How much of what a student learns comes from what is taught, and how much simply bubbles up from a subtle world view or vision flowing just beneath what is taught? Consider the above poster which I have found hanging from classroom walls. Seems harmless enough. Notice the progression to a modern human, complete with briefcase, indicating the extent of our collective progress, our collective evolution.
Part of civilized culture's inference of superiority comes from this idea, this ability to self improve and our ability to chart these improvements, through time, relative to things like health, sanitation, general living and intelligence. The grand secret is that many of these are relative improvements. Lets take, as an analogy, the modern running shoe perpetuated by Nike and other brands.
Over time, in an arc of progress, the shoe makes improvements upon itself, constantly evolving new ways of stabilizing the foot & cushioning impact. The catch: studies indicate that higher end running shoes have a rather high correlation with injury. Just recently, minimal footwear, has returned to popularity to emulate the barefoot runner. Personally I have begun to wear footwear similar to that seen below.
A barefoot runner generally strikes the front portion of the foot down first, with the heel to follow, touching down lightly. The foot works and it has worked for a long time. It doesn't need to go through a technicolor series of quantum leaps, because it already works. [This does not mean that long term muscle imbalances from the foot up can be disregarded... one may have to bridge these worlds carefully and therapeutically on a case by case basis]
However, when our culture deviated onto a different track and began wearing modern shoes, there was a space instantly born, with plenty of room for a better shoe. Meanwhile, all this time, in less flashy colors and dramatic shape-shifting, some indigenous peoples have been running long distances daily without demonstrating the injuries westerners typically associate with running, largely derived from striking heel first with disregard to the function of the foot in general. Personally, I was taught to run this way, but now we are learning to run again.
By the same principle, creating an enclosed space with artificial light, allows abundant space for a sixty watt bulb to achieve the quality of the sun (that star at the center of the solar system.) Now progress has a place to dance, and it may reinvent the bulb in a series of forward moving leaps. What its really doing is making closer approach to the quality of sunlight, which itself needs no improvement!
All of this business of improving may be more or less an act of improving upon our own way of life. One may acknowledge powerful improvements, however it is good to understand their context of being within our culture's own particular way of living.
We may feel the rush of moving forward as discovery breaks into progressive dances of improvement. Consider though, that behind the freedom of newly created options, sometimes there lies a subtle, barely tangible wall, hiding an optimal high quality given, such as sunlight, or a simple traditional food, or a healthy way of posturing the body, which might have been lost, or at least faded too far into the background, into the part of the time-line we have forgotten.
After all, what are a thousand options at the grocery among countless isles if none of them contain ground elements of nutrition and energetic integrity? If superwoman were to come to earth, she would have all the choice of men, but really she is looking for a man of steel. Her man; he is on Krypton, see. One has to wonder if some proclamations of freedom are inversely proportional to true quality. (relative)
Is freedom a hundred thousand lesser variations or one high quality given that once upon a time you didn't have to give a second thought to, because it never interrupted your dancing with it? Sunlight. Water. Air. Earth. Movement. Food. Community. Flow. Darkness.
That is not to say that our world doesn't provide variety at the realm of high quality given. Often there is loads of it. The Kalahari bushmen are said to utilize 85 high quality edible plants as the mainstay of their diet. A documentary entitled 'The Story of Man' says blood analysis traces these people back as our earliest living ancestor, the closest to people we have evolved from.
Jared Diamond, the author of The Third Chimpanzee, remarks that they "have leisure time, sleep a lot, and work no harder than their farming neighbors. For instance, the average time devoted each week to obtaining food has been reported to be only twelve to nineteen hours a week” And there they are living right under the crazy sun.
Lets return to sunlight as an example of high quality given. Consider the light we encounter from the sun, and lets consider it all the way back to source. The warmth we feel on our faces is an extension of that ball of light and fire; it is inseparable from source, as stream is inseparable from ocean. (this is a backwards flowing analogy, but still.)
The sun we see through the sky is literally touching our eye, intertwining with our system, correlating to the release of specific chemicals, correlating with the specific moods we feel when those chemicals reach our cells, correlating with specific desires and responses to life, correlating therefore with our perception of the world which drives the things we do, influences the choices that are made.
Without it, perhaps our perception of the world, if unsatisfactory, will have us reaching externally for satisfaction and into a whole realm of drugs and marketed goods, many of which further complicate the situation because they are also quick changes that don't quite fit the puzzle of our very beings, creating new gaps to improve upon, making room for new advances, new perceptions of ourselves getting better, new perceptions of progress, superiority, new perceptions of being at cutting edge of brilliance.
All because we spent our time underneath some fluorescent lights. Do you feel it?Ironic that we may read our children this:
There was an old lady who swallowed a cat
Imagine that, she swallowed a cat.
