reply to EWTN “Women of Grace” blog: Is Paranormal State TV for Real?

EWTN “Women of Grace” blog: Is Paranormal State TV for Real?

Vun, the Spirit of Fire, is the portal to the Ancestors
in the Dagara tradition of West Africa.

http://www.womenofgrace.com/blog/?p=14401

My reply to their post  is as follows- “waiting for moderation” (ok fine, it is more than the one paragraph that they suggest, but then there were more than one in the accepted comment on the page....Susan Brinkman can come talk to us here if the WOG blog can’t handle the bandwidth...I’d love to continue the discussion of such things with her and any others so interested and inclined, but I progress):

I have also noticed the great proclivity for drama to be a constant creation in shows such as these, as it is in most, if not all (sur)reallity tv.  This is the first mistake of shows like this.  The connection to human spirits who have passed over can be unsettling as those spirits can be truly unsettled and frustrated and in our midst, but the melodrama around it is not helpful to understanding out traditional responses to assisting those spirits, our Ancestors in their successful passage to the realm of the Ancestors.  Thank you for pointing out one of the fundamental problems with these types of programs in general.

There are, though, problems with the above characterization of these spiritual dynamics:

"First, let me say that I believe homes can be haunted and that spirits can toss around frying pans in the middle of the night. But I don’t believe that these events are due to the behavior of the deceased owner of the house who got lost somewhere between here and eternity and is roaming the halls looking for peace. This is pure theater. Disembodied souls don’t have voices that can be recorded on EVP meters, not only because their voiceboxes have long ago rotted in the grave, but because our God, who loves us beyond our comprehension, doesn’t let any of his beloved creatures “get lost” on the way to eternity."

If we take spiritual energy as purely that (and we know the implications are deep here), we know that energy is conserved, transformed, not deleted or destroyed.  Why then is it impossible to conceive that that human energetic imprint or spirit can not then have a corporeal effect, still, on the potential energy in the movement of objects or emotions or human sensation?  It only makes logical, rational sense that that would be entirely possible, in addition to the multiplicity of occurrences outside of televisual narratives that confirm these dynamics, especially in traditional and indigenous  contexts (even modern ones where people have not shut down their full range of human energetic awareness) where many thousands of years of communal energetic learning, awareness and experience give grounding to such experiences in a functional and integrated way.  This is why so many, many indigenous cultures have traditions, rituals and ceremonies for engaging and reconciling energies and spiritual dynamics in the Ancestral continuum.  Malidoma Some' asserts eloquently in "Healing Wisdom of Africa" that we are in such grave straits in the modern world precisely because we have forgotten and neglected (and been terrorized away from) our Ancestral relationships.  

In addition, the multi-dimensionality of the universe must be taken into consideration when we speak of being able to hear spirits or Ancestors, those that have died.  Of course they don't have voice-boxes.  That's a simplistic argument, but it is wholly dismissive of energetic reality to suggest that we are limited to the creation of sound pressure only in the normal physiological sense.  This is why we call it SUPERnatural or metaphysical!  Nor should we assume that our human ability to hear is only limited to the ear.  Again, that is simplistic in a world that largely agrees that we can see with the mind's eye.  The learned (and coerced) limitations that many of us acknowledge are exactly why we dismiss Ancestral energetic dynamics in the face of "rational", "scientific" objectivism.  It is pure folly and ignorance to relegate ourselves to "Avatar" science, thinking based upon the requirement to have energetic dynamics show up on meters or machines to be real or reliable.  Clearly, though, study and experience shows that this can happen, but it is not the only way that these dynamics can be substantiated.  I am sure there are countless Roman Catholics who can speak to the presence of their deceased loved ones in their midst with great assuredness and clarity.

The other issue that can and must be engaged here is that so many cultures do have the experience and awareness of souls being "lost" if the correct energetic work is not done or if our relationships to them are broken or out of balance.  The cultural perspective from which the Roman Catholic viewpoint is derived is not the only valid one on the earth.  To wholly dismiss the tens of thousands of years old (and beyond) cultural perspectives, wisdom, experience and knowledge of indigenous peoples would be clearly arrogant and ethnocentric at best.  That primary human legacy cannot be undone with the writings of one particular culture, just as the rantings of the Sanhedrin and the Pharisees did not necessarily make Jesus's statements and perspectives wrong.

We are on the right track with critiquing television programs that misappropriate and distort spiritual phenomena, but we are gravely mistaken when we provide narrow and simplistically dismissive filtered reads to time-proven, functional and expansive human cultural narratives.

[reposted also on my facebook page]

John Henrik Clarke - christianity before christ

This video is offered as information for support and discussion of indigeny, Africa, white privilege ("Patterns of Privilege"), predatory christianity, colonialism and imperialism.

Singularity ≠ Unity

So-called "artificial intelligence" has been around in the popular consciousness for some time now. Without a need for deep clarity, this and many concepts float about in the information glut that we call modern mass media, particularly with respect to the information super-sidewalk (so named by me more so for how we use it rather than what it is). "AI", like these other ideas and physical/social processes often represent corporate/industrial initiatives that become part of the social lexicon without proper social and communal critique to discern with deliberation if we actually want to move forward with them as a major cultural element.

Singularity is one of these up and coming ideas that many say is inevitable. It deserves greater social engagement particularly with respect to indigeny and energetics as it challenges and devalues the bases of indigenous (and all other) relationships to the world and the cycles of energy that have kept humans alive and whole for eons. Modernity has revealed itself as an ideological and systemic challenge to indigeny in its insistence on supporting concepts of "better life through chemistry" as seen in post-"world war" II industrial society and machine-based processes and processing as being 'essential' to human life, inevitable and preferable to almost all previous ideas and processes. Consider the functionally symbolic metaphor of "artificial imitation processed cheese food" being called "American" cheese. In addition, ideas like singularity have the full support of the capitalist corporatocracy and the imperialist ideas and structures that keep it alive. Numerous indigenous perspectives have shown these larger ideas and structures along with the machine culture and the chemocracy to be ultimately flawed, fallacious and failing concepts with respect to humanity, nature, the earth and to grounded spiritual development.

In my cultural media literacy work, I have often "joked" about the possibility of whether my students will have to choose between having a USB or firewire port being installed into their newborn babies. I have done this to provoke thought and discussion and a deeper awareness of technological trends and the easy social acquiescence that seems to come along with these technological systems. We have a much more intimate relationship with our digital technologies, computers, internet-capable phones and game consoles than we have ever had and seem absolutely pie-eyed no matter what new gadget, communicative tool or digital panacea comes down the pipe.

