The Final Empire - Book Two: The Seed of the Future

Chapters 13-20

Part I. Creating a Whole Life

Final Empire Chap 13: The Principles of Life: Page 205

The Moral Basis of the Life of the Earth

We live at a time of dissolution of human social bodies as well as the unraveling of the life force of our planet. This gives us all a sense of confusion and contradiction within existing social realities. Our response must be to turn to the enduring cosmic patterns of life, toward the healing of life. Because of the depth of the crisis our response must be equally fundamental. We are proposing to create no less than a completely new human culture that relates to the earth in a completely different way. We seek power, the power to endure. We are coming out of a position of weakness in which the power to kill and coerce was seen as the road to utopia. Now that the weakness of that conception is displayed in the planetary suicide of this final cycle of empire, those who choose to respond in a positive way need gather the seeds of Natural cultures and the truly beneficial things created by civilization and carry them through the apocalypse.

Our effort is to regain personal, social, ecological and cosmic balance. We propose to do this by adopting the natural pattern of life on this planet as our guide. The natural world is a world of shared energies. The life giving sunlight is captured by the green plants for transformation into living vegetation. The life energies circulate, transform and continue to circulate through the web of life. With this circulation, a slow build-up of the soil occurs to provide for the planet's further ability to support green plants that can capture more energy, driving the system to its climax of biological succession, its dynamic balance within the life of the planet. Just as the balance of energies within the human organism is consciously maintained among a vast array of different substances and nutrients, dynamic balance is maintained in the planetary organism by multi-billions of constantly interacting life processes. Just as the intellect alone could never guide and administer the functions of the human body, there is no way that human intellect could make decisions about the life of the earth that would be superior to the cosmic intelligence that has created and maintained it.

The life of the planet is able to cover the earth in its extremes of temperature, pressure and moisture variation through its creativity. The creativity and adaptability of planetary life combines with the thrust toward diversity of form and function that allows life to express its intelligence on all parts of the planet's surface. The hallmark of the whole life is diversity within unity. The planetary life functions with the paradox of unities within unities such that each life form is a unity unto itself but yet is a part of a greater whole.

The unities of the planetary life as well as innumerable and constantly acting life processes all maintain relationship with each other. Everything is connected and any adjustment of one effects others so that they adjust simultaneously to the new conditions of their existence. Creativity, balance, adaptability, shared energies, unity-diversity, transformation and relationship are modes of behavior that we find fundamental to life. These behaviors of living things occur within a context of consciousness. Each life form is a conscious entity. Consciousness is the glue that holds the form together and animates it. When consciousness departs in death, the form disintegrates.

These seven principles and their subsidiary effects are drawn from observation of the behavior of the web of living things. This is the behavior of life on earth. This is its moral pattern. From this we may draw moral principles for the behavior of human society. When we create human culture that is patterned on these principles and integrated with the web of life then human thought and action will be consonant with the purpose of life on this planet. Humans will re-present the life of the earth at the level of human activity. Life does have a moral basis and the moral obligations are clear. If we are to create a sustainable society, we must follow Natural Law. With the crisis and dissolution of empire we see the sanctions of the law. In creating new culture we must be aware of the need to conform to the law so that our kind and others may endure. Following our path back to the source we see that the elements of our new culture need contain balance, self-regulation (responsibility to self and others), an expanded view as to the functioning of the wholes, a foundation in cooperation and an institutionalized creativity. If our social pattern is grounded in the paradigm of life then our actions expressed from that base will be resonant with cosmic patterns.

Balance is the Foundation of Life

In a social sense maturity is seen as self-regulation, that point at which we are not dependent upon parents or others to conduct our affairs. In the organic world beings also exhibit self-regulation. It is the self-regulation of each species that gives the eco-system its balance. Because each being lives according to its nature, the whole functions in resonance. The balance of the human population in a forager/hunter band is self-regulating. This ecological maturity is fundamental. The cosmos exists in balance; the life of the earth exists in balance. Within this we see by contrast that the theorists of empire culture invented ideologies of linear increase, ideologies of imbalance. When the new edition of the myth of linear increase was being formulated in Darwin's time, the rationalist philosophers searched for a motivating dynamic in the natural world. They looked for a cause of change, which they could hold up as the force for linear increase. Darwin and Malthus found the motor in population increase. For Darwin, the balance of species is maintained mechanically by predators and starvation. As this flood of population continues it is the "survival of the fittest" that culls out the weak and selects the strong, whose descendants then become the new "evolutionary waves." Imbedded in this perspective is a total irresponsibility, a complete immaturity. No being is responsible to the whole. Each being is only obligated to fight others for its own survival. This pattern is in fact reflected in the culture in which we live. This is why we face planetary suicide. No one is responsible for the life of the earth. One simply struggles for the "individualist" power and wealth held out by the culture.

This scheme fit in with the theories of "free markets" propounded by Adam Smith in his tome, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776). In Smith's theory, all people were completely rational. With many sellers and buyers in a free market, they would choose the best product at the least cost, thus constantly moving efficiency and social benefit forward as the inefficient died off. In this scheme, no one is responsible, "the natural order," "the hidden hand of the market," brings the "good things" to society.

No society was ever configured this way. Powerful social forces, cartels and monopolies set prices and control supply, but Smith was creating a myth not describing reality. This is similar to Darwin's myth of the population motor. The claim is made that it is not human directed, that it fits the pattern of the cosmos. 

As this mythos expanded, "Social Darwinism" then became welded onto it. In the myth of Social Darwinism, human societies such as the imperial society of Britain rise to the top and humans within societies rise to the top because of their evolutionary superiority. Obviously there is no "top" to rise to in a cooperative forager/hunter band but in an imperial culture based in hierarchy this can seem to be "just common sense." We see the financial aristocracy born with the best medical care, fed with the best diets, tutored with the finest master teachers and finished at the best schools. Given the widest experiences of travel, entertainment, and sport because of inherited wealth and the mental reinforcement since birth that they are destined to rule, we can understand how they would readily adopt a social darwinist perspective. They could easily be persuaded that their kind was superior, while they stand on the necks of those who never had their advantages. In fact their class activly prevents others from having those advantages.

The linear thinker Hegel with his "dialectics" also thought he had discovered some kind of "natural" law. The "dialectic" is simply the clash of two opposing forces that result in a synthesis. As interpreted by Karl Marx in Das Kapital, the "dialectic" was focused on social changes in the imperial tumor body. The force of the class of industrial workers contradicts the force of the industrial ruling class. In Karl Marx's adoption of this theory, this would represent the thesis and antithesis. This contradiction of the ruling class and the working class is resolved in the synthesis, which in Marx's view would be the dictatorship of the industrial proletariat. In Hegel's linear dialectic, the synthesis becomes the new thesis and then a new antithesis arises. This is resolved into a new synthesis in order to keep the train of linear events going.

This culture bound theory looks good when applied to human social change within an industrial empire because the culture is based in competition/conflict, but this is an artificially created situation. If one tried to apply these linear theories to the natural life of the earth, they would not correspond to reality. The body of capitalist myth has allowed individuals in empire culture to believe that they have no moral responsibility, because, in their conditioned way of thinking, it is "natural" and "just common sense" that there be the rich and the starving, as that is how evolution progresses. Ignoring the dynasties of inherited capitalistic wealth and the power of an entrenched elite, people will say that it is natural for some to have more than others. Just as it is natural for the more highly evolved industrial societies to control and aid those less able to "modernize."

The body of Marxist myth can only work if there is industrialization. In this theory of imbalance, one accepts the cult of science and the poisonous and destructive process of industrialization as the path to utopia. Like the capitalist variety industrialist, the radiation poisoning and ecological degradation of Marxist lands is seen only as a "management" problem.

By focusing on the matter of balance in the cosmos and on earth we see that some of the basic assumptions by which all of us in empire culture are conditioned, are at great variance from cosmic patterns. The matter of population balance is fundamental to our understanding.

Robert Augros and George Stanciu in their important new book, The New Biology, survey recent biological studies that describe the self-regulation of populations. They show that elephants, for example, regulate their populations according to food supply and living conditions by raising or lowering the age of puberty and by shortening or lengthening the duration of the period of sexual fertility of females. Augros and Stanciu say that, "Evidence from other field studies indicate that the birth rate or the age of first reproduction depends on population density in many large mammals, including white-tailed deer, elk, bison, moose, bighorn sheep, Dall's sheep, ibex, wildebeest, Himalayan tahr, hippopotamus, lion, grizzly bear, dugong, harp seals, southern elephant seal, spotted porpoise, striped dolphin, blue whale, and sperm whale."1

There are many different ways in which species regulate their populations. One interesting study showed that all of the birds of the same species, in the same region, could vary the number of eggs in the nest in any one season according to food availability and species population density. In a certain year of low food supply all of the birds' nests would have three rather than the usual four eggs. Augros and Stanciu quote biologist V.C. Wynne-Edwards who says:

"Setting all preconceptions aside, however, and returning to a detached assessment of the facts revealed by modern observation and experiment, it becomes almost immediately evident that a very large part of the regulation of numbers depends not on Darwin's hostile forces but on the initiative taken by the animals themselves; that is to say, to an important extent it is an intrinsic phenomenon."2

In the popular mind the image of ecological balance is the wolf pack and moose herd. This image does represent the balance of the food chain but eliminates the cooperative and holistic elements of ecological functioning. While the wolf, cougar and eagle are dramatic and fit the imperial image of power and violence; these predators are only a handful while there are millions of other species from micro-organisms to redwood trees, whose populations are not impacted significantly by photogenic predators.

Life is wise, mature and self-regulating. The myth of the "red in tooth and claw" has distorted our understanding of nature, but by a review of recent biology we are able to adjust our images to the way nature really works and the way a creative and stable human culture could fit into it. In the contrasts that we have been examining we see that there is a profound shift of image from mindless organisms driven to maximize their numbers, to responsible, intelligent self-regulating living beings. 

These are not academic biological questions; they are political questions of the theology of empire. They control the definition of what life is, and define appropriate behavior for humans.

Reductionism is the prevalent method of science. The "Newtonians" who dominate the sciences except for the new "Quantum" school of physics, say that the universe is like a giant clock built of "dead" matter. We take apart the pieces and examine them down to their quarks and discover what makes the world tick. This is the dominant scientific view and the "conventional wisdom" of empire culture. But the rare scientists such as Augros and Stanciu propose a holistic view in which the cosmos and each of its components relate as whole but interrelated bodies.

The Cycles of Life

Balance and cycle are the basic processes of the cosmos. Events are circular, cyclical and vibrational- from one pole and back around to the other. We are born to cycle and motion. From the time that the reproductive cells are formed in each of our parents, we are in motion. When a sperm makes its journey to our egg, we are in motion. When we are later carried in the womb, we are in an amniotic sea of motion. After the cycle of gestation, we are finally born out of the body into a world of motion where winds blow, seasons cycle, and cycles of our own growth occur.

Each of us has been born onto a sphere travelling in space, called the Earth, which is spinning around the central sun. The central sun with its planetary companions travel in a circle within our galaxy which itself is moving around a supercluster of galaxies. From the moment our first cell is created, we are part of the whole, and we never cease being in motion. We are a process, part of increasingly larger processes. There is no such thing as linear expansion toward some static impregnable security. The motion we experience is not random, but is cyclic. The circles of the Milky Way Galaxy, the solar system, our earth and the moon around us, occur in cycles so finely balanced and timed that they may be computed exactly, far into the future or into the past. 

These invariable motions are the Law. These impeccably tuned; harmonious cycles are imposed upon us by forces so powerful that there is no question that they are Cosmic Law, Natural Law. Within these celestial cycles the planet spins in a constant cycle of sunlight/darkness that is functionally a day/night alternating current. Each point on the planet's sphere is saturated with energy, then shadowed from it in precisely timed measures. Within the diurnal/nocturnal cycle and the energy cycle of the seasons, organic life on earth proliferates. The life of the earth was able to grow and develop because it remained in a state of dynamic balance. 

There is certainly change in the earth's life but this occurs within a context of balance. The earth's poles do tilt which causes the seasons. If the earth tilted even a few more degrees or if there were any deviation of the earth's orbit around the sun, the life of the earth would be greatly altered or non-existent. The organic life of the Earth has developed its cycles within the womb of the solar system. The sun, the principal energy source, is itself a cyclically pulsating body which experiences periodic expansion and contraction. The sun revolves in a 27-30 day cycle, its heat output fluctuates in a 273-month cycle, sunspots occur in a 22.22-year cycle, and the magnetic poles of the sun reverse themselves every 22 years. The widely varying energy fields of the sun encompass the earth, as it vibrates within what might be called the solar energy body. 

Could we visually perceive magnetic energy fields, we would see the teardrop shaped body of the earth and its magnetosphere speeding around the sun. Within this teardrop of the magnetosphere we would see a stronger doughnut-shaped magnetic energy field with depressions at the north and south poles. Further within this energy envelope are layers of tenuous matter called the atmospheric strata: exosphere, ionosphere, mesosphere, stratosphere, and troposphere. As with organic cell membranes, each of these layers is composed of different elements and performs particular functions for the inner body of the planet. The ozone layer and the other atmospheric membranes are barriers allowing certain energies to pass and preventing others from entering. The skin of all biological cells performs this same function.

The earth, the complex blue and white speckled egg, is alive, and its life processes vary constantly as it spins. Its colors change with the seasons; its cloud layers whirl and circulate in rhythmic cycles. Not surprisingly, an Italian chemist has discovered that the speed of the chemical reactions varies according to a number of planetary situations.

"More than 400,000 experiments, covering a ten-year period, by Professor Giorgio Piccardi, of Florence, Italy, show that the time required to complete various chemical reactions varies with the time of day, the time of year, the sunspot cycle, and whether or not the chemicals in his test tubes and flasks are protected from external electromagnetic forces by metallic shields."3

Uncountable numbers of organic events occur each second on earth, conditioned by celestial events within the body of the solar system. The sunspot cycle, the solar cycle, the moon cycle, the alternation of light and dark, all these events and more, trigger or impress themselves on organic events on the earth. Everything is in relationship; everything flows in cyclic adaptation according to its nature and place in the universe. Organic events such as the metabolism of plankton in the oceans, the migration of salmon, the growth of forests, the annual migration of caribou, the cycles of sexual reproduction and innumerable other events all are influenced by cyclic forces utterly enmeshed in a flowing whole so intricately balanced that a relatively small eruption on the sun, a solar flare, can create multiple effects in the process of the life of the earth. Whether viewed from the energy metabolism of the solar system or from the vantage point of the various kinds of living molecules in the cell, life unfolds in a series of wholes, each fitting into and forming an integral aspect of a larger whole. The many parts whose functions combine to create the cell are also a part of an organ, which in turn is part of the whole body. That body may be part of a tribe, a school of fish, or a deer herd whose social body then fits into a larger food chain. The pattern of the cosmos is form integrated within form and mind within mind.

The various habitats across the surface of the planet create the whole body of the earth, which itself is involved with energy flows (metabolism) that are solar, galactic and cosmic. The mind of the cell exists within the mind of the organ, which exists within the mind of the body. Form exists within form, mind within mind and life within life.

Life Cooperates

Our subconscious conditioning leads us to believe in the ubiquity of violence. We see the culture of violence of the empire as natural. Nonetheless, there is no mindless, gratuitous violence in nature. There is eating. Predators eat prey and the prey violently resist but organisms don't go around attacking each other for no reason. There are territorial challenges and mating challenges but these seldom reach the stage of violence and death. Our conditioned belief in the violence in nature is so deep that the Hollywood film makers who create "nature" movies train animals to fight for the films. Wild stallions kill each other and bears attack each other in the movies because it adds drama and it lends an air of "authenticity" to the film. People expect it, so it is faked for the audience.

Darwin said, "All nature is at war, one organism with another, or with external nature."4 This struggle for survival follows his original assumptions of scarce resources and exploding populations. This assumption of the violence of life has been shared by many of the original Rationalist philosophers as well as the general conditioned population, most of who no doubt grew up in the artificial environments of cities and had little contact with natural reality.

Ecology is sometimes called the "subversive science" because it assumes interdependence in the living world. Ecology is the study of the inter-relationships of nature. As these cooperative inter-relationships became more apparent through study, the new science became more subversive to orthodoxy. It is now demonstrable that nature is a vast cooperative enterprise. There is no war. Each being functions according to its own nature and its nature fits its ecological niche. Organisms aren't out in nature battling over the same grass seed. Each feeds according to its own niche and these niches are highly refined. Ecologist Robert MacArthur did a study of five species of warblers, all about the same size, all occupying the same territory and all eating the same food- spruce bud worms. He discovered that their niches were so finely and cooperatively tuned that each species predominantly used a different portion of the tree for their feeding. That is, one species would go to the top portion of the tree; another would concentrate on the base of the tree, another one quarter of the way from the top and so forth. These finely tuned niches exist throughout nature.

Not only are organisms careful about their niches but they work cooperatively together in all sorts of symbiotic ways. Biologist David Kirk says, "It is doubtful whether there is an animal alive that does not have a symbiotic relationship with at least one other life form."5 This is also true in whole communities. The succession from primary to climax forest is an array of symbiotic relationships as guilds of species prepare the way for other guilds of species. Authors Augros and Stanciu cite the work of marine biologist Conrad Limbaugh, who has studied cleaner-client relationships. Involved in this startling activity, so far known, are forty-two species of fish, six shrimps, and Beebe's crab. In these cases one species takes parasites from the body of another for food. Limbaugh says, " 'I saw up to 300 fish cleaned at one station in the Bahamas during one six-hour daylight period.' The client fish approaches the station and poses, allowing the cleaner to forage within its gills and even to enter its mouth without danger. No one yet knows what prevents ordinarily voracious fish from eating the cleaners."6

The Consciousness of Life is Creative

The beauty and wealth of the life of the earth is its diversity. "...Two billion different kinds of organisms have at one time or other inhabited the earth."7 The creativity of life forms is such that some live at the bottom of the ocean and some in the coldest arctic regions. The diversity of forms and the diverse ways in which they cooperate together to form one unity demonstrates overwhelming, creative intelligence. The "evolutionary transformations" show this creativity. There are huge disjuncts in the proliferation of the forms. Such a disjunct is the transformation from the spore bearing plants to the flowering plants that appeared, suddenly, worldwide. Gerbert Grohmann in his study of plant form, entitled The Plant, states, "To conclude - as the evolution theory does - that lower forms of life developed into higher ones means to get lost in theories and thereby violate the fundamentals of science. We have proof of the fact that the higher organisms follow after the lower ones, not that they descend from them."8

Augros and Stanciu say that:

"Whole new orders appear suddenly and simultaneously, with no evidence of intermediate stages. These sudden bursts of new flora and fauna, so typical of the fossil data, are called radiations since the ancestral stock develops at one time many new body plans and diversifies in several directions at once. Mammals are a fine example. During the early Cenozoic era some 50 million years ago, mammals suddenly diverged into about twenty-four different orders ranging from bats to whales, kangaroos to elephants, and rodents to rhinoceroses."

"The pattern, then, is great clusters of diversified organisms appearing like Athena, full-blown from the head of Zeus. This typical pattern of radiation dramatically contradicts Darwinian gradualism. Darwin himself recognized this and called the sudden appearance and early diversity of flowering plants 'an abominable mystery.' "9

Mechanistic theories such as Darwin's gradualism or the doctrine of uniformitarianism (slow earth changes over long periods of time) in geology, have endured not so much because of the logic of the theory but that they fit the prevailing social ideology so well. The increasingly "powerful" civilized human, "man the toolmaker," acting on inert, mindless matter is a welcomed image. The conscious power of an intelligent and balanced earth that creates the forms of life, in which the human is one, is not welcome news. To think that all of the life forms are part of the whole intelligent life of Earth like all of the forms in a cell are part of a cell's life, would frame a new ethical view. That image would come dangerously near causing us and the empire to question our way of life.

The mechanists of science have gone to great lengths to suggest that life has little power of conscious creativity. Their efforts to deny that animals think is laughable to anyone who has lived on a farm or ranch. Another intellectual sleight of hand is the creation of the concept of instinct. Instinct is a meaningless word that has long served the mechanists as an explanation for what could not at the time be explained or admitted. Is the honey bee society so conscious and intelligent in its own way that it can do the activities and constructions that it does? No, is the mechanist reply, "it's instinct." In creating new human culture we will be creating an assemblage of ideas, a thought form, which will be linked with biology. An expanded view will be taken of what mind is and how it fits with culture, biology and the earth.

The Psychobiological Perspective

The mind-set of industrial culture is conditioned by the cult of scientism. The reductionist view that matter is the only reality has become the cultural "common-sense" view. This is not in fact what the scientific method says. Empirical science observes, measures, quantifies and performs tests on things, with the understanding that the "things" have to be matter or none of this could be done. The actual scientific method makes no comment on anything outside the realm of matter that it tests. What has happened is that the body of repeatable experiments and "scientific laws" (one must be aware there is much dubious material travelling under this banner) has been raised to the level of "truth" and dogma. Science has become the bible by which truth and reality is verified by a mass culture influenced by years of classroom conditioning. Love, creativity, hope, consciousness, in fact much of the real non-material reality of life and activity has been relegated to insignificance by the cult of science.

The quest for power (military and other) through science has become the central focus of the industrial empire. In the broad view, science is the means to power whereby the empire culture more efficiently extorts the life force of the planet. (Scientific agriculture does not concentrate on building the life of the soil; it concentrates on producing heavier tonnages for market). The reality that science is an integral component of the imperial social system is shown by the fact that more than half of the working scientists of the U.S. are employed in the military-industrial sector. This is hardly a dispassionate search for truth, as the propagandists would have it. The scientific establishment is deeply implicated in the social apparatus of coercion and death as a means of political control.

The control of the public definition of reality- what humans are, what nature is, even the definition of life itself- is not just a matter of scientific dialogue, it is an item of central importance to the power of empire itself. If the context of reality in the public mind is narrowed to a chemical reaction, people will more willingly march in lock step than if they were to realize the mystery, awe and immensity of reality. If the public is conditioned to believe that humans are with original sin, have an African primate genesis that is vicious and brutal, they will be more willing to agree to a military/police state. It will be just "common sense" to them that humans are so brutal that they can only be controlled by strong governmental force. If the public were to understand that each of us is a conscious being living within other conscious beings, such as Gaia, the whole life of the earth, the purpose of public life would change. This would threaten the status of the scientific/military/industrial elites who now control and profit from the production of material goods and the control of money.

Materialist science, is a cult. It is a mass social institution and also a method of knowing. It continues the split between Being and Doing and between body and mind. When we look at Natural cultures we see great attention to Being- in relationship to the world. When we look at the scientific ideology we see great attention devoted to abstracted Doing, with little attention paid to our inherent being. Da Free John (a.k.a., Franklin Jones) summarizes this difference which underlies the struggle of empire to control the life of the earth:

"The scientific establishment has been organized in league with the highest levels of concentrated political, economic and propagandistic power in the world today. Science is simply the primary method of knowing in modern societies, and its rule is established in no less an irrational and authoritarian manner than was the case with any religious or philosophical principle that ruled societies in the past.

"The method of science has now become a style of existence, a mood or strategy of relating to the world and to other human beings. That method now describes the conventional posture taken by 'Everyman' in every form of his relationship to the conditions of existence. Science has become a world-view, a presumption about the World-Process itself. It has become a religion, although a false one. And modern societies are Cults of this new religion. Can this new religion establish us as individuals and communities in right relationship to each other and to the World-Process? Absolutely not! Science is only a method of inquiry, or knowing about. It is not itself the right, true, or inherent form of our relationship to the conditions of existence, we cannot account for existence itself. And we are, regardless of our personal and present state of knowledge about the natural mechanics of the world, always responsible for our right relationship to the various conditions of experience, to the beings with whom we exist in this world, and to the World-Process as a whole. Relationship is inherently and perpetually a matter of individual responsibility, founded in intuition, prior to the analytical mind."10

The cult of scientism and empire has brought us to the brink of the death of the planet and the cult figures have no adequate response. The sad, one-dimensional leaders of empire challenge any new strategy meant to lead to health. If they don't like ecological restoration, what do they have to offer our collective grandchildren? If they don't like permaculture, let them then defend industrial agriculture. If they don't like population control, let's hear from them what they have to offer in view of the reality that we all see. Every patriarch in a position of power in every mass institution bears responsibility. It is obvious now that their refrain of growth and material wealth is not the answer.

We need to maintain perspective on the cult of scientism. It is discredited by its works. We live on a rapidly dying planet. We can't let the group that has led us to the brink of annihilation convince us that more of the same is a solution.

All Is Mind

The philosophical materialists of the modern empire, including mechanist/reductionist science, Marxist and Capitalist political theory and even such things as modern industrial medicine, would have us believe that we are simply the manifestation of chemical reactions in the cells. In the estimation of the philosophical materialist, the knowledge that seeds have of when and where to germinate, the migration of birds, the complex self-regulation of organic bodies comes about because of chemical reactions. They assume that consciousness is a result of chemical reactions in the brain.

This, we would say is part of the whole accomplishment of empire culture to denature and de-sacralize life to the point of meaninglessness. If we are conditioned to experience our lives as only marginally meaningful, we certainly will invest little meaning in the life around us. The awe, mystery and wonder of the teeming life of our earth is reduced to a meaningless movement of substance.

Yet it is precisely the non-material that makes life real and meaningful. The test is in our awareness. Do we intuitively feel that our conscious awareness is some unexplained process of chemical and electrical reactions? It is joy, ecstasy, love and other feelings that make life worth living. In opposition to the dry pronouncements of science there is a rich fund of inherited wisdom. The large bulk of forager/hunters and aboriginals say they perceive a non-material, spiritual reality. They give varied impressions and descriptions of non-material dimensions.

Hindu yogis of ancient tradition, Hermeticists and others assert that All is Mind.11 All is mind say the ancients. Form is created by the imaging power of consciousness. Form is created using consciousness as material. Consciousness is light. Form is congealed light vibrating at a lesser vibration than pure light.

When one looks out into the cosmos at night, one sees points of light. This light is the refraction of pure light striking the cells in our eyes. We know intellectually that the cosmos is full of pure light going in all directions from those stars but most of us cannot perceive that light that is not first refracted from something material. We see darkness. 

From the Unseen to the Seen: The Manifestation of Material Reality in the Hopi View

We picture reality and its meaning through language. The inspection of the languages of different cultures reveal that each lives in radically different worlds. The semanticist Stuart Chase says, "There is no one metaphysical pool of universal thought. Speakers of different languages see the Cosmos differently, evaluate it differently, sometimes not by much, sometimes widely. Thinking is relative to the language learned." The languages of the worldwide materialist empire, which are generally Indo-European languages, contain world pictures. They contain specifications of what a human is and contain specifications of what each human should aspire to become, in a linear manner. All of these word images are conditioning agents of the worldview held by the culture of empire.

On the other hand, the Hopi belong to a loose language group called Uto-Aztecan. Their language reveals a world that is much different than our own and to show the contrast, their language is closer to the concepts in Einstein's Theory of Relativity. According to some physicists, the Hopi language could have been used to express Einstein's theory that at present can only be fully described in mathematics.

Because this whole matter of linearity and linear increase as a cultural fundamental is so important it is productive to contrast the Hopi view with the one in our own heads. All humans are involved with the concept of time, or duration. One type of time is psychological time, which the Hopi would emphasize. This is duration as we experience it in consciousness, our conscious experience of what was and what is now. All of us have experienced altered states of consciousness to some degree and know that our experience of duration changes according to our level of concentration and other factors. The other concept of time is actually measurement. When we look at a watch we are looking at a measurement of cosmic movement. The circulation of our planet around the sun is divided into months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, seconds and so forth. The time on the watch face is not psychological time but the measurement of distance- the earth's travel and thus often, is not the time that we experience.

To the Hopi, there is the reality of the Here and Now manifest material world and then there is the unseen, not yet manifest reality from whence this present world came. In this part especially, the Hopi view reflects the basic pattern of our ancient cultural view that the material world is manifest from an unseen spiritual world with which we can be in communication and which we can influence according to our thought and behavior. Philosophy students will remember Plato's Idealism. This is a refined reflection of the view that was general in Natural culture. In Plato's view the material world with all of its forms is a more or less imperfect reflection of perfect ideas of form held in unmanifest dimensions of Being.

In any language into which this document could be successfully translated, there will be the concept of linear time. There will be past, present and future. This is the very psychological cornerstone of the myth of linear increase. Nonetheless in the linear time that is measured by distance of planetary travel, the earth doesn't really go anywhere but around in circles. Our mental appreciation of "time" that we gained from that measurement is turned into a linear progression that we think of mentally as starting in the remote past and moving through to a remote future in a linear manner.

Benjamin Lee Whorf, one of the early scholars of linguistics, examined the Hopi language intensely. He describes what he discovered of Hopi metaphysics:

"The metaphysics underlying our own language, thinking, and modern culture (I speak not of the recent and quite different relativity metaphysics of modern science) imposes upon the universe two grand COSMIC FORMS, space and time; static three-dimensional infinite space, and kinetic one-dimensional uniformly and perpetually flowing time-two utterly separate and unconnected aspects of reality (according to this familiar way of thinking). The flowing realm of time is, in turn, the subject of a threefold division: past, present and future.

"The Hopi metaphysics also has its cosmic forms comparable to these in scale and scope. What are they? It imposes upon the universe two grand cosmic forms, which as a first approximation in terminology we may call MANIFESTED and MANIFESTING (or, UNMANIFEST) or, again, OBJECTIVE and SUBJECTIVE. The objective or manifested comprises all that is or has been accessible to the senses, the historical physical universe, in fact, with no attempt to distinguish between present and past, but excluding everything that we call future. The subjective or manifesting comprises all that we call future, BUT NOT MERELY THIS; it includes equally and indistinguishably all that we call mental-everything that appears or exists in the mind, or, as the Hopi would prefer to say, in the HEART, not only the heart of man, but the heart of animals, plants, and things, and behind and within all forms and appearances of nature in the heart of nature, and by an implication and extension which has been felt by more than one anthropologist, yet would hardly ever be spoken of by a Hopi himself, so charged is the idea with religious and magical awesomeness, in the very heart of the Cosmos itself. The subjective realm (subjective from our viewpoint, but intensely real and quivering with life, power, and potency to the Hopi) embraces not only our FUTURE, much of which the Hopi regards as more or less predestined in essence if not in exact form, but also all mentality, intellection, and emotion, the essence and typical form of which is the striving of purposeful desire, intelligent in character, toward manifestation-a manifestation which is much resisted and delayed, but in some form or other is inevitable. It is the realm of expectancy, of desire and purpose, of vitalizing life, of efficient causes, of thought thinking itself out from an inner realm (the Hopian Heart) into manifestation. It is in a dynamic state, yet not a state of motion-it is not advancing toward us out of a future, but ALREADY WITH US in vital and mental form, and its dynamism is at work in the field of eventuating or manifesting, evolving without motion from the subjective by degrees to a result which is the objective."12

The world of the Hopi is manifest or unmanifest. The manifest is that which has been "made", "solidified." That which is not yet "made" nonetheless exists in potential, in a world that is yet to work itself out into the objective "hardness" of this objective world. The Hopis in their effort to maintain the "balance" of the world, "work" on the inner subjective in the Kivas. Later, they will do the same in the elaborate ceremonials in the village plazas. They do this in order to "help" that which will become "made" in the objective world. A fundamental understanding of Hopi, and generally most Natural cultures, is that each person and tribe are conscious participants in the consciousness of the whole world. Thus the thinking, intention and balance of each person and tribe has an effect on the balance of the life of the whole. This is one of the aspects of what the Hopi mean when they say they are keeping the world in balance. The meaning of this statement is not that they are keeping the north and south poles in their places. The statement is a simplification of a vast complex of meanings involved with the balances and manifestation of life.

The culture of empire has made the ability to create tools that more and more efficiently extort the life force of the earth, the basis of judgement of what peoples are "advanced" along the linear road and what peoples are not. When we look at the complexity of languages we see another way of viewing the richness of human culture. From a linguistic point of view, Whorf says:

"It causes us to transcend the boundaries of local cultures, nationalities, physical peculiarities dubbed "race," and to find that in their linguistic systems, though these systems differ widely, yet in the order, harmony, and beauty of the systems, and in their respective subtleties and penetrating analysis of reality, all men are equal. This fact is independent of the state of evolution as regards material culture, savagery, civilization, moral or ethical development, etc., a thing most surprising to the cultured European, a thing shocking to him, indeed a bitter pill! But it is true; the crudest savage may unconsciously manipulate with effortless ease a linguistic system so intricate, manifoldly systematized, and intellectually difficult that it requires the lifetime study of our greatest scholars to describe its workings."13

One does not think about the structure of the language that one is using when a conversation is going on and neither does one think of the subconscious assumptions of culture contained in the language. In 1975, Dr. Freda Morris, clinical hypnotherapist and author of Hypnosis With Friends & Lovers, first began discussing the hypnotic nature of acculturation. In a recent book she says, "The absorption of our own cultural traits as we grow up is itself a process of slow hypnosis-as powerful posthypnotic suggestions are built up by the slow deep implantation of certain cues that vary from culture to culture."14

The Illusion of Matter

The cosmos is energy in motion. As some recent physicists say there is no "thing" there- in matter. Those "things" wearing the labels of neutrons, electrons, quarks and so forth are simply energy in motion at such speed that to us it appears hard and real. "THE ALL is MIND; The Universe is Mental," declares the Kybalion, an esoteric text of ancient lineage. "Nothing rests; everything moves; everything vibrates," it says.15

Form, is held in consciousness. Form is held in consciousness by the memory power of mind. Just as the operations of typewriting or piano playing are at first highly conscious but then become habits on a less conscious level, it is proposed that biological form exists in cosmic consciousness as "habits of mind."

Although orthodox biology has been dominated by the mechanist/reductionist and Darwinian schools of thought there have been a few Vitalist biologists through the years maintaining that, in addition to matter, there is a non-material, vital element present in life. Through each decade there have been a few of these biologists on the periphery of orthodoxy. Recently new developments, that could be looked upon as related to Vitalism, have occurred in biology. These researchers seek to explain the elaboration of the form of each organism by means other than the physio-chemical. Rupert Sheldrake has created a body of thought concerning fields leading to the creation of biological form.

Sheldrake participates in a school of thought called Morphic Resonance. The biologists of this school say that biological form is created by immaterial morphic fields, fields of force that create forms. Sheldrake advances this notion in two recent books, A New Science of Life: The Hypothesis of Formative Causation (1985) and The Presence of the Past; Morphic Resonance and the Habits of Nature, (1988).16 

What is it that Creates Forms?

A serious problem has existed for the mechanist scientists for many years in their attempts to explain the development of form from embryo to maturity. What is it that guides the development of the form? What is it that holds the form in its shape as the cells and other substances change in the body? Recently the lay persons have been led to believe that it is the DNA code that does this, but when we get down to specifics, we find that the genetic researchers do not go so far as to say that DNA completely controls the development of form. They only say that DNA is related to the final characteristics of form. The DNA in the arm is the exact copy of the DNA in the leg. They are duplicates; there is nothing different in them that could explain the differential development of the form of the arm or leg. Recently science commentators have compared the DNA code to a computer program and have made the analogy from the computer codes, to the computer output, but even here, in this case, some person created the computer and the software.

Author Edward W. Russell wrote the book, The Fields of Life, which discusses the work of Dr. Harold Saxton Burr, which concerns immaterial force fields that participate in creating biological form. Russell points to the logical problems involved in the confusion of the creation of form and DNA. He states:

"A part cannot be a matrix for a whole; a simple design cannot be a blue-print for a more complicated one. As a functioning organization, the body is more than the sum of its components. Genes and DNA molecules are simpler organizations than the organization of the body as a whole.

"It is true that DNA-fans credit molecules with anthropomorphic powers, in much the same way as primitive tribes attribute human attributes to idols of stone or wood. They solemnly assure us that Molecule A has all the information needed for heredity, that Molecule B passes this on to the cells while Molecule C assesses the needs of the cells and restrains A and B from getting too enthusiastic. But nobody has so far explained how Molecule A got the information in the first place, how Molecule B distributes it and how Molecule C can judge anything, let alone check A and B."17

Author Richard Moss, a medical doctor reports on this matter of the development of the form of fetuses:

"...There have been experiments with the developing frog embryo where, at a point in its development when it has begun to differentiate the left and right arm buds, the embryo can be cut in such a way as to rotate the arm buds. The left arm bud ends up on the right and the right arm bud is on the left. Yet, instead of going on to develop the displaced left and right arms, the embryo matures and that which began as a left arm turns into a right arm and that which would have been a right arm turns into a left arm.

"There is nothing in the genetic material as we understand it that should account for the interruption of a normal process by a human experimenter. If life unfolds simply through the material maintained in the genetic pattern then this realignment should not occur."18 

Cells are individual conscious entities that participate in collective consciousnesses at various levels. There are many varieties of one-celled beings who do not live in cell communities but spend their lives free and self-regulating. When cells join in cooperative association they do not lose consciousness any more than a fish in a school. Although not popularized by the mechanist orthodoxies of the universities, there is a body of empirical evidence indicating that there is more to organism than simply chemical reactions. Dr. Harold Saxton Burr has spent much of his life experimenting with electrical fields that envelop all organic forms. We need keep in mind that all form is of a field nature. When we put iron filings around a magnet we see the shape of an immaterial field. When we examine matter we see an atomic field that assumes many forms. The nature of form is that it has boundary. Organic forms have the familiar material boundaries (skin) that we see and then there is an electrical envelope outside this boundary that has been studied by Dr. H.S. Burr. This envelope is an extremely weak, direct current electrical field, extending out less than an inch. This field exists around all organic forms. There are also other energy fields such as the alternating current fields of electricity extending out from various regions of the human body, but none of these encompass the whole body. Dr. Burr was interested not so much by the fact that such a field exists but by the fluctuation of energy potential in these fields, which resonated with terrestrial and extra-terrestrial events. By monitoring the direct current field around living things, Dr. Burr found that the change in potential energy of this field correlates with specific events both internal and external to the body. This energy field that Burr studied is the same as the energy field that is monitored by the lie detector (Electro-Galvanic Skin Response Machine). The lie detector monitors fluctuations of the emotions. It is important to note that the field of electricity itself is probably not the emotion but a by-product of its functioning. The symptomatic fluctuation makes it possible to monitor the actual phenomenon. By his study, Burr found that each of us is a participant in the metabolism of the solar body through this field. Fluctuations in energy potential of this direct current field correlate with the lunar cycle and the sun spot cycle. He also discovered that by monitoring the field, the ovulation of the human female could be spotted exactly, a matter of extreme importance to the human family. The electrical monitoring indicates an immaterial force that both controls and is controlled by the material. It is an integrated whole. It has long been a question in biology of how the form of cellular organization maintains itself while the substance changes. The question of how the cells of the foetus create the form of the child or the cells of an organ recreate its form after an injury has remained a mystery. Living organisms are a flow system with intake of material being transformed into proteins, cells and fluids. The rule of thumb is that the entire human body is cellularly replaced in a seven-year period. Although the materials of the body are in constant flux, the form of the whole does not change, except slowly with age.

Dr. Burr found that the control field, which he was monitoring electrically, is a guiding field, or more specifically a partially guiding field. He sets out a hypothesis that he states in the following manner:

"The pattern or organization of any biological system is established by a complex electro-dynamic field which is in part determined by its atomic physio-chemical components and which in part determines the behavior and orientation of those components. This field is electrical in the physical sense and by its properties relates the entities of the biological system in a characteristic pattern and is itself, in part, a result of the existence of those entities. It determines and is determined by the components.

"More than establishing pattern, it must maintain pattern in the midst of a physio-chemical flux. Therefore, it must regulate and control living things. It must be the mechanism, the outcome of whose activity is wholeness, organization, and continuity."19


Burr's research led him to the discovery that by monitoring the energy field he could determine the longitudinal axis (spinal column) of an unfertilized salamander egg. As he monitored it after fertilization his monitoring of the immaterial guiding field indicated that the spinal column remained congruous with the electrical polarity throughout its development. That is, the guiding field was there before fertilization and remained there as the guiding field, as the biological form unfolded. Burr went further and demonstrated that the guiding field not only participates in guiding the development of form but also is always at work with the living organism. Burr used a rudimentary protoplasmic being called plasmodium for his experiment that indicated activity in the immaterial field before activity was seen in the material. He explains:

"Under the microscope, it is simple to demonstrate that every 60 or 90 seconds the protoplasm in the veins reverses the direction of flow. The electrical pickup from the vein, combined with the moving picture, reveals that in the majority of instances polar reversal of the voltage occurs before there is a directional change of the plasmic flow, but also there are many instances where the change in both phenomena seem to occur simultaneously."20

Although Burr's work never gained the attention of the orthodox, whose view would deny this possibility, it nonetheless gives us a direction to proceed. What Burr's work indicates is that we are intimately involved with unseen fields of energy. With Burr's methods of monitoring, the depth of a trance state can be followed while a person is in hypnosis. In the experiments done with hypnosis, Burr and his associates found that having the hypnotized subject remember highly emotional situations caused the electrical field to change (therefore its value as a lie-detector). Burr also found the cosmic fluctuations of moon cycle; sun cycle and sunspots caused changes in the electrical potential of field, thus giving us evidence of the intimate connection of our bodies and emotions to cosmic events. In addition to being simply another piece of evidence that everything is connected, the Burr material shows an interaction between a force field that can be monitored by its electrical side effect and the physical organism. It suggests even further that important aspects of the control of the material form exists in this field.

The Creation of Form - Morphic Resonance

Mechanistic science does not emphasize consciousness. Consciousness and any of its possibilities are unmentioned aspects of life that still are left in mystery. For example the kind of problem that might come up is how to explain memory. The molecules, especially proteins, of our bodies are replaced in days or months, at most. So how does the memory of early childhood continue to exist in the proteins of the brain cells of an elderly person? Is it encoded somehow in a chemical reaction? Mechanistic science because it does not acknowledge the immaterial will not consider consciousness and its abilities, but continues to dissect brains and molecules attempting to fashion an answer. With his hypothesis of formative causation Rupert Sheldrake has pointed a way out of the dead-end and looks at "effects" then argues back to causes. Though he does not mention consciousness, he suggests fields as an explanatory term. Sheldrake says that fields are non-material regions of influence and he points to gravity as an illustration of this. Gravity holds us to the earth. Because of the precise force of its pull our own bone structure is engineered. If our bones were longer or thinner or of weaker substance we would not be able to function on the surface of the earth. In this manner this field structures us and all other things on the earth's surface.

The energy field of the solar system has been discussed. This field with its many different types of energies certainly has an effect on the forms within it, such as the nature of biological life on earth.

