Comments on: A Brief Summary of Animism http://anthropik.com/2006/08/a-brief-summary-of-animism/ se wo were fi na wosan kofa a yenki Sat, 05 Jul 2008 11:52:46 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.3.3 By: little lightening bolt http://anthropik.com/2006/08/a-brief-summary-of-animism/#comment-174443 little lightening bolt Mon, 08 Oct 2007 23:21:03 +0000 http://anthropik.com/2006/08/a-brief-summary-of-animism/#comment-174443 This Oct. 10th Have A HAPPY DOR DAY! In honor of A(lfred) Irving Hallowell (source) Died 10 Oct 1974 (born 28 Dec 1892) American cultural anthropologist who was an authority on the Northern Ojibwa Indians. He used tests of perception, and particularly favoured the Rorschach ink blot test to assess individual Ojibwa personalities. Hallowell collected a series of 266 Rorschach records from various Ojibwa communities, and although he never prepared an over-all summary of the results in the form of a sketch of typical Ojibwa personality structures, he used the data in a number of papers. All of Hallowell's field work was undertaken among American Indians. He published many studies of the tribes and made important contributions to culture- and- personality theory. His book Culture and Experience appeared in 1955.« The Ojibwa of Berens River, Manitoba: Ethnography into History, by A. Irving Hallowell, et al. October 10th is DOR day! What is DOR day you might ask? A day of respect, or DOR DAY! OK... so here is either a holiday for Bioregional Animists, a cognitive challenge, or a weekly or even daily practice... I guess it depends on you! But here is the idea... Find time to, just for the heck of it, think like an animist all day. Take the whole day to do it too... by this I mean RELATE to every thing around you as a person ( an other than human person, NOT an anthropomorphised person, for you newbs to new animism) see how relating to every thing around you as a person changes your perception and your actions. Ask your self questions, ask other than human persons questions. Be mindful and respectful in your relations, but do this all day, and just see what happens. It can be easy for us to take on the animist practice in theory and it can be easy to have relationships with powerful beings in nature like bears and cougars etc... but to extend animist thought and behavior into everything that we do for a day will be a hard rewiring for many of us not raised in a traditional animist home, and might even be hard for those of us who were! This is a Day Of Respect to other-than-human-persons and of cultivating respectful relationships. It forces us to reevaluate of indoctrinated assumptions and behaviors and form new healthier ones...deepening our roots to our life place through the cultivation of new ways of thinking and acting in our life place... its a time of transformation and change, honor and respect... communication, acknowledgment, and celebration! Especially CELEBRATION!!! Focus this on this day in ways we can cultivate new celebratory relationships with natural cycles and other-than-human-persons ( who might be a natural cycle as well... hmmm....), maybe ask the land how it celebrates its birthday, or the coming of winter, or how it honors its dead? DOR day is a day of communion and discovering how we might celebrate and honor our lives as animists. Have a Happy DOR DAY! Thanks Irving for opening a Door... This Oct. 10th Have A HAPPY DOR DAY!

In honor of A(lfred) Irving Hallowell
(source)
Died 10 Oct 1974 (born 28 Dec 1892) American cultural anthropologist who was an authority on the Northern Ojibwa Indians. He used tests of perception, and particularly favoured the Rorschach ink blot test to assess individual Ojibwa personalities. Hallowell collected a series of 266 Rorschach records from various Ojibwa communities, and although he never prepared an over-all summary of the results in the form of a sketch of typical Ojibwa personality structures, he used the data in a number of papers. All of Hallowell’s field work was undertaken among American Indians. He published many studies of the tribes and made important contributions to culture- and- personality theory. His book Culture and Experience appeared in 1955.« The Ojibwa of Berens River, Manitoba: Ethnography into History, by A. Irving Hallowell, et al.

October 10th is DOR day! What is DOR day you might ask?