She swallowed the cat to catch the bird...
She swallowed the bird to catch the spider
That wiggled and wiggled and tickled inside her.
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.
But I dunno why she swallowed that fly
Consequently, the vitamin D deficiency from not getting enough sunlight provides a nutritional gap that vitamin-fortified new foods may seek to fill, indicating progress. When those foods correct a deficiency in some regard, we may register this as a better food. (even if it is deficient in some way itself due to another quick change folded within)
Now Hype and the spotlight of fashion may follow; a marketer may link up as advertising campaigns seek to influence the purchaser toward particular foods, not in the vain that they are best for us, but because they are better than what we experienced before. We don't however take that comparison far enough, beyond the bubble wall of our own short collective memory.
Our history goes back way further than that, further than our invention of the modern shoe.The trick is we are comparing our new experience to what we experienced before, within our own cultural reference. Comparing one product to another from the same central isle of the grocery store may be like comparing two trees side by side on the same little island.
We are going straight to the center of tootsie roll pop, but its only ourselves hiding in there. We've got to leave the island, dive into the water and see that the land continues, however obscured. “The world is always changing. We have to look to the past to find out what doesn't change”. So we dive in.
After all the lights and sound, Vitamin D is not the only component of sunlight. Sunlight is not vitamin D; it is more like a relationship partner, though we hardly show up to the affair. According to the EPA, the average American today is indoors or in transit 98& of the time and outdoors only 2% of the time.
Now words flirt with truth and truth is usually in context, so there are exceptions here. There are people who fare well in Iceland during months of darkness for example. Plenty of tribal people wear simple shoes. And certainly I have seen the planet earth series and witnessed the relatively rougher aspects of life. Some tribal populations clash in some way or form.
In general though we seem to fare well when we fallback to the importance of natural light, the benefits of being barefoot, the benefits of sitting in ways that complement our physiology rather than challenge it like those uncomfortable high school chairs. Do you feel it?Have we evolved to sit in chairs, when squatting appears to be best for our physiology. It seems of benefit for the pelvic bone (or whatever) to be free and float around rather than being locked into position. And how effectively do we learn this way? Do stuck bodies encourage stuck minds. Stressing the mind certainly stresses the body, so the reverse seems also true.
The chair, like the shoe might be best removed, altered, at least reconsidered as we explore an evolution now of ergonomically correct chairs. (so feel free to grab a seat on the floor & please don't eat a tootsie pop by the way).We and all those things we share stage with (chairs, snacks, shoes, foods, other creatures, weather) are like pieces of an elaborate mufti-dimensioned puzzle.
Nutritionally speaking, this is the concern with producing genetically modified foods, which are essentially changes to one puzzle piece which is supposed to lock into the surrounding puzzle, which includes our digestive systems. A puzzle piece that is 99.99% right may not quite fit.
We may not have even yet discovered the very fine edges of that puzzle to reveal what does. The whole puzzle has to be grabbed at once and shifted! (Picture a kid trying to put square peg in round hole)
If only one piece of the puzzle is shifted, the other is left to adapt if it can adapt. And then we may be the foot that no longer fits Cinderella's shoe. And I suppose that's natural too.
I like the example of the meteor that is said to have wiped out the dinosaurs by changing the atmospheric conditions of earth very quickly, perhaps to include the amount and type of particles present which no longer matched Dino lungs; the temperature perhaps and the amount and degree of light.
I don't know much about it other than to say the conditions no longer fit with the organism and the organism was challenged to the brink. Obviously after 5 extinctions with earth, it may be perfectly natural to witness quick changes come to alter the world.
In other words, who is to say it is not the intent of the world to have a shift or a quick change? However, by the same token, who is to say that the desire which burns in me, right now all the way to the fingers typing these letters, is not also the intent of the world; What then of choice?
Its a very sticky point in an ever-changing world full of slow and quick change. However if we are building our own meteor and have the sentience to decide whether to keep building it, what shall we do? (Excuse me while I change into something less comfortable?)
“There are no rules now.
You who bore me, taught me, raised me.
Mother, Father, friends, lovers,
You are my brothers and sisters now.
All that you taught me to help me in life
Is no longer true, unless I find it so.
Your truths for you, mine for me.
But I, being some part child still,
Grieve for the missing parents to be no more
Nor to be a parent myself.
No longer even a child of God but co-creator.
This is frightening.
This is glorious.
-Jane Bishop, from Nepo's book.
