Supposedly our brains process things in the background while the foreground handles more mundane tasks. Mentalrobics has this little article about dumping what’s on your mind into a letter and then forgetting about it so that when you come back to the letter, you will have a sort of automatic insight into the problem. I think relaxation can help trigger the “aha” moment when the insight flashes to the foreground, as well.
Here’s an example. It’s part of our ongoing attempt to begin weaving a new, native mythology, but here you have Jason & the Argonauts recast along our bioregion’s rivers, and being guided by Merlin rather than Charon (it’s a shame adaptationzine.com is down, I wish I could link “Charon” to Paula Hay’s wonderful articles on him…)
When it comes to syncretization, I’m slightly more interested in what we can take away from our current culture and reuse. What have we learned in our civilized time that is worth keeping with us when we go feral? What “modern” practices can be integrated into our furture cultures? What is worth preserving through the crash?
Syncretization is a result of cognitive dissonance, an act of forcing two separate modes of thinking together. In a way it’s a defense mechanism. I think the major difference between syncretization and cultural appropriation is that syncretization isn’t really concious.
I was wondering that too, would syncretic rewilding involve a mainly conscious effort, or involve more something (say everything was right for this) that would -just happen?
If we do it actively, we can weave it together elegantly. If it “just happens,” the result will be far less elegant, and much more a mish-mash of cognitive dissonance.
The edges between dissonant Ideas is where my best thinking occurs. If we sit down and try to plan it all ahead, we’re going to overlook something important. I’m not saying that we don’t plan ahead, but just leave enough openness to let it evolve organically. Syncretization is the end product, not the act.
I'm not saying that we don't plan ahead, but just leave enough openness to let it evolve organically.
I think open planning makes the best planning. Plan to keep your senses open to the things you could never plan for.
Syncretization is the end product, not the act.
But no culture ever exists in a static state. Just like languages, they always change and morph and absorb and dislodge.
Sure, but maybe it goes from cultural theft to syncretization when one makes it your own. In the beginning, we are copying, by the end, it’s part of us. Until it’s fully synthesized into the new culture, it’s not syncrectic. It’s just borrowed.
Responding to all this in this medium is going to be hard for me. I’ve been told that involving me in a conversation is like entering an interrogation room with an unbiased babyfaced cop playing ignorant.
I ask alot of questions all the time, and often wonder why it’s so rare that someone else asks questions instead of disregarding my thoughts and saying no not that THIS, and I can’t inquire like I normally do here. It would probably get tiresome.
Questions like what is culture and what’s the point and where does war start, eventually leading into the question could it be an attachment to a specific cultural ideal, and questions like what makes something stupid and something else smart and how does that apply to dingos.
They can survive in Australia. I can’t. Does that mean I’m dumber than dingos?
[quote]Rekindling that relationship with your land is precisely what rewilding is about.[quote]
Statements like that one are why I’m so excited to find this!
It's up to us to form our own relationship with our lands.
I think that’s the key point here.
To me it’s like this. Yesterday I struck out the star hitter with nine curve balls up and to the left, and today they splintered their bat and slugged a home run on the first one.
There have been a million pitchers before me and a million batters before him and they all did different stuff, and I know about some of that stuff, but this situation is unique. I have a team to discuss this with, time to discuss it, and I have one choice and one alone. Adapt as I can as the batter has adapted as they can.
In terms of culture, I have all these different behaviors. So do the people around me. Things are always dropping in from the outside, invited or not. The manifestations are many. Together we identify as many of the major ones as possible, figure out which ones that we need to tackle together, examine them and their effects from as many ang;es as possible, decide to continue doing this and continue learning everything we can and reconvene and discuss some more until we feel comfortable with going forward and facing the issue.
The whole time everything is changing. The situation will change as we pay attention to it. It’s unique. There hasn’t been one like it before. Every group that came before ours has had different situations and different ways of handling them and that stuff is good to know, but this one is something else entirely.
So I guess what I’m saying is thorough examination and supreme adaptability are what I think keeps a group sharp and as prepared as possible. The past can help but I wouldn’t ever rely on it to apply to this situation. I think focusing overly much on what has happened creates an obstruction for new things to arise.