Electro-magnetic fields are familiar non-material force fields. These fields of electrical vibration bring us radio and television. Physicists measure electron fields, neutron fields and there are force fields even within atoms, they say. These recognized fields are non-material with effects in the material that can be experimentally measured. Though immaterial, these fields can be seen as controlling the material in some manner. Sheldrake says:

"The nature of fields is inevitably mysterious. According to modern physics, these entities are more fundamental than matter. Fields cannot be explained in terms of matter; rather, matter is explained in terms of energy within fields. Physics cannot explain the nature of the different kinds of fields in terms of anything else physical, unless it be in terms of a more fundamental unified field, such as the original cosmic field. But then this too is inexplicable-unless we assume it was created by God. And then God is inexplicable.

"We can, of course, assume that fields are as they are because they are determined by eternal mathematical laws, but then there is the same problem with these laws; how can we explain them?"21

In Sheldrake's thinking, the shape of each organism is guided by a morphogenic field. (The coming into being of form is morphogenesis). The morphogenic field of that organism resonates with the other fields of that species of organism that have gone before. Form resonates with form irrespective of the time frame in which it occurs. In his thinking, these fields are beyond our "normal" experience of space and time.

Each individual organism is in a guiding field that resonates with all others of that specific form that have gone before. Here Sheldrake says that the inherent capacity of memory and habit is instrumental. Just as many of our daily routines were learned with conscious attention but have now fallen below the level of conscious awareness and become habit, Sheldrake says it is memory and habit that are essential to the functioning of these formative fields of living things. The forms of organisms are in continual flux, says Sheldrake. As the flow of biological life goes on, new habits are slowly formed and go on to be incorporated into all newly developing organisms of that species. He offers many examples of the functioning of the morphic resonance of behavior patterns within species and a clear example is of the well documented development of a habit among a bird species residing in England, the blue tits.

Sheldrake says that in the case of the blue tits, they are very territorial, seldom straying more than a few miles from their breeding place. Yet a new habit resonated through the species all over England.

In Southampton, in 1921, a blue tit was observed to peck through the foil cap of a milk bottle, tear the foil back and drink from the bottle. The spread of this habit was recorded at regular intervals from 1930 to 1947. There are eleven species to which this habit has spread but it is most frequently confined to great tits, coal tits and blue tits. After the first observation of this "milk poaching," the habit was seen to spread rapidly through England where sometimes flocks of tits would follow milk delivery people through the neighborhoods waiting for the milk bottles to be put on people's porches. The detailed studies of this phenomenon show that the habit was independently "discovered" by individual tits 89 times in the British Isles. In the view of morphic resonance, this habit pattern resonated within the tit species and the pattern was then increasingly manifest by individual tits. During World War II milk deliveries in England stopped for the duration that was longer than the normal tit life span, yet when milk deliveries commenced again, tits all over England again began to take up the habit. After the war, "It seems certain that the habit was started in many different places by many individuals," researchers said. The habit also spread to Sweden, Denmark and Holland.22

The case of the blue tits is of behavioral form, or behavioral morphology. It also shows the resonance of habit over space and time. In the matter of the physical form itself, Sheldrake's other major point is that forms, themselves are habits of nature. We have the example of what in orthodox science is called "parallel evolution" which relates to habits of form. There are many examples of "evolutionary convergence" where biological forms from dissimilar species and different continents end up having similar or almost identical form or function- or both. There is also the popular illustration of the parallelism between the placental mammals and the marsupials of Australia. In Australia there is a marsupial flying phalanger that is almost a duplicate of a mammalian flying squirrel. In the southwestern U.S. there is a rodent called a kangaroo rat. In Australia there is a marsupial that is the same form. There is even a mole-like marsupial (except it has a chitinous beak like a duck-billed platypus) in Australia that lives and behaves like mammalian moles. The mechanists have gone through many intellectual contortions to explain these similarities but it is difficult when one assumes the life on earth to be "chance chemical reactions." Morphic resonance on the other hand gives us a much better tool with which to think about this subject. The group consciousness of aggregates of discrete, individual organisms further shows that there must be something other than chemical reactions directing organisms. There are many invertebrate organisms that live in colonies such as anthills or beehives that are so highly organized and differentiated that they appear to be unitary organisms. Sheldrake points to the order Siphonophora which resemble the unitary, multicellular jellyfish but contrarily, are actually made up of individual organisms acting in concert. These assemblages live in open oceans. He says that Nanomia, a member of this order;

"...consists of many specialized individual organisms. At the top is an individual modified into a gas-filled float. Below it are organisms that act like little bellows, squirting out jets of water which propel the colony; by altering the shape of their openings they are able to alter the direction of the jets. Through their co-ordinated action the Nanomia colony is able to dart about vigorously, moving at any angle and in any plane, even executing loop-the-loop curves. Lower on the stem there are other organisms which are specialized for the ingestion and digestion of nutrients for the rest of the colony. Long branched tentacles arise from them and are used to capture prey. There are also bracts, consisting of inert, scalelike organisms that fit over the stem and help protect it from physical damage. Finally, there are sexual organisms, which produce gametes which through fertilization can give rise to new colonies."23

With Nanomia we have the extreme blurring of the distinction between colony organization and "unitary organism." We see also the difficulty of explaining how all of these "individual unitary organisms" instantaneously coordinate if all they are is a mass of chemical reactions. The Nanomia poses some difficulty of explanation for the DNA influenced mechanist but none for a viewpoint of morphic resonance where fields are "nested" within fields. A molecule is a community metabolism, a cell is a community metabolism, and so forth for groups of cells as organs and organs as bodies, insect communities, particularly ants and termites, and we then carry this cooperative metabolism through whole ecosystems, ultimately to the being of the planet itself.

There are many examples of group consciousness in the natural world. Another fascinating group being is in the family of fungi. It is Dictyostelium discoidium, a slime mold. Individual organisms of this species live spread out in local areas of a forest floor where they live separately, and survive by eating bacteria. Each of them is about 5 microns in diameter, which means it would take some 200 of them to cover the dot of an "i." Because of their size, researchers say, to move twelve inches would be like a seventy-mile trip for humans.

After some generations of moving about feeding on bacteria, the organisms' food supply becomes exhausted. When this happens a hormone-type substance is released from a few key individuals which constitutes a signal and the individuals all head for that spot. Then, they mass into a clump that may number 100,000 individuals, measuring a few millimeters across. When the mass is assembled it resembles a slug complete with individuals that function as "eyes" and others who serve as "feet." When all is ready, the slug goes off across the forest floor looking for greener pastures, travelling on a coat of "slime" that the assembled group excretes. When it reaches an area to its liking it tips up on end and the slug changes into a form resembling a tiny mushroom with a long thin stalk. When it has achieved this new, similarly highly organized and complex structure, the small bulb at the top of the stalk emits spores, which begin a new cycle of individuals who multiply both by splitting and sometimes by sexual congress. Biologists have learned that the voluntary assembly of the slug can be artificially broken apart and the individuals can go back to being individuals if there is food nearby but, by the time the slug reaches the stalk and spore cap form, the individuals cannot return to their previous life as individuals. After reaching this point when spores are put out to create the new generations, the old body with all of its individuals dies.

Here again the importance of consciousness is dealt with in biological functioning. The slime mold and Nanomia are examples where the distinction between individual and group consciousness becomes very blurred. Nonetheless the primacy of consciousness in each individual is paramount in order to coordinate the physical actions of the colonial being and its group consciousness.

It has been proposed that the earth is a conscious entity as are all biological forms and that the consciousness of individuals can co-mingle in community, or colonial beings. It is plain that the colonial organisms have a purpose (to continue their lives by feeding themselves) and there are indications that Gaia itself has purposive intent.

Human scholarship has not focussed on the functioning of conscious wholes the way it has focussed on the behavior of the inert parts in atomic physics and molecular chemistry. Even so, we do have some hints that the consciousness of the whole earth functions even in an anticipatory way.

Does the Life of the Earth Have A Plan?

Gerbert Grohmann, who was a student of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and of Rudolph Steiner, suggests that biological form, when looked at as a project of the planetary whole, has undergone simultaneous change across the whole world at the same time. There have been periods during the development of biological forms on the earth during which form changed en mass. An example is the leap from spore bearing to coniferous and then to flowering plants. This is akin to the body of the earth undergoing transformation. These periods represent leaps in the change of biological form. Pertaining to the plant family Grohmann says:

"All phylogenetic [phylum=race or strain] development is discontinuous. Leaps are made and gaps divide the different stages. The facts demonstrate this clearly. The materialistic principle of the continuity of substance and force applied to the history of evolution inevitably leads to contradictions. The crest of the first wave of the development of plants growing in soil is the carboniferous flora; however, with the end of the Paleozoic Era, which for the plant kingdom lies between the Lower New Red Sandstone and the Permian Limestone period, this highly developed flora with its many very distinct species has vanished almost completely. One could hardly have a more impressive fact than this. After the Triassic Red Sandstone period, which is characterized by its scanty plant growth, a new beginning is made: the flora of the Mesophytic Era. The former vegetation, however, did not develop further.

"During the Mesophytic Era we again find highly developed plants of a special character, particularly in the Jurassic and Chalk formations. But this climax is also an end. In the Upper Chalk the rich variety of forms has disappeared. Suddenly, flowering plants spring up without warning, simultaneously in many different parts of the world. We need not violate palaeontological facts in order to find, for each of these great periods, one characteristic plant organ. In the carboniferous period it is the leafy vegetative shoot, corresponding to the fern. In the middle period (Mesophytic), with the predominance of conifers, Ginkgoes and Cycads, the leaf-stalk type of plant has risen to the stage of seed bearing. In the next period, Upper Chalk and Tertiary, the real flowering plant finally appears."24

Grohmann points out that the change of form occurs across the biological spectrum during these "evolutionary leaps." As the fern series comes to its end it begins to show form that is anticipatory of the cone bearing plants but the substance of the fern cannot carry the trajectory on because the actual tissue material could not sustain it. Grohmann says; "Organic evolution does not entail only progressive transformation of forms, but the very substance must be developed from stage to stage in order to create the conditions suitable for a certain level of organization."25

As the form of the fern reaches its end and it begins to develop form prophetic of the soon to appear cone bearing plants, the ferns do not continue to transform and become cone bearing plants. The ferns die out as predominant plants and new plants appear that are the cone bearing plants with substance organized appropriately to support the new form.

Grohmann's work points to avenues of thinking that are even beyond the morphic resonance of Sheldrake- that the resonance of form shows evidence of some plan that precedes the creation of form- anticipatory, creative thought on a grand scale. This goes beyond Sheldrake's careful documentation to suggest an active intelligence involved in creating the forms of life. What is being considered here is an inversion of the civilized perspective. What happens in consciousness is instrumental in events in the material, biological world. Without this understanding we will be greatly hindered in creating new human culture.

The Social Conditioning of Human Health

We of contemporary society have been conditioned with the image that health is a personal problem. Beyond that we are led to believe that health is a matter of chemistry. Being chemistry, health can then be ministered to by the vast establishment of the chemical/pharmaceutical industry. The medical establishment which is the third largest industry in the United States, just behind petroleum and war machines, is a direct expression of the structure and ideas of empire and the manner in which that culture relates to living things. Much like modern agriculture, the medical industry is a vast array of industrial institutions which produce chemicals, medical machinery, design and build hospitals with specialized architecture, produce computer programs for doctors offices, and operate massive medical education establishments and so forth. Because health care in the view of the scientific establishment, is chemistry, the focus of attention is on blood samples, tissue samples, biopsies and such. Within the system little attention is given to the person, their dietary habits, the air they breathe, their living conditions or other factors. The establishment exists for profit and the aggrandizement of those who direct it. The personal life and well being of the client is unimportant. It is chemistry (called molecular medicine in the trade) that the medical establishment focuses upon. In fact, within the functional operation of the medical establishment the more unhealthy the population, the higher the profits. For decades the damage from birth trauma caused by hospital birthing practices have been known. Little has changed because those practices are there for the convenience and efficiency of the institution itself.

Public health researchers, by and large, are not part of the medical establishment. They have a much more holistic perspective in that they look at the statistics of the health of whole populations. By looking at their work we begin to see to what extent the individual is shaped and conditioned by the group consciousness of the tribe or in this case a mass society. We begin to see that ideas held in the mind (culture) effect biological systems. We see the importance of creating new human culture with great attention.

The tumor body of empire is a planetary medical problem. It is progressive disintegration of the life system. The "material advancement" of "man the toolmaker" is held out to the public mind as a symbol of "progress." Meanwhile, in real terms, we have seen that health, diet and longevity severely declined when empire began.

The reality is that culture can condition us so that it actually causes disease. On the positive side of this we find that culture, if it is properly formed, can lead us to health and positive emotional condition.

Leonard A. Sagan, who is a scholar of Public Health, has authored a study that argues convincingly that individual health has little to do with industrial medicine but is a reflection of the quality of social experience. In his study, The Health of Nations: True Causes of Sickness and Well Being,26 Sagan demonstrates that the increase in population and longevity began before the rise of modern medicine, childhood death from infectious diseases began to decline long before anti-biotic chemicals and that modern medical care has little effect on public health. Sagan convincingly demonstrates that psychosocial changes have been responsible for the increase in life span and the increase in immunity. His study shows those social conditions directly effect human health. With the expansion of the World Empire, the economic condition of Europeans and those of the European colonies began to improve and the personal and social expectations of the people began to rise. The stability and strength of what we know as the "modern family" increased. The conditions of life of the Industrial Revolution period began to fall away as working people forced demands upon the elite for the eight hour day, better working conditions and a greater share in the social benefits. As the masses forced an opening in the social fabric, the people had more hope and aspiration in their lives. They began to throw off the slave psychology and hold themselves in more esteem, which is what Sagan sees as the key to personal health, a strong sense of self esteem built upon a social foundation that provides at least for the necessities of life. In the larger context this means that the elite of civilization, by sacrificing the life of the earth, have climbed back up to conditions Natural people already enjoyed. But what is being explored is how social conditions affect health.

Sagan shows that the decline in mortality rates began prior to the great sanitary movement of the nineteenth century. He states, 

"It was not the decline in infection that caused the decline in mortality rates but rather a decline in death rates of those who were infected."

High rates of infection persisted until very recent decades. The majority of deaths among infants are not due to microbiological agents transmitted through the food and water supply but rather are from microbiological agents commonly present in the environment; the deaths are the result of infection with viruses and other ubiquitous organisms, which will inevitably result among infants with lowered resistance.

"The decline in mortality from infectious diseases has been as dramatic among those diseases that are spread from person to person, such as tuberculosis, where sanitation efforts are ineffective, as among those that are spread through the food and water supply or through insect vectors."

Sagan continues by saying, "Finally, there is another explanation for the decline in deaths from infectious diseases, namely, an improvement in human resistance."27 Sagan introduces public health studies to show that modern medical care has little correlation with public health and that nutrition (above the malnutrition rate) does not correlate with public health. It will be a surprise to all of us who have been subjected to a lifetime of propaganda conditioning by the medical establishment that numerous studies show that the less food people have the healthier they are and statistically, the more doctors there are per capita in First World countries, the higher rises the infant mortality. A comparison of eighteen present industrial societies shows that higher infant mortality correlates with the increased number of doctors. Further, studies show that there is no correlation between public health expenditures and decline in death rates in these countries.28 To add another startling series of statistical studies, he points out that although there have been mortality rate changes concerned with specific organ sites, the risk of dying of cancer once it starts is no different than it was fifty years ago. The incidence of cancer has gone up tremendously but once one has cancer, the risk of dying of it has not changed in fifty years even given the tremendous investment in cancer research and treatment.

So what has caused the increase in health according to Sagan? His studies point to the increased strength of the nuclear family. In the larger context we saw the destruction of the tribe, the clan, extended family and finally the Industrial Revolution wiped out communal peasant existence. The slow climb back to simply a nuclear family for Europeans has been at the expense of the colonized world because of increased wealth trickling down to the masses in the imperial centers. Beginning with the Industrial Revolution and lasting up until well into twentieth century, what there was of family life was grim. Child labor took them out of the family at an early age. Labor hours for everyone were long and continuous; housing, wages and the conditions of life almost precluded a stable, nurturing family. Sagan points out that only recently has any attention been devoted toward the nurturing of infants and children. Many studies have shown that nurturing during infancy affects infant mortality, I.Q. levels, physical stature, and illness rates. The loss of one or both parents, indicating family influence, is even better known because of the greater ease of statistical comparison. For example, for a person who has lost both parents the suicide risk is seven times greater than a person from an intact family. In another study that Sagan cites, of college students who had been separated from a parent during childhood, nearly half had serious thoughts of suicide, whereas students who came from intact families only demonstrated a 10% incidence of such thoughts.

In a study from Johns Hopkins Medical School, 1,337 medical students were studied. In this study it was found that closeness to parents and the father's age (the older the father, the greater the incidence) at the time of the subject's birth strongly correlated with later suicide, mental illness and tumors. In a study at the University of Pittsburgh it was found that parental loss- death of a parent, separation or divorce of parents, correlated with a 25% increased chance of gastric neurosis, 35% for duodenal ulcer, 36% for psychoneurosis, 38% for alcoholism, 45% for rheumatoid arthritis, 55% for accidents, 55% for tuberculosis, 62% for delinquency and 70% for suicide.

Not only does early childhood experience in the family affect health and mortality but also the strength of the fabric of society affects the health of the family. In Natural culture the clan social environment was the norm. Now, the nearest thing approaching the clan is therapy and support groups. Though these groups have been only a fragile reflection of the clan, they are never the less of great aid to the individual members. Sagan finds that married people as a whole, have lower death rates than people of the same age who are single or widowed and the death rate for married persons is half that of divorced people. An elaborate study conducted in Alameda County, in northern California, clearly demonstrated that social isolation, "... Was associated with increased mortality from ischemic heart disease, cancer, cardiovascular diseases, and all other diagnoses, including suicide and accidental death."29 In reality living in the social conditions of an empire is as destructive to humans as war.

While the military is an instrument of war and death, in reality, simply the socialization it provides in human camaraderie actually decreases its member's mortality rates (outside the battlefield). Individuals who actually experience military society have better health ratings than others do. Sagan cites studies showing that, "... Mortality rates of servicemen are significantly below that of the U.S. population generally. For all personnel ages seventeen and over, the death rate is only 57 percent of that of non-military people of the same age."30 Another study, in Massachusetts, indicates the influence of social disintegration on health. It has shown a correlation between poverty, social isolation and cancer risk.

The relatively small group of people in industrial societies, who have statistically better health and longevity also have social advantages well above the norm, Sagan finds. This is the group who has a firm social foundation as infants, who have avenues of advancement and who have, because of social privilege or unusual families, been enabled to gain optimism and self esteem.

Studies from many industrial nations show that longevity is, looked at as a whole, a function of social class with the longest living group being the wealthiest. Studies in England, where universal health care has been in place a long time, show that the provision of health care makes little difference in these statistics, before or after the institution of a universal health care plan. Further to the point that health is a psychological matter influenced by social conditions, is the link between education and health. Sagan says:

"The mortality differences between those of the least and those of the highest [educational] achievement are very great, more so for women than for men, and are greatest among the middle-aged; females who have had four or more years of college have half the death rate experienced by those with little or no education. Differences in mortality among educational classes exist for a broad spectrum of diseases, the greatest differences occurring in deaths due to infectious diseases. Men with the least educational achievement experienced death from tuberculosis at a rate 776 percent higher than those with the highest educational level."31 

The link between mental-emotional state and health is much stronger than the simple wealth-health link Sagan says. "The studies seem to favor literacy as being directly linked to health rather than as a proxy for other variables. That is, the statistical association between literacy and health is consistently stronger than that between health and income."32

Following his review of social/personal health in modern industrial societies, Sagan details the personality attributes of those that live the longest and have the least illness. First, he says, they have a high level of self-esteem. They have a high regard for themselves but they are committed to goals other than their own personal welfare. These healthy people place high value on health and survival. They are future oriented. They are trusting and easily enter into social networks. They relish companionship, yet are not uncomfortable when alone and seek periods of contemplation and aloneness. Finally, he says that these people seek knowledge beyond formal education. He quotes Aaron Antonovsky of the Ben-Gurion University who says these people have a sense of coherence, a global orientation that expresses the extent to which one has a pervasive, enduring though dynamic feeling of confidence that one's internal and external environments are predictable and that there is a high probability that things will work out as well as can reasonably be expected."33

The pattern that is described fits well with what we know about the situation of forager/hunter tribes who relate to the ecological and spiritual whole around them.

Sagan shows quite adequately that health in a cosmic context is related to the question of identity and to positive emotional level. These factors exist in consciousness. Culture also exists in consciousness. An individual can be injured- the effect of the mind upon the body- simply by being conditioned into empire culture. The world industrial empire has passed the cusp of its development. The easily grasped "resources" are gone and the population explosion is in full acceleration. The flow of resources that floated the wealth of the First world populations up to the standard of Natural human culture are now declining and the disintegration of the family, especially in the U.S. is increasing. Sagan shows that the breakup of the nuclear family is showing a rapid increase, teenage pregnancy is increasing rapidly, as well as child abuse. All of these factors will have definite effects across the population. Sagan states that morbidity is increasing, particularly among children and that the evidence is that the health of the U.S. population is now going down. He concludes by saying, "As the modern nuclear family has come unglued, crime, suicide, and drug use have soared, just as have divorce and teenage pregnancy while scholastic achievement has declined. These associations and causal relationships have yet to be widely appreciated."34

The Medical Question of Identity

While Sagan offers the knowledge of a specialist concerning the statistics of health and social relationships, there is a larger context. This context is of true organic identity. We are seeing the rise of illness that is associated with psychological stress and with the autoimmune system. Psychological stress is a function of the reality one identifies with. If one is thoroughly conditioned and identifies closely with the immediate day to day social reality, such as the daily crises on television news programs, one experiences more stress than if one identifies oneself as an organic being functioning among other organic beings on the planet earth. In the case of the autoimmune system a deeper level of consciousness is at work. AIDS, cancer, allergies, asthma, candida albicans, lowered resistance to infection and other illnesses are related to the functioning of the autoimmune system. For example in the case of cancer, people get cancer every day. That is, a few cells in the body malfunction and do not replicate as they should. These cells are normally then consumed by the body. The consciousness of the body decides that they are not self- but other. The autoimmune system is directed by consciousness, not chemistry.

The same situation exists with the populations of the microorganism candida albicans. Normally, the population levels of the candida in our bodies are maintained at a beneficial level but in some cases, such as after over-doses of anti-biotics, the autoimmune system seems not to know its identity, the difference between self and other. When this happens the populations of candida explode without the autoimmune system controlling them. At that point serious illness develops. Here we have society and the person, living out of cosmic balance and then the vegetative consciousness of the individual body becoming out of balance. The problem on all three levels is that the being does not know what it is. Like the cancer cell, it has lost its sense of identity within the cosmic pattern.

Life and its consciousness cannot be fooled. We may act in an objectified, machine-like manner, we may begin to resemble the machine artifacts that we have created, we may even begin to believe that we can live in a machine culture with no more humanity than an internal combustion engine, but we cannot escape the fact that we are organic beings with a unique birthright and ancestry just like other species. What Sagan's material shows is the necessity of focussing on social environment in our new culture. There is also the necessity of having that social environment grounded in the pattern and principles of biological life. We must first know that we are within the body of Gaia. As we heal as a social body from the disease of empire, it is particularly the children upon whom we must focus. As we adults begin to create the new culture in a healing, therapeutic environment, we must be able to have fewer children but focus more attention on them.

We are discussing a leap that will be generations long. The present crisis is so profound that it will be many generations before "normalcy" returns. We are creating healing cultures whose basic patterns are such that we expect them to weather the events. It is the children and their children who will be living through this. We want these children to have the best possible opportunity. It is obvious from the material that has been examined that the clan structure is without doubt the most important ingredient in a person's later life. Given these considerations a new culture would be child centered and secondarily focussed on women of childbearing age. This is our hope for the future, the children. If we can function in therapeutic community to create a positive emotional environment and raise children without emotional crippling, then we will have provided the foundation for their lives.

It is not we who will be the final result of the cultural creation but they who must climb upon our shoulders, who will teach their children of the illness we have suffered and the positive direction that they must follow. In nurturing the children, we nurture the new culture. 

 

NOTES

1 The New Biology: Discovering The Wisdom In Nature. Robert Augros & George Stanciu. New Science Library. Shambala pub. Boston. 1988. pp.125,126.

2 ibid. p. 128.

3 Cycles: The Mysterious Forces That Trigger Events. Edward R. Dewey and Og Mandino. Hawthorn Books. New York. 1971. p. 200.

4 ibid. p. 89

5 ibid. p. 105.

6 ibid. p. 114.

7 ibid. p. 155.

8 The Plant. Gerbert Grohmann. Rudolf Steiner Press. London. 1974. p. 198.

9 Augros & Stanciu. The New Biology. op. cit. p. 173.

10 The Transmission Of Doubt: Talks and Essays on the Transcendence of Scientific Materialism through Radical Understanding. Da Free John. The Dawn Horse Press. Clearlake, Calif. 1984. pp. 95,96.

11 A view from modern physics is given in:

Space-time And Beyond: Toward An Explanation Of The Unexplainable. Bob Toben, in conversation with physicists Jack Sarfatti, Ph.D. and Fred Wolf, Ph.D. E.P. Dutton. New York. 1975.

Many examples are given in written works of yogis. A recent treatment is:

Nuclear Evolution: Discovery of the Rainbow Body. Christopher Hills. University of the Trees Press. Boulder Creek, Ca. 1977.

An example from Hermetic tradition is:

The Kybalion: A Study of The Hermetic Philosophy Of Ancient Egypt And Greece. by Three Initiates. The Yogi Publication Society. Masonic Temple. Chicago, Ill. 1936.

12 Language, Thought & Reality. Benjamin Lee Whorf. M.I.T. Pub. 1956. pp. 59,60.

13 ibid. pp. 263,264.

14 Hypnosis With Friends and Lovers. Freda Morris. Harper & Row. San Francisco. 1979. p. XIII.

15 The Kybalion. op. cit.

16 A New Science of Life: The Hypothesis of Formative Causation. Rupert Sheldrake. 2nd. ed. Blond & Briggs. London. 1985.

The Presence of the Past: Morphic Resonance and the Habits of Nature. Rupert Sheldrake. Times Books. New York. 1988.

17 Design For Destiny: Science Reveals the Soul. Edward W. Russell. Ballantine Books. New York. 1971. pp. 36,37.

18 The I That Is We. Richard Moss, M.D. Celestial Arts, pub. Berkeley, Ca. 1981. p. 31. 

19 The Fields of Life: Our Links With the Universe. Dr. Harold Saxton Burr. Ballentine Books. New York. 1972. p. 29.

20 ibid. p. 81.

21 Sheldrake. A New Science of Life. op. cit. p. 99.

22 ibid. pp.177-180.

23 ibid. p. 226.

24 The Plant: A Guide to Understanding its Nature. Gerbert Grohmann. Trans. K. Castelliz from Die Pflanze, Vol. I. Rudolf Steiner Press. London. 1974. pp.195,196.

25 ibid. p. 201.

26 The Health of Nations: True Causes of Sickness and Well Being. Leonard A. Sagan. Basic Books Inc. N.Y. N.Y. 1987.

27 ibid. p. 41.

28 ibid. p. 81.

29 ibid. pp. 135,136.

30 ibid. p. 138.

31 ibid. p. 175.

32 ibid. p. 177.

33 ibid. p. 188.

34 ibid. p. 110.

 

The Final Empire - Book Two: The Seed of the Future

Chapters 13-20

Part I. Creating a Whole Life

Final Empire Chap 13: The Principles of Life: Page 205

The Moral Basis of the Life of the Earth

We live at a time of dissolution of human social bodies as well as the unraveling of the life force of our planet. This gives us all a sense of confusion and contradiction within existing social realities. Our response must be to turn to the enduring cosmic patterns of life, toward the healing of life. Because of the depth of the crisis our response must be equally fundamental. We are proposing to create no less than a completely new human culture that relates to the earth in a completely different way. We seek power, the power to endure. We are coming out of a position of weakness in which the power to kill and coerce was seen as the road to utopia. Now that the weakness of that conception is displayed in the planetary suicide of this final cycle of empire, those who choose to respond in a positive way need gather the seeds of Natural cultures and the truly beneficial things created by civilization and carry them through the apocalypse.

Our effort is to regain personal, social, ecological and cosmic balance. We propose to do this by adopting the natural pattern of life on this planet as our guide. The natural world is a world of shared energies. The life giving sunlight is captured by the green plants for transformation into living vegetation. The life energies circulate, transform and continue to circulate through the web of life. With this circulation, a slow build-up of the soil occurs to provide for the planet's further ability to support green plants that can capture more energy, driving the system to its climax of biological succession, its dynamic balance within the life of the planet. Just as the balance of energies within the human organism is consciously maintained among a vast array of different substances and nutrients, dynamic balance is maintained in the planetary organism by multi-billions of constantly interacting life processes. Just as the intellect alone could never guide and administer the functions of the human body, there is no way that human intellect could make decisions about the life of the earth that would be superior to the cosmic intelligence that has created and maintained it.

The life of the planet is able to cover the earth in its extremes of temperature, pressure and moisture variation through its creativity. The creativity and adaptability of planetary life combines with the thrust toward diversity of form and function that allows life to express its intelligence on all parts of the planet's surface. The hallmark of the whole life is diversity within unity. The planetary life functions with the paradox of unities within unities such that each life form is a unity unto itself but yet is a part of a greater whole.

The unities of the planetary life as well as innumerable and constantly acting life processes all maintain relationship with each other. Everything is connected and any adjustment of one effects others so that they adjust simultaneously to the new conditions of their existence. Creativity, balance, adaptability, shared energies, unity-diversity, transformation and relationship are modes of behavior that we find fundamental to life. These behaviors of living things occur within a context of consciousness. Each life form is a conscious entity. Consciousness is the glue that holds the form together and animates it. When consciousness departs in death, the form disintegrates.

These seven principles and their subsidiary effects are drawn from observation of the behavior of the web of living things. This is the behavior of life on earth. This is its moral pattern. From this we may draw moral principles for the behavior of human society. When we create human culture that is patterned on these principles and integrated with the web of life then human thought and action will be consonant with the purpose of life on this planet. Humans will re-present the life of the earth at the level of human activity. Life does have a moral basis and the moral obligations are clear. If we are to create a sustainable society, we must follow Natural Law. With the crisis and dissolution of empire we see the sanctions of the law. In creating new culture we must be aware of the need to conform to the law so that our kind and others may endure. Following our path back to the source we see that the elements of our new culture need contain balance, self-regulation (responsibility to self and others), an expanded view as to the functioning of the wholes, a foundation in cooperation and an institutionalized creativity. If our social pattern is grounded in the paradigm of life then our actions expressed from that base will be resonant with cosmic patterns.

Balance is the Foundation of Life

In a social sense maturity is seen as self-regulation, that point at which we are not dependent upon parents or others to conduct our affairs. In the organic world beings also exhibit self-regulation. It is the self-regulation of each species that gives the eco-system its balance. Because each being lives according to its nature, the whole functions in resonance. The balance of the human population in a forager/hunter band is self-regulating. This ecological maturity is fundamental. The cosmos exists in balance; the life of the earth exists in balance. Within this we see by contrast that the theorists of empire culture invented ideologies of linear increase, ideologies of imbalance. When the new edition of the myth of linear increase was being formulated in Darwin's time, the rationalist philosophers searched for a motivating dynamic in the natural world. They looked for a cause of change, which they could hold up as the force for linear increase. Darwin and Malthus found the motor in population increase. For Darwin, the balance of species is maintained mechanically by predators and starvation. As this flood of population continues it is the "survival of the fittest" that culls out the weak and selects the strong, whose descendants then become the new "evolutionary waves." Imbedded in this perspective is a total irresponsibility, a complete immaturity. No being is responsible to the whole. Each being is only obligated to fight others for its own survival. This pattern is in fact reflected in the culture in which we live. This is why we face planetary suicide. No one is responsible for the life of the earth. One simply struggles for the "individualist" power and wealth held out by the culture.

This scheme fit in with the theories of "free markets" propounded by Adam Smith in his tome, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776). In Smith's theory, all people were completely rational. With many sellers and buyers in a free market, they would choose the best product at the least cost, thus constantly moving efficiency and social benefit forward as the inefficient died off. In this scheme, no one is responsible, "the natural order," "the hidden hand of the market," brings the "good things" to society.

No society was ever configured this way. Powerful social forces, cartels and monopolies set prices and control supply, but Smith was creating a myth not describing reality. This is similar to Darwin's myth of the population motor. The claim is made that it is not human directed, that it fits the pattern of the cosmos. 

As this mythos expanded, "Social Darwinism" then became welded onto it. In the myth of Social Darwinism, human societies such as the imperial society of Britain rise to the top and humans within societies rise to the top because of their evolutionary superiority. Obviously there is no "top" to rise to in a cooperative forager/hunter band but in an imperial culture based in hierarchy this can seem to be "just common sense." We see the financial aristocracy born with the best medical care, fed with the best diets, tutored with the finest master teachers and finished at the best schools. Given the widest experiences of travel, entertainment, and sport because of inherited wealth and the mental reinforcement since birth that they are destined to rule, we can understand how they would readily adopt a social darwinist perspective. They could easily be persuaded that their kind was superior, while they stand on the necks of those who never had their advantages. In fact their class activly prevents others from having those advantages.

The linear thinker Hegel with his "dialectics" also thought he had discovered some kind of "natural" law. The "dialectic" is simply the clash of two opposing forces that result in a synthesis. As interpreted by Karl Marx in Das Kapital, the "dialectic" was focused on social changes in the imperial tumor body. The force of the class of industrial workers contradicts the force of the industrial ruling class. In Karl Marx's adoption of this theory, this would represent the thesis and antithesis. This contradiction of the ruling class and the working class is resolved in the synthesis, which in Marx's view would be the dictatorship of the industrial proletariat. In Hegel's linear dialectic, the synthesis becomes the new thesis and then a new antithesis arises. This is resolved into a new synthesis in order to keep the train of linear events going.

This culture bound theory looks good when applied to human social change within an industrial empire because the culture is based in competition/conflict, but this is an artificially created situation. If one tried to apply these linear theories to the natural life of the earth, they would not correspond to reality. The body of capitalist myth has allowed individuals in empire culture to believe that they have no moral responsibility, because, in their conditioned way of thinking, it is "natural" and "just common sense" that there be the rich and the starving, as that is how evolution progresses. Ignoring the dynasties of inherited capitalistic wealth and the power of an entrenched elite, people will say that it is natural for some to have more than others. Just as it is natural for the more highly evolved industrial societies to control and aid those less able to "modernize."

The body of Marxist myth can only work if there is industrialization. In this theory of imbalance, one accepts the cult of science and the poisonous and destructive process of industrialization as the path to utopia. Like the capitalist variety industrialist, the radiation poisoning and ecological degradation of Marxist lands is seen only as a "management" problem.

By focusing on the matter of balance in the cosmos and on earth we see that some of the basic assumptions by which all of us in empire culture are conditioned, are at great variance from cosmic patterns. The matter of population balance is fundamental to our understanding.

Robert Augros and George Stanciu in their important new book, The New Biology, survey recent biological studies that describe the self-regulation of populations. They show that elephants, for example, regulate their populations according to food supply and living conditions by raising or lowering the age of puberty and by shortening or lengthening the duration of the period of sexual fertility of females. Augros and Stanciu say that, "Evidence from other field studies indicate that the birth rate or the age of first reproduction depends on population density in many large mammals, including white-tailed deer, elk, bison, moose, bighorn sheep, Dall's sheep, ibex, wildebeest, Himalayan tahr, hippopotamus, lion, grizzly bear, dugong, harp seals, southern elephant seal, spotted porpoise, striped dolphin, blue whale, and sperm whale."1

There are many different ways in which species regulate their populations. One interesting study showed that all of the birds of the same species, in the same region, could vary the number of eggs in the nest in any one season according to food availability and species population density. In a certain year of low food supply all of the birds' nests would have three rather than the usual four eggs. Augros and Stanciu quote biologist V.C. Wynne-Edwards who says:

"Setting all preconceptions aside, however, and returning to a detached assessment of the facts revealed by modern observation and experiment, it becomes almost immediately evident that a very large part of the regulation of numbers depends not on Darwin's hostile forces but on the initiative taken by the animals themselves; that is to say, to an important extent it is an intrinsic phenomenon."2

In the popular mind the image of ecological balance is the wolf pack and moose herd. This image does represent the balance of the food chain but eliminates the cooperative and holistic elements of ecological functioning. While the wolf, cougar and eagle are dramatic and fit the imperial image of power and violence; these predators are only a handful while there are millions of other species from micro-organisms to redwood trees, whose populations are not impacted significantly by photogenic predators.

Life is wise, mature and self-regulating. The myth of the "red in tooth and claw" has distorted our understanding of nature, but by a review of recent biology we are able to adjust our images to the way nature really works and the way a creative and stable human culture could fit into it. In the contrasts that we have been examining we see that there is a profound shift of image from mindless organisms driven to maximize their numbers, to responsible, intelligent self-regulating living beings. 

These are not academic biological questions; they are political questions of the theology of empire. They control the definition of what life is, and define appropriate behavior for humans.

Reductionism is the prevalent method of science. The "Newtonians" who dominate the sciences except for the new "Quantum" school of physics, say that the universe is like a giant clock built of "dead" matter. We take apart the pieces and examine them down to their quarks and discover what makes the world tick. This is the dominant scientific view and the "conventional wisdom" of empire culture. But the rare scientists such as Augros and Stanciu propose a holistic view in which the cosmos and each of its components relate as whole but interrelated bodies.

The Cycles of Life

Balance and cycle are the basic processes of the cosmos. Events are circular, cyclical and vibrational- from one pole and back around to the other. We are born to cycle and motion. From the time that the reproductive cells are formed in each of our parents, we are in motion. When a sperm makes its journey to our egg, we are in motion. When we are later carried in the womb, we are in an amniotic sea of motion. After the cycle of gestation, we are finally born out of the body into a world of motion where winds blow, seasons cycle, and cycles of our own growth occur.

Each of us has been born onto a sphere travelling in space, called the Earth, which is spinning around the central sun. The central sun with its planetary companions travel in a circle within our galaxy which itself is moving around a supercluster of galaxies. From the moment our first cell is created, we are part of the whole, and we never cease being in motion. We are a process, part of increasingly larger processes. There is no such thing as linear expansion toward some static impregnable security. The motion we experience is not random, but is cyclic. The circles of the Milky Way Galaxy, the solar system, our earth and the moon around us, occur in cycles so finely balanced and timed that they may be computed exactly, far into the future or into the past. 

These invariable motions are the Law. These impeccably tuned; harmonious cycles are imposed upon us by forces so powerful that there is no question that they are Cosmic Law, Natural Law. Within these celestial cycles the planet spins in a constant cycle of sunlight/darkness that is functionally a day/night alternating current. Each point on the planet's sphere is saturated with energy, then shadowed from it in precisely timed measures. Within the diurnal/nocturnal cycle and the energy cycle of the seasons, organic life on earth proliferates. The life of the earth was able to grow and develop because it remained in a state of dynamic balance. 

There is certainly change in the earth's life but this occurs within a context of balance. The earth's poles do tilt which causes the seasons. If the earth tilted even a few more degrees or if there were any deviation of the earth's orbit around the sun, the life of the earth would be greatly altered or non-existent. The organic life of the Earth has developed its cycles within the womb of the solar system. The sun, the principal energy source, is itself a cyclically pulsating body which experiences periodic expansion and contraction. The sun revolves in a 27-30 day cycle, its heat output fluctuates in a 273-month cycle, sunspots occur in a 22.22-year cycle, and the magnetic poles of the sun reverse themselves every 22 years. The widely varying energy fields of the sun encompass the earth, as it vibrates within what might be called the solar energy body. 

Could we visually perceive magnetic energy fields, we would see the teardrop shaped body of the earth and its magnetosphere speeding around the sun. Within this teardrop of the magnetosphere we would see a stronger doughnut-shaped magnetic energy field with depressions at the north and south poles. Further within this energy envelope are layers of tenuous matter called the atmospheric strata: exosphere, ionosphere, mesosphere, stratosphere, and troposphere. As with organic cell membranes, each of these layers is composed of different elements and performs particular functions for the inner body of the planet. The ozone layer and the other atmospheric membranes are barriers allowing certain energies to pass and preventing others from entering. The skin of all biological cells performs this same function.

The earth, the complex blue and white speckled egg, is alive, and its life processes vary constantly as it spins. Its colors change with the seasons; its cloud layers whirl and circulate in rhythmic cycles. Not surprisingly, an Italian chemist has discovered that the speed of the chemical reactions varies according to a number of planetary situations.

"More than 400,000 experiments, covering a ten-year period, by Professor Giorgio Piccardi, of Florence, Italy, show that the time required to complete various chemical reactions varies with the time of day, the time of year, the sunspot cycle, and whether or not the chemicals in his test tubes and flasks are protected from external electromagnetic forces by metallic shields."3

Uncountable numbers of organic events occur each second on earth, conditioned by celestial events within the body of the solar system. The sunspot cycle, the solar cycle, the moon cycle, the alternation of light and dark, all these events and more, trigger or impress themselves on organic events on the earth. Everything is in relationship; everything flows in cyclic adaptation according to its nature and place in the universe. Organic events such as the metabolism of plankton in the oceans, the migration of salmon, the growth of forests, the annual migration of caribou, the cycles of sexual reproduction and innumerable other events all are influenced by cyclic forces utterly enmeshed in a flowing whole so intricately balanced that a relatively small eruption on the sun, a solar flare, can create multiple effects in the process of the life of the earth. Whether viewed from the energy metabolism of the solar system or from the vantage point of the various kinds of living molecules in the cell, life unfolds in a series of wholes, each fitting into and forming an integral aspect of a larger whole. The many parts whose functions combine to create the cell are also a part of an organ, which in turn is part of the whole body. That body may be part of a tribe, a school of fish, or a deer herd whose social body then fits into a larger food chain. The pattern of the cosmos is form integrated within form and mind within mind.

The various habitats across the surface of the planet create the whole body of the earth, which itself is involved with energy flows (metabolism) that are solar, galactic and cosmic. The mind of the cell exists within the mind of the organ, which exists within the mind of the body. Form exists within form, mind within mind and life within life.