During one of these conversations with my students, one of them informed us about a concept called singularity that he explained to be a technological ideology of that inevitable and even more fatally intimate relationship with human performance enhancing hardware and software physically incorporated into the bodies of humans. In a way, my hopefully provocative sarcasm in class was a low tech suggestion as people like Ray Kurzweil and Kevin Warwick assert that not only is it possible, but desired to place micro-chips and other computer-based, nano-technological, digital hardware into the brain and body, along with the assumed benefit of bionic prosthetics that would be even more accepted than cosmetic plastic surgery is now.

The presence and projection of singularity is disconcerting for a list of reasons that cut to the core of the rationale for engaging indigeny and energetics as a real and integral, dominant part of the human experience on earth. As a particularly clinical and corporatist endeavor, computer/digital technologies in their creation and use embody a system of thought that allows for manufacturing (I dare not say "creation") and marketing for the sake of manufacturing and marketing. This expression of modernity has an unclear air of technology, the machine, human hubris over nature in a way that has led to the domination, or better yet abuse of nature much to our own detriment. Even though the proponents of singularity project this inevitable trend deep into the future, it is an inherently short-sighted idea that assumes a built-in pathological inadequacy to the human being with no discernible discussion of spiritual concepts or ramifications.

Kevin Warwick, as interviewed by Socrates on September 26, 2010 for his singularityblog.com website states the following:

“...I do see humans as being very, very limited in what we can do and the sooner we get into post-humanity and cyborgs and so on, the better, really...well I don’t know that I do want to save humanity (interviewer laughs). The sooner we get done with humanity and move on to something that’s a little bit better, so be it. And to me, the singularity is about moving on from humanity...getting humans living through the singularity as cyborgs...we come out of it as something a lot better, when we say bye-bye to humans unless there’s a few of them around that still want to live on islands and something and don’t cause any problems.”

http://singularityblog.singularitysymposium.com/kevin-warwick-on-singularity-podcast-you-have-to-take-risks-to-be-part-of-the-future/

It would seem immediately that Warwick has no sense...then clearly no sense of the energetic nature of the naturo-spiritual(-human) dynamic. The limitations he sees in humanity as a whole (if he even indeed sees humanity in a wholistic way!) are astounding even simply in the above quote...that tragic quote. What Warwick says is tragic for two key reasons. First, Mr. Warwick clearly has led such a narrowed, uninspired and disconnected life that he seems to have no faith in human nature, no faith in the resilience of humanity and no understanding of the depth of the naturo-spiritual dynamic within which humans, much like him, have been nestled warmly for millions of years (temporocentrism is a terminal ailment for Warwick). Second, it is also clear that Warwick is not a student of history (which can give rise to temporocentrism), at least not of the Zinn, Clarke or Deloria variety, and he has not learned any of the amazing stories that truly define the human indigenous experience.
[author's note: I clearly do not know Kevin Warwick personally and have never met him. I sincerely hope that he has never experienced the kind of personal or social/ancestral trauma that could cause him to feel so little hope for humanity, so little compassion for others and himself as to say what he has said above.]

What Warwick is suggesting, along with so many others supportive of the narrow-minded idea of singularity, is that the only way humanity can advance, that the only way we can experience progressive redemption is through an even more intimate relationship with computer-based, digital technologies. Keep in mind, Warwick and many others are suggesting that we we literally become the machine, so much so that we have them floating around in our bloodstream, our brain or that we have parts of us, million-dollar-mannishly, that are computer-based mechanical prosthetic technologies. While it is clear that these technologies are helpful to many of us who have terminal or chronic, serious diseases, physical conditions and disorders, it is not clear that these technologies are necessary to remediate the "problem of humanity". There is no basic and terminal, fatal flaw inherent in the human being nor the human becoming. No matter how deeply the christian ethic of original sin has become secularized in modern, industrial society, humans are no more flawed than the programmers and technicians who would be creating the hardware and software foundation of this singularitists', uber-geek fantasy. That said, what "flaws" do exist in humanity cannot be coded out of the process of manufacturing this virtually redemptive mistake.

It must be remembered that the idea of singularity comes out of the same capitalist, machine chemo-culture that created the pharmaceutical cartel that rushes poisons to market and refuses to test for the mixtures of its chemically explosive devices (read their warning descriptions recently?) and sits quietly by while reports come in attesting to the presence of said pharmaceuticals in the drinking water and reservoirs across Turtle Island - simply from the urinary tracts of the drugged. It comes out of the same non-indigenous socio-economic system that gave rise to a natural resource extraction and exploitation debacle that has brought humanity and many other species to the brink of extinction (if not over that boundary) and seriously thrown off the balance of many of the global and regional natural processes that keeps everything alive. It also comes out of the same system that gave rise to the computer glitch.

Said on the WBUR FM 90.9 webpage for their interview with Ray Kurzweil:

"Tiny computers in our brains, artificial intelligence, maybe even eternal life. It’s not science fiction, according to futurist Ray Kurzweil, it’s the future."

“They’ll go into our brains through the capillaries, interact with our biological neurons, put our brains on the Internet, give us vastly greater memory and problem-solving capability, keep us healthy from inside, augment our immune system,” Kurzweil said."

http://radioboston.wbur.org/2011/03/21/ray-kurzweil

Ray Kurzweil is undoubtedly a technical genius, but his futuristic machinations leave a lot to be desired. His projections, though completely plausible on a materialistic level, are totally devoid of an embrace of the sacred, of an embrace of divinity in humanity and in nature. I wouldn't be surprised if he shared some of the basic philosophical tenets of judeo-christianity, but whether he does or not seems inconsequential in his quest to change the nature of the human energetic enough to filter its innate ability to sense and heal its own internal and external world through the sieve of nano-technology and microchips. It seems that Kurzweil has no inkling of the enormous capacity the human being has for self-regulation and self-healing (and communal healing!) when you simply take away the constant injurious nature of the modern socio-politico-pathological world. It seems Kurzweil does not know that the cancers and sicknesses and diseases that are plaguing even us entitled and privileged USAmerican patriots are created and, at least, exacerbated by the stresses and environmental disruptions and degradation of the last one to two hundred years of anti-life. The very social system that created these diseases also created the technologies and ideologies of the singularities. If Ray Kurzweil was possibly more interested truly in the redemption of humanity than his own notoriety, he might be more willing to support technological restraint along with a deepening spiritual and environmental engagement that would hasten and catalyze the creation of a liberating OLD world order, one that acknowledges the deep human connection to nature, the analog world, the world-wide-web of life incarnate as earth, water, blood and bone, branch and butterfly. It seems he would rather send alight a mechanical version of the variegated fritillary, complete with servo-controlled flight systems, than to be a humble part of sustaining a world in which butterflies, frogs, fish and osprey find vibrant support from the teeming abundance of a world ecosystem allowed to humbly balance itself without the deadly effects of excesses in mining, extraction, exploitation, contamination and infection that a computer-based modernity seems so completely empowered and emboldened to set in motion.