Tell me if my thoughts are totally irrelevent. I won’t be offended.
The key is to be honest about te culture you grew up in, and to remember that it will always be with you.
Well, sure the world we live in effects us. But it’ll forever be with me? Are you saying I cannot break the mold entirely and live independently of the patterns which surround me?
This all reminds me of White Fang. How the wolf was put in a cage, pestered in all the ways to make it hate the world as much as possible, forced to fight lynxs and stuff, and then rescued. Of course all that violence had left it’s mark, and it took a lot of time for the wolf to find it’s peace and joy again, but it didn’t have to participate in either the wildlife or dogfighting to do that. It just needed love.
The edges between dissonant Ideas is where my best thinking occurs. If we sit down and try to plan it all ahead, we're going to overlook something important. I'm not saying that we don't plan ahead, but just leave enough openness to let it evolve organically. Syncretization is the end product, not the act.
I agree; I’m not talking about syncretism as a fully-fleshed out end-point, but as the next step that we take now.
Sure, but maybe it goes from cultural theft to syncretization when one makes it your own. In the beginning, we are copying, by the end, it's part of us. Until it's fully synthesized into the new culture, it's not syncrectic. It's just borrowed.
But you cannot understand it the way they do, because you’re not part of that culture. So it’s just theft.
Well, sure the world we live in effects us. But it'll forever be with me? Are you saying I cannot break the mold entirely and live independently of the patterns which surround me?
To some extent. You’ll always have your past, right? That means that just copying won’t work for you. You’ll need to find some way of dealing with your past. It’s more than just running into the woods to play Indian, it’s finding a new way of being enmeshed in a living community. Previous examples can point the way, but it takes more than just copying them. If you do that, that’s just cultural appropriation, that’s just the final stage of genocide. But to learn from others, adapt it to where you’ve been, and come up with a creative synthesis … that’s something else entirely.
Of course all that violence had left it's mark, and it took a lot of time for the wolf to find it's peace and joy again, but it didn't have to participate in either the wildlife or dogfighting to do that. It just needed love.
Sure. And I’m not saying that because you’ve been domesticated that you have to stay that way. But White Fang couldn’t just roll up with a new pack like nothing had happened, either. Once you’ve been domesticated, you can never be entirely wild again, but you can become feral. It’s what Daniel Quinn wrote about as the “third way.”
Awesome stuff. You definitely get a mixed bag with pop culture, but if you can sort through it, you can also find the parts where domesticated people are scratching at their collars right now.
Jason, hello. I like what you had to say in your original post, very intelligent. I feel that what we are all striving for now is a feral culture through this ‘process’(?) of rewilding.
I also forsee that at some point this feral culture becomes a ‘native’ culture, likely after a generation or two of living with the land/nature/ecoregion…
As for cultural appropriation, I almost feel it’s a natural reaction to reach out and emulate culture’s that have more recently than us lived closer to the land. Not saying it’s right or good, just a reaction to a void we have instead of a nature based gestalt we seek.
I initially emulated everything Native North American, but after time felt it was false or fake, not taking me deep enough into my ancestors natural heritage.
Likewise searching out how my European ancestors lived, seemed disingenous as I live in North America, not Europe. So I hit upon the idea of researching and emulating the culture of our far distant ancestors, way before we thought of the world as Europe, North America, Africa…just clans wandering across the face of Mother Earth.
I now practice skills of our COMMON ancestors 50,000+ years ago did, as far back as we have verifiable information on them. No cultural appropriation as I see it, just learning to live as we all once did, as we were all meant to.
Live Primitive in Peace. 
Alex
How do you know how people lived 50,000 years ago? Archaeologists aren’t sure; they’re mostly reconstructing that based on how people like, say, the Native Americans lived.
There’s lots of people to learn from, but there’s no one to emulate. Rewilding is going to take a lot more imagination than that. You’re in North America, so you’d be very well-advised to learn from Native North Americans. By the same token, you’re also going to have to figure out how you can tie that into the things that work from the culture you grew up with. It can never be a simple matter of emulation; no one else is in our position but us, so there’s no one to emulate, no one who’s ever done what we’re trying to do. So it’s going to take imagination. It’s going to be a syncretic process.