Large Fierce Mammal

“… humans are predisposed to seek two things – community, and a comfortably identifiable social position within the community.” ~ Worldly Wisdom Wednesday – Archaic Revival

Today I’d like to present a little gem that serendipitously hit me in the ear while I was on the road yesterday.

This interview with writer, humourist, and ethicist Randy Cohen aired on the CBC Radio show Q, and contains much enlightenment gained in the course of his years writing The Ethicist column for The New York Times. Particularly in its references to community as an influence on the behaviour of its members.

Enjoy the interview here. Consider it study for a future test.

Last week we talked about what Gandhi called “swadeshi“. If you haven’t read that article before this one, go do it now. We’ll wait.

Gandhi proposed a veering away from the British model of centralized control of resources and industrialized production power in favour of localized, self-sufficient community based government and production of necessary commodities at that local level. He envisioned that trade between communities would be minimal because of the level of self-sufficiency each would attain, but communication would be constantly open. Why? Because intercommunity communication is essential to building and maintaining consistent standards of ethics and conduct within a culture. It is essential to the transfer of ideas and knowledge. Without communication, communities become estranged, even as people do on an individual and family level.

Government offices are a shining example of this in their interactions with other agencies of the same government, and with the population they were set up to serve. Interagency competition and limited, if any, communication beyond the official party line they’re required to parrot results in no real communication at all, an atmosphere of distrust and disdain, and development of compartmentalized and essentially closed “cultures” that alienation induces to retreat behind walls of fortification to do their own thing. That means, for the most part, only perpetuation of the culture’s values matter, and no thing of real value to the Culture at large gets done, no matter how much money it costs.

None of this should surprise us because humans are predisposed to seek two things – community, and a comfortably identifiable social position within the community. The human grasp of community is limited in terms of the size of the population it can, or indeed should, grasp which is why the terms “global village” and “global economy” are bullshit of the most aromatic kind. We all know what they mean, but in terms of the Way of the Wild as it applies to Man, they are meaningless.

At the opposite extreme from globalization is the concept of what was once called “survivalism”, and has since come to be referred to as the “prepper” movement – people who have lost confidence in their government along with the ability of everything in their society to perform as promised – and so conclude they are on their own to see to them and theirs, in perpetuity if needs must. Taken too far, behind those ramparts of isolation I talked about earlier, this is as meaningless as globalization. Approached intelligently though, with an eye to the long haul and Simon and Garfunkel notwithstanding, it lies closer to the Truth if it springs from an understanding that you are not a rock, nor are you an island. You will need community as the Way of the Wild in Man requires.

The Archaic Revival: Evolving through the Survivalist Mentality to the Unity Mentality is the title of an article by Christopher Renzo published to the Keen Awareness blog on 24 April 2012. While the piece could benefit from a thorough proof reading, and I certainly cannot lay claim to embracing everything Mr. Renzo has ever written, I do feel he has hit a relevant nail on the head with this observation:

Observe and question the main stream avenues of social influence.  Observe the main stream media, observe government, observe religion, and observe big business.  Do these institutions disseminate views and objectives that support unity and harmony or do they keep the illusion alive that we, above anything else, are different and separate from each other?

Be observant as to what you watch and listen to, your mind is registering everything, even those things which it can not readily discern.  Be careful to see that maybe the major avenues of social dissemination are subliminally telling you that you are an individual who is not good enough, not pretty enough, not strong enough, and not rich enough to be labeled a “success.”  What is a success anyway?  Is something a success when it proves that you are “better” than another person at something?  What was that magazine trying to tell you about beauty and how you relate to it, what is the hollywood star telling you about how wonderful it is to be rich, popular, and influential?  Are these people really better than you?  Better yet, are these people fundamentally different than you?

There is no such thing as “better” only as far as you believe something or someone can be better.  Do you fear you must be better than someone else in order to secure your piece of the pie?  Is there not something fundamentally wrong with this way of life?

How are we to move from the survivalist mentality that has us competing against each other in a race to the bottom of consuming Earth’s last resources to a more harmonious society that thrives and allows the Earth to function optimally?