Singularity, as a social disease, can not be divorced from the capitalist concept of unlimited growth, yet another narrow-minded mistaken identification of the human as overlord of a simplistic, reductionist's nature. The modern misconception of a desacralized, violable judeo-christianized natural world is anathema to our indigenous lifeways, indigenous technologies that allowed for an abiding functional and practical respect for nature and other human beings so that all the interconnected systems of life could flow and grow freely, even with the high-tech levels of management that have recently come to life with regard to traditional Native American environmental stewardship (as referenced in Mann's "1491" and Outwater's "Water: A Natural History"). To date, I have heard nothing of Kurzweil's or Warwick's interest in any of these technologies, even though those indigenous agricultural/social/spiritual technologies have a much longer, better record of sustainability and for harmonious inter-relationship and integration with the humans that developed them. The resource exploitation and e-waste on the front and back end, respectively, of the medium-tech computer/virtual information industry should be evidence enough that singularity might not even have its one wobbly leg to stand on in proving to an awakening (or is it ensleepening into a virtual dream-world a la droid cinema and follywood movies streamed on wide-screen televisions?) techno-matrix-populace. Yes, the singularity is the blue pill.

And singularity is not unity. It is highly questionable whether the proliferation of cellular wireless "smart" phones, the internet and social networking websites has really helped humanity get beyond some of its deepest problems of alienation, disconnection and disharmony. Though we can access emails, images, videos, news, international and global events in split seconds, "connected" (now the modern mantra) to our loved ones, friends and family through persistent text messages, chats, tweets and rolling stati, more fundamental social and personal issues are just as persistent. Our reactionary fears of truly engaging the healing and sustenance of community, inabilities to invest fully and emotionally in friendly and romantic relationships and a deepening fracture between children, teenagers, adults and elders, more crippling and traumatic than the neat images of market niches would convey. Singularity is a terminal distraction away from that which holds the key to human social unity and spiritual harmony with sacred nature.

Jerry Mander, in "Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television", asserts that it is the modern tendency to create artificial environments, ranging from office buildings to supermarkets to digital virtual realities, that is the danger of our losing our ways of knowing, our ways of organically sensing the world that not only has created us and our culture but, has been our teacher, our harmonious cosmological travel partner, our primary, if not only, home.

Mander says the following:

"Living within artificial, reconstructed, arbitrary environments that are strictly the products of human conception, we have no way to be sure that we know what is true and what is not. We have lost context and perspective. What we know is what other humans tell us." (pg.68)

Mander challenges us to recognize our natural environment as our primary locus of cognition, the primacy of the corporeal and esoteric world around us and within us as being a sort of epistemological ecosystem that is dependent upon all of its elements working in conjunction and in its natural balance, not filtered through the auspices of a mediated digital matrix. We are even behooved to consider singularity as an attempt to actually make us the medium itself. If we are to have computer-based nano-technologies inside of us or otherwise permanently conjoined to our physiology, we in essence and in function become a veritable medium of digital communication. We would cease to be humans (if Warwick had his way) and would become the media themselves, fused into the datastream (of course, a matter-of-fact factor of singularity) of bits and bytes, controlled by the whims of the servers' impulses and the programmers' caprice. The control/power deferential issues would be astronomical.

Neil Postman's "Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology" offers powerful insight to put the limiting concept of singularity into its correct perspective. Postman likens technopoly to to yet another controlling structure that allows for our continued persuasion and manipulation to the changing ideological requirements of an already oppressive socio-economic reality...or better, surreality. Postman supports Mander's projections of this kind of technological with relationship to the naturo-spiritual (-human) dynamic saying that:

"It subordinates the claims of our nature, our biology, our emotions, our spirituality. The computer claims sovereignty over the whole range of human experience, and supports its claim by showing that it "thinks" better than we can." (pg.111)

Postman, though probably not particularly talking about singularity in 1992, asks us soundly, along with Mander, to question the issue of singularity's inevitability and to revisit our commitment to being more fully human rather than more partially bionic.

This challenge to singularity, the questioning of its utility and projected function is clearly required. The self-serving nature of the technopoly and it's corporatocratic parents must be put, at least ideologically, in check so that we don't end up passively adopting a truly and ultimately invasive systemic being into our collective and individual human body. What singularitists say is unquestionable, for one, merely because it exists can not be accepted blindly and out of hand because skilled marketers and techno-pundits are able to put an effective spin on it for the gluttonous consumption by a melancholic public.

David T. Kyle, in his important book, "Human Robots and Holy Mechanics: Reclaiming Our Souls In a Machine World", outlines the path for a successful battle with the machine culture that is the progeny of the last 50o years of human (under)development. He, refreshingly, points us toward the defeat of the machine's dominance over our human and external environmental nature. He plants our feet firmly on historical ground as he states the following:

"If the Machine's culture is truly beginning to break down, perhaps our evolutionary step is really a returning to the archaic, to that which is call the primitive within us. Returning to this primitive (or original) part of ourselves would be a step into a knowledge and experience that has been hidden deep within us, a spiritual energy that has been waiting to be released at this time." (pg.166)

Kurzweil and Warwick clearly have no interest in this "original" human experience, other than codifying it in binary so that we can play it back as a saleable, controllable data stream. Their arrogance would soundly put our connection to that essential human legacy in serious jeopardy, compromising if, most likely, forever (IF they have their way).