Life Cooperates

Our subconscious conditioning leads us to believe in the ubiquity of violence. We see the culture of violence of the empire as natural. Nonetheless, there is no mindless, gratuitous violence in nature. There is eating. Predators eat prey and the prey violently resist but organisms don't go around attacking each other for no reason. There are territorial challenges and mating challenges but these seldom reach the stage of violence and death. Our conditioned belief in the violence in nature is so deep that the Hollywood film makers who create "nature" movies train animals to fight for the films. Wild stallions kill each other and bears attack each other in the movies because it adds drama and it lends an air of "authenticity" to the film. People expect it, so it is faked for the audience.

Darwin said, "All nature is at war, one organism with another, or with external nature."4 This struggle for survival follows his original assumptions of scarce resources and exploding populations. This assumption of the violence of life has been shared by many of the original Rationalist philosophers as well as the general conditioned population, most of who no doubt grew up in the artificial environments of cities and had little contact with natural reality.

Ecology is sometimes called the "subversive science" because it assumes interdependence in the living world. Ecology is the study of the inter-relationships of nature. As these cooperative inter-relationships became more apparent through study, the new science became more subversive to orthodoxy. It is now demonstrable that nature is a vast cooperative enterprise. There is no war. Each being functions according to its own nature and its nature fits its ecological niche. Organisms aren't out in nature battling over the same grass seed. Each feeds according to its own niche and these niches are highly refined. Ecologist Robert MacArthur did a study of five species of warblers, all about the same size, all occupying the same territory and all eating the same food- spruce bud worms. He discovered that their niches were so finely and cooperatively tuned that each species predominantly used a different portion of the tree for their feeding. That is, one species would go to the top portion of the tree; another would concentrate on the base of the tree, another one quarter of the way from the top and so forth. These finely tuned niches exist throughout nature.

Not only are organisms careful about their niches but they work cooperatively together in all sorts of symbiotic ways. Biologist David Kirk says, "It is doubtful whether there is an animal alive that does not have a symbiotic relationship with at least one other life form."5 This is also true in whole communities. The succession from primary to climax forest is an array of symbiotic relationships as guilds of species prepare the way for other guilds of species. Authors Augros and Stanciu cite the work of marine biologist Conrad Limbaugh, who has studied cleaner-client relationships. Involved in this startling activity, so far known, are forty-two species of fish, six shrimps, and Beebe's crab. In these cases one species takes parasites from the body of another for food. Limbaugh says, " 'I saw up to 300 fish cleaned at one station in the Bahamas during one six-hour daylight period.' The client fish approaches the station and poses, allowing the cleaner to forage within its gills and even to enter its mouth without danger. No one yet knows what prevents ordinarily voracious fish from eating the cleaners."6

The Consciousness of Life is Creative

The beauty and wealth of the life of the earth is its diversity. "...Two billion different kinds of organisms have at one time or other inhabited the earth."7 The creativity of life forms is such that some live at the bottom of the ocean and some in the coldest arctic regions. The diversity of forms and the diverse ways in which they cooperate together to form one unity demonstrates overwhelming, creative intelligence. The "evolutionary transformations" show this creativity. There are huge disjuncts in the proliferation of the forms. Such a disjunct is the transformation from the spore bearing plants to the flowering plants that appeared, suddenly, worldwide. Gerbert Grohmann in his study of plant form, entitled The Plant, states, "To conclude - as the evolution theory does - that lower forms of life developed into higher ones means to get lost in theories and thereby violate the fundamentals of science. We have proof of the fact that the higher organisms follow after the lower ones, not that they descend from them."8

Augros and Stanciu say that:

"Whole new orders appear suddenly and simultaneously, with no evidence of intermediate stages. These sudden bursts of new flora and fauna, so typical of the fossil data, are called radiations since the ancestral stock develops at one time many new body plans and diversifies in several directions at once. Mammals are a fine example. During the early Cenozoic era some 50 million years ago, mammals suddenly diverged into about twenty-four different orders ranging from bats to whales, kangaroos to elephants, and rodents to rhinoceroses."

"The pattern, then, is great clusters of diversified organisms appearing like Athena, full-blown from the head of Zeus. This typical pattern of radiation dramatically contradicts Darwinian gradualism. Darwin himself recognized this and called the sudden appearance and early diversity of flowering plants 'an abominable mystery.' "9

Mechanistic theories such as Darwin's gradualism or the doctrine of uniformitarianism (slow earth changes over long periods of time) in geology, have endured not so much because of the logic of the theory but that they fit the prevailing social ideology so well. The increasingly "powerful" civilized human, "man the toolmaker," acting on inert, mindless matter is a welcomed image. The conscious power of an intelligent and balanced earth that creates the forms of life, in which the human is one, is not welcome news. To think that all of the life forms are part of the whole intelligent life of Earth like all of the forms in a cell are part of a cell's life, would frame a new ethical view. That image would come dangerously near causing us and the empire to question our way of life.

The mechanists of science have gone to great lengths to suggest that life has little power of conscious creativity. Their efforts to deny that animals think is laughable to anyone who has lived on a farm or ranch. Another intellectual sleight of hand is the creation of the concept of instinct. Instinct is a meaningless word that has long served the mechanists as an explanation for what could not at the time be explained or admitted. Is the honey bee society so conscious and intelligent in its own way that it can do the activities and constructions that it does? No, is the mechanist reply, "it's instinct." In creating new human culture we will be creating an assemblage of ideas, a thought form, which will be linked with biology. An expanded view will be taken of what mind is and how it fits with culture, biology and the earth.

The Psychobiological Perspective

The mind-set of industrial culture is conditioned by the cult of scientism. The reductionist view that matter is the only reality has become the cultural "common-sense" view. This is not in fact what the scientific method says. Empirical science observes, measures, quantifies and performs tests on things, with the understanding that the "things" have to be matter or none of this could be done. The actual scientific method makes no comment on anything outside the realm of matter that it tests. What has happened is that the body of repeatable experiments and "scientific laws" (one must be aware there is much dubious material travelling under this banner) has been raised to the level of "truth" and dogma. Science has become the bible by which truth and reality is verified by a mass culture influenced by years of classroom conditioning. Love, creativity, hope, consciousness, in fact much of the real non-material reality of life and activity has been relegated to insignificance by the cult of science.

The quest for power (military and other) through science has become the central focus of the industrial empire. In the broad view, science is the means to power whereby the empire culture more efficiently extorts the life force of the planet. (Scientific agriculture does not concentrate on building the life of the soil; it concentrates on producing heavier tonnages for market). The reality that science is an integral component of the imperial social system is shown by the fact that more than half of the working scientists of the U.S. are employed in the military-industrial sector. This is hardly a dispassionate search for truth, as the propagandists would have it. The scientific establishment is deeply implicated in the social apparatus of coercion and death as a means of political control.

The control of the public definition of reality- what humans are, what nature is, even the definition of life itself- is not just a matter of scientific dialogue, it is an item of central importance to the power of empire itself. If the context of reality in the public mind is narrowed to a chemical reaction, people will more willingly march in lock step than if they were to realize the mystery, awe and immensity of reality. If the public is conditioned to believe that humans are with original sin, have an African primate genesis that is vicious and brutal, they will be more willing to agree to a military/police state. It will be just "common sense" to them that humans are so brutal that they can only be controlled by strong governmental force. If the public were to understand that each of us is a conscious being living within other conscious beings, such as Gaia, the whole life of the earth, the purpose of public life would change. This would threaten the status of the scientific/military/industrial elites who now control and profit from the production of material goods and the control of money.

Materialist science, is a cult. It is a mass social institution and also a method of knowing. It continues the split between Being and Doing and between body and mind. When we look at Natural cultures we see great attention to Being- in relationship to the world. When we look at the scientific ideology we see great attention devoted to abstracted Doing, with little attention paid to our inherent being. Da Free John (a.k.a., Franklin Jones) summarizes this difference which underlies the struggle of empire to control the life of the earth:

"The scientific establishment has been organized in league with the highest levels of concentrated political, economic and propagandistic power in the world today. Science is simply the primary method of knowing in modern societies, and its rule is established in no less an irrational and authoritarian manner than was the case with any religious or philosophical principle that ruled societies in the past.

"The method of science has now become a style of existence, a mood or strategy of relating to the world and to other human beings. That method now describes the conventional posture taken by 'Everyman' in every form of his relationship to the conditions of existence. Science has become a world-view, a presumption about the World-Process itself. It has become a religion, although a false one. And modern societies are Cults of this new religion. Can this new religion establish us as individuals and communities in right relationship to each other and to the World-Process? Absolutely not! Science is only a method of inquiry, or knowing about. It is not itself the right, true, or inherent form of our relationship to the conditions of existence, we cannot account for existence itself. And we are, regardless of our personal and present state of knowledge about the natural mechanics of the world, always responsible for our right relationship to the various conditions of experience, to the beings with whom we exist in this world, and to the World-Process as a whole. Relationship is inherently and perpetually a matter of individual responsibility, founded in intuition, prior to the analytical mind."10

The cult of scientism and empire has brought us to the brink of the death of the planet and the cult figures have no adequate response. The sad, one-dimensional leaders of empire challenge any new strategy meant to lead to health. If they don't like ecological restoration, what do they have to offer our collective grandchildren? If they don't like permaculture, let them then defend industrial agriculture. If they don't like population control, let's hear from them what they have to offer in view of the reality that we all see. Every patriarch in a position of power in every mass institution bears responsibility. It is obvious now that their refrain of growth and material wealth is not the answer.

We need to maintain perspective on the cult of scientism. It is discredited by its works. We live on a rapidly dying planet. We can't let the group that has led us to the brink of annihilation convince us that more of the same is a solution.

All Is Mind

The philosophical materialists of the modern empire, including mechanist/reductionist science, Marxist and Capitalist political theory and even such things as modern industrial medicine, would have us believe that we are simply the manifestation of chemical reactions in the cells. In the estimation of the philosophical materialist, the knowledge that seeds have of when and where to germinate, the migration of birds, the complex self-regulation of organic bodies comes about because of chemical reactions. They assume that consciousness is a result of chemical reactions in the brain.

This, we would say is part of the whole accomplishment of empire culture to denature and de-sacralize life to the point of meaninglessness. If we are conditioned to experience our lives as only marginally meaningful, we certainly will invest little meaning in the life around us. The awe, mystery and wonder of the teeming life of our earth is reduced to a meaningless movement of substance.

Yet it is precisely the non-material that makes life real and meaningful. The test is in our awareness. Do we intuitively feel that our conscious awareness is some unexplained process of chemical and electrical reactions? It is joy, ecstasy, love and other feelings that make life worth living. In opposition to the dry pronouncements of science there is a rich fund of inherited wisdom. The large bulk of forager/hunters and aboriginals say they perceive a non-material, spiritual reality. They give varied impressions and descriptions of non-material dimensions.

Hindu yogis of ancient tradition, Hermeticists and others assert that All is Mind.11 All is mind say the ancients. Form is created by the imaging power of consciousness. Form is created using consciousness as material. Consciousness is light. Form is congealed light vibrating at a lesser vibration than pure light.

When one looks out into the cosmos at night, one sees points of light. This light is the refraction of pure light striking the cells in our eyes. We know intellectually that the cosmos is full of pure light going in all directions from those stars but most of us cannot perceive that light that is not first refracted from something material. We see darkness. 

From the Unseen to the Seen: The Manifestation of Material Reality in the Hopi View

We picture reality and its meaning through language. The inspection of the languages of different cultures reveal that each lives in radically different worlds. The semanticist Stuart Chase says, "There is no one metaphysical pool of universal thought. Speakers of different languages see the Cosmos differently, evaluate it differently, sometimes not by much, sometimes widely. Thinking is relative to the language learned." The languages of the worldwide materialist empire, which are generally Indo-European languages, contain world pictures. They contain specifications of what a human is and contain specifications of what each human should aspire to become, in a linear manner. All of these word images are conditioning agents of the worldview held by the culture of empire.

On the other hand, the Hopi belong to a loose language group called Uto-Aztecan. Their language reveals a world that is much different than our own and to show the contrast, their language is closer to the concepts in Einstein's Theory of Relativity. According to some physicists, the Hopi language could have been used to express Einstein's theory that at present can only be fully described in mathematics.

Because this whole matter of linearity and linear increase as a cultural fundamental is so important it is productive to contrast the Hopi view with the one in our own heads. All humans are involved with the concept of time, or duration. One type of time is psychological time, which the Hopi would emphasize. This is duration as we experience it in consciousness, our conscious experience of what was and what is now. All of us have experienced altered states of consciousness to some degree and know that our experience of duration changes according to our level of concentration and other factors. The other concept of time is actually measurement. When we look at a watch we are looking at a measurement of cosmic movement. The circulation of our planet around the sun is divided into months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, seconds and so forth. The time on the watch face is not psychological time but the measurement of distance- the earth's travel and thus often, is not the time that we experience.

To the Hopi, there is the reality of the Here and Now manifest material world and then there is the unseen, not yet manifest reality from whence this present world came. In this part especially, the Hopi view reflects the basic pattern of our ancient cultural view that the material world is manifest from an unseen spiritual world with which we can be in communication and which we can influence according to our thought and behavior. Philosophy students will remember Plato's Idealism. This is a refined reflection of the view that was general in Natural culture. In Plato's view the material world with all of its forms is a more or less imperfect reflection of perfect ideas of form held in unmanifest dimensions of Being.

In any language into which this document could be successfully translated, there will be the concept of linear time. There will be past, present and future. This is the very psychological cornerstone of the myth of linear increase. Nonetheless in the linear time that is measured by distance of planetary travel, the earth doesn't really go anywhere but around in circles. Our mental appreciation of "time" that we gained from that measurement is turned into a linear progression that we think of mentally as starting in the remote past and moving through to a remote future in a linear manner.

Benjamin Lee Whorf, one of the early scholars of linguistics, examined the Hopi language intensely. He describes what he discovered of Hopi metaphysics:

"The metaphysics underlying our own language, thinking, and modern culture (I speak not of the recent and quite different relativity metaphysics of modern science) imposes upon the universe two grand COSMIC FORMS, space and time; static three-dimensional infinite space, and kinetic one-dimensional uniformly and perpetually flowing time-two utterly separate and unconnected aspects of reality (according to this familiar way of thinking). The flowing realm of time is, in turn, the subject of a threefold division: past, present and future.

"The Hopi metaphysics also has its cosmic forms comparable to these in scale and scope. What are they? It imposes upon the universe two grand cosmic forms, which as a first approximation in terminology we may call MANIFESTED and MANIFESTING (or, UNMANIFEST) or, again, OBJECTIVE and SUBJECTIVE. The objective or manifested comprises all that is or has been accessible to the senses, the historical physical universe, in fact, with no attempt to distinguish between present and past, but excluding everything that we call future. The subjective or manifesting comprises all that we call future, BUT NOT MERELY THIS; it includes equally and indistinguishably all that we call mental-everything that appears or exists in the mind, or, as the Hopi would prefer to say, in the HEART, not only the heart of man, but the heart of animals, plants, and things, and behind and within all forms and appearances of nature in the heart of nature, and by an implication and extension which has been felt by more than one anthropologist, yet would hardly ever be spoken of by a Hopi himself, so charged is the idea with religious and magical awesomeness, in the very heart of the Cosmos itself. The subjective realm (subjective from our viewpoint, but intensely real and quivering with life, power, and potency to the Hopi) embraces not only our FUTURE, much of which the Hopi regards as more or less predestined in essence if not in exact form, but also all mentality, intellection, and emotion, the essence and typical form of which is the striving of purposeful desire, intelligent in character, toward manifestation-a manifestation which is much resisted and delayed, but in some form or other is inevitable. It is the realm of expectancy, of desire and purpose, of vitalizing life, of efficient causes, of thought thinking itself out from an inner realm (the Hopian Heart) into manifestation. It is in a dynamic state, yet not a state of motion-it is not advancing toward us out of a future, but ALREADY WITH US in vital and mental form, and its dynamism is at work in the field of eventuating or manifesting, evolving without motion from the subjective by degrees to a result which is the objective."12

The world of the Hopi is manifest or unmanifest. The manifest is that which has been "made", "solidified." That which is not yet "made" nonetheless exists in potential, in a world that is yet to work itself out into the objective "hardness" of this objective world. The Hopis in their effort to maintain the "balance" of the world, "work" on the inner subjective in the Kivas. Later, they will do the same in the elaborate ceremonials in the village plazas. They do this in order to "help" that which will become "made" in the objective world. A fundamental understanding of Hopi, and generally most Natural cultures, is that each person and tribe are conscious participants in the consciousness of the whole world. Thus the thinking, intention and balance of each person and tribe has an effect on the balance of the life of the whole. This is one of the aspects of what the Hopi mean when they say they are keeping the world in balance. The meaning of this statement is not that they are keeping the north and south poles in their places. The statement is a simplification of a vast complex of meanings involved with the balances and manifestation of life.

The culture of empire has made the ability to create tools that more and more efficiently extort the life force of the earth, the basis of judgement of what peoples are "advanced" along the linear road and what peoples are not. When we look at the complexity of languages we see another way of viewing the richness of human culture. From a linguistic point of view, Whorf says:

"It causes us to transcend the boundaries of local cultures, nationalities, physical peculiarities dubbed "race," and to find that in their linguistic systems, though these systems differ widely, yet in the order, harmony, and beauty of the systems, and in their respective subtleties and penetrating analysis of reality, all men are equal. This fact is independent of the state of evolution as regards material culture, savagery, civilization, moral or ethical development, etc., a thing most surprising to the cultured European, a thing shocking to him, indeed a bitter pill! But it is true; the crudest savage may unconsciously manipulate with effortless ease a linguistic system so intricate, manifoldly systematized, and intellectually difficult that it requires the lifetime study of our greatest scholars to describe its workings."13

One does not think about the structure of the language that one is using when a conversation is going on and neither does one think of the subconscious assumptions of culture contained in the language. In 1975, Dr. Freda Morris, clinical hypnotherapist and author of Hypnosis With Friends & Lovers, first began discussing the hypnotic nature of acculturation. In a recent book she says, "The absorption of our own cultural traits as we grow up is itself a process of slow hypnosis-as powerful posthypnotic suggestions are built up by the slow deep implantation of certain cues that vary from culture to culture."14

The Illusion of Matter

The cosmos is energy in motion. As some recent physicists say there is no "thing" there- in matter. Those "things" wearing the labels of neutrons, electrons, quarks and so forth are simply energy in motion at such speed that to us it appears hard and real. "THE ALL is MIND; The Universe is Mental," declares the Kybalion, an esoteric text of ancient lineage. "Nothing rests; everything moves; everything vibrates," it says.15

Form, is held in consciousness. Form is held in consciousness by the memory power of mind. Just as the operations of typewriting or piano playing are at first highly conscious but then become habits on a less conscious level, it is proposed that biological form exists in cosmic consciousness as "habits of mind."

Although orthodox biology has been dominated by the mechanist/reductionist and Darwinian schools of thought there have been a few Vitalist biologists through the years maintaining that, in addition to matter, there is a non-material, vital element present in life. Through each decade there have been a few of these biologists on the periphery of orthodoxy. Recently new developments, that could be looked upon as related to Vitalism, have occurred in biology. These researchers seek to explain the elaboration of the form of each organism by means other than the physio-chemical. Rupert Sheldrake has created a body of thought concerning fields leading to the creation of biological form.

Sheldrake participates in a school of thought called Morphic Resonance. The biologists of this school say that biological form is created by immaterial morphic fields, fields of force that create forms. Sheldrake advances this notion in two recent books, A New Science of Life: The Hypothesis of Formative Causation (1985) and The Presence of the Past; Morphic Resonance and the Habits of Nature, (1988).16 

What is it that Creates Forms?

A serious problem has existed for the mechanist scientists for many years in their attempts to explain the development of form from embryo to maturity. What is it that guides the development of the form? What is it that holds the form in its shape as the cells and other substances change in the body? Recently the lay persons have been led to believe that it is the DNA code that does this, but when we get down to specifics, we find that the genetic researchers do not go so far as to say that DNA completely controls the development of form. They only say that DNA is related to the final characteristics of form. The DNA in the arm is the exact copy of the DNA in the leg. They are duplicates; there is nothing different in them that could explain the differential development of the form of the arm or leg. Recently science commentators have compared the DNA code to a computer program and have made the analogy from the computer codes, to the computer output, but even here, in this case, some person created the computer and the software.

Author Edward W. Russell wrote the book, The Fields of Life, which discusses the work of Dr. Harold Saxton Burr, which concerns immaterial force fields that participate in creating biological form. Russell points to the logical problems involved in the confusion of the creation of form and DNA. He states:

"A part cannot be a matrix for a whole; a simple design cannot be a blue-print for a more complicated one. As a functioning organization, the body is more than the sum of its components. Genes and DNA molecules are simpler organizations than the organization of the body as a whole.

"It is true that DNA-fans credit molecules with anthropomorphic powers, in much the same way as primitive tribes attribute human attributes to idols of stone or wood. They solemnly assure us that Molecule A has all the information needed for heredity, that Molecule B passes this on to the cells while Molecule C assesses the needs of the cells and restrains A and B from getting too enthusiastic. But nobody has so far explained how Molecule A got the information in the first place, how Molecule B distributes it and how Molecule C can judge anything, let alone check A and B."17

Author Richard Moss, a medical doctor reports on this matter of the development of the form of fetuses:

"...There have been experiments with the developing frog embryo where, at a point in its development when it has begun to differentiate the left and right arm buds, the embryo can be cut in such a way as to rotate the arm buds. The left arm bud ends up on the right and the right arm bud is on the left. Yet, instead of going on to develop the displaced left and right arms, the embryo matures and that which began as a left arm turns into a right arm and that which would have been a right arm turns into a left arm.

"There is nothing in the genetic material as we understand it that should account for the interruption of a normal process by a human experimenter. If life unfolds simply through the material maintained in the genetic pattern then this realignment should not occur."18 

Cells are individual conscious entities that participate in collective consciousnesses at various levels. There are many varieties of one-celled beings who do not live in cell communities but spend their lives free and self-regulating. When cells join in cooperative association they do not lose consciousness any more than a fish in a school. Although not popularized by the mechanist orthodoxies of the universities, there is a body of empirical evidence indicating that there is more to organism than simply chemical reactions. Dr. Harold Saxton Burr has spent much of his life experimenting with electrical fields that envelop all organic forms. We need keep in mind that all form is of a field nature. When we put iron filings around a magnet we see the shape of an immaterial field. When we examine matter we see an atomic field that assumes many forms. The nature of form is that it has boundary. Organic forms have the familiar material boundaries (skin) that we see and then there is an electrical envelope outside this boundary that has been studied by Dr. H.S. Burr. This envelope is an extremely weak, direct current electrical field, extending out less than an inch. This field exists around all organic forms. There are also other energy fields such as the alternating current fields of electricity extending out from various regions of the human body, but none of these encompass the whole body. Dr. Burr was interested not so much by the fact that such a field exists but by the fluctuation of energy potential in these fields, which resonated with terrestrial and extra-terrestrial events. By monitoring the direct current field around living things, Dr. Burr found that the change in potential energy of this field correlates with specific events both internal and external to the body. This energy field that Burr studied is the same as the energy field that is monitored by the lie detector (Electro-Galvanic Skin Response Machine). The lie detector monitors fluctuations of the emotions. It is important to note that the field of electricity itself is probably not the emotion but a by-product of its functioning. The symptomatic fluctuation makes it possible to monitor the actual phenomenon. By his study, Burr found that each of us is a participant in the metabolism of the solar body through this field. Fluctuations in energy potential of this direct current field correlate with the lunar cycle and the sun spot cycle. He also discovered that by monitoring the field, the ovulation of the human female could be spotted exactly, a matter of extreme importance to the human family. The electrical monitoring indicates an immaterial force that both controls and is controlled by the material. It is an integrated whole. It has long been a question in biology of how the form of cellular organization maintains itself while the substance changes. The question of how the cells of the foetus create the form of the child or the cells of an organ recreate its form after an injury has remained a mystery. Living organisms are a flow system with intake of material being transformed into proteins, cells and fluids. The rule of thumb is that the entire human body is cellularly replaced in a seven-year period. Although the materials of the body are in constant flux, the form of the whole does not change, except slowly with age.

Dr. Burr found that the control field, which he was monitoring electrically, is a guiding field, or more specifically a partially guiding field. He sets out a hypothesis that he states in the following manner:

"The pattern or organization of any biological system is established by a complex electro-dynamic field which is in part determined by its atomic physio-chemical components and which in part determines the behavior and orientation of those components. This field is electrical in the physical sense and by its properties relates the entities of the biological system in a characteristic pattern and is itself, in part, a result of the existence of those entities. It determines and is determined by the components.

"More than establishing pattern, it must maintain pattern in the midst of a physio-chemical flux. Therefore, it must regulate and control living things. It must be the mechanism, the outcome of whose activity is wholeness, organization, and continuity."19 

Burr's research led him to the discovery that by monitoring the energy field he could determine the longitudinal axis (spinal column) of an unfertilized salamander egg. As he monitored it after fertilization his monitoring of the immaterial guiding field indicated that the spinal column remained congruous with the electrical polarity throughout its development. That is, the guiding field was there before fertilization and remained there as the guiding field, as the biological form unfolded. Burr went further and demonstrated that the guiding field not only participates in guiding the development of form but also is always at work with the living organism. Burr used a rudimentary protoplasmic being called plasmodium for his experiment that indicated activity in the immaterial field before activity was seen in the material. He explains:

"Under the microscope, it is simple to demonstrate that every 60 or 90 seconds the protoplasm in the veins reverses the direction of flow. The electrical pickup from the vein, combined with the moving picture, reveals that in the majority of instances polar reversal of the voltage occurs before there is a directional change of the plasmic flow, but also there are many instances where the change in both phenomena seem to occur simultaneously."20

Although Burr's work never gained the attention of the orthodox, whose view would deny this possibility, it nonetheless gives us a direction to proceed. What Burr's work indicates is that we are intimately involved with unseen fields of energy. With Burr's methods of monitoring, the depth of a trance state can be followed while a person is in hypnosis. In the experiments done with hypnosis, Burr and his associates found that having the hypnotized subject remember highly emotional situations caused the electrical field to change (therefore its value as a lie-detector). Burr also found the cosmic fluctuations of moon cycle; sun cycle and sunspots caused changes in the electrical potential of field, thus giving us evidence of the intimate connection of our bodies and emotions to cosmic events. In addition to being simply another piece of evidence that everything is connected, the Burr material shows an interaction between a force field that can be monitored by its electrical side effect and the physical organism. It suggests even further that important aspects of the control of the material form exists in this field.

The Creation of Form - Morphic Resonance

Mechanistic science does not emphasize consciousness. Consciousness and any of its possibilities are unmentioned aspects of life that still are left in mystery. For example the kind of problem that might come up is how to explain memory. The molecules, especially proteins, of our bodies are replaced in days or months, at most. So how does the memory of early childhood continue to exist in the proteins of the brain cells of an elderly person? Is it encoded somehow in a chemical reaction? Mechanistic science because it does not acknowledge the immaterial will not consider consciousness and its abilities, but continues to dissect brains and molecules attempting to fashion an answer. With his hypothesis of formative causation Rupert Sheldrake has pointed a way out of the dead-end and looks at "effects" then argues back to causes. Though he does not mention consciousness, he suggests fields as an explanatory term. Sheldrake says that fields are non-material regions of influence and he points to gravity as an illustration of this. Gravity holds us to the earth. Because of the precise force of its pull our own bone structure is engineered. If our bones were longer or thinner or of weaker substance we would not be able to function on the surface of the earth. In this manner this field structures us and all other things on the earth's surface.

The energy field of the solar system has been discussed. This field with its many different types of energies certainly has an effect on the forms within it, such as the nature of biological life on earth.

Electro-magnetic fields are familiar non-material force fields. These fields of electrical vibration bring us radio and television. Physicists measure electron fields, neutron fields and there are force fields even within atoms, they say. These recognized fields are non-material with effects in the material that can be experimentally measured. Though immaterial, these fields can be seen as controlling the material in some manner. Sheldrake says:

"The nature of fields is inevitably mysterious. According to modern physics, these entities are more fundamental than matter. Fields cannot be explained in terms of matter; rather, matter is explained in terms of energy within fields. Physics cannot explain the nature of the different kinds of fields in terms of anything else physical, unless it be in terms of a more fundamental unified field, such as the original cosmic field. But then this too is inexplicable-unless we assume it was created by God. And then God is inexplicable.

"We can, of course, assume that fields are as they are because they are determined by eternal mathematical laws, but then there is the same problem with these laws; how can we explain them?"21

In Sheldrake's thinking, the shape of each organism is guided by a morphogenic field. (The coming into being of form is morphogenesis). The morphogenic field of that organism resonates with the other fields of that species of organism that have gone before. Form resonates with form irrespective of the time frame in which it occurs. In his thinking, these fields are beyond our "normal" experience of space and time.

Each individual organism is in a guiding field that resonates with all others of that specific form that have gone before. Here Sheldrake says that the inherent capacity of memory and habit is instrumental. Just as many of our daily routines were learned with conscious attention but have now fallen below the level of conscious awareness and become habit, Sheldrake says it is memory and habit that are essential to the functioning of these formative fields of living things. The forms of organisms are in continual flux, says Sheldrake. As the flow of biological life goes on, new habits are slowly formed and go on to be incorporated into all newly developing organisms of that species. He offers many examples of the functioning of the morphic resonance of behavior patterns within species and a clear example is of the well documented development of a habit among a bird species residing in England, the blue tits.

Sheldrake says that in the case of the blue tits, they are very territorial, seldom straying more than a few miles from their breeding place. Yet a new habit resonated through the species all over England.

In Southampton, in 1921, a blue tit was observed to peck through the foil cap of a milk bottle, tear the foil back and drink from the bottle. The spread of this habit was recorded at regular intervals from 1930 to 1947. There are eleven species to which this habit has spread but it is most frequently confined to great tits, coal tits and blue tits. After the first observation of this "milk poaching," the habit was seen to spread rapidly through England where sometimes flocks of tits would follow milk delivery people through the neighborhoods waiting for the milk bottles to be put on people's porches. The detailed studies of this phenomenon show that the habit was independently "discovered" by individual tits 89 times in the British Isles. In the view of morphic resonance, this habit pattern resonated within the tit species and the pattern was then increasingly manifest by individual tits. During World War II milk deliveries in England stopped for the duration that was longer than the normal tit life span, yet when milk deliveries commenced again, tits all over England again began to take up the habit. After the war, "It seems certain that the habit was started in many different places by many individuals," researchers said. The habit also spread to Sweden, Denmark and Holland.22

The case of the blue tits is of behavioral form, or behavioral morphology. It also shows the resonance of habit over space and time. In the matter of the physical form itself, Sheldrake's other major point is that forms, themselves are habits of nature. We have the example of what in orthodox science is called "parallel evolution" which relates to habits of form. There are many examples of "evolutionary convergence" where biological forms from dissimilar species and different continents end up having similar or almost identical form or function- or both. There is also the popular illustration of the parallelism between the placental mammals and the marsupials of Australia. In Australia there is a marsupial flying phalanger that is almost a duplicate of a mammalian flying squirrel. In the southwestern U.S. there is a rodent called a kangaroo rat. In Australia there is a marsupial that is the same form. There is even a mole-like marsupial (except it has a chitinous beak like a duck-billed platypus) in Australia that lives and behaves like mammalian moles. The mechanists have gone through many intellectual contortions to explain these similarities but it is difficult when one assumes the life on earth to be "chance chemical reactions." Morphic resonance on the other hand gives us a much better tool with which to think about this subject. The group consciousness of aggregates of discrete, individual organisms further shows that there must be something other than chemical reactions directing organisms. There are many invertebrate organisms that live in colonies such as anthills or beehives that are so highly organized and differentiated that they appear to be unitary organisms. Sheldrake points to the order Siphonophora which resemble the unitary, multicellular jellyfish but contrarily, are actually made up of individual organisms acting in concert. These assemblages live in open oceans. He says that Nanomia, a member of this order;

"...consists of many specialized individual organisms. At the top is an individual modified into a gas-filled float. Below it are organisms that act like little bellows, squirting out jets of water which propel the colony; by altering the shape of their openings they are able to alter the direction of the jets. Through their co-ordinated action the Nanomia colony is able to dart about vigorously, moving at any angle and in any plane, even executing loop-the-loop curves. Lower on the stem there are other organisms which are specialized for the ingestion and digestion of nutrients for the rest of the colony. Long branched tentacles arise from them and are used to capture prey. There are also bracts, consisting of inert, scalelike organisms that fit over the stem and help protect it from physical damage. Finally, there are sexual organisms, which produce gametes which through fertilization can give rise to new colonies."23

With Nanomia we have the extreme blurring of the distinction between colony organization and "unitary organism." We see also the difficulty of explaining how all of these "individual unitary organisms" instantaneously coordinate if all they are is a mass of chemical reactions. The Nanomia poses some difficulty of explanation for the DNA influenced mechanist but none for a viewpoint of morphic resonance where fields are "nested" within fields. A molecule is a community metabolism, a cell is a community metabolism, and so forth for groups of cells as organs and organs as bodies, insect communities, particularly ants and termites, and we then carry this cooperative metabolism through whole ecosystems, ultimately to the being of the planet itself.

There are many examples of group consciousness in the natural world. Another fascinating group being is in the family of fungi. It is Dictyostelium discoidium, a slime mold. Individual organisms of this species live spread out in local areas of a forest floor where they live separately, and survive by eating bacteria. Each of them is about 5 microns in diameter, which means it would take some 200 of them to cover the dot of an "i." Because of their size, researchers say, to move twelve inches would be like a seventy-mile trip for humans.

After some generations of moving about feeding on bacteria, the organisms' food supply becomes exhausted. When this happens a hormone-type substance is released from a few key individuals which constitutes a signal and the individuals all head for that spot. Then, they mass into a clump that may number 100,000 individuals, measuring a few millimeters across. When the mass is assembled it resembles a slug complete with individuals that function as "eyes" and others who serve as "feet." When all is ready, the slug goes off across the forest floor looking for greener pastures, travelling on a coat of "slime" that the assembled group excretes. When it reaches an area to its liking it tips up on end and the slug changes into a form resembling a tiny mushroom with a long thin stalk. When it has achieved this new, similarly highly organized and complex structure, the small bulb at the top of the stalk emits spores, which begin a new cycle of individuals who multiply both by splitting and sometimes by sexual congress. Biologists have learned that the voluntary assembly of the slug can be artificially broken apart and the individuals can go back to being individuals if there is food nearby but, by the time the slug reaches the stalk and spore cap form, the individuals cannot return to their previous life as individuals. After reaching this point when spores are put out to create the new generations, the old body with all of its individuals dies.

Here again the importance of consciousness is dealt with in biological functioning. The slime mold and Nanomia are examples where the distinction between individual and group consciousness becomes very blurred. Nonetheless the primacy of consciousness in each individual is paramount in order to coordinate the physical actions of the colonial being and its group consciousness.

It has been proposed that the earth is a conscious entity as are all biological forms and that the consciousness of individuals can co-mingle in community, or colonial beings. It is plain that the colonial organisms have a purpose (to continue their lives by feeding themselves) and there are indications that Gaia itself has purposive intent.

Human scholarship has not focussed on the functioning of conscious wholes the way it has focussed on the behavior of the inert parts in atomic physics and molecular chemistry. Even so, we do have some hints that the consciousness of the whole earth functions even in an anticipatory way.

Does the Life of the Earth Have A Plan?

Gerbert Grohmann, who was a student of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and of Rudolph Steiner, suggests that biological form, when looked at as a project of the planetary whole, has undergone simultaneous change across the whole world at the same time. There have been periods during the development of biological forms on the earth during which form changed en mass. An example is the leap from spore bearing to coniferous and then to flowering plants. This is akin to the body of the earth undergoing transformation. These periods represent leaps in the change of biological form. Pertaining to the plant family Grohmann says:

"All phylogenetic [phylum=race or strain] development is discontinuous. Leaps are made and gaps divide the different stages. The facts demonstrate this clearly. The materialistic principle of the continuity of substance and force applied to the history of evolution inevitably leads to contradictions. The crest of the first wave of the development of plants growing in soil is the carboniferous flora; however, with the end of the Paleozoic Era, which for the plant kingdom lies between the Lower New Red Sandstone and the Permian Limestone period, this highly developed flora with its many very distinct species has vanished almost completely. One could hardly have a more impressive fact than this. After the Triassic Red Sandstone period, which is characterized by its scanty plant growth, a new beginning is made: the flora of the Mesophytic Era. The former vegetation, however, did not develop further.

"During the Mesophytic Era we again find highly developed plants of a special character, particularly in the Jurassic and Chalk formations. But this climax is also an end. In the Upper Chalk the rich variety of forms has disappeared. Suddenly, flowering plants spring up without warning, simultaneously in many different parts of the world. We need not violate palaeontological facts in order to find, for each of these great periods, one characteristic plant organ. In the carboniferous period it is the leafy vegetative shoot, corresponding to the fern. In the middle period (Mesophytic), with the predominance of conifers, Ginkgoes and Cycads, the leaf-stalk type of plant has risen to the stage of seed bearing. In the next period, Upper Chalk and Tertiary, the real flowering plant finally appears."24

Grohmann points out that the change of form occurs across the biological spectrum during these "evolutionary leaps." As the fern series comes to its end it begins to show form that is anticipatory of the cone bearing plants but the substance of the fern cannot carry the trajectory on because the actual tissue material could not sustain it. Grohmann says; "Organic evolution does not entail only progressive transformation of forms, but the very substance must be developed from stage to stage in order to create the conditions suitable for a certain level of organization."25

As the form of the fern reaches its end and it begins to develop form prophetic of the soon to appear cone bearing plants, the ferns do not continue to transform and become cone bearing plants. The ferns die out as predominant plants and new plants appear that are the cone bearing plants with substance organized appropriately to support the new form.

Grohmann's work points to avenues of thinking that are even beyond the morphic resonance of Sheldrake- that the resonance of form shows evidence of some plan that precedes the creation of form- anticipatory, creative thought on a grand scale. This goes beyond Sheldrake's careful documentation to suggest an active intelligence involved in creating the forms of life. What is being considered here is an inversion of the civilized perspective. What happens in consciousness is instrumental in events in the material, biological world. Without this understanding we will be greatly hindered in creating new human culture.

The Social Conditioning of Human Health

We of contemporary society have been conditioned with the image that health is a personal problem. Beyond that we are led to believe that health is a matter of chemistry. Being chemistry, health can then be ministered to by the vast establishment of the chemical/pharmaceutical industry. The medical establishment which is the third largest industry in the United States, just behind petroleum and war machines, is a direct expression of the structure and ideas of empire and the manner in which that culture relates to living things. Much like modern agriculture, the medical industry is a vast array of industrial institutions which produce chemicals, medical machinery, design and build hospitals with specialized architecture, produce computer programs for doctors offices, and operate massive medical education establishments and so forth. Because health care in the view of the scientific establishment, is chemistry, the focus of attention is on blood samples, tissue samples, biopsies and such. Within the system little attention is given to the person, their dietary habits, the air they breathe, their living conditions or other factors. The establishment exists for profit and the aggrandizement of those who direct it. The personal life and well being of the client is unimportant. It is chemistry (called molecular medicine in the trade) that the medical establishment focuses upon. In fact, within the functional operation of the medical establishment the more unhealthy the population, the higher the profits. For decades the damage from birth trauma caused by hospital birthing practices have been known. Little has changed because those practices are there for the convenience and efficiency of the institution itself.

Public health researchers, by and large, are not part of the medical establishment. They have a much more holistic perspective in that they look at the statistics of the health of whole populations. By looking at their work we begin to see to what extent the individual is shaped and conditioned by the group consciousness of the tribe or in this case a mass society. We begin to see that ideas held in the mind (culture) effect biological systems. We see the importance of creating new human culture with great attention.

The tumor body of empire is a planetary medical problem. It is progressive disintegration of the life system. The "material advancement" of "man the toolmaker" is held out to the public mind as a symbol of "progress." Meanwhile, in real terms, we have seen that health, diet and longevity severely declined when empire began.

The reality is that culture can condition us so that it actually causes disease. On the positive side of this we find that culture, if it is properly formed, can lead us to health and positive emotional condition.

Leonard A. Sagan, who is a scholar of Public Health, has authored a study that argues convincingly that individual health has little to do with industrial medicine but is a reflection of the quality of social experience. In his study, The Health of Nations: True Causes of Sickness and Well Being,26 Sagan demonstrates that the increase in population and longevity began before the rise of modern medicine, childhood death from infectious diseases began to decline long before anti-biotic chemicals and that modern medical care has little effect on public health. Sagan convincingly demonstrates that psychosocial changes have been responsible for the increase in life span and the increase in immunity. His study shows those social conditions directly effect human health. With the expansion of the World Empire, the economic condition of Europeans and those of the European colonies began to improve and the personal and social expectations of the people began to rise. The stability and strength of what we know as the "modern family" increased. The conditions of life of the Industrial Revolution period began to fall away as working people forced demands upon the elite for the eight hour day, better working conditions and a greater share in the social benefits. As the masses forced an opening in the social fabric, the people had more hope and aspiration in their lives. They began to throw off the slave psychology and hold themselves in more esteem, which is what Sagan sees as the key to personal health, a strong sense of self esteem built upon a social foundation that provides at least for the necessities of life. In the larger context this means that the elite of civilization, by sacrificing the life of the earth, have climbed back up to conditions Natural people already enjoyed. But what is being explored is how social conditions affect health.

Sagan shows that the decline in mortality rates began prior to the great sanitary movement of the nineteenth century. He states, 

"It was not the decline in infection that caused the decline in mortality rates but rather a decline in death rates of those who were infected."

High rates of infection persisted until very recent decades. The majority of deaths among infants are not due to microbiological agents transmitted through the food and water supply but rather are from microbiological agents commonly present in the environment; the deaths are the result of infection with viruses and other ubiquitous organisms, which will inevitably result among infants with lowered resistance.

"The decline in mortality from infectious diseases has been as dramatic among those diseases that are spread from person to person, such as tuberculosis, where sanitation efforts are ineffective, as among those that are spread through the food and water supply or through insect vectors."

Sagan continues by saying, "Finally, there is another explanation for the decline in deaths from infectious diseases, namely, an improvement in human resistance."27 Sagan introduces public health studies to show that modern medical care has little correlation with public health and that nutrition (above the malnutrition rate) does not correlate with public health. It will be a surprise to all of us who have been subjected to a lifetime of propaganda conditioning by the medical establishment that numerous studies show that the less food people have the healthier they are and statistically, the more doctors there are per capita in First World countries, the higher rises the infant mortality. A comparison of eighteen present industrial societies shows that higher infant mortality correlates with the increased number of doctors. Further, studies show that there is no correlation between public health expenditures and decline in death rates in these countries.28 To add another startling series of statistical studies, he points out that although there have been mortality rate changes concerned with specific organ sites, the risk of dying of cancer once it starts is no different than it was fifty years ago. The incidence of cancer has gone up tremendously but once one has cancer, the risk of dying of it has not changed in fifty years even given the tremendous investment in cancer research and treatment.