And that leads me to one more thing before we wrap up today’s discussion. Man has a large and highly adaptive brain – nearly as smart as a Crow – along with this pesky opposable thumb – one on each side unless you’ve gone through life being called “Lefty”. We Man critters can imagine and build solutions to problems that Nature didn’t give us the speed, wings, teeth, fur, claws, armor, sense of smell, or eyesight to solve otherwise. Lest it be thought that the Way of the Wild in Man is limited in scope to being maxed out at 18th century technologies, let’s combine today’s examination of community, communication between communities, and a tool you may have heard about called “the internet”. I’ll leave you with that reference, supported by Maxim XI from The Art of Worldly Wisdom by Balthasar Gracian:

Cultivate those who can teach you.

Let friendly intercourse be a school of knowledge, and culture be taught through conversation: thus you make your friends your teachers and mingle the pleasures of conversation with the advantages of instruction. Sensible persons thus enjoy alternating pleasures: they reap applause for what they say, and gain instruction from what they hear. We are always attracted to others by our own interest, but in this case it is of a higher kind. Wise men frequent the houses of great noblemen not because they are temples of vanity, but as theatres of good breeding. There be gentlemen who have the credit of worldly wisdom, because they are not only themselves oracles of all nobleness by their example and their behaviour, but those who surround them form a well-bred academy of worldly wisdom of the best and noblest kind.

Used properly by thinking people, a tool like that might just do a lot of good.

But more on tools next time.

Chart from the baconbarter.com website.

No, I’m not referring to prohibition. I speak of an experiment in that most fundamental of transactions – Barter. Barter that, best of all, involves bacon as the basic medium of exchange.

Josh Sankey is on a mission. According to his website – baconbarter.com – that mission is this:

I need your help. I’m driving from NY to LA with no cash and no cards – just a trailer full of Butcher Thick Cut Bacon to barter with for food, lodging, and everything else i need. It’s all to find out if America loves Bacon as much as money!

According to this KETV.com article –

The bartering spree — which is sponsored by Oscar Meyer — does have some minimum bacon exchange rates. For instance, offering a place for Sankey to sleep will get you about 15 bricks, while Civil War memorabilia may only get you three bricks of bacon …. A camera crew is traveling with Sankey chronicling his adventure as he spreads the joy of bacon from coast to coast until he is scheduled to reach his final destination of Los Angeles on Sept. 23.

A commercial enterprise of course, but at least one with an interesting undertone. Naturally, the presence of a camera crew will forever run the risk of attracting the ever present throng of attention whores. Time will tell what real value, if any, it turns up.

An ancient fertility god, decidedly NOT half cocked.

Surfing one of the bushcraft forums I frequent, I came upon a thread titled, “Half cock not working”. Even sight unseen I consider that sad on a number of levels.

Mrs. LFM’s reaction was, “I guess that’s a slight improvement on full cock not working….?”

Well, my Esteemed Friend Laurie Lacey learned of all this and dared … actually DOUBLE dared … me to turn the issue into a post here. He stopped short of the next step – the double Dog dare … but it wasn’t necessary. I don’t normally give a dare the courtesy of an ass sniff, given or received, but in Laurie’s case I’ll make an exception.

My reply is this limerick:

A strapping young fellow who talked
A far better game than he walked
Came to find that the ladies
All doomed him to Hades
When they learned that he went off half cocked.

“Its a tragedy of the first magnitude that millions of people have ceased to use their hands as hands. Nature has bestowed upon us this great gift which is our hands. If the craze for machinery methods continues, it is highly likely that a time will come when we shall be so incapacitated and weak that we shall begin to curse ourselves for having forgotten the use of the living machines given to us by God. Millions cannot keep fit by games and athletics and why should they exchange the useful productive hardy occupations for the useless, unproductive and expensive sports and games.” ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Satish Kumar is the Editor of Resurgence magazine as well as running the Schumacher Society, the Schumacher Lecture Series, and Schumacher College. He heads up Green Books, described on the company’s website as, “… an independent environmental publishing company producing books on a wide range of ecological and cultural issues.”