A day of respect, or DOR DAY!
OK… so here is either a holiday for Bioregional Animists, a cognitive challenge, or a weekly or even daily practice… I guess it depends on you!
But here is the idea…
Find time to, just for the heck of it, think like an animist all day. Take the whole day to do it too…
by this I mean RELATE to every thing around you as a person ( an other than human person, NOT an anthropomorphised person, for you newbs to new animism) see how relating to every thing around you as a person changes your perception and your actions. Ask your self questions, ask other than human persons questions. Be mindful and respectful in your relations, but do this all day, and just see what happens.
It can be easy for us to take on the animist practice in theory and it can be easy to have relationships with powerful beings in nature like bears and cougars etc… but to extend animist thought and behavior into everything that we do for a day will be a hard rewiring for many of us not raised in a traditional animist home, and might even be hard for those of us who were!
This is a Day Of Respect to other-than-human-persons and of cultivating respectful relationships. It forces us to reevaluate of indoctrinated assumptions and behaviors and form new healthier ones…deepening our roots to our life place through the cultivation of new ways of thinking and acting in our life place… its a time of transformation and change, honor and respect… communication, acknowledgment, and celebration!
Especially CELEBRATION!!! Focus this on this day in ways we can cultivate new celebratory relationships with natural cycles and other-than-human-persons ( who might be a natural cycle as well… hmmm….), maybe ask the land how it celebrates its birthday, or the coming of winter, or how it honors its dead? DOR day is a day of communion and discovering how we might celebrate and honor our lives as animists.

Have a Happy DOR DAY!
Thanks Irving for opening a Door…

]]> By: Lionel Emmett http://anthropik.com/2006/08/a-brief-summary-of-animism/#comment-159853 Lionel Emmett Fri, 13 Jul 2007 18:58:03 +0000 http://anthropik.com/2006/08/a-brief-summary-of-animism/#comment-159853 <strong>Petrovskiy_Raion</strong> Continental System May 12, 2005 Gran Reserva Rednecks Qiryat Haim Stadium Italian music festivals Holonic Indian Dress Hinduism in Tanzania Lionel Emmett Petrovskiy_Raion

Continental System May 12, 2005 Gran Reserva Rednecks Qiryat Haim Stadium Italian music festivals Holonic Indian Dress Hinduism in Tanzania Lionel Emmett

]]> By: Agriculture or Permaculture: Why Words Matter (The Anthropik Network) http://anthropik.com/2006/08/a-brief-summary-of-animism/#comment-135780 Agriculture or Permaculture: Why Words Matter (The Anthropik Network) Wed, 13 Jun 2007 15:26:31 +0000 http://anthropik.com/2006/08/a-brief-summary-of-animism/#comment-135780 [...] The distinction of "agriculture" from "permaculture" may seem quibbling or even pedantic, but it strikes directly to the heart of this phenomenon, the most important change in human history. As members of a culture on one side of that historical divide, we are naturally inclined to see our way as the only way, even though it is the novel, untested way. To call horticulture or permaculture a subspecies of agriculture is one symptom of this, a semantically Freudian slip that evinces and reinforces a much deeper cultural conviction, and a much deeper cultural narrative. By transforming the living world into nothing more than a unit of production, agriculture trains us to see all cultivation not in terms of ecological relationship, but as an economic equation of energy in and energy out. It makes our scale one of how much we modify the ecology, rather than the kind of modifications we make. Intrinsic to this view is our mythology of humans vs. nature, reflected most recently in the Romantic view of "wilderness,"9 but stretching back even further, to be found in the struggles of "human vs. nature" set up in Antigone with Antigone and Creon, and before that, in the Platonic dualism of the world of Forms, a mythic narrative of the literate mind.10 That is to say, what compels us to see horticulture as a kind of agriculture is precisely the underlying problems that define agriculture itself. Stepping beyond that gets us past clumsy phrases like Quinn's "totalitarian agriculture," aligns us with our colloquial understanding of the differences between "farm" and "garden," and sets us in a point of view that immediately highlights the most fundamental crisis of our time: the catastrophic nature of agriculture, and the hope we still have in horticulture. [...] […] The distinction of “agriculture” from “permaculture” may seem quibbling or even pedantic, but it strikes directly to the heart of this phenomenon, the most important change in human history. As members of a culture on one side of that historical divide, we are naturally inclined to see our way as the only way, even though it is the novel, untested way. To call horticulture or permaculture a subspecies of agriculture is one symptom of this, a semantically Freudian slip that evinces and reinforces a much deeper cultural conviction, and a much deeper cultural narrative. By transforming the living world into nothing more than a unit of production, agriculture trains us to see all cultivation not in terms of ecological relationship, but as an economic equation of energy in and energy out. It makes our scale one of how much we modify the ecology, rather than the kind of modifications we make. Intrinsic to this view is our mythology of humans vs. nature, reflected most recently in the Romantic view of “wilderness,”9 but stretching back even further, to be found in the struggles of “human vs. nature” set up in Antigone with Antigone and Creon, and before that, in the Platonic dualism of the world of Forms, a mythic narrative of the literate mind.10 That is to say, what compels us to see horticulture as a kind of agriculture is precisely the underlying problems that define agriculture itself. Stepping beyond that gets us past clumsy phrases like Quinn’s “totalitarian agriculture,” aligns us with our colloquial understanding of the differences between “farm” and “garden,” and sets us in a point of view that immediately highlights the most fundamental crisis of our time: the catastrophic nature of agriculture, and the hope we still have in horticulture. […]