Kyle goes on to broaden his perspective, relating the advance of Postman's technopoly as a serious breach of human development to its indigenous roots, its indigenous soul and the key nature of that root's role in the continued positive growth of human culture. Kyle states the following:

"The indigenous peoples of the planet may be the guardians, the holders and the releasers of this inward flow of connection to the consciousness of the species. To destroy the indigenous people with the Machine's all-consuming complexity would be to destroy the access to the potential knowledge that could awaken our awareness for radical change in behavior." (pg.166)

Though I might suggest that singularity would represent more of an oversimplification than a complexity, its effects would cut to the core of what it means to be truly human, to be truly
connected to the world-wide-web of life and, indeed, to our own particularly human ways of knowing, of feeling, of sensing the amazing, physical and spiritual world inside and around us. In deed, it would be a major disruption to the unity that indigenous and many non-indigenous people wish to sustain and advance with each other and with the sacred world in which we live and because of which we live. It is that unity and unity consciousness that is a major context for the healing that can and should take place within human culture. Our current, modern failings are showing us that we can not live with out it. And singularity is not unity.

~~~~~~

Mander, Jerry, "Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television", Quill, New York, NY 1978

Postman, Neil, "Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology", Vintage Books, New York, NY, 1993

Kyle, David T., "Human Robots and Holy Mechanics: Reclaiming Our Souls In a Machine World", Swan Raven & Company, Portland, OR, 1993

Spiral Dynamics at First Glance: The Twisted Linear from the Circular Perspective of Indigeny

My first awareness of spiral dynamics came out of conversations with two respected colleagues/friends who are both on powerful spiritual and social paths of growth and work. Initially, there were perceptions that spiral dynamics was a helpful tool to navigate at least some of the challenges that our modern world faced us with. As the core of this work became exposed, there were certain ideas explicit and implicit in these conversations that were troubling with respect to indigeny and energetics. Interestingly enough, both colleagues stated a disdain for how indigeny rebuffed modern technology and scientific advancement, fallacious in one instance and apologetic and short-sighted in another, suggesting that modernity is without fundamental flaws and that acceptance of such and its outcomes must be assumed. Upon closer observation of the writings of the creators of spiral dynamics, it became quite clear that there were many more short-comings than grounded progressive ideas. The main SD website (http://www.spiraldynamics.org/aboutsd_overview.htm) does state that “this is not a hierarchy of wisdom or decency or even intelligences, much less happiness and worth”, suggesting a universal nature of it’s way of seeing the world through “ways of thinking about human nature”, already defining universality by a narrowing filter of intellectual cognition born out of the modern euro-center. Indigeny incorporates, truly wholistically, the core human facets of intellect, spirit and emotion as indivisible, though understandable as separate entities. Indigeny does not base its growth on disintegrating one from the other. Energetics requires that they be unified. Spiral dynamics, according to the website, states that, “it reflects a variety of worldviews and conceptions of what life is about, but it doesn’t suggest any one as the ideal”. It seems to elude the writers that this actually does represent a particularity of European, modernized ideology that thinking in and of itself is primary for human development, with all due respect to the important writings and work of John Trudell (Trudell focuses much on the practice of clear, independent thinking, but most always assumes its presence in the larger wholistic indigenous context of human experience). The focus on the cognitive and psychological is in itself a limiting and damaging factor, particularly when connected to their application of the cultural/personal developmental levels or memes in a vertically defined spiral. Spiral dynamics is a twisted linear system of thought-bias, literally and figuratively and presents particular problems when looked at through the perspective of indigeny and energetics.

Spiral dynamics presents itself as being largely ethno(euro)-centric in nature as it speaks presumptively about the value of cognition (as opposed to emotional and spiritual value) and the importance of the psychological understanding of human thought and behavior. SD seems overly dependent on the eurocentrically defined modernistic concept of thought and the brain as the highest form of human development.

In addition, there are impressions of SD as short-sighted, narrow-minded and degrading to the indigenous genius that had driven the human relationship to the world for most all of human history and its highest levels of communal and ethical thought and practice. At another level, spiral dynamics presents itself as bordering on being racist (due, in part, to its relegation of indigenous ideas to lower thought form categories, seemingly straight out of colonial/christian ideology) and, at the very least, patronizing. It is, by design, highly derivative, but insensitively so since it does so without the courtesy of acknowledging the indigenous so-called memetic presence throughout the spiral’s upward contortion. Though the website states that any society might hold numerous elements of the spiral at any given point, the hierarchy of the spiral devalues, also by design, elements (particularly in the purple “indigenous” meme) that must be held in some state of equality with other levels if any society is truly to be understood and projected into the future as viable and/or desirable. If the spirally-defined hierarchical effluent is an unconscious outcome, it is even worse for those seeking clarity through its rose-colored (and turquoise-colored and purple and green and beige-colored) glass.

The ever-expanding spiral is reminiscent of the capitalist idea of unlimited growth, a blight upon the discursive and practical history of humankind and key to the blinded arrogant nature of capitalist globalization. It could be easily surmised that spiral dynamics is even a doomed hypothetical exercise simply because there is no practical resolution to the growth dynamic. Indigeny places a high value on the circular, the cyclical, not the twisted linear idea that is the core of SD. It is this cyclical, circular understanding that enabled indigeny to sustain life for so long through it’s understandings of the close relationships of life and death (ancestral continuum), energetic and material reciprocity, shared abundance and communalism. Linear thinking allows cultures (seemingly those that glorify the elements of the upper tier memes) to extract enviro-benefits (natural resources) without thinking of or caring about the consequences of such beyond the consolidation and proliferation of monetary profit. It is this way of thinking that allows workers to be patently used as means to the end instead of circularly understanding the need to truly provide security and abundance out of their labor. Linear thinking allowed christian domination of indigenous peoples worldwide without looking back at the presumptive core tenets of love, compassion and “doing unto others...” enough to notice that their own claims for religious, if not spiritual, ascendancy were impossible, negated by their own destructive cultural and political actions and inactions in the face of imperialism and colonialism. One need only look at the linear process set in motion by the christian-inspired political and economic schemes of the criminal Cristobal Colon amongst so many others.