Man is a social animal, and a fundamental departure from the Way of the Wild as it is meant to express itself in Man occurs when the value of individual contribution becomes subjugated to serving the role of cog in the machine. Treated as a mere tool, quick and cheap to create and all too easily thrown away when broken or worn out, the Spirit of Man languishes in miserable solitude even in the midst of a throng of his kind, ever immersed in the message that the value of each human is measured by his or her ability to consume.

In his splendid article, Gandhi’s Swadeshi – The Economics of Permanence, Mr. Kumar reveals lessons of incalculable and timeless value from the philosophy of a man who once grappled with restoring economic potency and independence to a population that had long languished in servitude to greater powers – Mahatma Gandhi. In his words you’ll hear echos of the battle cry that right now stirs the building realization of the threat to the Earth that is represented by big government in the service of big money, and moves a growing percentage of the population toward a smaller focus –  support of local Craftsmen as a first choice, buying meat and produce directly from Farms or Farmer’s markets, and seafood directly from Fishermen. Toward self-sufficiency on a community level by taking steps toward eliminating the intrinsic vulnerability that comes of absolute dependence on a centralized source of essential supplies, with its own agendas and priorities. Consider his description of what Gandhi called “swadeshi”:

In India, people have lived for thousands of years in a relative harmony with their surroundings: living in their homesteads, weaving homespun clothes, eating homegrown food, using homemade goods; caring for their animals, forests, and lands; celebrating the fertility of the soil with feasts; performing the stories of great epics, and building temples. Every region of India has developed its own distinctive culture, to which travelling storytellers, wandering ‘saddhus’, and constantly flowing streams of pilgrims have traditionally made their contribution.

According to the principle of swadeshi, whatever is made or produced in the village must be used first and foremost by the members of the village. Trading among villages and between villages and towns should be minimal, like icing on the cake. Goods and services that cannot be generated within the community can be bought from elsewhere.

Swadeshi avoids economic dependence on external market forces that could make the village community vulnerable. It also avoids unnecessary, unhealthy, wasteful, and therefore environmentally destructive transportation. The village must build a strong economic base to satisfy most of its needs, and all members of the village community should give priority to local goods and services ….

The British believed in centralized, industrialized, and mechanized modes of production. Gandhi turned this principle on its head and envisioned a decentralized, homegrown, hand-crafted mode of production. In his words, “Not mass production, but production by the masses.”

By adopting the principle of production by the masses, village communities would be able to restore dignity to the work done by human hands. There is an intrinsic value in anything we do with our hands, and in handing over work to machines we lose not only the material benefits but also the spiritual benefits, for work by hand brings with it a meditative mind and self-fulfilment.

I invite you to consider this and comment. We’ll expand on the concept in next week’s WWW, and look at one writer’s call for an “archaic revival“.

“And does this mean the end of all Mankind? I sincerely doubt it, because a state of balance and harmony is not found by living in a continuous state of discord with Nature. In our work with troubled Dogs, Mrs. LFM and I must seek to restore and cultivate the Way of the Wild as it sincerely expresses itself in that so familiar and yet so misunderstood of animals. Wild is not the same as unpredictable or dangerous. Far from it. Wild is purity of spirit and perfection of action, in harmony with the Nature of things, and the nature of every thing, free from conscious thought and attendant paralyzing indecision. This is not to imply that all in Dogs and Men is or should be a matter of instinct. Rather we need Nature to nurture as training proceeds. Wild is a return to first principles from which training can begin on a foundation that is known and understood.

“The Way of the Wild, then, is the ultimate in predictability. If the Way of the Wild is suppressed, denied, or otherwise forced into hiding, trouble follows. That too is predictable….” ~ Worldly Wisdom Wednesday ~ The Way of the Wild

In my lifelong (so far) study of Nature, the Way of the Wild has revealed itself to me in a gradual process that progressed at exactly the same speed as my understanding. Because all Ways spring from the Way of the Wild, they are connected, and I discovered this many years ago when I found what was, at the time, a startling similarity of decidedly Natural principles between what most would consider two unrelated Arts – the Art of Living with Dogs, and the Practice of Martial Arts. For the latter, most particularly as expressed in the writings of Miyamoto Musashi. This should have come as no surprise, and indeed no longer does for me, because all Ways are based on reality. The REAL Reality of Nature, not the one you want, need, or would prefer, because in  Nature sweetie, it’s not about you.