So what has caused the increase in health according to Sagan? His studies point to the increased strength of the nuclear family. In the larger context we saw the destruction of the tribe, the clan, extended family and finally the Industrial Revolution wiped out communal peasant existence. The slow climb back to simply a nuclear family for Europeans has been at the expense of the colonized world because of increased wealth trickling down to the masses in the imperial centers. Beginning with the Industrial Revolution and lasting up until well into twentieth century, what there was of family life was grim. Child labor took them out of the family at an early age. Labor hours for everyone were long and continuous; housing, wages and the conditions of life almost precluded a stable, nurturing family. Sagan points out that only recently has any attention been devoted toward the nurturing of infants and children. Many studies have shown that nurturing during infancy affects infant mortality, I.Q. levels, physical stature, and illness rates. The loss of one or both parents, indicating family influence, is even better known because of the greater ease of statistical comparison. For example, for a person who has lost both parents the suicide risk is seven times greater than a person from an intact family. In another study that Sagan cites, of college students who had been separated from a parent during childhood, nearly half had serious thoughts of suicide, whereas students who came from intact families only demonstrated a 10% incidence of such thoughts.

In a study from Johns Hopkins Medical School, 1,337 medical students were studied. In this study it was found that closeness to parents and the father's age (the older the father, the greater the incidence) at the time of the subject's birth strongly correlated with later suicide, mental illness and tumors. In a study at the University of Pittsburgh it was found that parental loss- death of a parent, separation or divorce of parents, correlated with a 25% increased chance of gastric neurosis, 35% for duodenal ulcer, 36% for psychoneurosis, 38% for alcoholism, 45% for rheumatoid arthritis, 55% for accidents, 55% for tuberculosis, 62% for delinquency and 70% for suicide.

Not only does early childhood experience in the family affect health and mortality but also the strength of the fabric of society affects the health of the family. In Natural culture the clan social environment was the norm. Now, the nearest thing approaching the clan is therapy and support groups. Though these groups have been only a fragile reflection of the clan, they are never the less of great aid to the individual members. Sagan finds that married people as a whole, have lower death rates than people of the same age who are single or widowed and the death rate for married persons is half that of divorced people. An elaborate study conducted in Alameda County, in northern California, clearly demonstrated that social isolation, "... Was associated with increased mortality from ischemic heart disease, cancer, cardiovascular diseases, and all other diagnoses, including suicide and accidental death."29 In reality living in the social conditions of an empire is as destructive to humans as war.

While the military is an instrument of war and death, in reality, simply the socialization it provides in human camaraderie actually decreases its member's mortality rates (outside the battlefield). Individuals who actually experience military society have better health ratings than others do. Sagan cites studies showing that, "... Mortality rates of servicemen are significantly below that of the U.S. population generally. For all personnel ages seventeen and over, the death rate is only 57 percent of that of non-military people of the same age."30 Another study, in Massachusetts, indicates the influence of social disintegration on health. It has shown a correlation between poverty, social isolation and cancer risk.

The relatively small group of people in industrial societies, who have statistically better health and longevity also have social advantages well above the norm, Sagan finds. This is the group who has a firm social foundation as infants, who have avenues of advancement and who have, because of social privilege or unusual families, been enabled to gain optimism and self esteem.

Studies from many industrial nations show that longevity is, looked at as a whole, a function of social class with the longest living group being the wealthiest. Studies in England, where universal health care has been in place a long time, show that the provision of health care makes little difference in these statistics, before or after the institution of a universal health care plan. Further to the point that health is a psychological matter influenced by social conditions, is the link between education and health. Sagan says:

"The mortality differences between those of the least and those of the highest [educational] achievement are very great, more so for women than for men, and are greatest among the middle-aged; females who have had four or more years of college have half the death rate experienced by those with little or no education. Differences in mortality among educational classes exist for a broad spectrum of diseases, the greatest differences occurring in deaths due to infectious diseases. Men with the least educational achievement experienced death from tuberculosis at a rate 776 percent higher than those with the highest educational level."31 

The link between mental-emotional state and health is much stronger than the simple wealth-health link Sagan says. "The studies seem to favor literacy as being directly linked to health rather than as a proxy for other variables. That is, the statistical association between literacy and health is consistently stronger than that between health and income."32

Following his review of social/personal health in modern industrial societies, Sagan details the personality attributes of those that live the longest and have the least illness. First, he says, they have a high level of self-esteem. They have a high regard for themselves but they are committed to goals other than their own personal welfare. These healthy people place high value on health and survival. They are future oriented. They are trusting and easily enter into social networks. They relish companionship, yet are not uncomfortable when alone and seek periods of contemplation and aloneness. Finally, he says that these people seek knowledge beyond formal education. He quotes Aaron Antonovsky of the Ben-Gurion University who says these people have a sense of coherence, a global orientation that expresses the extent to which one has a pervasive, enduring though dynamic feeling of confidence that one's internal and external environments are predictable and that there is a high probability that things will work out as well as can reasonably be expected."33

The pattern that is described fits well with what we know about the situation of forager/hunter tribes who relate to the ecological and spiritual whole around them.

Sagan shows quite adequately that health in a cosmic context is related to the question of identity and to positive emotional level. These factors exist in consciousness. Culture also exists in consciousness. An individual can be injured- the effect of the mind upon the body- simply by being conditioned into empire culture. The world industrial empire has passed the cusp of its development. The easily grasped "resources" are gone and the population explosion is in full acceleration. The flow of resources that floated the wealth of the First world populations up to the standard of Natural human culture are now declining and the disintegration of the family, especially in the U.S. is increasing. Sagan shows that the breakup of the nuclear family is showing a rapid increase, teenage pregnancy is increasing rapidly, as well as child abuse. All of these factors will have definite effects across the population. Sagan states that morbidity is increasing, particularly among children and that the evidence is that the health of the U.S. population is now going down. He concludes by saying, "As the modern nuclear family has come unglued, crime, suicide, and drug use have soared, just as have divorce and teenage pregnancy while scholastic achievement has declined. These associations and causal relationships have yet to be widely appreciated."34

The Medical Question of Identity

While Sagan offers the knowledge of a specialist concerning the statistics of health and social relationships, there is a larger context. This context is of true organic identity. We are seeing the rise of illness that is associated with psychological stress and with the autoimmune system. Psychological stress is a function of the reality one identifies with. If one is thoroughly conditioned and identifies closely with the immediate day to day social reality, such as the daily crises on television news programs, one experiences more stress than if one identifies oneself as an organic being functioning among other organic beings on the planet earth. In the case of the autoimmune system a deeper level of consciousness is at work. AIDS, cancer, allergies, asthma, candida albicans, lowered resistance to infection and other illnesses are related to the functioning of the autoimmune system. For example in the case of cancer, people get cancer every day. That is, a few cells in the body malfunction and do not replicate as they should. These cells are normally then consumed by the body. The consciousness of the body decides that they are not self- but other. The autoimmune system is directed by consciousness, not chemistry.

The same situation exists with the populations of the microorganism candida albicans. Normally, the population levels of the candida in our bodies are maintained at a beneficial level but in some cases, such as after over-doses of anti-biotics, the autoimmune system seems not to know its identity, the difference between self and other. When this happens the populations of candida explode without the autoimmune system controlling them. At that point serious illness develops. Here we have society and the person, living out of cosmic balance and then the vegetative consciousness of the individual body becoming out of balance. The problem on all three levels is that the being does not know what it is. Like the cancer cell, it has lost its sense of identity within the cosmic pattern.

Life and its consciousness cannot be fooled. We may act in an objectified, machine-like manner, we may begin to resemble the machine artifacts that we have created, we may even begin to believe that we can live in a machine culture with no more humanity than an internal combustion engine, but we cannot escape the fact that we are organic beings with a unique birthright and ancestry just like other species. What Sagan's material shows is the necessity of focussing on social environment in our new culture. There is also the necessity of having that social environment grounded in the pattern and principles of biological life. We must first know that we are within the body of Gaia. As we heal as a social body from the disease of empire, it is particularly the children upon whom we must focus. As we adults begin to create the new culture in a healing, therapeutic environment, we must be able to have fewer children but focus more attention on them.

We are discussing a leap that will be generations long. The present crisis is so profound that it will be many generations before "normalcy" returns. We are creating healing cultures whose basic patterns are such that we expect them to weather the events. It is the children and their children who will be living through this. We want these children to have the best possible opportunity. It is obvious from the material that has been examined that the clan structure is without doubt the most important ingredient in a person's later life. Given these considerations a new culture would be child centered and secondarily focussed on women of childbearing age. This is our hope for the future, the children. If we can function in therapeutic community to create a positive emotional environment and raise children without emotional crippling, then we will have provided the foundation for their lives.

It is not we who will be the final result of the cultural creation but they who must climb upon our shoulders, who will teach their children of the illness we have suffered and the positive direction that they must follow. In nurturing the children, we nurture the new culture. 

 

NOTES

1 The New Biology: Discovering The Wisdom In Nature. Robert Augros & George Stanciu. New Science Library. Shambala pub. Boston. 1988. pp.125,126.

2 ibid. p. 128.

3 Cycles: The Mysterious Forces That Trigger Events. Edward R. Dewey and Og Mandino. Hawthorn Books. New York. 1971. p. 200.

4 ibid. p. 89

5 ibid. p. 105.

6 ibid. p. 114.

7 ibid. p. 155.

8 The Plant. Gerbert Grohmann. Rudolf Steiner Press. London. 1974. p. 198.

9 Augros & Stanciu. The New Biology. op. cit. p. 173.

10 The Transmission Of Doubt: Talks and Essays on the Transcendence of Scientific Materialism through Radical Understanding. Da Free John. The Dawn Horse Press. Clearlake, Calif. 1984. pp. 95,96.

11 A view from modern physics is given in:

Space-time And Beyond: Toward An Explanation Of The Unexplainable. Bob Toben, in conversation with physicists Jack Sarfatti, Ph.D. and Fred Wolf, Ph.D. E.P. Dutton. New York. 1975.

Many examples are given in written works of yogis. A recent treatment is:

Nuclear Evolution: Discovery of the Rainbow Body. Christopher Hills. University of the Trees Press. Boulder Creek, Ca. 1977.

An example from Hermetic tradition is:

The Kybalion: A Study of The Hermetic Philosophy Of Ancient Egypt And Greece. by Three Initiates. The Yogi Publication Society. Masonic Temple. Chicago, Ill. 1936.

12 Language, Thought & Reality. Benjamin Lee Whorf. M.I.T. Pub. 1956. pp. 59,60.

13 ibid. pp. 263,264.

14 Hypnosis With Friends and Lovers. Freda Morris. Harper & Row. San Francisco. 1979. p. XIII.

15 The Kybalion. op. cit.

16 A New Science of Life: The Hypothesis of Formative Causation. Rupert Sheldrake. 2nd. ed. Blond & Briggs. London. 1985.

The Presence of the Past: Morphic Resonance and the Habits of Nature. Rupert Sheldrake. Times Books. New York. 1988.

17 Design For Destiny: Science Reveals the Soul. Edward W. Russell. Ballantine Books. New York. 1971. pp. 36,37.

18 The I That Is We. Richard Moss, M.D. Celestial Arts, pub. Berkeley, Ca. 1981. p. 31. 

19 The Fields of Life: Our Links With the Universe. Dr. Harold Saxton Burr. Ballentine Books. New York. 1972. p. 29.

20 ibid. p. 81.

21 Sheldrake. A New Science of Life. op. cit. p. 99.

22 ibid. pp.177-180.

23 ibid. p. 226.

24 The Plant: A Guide to Understanding its Nature. Gerbert Grohmann. Trans. K. Castelliz from Die Pflanze, Vol. I. Rudolf Steiner Press. London. 1974. pp.195,196.

25 ibid. p. 201.

26 The Health of Nations: True Causes of Sickness and Well Being. Leonard A. Sagan. Basic Books Inc. N.Y. N.Y. 1987.

27 ibid. p. 41.

28 ibid. p. 81.

29 ibid. pp. 135,136.

30 ibid. p. 138.

31 ibid. p. 175.

32 ibid. p. 177.

33 ibid. p. 188.

34 ibid. p. 110.

 
The Final Empire: Chapter 14

Culture as Organism

The Cultivated Life

Human culture is usually spoken of as the totality of ways of living of a people that are passed down the generations. Prior to the era of empires, human cultural knowledge was concerned in large part with the earth and its manifold life. Humans foraged upon the earth for their sustenance and the lore of the earth was their code of adaptation to that life. Their culture taught each generation how to live on the earth. Culture taught what to eat, how to eat it and when to eat it. Culture taught the ways to create shelter. Culture taught the meaning of the world, the explanation of what it is and how it came to be. Culture also taught how the tribe was to fit into that world. It taught the appropriate mating and the form of the extended family relationships. Importantly, it taught identity.

Human culture is an autonomous thought form, carried in the consciousness of the cultural members, which proceeds through time, more or less independently of any single individual. The culture is essentially held in the consciousness of individuals but those individuals do not create it. It is learned from the group. This flow of individuals through the cultural form is similar to the flow of individual cells through an organ. As individual cells are replaced in the body, the body maintains the integrity of its form and in a similar manner the cultural form maintains its integrity.

The meanings inherent in the English language indicate the ancient understanding of the process of culture. The words cult, culture, cultivar and cultivate all indicate a process of effort toward the continuance of the ideas and forms of life and knowledge. There is also the implication that the living things are learning and adapting. A cult is an assembling of people around some idea, especially a religious idea. It is a process in which the people learn certain ways of living and certain beliefs about the world. This body of knowledge is then passed on within the cult. When one cultivates a plant or crop, the living things are given attention and their lives are guided in certain ways. A variety of plant that has been cared for and whose optimum individuals have been selected over many generations is called a cultivar. "Domesticated" plants are cultivars.

This type of "cultivation" happens in the natural world. Of course there are no humans guiding the plant families and cultures, but families of plants do learn to modify their forms in order to adapt to the differing conditions of the earth. The willow-poplar-aspen tree family is a good example. This family is very important in semi-arid environments on the North American continent. They can propagate by seed transported by wind, water or animals. They can even propagate by pieces of themselves. For example, if a branch is torn off in a flood and comes to rest in a pile of flood debris, the branch will often take root and create a new colony. Once established, their main means of increase is by the root system. They establish a dense web of roots in an area and an upright tree or bush may grow out of any particular root area. 
This plant grows in stream courses or in areas where underground water is abundant and near the surface. Because flooding or fire, especially in the case of aspen, may clear off the above ground stems, the plant's continuance is based in the root system. If its above ground stems are cleared, it simply sends up new shoots. Its main body is the extensive root system underground. This important plant holds the soils of riparian habitats and also creates fertile micro-climates, adapting its shape and behavior to the amount of moisture it can get and to the elevation in which it grows, which relates then to the temperature that it must endure. 

Some members of the willow family are large in moist, hot, low elevations. As elevation increases or moisture decreases, the form of the plant will modify but the essential characteristics of the family remain. The modifications, each that have separate scientific names, vary, but the essential characteristics of the family are unchanged. The modifications of the family are the indication of the families' learning to adapt to different conditions. It is the indication of the family's culture. 

Opuntia, the familiar elephant ear cactus that grows the savory prickly pear fruits, is another example of a family with a rich culture. Opuntia will grow in a desert near sea level and up elevation to 6,500 feet. In some modifications in its low elevation desert home it can grow to ten feet tall, with wide and succulent leaves. In higher and colder elevations it may only grow six inches tall with small, shriveled leaves. It has acculturated itself throughout the variety of the land and its conditions. 
Animal culture shows this type of modification as their culture adapts to the differences of the land. In the past, some of the members of the bear family would be out on the Great Plains foraging on bison and elk carcasses. Others, especially the black and brown bears, would be high in the Rockies, concentrating on berries and insects. In the Pacific Northwest the bears would depend heavily on salmon runs. In the arctic the polar bears have a much different culture.

The salmon are an example of fish culture. They migrate from their birthplaces out to sea and then return after an extended period of time back to their exact place of birth to spawn. Individuals return to destinations, which are spread all over the watershed. Due to the differing of soils, moisture abundance and vegetation mix, the taste and smell of the water coming from their birthplace directs them home. Each of the different cultural groups such as coho, steelhead and sockeye have different times and styles in which they run to spawn in the upland streams, but each of their cultures show a similarity of adaptation to the earth.

Natural human culture has grown out of the earth as an adaptation to it. The earth, its life and metabolism has provided the pattern and ideas for human culture. Human cultures show a rich variety of adaptations to the differing conditions of the earth but the basic pattern of culture fits the basic life principles and pattern of the planetary life as a whole. The Natural cultures and their divisions were cultivated over eons of time. 

In the far north, where there is less sunlight and the lighter skin-colored people are found such as Lapps and Inuit (or Eskimo), the complex of culture is adapted to the cold and the darkness. The Lapps of northern Scandinavia, like the former Inuit, inland from the Hudson's Bay of Canada, have adapted to the deer family, reindeer and caribou, as their main energy source. Most of the other Inuit live from the sea.

In terms of Natural human cultures, there were people who lived primarily from the fish in the sea, cultures that were dependent upon the salmon runs of northern Europe, the British Isles, and both coasts of North America. There were cultures dependent upon massive deer and bison herds. There were the cultures of the complex rainforest ecosystems. Each of these variations of human culture was highly adapted and very ancient, as are the adaptations of the willow family or the prickly pear family. 

As the invasion of the world by the European Empire was ongoing, the Cossacks of Russia broke over the Ural Mountains into the Siberian region. At that time there were more than one hundred different cultural groups in the Siberian areas. Each of these groups was ecologically adapted to their local region and each had a different language or dialect and differing manners. This same condition obtained in California at the onset of the European invasion. Like the Siberian region, there were more than one hundred tribes in California differentiated into languages, dialects and ecological adaptations. If takes many thousands of years for languages and human social systems to differentiate into distinct groups. 

This shows that natural human existence offered stability over long periods of time and that warfare and tumult were not characteristic. When one views the intricacies of adaptation of the San in the Kalahari or the Inuit of the far north, it is apparent that the huge body of knowledge that enables these human cultures to adapt to such extremes was cultured over immense lengths of time.

Most people knowledgeable in the subject consider the rainforest regions to be the womb of organic life. Here light, temperature and moisture conditions have produced dense and complex patterns of life. Catherine Caulfield in her book In The Rainforest, explains that: 

"Between 40 and 50 percent of all types of living things - as many as five million species of plants, animals, and insects, - live in tropical rainforests, though they cover less than 2 percent of the globe.... Tropical forests contain from 20 to 86 species of trees per acre, whereas a temperate forest has only about 4 tree species per acre. The forests of the North American Temperate Zone have fewer than 400 species of trees.... Mount Makiliang, a forested volcano in the Philippines has more woody plant species than all of the United States. Tiny Panama has as many plant species as the whole continent of Europe." 1

The rainforest is also considered to be the womb of the human species. Many of the last remaining examples of our ancient human family exist in rainforest environments. These cultural groups have worked out intricate balances with the life around them. Many of them combine planting, gathering and hunting in their way of life. These cultural forms are without doubt the oldest and the most sophisticated on the planet in terms of their biological survival value, the ultimate test. 
Natural culture people live in a materially simple environment. Their food and shelter needs are simple and the tools that they need to accomplish this are few. This is especially true of nomadic people who would obviously keep any materials to a minimum because they would have to transport them. Transporting heavy loads of household goods, when the materials to create them existed everywhere would simply not make sense. This same functionalism applied to gaining food. 
Natural cultures sought food in the simplest way they could. They were not ideologically wed to hunting, gathering or planting but would use whatever was most efficient in any ecosystem. The White Mountain Apaches of the present State of Arizona, for example, were basically gatherer/hunters but they would plant at times, and they could be keen planters. On occasion a clan or larger group would stay in one area for a whole season to raise a crop. Others would return on the migratory gathering cycle to combine both gains. At other times seeds would be planted in certain areas from which harvests could be obtained when the group cycled back on the gathering route. 

In some seasons, in some ecosystems, planting would be more efficient than migrating. In some years of the climatic cycle, planting could be more efficient than hunting. Among the Jicarilla Apaches who formerly lived in the area of present northeastern New Mexico, there were band divisions who lived in two different ecosystems. The Olleros lived out on the edges of the Great Plains and were adapted to the herbivores there, the migratory herds. The Llaneros lived in the foothills and upper elevations of the Sangre de Cristo range. These groups would come together periodically, especially at fall harvest to share the gain of the seasons. In this way the bounty of a number of ecosystems circulated through the tribe.

We have some examples still remaining of highly complex rainforest acculturation that combined planting, gathering and hunting. Catherine Caulfield reports that:
"Ed Price, an agricultural economist who works for the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines, spent three years with small farmers in a village called Cale, in Batangas Province. Cale was not in the really steep and difficult highlands; it was more rolling hills, but there was no irrigation. In three years he identified more than 160 different crops and crop combinations grown by those farmers. They performed more than one hundred different technical operations. Whereas if you talk to a year-round irrigated rice farmer, he grows probably only one or two varieties of rice. And you can certainly number on two hands every operation he does to those crops. It's very simple, cut and dried. 

"But then, if you leap to tribal peoples in the hills, the agriculture is even more complex. They know the names of far more plants, and they grow far more plants. Their pest control strategies are more complex and their planting and harvesting timetables more finely tuned. They are more aware of wildlife in general. Forest species are one of their resources. In fact that is one of the distinguishing features of tribal people, that they depend partly on the forest itself for what they need. They forage, collect resin, gums, rattan, in addition to growing rice and other crops."

Caulfield gives an example of another tribal people who have the characteristic complex knowledge of their environment; "The Hanunoo people of the Philippines are hunter-gatherers who divide the plants in their territory into 1,600 categories, although botanists can only distinguish 1,200 species."2

One might say that natural human culture grew organically upon the life of the earth much like the culture of the willow family, opuntia or mountain lion. It fit into the energy pathways of the earth life much as an organ fits into a body. Human culture became part of the energy web of the living planet. The wisdom of Natural human culture is demonstrated by the endurance of the human family's adaptation over millions of years.

Culture is an Energy Code

All culture, even empire culture, contains an energy code. It informs the individual about what one eats, how one gains shelter and how one uses the materials of the earth for culturally important purposes. There is that part of the cultural knowledge that has to do with the practical everyday functions such as cooking, hunting and housekeeping. In a larger context there is the consideration of the environment and the culturally important stories, the myths and legends connected with it. This aspect of culture usually involves ceremonies and rituals having to do with such things as the seasons, the growth of life and the hunt. The encompassing cultural context is the cosmology. This framework of ideas is called by many names, myth, legend, story, religion and so forth. It gives an account of how material/immaterial creation came to be and what its purpose and meanings are- and the meanings of the human lives and destiny within it. This is the creation myth that sets the framework for that which has value and meaning. Human culture has an organic being of its own independent of any individual member of the cultural group. The culture and its teachings are the effective means by which the individual members maintain life. The culture sustains itself over time, though a succession of individuals is born and dies within it. Culture is a body of knowledge, a framework of ideas, and a thought form, held in the consciousness of individuals. 

The ideational thought form of culture is reflected in the material world. This reflection is the knowledge of how to build an atl-atl, bow and arrow or how to gather the acorns, leach out the acids and make them into a nutritious foodstuff. Culture teaches identity- one's place in the food chains, the biological energy pathways of the earth no less than the cultures of the willow varieties allow their adaptation to many environmental conditions.

The culture of humans and certain other mammals, we know without dispute, is held in conscious memory and we are suggesting that the culture of other biological forms result from morphic resonance. Life forms are a psychobiological phenomenon. Culture, whether it is plant, mammal or the culture of any biological form, is an organic and natural part of the life of the earth. Even in the case of the culture of empire it is organic, however pathological. Culture is part of the planetary life. It is not simply a human creation for humans. Many types of animals have an individually transmitted culture. That is, parents or older individuals of that family of beings transmit the culture to them. 

Most are familiar with the story of the baby lions that are taken from their parents at birth. Growing up with humans, the lions adapt somewhat to human culture but they do not learn their own. Therefore they cannot simply be let loose in the wilds or they will die. Specifically, they do not know how to hunt or what to hunt, as this knowledge is taught to them by their parents in nature. This phenomenon can be seen in mountain lions, bears, primates and many other animals that humans capture for pets. In the natural world each species carries an immaterial, ideational, thought form. The thought form is the energy code of the species life, or tribal life, that "informs" by generational transmission, the individual of its energy code of adaptation and survival. From the rainforests, the womb of humans and their culture, people ventured out onto the grassy plains and beyond. As they moved, their adaptation became refined to areas as difficult as the arctic and the Kalahari. 
The wisdom of adaptation allowed them to survive. Human cultural forms experienced diverse florescence. In many tribes, song, dance, ritual, and oral literature became so rich that specialists were needed to learn the many parts and many persons would be required in order to contain and transmit the whole tribal cultural form. In a world of living beauty, culture developed to the rich level of some Native American tribes who had specific songs for most daily activities and certainly for all important cycles of one's life. To the bird songs and the wolves' howl was added the richness of human culture.

In the remnants of Australian aboriginal culture or the existing Pueblo culture of the southwest U.S., as well as many other surviving tribal groups, we see beautiful and elaborate ceremony dramatizing the life of the earth in cultural form. The themes of ceremony relate directly to the living reality of the earth and cosmos. In Pueblo culture there is the buffalo dance, the green corn dance, the deer dance and so forth. In Australian aboriginal culture there are equally complex rituals related, as are the Pueblos, to participating with the creative force in the natural cycles of existence. Until the time of empire, human culture grew out of the living earth. Cultural ceremony was the living earth in human dramatization. The living earth was its habitat, its home. Culture was a holographic thought form held in the consciousness of individual humans. This form was a reflection and re-presentation of the life of the earth, which is itself a reflection of the effect of cosmic forces, i.e., all of the energy forces that have resulted in the planet earth being what it is and where it is and the solar, magnetic, atomic and other forces that sustain its being.

Human Culture is the Womb that Bears the Individual

Just as local conditions in the Solar body has created the environment for our type of life to be born on the planet earth; human culture creates what we are. But we are not products of human culture simply; we are the result of the efforts of life's adaptation since the first cell. In our being is contained the memory of an ancient past. Each of us in our embryonic development passes through stages that begin with the most ancient fish and end with our full development. 

Each human embryo at the initial stages closely resembles that of a fish. A little later in development at the point where the fish embryo is developing gills, our embryo also develops folds which if not differentiated further would be gills. As all the vertebrate species embryos develop they recapitulate the line of origin. As their embryos near maturity each continues on to form its individual species' differentiation but in the first few weeks of life the embryos of all vertebrates are nearly indistinguishable.

The habits of the first cell continue through space and time as transformations of form and substance until a human baby is born. At that point the baby is bonded to the mother and to the earth, as Joseph Chilton Pearce points out in his study, Magical Child. The phases of bonding that Pearce describes involve being secure and bonded with, for example, the mother, while exploring the world and then being secure and bonded with the mother and earth while exploring oneself. This is the way that the thought-form of culture functions also. The Solar body is the womb in which the earth grows as the cell grows within the conditions of the earth. The manifesting culture of organic life bears human culture and it finally bears the individual. In each step one is born within the other as if in a womb. From culture the individual learns identity and reality-view.

In tribal society there is a kind of individualism and paradoxically there is an understanding and acceptance of the interdependence of the human family and tribe. Jamake Highwater speaks of these unities of individual, tribe and cosmos. He explains: 

"In tribal religions there is no salvation apart from the continuance of the tribe itself because the existence of the individual presupposes the existence of the community. Every element of tribal experience is necessarily understood as part of the largest meaning of life insofar as life...does not exist without the tribe, which gives animation to its members. Yet the deviations of the individual are taken for granted because each person is part of the whole.

"It is through relationships that Native Americans comprehend themselves. Such relationships are richly orchestrated, as we have already seen, by elaborations of languages and ritual activities. Underlying the identity of the tribe and the experience of personality in the individual is the sacred sense of place that provides the whole group with its centeredness. The Indian individual is spiritually interdependent upon the language, folk history, ritualism, and geographical sacredness of his or her whole people. Relationships between members of families, bands, clans and other tribal groups are defined and intensified through relational and generational language rather than through personal names, which are considered to be sacred and private to the individual. The relatedness of the individual and the tribe extends outward beyond the family, band or clan to include all things of the world. Thus nothing exists in isolation. Individualism does not presuppose autonomy, alienation, or isolation. And freedom is not the right to express yourself but the far more fundamental right to be yourself."3

The realism of tribal society is that individual humans do not simply fall out of the sky but that each individual exists and in fact becomes what they are because of relationships to larger bodies of life both human and non-human.

The Birthright of Identity

Every human child should have the right to be culturally informed of who, what and where it is. To know that they are a recent manifestation of an immensely long history of biological form and that biological form is a vast interrelated system of life. What the nature of biological form is and where it is in terms of location in a bioregion, continent and planet should be the beginnings of education. Children are entitled to know the true organic reality.

In Natural culture people were conditioned as children by the living world within which they existed. The elders took them out onto the earth and pointed out how the various species lived, because first, this was survival knowledge. This also meant that they were being conditioned with a reality view that was based in the truth of the cosmic pattern of life. Conditioning of consciousness is not a negative occurrence; this is how we learn. The argument is with civilized conditioning. It is that it is self-injuring and ultimately suicidal.

The spirit's task in the material world is the manipulation of energies. The adaptation of various forms of life to the interrelated system of organic reality leads to their success and maturity. Power is endurance, to be able to continue existence. This power is created by successful adaptation to the flows of energy of the cosmos. When human cultures offer the platform, information-identity, that enables them to endure for hundreds of thousands of years, then individual and group creativity can be sponsored beyond that firm basis.

The Morality of the Cell (Our Ancestor)

Adaptation and cooperation are the premier standards of behavior of the cells. The principles of life's functioning are a cooperative energy flow. Shared energies, transformation, diversity-unity, balance, creativity, adaptability and relationship are patterns of life and also can be called the morality of life. Life in all its forms stretching from the cell to the human tribe have followed this general functioning. This is the value system of life. 
As the culture of empire has irrupted within the life system there has been a tension between the natural system of morality- this natural wisdom of life- and the diseased morality of empire. The various religions of empire represent, in a broad way, the resurgence of life habits (morality) into the imperial arena, opposing the dominant trends.

Through the history of empire there has existed a tension between the basic life perpetuating morality of the cells and the life defeating morality of empire. Though the pathology of empire has increased geometrically, the life morality continues to exert itself in the positive values imbedded in religion, charitable agencies, nature preservation groups, and some social ideologies. The tension exists also in each of us as the whisperings of the cells tell us the positive impulses such as kindness, helpfulness, cooperation while the structure of the social system of empire forces us toward self advancement, cynicism and cruelty at the expense of other Beings.

NOTES
1 Quoted in Friends of the Trees 1988 International Green Front Report. May, l988. Friends of the Trees, P.O. Box 1466, Chelan, Washington 98816. p.32.
2 In the Rainforest. Catherine Caulfield. Alfred A. Knopf pub. New York. 1985. p. 130.
3 The Primal Mind. Jamake Highwater. Harper & Row. 1981. pp. 171,172.


The Final Empire Volume II Part 2: Living on the Earth

Chapter 15: THE LIFE OF THE TRIBE

Flow, balance and cycle had been the basis of human experience for eons, until the present civilization arose. For several million years, humans were primarily nomadic gatherer/hunters, flowing with the seasons and the game. When the fruits ripened in the valleys, they went there. When the berries ripened in the mountains, they gathered them. Generally, they maintained a somewhat fixed migration route within their territories which followed the seasons of the food sources. Even on the islands in oceans, foods changed according to the seasonal shifts of ocean currents and the different species of life each brought. Experience of reality flowed with the cycles of the seasons. Social life flowed in cycle also. Social rituals were timed with cycles of star movement, seasons, birth and death, and fluctuations in food abundance. People saw the cycle of birth, maturity, marriage, old age and dissolution of each individual but also saw that the integrity of the tribe and the body of knowledge of the tribe endured over time, as the individual people flowed through it. The purpose here is not to look at all of the interesting variants of human culture around the earth but to observe the general and basic pattern which allowed humans to survive over such a long period of time, and then to investigate what suddenly happened that put people in the extreme situation in which they are now. There were and still are habits and practices of Natural culture people that are offensive to animal rights activists, to liberal intellectuals, to religious conservatives and many others of present day empire culture. This often leads people to reject wholesale any useful knowledge aboriginal cultures offer. So that these statements are clear, it is necessary to clarify that resuming forager/hunter culture intact is not necessarily being advocated. The immediate problem is the apocalypse of civilization. This has come about because the culture is out of balance. The first task is to learn how humans can endure on earth. The effort is to look at examples of our ancestors who had a sustainable culture so that ideas may gained of how we can create a new culture of balance. Cannibals and headhunters lived in balance with the earth, this is what the focus is, not necessarily their dietary habits. With the same respect, because empire has produced such monstrous suffering on the earth, this does not mean that throughout the course of civilization, methods, artifacts, understandings, and practices have not been created that are of great value, now and in the future. None of this should distract from our basic search which is first, to understand how to live in balance. This is the test to which any plan or method must be submitted. First it must be asked- does this add or detract from ecological balance?

Living in Harmony

Prior to their absorption by empire culture, an unimaginably rich variety of human Natural cultures circled the earth, each reflecting in its unique cultural consciousness the complexity and magic of life on Earth. The Natural cultures and divisions were cultivated over eons of time. Primal, or Natural peoples -those who exist in harmony and stability with the cycles of the Natural life- generally experience a deep subconscious sense of psychic security that is based in the Natural abundance of the earth ecologies. Rarely do they experience scarcity. Food is all around them.

Primal societies tend to be egalitarian, non-coercive, and non-hierarchical. The tribal culture of the human family did not have jails and police. In tribal society there was generally some form of consensus government operating, some kind of common agreement before actions are taken. In many tribes no action is taken unless everyone agrees. A tribe is a group of cooperating people, any one of whom could, ultimately, go off alone and still survive. Yet the culture of the tribe holds them together.

The food and shelter needs of Natural people are simple and the tools that they need are few. Rather, the wealth of tribal cultures is non-material. The human relationships are rich, the relationships with the surrounding living things are complex, and the learned culture including the oral literature is vast. 

The Tukano: A Primal Adaptation

Anthropologists studying the remaining primal cultures of the earth have discovered numerous tribal cosmologies and world-views. In the mid-1960's, anthropologist Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff, of the Universidad de los Andes in Bogota, Columbia, studied an intact tribe in Amazonia who call themselves Wirá -"wind", or, Wirá- pora -"sons of the wind." They are part of a larger, linguistically-related group known as the Tukano, which probably numbers no more than a few thousand people. This tribe is an excellent cultural group to examine because the pattern of social and ecological balance is so explicit in the culture, rather than implicit as many other Natural cultural systems are. Reichel-Dolmatoff has had the alertness to see the ecological implications of Tukano culture. Prior to the present ecological crisis anthropologists tended not to recognize such concerns.

The Wirá/Tukano live in the northwest part of the Amazonian rainforest in Colombia, near the border of Brazil. The Wirá territory borders the Rio Vaupés on the north and east, which is also the Brazilian/Colombian border in that locality.

The Tukano homeland is a diversified ecosystem which includes hilly uplands, some grassy savanna with sparsely scattered trees, and some tropical forest in its lower elevations. The Wirá live in large communal shelters called malocas, each of which houses an extended family made up of four to eight nuclear families. These shelters are widely scattered over the tribal lands. Part of the group subsistence is from horticulture that is practiced in small clearings. Manioc in its numerous strains is the most important staple. Plantain, banana, yams, pineapple, chili peppers and maize is grown, although maize is of minor importance in this area. Cotton and tobacco are also grown. Reichel-Dolmatoff lists thirteen edible fruits which the Tukano gather from the area. They also gather a large number of wild foods, medicines and materials from the ecosystem.

The Tukano hunt mostly small animals and birds and take an occasional deer, peccary and tapir as well. The environment of the Tukano is just on the edge of the deep Amazon forest and Reichel-Dolmatoff states that the edible species are not as abundant or diverse as in the deep forest but foraging is certainly important. The Tukano fish the plentiful rivers of their homeland; symbols related to fishing play an important part in their culture. The Tukanos' deep knowledge of the life of their homeland indicates that they have been in this location for a very long time. Every feature of the landscape is alive with symbolic meaning for the Tukano, passed down to them from their ancestors. The Tukano area is sparsely populated but they are bordered on all sides by other tribes. Reichel-Dolmatoff does not mention any conflicts between the Tukano and neighboring tribes.

The Tukano believe that the creative force of the universe, the Sun-Father, continually creates a limited number of plant and animal beings. His energy causes plants to grow and bear fruit, and animals to grow and to bear young. His masculine power continually energizes and gives form to a feminine world. His energy illumines and creates on both biological and spiritual levels. The energy of the universe is limited, as determined by the creativity of the Sun-Father. This energy flows in a circuit through all beings, between people, animals and plants, between tribal society and Nature.1

The Tukano perceive their universe as a giant flow system whose ability to produce energy is directly related to the amount of energy that it receives. They believe that an important way that humans can energize the system is to conserve, or repress, sexual energy. The "conserved" sexual energy returns directly to the total energy available to the whole of existence, enhancing its vitality. Human health and well-being, attained by controlling the consumption of food, also creates an energy input to the system. The energy of human well-being influences the stars, the weather, and other components of the system which are neither plants or animals but spirit forms. A fundamental tenet of Tukano cultural instruction is that human beings should never disturb the equilibrium of the finite flow system, but should return whatever energy they remove from the system as soon as possible. For example, when an animal is killed or when a crop is harvested the energy of the local fauna and flora is thought to be diminished; however, as soon as the game or fruit are eaten by humans, the energy is conserved, because the consumers of the food thus acquire the reproductive life force that previously belonged to the animal or plant.2

The matter of ecological, social and personal balance is a major focus of the culture. Reichel-Dolmatoff writes:

"This cosmological model of a system which constantly requires rebalancing in the form of inputs of energy retrieved by individual effort, constitutes a religious proposition which is ultimately connected with the social and economic organization of the group. In this way, the general balance of energy flow becomes a religious objective in which native ecological concepts play a dominant organizational role. To understand the structure and functioning of the ecosystem becomes therefore a vital task to the Tukano. It follows that the Indian's ethnobiological knowledge of the Natural environment is not casual and is not something he assimilates through gradually increasing familiarity and repeated sense experience; it is a structured, disciplined knowledge which is based upon a long tradition of enquiry and which is acquired of necessity as part of his intellectual equipment for biological and cultural survival."3

In the Tukano view, the goal of life and of the human activities and attitudes is to assure the biological and cultural continuity of Tukano society. "This goal can only be achieved by a system of strict reciprocity in all relationships that man establishes in the biosphere, be they in the framework of his own society or with the animals."4

They believe that Tukano society will prosper only if all other life forms are able to prosper and to manifest according to the needs of each species.Three important practices help to maintain balance within Tukano society, and between the Tukano and their environment. These are: population control, control of the exploitation of the Natural environment and the control of human aggression.

Population control is maintained by oral, herbal contraceptives, long nursing periods, abstinence, and by abandonment of the aged and infirm. Because food and sex are so closely related in ecological symbolism, control of conception is quite well regulated. The Tukano are fully aware of the balances between their population and the carrying capacity of the land area that they occupy.

The medicine people of the tribe, called payé regulate human impact on the environment and act to control social aggression. Illness is considered by the Tukano to be caused by personal, cultural and/or ecological imbalances. Such imbalances might include overhunting, waste of resources, or meddling with certain types of sexual energy discharge. The shaman, in dealing with individual illnesses, is concerned with individual behavior, and with cultural practices. An important function of the shaman is to communicate with the Spirit Beings who watch over the animals and the world of plants. As the shamans carry out their duties, they function as ecological guides. Whether the subject is encouraging cooperation or controlling aggression, the hunting of game, planting of fields or considering whether to move the village periodically to preserve the ecology, the shaman, through divinatory means, decides the issue.

Using mind-expanding vegetable substances to aid in communication with the Spirit Beings and with the deep consciousness of individuals or species of plants or animals, the shamans work to balance supra-individual social and ecological structures that have been disturbed by the sick person or by the tribe. The Tukano concept of the flow of life energy, appears generally to correspond to the prana of the Hindus, the chi of the Chinese acupuncturist, Wilhelm Reich's orgone energy, or the kurunba life essence of the Australian aborigines. To divine the flow of the life energy, the shaman goes into a divinatory trance:

"To the shaman it is therefore of the essence to diagnose correctly the causes of the illness, to identify the exact quality of the inadequate relationship (to be adultery, overhunting, or any other over-indulgence or waste), and then to redress the balance by communicating with the spirits and by establishing reconciliatory contacts with the game animals. To mention just one example of how a diagnosis is established: a man who has killed too many animals of a certain species will appear in the shaman's dream or trance states in the shape of that animal and the image will be accompanied by a certain luminosity, a certain degree of light. It is quite remarkable that differences in high or low light intensity are recognised to be very important in the flow of solar energy, as understood by the Tukano, and that shamans will mention in their spells and incantations up to seven shades of 'yellow light' that energize the biosphere."5 

The Tukano observation of the Natural world has aided them in maintaining a culture of sustainability and equilibrium. They exhibit very little interest in acquiring the type of new knowledge which would aid them in exploiting their environment for short-term gain, or in obtaining more food or supplies than they actually need. "But," writes Reichel-Dolmatoff:

"There is always a great deal of interest in accumulating more factual knowledge about biological reality and, above all, about knowing what the physical world requires from man. This knowledge, the Indians believe, is essential for survival because man must bring himself into conformity with nature if he wants to exist as part of nature's unity, and must fit his demands to nature's availabilities.

"Animal behavior is of greatest interest to the Indians because it often constitutes a model for what is possible in terms of successful adaptation.... The Indians have a detailed knowledge of such aspects as seasonal variation and microdistributions of the animal and plant species of their habitat. They have a good understanding of ecological communities, of the behavior of social insects, of bird flocks, the organization of fish runs, and other forms of collective behavior. Such phenomena as parasitism, symbiosis, commensalism and other relationships between co-occurring species have been well observed by them and are pointed out as possible methods of adaptation."6

The Tukano, like many native cultures in the western hemisphere, believe that the world is running down, deteriorating since its time of initiation. To assist the universe in re-creating itself and in maintaining its vitality, the Tukano regularly participate in ritual ceremonies where past, present and future generations are joined together. These rituals, in which plant and animal spirits are also believed to participate, appear to reinforce the motivation of each Tukano tribe member to walk in balance on the Earth.