With reference to indigeny and energetics, spiral dynamics belittles and devalues the sweeping, expansive nature of the indigenous dynamic. Modern society is already dangerously biased against the “primitive” and “superstitious world” of spirit beings, “ancestor worship” and nature-love, afraid of the transformative nature of the embrace, again, of the intensely spiritual life, one that calls one to attention in all spheres of human endeavor, a truly and deeply cultural integration of ones ethics that leaves you no real choice, but to walk on your correct path. SD also defines emotions as being of the lower order. Emotions are at the center of healthy and sane indigenous life, expressed beautifully in the eagle and the condor prophecy that comes out of indigenous south America, stating that the world will not be in harmony unless the intellectual focus of the North (read “west” or capitalist/industrial) learns to fly in unity with the heart focus of the South (read indigenous, wholistic, integrative). In the light of this, it seems as further insult and even more pointed separatist, disintegrative discourse that spiral dynamics relegates indigeny to one of the lowest, earliest memes (even though some of it’s core concepts are in the turquoise meme), seemingly clucking it’s all-knowing tongue at this lesser expression of human ability. This statement of Clare W. Graves is not only deeply implicit in the (downward) spirally bombastic text, but is explicit in statements such as the following:

“...what I am proposing is that the psychology of the mature human being is an unfolding, emergent, oscillating, spiraling process, marked by progressive subordination of older, lower order behavior systems to newer, higher order systems as man’s existential problems change.” (http://www.spiraldynamics.net/about-spiral-dynamics-integral.html)

This statement is glaringly self-serving, pompous, short-sighted and intellectually immature as it relegates the historically and temporally voluminous experience of human development and endeavor to an old, “lower order behavior system”. This hierarchical myopia comes screaming out of the deleterious philosophies and praxis of European capitalist-imperialist hegemony, even from the more genteel rantings, but injurious behaviors of the christian cartel. The cultural disdain of indigeny is astounding and is made worse by the statements of some of spiral dynamics’ adherents that take issue with how indigeny rejects modern technology. Even those ungrounded reactions are short-sighted and uninformed. Indigeny has never patently rejected modern (read electronic/digital/materially productive) technologies. On the contrary, indigeny has made good and productive use of the computer platform (Zapatista, Tibetan use of internet, Hawaii-based indigenous people’s server initiative, Sami youtube videos,...), the modern media (Four Directions Media, Mayan and other indigenous radio programming initiatives/ culturalsurvival.org,...) and even the burgeoning area of indigenous-concept t-shirts increasingly showing up on the internet, in retail stores and at powwows.

Spiral dynamics, as formulated and expressed, is unacceptable as a functional, sensible, expansive, integrative way of seeing the world. At another level, and I might add that according to spiral dynamics this is a lower order behavior to look at the universe of life as integrated as unified as this was developed and given foundation in what is called the purple meme (stage 2 of human development!), this reductive anti-system splits away from indigeny some of the elements that indigenous people have held sacred for thousands of years and have brought bravely into this modern construct of cultural dog-eat-dogism. For example, the orange meme (3 steps up the ladder of consciousness according to spiral dynamics’ developers) claims that the “brain/mind coping capacities” and now able to “test options; maneuver” (http://api.ning.com/files/ U3wc*eXIx*aWcb6vs3K5FZ*89qHLby-6lFhVfnyRY2QXjYTViRxgS9* cGCeqgOhdy4LXJXztS8-DtiI4k9-UrUYtyY3OxfSF/Spiral_Dynamics.jpg) in some way heretofore unseen or unexpressed in early historical memes (though they claim fluidity of these memes, they are all marked by historical time periods). If indigeny has been anything, it has been able to test and put into perspective a mind-boggling host of material, social and spiritual options and maneuvered itself through time and space in harmonious and challenged/challenging ways for millennia. To simplify and disempower the indigenous idea and praxis by lowering it and its wholistic (emotional, intellectual, spiritual) nature to a lesser and lower order “behavior” is defining the very ignorance inherent in spiral dynamics’ position. That some of their “higher order” elements are actually elements held in high regard and practice by indigeny, particularly in the so-called turquoise meme, shows the uninformed character of this work.

Spiral dynamics also falls short, and this is a major and glaring flaw, in not validating indigeny as the container/remediator for two of modern society’s greatest ills and current challenges. First, it is increasingly a common awareness that many modern scientists, chemists, biologists and medical doctors and desperately seeking the aid and knowledge of indigenous people (IK) who have always been aware of working with plants and other beings of nature for healing purposes. It is modern life and culture that has created the increase in cancer, diseases of excess and imbalance and other environmental and physiological pathologies beyond its own ability to bring them under control. It is these very same professionals who lament how important it is to document this knowledge before all the rain forests are gone at the hands of the very ideology that sent them scurrying into the bush in the first place. Second, it is now becoming clear, based on United Nations reports and other sources, that understanding and best practice with regard to human-accelerated global warming/climate change is to be found in the culture of indigeny and energetics. Somehow, indigenous people and their spiritual traditions, rife with “ritual ways”, “tribal”, “animistic” practices and “tradition” around nature, society and cultural production are somehow able to help modern folk with their most pressing psycho-social-spiritual challenge that they’ve ever created by their own hubris. The indigenous concepts of informed intimacy1, born out of the historic, spiritually-based and familial relationship with land and nature, the primacy and sacredness/inviolability2 of nature and parity3, respecting the diversity of form and function in nature (and, therefore, humanity) as a truly integrative ideological and practical process all express the foundational and powerful way that indigeny and energetics provide modern culture with a (if not the) way through the moral and behavioral impasse that modernity finds itself so deeply mired in at this key time in history.

Spiral dynamics is truly a newly developing “hypothesis”, a toddling concept in its first (..., second or third) awkward stage of defining itself, steeped in its own biased cultural grandiosity. It may yet, though, prove to be useful in some intellectual, theoretical way. It remains to be seen if it can fulfill the social mandate for change, congruence and dynamism that SD’s progenitors state is possible. Problematic in this projection is that the developers of this system seem tied to what they call “higher levels” of existence, understood by this writer to mean modern, scientific and technological means of thought and production as opposed to the wholistic ways of being and doing given long life in the conventional, indigenous world. Spiral dynamics is clearly apologetic of the modernistic shortcomings that the last 150 years of industrialism and capitalist intellectualism has wrought. That their website claims that SD is NOT “a religion, nor a doctrine, nor a dogma rooted in matters of faith” (http://www.spiraldynamics.org/aboutsd_ overview.htm) is probably a great thing since most mainstream intellectual/ideological works make fallacious assumptions that “faith” and “religion” (usually a christian bias) are necessary for human sustenance without incorporating the more core values of spiritual engagement and circularity grounded and developed in the indigenous milieu of energetics. We are better off not having the christian bias become explicit in the statements of spiral dynamics, though it is still implicit, as it would further narrow the possibilities for universality of application, an assumed goal of this work.

Even though it’s creators state that we shouldn’t get too bogged down in some of the more superficial engagements of the symbolism, it would be sophomoric to suggest that these symbols don’t have meaning in and of and possibly despite themselves. What they have done IS set up a system of symbolic representations that they say help others to manage relationships. That they dismiss off-hand the negative potentialities of this symbolic system, especially since they claim to be containers, not content, is again short-sighted and speaks more to the particularity of their own cultural filters than to any real and grounded engagement in the experience and needs of humanity. All of our experiences are connected to the universal, but not all of the ways by which we have experienced and processed human life and work are worthy of further propagation. Accepting matter-of-factly the presence of capitalism does not mean we should continue its programs and processes into a projected future.