“There’s facts about dogs, and then there’s opinions about them. The dogs have the facts, and the humans have the opinions. If you want the facts about the dog, always get them straight from the dog. If you want opinions, get them from humans.” ~ J. Allen Boone

The as yet, and in some cases permanently, unenlightened speak of living with Dogs almost exclusively from a foundation of “dominance” and “submission”. They think of Martial Arts strictly in terms of self-defense, fighting, action movies, and grossly misunderstood concepts they have no interest in getting to know better like “yin-yang” and “Zen”.

“Do nothing which is of no use.” ~ Miyamoto Musashi

What came to light for me was how similar in conclusion was the thinking of those who gained enlightenment through their dedication to understanding what Musashi called “the Spirit of the Thing”.  For those whose dedication to the study of their Art had permitted the Spirit of the Thing to reveal itself to the necessary degree, common ground was revealed in what they spoke and wrote about it.

“May I be blunt?

“Telling people how to train a dog SOLELY by teaching a ‘method’ is straight up shallow. A fulfilling relationship with our dogs cannot be achieved exclusively through applying ‘scientific principles’, clicker training, or punishment based training.

“Through heartfelt interaction lies the path to a fulfilling relationship. And having a great relationship with our dogs is synonymous with having a dog that ‘gets you’, listens to you and respects you.

“Understand this, and you understand 90% of dog training.” ~ Zak George

The further one gets down The Path, the more “systems” created as guides toward enlightenment reveal themselves as impediments to growth. Consider …

“I will not pick out any particular “ism” to poke fun at or for that matter to celebrate as functional. Living a sedentary life is more in line with sanity than the fear that causes us to look for something that may not be there. And if it is, then it would have probably revealed itself by this time…. This leads us to the idea of “magic.” Most magic is illusion based on the sensory understanding of things that we assume can or cannot be and then becomes philosophical diversion or rather distraction from being at true inner peace with oneself. I have come to not enjoy witchcraft in any form of ritual to pervade my essence. They all presume to open a path to enlightenment that is a complete waste of time to pursue…. You want to be enlightened and be able to do “parlor tricks? POOF! You’re enlightened and can now do “parlor tricks,” such as of walking on fiery coals, breaking sweats in the middle of a frozen pond, putting your hand through ten boards, etc. I am sure you get the idea. The same applies to wanting someone dead and making someone dead: two completely different things. I like to use the life and death paradigm as it puts things in direct perspective.

“Are we having fun yet? The idea here is that humans, in their utter lack of ability to come to terms with the tragedy of their own inconsequence will always make up things in the attempt of thinking that they actually understand anything. This is also based on misunderstanding our own intellects caused by egotistical thinking. Dybbuks, golems, zombies, etal, are simply devices we use to try to explain what does not have to be explained. Ki, c’hi, soul, are devices we use to attain levels of consciousness we believe will empower us to perform amazing feats. Secret codes, mantras, mandalas, butterflies, peppermints, or whatever anyone would presume to be the “answer” are silly. The reality is that the attitude of living in joy and freedom is overlooked for lack of sensibility and thinking, or worse, believing that someone else knows the answers to the questions that have no answers. As Buddha no doubt said, ‘Ain’t no thing. Stop playing with your petunias.'” ~ Hanshi Stephen Kaufman in an excerpt from his Understanding the Motivation of the Universe

Master at Arms James Keating is widely known as Master of the heretofore lost, and because of his work now lively and vibrant, Art of the Bowie knife. Jim has an extensive Martial Arts schooling and experience going back to his youth, and teaches a wide variety of combative methods through his Combat Technologies (Comtech) organization. Jim and I correspond regularly, and when in the past few weeks he made reference on his MAAJAK World e-zine to the mastery of “movement” as opposed to that of the styles and techniques of any particular “art”, it caught my attention. So I wrote him to make inquiries, and among other things he said this about the Naturally fundamental act of MOVEMENT as the vital point in what he teaches, and Life in general:

“… in some ways it relates to darn near everything. Dance, sports, daily functions and more…. The greater the range of motion one has the more things come forth. Athleticism and experience figure into the mix, each man decides for his abilities/needs. Thus, each student I turn out appears different from the rest, why? Because he really is different – motion study allows perfect targeting for that individual’s goals and body type to be met. Styles and systems often are mere stamp mills producing clones of dubious worth – in such the individual suffers, the style flourishes.”