Today, the Tukano world of perpetual balance is evaporating. Shell Oil company is exploring and drilling in the area. The land and rivers are becoming poisoned by oil and by the toxic chemicals used in the drilling process. Settlers from other parts of Columbia are being encouraged by the Columbian government to settle in the region, in order to relieve the population pressures within other areas of the country and to secure the remote border against possible Brazilian expansionism. The settlers and the oil workers continually assault and kill the Tukano, and push them off their lands. The Tukano/Wira' have also been assailed by missionaries, particularly by priests of the Monfortian Congregation of Dutch Catholics, the Catholic Order of San Xavier. Recently the (protestant) New Tribes Mission and the (protestant) Summer Institute of Linguistics have moved in. Their base of operations is the "Bible Belt" of the southern U.S. They focus on destroying tribal culture. By destroying tribal communalism and other elements which they describe as "primitivism," they hope to lead the natives into "the free enterprise economy."7

Peace With the Earth

It is important that we look at the emotional content of culture. We live in a culture of muted desperation. We are inculcated with a grasping nature because of the competitive basis of the culture and because of the arranged scarcity. In contrast, the emotional tenor of many forager/hunter cultures was distinctly peaceful and emotionally positive. A small, blonde woman named Florinda Donner, for example, went to live recently with the Yanomami tribe of the Amazon. She met an elderly woman at a trading post who agreed to guide her through the rainforest to the tribe's location. In her book Shabono she details her pleasant time with that tribe. In this case as well as many others, we see the inversion of the images we have been conditioned with. Here a lone woman joins a "savage" tribe and stays a lengthy period without receiving a scratch. Had she simply walked through the seamier parts of any large "civilized" city her safety could not be nearly as secure.

Part of the emotional security of our Natural culture was no doubt due to its holism. Rather than live in a narrow, "mentalized" social world, in that culture people lived in the universe, so to speak. The earth, the sky, the stars were the context of their life and they accepted and identified with them all. Natural culture teaches that we are an integral part of all life. Black Elk, Holy Man of the Oglala (Sioux), who shares in a line of inheritance unbroken since the Pleistocene and beyond, states this viewpoint. He speaks of a "threefold peace" which he says, is the only true peace: 

"The first peace, which was the most important, is that which comes with the souls of men when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe and all its Powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells Wakan-Tanka, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us. This is the real Peace, and the others are but reflections of this. The second peace is that which is made between two individuals, and the third is that which is made between two nations. But above all you should understand that there can never be peace between nations until there is first known that true peace which, as I have often said, is within the souls of men." 

This cultural understanding that we are children of the universe is extremely important. With the realization and acceptance of this fact comes maturity and responsibility to oneself and to the cosmos. One heritage of early culture is consideration for other life forms. The Apaches of the Southwestern U.S. would not kill animals at water holes because it was unfair, since all beings need water. When the !Kung San (Bushmen) of the Kalahari find a clutch of ostrich eggs, they take only part of them out of respect for the ostrich. Examples like these are numerous in reports about Natural culture people. The sharing, the cooperativeness, the wisdom and understanding- the concern for that which is outside of self- are attributes of self governing human maturity. In 1977, the traditional elders of the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy, the Hau de no sau nee, issued a statement appealing to the United Nations for help in maintaining their identity in the face of the continued destruction of their culture by U.S. and Canadian society. In the statement, later published under the title, The Hau de no sau nee Address to the Western World, they describe their past prior to the invasion of empire culture. The former abundance of their lives is evident. Many points of correspondence with Tukano thought emerge from the Hau de no sau nee statement as well. Clearly, reverence for life and cooperation among tribal members were seen to assure continued abundance: 

"We were a people of a great forest. That forest was a source of great wealth. It was a place in which was to be found huge hardwoods and an almost unimaginable abundance and variety of nuts, berries, roots, and herbs. In addition to these, the rivers teamed with fish and the forest and its meadows abounded with game. It was, in fact, a kind of Utopia, a place where no one went hungry, a place where the people were happy and healthy. 

"Our traditions were such that we were careful not to allow our populations to rise to numbers that would overtax the other forms of life. We practiced strict forms of conservation. Our culture is based on a principle that directs us to constantly think about the welfare of seven generations into the future. To this end, our people took only as many animals as were needed to meet our needs. Not until the arrival of the colonists did the wholesale slaughter of animals occur. 

"We feel that many people will be confused when we say that ours is a Way of Life, and that our economy cannot be separated from the many aspects of our culture. Our economy is unlike that of Western peoples. We believe that all things in the world were created by what the English language forces us to call 'Spiritual Beings,' including one that we call the Great Creator. All things in this world belong to the Creator and the spirits of the world. We also believe that we are required to honor these beings, in respect of the gift of life. 

"In accordance with our ways, we are required to hold many kinds of feasts and ceremonies which can best be described as 'give-aways.' It is said that among our people, our leaders, those whom the Anglo people insist on calling 'chiefs,' are the poorest among us. By the laws of our culture, our leaders are both political and spiritual leaders. They are leaders of many ceremonies which require the distribution of great wealth. As spiritual/political leaders, they provide a kind of economic conduit. To become a political leader, a person is required to be a spiritual leader, and to become a spiritual leader a person must be extraordinarily generous in terms of material goods. 

"Our basic economic unit is the family. The means of distribution, aside from simple trade, consists of a kind of spiritual tradition manifested in the functions of the religious/civil leaders in a highly complex religious, governmental, and social structure.

"The Hau de no sau nee have no concept of private property. This concept would be a contradiction to a people who believe that the Earth belongs to the Creator. Property is an idea by which people can be excluded from having access to lands, or other means of producing a livelihood. That idea would destroy our culture, which requires that every individual live in service to the Spiritual Ways and the People. That idea (property) would produce slavery. The acceptance of the idea of property would produce leaders whose functions would favor excluding people from access to property, and they would cease to perform their functions as leaders of our societies and distributors of goods. 

"Before the colonists came, we had no consciousness about a concept of commodities. Everything, even the things we make, belong to the Creators of Life and are to be returned ceremonially, and in reality, to the owners. Our people live a simple life, one unencumbered by the need of endless material commodities. The fact that their needs are few means that all the peoples' needs are easily met. It is also true that our means of distribution is an eminently fair process, one in which all of the people share in all of the material wealth all of the time. 

"Our Domestic Mode of Production has a number of definitions which are culturally specific. Our peoples' economy requires a community of people and is not intended to define an economy based on the self-sufficient nuclear family. Some modern economists estimate that in most parts of the world, the isolated nuclear family cannot produce enough to survive in a Domestic Mode of Production. 

Ours was a wealthy society. No one suffered from want. All had the right to food, clothing, and shelter. All shared in the bounty of the spiritual ceremonies and the Natural World. No one stood in any material relationship of power over anyone else. No one could deny anyone access to the things they needed. All in all, before the colonists came, ours was a beautiful and rewarding Way of Life."8

When Europeans first arrived on this continent, Hau de no sau nee territory covered the land from Vermont to Ohio and from Quebec to Tennessee. There were hundreds of Indian camps throughout this region. This culture functioned under a constitution called the "Great Law of Peace." The Hau de no sau nee Address to the Western World, describes this body of law as, "a law which recognized that vertical hierarchy creates conflicts...They dedicated the superbly complex organization of their society to function to prevent the rise internally of hierarchy."9

This governing form was the inspiration for the concepts of separation of powers and checks and balances, found in the United States constitution, concepts which have now spread throughout the world. The Address states that, "It is the oldest functioning document in the world which has contained a recognition of the freedoms the Western democracies recently claim as their own: the freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the rights of women to participate in government."10 The "checks and balances" constitution of the United States has the express purpose of controlling centralized authority. The ideas for the structure of it were taken from the Iroquois Confederacy of the northeast U.S. The Six Nations Confederacy as it is also called is made up of the Mohawk, Oneida, Cayuga, Seneca, Onondaga and Tuscarora tribes. Originally there were five tribes in the confederation and their symbol was the eagle with five arrows wrapped in hide in its claws. This is the symbol that appears on back of the U.S. one dollar bill, where the eagle has 13 arrows wrapped, denoting the original colonies. At the time the U.S. constitution was promulgated it was seen by the world as a tremendous advance in "civilization" because relatively speaking it limited the power of the emperor/elite and provided representation of the people in a structure of parliamentary democracy. Though "civilization" has not arrived at the purity of democracy or the culture of the Six Nations and their "Great Law of Peace," the constitution of the Six Nations exemplifies the Natural culture tradition of control of hierarchy as worked out by these tribes. The "Great Law of Peace" also reflected gender balance that empire culture has not yet attained. Within the structure of the Six Nations were womens' councils that were an equal part of considerations. In addition to this, Clan Mothers were very powerful and in many cases held advisory powers with respect to council decisions that were close to what parliamentarians would consider a veto.11

Non-Hierarchal Self-Government of Natural Societies

The enterprise of the cells reaches a high level of organization and coordination of energies- power. This communal power appears to function with common agreement of the cells and without central command, as far as their own functioning. In tribal society there is generally consensus government, some kind of common agreement before actions are taken. This seems obvious on the face of it when there is a group of cooperating people, any one of whom could, ultimately, go off alone and still survive. In the imperial inversion, control is paramount. The control begins with the feeding base, e.g., agriculture or herding. One does not gather what is there, one controls the system of fertility extortion. In the same way, the hierarchy of social power controls the productive power of the human masses and their food supply with physical coercion- some kind of militarized force with the ultimate power to kill.

Mark Twain is reported to have said, "Tell me where you get your corn pone and I'll tell you what your opinions are." This is reasonable in civilized society but in forager society, most of the people except the very young and the aged can feed themselves by their own efforts- they ate what they found. When the culture of stasis broke out, the sedentary society was located in one place and social hierarchies determined the allocation of land and they determined who was to eat, what they ate and how much, because of the elite control of the mass. In Natural human culture with emphasis on relationship and cooperation, there is the ability to satisfy human needs (food-shelter-love). Power is latent in the ability of the tribe to cooperate and work together for its continuance. Power is also latent in the respect for elders' knowledge and wisdom. The youth do not know because they do not have experience. The elders do know, they have lived through the experiences. In the hunt, in foraging, in personal relationships, the youth respect and listen to the elders because that is how they have always learned since infancy. Wisdom is an extremely important factor in Natural human culture. Wisdom leads to authority. But, even though there is authority and respect there is no centralized power or coercion. Power in the tribe lies with each person; it is not centralized. It is not the power of the one to compel the many. It is the power created by the many working together. The French anthropologist, Pierre Clastres has explored this question of "political structure" in Natural human society. What he has determined is that tribal society in the Americas, where he studied, are arranged so as to prevent centralized power from arising just as the Hau de no sau nee state. In the South American native societies which he examines, there is a titular chief, one who speaks for the tribe.

When the imperial mind encountered the Natural culture it immediately concluded that chiefs equalled emperors. Not so, says Clastres. Chiefs were the way that Natural culture prevented the formation of centralized power, the way that they controlled hierarchy. By setting up the chief as the leader and then preventing the chief from having dictatorial power, Natural culture protected itself and protected the freedom of everyone involved from the extortion of dictatorial, centralized power. Clastres says:

"Given their political organization, most Indian societies of America are distinguished by their sense of democracy and taste for equality. The first explorers of Brazil and the ethnographers who came after often emphasized the fact that the most notable characteristic of the Indian chief consists of his almost complete lack of authority; among these people the political function appears barely differentiated. Though it is scattered and inadequate, the documentation we have lends support to that vivid impression of democracy common to all those who studied American societies.... It is the lack of social stratification and the authority of power that should be stressed as the distinguishing features of the political organization of the majority of Indian societies. Some of them, such as the Ona and the Yahgan of Tierra del Fuego, do not even possess the institution of chieftainship; and it is said of the Jivaro that their language has no term for the chief.

To a mind shaped by cultures in which political power is endowed with real might, the distinctive rule of the American chieftainship is asserted in paradoxical fashion. Just what is this power that is deprived of its own exercise? What is it that defines the chief, since he lacks authority? And one might soon be tempted, yielding to the temptation of a more or less conscious evolutionism, to conclude that political power in these societies is epiphenomenal, that their archaism prevents them from creating a genuine political form. However, to solve the problem in this fashion compels one to frame it again in a different way: from where does this institution without "substance" derive its strength to endure? For what needs to be understood is the bizarre persistence of a 'power' that is practically powerless, of a chieftainship without authority, of a function operating in a void.12 

In a text written in 1948, R. Lowie, analyzing the distinctive features of the type of chief alluded to above, labeled by him titular chief, isolates three essential traits of the Indian leader. These traits recur throughout the two Americas, making it possible to grasp them as the necessary conditions of power in those areas:

(1.) The chief is a 'peacemaker': he is the group's moderating agency, a fact borne out by the frequent division of power into civil and military.

(2.) He must be generous with his possessions, and cannot allow himself, without betraying his office, to reject the incessant demands of those under his 'administration.'

(3.) Only a good orator can become chief13

This pattern of triple qualification indispensable to the holder of the political office is, in all probability, equally valid for both North and South American societies. First of all, it is truly remarkable that the features of the chieftainship stand in strong contrast to one another in time of war and in time of peace. While often the leadership of the group is assumed by two different individuals. Among the Cubeo, for instance, or among the tribes of the Orinoco, there exists a civil power and a military power. During military expeditions the war chief commands a substantial amount of power- at times absolute- over the group of warriors. But once peace is restored the war chief loses all his power. The model of coercive power is adopted, therefore, only in exceptional circumstances when the group faces an external threat. But the conjunction of power and coercion ends as soon as the group returns to its normal internal life. ...Normal civil power, based on the consensus omnium and not on constraint, is thus profoundly peaceful and its function is 'pacification': the chief is responsible for maintaining peace and harmony in the group. He must appease quarrels and settle disputes- not by employing force he does not possess and which would not be acknowledged in any case, but by relying solely on the strength of his prestige, his fairness, and his verbal ability. More than a judge who passes sentence, he is an arbiter who seeks to reconcile. The chief can do nothing to prevent a dispute from turning into a feud if he fails to effect a reconciliation of the contending parties. That plainly reveals the disjunction between power and coercion.

"The second characteristic of the Indian chieftainship- generosity- appears to be more than a duty: it is a bondage. Ethnologists have observed that among the most varied peoples of South America this obligation to give, to which the chief is bound, is experienced by the Indians as a kind of right to subject him to a continuous looting. And if the unfortunate leader tries to check this flight of gifts, he is immediately shorn of all prestige and power."14

Clastres makes another interesting observation of the dynamic of sharing and its highly regarded value in Natural society. He observes that when polygamy occurs, it is usually confined to the Chief and sometimes also the principal leaders, who by the cultural definition, share the most. The women, who are the real, and recognized, productive strength of the group, produce much of the material which the leaders give out. Thus, in a sense the group places a number of powerful, productive women in place with the chief and receives gifts from the Whole institution of chieftainship.

Clastres continues:

"Besides this extraordinary penchant for the chief's possessions, the Indians place a high value on his words: talent as a speaker is both a condition and instrument of political power. There are many tribes in which every day, either at dawn or sunset, the chief must gratify the people of his group with an edifying discourse. Every day the Pilaga, Sherente, and Tupinamba chiefs exhort their people to abide by tradition. It is not an accident that the gist of their discourse is closely connected to their function as 'peacemaker.' No doubt the chief is sometimes a voice preaching in the wilderness: the Toba of the Chaco or the Trumai of the upper Xingu often ignore the discourse of their leader, who thus speaks in an atmosphere of general indifference. But this should not hide from us the Indian's love of the spoken word: a Chiriguano explained the accession of a woman to the office of chief by saying: 'Her father taught her the art of speaking.' "15

"Humble in scope, the chief's functions are controlled nonetheless by public opinion. A planner of the group's economic and ceremonial activities, the leader possesses no decision-making power; he is never certain that his 'orders' will be carried out. This permanent fragility of a power unceasingly contested imparts its tonality to the exercise of the office: the power of the chief depends on the good will of the group. It thus becomes easy to understand the direct interest the chief has in maintaining peace: the outbreak of a crisis that would destroy internal harmony calls for the intervention of power, but simultaneously gives rise to that intention to contest which the chief has not the means to overcome."16

As Clastres indicates, there are occasions when the chief cannot successfully mediate disputes among the group. When this happens, anthropologists indicate, tribal groups generally solve this by fission. The group splits apart. There is no battle for the centralized power, because there is no centralized power.

These observations apply to the basic patterns of Natural human culture. There are of course permutations of the patterns of Natural human culture, but we are making observations of the basic outlines of the bulk of Natural human family and not the permutations such as for example the "Kings" of some African groups, the Andean Inca society or, for example, some societies in which castes and rampant human slavery have broken out.

The Essene Community: An Example of an Integrative Womb

Becoming personally integrated and balanced with the earth and cosmos does not necessarily mean duplicating forager /hunters, though they present immediate and sound examples. The point is to live in balance in an integrated way, on all levels. The culture of the Essenes provides an example that shows that the individual can become integrated and that human culture can be created that is in balance with the life of the earth. The point is that in the Essene culture balance is fundamental for the person and the cultural group. The fundamental requirement for the Essene or the Tukano culture to be perpetually viable on the earth, is that it exist in balance. The Essenes, until they were destroyed by the Roman Empire, created this accomplishment from around 300 B.C. to 100 A.D. The Essenes were not a tribe or an ethnic group. They were monastic communities that existed in Egypt and the Mid-East. The Essenes were mostly Jews who lived apart and did not participate in the mainstream culture other than deriving some of their philosophy from ancient Jewish teachings. They lived in the desert, but usually near bodies of water, such as small lakes or streams. They gained their food through unique forms of desert agriculture.

We know of the Essenes from the writings of Josephus Flavius, a contemporary Jewish historian and political figure in the Roman government, from Philo, the Alexandrian philosopher and writer, and the writings of Plinius the Elder, the Roman Naturalist. We also know of the Essenes from references in the Dead Sea Scrolls that were found in Qumran near the Dead Sea. Some of these scrolls contain copies of early books of the Christian bible which contain references to the Essenes, but which in later centuries were excised by the Church.

A contemporary scholar and linguist who has provided much information about the Essenes is Edmond Bordeaux Székely. There are three groups of Essene documents that he was able to translate from the original Aramaic language. One of these sets was held by the Royal House of Hapsburg in Austria, another was held in the library of the Vatican and the other set were the Dead Sea Scrolls, written in Aramaic. It is unknown how the Vatican obtained its Essene documents which are stored there along with many other unique "art" treasures. The Hapsburg texts are thought to have been brought out of Central Asia in the Tenth Century by Nestorian priests who were fleeing persecution.

The Essenes were accomplished horticulturalists and arboculturalists. Székely says that each one of them carried a small trowel with which to do gardening and to scoop up any organic material in the area for the compost. Healing had great emphasis in Essene communities and members often would travel into villages to do healings. As a spiritual community, the Essenes maintained an orderly day that was structured toward raising consciousness. They lived a simple, regular life, close to the earth with their gardens and orchards.

The information that Edmond Bordeaux Székely provides indicates that the culture of the monastic communities was directed toward centering and balancing the individual and community. The Essenes maintained a daily focus on cosmic, terrestrial and personal integration. The Essenes believed that they and everything in the cosmos existed in a pattern of energies which they consciously sought to integrate with. Székely says that, "They had the deep wisdom to understand that these forces were sources of energy, knowledge and harmony by which man can transform his organism into a more and more sensitive instrument to receive and consciously utilize the forces. The characteristics of each one of the different forces was very clear to them and they knew what the force meant in each individual's life and how it should be utilized."17 Because of the work of Székely and others we know the form of the Essene practices but unfortunately there is no full written record of the esoteric teachings that amplified and gave substance to that form. We do know, according to Shékely's work, that the framework of these different forces was set out in a series of seven morning and evening meditations, which also included noontime "peace" meditations. Székely says that there were three immediate objectives in this practice. "The first is to make man conscious of the activities of the different forces and forms of energy which surround him and perpetually flow toward him from nature and the cosmos. The second is to make him aware of the organs and centers within his being which can receive these currents of energy. The third is to establish a connection between the organs and centers and their corresponding forces so as to absorb, control and utilize each current."18

The morning communions were concerned with the visible terrestrial realm of energies. The series of daily contemplations were food, topsoil, trees, beauty, sunrise, blood-rivers-water, and breath. Each of these meditations focused on a broad concept. For example the Thursday morning meditation was called the Angel of water and the concept was the liquidity of blood, rivers and so forth. The force involved is that of circulation which exists throughout the cosmos. It was the thinking of the Essenes that the day would begin with the seed thoughts and contemplations which then would be with them until evening as they dealt with the material world. At mid-day the Essenes focused on peace contemplations. The evening meditations were devoted to more ethereal concepts. The evening communions of the Essenes prepared the individual to utilize a different dimension of consciousness. As Székely says, modern life with its tension and lack of peacefulness results in the sleep state and dreaming being primarily a time to emotionally "detoxify" from the events in the waking state. The Essenes on the other hand lived isolated in very peaceful conditions and they used the sleep state as a constructive and creative faculty. Székely says, "The Essenes knew that these last thoughts influenced the subconscious mind throughout the night, and that the evening communions therefore put the subconscious into contact with the storehouse of superior cosmic forces. They knew that sleep can thus become a source of deepest knowledge."19

The evening communions were devoted to forces of the invisible realms that had correspondence with the terrestrial force that had been the subject of the morning communion. The subjects of the evening communions were the eternal life, creative work, peace, power, love, wisdom and the creative universal spirit. The Essenes, until they were destroyed by the Roman Empire, created this accomplishment of balanced community and won the admiration of the early historians mentioned. Josephus and the other historians referred to them variously as, " 'A race by themselves, more remarkable than any other in the world,'" "'the oldest of the initiates, receiving their teaching from Central Asia,'" and "'teaching perpetuated through an immense space of ages.' "20 

Integrating Ourselves and the New Culture

Love holds the world together. In our Natural state we are at one with the world. We are at one with our social environment, the clan and we are at one with ourselves. It is the flow of love- positive energy, that holds this together. This is the condition that we will create in our new culture. This is the condition that our children are entitled to as their birthright on the earth. This is the baseline condition that all humans are entitled to as they begin to create their own personal lives.

Extensive studies have shown the profound effect of experiences in early childhood that carry down through the generational lines. Children who have been beaten will beat their own children. Children who have been sexually abused will be sexually abusive. The manner in which children are dealt with will condition them for the balance of their lives. This in itself is enough reason for us to establish a healing community. In a larger context, it is the lack of love and comforting atmosphere that ingrains the fear and separation that is the motor of civilization.

In our own lives it is our fear and defensiveness that we must deal with in pursuing our own wholeness, our integration. We have been conditioned into separation and contraction. Wilhelm Reich's image of the expansive phase of the body, reaching out to the world, is appropriate. It is this condition that we need move toward. Our cultural upbringing teaches us to emphasize the intellect at the expense of our emotional body. In universities across civilization, the pressure is such that students jump from the windows of the dormitories when their intellectual achievement does not meet the standards that are set up for them. Our conditioning is such that when confronted by stress, the intellect churns but the atrophied emotional body cannot respond. We are unable to respond in a holistic way because we are conditioned into fear and separation. We have learned to perceive the world and other people as a source of threat.

This conditioning is not immutable. We can cause this conditioning to evaporate by focusing the conscious mind upon it. This must be done with the concentration and vigor of the whole being. The subconscious mind holds the whole of our experience. In the familiar story of the person in a hypnotic trance state, they can remember an experience that occurred many years before and they can recall the ticking of a clock, the smells, the emotional response of that moment. Our actual conscious awareness is profound but it is filtered through the surface conscious mind which sorts out and holds in surface consciousness only that which the surface consciousness defines as important. It is in our subconscious mind, the less than fully conscious realm of mind, where the basic assumptions about our existence are held. These assumptions and conclusions of the subconscious are the groundwork of our present lives.

There are two ways in which this "posture" toward life is created. The first is simply repetition. This is the same thing as acculturation. In the field of hypnosis this is done in light trance and the suggestion is given over and over. (A trance is simply a concentrated state of attention such as one adopts when watching television or sitting in a classroom). In a classroom there is the conscious flow of events, the teacher teaches and the children respond, but there is also the emotional context that the mind perceives. That is, the competition between the students. Each is eager to receive the exclusive rewards by getting their hand up first, by having the right answer. This sets the framework of the mind to readily accept suggestions from the teacher. The suggestion in this case is the content of teaching, which is accepted uncritically The suggestion is also the social context in which this occurs. This goes on day after day, for years. It is not any particular interaction that sets the tone for the subconscious mind, it is the emotional experience of the constant competitive, separative environment that conditions the subconscious mind. This repetition conditions the mind to view the world as an environment containing competitive threats. This in turn limits our ability to be open, loving and trusting adults. Birth trauma, family conditions, television images, school experiences, all serve to establish our basic subconscious grounding.

In the field of hypnosis there is also a second way to suggest assumptions about reality to the subconscious mind. This is done in deep trance. A deep trance is a highly concentrated state of attention. In this state the intellectual body and the emotional body are functioning in a unity and the yes/no critical faculty of surface consciousness is not functioning. In this state the being is not fragmented consciously but is completely in deep consciousness. This is the state in which early childhood trauma causes the subconscious mind to have deeply set assumptions about reality.

The birth experience is the first and most fundamental experience that we integrate into our being. Negative and self limiting suggestions as well as the positive and bonding suggestions can be easily accepted by the subconscious mind at this early point. As Arthur Janov began to work with people who had experienced birth trauma he developed a therapy that involves conscious recall of the trauma. To recall the trauma and understand it as an adult in another, more benign context, changes the subconscious mind's understanding of the event and helps dissolve the blockage of positive emotional energy and enhances the feeling of well-being. This is the key element in dealing with subconscious assumptions. They must be brought up to consciousness, relived and the effect eliminated by present understanding. In Janov's therapy, patients recall the primal event of birth. The following is an example of a primal experience of one of Janov's patients:

"I had lost the fight at birth and felt totally defeated. Life was against me. I felt I had no control over what was happening to me. During this Primal I felt like I was being jostled about by different people. I was very scared. I'm not sure what the feelings were all about, since there were no scenes or images in my mind. But I would hazard to guess it was the doctor and nurses handling me after birth. "I felt so alone. I cried for help. Where is someone to see how much I hurt? I even felt angry that they could be so stupid to see my crying and screaming and just let me go on doing it. I just wanted someone to hold me gently and let me calm down. Then I felt I didn't want anyone to touch me if it was going to be rough."21

It is this type of "reliving" of primal events that allows the person to resolve a contraction that may have prevented the person from having emotionally rich relationships with other people for a lifetime. The subconscious mind accepts deep suggestions throughout life but particulary it accepts suggestions in youth, before the personality is thoroughly armored and in a defensive posture. The accepting of a suggestion by the subconscious mind requires a highly emotional state, a state brought on by accident, punishment, fear or other emotional trauma. This is the sudden acceptance of deep suggestion as opposed to conditioning by repetition.

The subconscious assumptions not only configure one's view of reality but actively guide the daily life. If one has accepted a self limiting suggestion such, "You're no good, you'll never amount to anything," during a spanking, for example, the subconscious mind will ensure that the suggestion will be carried out. People that constantly repeat self-limiting suggestions such as, "I never could do that," "I was never any good at that," "I'll never be able to learn that," "No one likes me," are repeating and reinforcing subconscious suggestions which the subconscious mind will endeavor to carry out in their daily lives.

With considerable effort these self-limiting assumptions and contractions can be eliminated, but first we need to gain an image for ourselves as being centered on the earth, centered in cosmic reality. That we are organic beings, living in community with other organic beings on the surface of the planet earth is not always clear to individuals in civilization. We need personal experience of this, personal images of this reality. If we go to a wilderness area or the most undisturbed Natural area that we can find, we will be immersed in, and receive stimulus from the Natural life. This is the place where we can become grounded. We may not become immediately integrated with the Natural life the first time, but we will be with the proper images, sights, smells, Natural sounds and feelings.

In a Natural area we can concentrate or meditate on our roots and origin in life. We can consciously open ourselves to any possible communication from that life. We go there with intent. Our intent is to use that time to focus on the reality of our being. We understand that we are organic beings just as the birds and the trees and that this is our home and is where we belong. This is our corporeal identity. We begin to identify with the Natural life. Given the present chaos in society and the many diversions, it may not be easy to get to a quiet, undamaged Natural area often, but it is essential. It is essential to have that experience and to gather those images into memory. This is the grounding, the realization- not just intellectually held -that one is a Natural organism, on the surface of the earth, itself which is flying through space among other large bodies such as sun, moon, planets and stars. Healing from the injury of alienation is not dependent on the cleverness of the technique but on the deep-seated intent of the person. This is because the ideas and feelings that were produced from the original conditioning influences are also deep-seated. The imprints from the original conditionings are stamped into the subconscious mind as general understandings and postures of feeling. The subconscious mind is in the realm of the vegetative mind that operates the body, keeping the body in a state of homeostasis. The intellectual mind might change itself every day but the subconscious mind receives the constant repetition of ideas and other conditioning stimuluses- over a life-time. It is this mind that develops the basic emotional posture of the being.

The experience of empire culture is to live in an abstracted manner. If one goes to the industrial medicine establishment for medical care one is dealt with on the chemical level by molecular biologists. This has no effect on peoples' life problems or their emotional health. We live at the level of our feelings. How we feel about ourselves, how we feel about the world is the state of our health. It is at this key level of the subconscious mind that the first healing must be brought about.

The direction of healing is toward healthy and Natural energy flows for the inhibited and contracted organism. In the mid-twentieth century a large body of healing knowledge has arisen which seeks to unlock the flow of vital energies.

Acupuncture, acupressure massage, shiatsu, Janov's primal therapy, hypnosis, rebirthing, Reichian massage, reflexology and many others deal with blockages of energy flows. Mental blocks, emotional blockages and physical blockages of energy are involved. This field of medicine is now called Alternative Medicine in the United States. Many of the modalities can be learned easily through workshops and seminars given in most major cities. A vast literature is also now available at many bookstores. One of these typical modalities, for example, Reichian massage, deals with both mental blocks and their location as mild cramps and zones of tension in the musculature. Reichian work has its roots in Freudian analysis and it uses this mental-analytical technique but also heavily relies on massage to help loosen and eliminate the actual body armor- areas in the body where tension is held. When the mental and physical blocks are released a phenomena occurs that the Reichian therapists call "streamings." These streamings are spasms of energy releases of the body accompanied by shuddering and definite emotional release.

As we begin to create new culture we must integrate knowledges and methods into the cultural form that address these problems of blockage of positive energy. In emerging from the disaster of civilization we understand that we have all been injured by the experience of its acculturation. New culture needs to have the qualities of a therapeutic community to assist the adults as they begin moving toward emotional healing and toward the full enjoyment of life. As we begin moving toward health, maturity and reality we will begin taking responsibility for our own lives- cosmically speaking- and responsibility for our home, the earth.

The Security of Children in the Extended Family

In Natural human culture the relational language of family identity, that is, what you call mother, father, uncles and aunts is much more diffuse than in the more atomized relationships of civilization. Often all of the mother's sisters are referred to as "mother." The same situation often obtained with the identification of the father. In a broad sense the young are looked upon as children of the tribe.

The task of raising the children was also a diffuse activity. The grandparents often participated more in raising the children than the biological parents. In some cultures the siblings of the parents had responsibilities in instruction of the children in certain areas, just as the "chief" or sometimes the shaman had responsibilities of orating the cultural traditions.

In this diffuse manner of social relationships direct coercive authority was not emphasized. Children when they engaged in disapproved behavior were usually shunned and then rewarded with affection when they engaged in approved behavior. Nonetheless the social situation of children was of a different quality than in modern industrial society families. Children were looked upon differently, they were valued and they performed valued tasks in the family from the time that they could understand. The children's work was appreciated and the children understood that they had a legitimate and needed place. This is a contrast with the situation of children in industrial society that have no more functional purpose than a pet poodle. It is apparent to the youth of industrial society that they have no functional purpose to their families (other than possibly taking out the trash or mowing the lawn). This childhood tends to reinforce the feeling that life is meaningless. Their real legitimacy is as workers in the production system. When they get a job and generate money, then they become legitimate persons and escape their dependency status.

While the teaching of the young in industrial society is done by the mass institutions of television and school, in Natural culture, ordinarily, much energy is devoted to the teaching of young people. As the young people work alongside the adults they learn all of the voluminous skills needed to transform significant items of the Natural environment into human uses. In these cultures children were taught who they are, what it means to be a human and what the nature of humans is. In the book Seven Arrows, Hyemeyohsts Storm kindly shares with us the type of sophisticated teaching that U.S. northern plains culture contained. In this teaching of the Medicine Wheel, the child learns of the foundation of human action; wisdom, innocence, trust, feelings, introspection, illumination and understanding. The possibilities and problems of wars, hate, love, greed, generosity and loneliness are pointed out.22 In the Native American cultures that emphasize the Medicine Wheel as well as many other Natural cultures, voluminous teaching stories exist. Because of the style of life, the adults and youth are together and there is plenty of time for the transmission of human culture through the teaching stories and other means. These functions in Natural culture help the children learn what to expect in life and to learn the meaning of their personal experiences. In modern society this type of teaching is rarely offered a child.

In recreating human culture we will need to consciously create, in the first generation at least, groups of people who can stay together as "family." In the human past many different types of marriage and family arrangements have been created. Today the bulk of the world's people live in some kind of multiple person, marriage arrangement. Unfortunately, at this time most of these exist in patriarchal societies, none the less, group marriage has been common through human history.

Clans will be created, marriages will occur and group marriage should not be ruled out. Many severe social pathologies manifest in the present shrivelled nuclear family. The problems of control, dominance/submission and emotional dependency occur in the nuclear family. In group marriage these patterns cannot so easily endure. Group marriage causes people to be more mature, faces them with the responsibility for their actions in co-equal association where one person cannot control another and one person usually does not develop addictive emotional dependency on one other person. 

Awareness is Power

It is not difficult to understand that the interests of our ancestor, the cell, is the same as the interests of each human child, each human adult, the whole of human society, the whole of the ecosystem, the whole of Gaia and the cosmos. To establish more potentiative relationships and to become more conscious of self and other is the standard. For the life-form to rest in the stable diversity of its organic niche, to potentiate that diversity and for conscious awareness to increase- is to gain power. The awareness of what one is and the context one exists in, increases the chances of enduring and increases Being. If all levels are congruent- cell, micro-organism, fish, plant, animal, human, human society, ecosystem and Gaia- then empowerment takes place. In a cosmic context, humans cannot empower themselves at the expense of the other life that supports them. For humans to truly empower themselves they must also empower Gaia.

How is this to be done? It is to be done by establishing human cultural form such that by its "housekeeping" life activities, potentiates the biological life and by its internal dynamics, potentiates that culture itself and the Being of each individual of that culture. The culture must be created so that this effort is inherent in the cultural awareness and dynamics. This is what basing the culture on the simple principles of life means. If the principles are followed, the potentiation of life will flow from that, just as when the principles of the Inversion are followed, ultimate extinction results.

Reality Conditioning

Conditioning is fundamental to the cosmos. Everything is conditioned by other cycles of energy, just as the metabolism of energy of the Sun conditions the life of the earth. Conditioning in the mental realm functions such that when first presented with an idea (such as the erroneous, imperial idea that power is simply the ability to force others or the world to bend to our desires), it is fresh and new, but by the repeated exposure to the idea it is accepted by the intellectual mind and slips below the level of conscious inspection and becomes part of our subconscious "world view." Once this occurs and that idea slips in with other complementary sets of ideas, then we do not consciously think about it- we simply know that it is right. It is through this lens of complementary ideas that we perceive the world and insist that we are seeing "reality."

When the baby mountain lion is born, its conditioning begins to predominate with conditioning from its elders. The baby mountain lion is conditioned with the facts and reality of its identity- what it is and how a being of its nature behaves, what it eats and how it socializes with other mountain lions. A human baby in Natural culture undergoes a similar conditioning with relationship to its nature and to the Natural world. We cannot escape conditioning- but we can become aware of it. As we nurture the children into their birthright, ideally we are providing them with the knowledge and conditioning of their organic identity. This must be the baseline starting point or otherwise the conflict with the cosmic cycles of energy will not allow them to endure. Conditioning into our organic identity will also create the mental image of the principles of life's behavior which organic culture will also follow. Because New culture will exist in a natural, living environment, this becomes the larger context of conditioning. Natural, non-pathological culture is an organic phenomenon. Humans become what they are conditioned to be, according to the ideas and images of the existing culture. Our healing culture needs be patterned on the true organic identity and to provide the image for further creative group development. It needs to convey the image of what the nature of human is, rather than declensing the possibilities of our lives. This needs to include all of our relations and our faculties and abilities, both physical and psychic. We humans who have conscious choice of our cultural form have the opportunity and ability to creatively potentiate our being. Out of the disintegration and crisis on the earth we may awaken enough now to grasp the opportunity to create the new, to create a culture in which the conditioning is conscious and we are conscious of the choice of conditioning.

Our identity is the cosmos, the same as the cell in the liver is us. We are also an interactive part of the solar being, Gaia, the bioregion, the tribe and we are the person of the physical body. While we are a fraction of the culture of our tribe, we are also individuals.

The simple principles of the behavior of life are our path. If we are in those bounds, whatever we do we will be on the path. We will develop relationship, more energy, more being, more unique individual diversity and so forth as we mimic life's pattern of beauty, ecstacy and complexity. This means that we must be severed from the conditioning of empire and its culture. That is not to say that we must fear it but that we need a firm grip on organic reality and a healthy sense of what conditioning itself is.

Certainly the amplification of our being, as taught to the children will begin with our perceptive faculties, our faculties of awareness. Awareness is power, consciousness is power. Our heightened awareness increases our power to endure and to cooperate with the cosmic project of life. The awareness to adapt efficiently to the life of the earth is power. The degree of awareness, increases that ability, that power.

Each of us have the senses of sight, hearing, touch, emotion and intellect that aid us in perception of objective reality (and our internal subjective reality). Each of these senses has a further refinement that is normally atrophied in civilization and not always emphasized in Natural cultures. With the sense of vision, there occurs clairvoyance. With the sense of hearing there is clairaudience (hearing on spiritual planes). With the sense of touch there is the faculty of clairsenscience (hunches of "feeling" of some reality not perceived by the physical senses). There is also the faculty of mental telepathy. There is the capacity of foreknowledge, knowing a thing that will happen before it occurs. There is the faculty of divination, finding answers to questions through non-intellectual means. Associated with this ability is the capacity that can be called dowsing for want of a better English word. This is an extremely important faculty to develop not only for locating the water veins in the earth and understanding one's place in that way but for dowsing many other earth energies in one's place so one begins to understand the functioning of the body of Gaia as a living being.

As the practice of acupuncture allows the practitioner to assist the beneficial movements of energies in the human body, the activities of the geomancer who dowses and understands the Gaian energy flows of her watershed is very important to the activity of integrating human activities with the life of the earth.

This is part of the womb function of culture. The pattern of culture should emphasize the cultivation of these natural abilities of the human tribe.

Communication is Relationship

We who are the life of the earth are increasing our Being. Our nature as humans allows us to amplify and potentiate what now lies dormant, waiting to unfold. Like the unused capacity of our brains, there are other potential abilities that can be cultivated. The clarity and strength of our communication is one of those. Communication is conscious relationship and also energy relationship. Communication at a telepathic level with the other beings we live with will amplify the experience of life. This is a distinct possibility of future cultural creation. The planetary life has put humans, whales, dolphins and elephants in one similar niche. They have great ability to form images and to communicate them. Because of the fold of the frontal lobes of the brain, we species are particularly suited toward complex communication. The little we know about interspecies communication in Natural culture suggests that communication with other species enjoys a long tradition.

Communication between humans on a verbal level uses the tool of language. Language reflects the focus of attention of the culture. In the language of the Inuit of the far north it is said there are more than thirty descriptive words for snow, its different conditions. In the ancient language of the Greeks there were many descriptive words for love, the various qualities of its manifestation. Language- semantics, carries the culture and becomes a tool of thought. In that respect, as we learn languages we learn the cultural nuances. In creating a new cultural form we need create new language appropriate to that cultural perception.

We find that in English as well as many other languages of civilization there is much confusion. In many cases similar sounds mean different things, different word sounds mean the same thing. Language, as we know it, is indistinct. To add to this we are now coming into the age of double-speak in which elites employ psychological operations and media manipulation teams to confuse and disinform the masses.

An example of the type of linguistic pattern that we need has been discovered by John W. Weilgart. Weilgart who had a thorough background in linguistics, psychology and philosophy experienced a revelation. In this revelation the seed ideas of a new type of human language occurred to him. 'aUI' is the name of this language. It is not the type of language that we are accustomed to. Abstract symbols like letters do not denote or connote abstract meanings. Instead there are a set of thirty-one basic symbols that reflect the basic intuitive realities of our existence. These are such things as space, movement, light, human, life, time, matter, sound, feeling, round, equal, inside, quantity, quality and so forth. Out of these basic categories thoughts are put together intuitively and analogically. The symbols for each of these categories is congruent with their meaning such that 'inside' is a circle with a dot inside of it. Feeling is a heart shaped symbol and active is a lightening shaped symbol. Next, Weilgart created the sounds for each symbol so that the sound is intuitively similar to the meaning such that the sound for inside is a guttural sound coming from deep inside the throat. The way that the thoughts are combined can be shown by the abstract thought-meaning-symbol-sound; anticipation. In aUI this becomes fore-feeling and it uses the heart symbol for feeling with the symbol for before in front of it. Weilgart has also created a sign language in which the arms and upper torso form the symbols. This provides an additional level of congruence of meaning for each symbol.

Dr. Richard S. Hanson, Professor of Ancient Near Eastern Languages at Harvard University says that:

"In discovering aUI, Prof. Weilgart had discovered something of the nature of language in its primitive state and something essential about human communication at its beginning stages. This 'language of space' is not a concocted language like esperanto. It is a rediscovery of the basic categories of human thought and expression.