I would add that this is power, the ability to fire little meteors into our own world. When we talk about changing what we eat, we talk about changing tiny things of course, tiny components of which dock on those specific sites on our cells, which they fit like a puzzle piece. Though the puzzle pieces are not really so tangible, especially considering even the nature of atoms which in the realm of discussion are mostly empty (if empty is even possible with electrons appearing and disappearing in a quantum sea)
The distance between nucleus and the nearest fuzzy idea of an electron may be essentially miles apart. So, more appropriately, we fit the world like a fluid energy puzzle, and if we change the world quicker than we change ourselves or change ourselves quicker than we change the world, we may find our current form obsolete. We essentially create a new mosaic into which we may not fit.
We live on a thin slice of earth and if we fill that space with that with which we are not compatible with, right down to the particles of air we breath, we have to consider that we have surrendered a portion of our space. It goes further than that, because if that thin slice is made incompatible for a fraction of other creatures, the domino affect can shift the mosaic in that way too.
For example, a cow may face not only a radically confining environment, but a quick change diet composed of corn (genetically modified corn no less) rather than a smorgasbord of grasses, and furthermore passes along to the consumer a lower fat soluble vitamin count, a lesser quality fat in general, & complications arising from antibiotics given to cows with now lowered immunity.
What about farmed bees that are fed fructose syrup? Are they resistant to all they need be resistant to? Are they up for pollinating all those plants on which the world depends? In some countries, such as Japan, fitness is valued in relationship to work, but these workers work for more than a single company or country. And what about s/he who consumes the sweet honey?
Recently I learned that direct current (DC) electricity travels on the outside of the wire. In a way, we are like that too, clinging to a stream of food and world coming right through us, mouth to exit, mind to action. We are what we eat eats; We are what we interact with interacts with; We are what we live with lives with; We are what we dance with dances with.
In this sense we are not merely ourselves, but the whole dance, the whole system with which we are intertwined. One has to admit there is always an exception to any rule and that quantum leaps are possible, what with particles co-existing as waves in a boundless mystery. Everything we think is set in stone turns out not to be. There is said to be great hidden potential within our own genes, hidden abilities which may not be switched on until we place ourselves in the situation that flicks the switch.
Then there is our very reaction to our environment, which itself is not solid but a great potential sea of mystery we all swim in, which our thoughts are undeniably & fluidly tied to. An electric unset sea.
Certainly in a future entry, we may delve deeper beyond the apparently physical, to discuss spontaneous remission, power of mind, exceptions to rules, in that realm where we or I doesn't easily apply. Forgive my limited use of the word we in this entry! What should I say? Our words are explorers seeking to go new places, but they are built sometimes of the place that made them, so like our culture they must adapt in time. Still, aren't they beautiful?
For now lets address the system in a tangible physical earthy way, as it stands, regardless of what holds it in form. Lets say its a relative factor in our culture to go out of style. Lets speculate too that our diet has changed from what is native to us, and lets speculate that, as a result, the composition of nutrients in our skin has changed. This was a speculation that came up in one of my nutrition classes.
Now, assuming we and sun to be dance partners, locking fluid arms in the great mosaic, who then has made a quick change and changed the dance moves, relatively speaking? Who has gone out on the dance floor, ditched the program and started fancy break dancing, with our partner still standing there burnin' like a fireball. [Insert jeopardy theme song here]... The sun or us?
In answer to our concerns about sun exposure, we apply sunscreen, itself often containing numerous brand new, never before danced with, quick change agents. We also may reduce natural light exposure in general, but something to consider, as previously mentioned, is that the quick transformation in our own skin composition, due to rapid changes in our diets, relative to those of our ancestors, outside the bubble, may be a factor in the sun-skin relationship and its negative consequences.
There may be more on trial here than simply the quality of that original source light iself, which interestingly enough has fallen upon multiple creatures round the world for eons, eons we survived through to bring us to this (well, according to popular speculation anyway.) Tribal/indigenous bands of people still exist today.
People, who according to Dr. Weston Price, display superior health and nutrition that comes without a quick change to diet and lifestyle, which thereby affects nutrient load, as revealed by blood tests by Price showing higher levels of fat soluble vitamins in the native & indigeonous populations he studied.
Is cancer more a modern happening, since the industrial revolution (or the agricultural) revolution?
It is at least the case that we have changed our personal piece of the puzzle enough that we are no longer an effective control for the sun skin experiment.
Also I suppose we have changed our own atmosphere which the sun filters through as well, with ozone holes primarily above the poles. We also may avoid sun and then blast our skin in bursts. Two radical extremes. (quick changes)
In order to truly study the sun skin relationship, we might consider a gracious study of whatever remains of relatively isolated hunter-gatherer peoples we can find or even ourselves when we display optimal nutrition.
Still , one has to use one's best judgement. If I know anything, I know that I don't. Time plucks stars from the sky and I'm sure it will blow something I'm confidently sure about into the ethers and serve me up a wonder-filled slice of humble pie.
A person may be a fish that's jumped out of the bowl to get an expansive view, shouting it out, while still all the while actually underwater, which some thing comes along at some point and kindly reveals.