If you have to have had taken their courses to understand the deeper intricacies of this system, then they were woefully mistaken in providing misleading and confusing symbolic materials that they knew would be misunderstood. In fact they claim it has happened in numerous ways, hence their “Caveats” page on the main site.

The “Caveats” page claims the following with regard to SD:

“programs depict complexes of flowing systems within people as life conditions in their worlds and internal neurobiological systems interact—our approach never puts people into pigeonholes or boxes”
(http://www.spiraldynamics.org/aboutsd_caveats.htm)

It might be correct that these memes actually represent fluid models of “biopsychosocial” systemic application, but the symbolic representation of their twisted linear structure, though they make claim that it is so much more than the memetic categories which make up the spiralized dynamism (which, again, is the very name of the process), does not speak to fluidity at all. Possibly the fluidity exists in the historicity of the memes’ development, but even that suffers from a lack of accuracy, unless even the years/periods attached to the memes are actually so fluid as to make them devoid of temporal characteristics at all. And then, what is one of these memes, if not a pigeonhole or box. It seems the progenitors of SD want it both ways, categories/containers AND fluidity/non-judgement. What they may actually have is non-clear. They go on to say, “Much attention goes to the superficial categories rather than the engine that drives human nature”. That may not have been the case if it weren’t based upon, however superficially and theoretically and hypothetically, memetic containers or, if you will, boxes.

“The models are elegant and sometimes others represent them as wrapped in details that contribute little of substance and only add confusion.”

Agreed.

It took only a three minute segment of the Link TV Global Spirit program, “Earth Wisdom for a World in Crisis” to define the ideological framework of indigeny and point to why SD falls far short of being able to, first, bring clarity to our understanding of indigeny and, second, to provide a cogent way to apply important indigenous concepts in a dominant industrialized, capitalist world and worldview faced by so many problems of its own making. Chief Oren Lyons of the Onondaga Nation, relating a story about having been asked, “what’s your bottom line?”, simply, though after much reflection, stated, “There is no bottom line”. In the worldview or “cosmovision” of indigeny and energetics, there is no economically-defined hierarchical level at which all accounts and assets organize themselves into some profit-loss statement. Chief Lyons said, “We live in the cycle”. This cyclical (circular) nature of the indigenous understanding and practice was underscored by Thomas Alarcon, advocate for the Aymara tribe in Peru, who stated, “Everything turns. Everything revolves. It cycles.”

Spiral dynamics represents the modern, “western” inability to allow or actively bring resolution to fundamental problems. If its creators/developers had been able to conceive the temporal element in a circular formation, they might be able to enact more fluidity in their own understandings of human dynamics and the value of the purple meme and other “lower order” concepts. It is exactly this idea of unlimited growth, symbolized by this upward-spiraling “open-ended” theory, like a plant that grows and then divorces itself from its roots, that is the crippling mindset that fights its own need to resolve itself, to see itself from a different point of view and then act as though it has actually learned something or experienced a substantial level of enlightenment. No matter what the deeper levels of SD are, they are indelibly linked to the devolutionary energetic of their own dominant symbolism. With regard to indigeny, it remains to be seen if spiral dynamics has the scope and ability to treat indigenous concepts and culture with respect or any level of clarity. If it can not do even this, it becomes even more doubtful that it can then hold the rest of the human experience in correct perspective, enough to support and enact real change and resolution in the world as opposed to prettified reform of failing social and political processes.

Indigeny can use all the allies that it can get. It seems unlikely that spiral dynamics is one of them.

Indigenous People Fighting Back Against the 2010 Olympics

Reprinted from the facebook page of the Olympic Resistance Network:

The 2010 Winter Olympics will take place on unceded indigenous land from February 12-28, 2010. The effects of the upcoming Winter Games have already manifested themselves- with the expansion of sport tourism and resource extraction on indigenous lands; increasing homelessness and gentrification of poor neighbourhoods; increasing privatization of public services; union busting through imposed contracts and exploitative conditions especially for migrant labour; the fortification of the national security and military apparatus; ballooning public spending and public debt; and unprecedented destruction of the environment.

The Olympic Resistance Network is primarily based in Vancouver, Coast Salish Territories and exists as a space to coordinate anti-2010 Olympics efforts. In doing so, we act in solidarity with other communities across 'BC' - particularly indigenous communities who have been defending their land against the onslaught of the Olympics since the bid itself. Our organizing is largely being done under the slogan of "No Olympics on Stolen Native Land," while creating an opportunity for all anti-capitalist, indigenous, anti-poverty, labour, migrant justice, environmental justice, anti-war, and anti-colonial activists to come together to confront this two-week circus and the oppression it represents.

In addition to building ongoing educational and resistance efforts, we are organizing towards an anti-2010 convergence based on the call for an international boycott by native warriors - particularly at the Indigenous Peoples Gathering in Senora, Mexico in October 2007. We hope to see you all in 2010 to demonstrate our indignation and resistance!

ORN website (under construction): http://olympicresistance.net/

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

While so many are reveling in the legacy of what we perceive to be the Olympics, there is a courageous group of indigenous and non-indigenous activists, anti-capitalist/colonialist resisters and supportive people raising voices and serious questions about the socio-political and cultural effects of that legacy. There is a powerful statement being made, largely outside of mainstream media sources, that is informative on the capitalist, expansionist, globalizationalist, neo/settler-colonialist dynamic that underlies the presence of the Olympics in Vancouver and beyond this month.

The Olympic Resistance Network (ORN) and the Tent City residents have come under great pressure from the Vancouver Police and other authoritative forces during their occupation of the area near the olympic village. In addition, Democracy Now!, through Free Speech TV, has reported that numerous independent journalists deemed by the Vancouver and Canadian government to be supportive of the ORN and Tent City have been stopped at the Canadian/USAmerican border, detained and sometimes had their equipment seized. Amy Goodman, internationally know and respected anchor for Democracy Now!, was even detained and mistreated at the border. On one of the recent Democracy Now! broadcasts, a Canadian resident being interviewed on the show apologized on behalf of the government, moreso out of personal solidarity with Goodman, the journalists and the protestors than as any sort of official representative of the Canadian government.