]]> By: Fragile Conversation « Rugged Indoorsman http://anthropik.com/2006/08/a-brief-summary-of-animism/#comment-76907 Fragile Conversation « Rugged Indoorsman Thu, 05 Apr 2007 11:45:26 +0000 http://anthropik.com/2006/08/a-brief-summary-of-animism/#comment-76907 [...] I recently read The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram after reading this terrific review by Jason Godesky on Anthropik, and I also highly recommend it for its expert blend of diffuse disciplines and for his remarkable insights into an animistic worldview that we might once again begin to share. [...] […] I recently read The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram after reading this terrific review by Jason Godesky on Anthropik, and I also highly recommend it for its expert blend of diffuse disciplines and for his remarkable insights into an animistic worldview that we might once again begin to share. […]

]]> By: Wolves & Dogs (The Anthropik Network) http://anthropik.com/2006/08/a-brief-summary-of-animism/#comment-29516 Wolves & Dogs (The Anthropik Network) Mon, 13 Nov 2006 20:20:12 +0000 http://anthropik.com/2006/08/a-brief-summary-of-animism/#comment-29516 [...] As a result, the human brain has a much reduced olfactory bulb; we came to rely on dogs to essentially provide us with our sense of smell. Humans and canids co-evolved. What we share with dogs is unique—true symbiosis. Of course, even that relationship was changed forever by the innovation of agriculture, and the age of true domestication. As David Abram illustrates, in the wild, humans communicate with other kinds of life and essentially turn them into an extended set of senses. The co-evolution of humans and dogs is only a particularly strong example; removing humans from their ecological context is removing the human brain from the prompts and senses it relies upon. In short, domestication, for humans, is a kind of brain damage. [...] […] As a result, the human brain has a much reduced olfactory bulb; we came to rely on dogs to essentially provide us with our sense of smell. Humans and canids co-evolved. What we share with dogs is unique—true symbiosis. Of course, even that relationship was changed forever by the innovation of agriculture, and the age of true domestication. As David Abram illustrates, in the wild, humans communicate with other kinds of life and essentially turn them into an extended set of senses. The co-evolution of humans and dogs is only a particularly strong example; removing humans from their ecological context is removing the human brain from the prompts and senses it relies upon. In short, domestication, for humans, is a kind of brain damage. […]

]]> By: The Battle for Our Home (The Anthropik Network) http://anthropik.com/2006/08/a-brief-summary-of-animism/#comment-29007 The Battle for Our Home (The Anthropik Network) Thu, 09 Nov 2006 19:11:50 +0000 http://anthropik.com/2006/08/a-brief-summary-of-animism/#comment-29007 [...] A new perspective is needed in this debate, because both sides are currently locked in the insane fantasy that humans exist apart from the other living communities we depend on—the question has so far turned on how best to put the Allegheny Forest to human use. Samuel MacDonald, author of The Agony of an American Wilderness about the mounting conflict in the ANF, puts it in terms of "rights": Just try thinking about it from Pittsburgh's perspective. Would you rather live near a pristine wilderness where you can do backwoods camping? Or would you rather live near a posh rural retreat with a lot of amenities? Is it the government's job to provide either? What about the people who live there? Do they have a say? What if they want something you don't want? Do their views take precedent? Why? Why not? What if they "built" the forest with their own hands? What if they saved it from extinction? Is there a balance? Who gets to strike it? What if that balance gets struck and people litigate until that balance is no longer possible? Messy stuff.12 [...] […] A new perspective is needed in this debate, because both sides are currently locked in the insane fantasy that humans exist apart from the other living communities we depend on—the question has so far turned on how best to put the Allegheny Forest to human use. Samuel MacDonald, author of The Agony of an American Wilderness about the mounting conflict in the ANF, puts it in terms of “rights”: Just try thinking about it from Pittsburgh’s perspective. Would you rather live near a pristine wilderness where you can do backwoods camping? Or would you rather live near a posh rural retreat with a lot of amenities? Is it the government’s job to provide either? What about the people who live there? Do they have a say? What if they want something you don’t want? Do their views take precedent? Why? Why not? What if they “built” the forest with their own hands? What if they saved it from extinction? Is there a balance? Who gets to strike it? What if that balance gets struck and people litigate until that balance is no longer possible? Messy stuff.12 […]