And here's the thing: you never see it coming. A view can solidfy to the point where it is like a rock inside you. And then that something comes along. And its out there. Until then, scratching curious nails at the surface of a mystery may reveal a useful tendency. I love that quote “The universe has tendencies not laws.” (Amit Goshwami)
One such tendency we may observe is that when a creature is relocated quickly to a new habitat, craziness may unfold. Look up so-called invasive plants and animals in your area and you may see how the meeting of creature with habitat may be meteor-like in it's impact. English Ivy and Nutria in the Pacific Northwest, Zebra Mussels in the Chesapeake, etc. These are great examples of quick change.
Along those lines, certainly the quick migration of peoples in recent times may set forth changes, consequently exposing an ethnic group suited to certain amounts of sun to new and relatively inappropriate or better put, new conditions.
However, when talking of this, we still may be talking of the side effects of adapting to our own new culture/new way of living which may include more rapid travel/relocation, just like it includes a better running shoe.
Now this is a huge point. Because we are not talking about improvements on the entire state of people since the beginning of time, that is human beings. This means that if we become more intelligent, we may become more intelligent than ourselves in our own particular game.
We are talking about relative improvements on the state of modern people, itself a potentially misleading label, since today in modern times, hunter gather & indigenous peoples still exist.
Meaning that there is more than one destination thus far in the human story; meaning that the story has not reached its relative end with us. The very sense of we is expanded now.
It seems premature to register our own culture, in its infancy of 500 generations as more intelligent. If we want to use the word we to define us as members of our culture, we could just as easily say we are one modern group who took one particular mysterious path.
The story of all humans is not limited to the particular bubble in which we developed new shoes and lights and foods and chairs from that point on. Our way, of course, is supported by numbers, a large population, which expands the bubble to its furthest reaches. We may consider perhaps the question “Is the big balloon full of brilliance or simply close to popping?”
And, again can we call the bubble the latest chapter in a linear story of man, when neurologically equivalent beings who live differently are still among us? People whose ways are generally in accord with the tendencies of the world that our culture, in its quick change newness, is still at a grasp to understand and align with.
Then again, there are common sense powerful assumptions holding our culture's strong world view in orbit... assumptions that beg a three-D poster type of second look. They include: We are longer lived [note to self: add link here]... Our lives are easier; We are the leading edge of intelligence, having passed written down knowledge on to others, thereby exponentiating intelligence. Technology takes the game to a new level. On this enterprise, have we really boldly gone where no one has gone before?
Over the course of entries to come, we will explore these topics further. One interesting assumption worth noting is this: dominantion is an obvious demonstration of superior intelligence in itself. In which case, the following is posed:
Imagine for a moment a table with two plates, one with lightly steamed broccoli, the other with a piece of your favorite candy.
Few people would agree that candy is a superior food to a vegetable and yet, its taste is so intensely sweet, that one may truly physiologically lose a taste for vegetable... (for real, as I learned in my nutrition class, resulting in an actual alteration in perception, which will eventually return to baseline over a number of weeks when the diet is balanced again).
Concentrated sugar, lights and sound are strong in that way; They may be enticing, seductive, overpowering. But superior? Where does the choice of concentrated sugar lead? And what truly drives one to choose it.
In the end, does what our culture has to offer amount to a sugary and complicated firework or a deep and wholesome meal? Or both?
To study ourselves and negotiate our challenges, it may take more than going to the edge of our own cultures history and placing a hand on the outer wall of our own bubble. Like Truman (true man, true person, true curiosity, true wonder, true mystery) we have to crack open the door.
Perhaps with a bit of distance we may turn back around to see ourselves again, and that would be quite brilliant to say the least.
And in case I don't see you,
Goodnight.
it looks like I have some proofreading to do in general here (: Were this my entire life I could stare longer into this screen, but it is not, so this entry may represent the best I have at the moment. I post it, because better it be imperfect that stuck in a digital drawer somewhere ( :
A somewhat unprofessional ADD referenced section:
Jared Diamond, Excerpts From The Third Chimpanzee and Guns, Germs & Steel
Thanks always to Daniel Quinn, Story of B and Ishmael
Ulrich Kraft (Scientific American Mind: Article on Seasonal Affective Disorder)
Brief Mention: Kazuo Murakami, Phd., The Divine Code of Life (Genes)
Weston Price: Nutrition & Physical Degeneration
Mark Nepo: A few random quotes from book The Exquisite Risk
The Story of Man DVD (blood typing to reveal ancestery)
Christopher McDougall: Born To Run
Nutrition class with Don Matesz
Article: Population as A Function of Food Supply
The Truman Show (Movie)
GMO Article
The quote “we must look to the past for what doesn't change”: from a movie
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