To semantic theorists this should be most interesting. By working with basic categories of meaning and a simple set of aural and visual symbols for each, Prof. Weilgart has succeeded in making language definitive rather than merely denotive or conative. Basic categories are communicated through single symbols and new concepts are created by merely combining the basic symbols by way of a simple, intuitive logic. The result is language which has the simplicity of archaic speech plus the sophistication of modern thought."23

There are a number of cultures known to modern anthropology that use several languages within the culture. Among the Apaches of Southern New Mexico there existed a "war language" that was only used in expeditions of war. Among other cultures there are known to have been spiritual languages, used primarily for discourse on spiritual subjects. Certainly with the creation of new culture the need for new language exists. The languages of empire carry all of those definitions of reality within it. If we use a pure language that has no emotional connotations connected with it, we will be greatly aided in creating new social reality.

aUI is so intuitive and simple that Weilgart was able to teach it to many different groups. Individuals of these diverse groups such as military servicemen, children of tribal societies, and U.S. school children were able to begin communicating in the language within a few minutes. Weilgart, among other talents, was a professor of psychology. In this capacity he used this language to facilitate communication with people classed as schizophrenic. These people, who ordinarily experience confusion in communication, were able to improve their communication significantly because of the precision and clarity of the language that they learned after a brief introduction.

The Pleasure of Life

One of the ways that the psychology of empire steals individual power is by conditioning them with the sense of their meaninglessness and inferiority, as well as the fear of pleasure. The example of the Judeo-Christian heritage, the Islamic heritage and the Confucian heritage is of the masses learning that they are unworthy, inadequate and as children in need of discipline by the religious hierarchies and the emperor/elite. Christianity particularly, after the first ten centuries of being controlled by the Roman Empire, conditions the people to believe in their "sin," their inadequacy before the Pope and emperor. Christianity historically has emphasized the benefits of suffering and the sin of pleasure. Sin originally meant "missing the mark," that is, not being with God or the transcendental consciousness. Nonetheless the hierarchy brought it around to mean the inadequacy of the "faithful" in adhering to the dictates of the hierarchy. The basic human needs are food, shelter and love. Love is the wholistic feeling of attraction and is an integrative force. It is a holding together. At the same time on a personal level it is also an expansive giving force. While "man the toolmaker" emphasizes Doing to the detriment of the content of life, we need emphasize the fulfillment of life and its pleasurable quality. Love in all its aspects as a communication of energies need be emphasized. There is no reason in our quest for amplified states of Being that we cannot acculturate the enhancement, technique and knowledge of love to a more sophisticated degree than the culture of militarism has carried the strategies of conflict. We are conditioned with the emotional plague that Wilhelm Reich calls the "pleasure anxiety." Our fearful contraction prevents our liberation. The danger of having nothing to do if we stop making machines is not real. Acculturating ways to enhance our enjoyment of life is a pleasurable task and is a legitimate focus of cultural attention. In 1927, the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski brought out his work, Sex and Repression In Savage Society and in 1929 he brought out The Sexual Life of Savages. These books tended to corroborate Wilhelm Reich's findings. Malinowski had the opportunity to live with a cultural group in the South Seas, on the Trobriand Islands, in a culture of relative sexual freedom. In this culture nakedness and sexual activity were accepted as a natural part of life. Children were allowed complete sexual freedom, and, in fact, huts were established for them within the villages for their games and play. The only taboo was incest and this was vigorously enforced. Malinowski reports that: 

"The children initiate each other into the mysteries of sexual life in a directly practical manner at a very early age. A premature amorous existence begins among them long before they are able really to carry out the act of sex. They indulge in plays and pastimes in which they satisfy their curiosity concerning the appearance and function of the organs of generation, and incidentally receive, it would seem, a certain amount of positive pleasure. Genital manipulation and such minor perversions (sic) as oral stimulation of the organs are typical forms of this amusement. Small boys and girls are said to be frequently initiated by their somewhat older companions, who allow them to witness their own amorous dalliance. As they are untrammelled by the authority of their elders and unrestrained by any moral code, except that of specific tribal taboo, there is nothing but their degree of curiosity, of ripeness, and of 'temperament' or sensuality, to determine how much or how little they shall indulge in sexual pastimes. 

The attitude of the grown-ups and even of the parents toward such infantile indulgence is either that of complete indifference or that of complacency-they find it natural, and do not see why they should scold or interfere."24

Malinowski found the Trobriand Islanders to be free, democratic-minded, and self-governing without compulsion. He found also a freedom from violence, theft and European types of sexual perversion, i.e., sadism, masochism, rape, prostitution, sexual incompetence and inability to respond sexually because of neurotic complications. This certainly is a radically different image of society compared to the one raised by Barbara Tuchman of the Fourteenth Century European social reality. An anthropological study of people living on the Amphlett Islands nearby provides further dramatic contrast. 

This group, who's origins Malinowski did not report, with its patriarchal, authoritarian family structure, displayed all the signs of the European neurotic, such as distrust, anxiety, neurosis, perversion and suicide. It is interesting to see that those tribal peoples who have slid into neuroticism, authoritarian culture, and sexual imbalance in the same pattern as the empire culture, also display the same sorts of personal dysfunctions. Although the bulk of the Pleistocene cultural inheritance favors sexual balance, those tribes who, for whatever reason, have become dominated by one sex exclusively, usually patriarchy, show problems just as does the culture of empire. Love and beauty come not by fighting for it but by surrendering to it. Reich suggests that it is the ability to surrender fully in the arms of a loved one that is the primary condition of receiving the beauty of love. A deep sense of psychic security is necessary in order to accomplish this. Nature puts her template upon the flow of Life. She shows that sharing, non-defensiveness, and cooperation are the pattern of health and sanity on the level of cellular sharing, on the level of sexual sharing-and in the spiritual realm, the road to transformation has always been said to be by the route of surrender to the creative spirit of the Cosmos. To let go. To trust the creative Life to provide. To follow the pattern of nature that is created by a higher intelligence is the path to transformation and to psychic security. It lies in following the natural pattern. The path to psychic security, security while living in motion, in transformation, in the flow of a constantly changing world, is not to react defensively against change in a vain attempt to create a static, secure environment, but to surrender, let go on every level and realize that the power of the cosmic intelligence creates, guides and sustains the world. The direction toward wholeness of self, soil and world is to generalize the sexual love from the genital point to the universe through the stages of transformation of life; cellular, self, others, the planet and the cosmos. Life then becomes wholly responsive.

We are faced with a life without a future in civilization, with fear, cynicism- the programmed helplessness- and the social pattern of isolation tugging at us. We are discouraged from forming human community and creating the future. Nonetheless we have the power to do it. That is simple. The key to the power is overcoming our estrangement from others and from the world. If we can trust each other in community, that is the power. Then it can be done. If the materialist can fly around the sky in a tin can, we can certainly create a culture of increasing beauty, awareness, communication between species, cooperation between species, and communication between humans and the larger forms such as Gaia and the beings that are Gaia's neighbors.

Healthy Culture: Glimpses From the Past

The reports of novelists and travellers often give us more of the flavor of encounters with tribal people than dry academic studies. During the period of European colonization encounters were happening around the globe. Some of these "first encounter" reports carry the amazement of the Europeans who were coming from a life in a culture of tension and negative emotion, when they encountered a radically different culture. The contrast between a healthy culture and an unhealthy culture is clear. Herman Melville provides a view of a culture in which positive feelings are prevalent from his book Typee. The Typee, a tribe on the Marquesa Islands, are now an almost vanished group but they were in full flower when Melville visited. About his experience, he says: 

"During my whole stay on the island I never witnessed a single quarrel, nor anything that in the slightest degree approached even to a dispute. The natives appeared to form one household, whose members were bound together by the ties of strong affection. The love of kindred I did not so much perceive, for it seemed blended in the general love; and where all were treated as brothers and sisters, it was hard to tell who were actually related to each other by blood. Let it not be supposed that I have overdrawn this picture, I have not done so."

A few early explorers have provided us with insights into the day to day lives and the emotional tenor of other Natural cultures that existed before the complete expansion of the world empire. Explorer Villialm Stefannson, writing in 1908 had the following report after living 13 months with an Eskimo family:

"With their absolute equality of the sexes and perfect freedom of separation, a permanent union of uncongenial persons is wellnigh inconceivable. But if a couple find each other congenial enough to remain married a year or two, divorce becomes exceedingly improbable, and is much rarer among the middle-aged than among us. People of the age of 25 and over are usually very fond of each other, and the family-when once it becomes settled-appears to be on a higher level of affection and mutual consideration than is common among us. In an Eskimo home I have never heard an unpleasant word between a man and his wife, never seen a child punished, nor an old person treated inconsiderately. Yet the household affairs are carried on in an orderly way, and the good behavior of the children is remarked by practically every traveller.

These charming qualities of the Eskimo home may be largely due to their equable disposition and the general fitness of their character for the communal relations; but it seems reasonable to give a portion of the credit to their remarkable social organization; for they live under conditions for which some of our best men are striving-conditions that with our idealists are even yet merely dreams."25

Obviously, not all tribal cultures have arrived at the level of positive cooperation that this report demonstrates of the Eskimos, but we can be sure on the other side of it that few imperial cultures have.

So that we may fix in our minds the fact that it is possible for humans to live on the planet without jails, nuclear war, ecological ruination, valium, and the one-dimensional artificiality of suburban-shopping center culture, let us look at another report from the same area. This report is from the famous arctic explorer Amundsen. He states:

"During the voyage of the Gjoa, we came into contact with ten different Eskimo tribes in all ... and I must state it as my firm conviction that the Eskimo living absolutely isolated from civilization of any kind are undoubtedly the happiest, healthiest, most honorable and most contented among them. It must therefore be the bounded duty of civilized nations who come into contact with the Eskimo to safeguard them against contaminating influences, and by laws and stringent regulations protect them against the many perils and evils of so-called civilization. Unless this is done they will inevitably be ruined.... My sincerest wish for our friends the Nechilli Eskimo is that Civilization may never reach them."26



NOTES

1 Akwesasne Notes. vol. 16, #6, Winter 1983. "Cosmology As Ecological Analysis: A View From The Rain Forest." G. Reichel-Dolmatoff. pp. 22-25. (Reprinted from The Ecologist, Cornwall, England)

2 Amazonian Cosmos: The Sexual and Religious Symbolism of the Tukano Indians. Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff. University of Chicago Press. Chicago. 1971. p.50.

3 Akwesasne Notes, op. cit. p. 22.

4 Reichel-Dolmatoff. Amazonian Cosmos. op. cit. p. 243.

5 Akwesasne Notes. op. cit. p.24.

6 ibid. pp. 22-25. 

7 The Indian Peoples of Paraguay: Their Plight and Their Prospects. Special Report. Cultural Survival Publications, 53A Church Street, Cambridge, MA. 02138. $2. (contains information on New Tribes Mission capture of Aché Indians in Paraguay and their incarceration and death in a concentration camp). 

Fishers of Men or Founders of Empire? The Wycliffe Bible Translators in Latin America. A U.S. Evangelical Mission in the Third World. Published with Zed Press. December 1982. 344 pp. $12.95. available from Cultural Survival at the above address. (contains references to activities of Summer Institute of Linguistics).

Cultural Survival Quarterly. "Health Care Among the Culina, Western Amazonia." Donald K. Pollock. vol. 12, #1, 1988. p.32. (Contains report of Summer Institute of Linguistics selling medicine to Indians- which works to force them into the money economy and assist the campaign against traditional medicine which they identify with "Satanism.")

8 A Basic Call to Consciousness: The Hau de no sau nee Address to the Western World. Geneva, Switzerland. Autumn, 1977. Akwesasne Notes. Mohawk Nation. via Rooseveltown, New York 13683.

9 ibid. p. iii.

10 ibid. p. 18.

11 The Constitution Of The Five Nations or The Iroquois Book of The Great Law. A.C. Parker. Iroqrafts, pub. R.R. #2, Ohsweken, Ontario, Canada. 1984.

12 Society Against The State. Pierre Clastres. Robert Hurley, trans. Mole Editions, Urizen Books. New York. 1977. p. 20.

13 ibid. p. 21.

14 ibid. p. 22.

15 ibid. p. 23.

16 ibid. p. 28.

17 From Enoch To The Dead Sea Scrolls. Edmond Bordeaux Székely. Academy Books, pub. San Diego,CA. 1975. p. 28.

18 ibid. pp. 29,30.

19 ibid. p. 79.

20 ibid. p. 14.

21 Imprints: The Life Long Effects of the Birth Experience. Arthur Janov. Coward-McCann, Inc. New York. 1983. p. 45.

22 Seven Arrows. Hyemeyohsts Storm. Harper & Row. New York. 1972.

23 Cosmic Elements Of Meaning: Symbols of the Spirit's Life. Dr. John W. Weilgart. Cosmic Communication Co., 100 Elm Court, Decorah, Iowa 52101. preface, p. xvii.

24 The Sexual Life of Savages; In North-Western Melanesia. Bronislaw Malinowski. Halcyon House. New York. 1929. pp. 55,56.

25 Civilization Its Cause and Cure and Other Essays. Edward Carpenter. George Allen & Unwin Ltd. pub. London. 1914. p. 81.

26 ibid. p. 82.




Final Empire: Chapter 16




THE RESTORATION OF THE LIFE OF THE EARTH

Few of us initially have the luxury of simply pulling out of the culture of empire, immediately denying it our energy. There is no blame. Establishing a culture that is in balance with the earth requires the cooperation of a group of people. One cannot simply go to the mountains and be a forager/hunter, the animals are mostly gone and the wild food plants are rare. We can work for social justice, we can work toward ecological sanity but we are still living in a culture and in a pattern that is destroying the life of the earth. To be actively mobilizing toward setting up what might be called "seed" communities is the really significant action. If people don't actually get out of the money economy to a significant degree, if they don't create a new land based culture that aids the earth, all the other political and environmental efforts will ultimately be meaningless. To be actively mobilizing toward setting up seed communities is what is most significant. Movement is now happening, the seed is being empowered. That we are moving toward food growing capability, land, community, emotional positivity, healing, integration of every level possible - and toward the top of the watersheds, that is the significant action- by whatever means we have at our disposal. Of course people must resist the destruction and move ahead on all the fronts that they are normally active in, but this becomes meaningless unless cultures of balance are also established. In the last decade of the Twentieth Century there are tremendous resources available. There is much food-growing expertise available and healing techniques- both personal and social, there are libraries full of information about specific ecosystems and there are libraries of knowledge about all of the diverse ways that societies have been formed in the past. We have all of the resources that we need.

In the past several decades a great intuitive movement toward healing and integration has taken place. This has taken place with the rise of holistic health and the resurgence of interest in spiritual knowledge. This has taken place on the mental and emotional levels with all of the support groups and holistic healing modalities that have manifest. This has also taken place with the knowledge of the physical ecology and life of the planet. Not only is conservation of primary concern, but the restoration of watersheds is beginning. No funding of "projects" has done this, no elite has organized it. It has arisen intuitively from the people in response to real needs. It is the beginnings of the decentralist answer to the contradiction of civilization. In comparison with the phantasy world of the "Golden Age" of the Nineteen Fifties it is a planetary awakening.

In the field that might be called feeding oneself and the restoration of the planetary life, a similar explosion of genius has taken place. There are now many tools and resources. The important factor is to create a practical plan that answers the question, "How do we live in balance with Nature?" This is a familiar intellectual refrain and a popular concept but the practical shape of it must be drawn and then it must be done. That first step must be taken- create the method and build the image.


The Simplicity

In order to retain our sense of reality it is necessary for us to look briefly again at where we are in our understanding of food producing, so that we can appreciate the tremendously valuable advice of the elders, even if we and the anthropologists can only glimpse the larger outlines of it. Civilized agriculture is war with the spirit of life and war with the cosmos. Agriculture is an effort to force the simplicity and unbalance of the "ten world food plants" on the cosmos. When the climax ecosystem is cleared for agriculture, the earth seeks by all means at its disposal to heal the wound. It sends in the first aid crew to revegetate the area and cover the poor oxidizing and eroding, bare soil.

If life finds some unnatural abundance of exotic plants there, like soybeans or designer flowers, it calls in all of the species of fungus, micro-organisms and insects that can eat up that sickly or unnatural life and reconvert it back into the life stream. What this means is, that it takes energy to fight life which is making an effort to rebalance itself. To do this requires fertilizers, poisons, petroleum, steel mills, agricultural universities, polluted waters, dead seas and on and on. When technicians look at a swidden plot in a rainforest and compare its productivity to a farm field and talk of how the "natives" might increase the productivity of the swidden plot to "help" them achieve some surpluses to sell so that they can exist on the margins of the money economy, what we are really looking at is trying to help them get some money so that they too can help poison and kill.

Native cultures are organic formations on the earth, they are not intellectual/ideological groups. We cannot expect that they understand the moral history of the steel axe and we cannot fault them for their "absurd truthfulness" and inability to refuse the invaders statement that there is a better way than the one they have always used. The historical corruption of natural culture has not been a contest of force between two groups but simply injury to organic cultural form, the same as a climax ecosystem is deformed by the bulldozer.

A system whose purpose is to extort surpluses from the soil requires a fight against nature, usually in the form of mono-cropping, and that all important pattern of empire- simplification and control. Our interest is in an entirely different perspective, an inverse perspective. Complexity, not immediate explosions of production is desired. Stability, fertility and diversity should constantly increase. When people are released from the extortion/profit motive in agriculture then the latitude for creative abilities is released and the scope of possibilities increases tremendously.

Some hints from the elders about an inverse method of producing food will be gained. Producing food by adaptation to the balance of life is the inverse of modern agriculture. While looking at the techniques of the elders, it will be kept in mind that creating culture for ourselves that envelopes the practices that we create for our watersheds is a simultaneous necessity.


The Adaptation of the Most Ancient Ancestors: Rainforest Permaculture

In the age of the great ice sheets, much of the earth became more arid. In those times the rainforest was forced to retreat to refuge zones. One of these zones, for example, is the area of the relatively small Awa tribe, straddling the border of Colombia and Ecuador, near the coast of South America. This area, like the other "refuge zones" in other rainforests, is extremely rich in localized species, ones that came through the ice ages intact. Our human family survived through those ages with them. It is easily possible that direct ancestors of the Awa came through those times. These people and the other rainforest people are the ancient ones. It is they who have the sophistication of adaptation that reaches back toward our origins. The adaptation of rainforest peoples is as diverse as is the rainforest ecosystem itself but some patterns emerge in the adaptations of many of the tribes that will be helpful hints to us. We can consider it advice from the elders. The first and most striking thing about the rainforest peoples is their encyclopedic knowledge. D.A. Posey, a valiant anthropologist-advocate who has recently been arrested by the Brazilian government for effectively assisting the Kayapó tribe of the Amazon, says that the Kayapó gather, "Some 250 species of plants for their fruits and hundreds of others for their nuts, tubers and leaves." He and a co-worker A.B. Anderson state, in their 1983 survey, that of 140 plants in the Kayapó area, "only two were not considered useful by the Kayapó. Equally astonishing is that the Kayapó claimed to have planted approximately 85% of the plants collected in ten sample forest 'islands'."1

The rainforest people gather their needs from the environment. They create tools, clothing, ceremonial wear, building materials, and medicines as well as food. They collect waxes, oils, ointments, ornaments, perfumes, pigments, dyes, gums and resins, as other anthropologists have pointed out.2 Insects and no doubt the roe of fish are also important food sources. Animals and fish of course are primary sources of protein for some rainforest peoples and for many other tribes horticulture is a mainstay of their stability.

Many Amazonian people rely on fishing for their basic diet. But the natural people don't always just fish, they have an intricate cultural relationship with the fish tribe, physically and spiritually. The pattern of these relationships is adaptation and mutual aid. Anthropologist J. Chernela writes of the Uanano tribe of the Amazon who gather fruit eating fish which subsist from fruit that falls from trees at the banks of the rivers. This creative adaptation of fish and forest means that the forest, especially along the banks must be protected for the fish. As Chernela describes it, the Uanano understand the fish who congregate in spawning are conducting a "fruit-exchange" ceremonial dance. During this period the fish are protected by the people and are only caught when returning from the dance.

It is this sophistication of cultural understanding that gives these people their power of continuance (and it is mirrored in other rainforest-fishing cultures). Not the fact that the living habits of the fish are understood intellectually, but that this understanding is integrated in human culture, is what creates the sophistication.


The Complexity

Catherine Caufield, in her work, In The Rainforest, tells of the Lawa living in the rainforest of northern Thailand bordering Burma. (Now, unfortunately, according to articles in Cultural Survival, many of these stable rainforest tribes of the area are being assaulted by the Thailand central government for the familiar "national security" and anti-guerilla reasons.)3 As Caufield describes them, the Lawa are shifting cultivators who live in settled villages and have been in the same place for many centuries. She states,

"They grow more than eighty food crops, plus another fifty for medicine and ceremonial and household uses. In addition, they collect and use more than two hundred wild plants that grow in their fallow fields. Their system supports about 80 people per square mile, taking fallow land into account. One square mile of cultivated land supports 625 people, a ratio that compares well with, for example, Britain, which has one square mile of agricultural land in use for every 750 people. Britain, of course imports 60 percent of the fresh fruit, 20 percent of the grain, and 23 percent of the meat its people consume, whereas the Lawa are self-sufficient in food."4

Caufield goes on to explain that they take great care of their land in terms of fire, soil erosion and soil disturbance. She says that anthropologist Peter Kunstadter has learned that young Lawa children can recognize 84 cultivated varieties of plants and another 16 useful uncultivated plants, "Even at the stage where the plants are less than a centimeter in size."5

The Lawa, powerful as their cultural adaptation is, are not the most complex culturally, according to researchers in Southeast Asia and the South Sea Islands. It is the more "primitive" tribes higher in the hills who know more plants, grow even more varieties, hunt in the natural forest and gather there. It is the complexity of the adaptation and the encyclopedia knowledge, then, which distinguishes the more powerful people.

The Cultural Survival volume, Indigenous Peoples And Tropical Forests, summarizes the, so far, limited observations that have been made of true rainforest food growing, called swidden. (This is distinguished from the destructive and ignorant temporary agriculture practiced by "frontier" settlers at the edge of rainforests. This practice, which is destroying rainforests is usually referred to as slash and burn.) First, the matter of soils is known precisely by most indigenous people. Soil quality is judged by the type of vegetation growing on it. It is judged by its color, taste, smell and by examining its subsoil moisture during various seasons. This means not that any one spot will be chosen for a plot but that each area is appropriate for plots according to the plants that will subsist best in that environment.

The food growing regime will not necessarily involve one or several plots, but may encompass many smaller ones according to the needs. During clearing of the plots, some of the plant species may be saved. Some of the tree species may be saved also for shade, wind breaks, to attract wild animals or for later use. In the planting one does not simply sow seeds but may use seeds, seedlings, cuttings, tubers and roots. In arranging the plantings, shade, light, soil, soil moisture, companion plants, nearby trees and other considerations will indicate the creation of micro-climates within the plot. All of these combinations will be transformed according to the different ecological zones that each plot has been located in. As the plot is "feathered" into the mature forest the matter of local animals is keenly considered in terms of attracting them to the area by having plants in the locale that the animals like and utilize.

The anthropologists have discovered that many plots remain in some kind of use for many years. With use, the soil and the growth of different plants in the plot changes. As the years go on, different plants are emphasized, often tending more and more toward bush and tree crops. There is mention in the literature of use of plots for 20, 30 and more years. One very important observation made by a few of the anthropologists is that this transformation from cleared plot to mature forest follows to a great extent the phases of ecological succession of the natural forest- except the tribespeople substitute useful relatives or plants of similar life habits for the plant that would ordinarily be in place during ecological succession.

As the planetary ecological crisis has deepened, anthropologist have focused their attention more clearly on the ecology of natural culture and are beginning to suggest that some "wild" rainforest environments are looking more like managed environments. Animals are attracted here and there according to the plants that are planted; the shamans of the Tukano for example, monitor the species populations and help expand or inhibit hunting. The Uanano and others work together with the fish populations. Posey adds that the Kayapó collect forest plants and replant them near camp and near main trails. This tactic he calls 'forest fields.' He says, "They use at least 54 species of plants from these forest fields, including several types of wild manioc, three varieties of wild yams, a type of bush bean and three or more wild varieties of cupa."6

Posey says that even now in their debilitated condition a Kayapó village may have 500 kilometers of trails that are planted and managed so that travel may go on for months at a time without resort to garden produce. Posey points to one ecological zone in which forest "islands" occur in a savanna region. When he observed the forest islands closely he perceived that they had been 75 per cent created by the Kayapó through laborious methods of upgrading of the soil environment.7 When we consider that each of these hundreds of plant species used by the rainforest people, have individual growth habits and needs and that they have individual uses within the tribe and that they may well have individual meanings spiritually in the cultural cosmology, we are approaching some ability to conceive of the complexity with which these people live. In addition to this general over-view of swidden we should keep in mind that some rainforest ecosystems may have highly specialized adaptations such as swamp draining, types of raised beds with water channelling between them and other unique combinations of plots on highly varied ecosystems ranging from rainforest to drier savanna or higher elevations which are within a tribes' habitat.


Beyond the European Row-Crop Garden: A Look at Some Recent Methods

The practice of clearing the forest, plowing, planting, exhausting the soil and moving on has enjoyed a long history in the empire. Gardening has been often a kind of mini-scale picture of the broadscale farming system. In recent generations developments have occurred that offer differing perspectives on this standard. Civilized gardeners have always followed the cultural standard of -more!- and since the Nineteenth Century popularization of soil fertilizing in Europe, there has been the production oriented effort to grow plants faster and bigger. One might call it the "biggest pumpkin at the county fair," syndrome. Finally attention began to shift (still today only with a small but vital minority of gardeners) to food value, hardiness and other values. A milestone was set when Sir Albert Howard published his book Soil and Health. Howard was a colonial administrator in India in the first part of the Twentieth Century. He began to experiment with soil enrichment and composted soils. During his work with the soil, he drew the conclusion that healthy soils produce healthy plants.

Healthy plants in turn produce healthy people and livestock. One of his experiments was to drive a herd of his brahman cattle to the next village, among a herd of diseased cattle to show that because of his healthy soil, they would be unharmed- and they were not. Another important point that he made was that the life system will attempt to eliminate the dross and the unhealthy. He insisted that if the plant is healthy it will not be focused on by the diseases and insects, as will sickly or exotic plants that are grown completely outside their space and time, because of their economic value. The backbone of Howard's system of nutrition was the science of composting. The creation of concentrated fertility in compost was the basis of his work. The observation that healthy soil creates healthy plants seems common sense today (except to the industrial agriculturalist) but was startling in its time.

J.I. Rodale, as a young man became inspired by Howard's work and started the famous magazines Organic Gardening and also Prevention. This point of view found a ready market and Rodale and his family were able to create a remarkable institution featuring a number of associated magazines, a large research farm in Emmaus, Pennsylvania and a broad readership. While Organic Gardening stuck with the row-cropping and annual plants to a large extent, the focus was turned effectively to soil and health. It is because of the Rodale family and their focusing the attention of a vigorous minority of gardeners, that we are able today to save some seed strains and also introduce and test cultivars such as quinuoa, teff and grain amaranth. As large numbers of us begin turning to personal food growing, a file of old copies of Organic Gardening will be invaluable.


Food From Trees

Civilized people and Europeans in particular live in self created boxes, often with several trees outside and a square plot called a garden which focuses on vegetables. This comes from the civilized contraction of urban life and from the feudal farm ecology inherited from Europe in particular. Trees, tree crops and forest farming are largely left out of this picture. While the soil of row crops must be fed, trees and forests of trees build soil, pump water, provide habitat for other species and do many other services for the earth life. What we have seen is that herding and industrial agriculture are often the lowest uses of the land. Using trees as a source of sustenance and to help reforest the earth makes good sense.

The authors of Forest Farming offer some comparisons between food raising and agricultural commerce. The herder can get an average of 200 pounds of meat from an acre of rich land. This operation is generally a for-profit business. Although there may be no market for it in the money economy, in reality that same area of land could produce one and one-half tons of cereal grain, seven tons of apples, or 15-20 tons of flour from the pods of honey locust trees. (And the honey locust flour is superior in nutritional value to any cereal grain.)8

Some average yields of tree crops help illuminate these tremendous differences. Douglas and Hart, in Forest Farming give the yields for a few of the hundreds of tree species that yield oils, gums, nuts, fruits and many other useful items: African locust beans 10-15 tons per acre; carob, 18-20; mulberries, 8-10; persimmons, 5-7; chestnuts, 7-11; oaks 10-12; pecans, 9-11; and dates, 4-7.9

These authors have done a world survey of trees that can produce food for people or animals. One of the valuable effects of their studies is to show us the amazing variety of trees that are useful for survival, though they may not be useful in a "profit making" farm. Trees, aside from the reforestation imperative, offer great prospect to green culture.

The two basic texts of tree gardening are Tree Crops - A Permanent Agriculture, Russell J. Smith (Harcourt Brace & Co., 1929) and Forest Farming: Towards A Solution To Problems of World Hunger and Conservation, J. Sholto Douglas and Robert A. de J. Hart (Rodale Press, Emmaus, Pa. 1978).

Spirulina: The Sunlight and Water Food

Micro-organisms are the essential life of the earth. The numbers of them, the complexity of the roles that they play and their survival abilities make the larger forms of life that humans are accustomed to, insignificant in biological terms. Students estimate that ninety percent of the species of life on this planet cannot be seen with the human eye.

One of the recent and revolutionary developments in human food is from micro-organisms. Spirulina is a blue-green microalgae that is between 62-68% protein. Chlorella is a similar microalgae which has a protein content of 40-50%. Spirulina can be grown easily with sunlight, water and small amounts of fertilizer such as chicken manure or de-natured human excrement. Being essentially a carbon compound it can be used for food or fuel.

Yogi and philosopher, Christopher Hills has been primarily responsible for bringing this food to the hungry world population at the present time. In 1965, Hills and Dr. Hiroshi Nakamura of Japan organized the Microalgae International Union composed of nearly 150 scientists (primarily microbiologists) to do research and offer information to the world about the use of algae for human food. By the Nineteen Seventies the Microalgae Union had worked out all of the systems necessary to mass produce this potent and easily grown food. Even though the Microalgae Union had found an inexpensive and potent food that could be one of the answers to the world food problem, to their chagrin they failed in their effort to get it adopted in any serious way by the world's governments. The simple reason for the failure was that the people that profit from the existing world food production system have their power and wealth from that system and the prospect of a new food or food supplement that is potent and inexpensive is not to their liking. Nonetheless all of the bugs have already been worked out of the systems of production and it is ready to be used as a help with the problem of world starvation and it can be one more technique in our inventory of food growing.
 

Comparison of protein content of Spirulina and Chlorella with common foods (% in dry weight)

Spirulina 62-68 
Chlorella 40-50 
Soy Bean 39 
Beef 16-20 
Egg 18 
Fish 16-18 
Wheat 6-10 
Rice 7 
Potato 2 


Amount of organic substances of Spirulina in dry weight (%)

  Spirulina Chlorella Soy Bean 
Protein 62-68 40-50 39 
Carbohydrate 18-20 10-25 36 
Lipide 2-3 10-30 19 
Vitamins pro. A, B1, B2, B6, B12, C pro. A, B1, B, nicotinic acid B1. B2. B6 

Spirulina is grown by sunlight in water that does not freeze, provided it is kept separate from other water so that other micro-organisms do not begin to grow in it. It is harvested by filtration through ordinary cloth. The reproduction rate of Spirulina is 40X per 24 hour period, therefore one ton becomes 40 tons in one day under the most optimal conditions.

Spirulina was an important staple food of the ancient Mayans and the people of Chad in Africa now gather this food from bodies of water and make it into cakes. In any survival situation this food certainly should be considered.10

The Ecological Health Garden

Edmond Bordeaux Székely has developed a system to produce high quality food in a small space. Székely, a farsighted, renaissance person who spoke ten modern languages and was a philologist in Sanskrit, Aramaic, Greek and Latin, also translated important Mayan Codexes. Székely authored 68 books and translated many. It was his translating of ancient Essene documents from the Aramaic that sparked his interest in health, diet and in the Essene way of life, including their agricultural practices.

Székely sets out his method in the book The Ecological Health Garden. His method involves four units; a compost unit, an earthworm farm unit, a germination unit and a plant unit, thus the system is partly to build soil and partly to grow plants on the healthy soil. The compost unit of course is created by any organic debris that can be collected and the earthworm farm also is fed by organic debris, producing probably the highest intensity soil fertility possible and also producing earthworms in abundance for planting in the compost and in the plant boxes. The germination unit is kept in the dark and a moist medium is used for making the seeds sprout. Ten percent of the sprouted seeds are used for planting in the plant boxes and the balance is eaten. By staggering the germination times a continuous supply of sprouts can be had. The plants, which are grown in boxes, are grown in intensely fertile soil and therefore are of the highest nutritional value. In addition to the compost heap, Székely says the earthworm unit will occupy about two square yards. The germination unit will measure one square yard and for each person about 16 square yards of planting boxes will be necessary.

The principles involved in deciding what to grow in the system are:

maximum nutritional value; 
plants suitable for intensive ecological gardening; 
personal likes and dislikes; 
preference given to plants that can be eaten in a fresh state; and plants that cannot easily be obtained elsewhere, such as in the wild state. 
One of the points that is highlighted by Széckley's system is how easily we may feed ourselves in an emergency situation. This simple system that he outlines can support life. It can be even more simple if we gather the seed of selected wild plants for sprouting.


The 'Do Nothing' Farmer

Masanobu Fukuoka is a person who has caused a stir by the publication of his book, The One Straw Revolution, in which he advocates and demonstrates what he calls "do nothing farming." Fukuoka began a career with the Japanese government in an agricultural related job but soon quit in frustration to return to the farm that he had inherited from his family. For 40 some years Fukuoka has been developing a system of no plow agriculture. The results of his method of growing rice equals the harvest from the traditional intensive methods of old Japan and equals the modern industrial system of rice production. He advocates no plowing, no chemical or compost fertilizer, no weeding or herbicides and no dependence on chemicals.

"In early October, before the harvest, white clover and the seeds of fast-growing varieties of winter grain are broadcast among the ripening stalks of rice. The clover and barley or rye sprout and grow an inch or two by the time the rice is ready to be harvested. During the rice harvest, the sprouted seeds are trampled by the feet of the harvesters, but recover in no time at all. When the threshing is completed, the rice straw is spread over the field.

"Between mid-November and mid-December is a good time to broadcast the pellets containing the rice seed among the young barley or rye plants, but they can also be broadcast in spring. A thin layer of chicken manure is spread over the field to help decompose the straw, and the year's planting is complete. "In May the winter grain is harvested. After threshing, all of the straw is scattered over the field.

"Water is then allowed to stand in the field for a week or ten days. This causes the weeds and clover to weaken and allows the rice to sprout up through the straw. Rain water alone is sufficient for the plants during June and July; in August fresh water is run through the field about once a week without being allowed to stand. The autumn harvest is now at hand.

"Such is the yearly cycle of rice/winter grain cultivation by the natural method. The seeding and harvesting so closely follow the natural pattern that it could be considered a natural process rather than an agricultural technique."11

Every year that Fukuoka has used this method his soil has grown richer because the natural cycle of feeding the soil continues. This is different than even traditional Japanese agriculture that burned the straw in former times (industrial methods are now uniformly used in Japan).

One interesting and simple trick that Fukuoka has developed is to coat the seeds of the rice and vegetables that he sows with clay, simply by mixing the seed and the clay and sifting it through a wire mesh. This prevents the chickens and birds from eating the seed when it is broadcast on the surface.

Fukuoka reclaimed some of the nearby hillsides that had been abandoned after the soil had been exhausted by farming. He hauled in ferns, straw and other organic material from higher up the mountain and hauled in rotting logs to help build up the soil. He also planted a fast growing acacia variety from Australia. These trees, being legumes, help the soil at the lower levels where the tree roots penetrate. As the mountainside had previously been clear cut, pine sprouts grew from some of the stumps. Many of these he let grow. He planted a number of varieties of fruit trees in this area and also broadcast clover seed. He says that six to ten acacias per quarter acre were enough to fertilize the deep soil and help the fruit trees which he says only once needed to have the brush and trees immediately around them cut back. On the surface soil he planted clover and the Japanese radish called daikon, a strong growing plant that will reseed itself. Fukuoka also cut back the weeds periodically with a scythe to help provide more green manure. Now, Fukuoka reports, "As a result of this thick weed/clover cover, over the past twenty years, the surface layer of the orchard soil, which had been hard red clay, has become loose, dark colored, and rich with earthworms and organic matter."12

Fukuoka also broadcasts many vegetable seeds as he does rice. These he places on the hillsides and between the trees in the orchard. These vegetables reseed themselves year after year and change their quality for the better, Fukuoka feels, back toward their original wild ancestors.

One of the values of Fukuoka's work is to show that by following the principles of nature one can at least equal modern industrial methods. He also demonstrates that feeding the soil is the key to healthy plants and healthy people who consume them.

He says that, "Doctors and medicine become necessary when people create a sickly environment."

In Fukuoka's natural, "do nothing" farming style, time is allowed for human pursuits. He suggests writing poetry and Haiku such as did the traditional farmers of Japan. "In caring for a quarter acre field," reports Fukuoka, "One or two people can do all the work of growing rice and winter grain in a matter of a few days."13

He goes on to explain that if 22 bushels (1,3000 pounds) of rice and 22 bushels of winter grain are harvested from a quarter acre field, then the field will support five to ten people, along with an hour or so per day maintaining the balance of the farm. He points out that, "If the field were turned over to pasturage, or if the grain were fed to cattle, only one person could be supported per quarter acre."14

Fukuoka's food growing has much to recommend it simply in its Taoist-like philosophy. He says, for example:

"The farmer became too busy when people began to investigate the world and decided that it would be 'good' if we did this or did that. All my research has been in the direction of not doing this or that. These thirty years have taught me that farmers would have been better off doing almost nothing at all.

"The more people do, the more society develops, the more problems arise. The increasing desolation of nature, the exhaustion of resources, the uneasiness and disintegration of the human spirit, all have been brought about by humanity's trying to accomplish something. Originally there was no reason to progress, and nothing that had to be done. We have come to the point at which there is no other way than to bring about a 'movement' not to bring anything about."15


European Mystic Gardening

Another method created in this century is Bio-dynamic Gardening. The foundation of the Bio-dynamic method was set out in 1924 by the German mystic, Rudolph Steiner, though it draws upon the folk tradition of Europe going back to early Indo-European days. Bio-dynamic gardening is a wholistic perspective that takes into account the movements of the planets and the earth as well as the activities of the soil and plants. In an alchemical sense it asks for the discipline of observation such that the consciousness of the gardener and the surrounding life are expanded.

Bio-dynamics too, relies heavily upon composting, but, this is a composting method with cosmic significance. Wolf D. Storl, a practitioner of the method says:

"Bio-dynamics, though not disparaging of common sense, is concerned essentially with consciousness-expansion in regard to plants, animals and soil. The attempt is made to look into the deeper spirit of nature. Out of this deeper awareness, based on exquisite observation of nature, the approach calls for not letting things run their natural course, but for intensifying certain natural processes (creating optimal animal populations, making special compost preparations, planting selected companion plants at certain cosmic constellations), aiding nature where she is weak after so many centuries of abuse, short-cutting destructive processes, and using human intelligence, kindness and good will to foster positive developments (planting hedges for birds, planting bee pastures, etc.). Bio-dynamics is a human service to the earth and its creatures, not just a method for increasing production or for providing healthy food."

With its emphasis of right relationship to the earth, Bio-dynamics outlines a symbolic method of thought which is applied alchemically to life and its activities. Fundamental to this are the four elements of fire, air, water and earth. These "elements" symbolize tendencies of movement and condition, such as warm, dry, moist, expansive and contractive. These tendencies are seen as basic to the way the material world functions and are used as templates of thought and analysis.


Findhorn: Communication With the Spirit of Life

Findhorn, now well known in New Age circles, is located in a transformed trailer park on the north coast of Scotland. In this cold, damp, sandy, sterile and generally inhospitable area that is farther north than Moscow, a center of energies has manifest a remarkable synthesis of people and plants. The Center was begun by a retired Royal Airforce Captain named Peter Caddy and his wife Eileen, who communicates directly with esoteric spiritual levels. The couple who were living a "normal" life, with Peter working as a hotel manager, began to experience personal and marital crises. These developed into considerable anguish and stress in their lifestyle. Both of them were ultimately reduced to a point of desperation. Eileen developed clairaudience and began to be guided by a voice. Because of their experiences, they came to depend upon the guidance and perplexed as they were, they were guided to the nondescript and forbidding piece of sandy spit that is now known as Findhorn Garden. With only a tiny pension and after some crisis, these two moved out of a fairly luxurious middle-class life, into what was really a tiny trailer house slum, and in a decade, a spiritual center was functioning whose story had spread world-wide- without these two ever having to plan or worry about where the energy would come from to manifest the vision. As they adjusted to the strange environment, a woman named Dorothy MacLean joined with them and she began to be guided by nature spirits toward garden building and this Peter carried out.

The various life forms that gave guidance were given the names of the traditional culture of the area such as devas, Pan, elves, sprites, nymphs and such. The word symbols put on the consciousness of these living beings are without a doubt inherited, with modification from Celtic culture which inherited it from the pre-Indo-European cultures that built Stonehenge. The arrangements of the names of these different spirits shows the pattern of lives within lives and consciousness within consciousness. There are water sprites and "elementals," who then are also part of plants. There are names for plant species and animal species and then finally there is Pan, the spirit of the whole of Nature. Pan encompasses these other "component" spirits. The inherited language shows that people recognized life functioning within life and spirits within spirits.

The humans of Findhorn put absolute faith in the advice they received from these spirits and unusual things began to occur among the living things in the garden, things like the now legendary forty pound cabbages. The fact that the whole garden rested on what would normally be relatively sterile sea shore sand with only a few inches of compost on the surface added to the amazement. As the communication developed, trees and bushes were added to the garden and a multitude of flower varieties. As human community began to manifest around these people, the gigantism of the vegetables began to lessen, but the vitality of the living garden arrangement did not. The energy then seemed to manifest in the human community that was being created and the life energies it was manifesting.

Manifesting was one of the central themes of the community. The sense was to integrate oneself with the cosmic life, accept the guidance given as to what one should do and then expect and have absolute faith that the means to achieve that guidance would manifest.