]]> By: Dream Worlds (The Anthropik Network) http://anthropik.com/2006/08/a-brief-summary-of-animism/#comment-26566 Dream Worlds (The Anthropik Network) Wed, 18 Oct 2006 22:45:20 +0000 http://anthropik.com/2006/08/a-brief-summary-of-animism/#comment-26566 [...] Animists accept their experience in a fullness that seems radical to us.10, 11 Dreams are often expressed as reality—no qualifiers are needed. A hunter-gatherer is far more like to say, "I became a deer last night," than "I dreamt I became a deer last night." This latter phraseology denigrates the dream with its insistence that it was not real. The dream has its own internal reality, and is experienced in precisely the same way that waking reality is experienced—making it just as real. [...] […] Animists accept their experience in a fullness that seems radical to us.10, 11 Dreams are often expressed as reality—no qualifiers are needed. A hunter-gatherer is far more like to say, “I became a deer last night,” than “I dreamt I became a deer last night.” This latter phraseology denigrates the dream with its insistence that it was not real. The dream has its own internal reality, and is experienced in precisely the same way that waking reality is experienced—making it just as real. […]

]]> By: Dysfunctional Culture (The Anthropik Network) http://anthropik.com/2006/08/a-brief-summary-of-animism/#comment-23627 Dysfunctional Culture (The Anthropik Network) Wed, 27 Sep 2006 03:50:07 +0000 http://anthropik.com/2006/08/a-brief-summary-of-animism/#comment-23627 [...] Aside from apologizing for the abuse (civilization hits me because it loves me), what are the other effects of abuse, in individual humans? Jennifer Atieno Fisher explains, and I sardonically turn various words and phrases into links: First recorded (and later denied) by Freud, the aftereffects of exposure to severe abuse were rediscovered and legitimized in studies of "shell-shocked" war veterans. Particularly when people are traumatized in early life, the effects of trauma interfere with all types of development. Intelligence is occluded as persistent learning and concentration deficits develop. Severe symptoms, frequently misdiagnosed, include dissociation, multiple personalities, learned helplessness, addiction to danger, and painful "body memories." Effects are contagious to surrounding systems and future generations. Many survivors identify with the aggressor and become victimizers themselves. [...] […] Aside from apologizing for the abuse (civilization hits me because it loves me), what are the other effects of abuse, in individual humans? Jennifer Atieno Fisher explains, and I sardonically turn various words and phrases into links: First recorded (and later denied) by Freud, the aftereffects of exposure to severe abuse were rediscovered and legitimized in studies of “shell-shocked” war veterans. Particularly when people are traumatized in early life, the effects of trauma interfere with all types of development. Intelligence is occluded as persistent learning and concentration deficits develop. Severe symptoms, frequently misdiagnosed, include dissociation, multiple personalities, learned helplessness, addiction to danger, and painful “body memories.” Effects are contagious to surrounding systems and future generations. Many survivors identify with the aggressor and become victimizers themselves. […]

]]> By: janene http://anthropik.com/2006/08/a-brief-summary-of-animism/#comment-22145 janene Sat, 09 Sep 2006 00:06:51 +0000 http://anthropik.com/2006/08/a-brief-summary-of-animism/#comment-22145 Nicely put, Jim :-) Janene Nicely put, Jim :-)

Janene

]]> By: JimFive http://anthropik.com/2006/08/a-brief-summary-of-animism/#comment-22121 JimFive Fri, 08 Sep 2006 17:32:44 +0000 http://anthropik.com/2006/08/a-brief-summary-of-animism/#comment-22121 Re: The awareness problem No matter how hard you look at the inner workings of your computer. No matter how much you map out the transistors and the electrical flow within the computer you will never find the letter 'A', so how did this 'A' get on your screen? Is it necessary to posit an 'other' world where the 'A' exists. The Red-Experience is not in the Brain. The Red-experience is in the Eye and in the Object that is Red. JimFive Re: The awareness problem

No matter how hard you look at the inner workings of your computer. No matter how much you map out the transistors and the electrical flow within the computer you will never find the letter ‘A’, so how did this ‘A’ get on your screen? Is it necessary to posit an ‘other’ world where the ‘A’ exists.

The Red-Experience is not in the Brain. The Red-experience is in the Eye and in the Object that is Red.

JimFive

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