Even a cursory examination will highlight how each Truth quoted here, regardless of the Art that gave it birth, strips away everything that is not Wild in Man’s interaction with the World. Think on this as it applies to your own life and studies, until next time.

Clem Hiltz died on the 17th day of April, 2008. Dying was the last thing he ever did, but in all 96 years of his accomplished life, it was the least notable. Dying doesn’t make anyone unique because sooner or later everybody is going to do it. It’s the challenges living brings, how they are met, and the degree to which the lessons learned from coping with them are absorbed by the individual to be passed on to the group, that tells the tale; and Clem’s life was second to none in telling the tale.

Growing up in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know who Clem Hiltz was, but I only came to know him personally during my six years service as Emergency Measures Coordinator for the Municipality of the District of Lunenburg, from 1988 to 1994. At the time, a mere kid in his seventies, Clem was filling the same role for the Town of Lunenburg, so we got to talk a lot.

Clem had a style of illustrating his point with a story, and with a history like his, he rarely had to step outside his own life experience to find one. My reason for bringing him up today has to do with one of his stories.

As a teenager, Clem had sailed aboard the famous schooner Bluenose out of Lunenburg, under the equally famous Captain Angus Walters. Bluenose was the cream of the Lunenburg fishing fleet, and she was built for speed. In those days, Cod was king, and the salt banking schooners raced to the banks for pride of place, deployed their crews daily in two man doreys from which they fished with baited multi-hook lines, often at their peril, until the ship’s hold was full for the race home again, with the first vessel landing its catch bringing the best price. Speed was important.

Clem told me of a moment from back in those days when, as a young man, he stood in the office of his employer. An owner of fishing schooners, the man was a vocal opponent to the new trawling methods that were just coming into vogue – techniques that involve dragging a net behind the ship that gathers everything in its path, and then sorting through the contents, keeping the fish you came for, and throwing back the carcasses of the ones you didn’t. By comparison, the hand line method used by the salt bankers permitted a fish by fish sorting of the catch, so that anything found on the line as you pulled it in that wasn’t what you were looking for could be immediately thrown back alive. Don’t get me wrong, in those days the motivation wouldn’t have been about kindness or conservation. This was business, and doing it was hard work, so fucking around for more than a few seconds with anything that didn’t get the job done simply wasn’t on. Nevertheless, the sheer fish catching efficiency represented by the trawler cast the shadow of impending extinction over the old and time honoured way of doing things.

Clem’s reason for being in his employer’s office that day is unimportant, but I recall that his seated superior was speaking, and the wide window behind him afforded an expansive view of the harbour. As he spoke there came a sound from the water – the throbbing cadence of an engine as a trawler motored into view on its way to the fishing grounds – at the sound of which the other man stopped talking mid-sentence and swivelled in his chair. He watched the vessel from the moment of its appearance to its passing from view before he swivelled back to look at Clem, pointing at the wall in the direction the vessel had gone.

“That, young man,” he said, “Is the beginning of the end.”

A man of his times with a personal fortune built on fishing for Cod, the gentleman addressing Clem no doubt spoke those words as much out of resentment at having his comfortable position in the scheme of things so easily dislodged by the upheaval represented by a sudden turn of technology as he did from any concern for the potential extinction of his prey. The current bureaucratic buzzword of “sustainable” as it’s applied to human practices of consumption would not have been part of his vocabulary. None of that stops him from being right, and from this singular observation much can, and should, be learned.