The unique neo-tribal sharing of energies at Findhorn transcended the shallow image of rules, structure and rigid community form. Paul Hawken, a visitor to Findhorn in the mid-Nineteen Seventies says:

"Although this community grows, it does not go out and work for anything it requires. Everything here is produced by the 'law of manifestation' which is the tenet that if you are following that voice within you which is the higher consciousness common to all men, then you are 'in the right place at the right time, doing the right thing' and all of your needs will be met. Your needs- not your desires. The faith that they feel is like a rock-it is immovable. Such absolute faith can have its problems when it occasionally meets the dualistic consciousness of the confused beings who stalk the earth, and I guess that is just about everybody including me. People, sometimes a little self-righteous in their ambivalent state, are sometimes shocked by the absolutes of Findhorn. This is not a community where itinerants can wander in and by invoking their presence claim 'rights'. There is no minority view here simply because there is no majority. There are not two sides to an argument because there are no arguments. What sounds wonderful to some may sound a bit frightening to others. At Findhorn, there are no regulations, there are no orders, there are no chains of command, but there is a group constantly striving to maintain an improve their receptivity to God and each other in order to channel light and truth to Earth. So there is no rule or knowing how something will come to the community and likewise there is no planning for the 'future'-there is only the simple faith that in time all needs will be met."16

Another encouraging point about Findhorn is that it shows possibilities of people stepping out of civilization and being able to manifest a positive emotional environment in a group. Hawken reports:

"Unfolding at Findhorn is an environment highly conducive to the transformation of consciousness. I never heard anyone at Findhorn criticize anyone else while I was there. I repeat, during my two-week stay, I never heard a single negative word about another person. There is no set of dogmas, diets, meditative techniques, or physical exercises to aid or bring about such consciousness."17

In the experience of Findhorn everyone was living intensely in the 'here and now', an experience akin to being able to do what you've really wanted to do for a length of time. At Findhorn, according the Hawken, they had an explanation for this:

"It is felt here that because we concentrate so much on our 'image' of ourself, we must constantly hold ourselves in check and re-adjust either ourselves or external reality to conform to this image. Since this is essentially an energy turned in on itself, it does not renew itself easily. This leads to mental and physical fatigue, self-consciousness, lack of self-assurance, and a hindered vision of true reality.

Those who are able to release this heavy burden of 'image' and personality experience a great release of energy which was formerly used to hide and conform oneself. Findhorn provides for people, young and old, a matrix within which they can rapidly undergo this process of transformation. The energy which is released is merged with the energies which come from higher levels. The merging of these two energies creates a synergistic effect where the whole exceeds the sum of the parts. The remarkable thing about Findhorn is that so many here are living embodiments of that change, yet Findhorn lacks obvious techniques, dogmas, or religious doctrines to hasten along this process or bring it about."18


NOTES

 

1 Indigenous Peoples And Tropical Forests:Models of Land Use and Management from Latin America. Cultural Survival Report #27. Jason W. Clay. Cultural Survival Inc. pub. Cambridge, Mass. 1988. p. 5.

2 Prance, Campbell and Nelson 1977. Quoted in Indigenous Peoples And Tropical Rainforests. p. 5.

3 Cultural Survival Quarterly. Vol. 12, #4. 1988. "Resettlement And Relocation," part II.

4 In The Rainforest. Catherine Caufield. Alfred A. Knopf pub. New York. 1985. p. 136.

5 ibid. p. 136.

6 Clay. Indigenous Peoples And Tropical Forests. op. cit. summary from text. Posey quotation. p. 51.

7 ibid. p. 55.

8 Forest Farming: Toward A Solution To Problems of World Hunger and Conservation. J. Sholto Douglas & Robert A. de J. Hart. Rodale Press. Emmaus, Pa. 1978. p. 5. (nutrition p. 37).

9 Douglas & Hart. Forest Farming. op. cit. p. 5.

10 Honolulu Star Bulletin. March 29, 1972. "The Solution for Hunger Is a Small Matter" Jocelyn Fujii. P. B-2.

The Mass Production of Spirulina: A Helical Blue-Green Algae As A New Food. Dr. Hiroshi Nakamura. Microalgae International Union pub. London. 1970.

11 The One-Straw Revolution: An Introduction To Natural Farming. Masanobu Fukuoka. Rodale Press. Emmaus, Pa. 1978. pp. 42-44.

12 ibid. p. 64.

13 ibid. p. 3.

14 ibid. p. 103.

15 ibid. p. 159.

16 Findhorn - a Center of Light. Paul Hawken. Tao Pub. Boston, Mass. 1974. pp. 27,28.

17 ibid. p. 33.

18 ibid. pp. 37, 38.



The Final Empire - Chapter 17

PERMANENT DESERT CULTURE

The model, the example of "living in balance with nature" that will be explored, is a watershed that exists in a semi-arid environment in the Southwestern United States. Because this area exists in that climate, it will be useful to survey the different strategies that humans have used to adapt to these regions. While this model applies to the near desert areas, it is suggested that a similar analysis be applied to any area in which a community of people may want to establish.

The Forager Example 295

Adaptations to the desert environment have been sedentary, nomadic and variations between the two. The Bushmen people of Southern Africa are a very ancient race of people that populated the cone of Southern Africa until the very recent arrival of the negroid, Bantu people and others. These people who are as physically different from the negroid peoples as the caucasians are from the eskimos, have been eliminated in most of their previous habitat and only survive in the severe environment of the central deserts of the cone where the non-adapted could not, until recently, enter- the Kalahari.

The Bushmen people are probably equal to the northern Eskimos in the incredible balance that they maintain with the life around them. For eight to ten months of each year they have no obvious source of water. Their liquid comes from plants and animals. Their water diet is so meager that every possible drop of liquid is squeezed from each animal that they kill and saved for consumption. Yet, researchers and visitors that know the Bushmen people say that they are happy, kind, cooperative, and well adjusted to their environment.

Anthropologist George Silberbauer lived with a group of Bushmen clans in one part of the Kalahari Desert. The group that Silberbauer lived with and studied he named the G/wi for recognition in the English language. The G/wi he states, "have water for only six to eight weeks in most years."1 The balance that the G/wi have reached with their environment is so fine, Silberbauer notes, that they often exist on the edge of heatstroke during the hot, dry seasons yet he never witnessed heatstroke. He states:

"Many G/wi, by their lassitude, malaise, and atypical irritability manifest what appears to be the prodromal signs of heatstroke, which, although they do not develop into stroke episodes, indicate how slender the margin of survival sometimes becomes under these conditions."2

The earth in the G/wi homeland is predominantly covered by grasses, forbs, brush (especially thorn bushes), and some trees. The people migrate throughout their land and attempt to camp near waterholes or sources of moisture. Edible plants make up the bulk of the G/wi diet; from 75 to 100%, according to Silberbauer. He states that there are 30 odd species that are the main subsistence for the group and he further notes that there are plant species that are consumed only for their moisture value rather than for their limited value as food. The G/wi do eat meat of course, when they can. Silberbauer lists 20 species that are used ranging from giraffe, down through a number of antelope types to other species such as porcupine, warthog, rabbits, jackals, rodents, birds, tortoises, snakes and frogs. He also indicates a substantial diet of invertebrates. Silberbauer calculates the annual meat consumption at 93.l4 kg. per person. Other researchers have noted that the caloric and protein value of food consumption of Bushmen peoples generally compares with that of Europeans.

As various students of the Bushmen peoples describe them, they have few possessions other than functional tools and utensils. Researchers also comment on their somewhat mystic profundity. One anthropologist who has studied other bands of Bushmen in another (and slightly wetter) area of the Kalahari says that they identified 200 plant species and 220 animal species for him and probably most were used for food, medicine or materials.3 This encyclopedic knowledge of the life around them and the sensing of its pulsations and movements begins to take on a mysterious aura to a person who has not lived life with the natural world. For example, the arrow point poison that is used by the G/wi comes from a larva of a particular beetle. This beetle larva that exists in cocoons some 20 to 25 cm. under the ground, are only found under a certain kind of large bush, the corkwood. The poison is only active when it enters the bloodstream and can be ingested without harm. This makes it an ideal poison for hunting arrows. How the G/wi learned of the larva and learned to use the poison is a mystery which indicates the profound sense that they have of the life around them.

The life cycle of the Central Kalahari is a two phase cycle of summer rains and winter dryness. During the rainy season the seed inventory that has been dispersed over the desert floor, germinates and the plant life flourishes, animals of all kinds gestate and lay eggs and water holes fill. At this time the tsama melons, a basic staple which provide food and moisture for the G/wi, proliferate. At this season, Silberbauer estimates that there were 29 usable species of plants available. It is during this time that the families and bands come together because the concentration of people can be supported in one area. At this wet season time of May in the southern hemisphere, the grouped people travelled only a few miles foraging for food. The people have a migration pattern that fits the season, the moisture and therefore the immediate food availability. As the season begins to dry the people disperse. The concentrated group breaks up and the bands go to different water holes. Hunting involves considerable travel on the part of the men. When bow and arrow hunting, the men go on several days trek. In this case they jerk the meat, that is they sliver it into thin strips and sun dry it. In this way it can be conveniently carried back to camp, although any moisture derived from the animal must be consumed on the spot. The people do use snares to catch smaller animals but this is only done near camp where the snares can be visited several times each day, because, as the observer notes, N!adima, their word for the creator, would be offended if they caused, "One of his creatures unnecessary suffering." Clubs, used in beating and throwing are also used to harvest small game.

The people occasionally rob the lions of their kills by rushing up to the lions and scaring them away. According to observer Silberbauer; " The trick lies in correctly judging the moment; if approached too early in its feed, the lion will attack, and if left too long, until it is sated and lazy, it will stand and defend its kill rather than run."4 An interesting sidelight is the complete sense of sharing and mutual aid in this culture. The anthropologist, Silberbauer, who came to the G/wi from another culture and pattern of conditioned perception, treats the question of private property at some length. In trying to get at this question in this Pleistocene culture, he was not very successful. He explains:

"I have equated ownership with exclusiveness of use or control of use. The concept of ownership is not highly developed among the central Kalahari G/wi and I found difficulty in discussing it with them....

Undisturbed, untouched, and unclaimed territorial assets are owned by N!adima but are subject to human ownership once the process of their exploitation has been initiated. For instance, when a man signifies his intention to hunt a particular animal, it is wrong for any other man to attempt to take the animal for himself unless and until the hunt is abandoned by the first claimant."5

Silberbauer says that among the G/wi only the plant food that is needed that day is collected for the household and this is shared equally by the household and elderly or invalid. When the good fortune of catching a large animal occurs, the meat is distributed between hunters, helpers and the camp at large. Anthropologist Richard B. Lee in his study, "!Kung Bushmen Subsistence: An Input-Output Analysis," states concerning the sharing of food, that hunters hunt individually or in pairs, but:

"Cooperation is clearly in evidence, however, in the consumption of food. Not only do families pool the day's production, but the entire camp-residents and visitors alike-shares equally in the total quantity of food available. The evening meal of any one family is made up of portions of food from the supplies of each of the other families resident. Foodstuffs are distributed raw or are prepared by the collector and then distributed. There is a constant flow of nuts, berries, roots and melons from one family fireplace to another until each person resident has received an equitable portion."6

Silberbauer notes interesting relationships between the life of the people and the life of the land. The human manuring around camps results in seed dispersion of useful plant populations in areas that are preferred camp sites for humans. He notes that the manure is worked into the ground along with the seeds by the cooperating dung beetles so that the seeds are nicely planted and ready for the next seasonal germination.

Silberbauer observed the G/wi burning grasses to promote the growth of the ground running vines of cucurbits. The grasses were burned off and then when the moisture came in, the burn spot was the first to green up. This green growth of grasses attracted the herbivores who ate it down severely (and in being there, made themselves available as food). The cucurbits then had the sun to maximize early growth, when in usual habit the cucurbit normally started its natural cycle of growth well after the grass. In the extremely dry time when animals and birds have migrated long distances away and others are in hibernation or relatively suspended animation, the G/wi also become withdrawn in a similar manner. By this time they have broken down into the smallest family units.

Even though it may seem to many that the G/wi endure hardship and in material terms are quite poor, they display a consciousness of their place in the universe, a spiritual sophistication and a human maturity far more developed than many other cultures. They are humble and careful not to take more than they need for their sustenance. They never shoot more than one game animal due to their consideration of N!adima who owns the world and consideration of the other beings who live with us on the earth. Silberbauer notes that the much valued ostrich eggs, which the G/wi find and use for food as well as valuable water containers, are each the equivalent of two dozen chicken eggs. Nonetheless, when the G/wi find an ostrich clutch, which may number ten to fifteen eggs, they only take two or three.

Silberbauer visited the G/wi in 1958-1966. He states that soon after, the long drought in the Kalahari broke. The herders, miners and others moved in to get what surpluses existed, hence the G/wi, like many other Bushmen peoples before them are no more. He says:

"...For better or worse, the close-knit, self-sufficient organization of band society, which is described in this book, and the completeness of the band member's control of their society are gone. The 'ethno-geographic present' is now the past."7

A Sedentary Example 299

The ancient Nabateans of the Negev Desert were a people who created an organic niche for themselves within the metabolism of the earth. Rather than just live in balance like most foragers, the Nabateans actively created an organic space for themselves over and above what the earth offered. They did this without damaging the other life or taking away from it. They created a new organ that further enhanced the life of the earth toward greater diversity, fertility and refinement.

The civilization of the Nabatu demonstrates what can be done by a creative group of people. The Nabatean civilization existed in the Negev and Sinai deserts for approximately two centuries and produced an amazing and exquisite culture in a land of as little as two to four inches rainfall per year. These people had no "resources" other than their creativity. They demonstrate that right now most of the deserts of the world could be successfully inhabited. This could not, of course, be done within the context of industrial civilization.

Little is known about the origins of the Nabateans. Scholars conclude, based on the existing evidence, that they were a tribe or group of tribes coming up out of Arabia into the Sinai-Negev area. Little is known either about the natural history of the Sinai-Negev desert. The interior desert has an average of four to eight inches of rainfall in the northern part of the Negev and this becomes less toward the south into the Sinai. The land forms and climatic systems are such that rainfall-vegetation regimes can change radically in only a few miles as one travels from the Mediterranean Sea, east into the desert. Efraim Orni and Dan Yaalon, in their survey of the soils of Israel, mention that the soil of the southern Negev is covered by "reg" soil which is a dark, flinty and gravelly desert pavement. Beneath this relatively impermeable surface is "a pale, loose, loamy layer up to one foot (30 cm.) thick."8 

This fact would tend to indicate considerable vegetation at some time in prehistory. The Northern Negev in the Beersheba lowlands is a yellowish-brown loess, according to the authors, and is typical of desert fringes, being soil that is brought in from the inner desert regions by dust storms. Although many desert sections of the present Middle East were forested in ancient times, little is known about what the vegetation cover of the Sinai-Negev may have been. Though there is a long history of settlement in the Negev, it was usually also a very sparse population up to the time of the Nabateans.

Although scholars find no evidence of village life for the Nabateans earlier than the first century B.C., historians believe that they were in the region as nomadic tribes. There are indications that they were not a semitic people but were aboriginals displaced from Arabia by the present inhabitants.9

Nelson Glueck, probably the foremost scholar of this singular people, sums up his view of them in his study, Rivers In The Desert:A History of the Negev, by saying:

"Their rule prevailed for several centuries from Arabia to Syria and across the Negev to Sinai. They may be accounted one of the most remarkable peoples of history. Springing swiftly out of the desert of Arabia to a position of great power and affluence, they were thrust back by the Romans even more swiftly into the limbo whence they came. While their turn lasted, the Nabateans wrought greatly, developing almost overnight into builders of magnificent cities, which are unique in the history of the handiwork of man. They became tradesmen, farmers, engineers, architects and artists of outstanding excellence. The phenomenon of their appearance and disappearance between the first centuries B.C. and A.D. may be likened to the brilliance of a meteor flashing briefly across the skies to blazing extinction.10

They were indeed a wonderful people, whose abilities were directed to the arts of peace rather than to the science of war, to the fructification of deserts rather than to the sowing of their neighbors' fields with salt, to the conservation of the soil and the skillful gathering and utilization of water rather than to the squandering of natural resources and to the scorching of the good earth to prevent others from enjoying its blessings.

"They found their reward in the survival values they created for themselves and their children and their childrens' children, planning and undertaking soil and water conservation schemes which sometimes must have taken generations to complete. It was in this way that they reconquered the wilderness of the Negev, planting more agricultural colonies there than it had ever known before."11

The first century B.C. historian Strabo helps to illuminate more of the cultural life of the Nabateans. Describing their life at that time, he says that they were, " 'temperate and industrious,' and with stringent laws concerning thrift. Democracy, a carry-over from the desert life, still regulates social life, even to that of the king. But now they drink their wine in golden beakers, are entertained by dancing girls, have planted gardens about Petra, and their king wears purple. They have few slaves, but live in houses of stone in a city unwalled because of peace."12

The culture of the Nabateans was based on water concentration, containerization and soil conservation. In the Negev as well as many other semi-arid deserts of the world, rainfall comes only sporadically, but often in heavy torrents. If the area has tree cover and good vegetation cover of other varieties such as grass, the land is able to harmonize the cycles of moisture, by absorbing the water. If the land has been abused or if it is simply too dry to support much vegetative cover, the rain simply runs off in torrents to sink finally in the desert lowlands.

The Nabateans existed in a desert that was very arid and had little vegetative cover. Their strategy was not to try to build soil on the expanses of desert but to use the expanses for water catchment and then to concentrate the water runoff into areas that could be intensively worked to build the soil. Because much of the environment was rock and ground with an impermeable pavement surface, they were greatly aided in the water catchment effort and made full use of this fact.

One of their talents was the containerization of water. They often cut cisterns out of solid rock (as they cut their most important city, Petra out of rock). They also used plaster created from the burning of local limestone. Plaster enabled them to dig holes in the ground almost anywhere they might need a cistern. After the hole was dug they plastered the sides and bottom so that it would hold water. There are plastered cisterns built by the Nabateans in the Negev now that are still in use by the bedouins who water their herds from them. Some of the rock cisterns that have been found have capacities of thousands of gallons. As the Nabateans had many hundreds of villages around the area they had to preserve every drop of water possible. One ingenious way of filling cisterns, other than through simple diversion from canyons, was to find caves in the cliff faces or to dig out cliff faces in the manner illustrated below. 

The Nabateans by the use of dams, terraces, diversionary wells, channels, aqueducts, cisterns and reservoirs, used whole watersheds as catchment areas. Their devices ordinarily went right to the tops of the valleys and canyons so that any sudden rush of water was tempered and utilized to its maximum. They used walls of rock several feet high that encircled mesa tops.
 
By using the diversionary walls, the water runoff could be channeled in a relatively slow moving flow onto terraces and onto flats below the mesa. An additional benefit was the topsoil suspended in the water run-off. Provided that the water wasn't cutting erosion strips, the silt that ran off would be the lighter material that had organic value in the farming areas.

After the water was concentrated it had to be spread onto the fields. Its velocity had to be checked so that it didn't dig out erosion paths in the fields. The Nabateans did this by having their fields on multiple levels. The Nabatean farmer could give some fields a small amount of water while others received more, thus making adjustment for different varieties of plants. This was done by having higher or lower spillways, thus impounding a pre-set level of water.

In the canyon bottoms a system of basins followed each other downhill. These were constructed so that as each basin filled, the excess water ran to fill the next basin. The spillways were constructed of tightly fitted rock that was set so that the water would not run out until there was six inches of water in the basin. This slowed the water enough to prevent erosion.

The Nabateans used wells when they could reach the water table. Artesian wells still remain in the Negev from the Nabatean days. In a few instances water bearing aquifers were located. These would be strata of sandstone or other porous material that was holding water. Workers dug horizontal tunnels into the hillside until they reached the water bearing strata. Another creative technique was a combination of water catchment and well. It is called a Kanat by contemporary researchers. The Kanat system is especially used just at the point where an intermittent stream comes out of the mountains and enters a flattened area. Often, in deserts more water travels underground than on the surface and the Kanat was designed to exploit this. It functions by sinking a number of well shafts down into this layer which is usually gravel. The water seeps out of the wall of the well shaft but unlike most wells the water does not collect on the bottom. Where the floor of a normal well would be, is a horizontal tunnel. Instead the water runs down and out of the tunnel which drains all of the shafts.

Daniel Hillel, in his study, Land, Water and Life In A Desert Environment, states that at the peak of the cultural manifestation of the Nabateans, there were many hundreds of farm units in the northern Negev; that "runoff farming encompassed practically all of the usable land in the northern Negev." Glueck states also that the Nabateans held "millions of gallons of water," in their cisterns and reservoirs, giving an idea of the extent of their works.13

The average wadi bottom planting according to Glueck was around twenty five acres. Hillel estimates the average runoff in the Negev to be from 10% to 15% of rain falling on the catchment basin and he puts the water requirements of winter crops in the Negev at about four inches of rain (or other water). From these calculations, Hillel states that the ratio of catchment basin to growing area must average 25:1. Other crops than standard field crops do better apparently. He does cite an experiment that he has done with almond trees in an area of eight to ten inches rainfall that grow well with a 3:1 catchment area to planted area.

Tree crops in the Negev are almonds, apricots, figs, olives, pomegranates, and date palms. Wheat is a winter crop and summer crops include grapes and cucurbits (i.e., melons, squash). The ancient Nabateans must have grown many of these crops. We know from written historical records that they grew barley and aracus (apparently a legume) also.

The effectiveness of the Nabateans' creativity is shown by a reconstituted Nabatean farm done by Professor Evanari of Hebrew University:

"In 1960, when this experiment was tried, Israel had the lowest rainfall ever recorded, amounting to only an inch and a half. Crops in the Negev and elsewhere failed and had to be plowed back into the soil, but to everyone's astonishment barley on the professor's ancient farm, which had lain fallow for 1,700 or more years, produced a crop that stood chest high. The secret lay in the fact that the ancient Nabatean channels, which the professor had restored, sluiced the rain down from the surrounding hills, while the walls surrounding the quarter-acre plots maintained the water at a depth of six inches when, during one sudden shower, only a fifth of an inch of rain fell. From these ancient fields the professor and his helpers gathered five hundred kilos of barley per acre, equal to the grain yield in the Dakotas.

Using the same principle of flood irrigation, Professor Evanari has converted an ancient wadi system into acres of grapes, apricots, almonds, olives, and such vegetables as asparagus, cucumbers, and artichokes. Moreover, the plants need no sprays to protect them from the usual plant diseases, as the dry heat of the desert itself bakes and sterilizes the soil."14

Another desert dwelling people, the Kiva People, who all used underground ceremonial chambers called Kivas, lived in ancient times and many villages still exist in the southwestern part of the North American continent. The names of their ancient groups were Anasazi, Hohokam, Mimbres and Mogollon according to their place of residence and each of the contemporary pueblos usually carry Spanish names. The ancient Kiva people constructed some hydraulic works on the order of that done by the Nabateans. Most of the land where the ancient Kiva People lived received between 10 and 20 inches of rain per year so they did not have to go to the extremes of the Nabateans in their engineering and design. 

They did use terracing, channeling-off water catchment areas and dams in their agriculture, even though they were able to farm dry land to a greater extent without the water concentration devices. Probably the majority of effort was flood-plain agriculture. This is simply planting flood plains with flood water channelled on to it. They had additional techniques that the Nabateans are not known to have used. One of these techniques was to find sandstone cliffs with a spring at the base. This indicated that the sandstone was an aquifer holding water. The Kiva People constructed dams on the mesa top and the impounded water would sink into the aquifer rather than run over the side. This increased the spring flow and insured a dependable water supply.

Another ingenious technique works very well. Any impermeable material laying on desert soil will cause water to collect beneath it. It will protect the soil from oxidation and also act as a mulch. The Southwestern Kiva people placed flat, dark colored rocks out in fields in a checkerboard design. The fact that half the area is covered means that the rest gets twice as much water. The dark color of the rocks also absorbs heat during the day thus moderating the cold at night.

There must have been many micro-environment techniques used by various desert dwellers. One that we know the Essenes used and no doubt which was used by the Nabateans was the earthen vessel. A pottery vessel is very water efficient when used as a planter. In this way the moisture is containerized. Another use for the pottery vessel is to bury it with its rim at ground level with plants encircling the jar. It is filled with water which slowly seeps out of its porous sides to water the plants and its top can be covered to prevent evaporative water loss.



NOTES

 

1 Hunter and Habitat in the Central Kalahari Desert. George B. Silberbauer. Cambridge U. Press. 1981. p. 221.

2 ibid. p. 277.

3 Environment and Cultural Behavior. ed. Andrew P. Vayda. Natural History Press. 1969. "Kung Bushman Subsistence: An Input-Output Analysis." Richard B. Lee. P. 67. 

4 Silberbauer. Hunter and Habitat. op. cit. p. 216.

5 ibid, p. 232.

6 Lee. Environment and Cultural Behavior. op. cit. p. 58,59.

7 Silberbauer. Hunter and Habitat. op. cit. p. 1.

8 Israel Today: Reclamation and Conservation of the Soil. #26. Efraim Orni & Dan H. Yaalon. Israel Digest pub. P.O.B. 92. Jerusalem. 1970. p. 15.

9 The Nabateans:Their History, Culture and Archaeology. Philip C. Hammond. Paul Astrom, Pub. Gothenburg, Sweden. (Other scholars of note concerning the Nabateans are Professor Evenari of Hebrew University and Archaeologist Avraham Negev, both of Israel.)

10 Rivers In The Desert: A History of the Negev. Nelson Glueck. Farrar, Straus & Cudahy. New York. 1959. p. 193.

See also: Land, Water and Life In A Desert Environment. Daniel Hillel. Praeger pub. 1982. And: 

The Negev; The Challenge of a Desert. 2nd. ed. Michael Evenari, Leslie Shanan, Naphtali Tadmor, et. al. Harvard U. Press. Cambridge, MA 1982.

11 ibid. p. 202.

12 Hammond. The Nabateans. op. cit. p. 13.

13 ibid. p. 211.

14 World of the Desert, Slater Brown. Bobs-Merrill. New York. 1963. p.75.

 
 The Final Empire: Chapter 18


CHOOSING REALITY


Claiming Our Birthright p. 295

Civilization is a mental/material world of culturally transmitted illusion. It is suicide on a vast historical scale. It is indeed a self-fulfilling prophecy of linear increase until the final exhaustion is reached. The behavior of the swelling tumor body fails all tests of common sense and of feelings that come from the heart. When we look out upon the earth at the confusion and the dying, the results of this pattern of behavior cannot be denied. We are living out the dissolution, the degeneration and the separation on a psychological level. We are living it out on a social level and a political level and we are existing within the body of an organism that is experiencing it on a planetary level.

The conditioned illusion of the "march of progress" will fade as desperation begins to enter even for First World populations. The exponential increase of linear growth is now entering the phase in which we will see forms- mental, social, political and industrial- begin to shatter. The swelling energies of the trends of history triggered, centuries and millennia in the past, are reaching their logical culmination. As the swelling energies exceed the ability of the pre-arranged forms to contain them, the forms will disintegrate. The growth of population, the increasing prevalence of poison, the rise in background radiation, the increase in severe weather disturbance from the greenhouse effect, the increase in conflict from the militarists rabid to corner the last resources; these and many other trends of increase will ultimately insure the demise of the final world empire.

As the crises increase, the world military order of empire will attempt in the last gasp, to consolidate, to save itself, but it cannot for long. It will fall. If one destroys what feeds them, even over a length of one hundred centuries, one will finally starve.

The period that we are entering is unprecedented, there are no roadmaps for us within the culture of civilization. There will be crises within crises, within crises and the outer boundaries will be the whole body of the earth: the ozone layer, the atmospheric greenhouse gases, the macro-ocean currents and whole bioregional ecosystems. Fragmentation and sudden crises will be the hallmark of the age.

There is a valid roadmap and that is our birthright as organic and cosmic beings. We each enjoy a nature as cellular organisms and we all enjoy a nature as life on earth, enabled by cosmic conditions on that scale. Are we to believe that this beauty, joy and intelligence that we experience is confined simply to the earth? Are we to believe that there is not an energy moving toward healing, wholeness and experiential, sensory, visual, aural, and spiritual beauty in this cosmos that even exceeds the limits of our perception? When we see our wounds heal, when we see the pioneer plants cover the injured soil, when we see the sun's rays from the heart of the solar body transformed into the beauty of an old growth forest or other matured life, can we not see that the pattern leads toward wholeness, happiness and beauty? Organic life is our birthright and our roadmap is the cosmic pattern.

The Civilized Alien p. 310

We are estranged from the whole life. We suffer from separation and to the degree that we cannot recognize that source of suffering, it increases. We need release the contraction, the defense, the barrier and re-unify. The forces and patterns that have enabled life on earth, flow when the patterns are resonant on all levels. We cannot expect sufficient power from the sources unless we are centered and balanced personally, socially and then the human group is set within the life of the earth in a balanced way. If our minds can expand so that we can see the severity of the crisis on its planetary and solar scale then we can also understand the pattern. When remission of cancer is achieved by affirmation and visualization it comes about by the cell receiving intelligent communication- "inspiration"- from the whole intelligence. Where we exist, in this here and now, on the earth, we cannot simply balance person- tribe- watershed. The organic disturbance is planetary. The energies need be spread to many points of reception over the earth. Those receptive tribes need achieve resonance on both material and non-material levels.

We must start from here, from the point of our own awakening, not as a person socially defined but as a human ecologically defined. The reality of cosmic perspective- that is our awakening. Being here, in the real cosmos, we are not separate. This is our destiny, to awaken to the cosmic identity of Gaia. If we accomplish our aim of reintegrating human culture with the life of the earth then our activities will, in important ways, structure the new culture. As we organize ourselves to aid the life of the earth, social structure, ritual and practice will flow from that.

We will return to the earth and our needs will be met by the earth. From our permacultural base we can derive food, oils, flours, fibres, waxes, woods, medicinal plants, brewing agents, lubricants, fuel, dyes, glues, wood for construction, soaps and other items. We humans need food, shelter and love to survive on earth and our new culture can provide that.

The last section of this book is a roadmap for the material plane. If we follow the map and move toward the sources of life we will become spiritually informed, resonantly. We are returning home but our absence has been lengthy. We will need introductions. I have created, with advice from the elders, a permaculture of a place, a watershed. I am presenting this in the form of a "case study" but it is only a guide, a suggestion. This is a suggested guide to creating your introduction. You must create your own in your place, to the place our grandchildren and great-great grandchildren will inhabit. We are going to marry each other and we are going to join our mother the earth. Our guide is our collective great grandchild who stands afar in paradise. At this cusp of the age, at this moment of opportunity, it is time to commence the acquaintance. 

This is indeed a new age and a time of decision. Persons of all tribes and all races who are moving toward balance and unity are separating out from the suicide pact. This is the palpable reality. When all falls into disintegration, with all the species on earth involved, race, creed, geography and such are immaterial, only that which has prospect of continuance becomes real. This then means that our sense of reality must change. We will trade our lives as ciphers in mass, industrial society for an opportunity to meaningfully participate in cosmic creation, spiritually, intellectually, socially and ecologically. Irrespective of the final outcome, we will reap immediate challenge and enjoyment. Our lives will become more real and fun. We will return to the earth and create peace among us, for the children. We will create a human focussed society that emphasizes the expansion of human Beingness. Human abilities, talents and human focussed activities will be important rather than marginalized as in the present culture of materialism that focuses on social power and on the production of material goods. In order to succeed we must focus on the children as our most important task. Simply creating a positive emotional base in our culture and raising children in that environment will help them immensely when they face the increasing difficulties of their generations.

Our focus is on the living things. This is our cultural reality. We will become informed about the life of the earth, we will be involved with living things on a daily basis. Houses, freeways and factories as a focus of reality will fade away. Living things are the cosmic reality on earth. The growth and condition of life is our focus. We live on watersheds and in bioregions. These areas are organisms on their level of being just as the earth is an organism on its level. Our basic reality is sun, soil, water and air because those four items and their conditions are the basic reality of life on earth. We focus upon the condition of those life giving elements.

When we live at the top of our watershed and are expanding downward, a basic test of our culture and the legitimacy of our occupance on earth will be that pure air and water are emitted from the area that we inhabit. This is a simple and real test. This does not mean that we have to go to the tops of high mountains. Many rises, hills and ridges are at the top of their local watersheds.

Gaia's History P. 312

Because rock conditions soil, it is important to know the geology of one's place. In the valuable book, The Secrets of the Soil, Tomkins and Byrd report on several people in different locations who have discovered and used crushed rock from unique rock deposits as amazingly beneficial soil conditioners.1 There are no doubt many of these deposits of uniquely balanced minerals scattered over the earth.

Knowing the "bones of the mother" also leads us to other knowledge. Through our dowsing and other sensing abilities we will come to know the circulation of energies within the hard body of the earth. This relates to aquifers, springs, underground streams and rivers and it also relates to the finer chi energies of the earth and places of power. Dowsing for underground waters is an easily learned ability. Probably the premier work in this area is the book Supersensonics, by Christopher Hills.2 Other works giving instructions in dowsing techniques are also easily obtained. The dowsing ability is not confined to water but is an ability whereby one's area of consciousness that deals with that talent can inform a person of answers to many questions such as the most efficacious herb to use in specific healings, the location of minerals, the paths of the various earth energies, as well as the course of underground streams and rivers.

Geology books and academic studies can serve as introductions in this matter but observation (with all senses receptive) over time, is the final source of knowledge.

The mosaic of life that exists on the surface and which is integral with the energy flows of the hard body must be known intimately. On the watershed of the San Francisco River, the location of our case study, these mosaics of large biotic zones, or life zones, are divided in a general way by elevation and the areas where two zones intermingle, which are called ecotones, are especially important because there, the diversity is even greater. Some lore of the birds and animals can be found in books. If the life in one's place is not completely gone, older people may know some lore of the wildlife. Here again there is no substitute for observation. One reason is that birds and animals do have individual characters which are sometimes very pronounced and generalizations about whole species are only that- generalizations.

The natural history of one's area may be difficult to discover depending on the length of colonization by empire and the use that culture has made of the land. Generally, much was eliminated before any systematic gathering of biological information was begun. Some academic sources are usable, some information can be gleaned from historical libraries and works written by first settlers. On the watershed of the San Francisco River, trappers were early arrivals and several left journals. A meat hunter who sold game animals to the miners and also several early ranchers left books about their experiences. From these types of sources one gains an occasional plant, vegetation or animal description to begin putting together a picture. To gain a sense of the truly teeming life on a broad scale, one can search out studies such as Farley Mowat's Sea Of Slaughter. (Bantam 1986), about the north Atlantic coast or Peter Mathiesson's Wildlife In America (1959). The bibliographies of this type of book offers further sources that are helpful.

Understanding the natural history of the area helps understand the potential of the land and helps understand the climax ecosystem that may, but probably does not now exist.

Understanding the human occupancy of one's watershed is imperative. Again, unless there are Native people who either live now- or have cultural memories of how their ancestors lived, one must resort to books. This applies to all who have lived in the place, not simply the last native group. 

Other historical sources also may offer some clues to the native ethnobotany. Not only foraging systems but knowledge of the entire life ways of native people need to be focussed upon. Tools, materials, migration patterns, sacred places, "myths" and much more is of interest to those who expect they and their great-grandchildren will live with the place.

Identification manuals for plants, trees, birds, animals, mushrooms, fish and any other life forms in one's place are a must. It is important, at least initially, until we develop our own language, to use latin names for precise identification as common usage names vary from person to person and region to region (and even between some garden seed catalogues that do not use latin names). 

One should be out on the earth much of the time identifying food plants, medicinal herbs and generally beginning observations. Watching the plant habits is essential. Where do they grow, the north slope, south slope, canyons, ridgetops? What soils do they like? Dig into the soil, examine it periodically in different areas to keep track of soil moisture through the seasons. Smell the different soils, taste them, become familiar with them. Watch for plant associations. Notice the patina of plant groups. This often tells of underground water courses, soil types and even favorite spots where birds or animals visit often and drop seeds. If one is in a heavily impacted area, search for places that are difficult for livestock or people to get to and study that relatively undisturbed area intently. If one is in a place that is completely obliterated, try to find areas in that watershed that are somewhat natural and use them to get ideas for a permacultural restoration at the place that has been obliterated.

Begin to create seed inventories. Store them carefully with adequate note of plant description, place of residence on the watershed, date and other relevant information. Excellent books exist which explain wild seed gathering and wild plant propagation. There are books such as American Wildlife And Plants: A Guide To Wildlife Food Habits, by Martin, Zim and Nelson (Dover, 1951) which can greatly aid our practice of observation. This will also give us clues to the creation of wildlife habitat. In this matter one should not ignore "Fish and Game" bureaucracies. Though they focus on species important to the "trophy hunting" industry, they often have some information on other species. There are now a few books, pamphlets and magazines focussing on ecological restoration. These are very useful.

One of the important considerations that we will have is to help Gaia feed herself so she can feed us. To help her ingest sunlight we will be making effort for the climax ecosystem to restore itself. In those areas where there is no ecosystem remaining we will use permaculture. This method builds in complexity, aid to the soil and aid to the general life. Then we will live from that increase.

With the world-wide damage from empire there is no way that Gaia can return to her pristine condition. We're discussing scar tissue in the case of obliterated zones. In view of the geographic transfer of plants, animals, diseases and all the rest in the past ten thousand years, what our effort must be is to simply create a facsimile ecosystem that is as complex and as close to the original as possible using what genetic materials we have at hand. Many of these species may have been unknown to the original climax ecosystem. Then we must let Gaia do the further healing growth. Hopefully the weeds will help us by overgrowing the civis problem, the villages, towns and cities that do not fit in the solar budget and are extorting other life to subsidize their energies.

The Moment of Opportunity p. 314

There is no reason that some of the remaining energies of the empire cannot be used to assist in our transition to balance. Indeed, we would hope that the entire remaining energy of civilization could be used so. The "time of purification" is now upon us. We need move swiftly. We have solutions. This must be made clear to those who will respond. Though we must use whatever strategies we can to resist the destruction of the best that remains, the forward direction of our solutions are not political, religious or ideological- they are simply the patterns of life.

The permaculture that follows is a case study. It has been created as an example, an introduction. Please use it in gaining ideas to help our mother, the earth, in your place. As we all tune into the frequency, we will be in touch.

NOTES

1 Secrets Of The Soil: New Age Solutions For Restoring Our Planet. Peter Tompkins & Christopher Bird. Harper & Row. New York. 1989.

2 Supersensonics: The Science Of Radiational Paraphysics. Vol. III. Christopher Hills. University of the Trees Press, P.O. Box 644, Boulder Creek, Calif. 95006. 1975.

End of Part II, Volume II


The Final Empire: Vol. 2 - PT. 3 ON THE WATERSHED

Chapter 19: THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE WATERSHED OF THE SAN FRANCISCO RIVER p. 319

Very early in time, shallow seas covered the Southern part of New Mexico, Arizona and Northern Mexico. As the tension of the North American tectonic plate colliding with the East Pacific Rise increased, the surface of the land across the American West began to crumple, shift, and rise.

The Mogollon Rim, which is the southern border of the Colorado Plateau, was part of a stable platform related to the Great Plains and the Colorado Plateau for several hundred million years. More than a hundred million years before the present, (B.P.), the area south of the Mogollon Rim began to fall because of the geosyncline that runs southeast to the Gulf of Mexico, elevating the Colorado Plateau to the North. Somewhere in the neighborhood of seventy million years B.P., the era of late dinosaurs, the positions reversed and the southern portion again became higher than the Colorado Plateau. By the time period of twenty to thirty million years B.P. the two sections had again reversed themselves and became as they are today with the Mogollon Rim being the border area between the two.1

Once the surface of the earth had settled into the general contours that it now has, the Rio Grande began emptying into a large lake located in Southern New Mexico and Northern Chihuahua. The Mimbres River and the Gila River also emptied into this sump. Sometime later the Rio Grande found the outlet in the gap between the mountains where El Paso is today and began to flow to the sea at the Gulf of Mexico. The Gila found another route out through Southern Arizona to meet the Colorado at Yuma. This left the Rio Mimbres to continue to run into the sump that has been called the Southwest Divide Basin, a basin 124 miles wide from which no water exits to either ocean.2

The great ice sheets of the last glacial period extended not much farther south than Santa Fe, New Mexico and as they receded the climate changed. As the ice sheet receded and after it was gone, the desert ecosystem progressed eastward and northward out of what is now the Sonoran desert. The montane system made up of pines, spruce and fir receded ahead of the piñon-juniper regime, which was followed by the desert regime.

Twenty-two thousand years ago the San Francisco watershed was probably entirely covered by forest of the pine-spruce-fir variety. As the desert regime expanded, the piñon-juniper zone began to move up in elevation. As the piñon-juniper zone began to move up in elevation and northward, grass lands followed behind and ahead of the present desert system. Grasslands dominated the northern Sonora-Chihuahua deserts for several thousand years before the present desert and the higher piñon-juniper zones were set around eight thousand years B.P.

 
The Elevational Life Zones

The watershed of the San Francisco River is a unique region where within a distance of roughly 20 miles one can travel from the Sonoran-Chihauhuan desert type eco-system to an alpine ecosystem or life zone characteristic of Northern Canada. This is possible because the Rim rises out of the desert with peaks that are almost 11,000 feet in elevation. The life zones of the semi-arid desert in the Southwestern U.S., like other areas, are conditioned by elevation. As one goes up elevation, the temperature and moisture regimes become cooler and more moist. Because of this the same effect will occur if one goes long distances northward. Travelling north thousands of miles, one will cross the same life zones that one crosses by going up elevation along the Mogollon Rim. This abundance of life zones creates a fertile place for forager peoples because of the seasonal variety of foods available and also because it allows humans to avoid the effects of summer heat in the desert and the winter cold in the high mountains.

The lowest elevation of the San Francisco watershed is in the Chihuahuan Desert. The Mogollon Rim is the northern boundary of both the Sonoran Desert life zone and the Chihuahuan desert to the east of it. Phoenix, Arizona is in the Sonoran and El Paso, Texas/Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, being in the Chihuahuan. Though both are deserts, there are significant qualitative differences between them. The big differences are that the Chihuahuan is generally higher in elevation and the Sonoran has more species diversity. From the spot that the San Francisco river joins the Gila near the border of New Mexico/Arizona, back up toward the rim, is area that is transitional. It is the intermingling at the edge of two biogeographical regions. These are the Chihuahuan Desert to the south and the Colorado Plateau to the north. Even though the bottom of the watershed is in the Chihuahuan Desert and has those characteristics, these larger mega-zones both condition it. 

The piñon-juniper life zone begins at roughly 5,000 feet elevation. This life zone predominates in the identifying tree species, smaller nopal cactus, and some grass species, bushes, as well as some forbs peculiar to this zone.