Exacerbating the popular confusion around this issue of sport and indigenous sovereignty/human rights and justice, the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN), the Roman Catholic cable tv channel reported in their "Rome Reports" program that the Pope had sent a letter to the archbishop of Vancouver stating, "sports can make an effective contribution to peaceful understanding between peoples and to establishing the new civilization of love." Two things become clear in the light of the ORN's stance against the presence of the olympics. One is that the pope and all of his minions are ignorant of the olympic impact on human life and welfare in Vancouver. That might not be so surprising when we understand how closely related to capitalist and colonialist expansion the concomitant expansion of Roman Catholicism (in particular) and christianity (in general) is. Secondly, the pope and his vatican crew may be well aware of the effect of the olympics on the indigenous and poor populations in and around Vancouver. This would be even less surprising since the vatican has a history of intolerance and outright disrespect toward indigenous people. It is one of the political structures that has been forcibly ripping indigenous people from their lands and cultures all over the world, raping, pillage and killing indigenous people, physically, emotionally and spiritually. It clearly marks the vatican as, at the very least, a disingenuous socially retrograde structure. At worst, the vatican has a program of aiding and abetting the disintegrations of indigenous life and the spiritual energetics systems that indigeny has brought such deep foundation to around the globe over the last few million years. Equally as alarming, that the vatican has come out in support of the olympics' negative existence in Vancouver may help to obfuscate the populace's ability to see the necessity of supporting the Olympic Resistance Network and the indigenous people that are being actively and openly oppressed by the olympics, the Canadian government and other colonialist/capitalist structures (like the vatican).

"God Is Red" (Vine Deloria, Jr.) review for Alibris.com

Required reading.....

...for anyone studying indigeny, energetics, indigenous spirituality, christianity, European religious history, culture, philosophy. This is a fundamental work in understanding the relationship of Native American/indigenous spirituality and religious concepts and their relationship to european christianity and the peoples that carried these two traditions. Deloria makes a clear and concise case for the reevaluation of the efficacy and function of christianity outside of its cultural space and in all of the geographic and cultural spaces it has been forced into. Christianity, in Deloria's critique, clearly becomes a brickish template slammed down upon the more culturally congruent and functional spiritual and religious concepts and practices that were created and practiced by Native Americans on Turtle Island (north America) as opposed to the avenue of ultimate salvation that christians have characterized it as. Deloria shows this to not only be fraudulent, but impossible because of the very nature of spiritual/religious creation by humans in time and space. "God Is Red" is a valiant representation of spirituality /religion as a functional, organic cultural production and relationship with Spirit, not merely a dogmatic exercise and tool for socio-political, psycho-sexual and imperial control.

Deloria's calcuation of the culturally divergent conceptions and uses of space and time shine forth as academic genius from his pages. This is key to his thesis.

If "God Is Red" is not on your reading list, your understanding of indigenous spirituality and religion may not be complete. It should be read in every christian seminary, school and missionary headquarters. If christian missionaries and developers of missiology would understand (largely a matter of openness and choice, not intelligence, of course), embrace and live the truths of Deloria's work in this text, mission work and other forms of proselytizing would cease for the betterment of all those whose cultures have been and are still yet to be depowered and destroyed by the unGodly superimpositiion of christian concepts and practices upon people's for whom these displaced and contentious ideas and lifeways were never meant.

Excerpt from "Environmentalism and Revolutionary Energetics: Monadnock, Oxbow and a Very Sad River in Chicago"

"Environmentalism and Revolutionary Energetics:
Monadnock, Oxbow and a Very Sad River in Chicago"

Part One

This is an 'article' (I'm not sure what to call it) I wrote about issues of environmentalism and spirituality. It addresses concepts of indigeny and energetics along with religion, politics and even Ayn Rand. Stay tuned for further excerpts. Comments and feedback are highly regarded. US

"Put "environmentalism" into your search engine and see what comes up.

(long pause.... waiting for you to do as suggested.... ok...do it later...)

As I pondered the relationship of environmentalism and revolutionary energetics in the purview of the information supersidewalk, I was confused, surprised and disappointed considering my assumption of the positive nature of a movement or set of ideas named "environmentalism". Envisioning images of well-written picket sign slogans outside of corporate headquarters, brave and valiant, nay intrepid eco-warriors in Navy Seal-esque inflatables buzzing behemoth high-tech whaling ships on the cold, open seas and quietly powerful women setting up shop in beloved trees, I was summarily smited by such resources as:

"Environmentalism.com home
Links and articles analyzing the destructive religion of environmentalism."

"The Death of Environmentalism
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTML
In this remarkable report on how environmentalism became a special ...
modern environmentalism is no longer capable of dealing with the world's most serious ..."

"Environmentalism Refuted - George Reisman - Mises Institute
Environmentalism is the product of the collapse of socialism in a world that is ignorant of the contributions of Ludwig von Mises-a world that does
not know ..."

"The Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights: Environmentalism and ...
Argues that environmentalism uses false scientific claims to frighten the unwary , has a doomsday mentality reminiscent of Dark Age fanatics, ..."
(electronic search, Google, retrieved 10/25/08 from http://www.google.com/search?q=environmentalism&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a)

The above links were not the only ones that came screaming bloody-humanity-murder off of my computer screen, but they were the ones that demanded the most of my attention. As a student of progressive and revolutionary social movements and politics (and physics), I know that there is always a reactionary backlash to any substantial progressive or revolutionary action or set of ideas. The presence of these websites on the first of many pages about environmentalism was a clear statement of the organizational power of these reactionary forces and, unluckily, a tip-off to a possible deficit of organization of the environmental movement, at least on the pages of Google.

I wondered why one of the first links, "environmentalism.com" was an anti-environmentalism page. Had no one in the environmentalist movement thought about, cared enough or had enough money or time to safeguard one of the main portals to information about one of the most dynamic and enlightening ideological thrusts in these modern times? Was the environmentalist movement merely a hodge-podge of under-funded and over-emotional neo-hippies sitting at their Macintosh laptops in their hardwood-floored group-domiciles in Cambridge, Austin, Oakland and Portland? I wasn't sure, but then I couldn't remember the last time I met someone who proudly and expansively bore the moniker of "environmentalist" on their sleeve or in their words (interestingly enough, my experience with "republicans" and "democrats" is much the same).

Perusing environmentalism.com, embarrassed that the ‘bad guys' had outbid ‘us' on ‘our' domain name, I found their reference to the Unabomber as an "explicit environmentalist" akin to the same extreme kookism that marks the globalization movement's characterization of anything or anyone remotely smelling, walking or talking like socialism (peoplism as I like to call it conversationally), a system which focuses primary attention and resources to the needs of humanity. Silly, right? Deep within that kookism reference, the parallel between anti-peoplism and anti-environmentalism was clear.

The nature of that first Google page could have also lent itself to the pernicious move of the capitalist corporatocracy toward the destruction of net neutrality, a real and current effort that threatens the democratic nature of the internet and would render non-tribute-paying (read progressive, socially-responsible and/or peoplist) sites imperceptible or virtually inoperational in the web realm.

