i was using the food choice thing as an analogy:
in my opinion, we rely (unhealthily) on civilization for our needs a lot like a child would rely on a parent because we’ve replaced the original mother (earth) with civ. i think a lot of parents emulate civilization in their relation to there children. i find myself surrounded by a culture that is constantly trying to supply me with things i don’t need by trying to convince me that i do or don’t need them.
when i ask “why do i need that?”, civilization (like many civ parents) in essence often replies “because i said so”.
of course there are times when a full explanation to a child’s question is not going to make much sense and confuse, but there are times when i see myself and others just giving the “because i said so” answer for the sake of dodging a perfectly reasonable question. when i worked at a summer camp for a month for the last three years and when i babysit my nieces and nephew, i find that kids understand a lot of things if i put it in “kid terms”. kids are often as sophisticated as adults, they just speak a different language. when we assume that they won’t understand certain things, we undermine their intelligence.
civilization does the same thing to adults. it undermines our intelligence by giving us slippery reasoning for things it doesn’t really want to explain.
as a teen, i find myself increasingly confronted with all kinds of choices.
as you said:
:[quote=“heyvictor, post:1, topic:1034”]If a young person has the ability to choose from a hundred different lifestyles, value systems, career paths etc. or to mix and match it all in an infinite number of ways. Plus being bombarded with information, attitudes and morals from all kinds of cultures, it makes it a lot harder to pass on a tradition or knowlege in any kind of clear, un-watered down or bastardized way.
How many of us now would willingly give up all those choices that we have? All the access to “information” which is often not really information at all, it’s just clutter. But wait, isn’t it that same wide openness and abundance of information that allows us to be able to choose rewilding?
How do we find a kind of moral compass to navigate through all the worthless but distracting and often deceptive bullshit?[/quote]
the moral compass i use to navigate through all that bs is by asking the “but why” question. there are obviously things that i’ll only understand as i get older, but for now, the best thing i can do is to keep questioning every choice i make that is in some way influenced by civ, instead of just excepting those dodgey “because i sad so” answers. I find the most important cultural values are based on some degree of common sence, and common sence is exactly what civ culture avoids. this culture teaches us to avoid common sense and impairs our ability to use it. if people were to question this culture and it’s values, i think they’d come up with the answers pretty easily. the problem is that most of us (something i see a lot of in my friends) don’t know how to use that common sense “muscle” anymore. we haven’t exercised it in so long, we just except all the bs as a way things are, “because it tastes good”, “because it feels good”, all those “because i said so” reasons. those flashy cultural civ values are a lot like the colors and tastes civ tries to hook our kids with (hence the pop sickle analogy i used) and with a little common sense, we’ll find that those things, be they brightly colored pop sickles or attractive cultural values, are only a replacement for the real camas and soap berries or the fundemental (re)wild values that are inherent in us all. all we need to do is to keep questioning every thing civilization throws at us and i believe we can sieve out the real values that are the fundamentals in most indigenous cultures.
of course that’s just my opinion and maybe those aren’t the thoughts your looking for. i’m also not a very wordy person and i find it hard to explain myself sometimes. i hope i didn’t sound too confused in my ranting.
