologies. There’s a reason for that. We need to uncover and understand that reason.

Then, we need to use that “science” to achieve a different end.

Similarly, we need to get rid of prejudices we have about the human race. We still hold onto a lot of falsehoods about humanity. For instance, that we are somehow different from other life (in structure, behavior, or tendency). Or that we are “humane” in some way, and not prone to kill things (whatever they may be – ourselves, others, other animals, other life).

The key, I think, is the quote above. First, we have to do this within the familiar. We have to create options that connect people back to nature within their already-existing structure. “Victory Gardens” is a great example of something like this.

Finally, we have to DO this. We cannot rely on government, others, non-profits, or anyone else. The people who are concerned need to come together and make things happen through action. Similar to Mohammad uniting the tribes of the Arabian peninsula.

Just my take on it…

Michael Irving

“Better the townies adapt in place….” Surely you jest, Vera.

My point regarding influencing the-powers-that-be was in the same vein as Guy’s comment, “if government would…serve as an inspiration and provide resources…” Instead of just hoping the townies don’t abandon the cities and head for the country, it might be better to try convincing the town council and mayor of your community that some preparation is in order to help the townies adapt in place. The-powers-that-be are not just the heads of international corporations or their shills in Federal or State government. Influencing your local PUD might be more important to your future than anything the President or the banksters do.

Michael Irving

I recently finished a Paul Shepard jag, which I cannot recommend enough. Apropos, too. AFA what to do, and how to get there…hmm. Good ideas, Guy. Yes; agrarian communal is an attainable and desirable step back from where we are now, and if instead of large-scale (giant wind farms and attendant infrastructure, nucular) energy-generating grid componants we opt for a million small ones, then we could have the internets too. Maybe.

We’d better. We’re leaving books behind.

Shepard would suggest we leave wide and long wild zones too, particularly in the areas that have proven to be incubators for diversity. Not as we do now, not as commodities; we run roads through them for RVs, and that must cease. We’ll need things to eat, and I don’t want just breeds to eat. Nor to learn from: we learned what we needed to know from other species in those elder days. Breeds are too damned stupid, we only learn domesticity from them, herd behavior. Sod that.

Zombie cookbooks. That’s what I’ll write next.