Nefarious machinations of the capitalist corporatocracy (thank you, John Perkins, for a perfectly concrete and functional buzzconcept) notwithstanding for the purposes of this communiqué, there is an element of our human experience that is deeply missing from the somewhere-over-the-radar work of environmentalism and the steadfast legions of reducers, reusers and recyclers. The contemporary environmental/green movement is missing a major power dynamic in its attempt to bring balance back to our natural world. We find ourselves doing material things in relationship to our desire to "save the earth". We find ourselves doing political things, all be they rocks against a brick wall (not pessimism, but a reminder that if the rocks are numerous and big enough, brick walls can be reduced to dust) in the interest of creating a world free of rampant pollution and animal (including human) extinction. We find ourselves doing physical things, biking instead of driving fossil fuel vehicles, taking stairs instead of elevators, building green buildings instead of status quo office complexes to help cool a warming globe.

And we still find ourselves in the lurch of wholism and functional completion in our efforts to live in harmony, in balance with the very physical and naturo-spiritual reality that gave us birth."

The sad river in Chicago.

Copyright 2008 Ukumbwa Sauti

Indigeny and Energetics Definitions 01

indigeny – indigenous thought and practice, ideology and modes of production and distribution that stem from a historical, familial and cooperative relationship with a body of land, the relationship with which gave rise to a set of values and traditions that are pivotal to sustaining the people within that cultural framework

1. sovereign – 1. indigenous socio-cultural reality as defined by the independent, autonomous development of cultural thought and practice, based in a particular geographical container, unencumbered by the degrading qualities of capitalist and colonial ideology, economy and modes of production that would come millions of years into indigenous cultural development, but effect gross and deleterious changes upon indigeny world-wide; 2. period in which indigenous socio-cultural reality/indigeny was defined by autonomous, independent development on familial land masses

2. disintegrated – 1. period in which cultural elements are conceptually devalued and/or physically destroyed, most always creating a condition in which the particular indigenous social structures and socialization patterns are fully or partially destroyed, destabilized and/or conceptually devalued; 2. period in which the values and practices that have sustained a society through sovereign indigeny are removed from or devalued in their state of integration in the lives of individuals and the society as a whole; 3. (disintegration) extraction, destruction of devaluation of traditional cultural elements and dynamics from the human social container that created, developed and refined them, often accompanied by the supplanting of foreign and/or antagonistic values and cultural elements by force or unethical coercion (e.g., Christian missionary schools in Africa, Asia or America); 4. period of indigeny in which ancestral, familial land was/is forcibly or otherwise coercively misappropriated and natural resources were extracted and exploited at ever increasingly phenomenal rates

3. unified – 1. indigeny as expressed during an intra- and post-capitalist period in which indigenous thought, practice and social collectives are in direct control of their own cultural realities and destinies and are supported, framed and enlivened by the essential features of their traditional past; 2. historical period marked by the dynamics of cultural compositing, socio-political reunification and socio-economic reorientation to communalistic modes of organization and production

energetics – naturo-spiritual thought and practice and healing modalities expressed in multiform indigenous frameworks, including,, but not limited to direct body work, ritual technological applications of natural elements, herbology, naturopathic medicine, spiritual healing technologies and invocation of and work with spiritual energies and beings, all of which involve the assumption of the union of the physical and spiritual realms (energetics assumes the oneness of the human and naturo-spiritual worlds)

1. evolutionary – energetics as defined and expressed by indigenous cultures before
   the incursion of the destructive external forces of colonialism, capitalism and Christian-dominated religiosity

2. devolutionary – 1. medical, medicinal and energetic thought and practice that focused on suppression of symptoms, was defined by its exploitation of or separation from its constituent component’s natural qualities or orientation and whose effects (whether in production or application) were deleterious to nature and/or the recipient; 2. physical, emotional and/or spiritual healing modalities that give rise to substantial negative and destructive effects in the human individual body or larger social structure; 3. any medical or religious thought or practice dangerous or destabilizing to the ethics and practitioners of indigeny

3. revolutionary – 1. indigenous energetic thought, process and practice recovered
   from a culture’s traditional past and often marked by new modes of production /or distribution, especially as a progressive response to the ravages of disintegrated indigeny in an effort to usher in new waves of cultural reclarification and reunification and the age of unified indigeny; 2. indigenous energetic thought, process and practice as expressed in the process of progressive projection; 3. Indigenous thought, process and practice that takes place and finds dominant expression during the age of unified indigeny

√ addendum to revolutionary energetics - environmentalism and sustainable agricultural movements are important steps toward and may be included within the framework of revolutionary energetics, but are not in and of themselves complete statements of this concept as they do not, at least in popular communications, include a naturo-spiritual dynamic; the concepts of revolutionary energetics and unified indigeny may find themselves in debt somewhat to the powerful ideological and material forces of the environmentalist and

Indigeny and Energetics Introduction 01

This work around indigeny and energetics seeks to place indigenous thought and practice, including naturo-spiritual dynamics (nature and human spiritual development have always been partners in history), in its correct historical perspective, to empower indigenous people and others through a change in conceptual outlook and an opportunity to move humanity forward in time with the correct vision and intellectual and spiritual motives. Indigeny and energetics seeks to provide a place for the organization of thought and work that has been put into a tailspin by the forces and ideas of modernity/capitalism and the machine/industrial age, which the framework of indigeny puts into a correct perspective as a sub-cultural, functionally-limited and necessarily temporary socio-political dynamic.

Indigeny and energetics concepts are strengthened by the substantial and growing awareness of the relationship of capitalism/consumerism/ materialism to the continuing destruction of the natural environment, the home and sustenance of humanity on both the physical and spiritual planes. Indigeny has existed for thousands, upon millions of years - modernity for about 250 to 500 years at most in its infancy, adolescence and adulthood. Modernity is aging quickly, becoming outmoded, fraught with irreconcilable ideological and material conflicts. These conflicts cannot be mitigated within the offending system due to the nature of its shortcomings.

This blog is offered as a repository of the initial literary developments and writings of indigeny and energetics (concepts developed by Ukumbwa Sauti, M.Ed.) in particular and as a place for discourse on the issues of sustainability, environmentalism, spirituality, religion, media, modern culture and technology in general.

Ukumbwa Sauti is informed and guided by the works of Malidoma Some’, Alwyn Thomas, David Sprague, East Coast Village, Vine Deloria, Jr., Winona LaDuke, Jerry Mander, John Perkins, Kwame Nkrumah, Seku Ture, Malcolm X/El Hajj Malik El Shabazz, Ted Andrews, Bernadette McDonald/Douglas Jehl, David Helvarg, George Gerbner, Ben Bagdikian, Don Jorge Tamayo, St. Suzan Baltozer and the millions upon millions of indigenous people who have contributed so beautifully to the great body of knowledge and work and life and living experience that we know as human development.