Ecology (noun) – The branch of biology that deals with the relations of organisms to one another and to their physical surroundings. ~ Source: oxforddictionaries.com

Building on what we talked about in last week’s article in this series, today will be about ecology, growth, and limits. “Ecology”, as you can see, is a wonderfully useful word because it neatly encapsulates the connectedness of living things to each other as well as to the environment in which they live their lives. Within any environment there will be a finite quantity of resources that are consumed by the organisms that exist  there – some that will renew once consumed as well as some that will not. For most organisms, the resources consumed will either be other organisms, the detritus of other organisms, or both. So in the end, for most living things in Nature, there is no delineation between organisms and the resources they consume because, in a balanced ecosystem, every step of the life cycle of one provides resources necessary to that of at least one other, and for higher order organisms, to many others.

For the sake of clarity, let’s pause to establish what is meant by renewable and non-renewable resources, using a very simple black and white model; i.e, do you have enough of it or not, and if not, then how and when will you be able to get more?

A renewable resource is one that will self-perpetuate, and while its exploitation may result in local depletions, migratory consumption schedules that are timed to the cycle of renewal – consuming the same or an equivalent alternate resource from other areas of an organism’s range while the consumed resource regenerates – can normally be relied on to bless the consumer with a predictable source of resupply. Unless, of course, the consuming population becomes large enough to simultaneously deplete all sources of a heretofore renewable resource, something that, in Nature, normally results in population displacement, and even mass die offs up to and including localized extinction of entire species. Localized extinction becomes total extinction when the maximum sustainable population of consumers is reached or exceeded, and the range occupied by the consuming organism equals the size of the ecosystem that was occupied by the depleted renewable resource. At this point, a renewable resource becomes a non-renewable one. (more…)

THE LFM QR Code.

If you’ve got a portable device that has a bar code scanner option, you can use it to read the Universal Product Code (UPC) printed on the packaging of, and often the store shelving that holds, just about everything you might ever want to buy. If your device gives you access to the internet you can go from scanning to check pricing and availability wherever that product is sold, read product reviews written by other people who have purchased and/or used it, visit the manufacturer’s website – the options are limited only by your surfing skills.

At the top of this article is another even more information packed bit of labelling called a Quick Response (QR) code. According to one article:

Invented in Japan by the Toyota subsidiary Denso Wave in 1994 to track vehicles during the manufacturing process, the QR Code is one of the most popular types of two-dimensional barcodes. It was designed to allow its contents to be decoded at high speed.

Unlike the old bar code that was designed to be mechanically scanned by a narrow beam of light, the QR code is detected as a 2-dimensional digital image by a semiconductor image sensor and is then digitally analyzed by a programmed processor. The processor locates the three distinctive squares at the corners of the image, and normalizes image size, orientation, and angle of viewing, with the aid of a smaller square near the fourth corner. The small dots are then converted to binary numbers and validity checked with an error-correcting code.

Yesterday my exceptionally tech savvy Wife brought a website to my attention that makes QR Codes for the masses. Presented as, “… a gift to the Internet community brought to you by Andreas Haerter and Andreas Wolf,” GOQE.ME is a tool you may find useful. Go check it out.

One of several banners promoting this year’s event that were created by the Ross Farm Living History Museum, and posted to their facebook page. Click the image to enlarge it.

I first mentioned the Maritime Hand Mowing Championships, hosted annually at the Ross Farm Living History Museum, last June in my article Musings of an Apprentice Mower. At the time I stated that Mrs. LFM and I would be attending what was then the 8th annual iteration of that splendid event, and soon after was reminded that the Gods laugh at him who dares speak his plans aloud. Not so this year, for we held our cards close to the vest, and successfully soaked in the 9th annual event yesterday!

Before continuing, and to save myself a lot of explaining, I’ll give you some insight by way of a highly informative video from the Ross Farm YouTube channel that speaks of last year’s competition …

If you’ve read my recent announcement of the Not All That Grand Opening of the LFM Shootin’ Range, you’ll know we’re well on the way to his and hers synchronized mowing, and while Mrs. LFM and I had no intention of competing this year, we are in training for next time, and let me tell you, if 2012 is anything to go by, the competition will be stiff! (more…)