At the upper border of the piñon-juniper life zone is the ecotone called chaparral. Ecotone is the word that describes the intermingling of two life zones at their borders. This is a very rich ecological area that also contains oaks and manzanita as prevalent species along with the ponderosa pine which is the life-zone above it. The chaparral it should be emphasized, like other ecological specifics, does not occur at all places of the ecotone. Only where sun, soil and moisture are right will these large areas of chaparral appear.

At roughly seven thousand feet elevation the ponderosa pine forest begins. This is the zone of the cool summers and quiet nights. Between 8,500 and 9,000 feet that life zone begins to shade into the fir-aspen zone. This is the high elevation of snow, springs, abundant fungi, boggy meadows and the beautiful aspen forests of autumn.

Above this zone is the spruce-aspen zone. This zone is everything that one would find in a northern Canadian forest. Above this zone at roughly 10,500 feet elevation we find the tree line and then hardy grasses and shrubs above at the top of Mogollon Baldy and Whitewater Baldy, the same type of areas of moss, grass and low bushes that one sees in the arctic. Each of these life zones is a general approximation as to elevation, and vegetation cover. The zones vary; for example, a warm, drier, south facing slope would have characteristics of a lower elevation than a north slope which is colder and on which the moisture evaporation is not as great. There will be areas also that are in the rainshadow of high ranges and so receive more moisture than would the same face in an area that was not in a rainshadow. Narrow canyons, especially on a north face can vary the life zone considerably. Soils also have an effect on these zones. Often if soil is poor a zone will reflect species that are characteristic of the next zone lower. Generally speaking, the life zones do maintain the given elevations with the proviso that the farther south one goes, the higher is the elevation of each life zone.

Though certain species are identified with particular life zones, it should be kept in mind that there are seasonal migrations of birds and animals and that also plant species will migrate into any area to their liking. A good example is the ponderosa pine which has its own life zone but in the days before the empire when they were not felled, they would flow down the moist canyons and stretch along the live streams at lower elevations far out into the desert as long as their roots could reach water. The elk who now live cloistered in high mountains everywhere, are naturally more of a plains and meadow animal (they are predominantly grass grazers, rather than browsers). Since the coming of empire they too have retreated.
 
The Moisture

Generally, precipitation on the Watershed increases about four inches for each one thousand foot rise in elevation, but there are exceptions that modify this rule. The watershed receives weather from both the Atlantic (Gulf of Mexico) and the Pacific in seasonal alternation:

"Winter is the driest season because much of the moisture from Pacific Ocean storms moving inland is removed over the mountains to the west. The seasonal difference is less pronounced west of the Continental Divide than to the east. The main source of moisture in the summer is the Gulf of Mexico. Moist air enters New Mexico in the general circulation from the southeast about the westward displaced Bermuda high pressure area. Two-thirds of the annual precipitation falls during the warmer six months, and half the annual average precipitation falls from July through September. This is mostly from brief, but often heavy, thunderstorms."3

Even though the low end of the watershed should follow the altitudinal pattern for rainfall it is nearer the air flow of the Atlantic out of the Gulf of Mexico which brings it more moisture. Also rain clouds headed north sometimes back up against the escarpment of the Mogollon Rim which is thousands of feet high. This also helps cause rain.

The two phase, winter-summer alternation of moisture is significant. The effects of this can be seen particularly among the grasses and the forbs, which are plants that are smaller than bushes but that are not grass or grasslike. The dual wet periods bring on cool season plants that achieve their growth during the winter rainy season and warm season plants that are adapted to the summer rainy season. The bulk of the plant species are warm season. Nonetheless, the life of cool season plants assist in feeding the browsers and grass eaters during the cold winter months and forbs such as filaree and the cool season perennial grasses help cover the exposed soil when other plants have died back because of the cold.

The summer thunderstorms not only bring in moisture but there exists a complex relationship between the organic life of the area and the moisture-electrical nature of the earth and of the upper atmospheric layers. In controlled tests it has been discovered that plants in the desert will grow significantly faster if they have natural rain from thunder storms than from the same amount of water from irrigation. When weather systems move about the planet, they carry their own electrical natures. The stories are well known of people with arthritis or old injuries who can predict the weather several days in advance because of pains. According to the study, The Ion Effect: How Air Electricity Rules Your Life and Health, by Fred Soyka and Alan Edmonds (Bantam, 1977) the "devil winds," the dry, hot winds like the Santana in Southern California, the Sharav in Israel and other such winds around the globe, show that the positive ionization that causes the feelings in the bones, arrives several days before the winds and weather fronts arrive.

The earth at the surface is more predominant in negative ionization than the upper atmosphere which predominates in positive ionization. Negative ionization, laboratory tests with plants show, is very life enhancing and oppositely, environments that predominate in positive ionization can actually make plants wilt as well as making people ill and irritable, because of its effect of triggering the adrenal glands which after prolonged elevation throws humans into depressions and anxieties because of the upset of the hormonal balance and blood sugar levels.

When a thunderstorm comes through the region, lightning equalizes the positive and negative charges of earth and atmosphere. As the thunder storm begins with its increase of negative ionization on the surface of the earth, most people experience an euphoric feeling, as they do in showers or when sitting near waterfalls or seashores (aerating water is one producer of negative ionization). This is caused by the heavy negative ionization amassing just before this tremendous energy exchange between the upper atmosphere and the earth - the lightning. In sum, the watershed of the San Francisco river is connected to the whole earth through these and many other macro-events.

Life Before Empire

Prior to the invasion of empire, palmate antlered Merriam elk grazed out on the lowland flats and up into the edges of the ponderosa. Mule deer too would be seen far out on the flats as well as the predominant animal of the grasslands, the pronghorn. The pronghorns were the most abundant on the grassland flats, their herds often numbering in the tens of thousands. The open grasslands, which were much more in evidence then because of grass fires, supported other animals such as the coyote and the wolf, which followed the herds.

Prairie dog towns were numerous and each contained hundreds if not thousands of the small animals. These burrowing rodents numbered in the millions in the area and provided a subsistence base for the coyote, wolf, raptors and the black footed ferret as well as the human occupants of the area, who found them especially easy to catch during summer downpours when the prairie dogs would drown out in their burrows and come to the surface of the ground where they were easily caught. The drowning of their burrows helped the earth accept and hold the sudden downpours of water and deterred sudden runoff.

The riparian habitat along the streams, the most fertile life of the desert, was originally much different. The cottonwoods were very few because they made such good food and construction materials for the beaver, but there were more willows and other trees. The beavers stretched from the Colorado River at Yuma, Arizona, up the Gila, then in all of its tributaries to the tops of the watersheds. Partly because of their activities, the water ran slow and the pools were many. The cienigas (marshes) that they created became home for many animals, water birds and waterfowl and the abandoned beaver ponds eventually dried and became beaver meadows. The beavers also created environments for other human food such as the tules (cattails), the arrow leaf potatoes and all of the animal life that visited that oasis.

The riparian habitats were the real fertility generators. These streams, such as the San Francisco, carried life out into the desert and enabled life to migrate upstream. The ponderosa were found in the canyons and valleys many miles down out in the desert as were the bears, especially grizzly.

Dr. John P. Hubbard, formerly of the Rockbridge Alum Springs Biological Laboratory and now Supervisor of the Endangered Species Program of the New Mexico Department of Fish and Game describes this ribbon of verdant green that drains the Watershed:

"Biologically, the San Francisco Valley, may be likened to an arm of the sea penetrating the midlands and highlands of southwestern New Mexico as a corridor from the lowlands to the west. The ‘ocean’ which it represents is the extensive, sub-tropical region of the southern Arizona and adjacent Mexico, which may be termed the plant and animal province of the Sonoran Desert, or simply the Sonoran biota. It is mainly along the San Francisco River and it’s sister stream, the Gila, that the Sonoran biota penetrates southwestern New Mexico and between the two valleys an impressive representation of such plants and animals is found. Among plants included are such dominant species as the Fremont Cottonwood, Arizona Sycamore and Arizona Walnut, while some examples among the fauna include most of the native fish, the Gila Monster, Arizona Coral Snake, Arizona Cardinal, Albert’s Towhee and the very rare Coati-Mundi. Not all of these have been found in the San Francisco Valley, but studies there are far from comprehensive and all may well occur, along with other Sonoran forms.

The San Francisco and other such valleys are also what might be thought of as oases for plants and animals which require permanent surface water or for the habitats that it fosters. Besides fish, animals needing an aquatic environment include many amphibians, turtles, water birds and such mammals as the beaver. Some of these and many other species require the riverside woodland and other habitats that the valleys sustain. The differing availability of surface water from the floor and up the slopes of the valleys results in a great diversity of habitats within a relatively small area. Such habitats range from stands of broadleaf trees and marshes to grassland and desert-like growths of mesquite, yucca and cacti. This large array of habitats in turn produces a diversity of animal life, so that valleys such as the San Francisco and Gila sustain a great many kinds of organisms. For example, in the Gila Valley some 115 species of birds breed, which is almost a fifth of the species regularly breeding in North America north of Mexico, and the as-yet-incompletely-surveyed San Francisco Valley will probably prove to be nearly as rich. The diversity of birdlife and doubtlessly of other groups of organisms in the vicinity of these two valleys is greater yet when one considers the very large array of habitats existing from the valley floors to the peaks of the Mogollon Mountains directly to the east. For example, within a 25 mile radius of Glenwood almost 200 species of birds may be expected to breed, a figure equalled or exceeded by few nonmarine regions in temperate North America.

The San Francisco Valley seen from afar, is a narrow ribbon of verdure through the usually brown hills and plateaus of southern Catron County, but in places it has been changed by settlement and agriculture. The open woodland along the river is predominantly cottonwood and willows, with other, less numerous trees including box elder, ash, walnut, sycamore, hackberry, oak, desert willow and others. Interposes between this riparian woodland and the river is often a fringe of the evergreen, shrubby composite called batamote or seepwillow. Beyond riparian woodland on the floodplain are thickets of mesquite and catclaw and these give way to chaparral and an evergreen woodland of oaks and junipers on the slopes.

Canyons opening into the San Francisco Valley are numerous and frequently support interesting and different assemblages of plants of their own. For example, in Whitewater Canyon are Arizona Alders, Netleaf Oaks, and Narrowleaf Cottonwoods - plants typical of the foothills rather than of the low Sonoran valleys. Towering over the San Francisco Valley are the Mogollon Mountains, which support pine, fir and spruce forests. All of these habitats combine with plains, cactus flats and others to provide the great biological diversity in the region centering on the San Francisco Valley, truly a natural treasure."

The Fire Regime

Another macro-dynamic of the watershed was fire, a cyclical occurrence with the grasslands before they were grazed down by cows. They burned often when set by lightning in the fall when the tall grass was dry. The fires helped the grassland maintain itself by burning back the other types of plants that would like to live there themselves, such as the cactuses, the larger forbs, the juniper and the piñon. High in the mountains, forest fires still become wide-spread in July. One period between the two-phase rainfall regime, the months of April, May and June, are quite dry. As this annual mini-drought continues into the summer, everything becomes desiccated and the humidity drops very low. Toward the first of July the dry electricity in the air begins to crackle and thunderheads begin to appear. Small at first, these thunderheads grow and finally the shock of thunder is heard, first in the highest mountains. Through the coming days as the dryness crackles and the thunderheads become larger, the fires begin. It seems that until it primes itself sufficiently, the thunderhead tribe cannot drop any rain and so the first lightning storms come through and there is lightning but no rain to put out the fires that are caused. Each July the Mogollon Rim has the highest fire rate of anywhere on the continent.

It is usually a week or ten days before the system can get itself primed and finally begin to drop rain. As the high mountains begin to get drenched, the phenomenon begins to generalize into the lower altitudes. Finally the immense flats stretching out toward Mexico are receiving a little rain. As the rain begins, the fires decrease sharply in number but continue sporadically until fall when the lightning storms cease. The view of a native, undisturbed ponderosa stand is the view of a park. From a grassy meadow one can look into the forest for a long distance past the giant, "yellow belly" ponderosas. Ordinarily, the fires that come through are ground fires that move along the ground rather slowly and ignite a bush here and there or a patch of bunch grass. The fire may singe, but never burn down the ponderosa, whose branches don’t begin until fifty feet up. The effect of the fire is to open the forest and to prevent the ponderosa from entirely taking over so that a variety of other life can have space also. This is especially true in brushy chaparral where the fires are a common and natural occurrence. Fires actually help the fire-adapted varieties of that fertile zone.

The fires also help the aspen which can be forced out by the stronger fir and spruce at that higher zone. In a sense the aspen are nurse trees that come into an area first after disruption, along with the bushes with berries and other high elevation forbs and grasses. In a burned over area the aspen will resprout and hold the soil, help cool the area and help keep it moist until the evergreens can regenerate themselves.

The Human History

Humans were present at least 13,000 years ago in the southwest as indicated by the "Folsom Man" archeological find. Along with these humans were giant ground sloths, the dire wolf, the short faced bear, the saber-toothed cat, the mastodon, the mammoth, the giant peccary, camels, pronghorns of two additional species other than the one that exists today, ancient bison, the forest ox, the mountain goat, the tapir and several species of early horses. Like the large mammals world-wide, these species have disappeared during the last 10,000 years as the climate changed from grasslands in the lower areas and flatter areas of New Mexico to a more piñon-juniper regime.4

It is difficult to say how long humans have been in the Southwestern U.S. Most Native American people say that they have always been here. The academics cling to the Bering Strait Migration orthodoxy.

In the Mogollon Rim country we know that humans managed their longevity partially by corn. Although there were no doubt humans in the area earlier, small corn cobs have been found that date back 5,000 years. The archeological work at Bat Cave and Tularosa Cave, on the Watershed, show that corn came into the area at least that early and beans followed several thousand years later. Because some remains survive from 2,500 years B.P., we know that humans were then living in pit houses in the area. There is evidence of pit house people receding back many hundreds of years earlier in what is called the "Cochise Phase" in the Southwest, but no sites of that nature have been excavated on the San Francisco watershed.

On the San Francisco watershed there has been one major excavation of a 2,500 year old pit house village, which is called the SU site (after the large ranch with the SU brand). This site contains eighteen dwellings and it is considered by the principal archaeologist to be the only one within a fifteen to twenty-mile radius.

The archeologist, Paul Martin, describes the dwellings:

"Mogollon houses of the Pine Lawn phase lacked antechambers, partition walls, slab-linings or firepits. Furthermore, the roofs of early Mogollon houses were not supported in any standard fashion, as were the Anasazi roofs. Instead, one finds anywhere from one to six primary roof supports set apparently in higgledy-piggledy fashion (except the single roof support, which was placed near the center of the house) and never twice in the same way. Early Mogollon houses are irregular in shape, resembling an amoeba and are very shallow. Lateral entrances to Mogollon houses are not always present but when these entryways are found they may be short and stubby, or long with upward-sloping floors, and are oriented toward the east. Deep pits, sometimes several to a house, are frequently found in Mogollon houses."5

Most of the Pit House remains on the San Francisco watershed have been found in the chaparral area. The chaparral and the riparian habitats along the live (year around) streams must be considered the real fertility generating "islands" of the watershed. That we find the pit houses in this zone should be no surprise. From the chaparral zone the pit house people had the ecological zones above and below them available for forage. There is no doubt that the pit house people were sure to be in the chaparral in the fall when the natural harvest comes in. When the acorns drop in the fall and the piñon nuts are ready, the service berry, sumac, manzanita and rose hips ripen. Yucca bananas can also be found in the chaparral as can the smaller agaves. When the harvest is ready in the chaparral, the life of the area comes in to eat. Deer, bear, peccary, turkey, squirrels, pack rats, jay birds and others feast on the bounty. These animals attract others, coyotes, wolves, bobcats and mountain lions, who eat the herbivores. 

Transition to Sedentariness: The Kiva People

Food sources of the Pit House people as shown by excavations over a wide multi-state area differed according to the area and its availabilities. Subsistence shaded from almost pure hunting and foraging to almost exclusive farming. Anthropologist David Stuart gives some clues about the relative value of nomadic versus sedentary lifestyles. He says:

"It took field work among remnants of the world’s nomadic peoples and in remote agricultural villages to discover the reasons. Under conditions of very low population density, nomadic hunter-gatherers earn a living with only 500 per capita hours of labor each year-and malnutrition is surprisingly rare! Unsophisticated agriculturalists required more than 1,000 per capita hours annually to do the same-but malnutrition and infant death are more common. So are crop failures."6

"Work time" stands at near 2,000 hours a year for the average industrial worker.

Beginning in 500 A.D., the San Francisco watershed was populated by the Kiva People (popularly known as "the Anasazi"), who, through change from the Pit House people or introduction of another strain of humans, were living in above ground "Pueblo" style buildings and all conducting spiritual activities in underground Kivas. These people are estimated to have remained on the Watershed until 1250 or 1300 A.D. They were closely related to the Mimbres subgroup nearby, one hundred miles to the east, as shown by the large number of "Mimbres style" pots dug up on the Watershed of the San Francisco.

One can hardly walk around on the Watershed at the chaparral level or below, on any suitable housing site, without finding pot shards, stone tools, arrow heads or other remains of the Kiva People. Archaeologists estimate at least 30,000 people lived in the area before the disappearance. Archeologist Christopher Nightingale who has done the most extensive survey of the area puts the figure at a level, "In excess of 30,000." No more sharp contrast could be drawn in cultural land use patterns than the fact that 2,700 people live in the same area now and only marginally, within the definitions of the industrial society.

The culture of the Kiva people was no doubt very similar to the nineteen native pueblos in New Mexico today. The adaptation to the land was by village. The village was located generally near live water so that water could be channelled in to the crops. The basic subsistence crops were mother corn and her daughters beans and squash. Beans and corn provide a complete amino-acid combination. Particularly, in the New Mexico region, green chiles were also a part of the inventory. There was tremendous variation within each of these species. The strains of corn held even today by contemporary pueblos vary according to color, water needs, temperature needs and other considerations. This same situation applies also to the bean and squash varieties.

There probably were also ancillary cultivars, such as there are in the pueblos today. Domesticated types of the wild groundcherry are grown, sunflowers are often seeded around fields, devil’s claw is often domesticated and grown as well as many other useful plants. It should be mentioned that various "weed" species are usually kept around the field areas for various purposes also.

Pollen analysis of archaeological digs in Central America indicate that for nine thousand years the Mayan adaptation diet has predominated in corn, cucurbit (squash), beans, meat, agave, chili peppers, ceiba (a tree fruit), bristle grass (setaria-seeds ground to flour), cactus and amaranth.

Mother corn and her daughters are the Meso-American adaptation. In reality, the Anazasi were suburbs of the centers such as Copán and Tikal of the Central American Mayas. The pueblo cosmology, especially the Hopi, shares major patterns with the Meso-American. In Frank Waters’s definitive work, Mexico Mystique: The Coming Sixth World of Consciousness, (Swallow Press, 1975), the similarities are clearly laid out. In the pueblos today the traditional shell necklaces called heishi are made of shell from both the Atlantic and the Pacific. The old trade routes that connected the oceans, Central America and the pueblos to the north are known. In some Kiva ceremonies, parrot feathers are still required. Just below the center of modern nuclear war at the city of Los Alamos, New Mexico, is the ruin of an ancient pueblo. As one walks up the trail approaching the mesa where the ruin is located, a long serpent is visible on the cliff face. It is the symbol of Quetzal Coatl, the redeemer and symbol of the life force of Meso-America.

From diet flows social structure in natural culture and then in the industrial inversion, diet becomes the result of what plants mass machine production methods can most profitably grow and harvest. Because of mother corn and her daughters, the pueblos must stay in one place, thus houses. The irrigated varieties of these plants require flat land near live streams. This means that some authority must apportion the scarce water and land resources. This all results in something of a stratification in the pueblos but this is not the hierarchy of the empire with which we are familiar. In most pueblos today there is no permanent leader. Leadership is rotated annually in a complex formula the precludes complete elitism. Rotation of responsibility among other "offices" and even rotation of different groups is customary. The cultures of the pueblos, which are each self-governing entities, are extremely complex. It is this complexity in addition to the cultural values that mitigates the solidification of exploiting elites.

Often in the pueblos there is an equal division into two parts, that anthropologists call moieties. One is born into their moiety. In several pueblos these are called the summer people and the winter people. This carries with it certain ceremonial obligations that relate to the seasons as well as others. One is born into a clan such as turtle, eagle, or bear. One is often born into one of several divisions in the moieties. One often joins a secret spiritual society that may or may not be related to one’s birth line. One then, may marry. This will double the relational web of one’s life. Finally, as an individual, one will become distinguished for talents or style and that will produce its own conditioning of all relationships. Though this listing may seem long, it by no means is exhaustive of the tremendous complexity with which the pueblos function. We must add to this a calender cycle that includes both functional acts such as ditch cleaning, the first deer hunt, the time of bean planting and such. The other important calendar cycle is the ceremonial cycle which is winter to winter and includes many ceremonies large and small, public and private.

One of the big reasons that jobs in industrial society destroy pueblo culture is that the functioning of this great swirling, ever-changing mandala of culture requires- time. In this mandala, all is integrated, the cosmos- through the star movement timing of certain ceremonies, right down to the seasonal bean dance. It is this constant flux of responsibility and the dense web of human relationships that have prevented any pueblo culture in known history from being taken over and eradicated in any permanent way.7

This is the culture that typified the Kiva People of the San Francisco watershed. The Kiva People of the San Francisco left at about the same time as the other "Anazasi" in the southwest, from 1200 to 1250 A.D. Some questions remain. Why did they leave? Did they exhaust the soils? Did they deforest they area for firewood during their long tenure? Did they deplete the animals and wild foraging plants to the point they have no supplemental food sources? We don’t know, we can only speculate. Their disappearance could have been something entirely social, following a vision or prophecy.

True Forager/Hunters: The Apache

The forager/hunter people commonly known as the Apache came into the watershed soon after the exit of the Kiva People. The groups popularly known as Apache are Athabascan. They are part of a sizable language group that includes the large Athabascan tribe of northern Canada, the Navajo, the Hoopa on the coast of northern California and the decimated group who lived near Grants Pass in southwestern Oregon.

Just as the G/wi, living in one part of the Kalahari Desert used tsama melons as the basis of their food sustenance, the !Kung living in another part of the same desert used the ground nut, mongongo, for their primary subsistence. In the same way the various Athabascan tribes of the Southwestern U.S. maintained different lifestyles based upon the different ecologies that they were integrated with, stretching from the Great Plains in the vicinity of Oklahoma and Northern Texas (Kiowa and Lipan Apache), through Northeastern New Mexico (Jicarilla), to Eastern-Southeastern New Mexico (Mescalero), then across the Mogollon Rim and into Central Arizona (Hot Springs, Chiricauhua and Western Apache). One band, the Nednhi lived in the northern part of the Sierra Madre in Mexico. Each of these groups and areas maintained a life style based on the particular life system with which they lived.

It was the northern branch of the Chokonen (Chiricahua Apache) that specifically occupied the San Francisco watershed. This band was led by Chihuahua in the last days. This is the northern division of the Chokonen and the southern band was led by Cochise. Though we say that a band is specifically identified with an area, it may be more accurate to say that they were localized there. Bands ebbed and flowed and often entered each others customary area to visit and forage. On the east of the Watershed along the Mogollon Rim and on its back side, to the north, lived the Bedonkohes. These people are popularly identified by their famous son by marriage (he was actually born into the Nednhi Apaches of the Sierra Madre) Geronimo. Just to the northeast of the Bedonkohes, along the Black Range and north on the west side of the Rio Grande to the vicinity of what is now Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, lived the Chihinnes- Hot Springs Apaches, popularly identified with the last free leader, Victorio.

The bands were identified with these areas, though they ranged widely. In the last days of the resistance it is known that they ranged from southern Colorado to south central Mexico. Mobility was the key element in their ecological adaptation. They harvested the surpluses of the land and they had to know where these would be and when. The ethnobotanists, Morris E. Opler and Edward F. Castetter give this summation of the Apache forager lifestyle and it certainly could be applied to all of the forager people, in general, that have lived on the earth:

The Apache; "Moved with the seasonal change of weather and followed the wild food harvests as they occurred.... When colder weather came he (sic) removed to a lower altitude; in summer he (sic) was in the highlands again. When the mesquite and screwbean ripened on the flats, parties of Apache were there to gather them; when the hawthorn hips were ready in the highlands, Apache were nearby to take them. These people knew nature’s calendar by heart, and no matter whether a grass seed ripened or a certain animal’s fur or flesh was at its best at a particular time, the Apache was present to share in the harvest."8

The integration of the forager people with the life of the earth is essential and natural, so that the weather, the daily habits of the animals and plants and one’s own intuition vis-a-vis the natural world make up a composite of perception in which one becomes part of the life of earth- becomes natural life.

James Kaywaykla was a grandson of Nana. Nana was the elder who rode with Geronimo. Kaywaykla was a Chihinne. The tribal name of Chihinne means Red People, referring to the red band of clay that the tribespeople put across their faces just under the eyes to cut the glare of the sun. (In modern day usage they are called the Ojo Calientes or Hot Springs Apaches.) Kaywaykla tells of the foraging habits of his people. He says in translation:

"My people spent their summers in the mountains of New Mexico, carefree, untrammeled. They migrated to Mexico in the fall, living off the land as they went, killing game, harvesting fruit, and giving thanks to Ussen for the good things He had given. They knew the land of jungles and of tropical fruit. They knew the people whose land they crossed. They were on the very best of terms with Cochise and his band. They penetrated the fastness of Juh, Chief of the Nednhi, and were received as brothers. When they in turn came to us we gave freely of our best."9

Each mountain range was a repository for many of the items that the Apaches used. On the northern edge of the Sierra Madre Occidental, the stronghold of the Nednhi Apaches, lastly led by Juh, the high mountains and foothills provided agave (agave palmerii), deer, walnuts (juglana rupestris, var. major), acorns (quercus emoryii, q. reticulata, q. turbinella, q. grises, and q. arizonica), honey, nopal fruits (opuntia phaeacantha) and mesquite (prosopis juliaflora). The Chiracahua band, popularly identified with the leader Cochise, were centered around the Dragoon, Chiracahua, Peloncillo and Hatchet mountain ranges and they had similar food with the addition of datil yucca (yucca baccata), palmilla yucca (yucca elata) and sumac. Pronghorn (often called antelope but they are not antelope, they belong to a family that is neither deer nor antelope) were available on the flats separating the ranges. The Bedonkohes, Geronimo’s tribe, were centered on the headwaters of the Gila and San Francisco Rivers. This area provided mountain sheep, pronghorn, elk, deer, acorns, mescal (agave), datil yucca, nopal fruit, mesquite and piñon nuts. The Chihinnes, who centered around Ojo Caliente, enjoyed a variety similar to the Bedonkohes just south of them. These are primary items and dozens of other items of less importance were used.10

Probably the most important items of the Chokonen and Bedonkohe diet on the Watershed were the pronghorns, mesquite, mescal (also called agave), and acorns. The pronghorns existed from the desert area up to at least high ponderosa forest. More important than elevation is the pronghorns’ need of flat land. With their amazing speed of 50-70 mph and binocular vision it is necessary for them to live in flat areas at whatever elevation they can find them. The flats must be sufficiently expansive to allow them the distance to run from their pursuers and the flats also must be smooth topsoil without rocks. As these animals existed from the desert up to the higher regions, they were a favorite animal food of the native people.

The agave was probably the most important plant food of the Apache.11 The agave grows best in the desert region but will grow up into the piñon-juniper to the ponderosa, although the form of the plant found there is smaller. Anthropologist Winfred Buskirk says that the agave could be used at any season, although because the plants were abundant in an area that was the Apache’s wintering environment this was normally when they were used. Any of the plants would suffice, but the best were the ones that were preparing to flower. The agaves, which are sometimes called the "century plant," only bloom once and then die. The northern agaves may bloom at ten to fifteen years, but agaves farther south in Mexico may go as long as thirty years before they flower and die:

"In the fall and winter good edible plants could be selected by observing the leaf bases and the terminal shoot, a thickening of which indicated that the plant would bloom the following spring. The best time for gathering was in the early spring, usually in April, at which time some of the plants blossomed. At this season enough mescal was prepared to last through the summer or longer."12

The root was severed under the bulb and the plant taken out of the ground. The leaves of the plant were trimmed off and it was ready for roasting. The crowns average twenty pounds each and as many as forty would be roasted at one time. Basehart, who studied the Apache subsistence cycle, states that the Chiracahua gathered forty to sixty crowns per year per family, and that a month or more might be spent gathering the food.

The agaves were roasted in an earth pit, up to twelve feet in diameter and two to four feet deep. The pit was filled with oak and then fired. Small eight inch diameter lava rocks were layered over the coals, some beargrass put in as a cover and the agaves were then put into the pit. Beargrass was again put over the top and the pit was sealed with earth; an additional fire on the top of this earth appears to have been optional. Kaywaykla says that his people put the long narrow leaves of the agave down into the pit, standing them upright as they filled the pit. As the cooking progressed, they were able to check on the progress of the cooking by pulling out a leaf. The condition of the leaf indicated when the agave was cooked. Various references indicate that the agave was cooked from one to two days. After baking, the agave was pounded flat into sheets several inches thick and dried like jerky (sun dried meat). The food in this condition could be kept for a matter of years. A one-quarter cup serving of prepared agave provides thirty calories and more calcium than does a half glass of milk.13

Agave is very sweet and could be used with pemmican, mush, mixed with flour for breads or used in many other ways in addition to eating the dried material without further preparation. 

Another use of the agave was for sewing. The sharp spine on the tip of the agave leaf can be used as a needle and the strong fibers of the leaf are used as a pre-attached thread. The leaves are simply dried and the pulp of the leaf pounded out so the remaining portion, the fibers, are used in braided or twisted fashion with its own sharp needle. Kaywaykla mentions that it is an effective method with which to sew rawhide soles onto moccasins. The juice of young agave leaves is also used medicinally when signs of impending scurvy are detected.

Both types of yuccas, (elata-narrow leaf and baccata-wide leaf) were used in the same life zone as the agave. Elata is the familiar soap yucca and its stem and flowers were also used as food. Baccata or datil yucca bears a fruit of exquisite taste which grow from five to seven inches long. These fruits are called yucca bananas and they can be eaten fresh, roasted, dried or ground into meal. The young inner shoots of this plant can also be used.

The nopal cactus is a prolific plant in the desert and up into the piñon-juniper zone where its varieties grow smaller. The elephant ear leaf can be eaten as well as the fruit which is called "prickly pear" or tuna, in Spanish. In Mexico and in Latin groceries in the U.S., the chopped leaf can be purchased as "nopalitos". The fruit of this plant was especially used by the Apaches.

Mountain sheep were abundant in the desert ranges and in the foothills of the Mogollon Rim. These animals gain security by their unusual agility in the rocky heights of steep hills, mountains and cliffs. While not necessarily bound by life zone, it occurs that this type of terrain exists primarily in the desert and piñon-juniper regions.

Like many of the animals, the Apaches migrated seasonally, but this did not mean that they moved en masse everywhere they went. Basehart says, "Not all... would move any great distance in a given year, nor would the same families and larger social units travel in identical directions and distances from year to year. Thus, a group might remain close to a central base throughout one year, and travel a considerable distance the next; alliances between families were not permanent, but could shift from season to season."14

The Apaches did much grinding of flours. Seeds are the obvious basis of flours but seed coatings, pollen and other plant parts can also be dried and ground as flour either by itself or mixed with other desirable flours. Sources of Apache flours were mesquite, screw bean mesquite, agave, acorn, piñon, sunflower seeds, walnuts, juniper berries, grass seeds of many types, chia in the lower elevations, devil’s claw seed, coyote melon seed (calabazia), tule pollen, and amaranth seeds.

Prominent among the greens used was the amaranth (amaranthus palmeri). (Gary Nabhan says of the plant; "The raw Amaranthus palmeri greens [one hundred grams] contain nearly three times as many calories [36], eighteen times the amount of vitamin A [6100 international units], thirteen times the amount of vitamin C [80 milligrams], twenty times the amount of calcium [411 mg.], and almost seven times the amount of iron [3.4 mg.] as one hundred grams of lettuce.")15 The immature rocky mountain bee plant (cleome serrulata) was also a staple green. Other plants known to be favored by the Apache were wild potatoes (solanum jamesii) and wild onions (allium cernuum), both which grow prominently in the chaparral.

The Apaches did some planting in the canyons and river bottoms. The detailed knowledge of the different corn colors and strains shown by anthropologists' informants, demonstrate the fact that there must have been considerable farming. The crops raised were essentially corn and beans but, of course, the seeds of wild food plants were often scattered around camp so there would be an abundant supply near.

Anthropologists estimate that the Apaches used nearly fifty species of food plants comprising 40-50 per cent of their diet. Because anthropologists were visiting the Apaches long after they had been concentrated in the reservation camps and long after the methodical and planned destruction of their culture had begun, it would be difficult to inventory their complete knowledge and lifestyle. We could suffice it to say that the Apaches probably made use of everything that was reasonably edible and used a large inventory of what they found on the land for materials to create the shelters, tools and the basic necessities of their life. 

Humans of course do not live in a vacuum of simply eating. The Apache display of humility and sophisticated ethical cultural perception of much of the rest of the Pleistocene inheritance. Kaywaykla, for example, speaks of the consideration for the animals and other life of the earth. He points out that animals were never killed at waterholes because of the consideration that all beings were put on the earth and that they must drink, too. They were not killed there out of fairness to them.

The Arrival of Empire: The Story of the Last Native People on the Watershed

Santa Fe, the Capital of what originally was called the Kingdom of New Mexico, was already a thriving village when the Pilgrims reached Plymouth Rock. Spanish immigrants, many of them from northern Spain, reached New Mexico by the Fifteen Hundreds. They first attacked the various pueblos in order to enslave the people and usurp the bottom lands for agricultural use. The blood flowed freely. The Spanish recreated the feudal culture of Spain in New Mexico with landed estates in the form of land grants given by the King of Spain. 

These land grants featured the landed aristocrat on the choice land surrounded in the village area by the non-landed spanish and then in an outer area lived the "coyotes," mixed-race people and detribalized natives. They were the buffer against raiders. This "Rancho Grande" colonialist structure was based in agrarian pursuits and occupied the best bottom lands of the Southwest. The "Rancho Grande" of the colonialist cattle baron such as existed across northern Mexico and is fixated in the balance of the Latin American mentality, could not be established in the open spaces of New Mexico because the nomadic tribes could not be exterminated or subdued as were the sedentary pueblo people who were based mostly in the river bottoms. Centuries passed in New Mexico with the Spanish holding the fertile bottom lands and the nomadic tribes moving freely in the surrounding area. The tribes raided the Spanish and the Spanish in turn raided the tribes for slaves. Slaves were held in New Mexico society as well as being sent south into Mexico from the slave markets of Taos and Abiquiu. At the time of the Civil War, a Senate Investigating Committee found that New Mexicans held one-third of the Navajo tribe in forced slavery in their semi-feudal society.

The Chokonen, Chihinne and Bedonkohe bands first encountered Spanish near the watershed of the San Francisco river in Southwestern New Mexico in the Sixteen Hundreds. They came to work the mines in the Silver City area, south of the Mogollon Rim. The first groups of miners left, but later, others arrived for the silver metal. Like the personality pattern of other parts of the empire, swelling around the globe, the people invading the southwest carried the stamp of empire culture. These conquerors had light colored skins which they believed inherently superior, they were part of the flock of the Christian God, creator of the universe. They were part of a rising tide of machine makers and importantly they had the superior knowledge to "develop" the land and cultivate its ability to "produce."

They also came from a culture whose central value was material goods and they were being offered the prospect of land and the "resources" on it including the native slave labor. The magnetic dream that pulled them was akin to winning the status of the landed, aristocratic nobility of Europe, on the lottery. It was this Christian/imperial mind-set that helps explain the gigantic moral atrocities these people committed upon the "godless savages." The native people and the land were there to be plundered.

As we would guess, the first significant contact between Apaches and the Europeans in the area of the Watershed was tragic. The first significant event occurred at the mines at Santa Rita, between the Mimbres and Gila rivers. Mangas Coloradas (Red Sleeves) was chief of the Chihinnes. At that time the Governor of the Mexican state of Chihuahua was offering money for Apache scalps. A man named Johnson and a number of his friends invited Mangas Coloradas and his band, reported to be several hundred, in to the mining camp for a feast. When the Apaches had begun the feast, the miners opened up on them with either a gatling gun or cannons (reports conflict). A large number were killed. Mangas Coloradas was wounded, but he escaped, carrying only his son Mangus who had not been killed.

Later, in mid-Eighteen Hundreds, when the Americans had taken the Southwest from Mexico, a Colonel Carleton came out of California leading a group called the California Column who were going to fight in the U.S. Civil War, in the east. By the time these men reached Arizona and New Mexico it appeared that their services would not be needed as the war had ended but ambitious to make a name for themselves, they began to attack Apaches. At about this time Mangas Coloradas went into the camp of these Americans to attempt to make peace with the new kind of Europeans. As he was there under a flag of truce, nonetheless he was killed. His head was then cut off and boiled. Later the skull appeared on the east coast where it was exhibited to curious crowds in a touring carnival. Victorio then succeeded as chief. In 1870 the Chihinne lead by Victorio were "given" a reservation at Ojo Caliente, west of the present Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, by Executive Order of the President of the United States. Shortly after this promise, they were forced out of that area and marched eighty miles west to Fort Tularosa on the San Francisco watershed and held over the winter by the military. The promised supplies did not arrive until spring and then they were of the characteristic inferior quality. Many died that winter of starvation and exposure. After this experience, the government allowed them to return to Ojo Caliente but shortly they were given orders to go to the death camp at San Carlos where hundreds of Apaches had already died of malaria and starvation with full knowledge of the United States government. Victorio and his group went there, some in chains, never again to have their promised reservation.

Members of the Chokonen, Chihinne and Bedonkohe bands several times broke out of the concentration camp at San Carlos. During the last escape of Victorio, many Chihinne and members of other bands went with him. From this escape they never returned. They were trapped by the Mexican Army at a range of mountains called Tres Castillos southeast of El Paso, across the border in Mexico. Almost all of the Chihinne and Bedonkohe, including Victorio, were killed at that time except for a few who escaped in the dark. During the last days of the Apache resistance, the Spanish had consolidated their hold on the bottom lands of the watershed and the Texas Cattle Barons were already swarming in. The invaders and their strident newspapers demanded that the last "renegade" Apaches either be killed or locked up on reservations. Nonetheless, several small groups stayed out and on the run for five long years as the press and the settlers remained in hysterics over the "savages". The main group was led by Geronimo and Nana of the Bedonkohes and Naiche, son of Cochise of the Chokonen. This small band of people who numbered less than 30 (25 men, the rest women and children) faced as high as 5,000 U.S. Army troops (one quarter of the U.S. Army at the time), scattered through the southwest, who rode grain fed horses and were securely supplied with food and other necessities from the U.S. Treasury. The Apaches had only their Pleistocene knowledge of the life of the area to sustain them, but because they were so pursued, they could not follow the seasons or even effectively hunt for the dwindling game of the area, yet, still they persisted by finding what they could on the land and by raiding the invaders.

Finally, the small band surrendered, September 3, 1886, to General of the U.S. Army, Nelson A. Miles who lied to the Apaches and promised them a reservation and much else that he could not deliver. The small band, who had been enticed away from their stronghold in the Sierra Madre of Mexico by General Miles’ lies, were led ultimately to the Southern Pacific railway tracks north of the border. There they were loaded into boxcars along with all of the Chokonen, Chihinne and Bedonkohe people that still survived on the San Carlos reservation. Based on the lies of the U.S. government, other leaders, Mangus, the son of Mangas Coloradas of the Bedonkohes and Chihuahua, leader of the northern division of the Chokonen tribe, both separately brought small bands in at that time. They too were loaded into boxcars.

This group of the last hold-outs and the remainder of those four tribes who were living peaceably on the Fort Apache and San Carlos reservations were all put on railroad trains and shipped to a military prison in Florida. More than 400 prisoners of the Chihinne, Bedonkohe, and the two tribes of Chokonen Apaches were confined as prisoners of war for 27 years. The duplicity was such that 14 Apache scouts who had turned on their own people and in fact were the only reason that the U.S. Army could get close to the holdouts, were also imprisoned. When the government in Washington, D.C. finally realized they had also imprisoned these 14 U.S. Army enlisted men (the Apache scouts) the government ordered them mustered out of the service and kept them imprisoned along with the others. Later, the remains of the tribes were confined at an army reservation at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. In 1913 an act of Congress allowed those who wished, to return to the Mescalero Reservation of New Mexico, but due to loud protests from the people of Arizona who now occupied part of the traditional home of the Apache, they were prohibited from moving to Arizona.

The Apaches were the human casualties of the march of Empire, and it was their resistance to invasion that is responsible for the Mogollon Rim country being even as relatively undamaged and uninhabited as it is, because they kept the settlers out and then when the Apaches were removed the cattlemen who had a sparse population moved in.

In 1913 some of the Apache men who had been young boys at General Miles "peace parley" when Geronimo surrendered, returned to their homeland to decide whether they wanted to come to the old original Chihinne "reservation" at Ojo Caliente or whether those returning would like to go to the Mescalero reservation in east-central New Mexico. Jason Betzinez describes the return to Ojo Caliente of the last handful of Chihinnes after many years of imprisonment and after the invasion of the cattle barons:

"In the morning we resumed our journey to Monticello. This was where the Apaches had made their first peace with the Mexicans. We did not stop, because we all were anxious to get on to our old reservation. From Monticello the route led up the dry creek bed which previously had been such a nice little stream. Now it was all filled in with gravel, which made it twenty jumps wide instead of the one jump which it had been before.

"We arrived at the old agency after dark but got up early next morning in our eagerness to look around at our old homeland. What a depressing sight it turned out to be! The whole country, once so fertile and green, was now entirely barren. Gravel had washed down, covering all the nice valleys and pastures, even filling up the Warm Springs, which had completely vanished. The reservation was entirely ruined. Looking around bitterly, I said to myself, ‘Oklahoma is good enough for me.’"16

There are now, no native people on the watershed, though there are many reservations within a one hundred-fifty mile radius, the White Mountain Apache, San Carlos, the large Navajo reservation in northeastern Arizona, Hopi, Zuñi, Ramah Navajo, Acoma, Laguna, Cañoncito, Alamo Navajo reservation near Magdalena, New Mexico and the Mescalero Apache reservation.17 

The Ecological Effects of Colonization

Spanish herders began moving into the San Francisco watershed even before the Apaches had been eliminated. By the 1870's the wealthy Luna brothers of Los Lunas, New Mexico south of Albuquerque were grazing the area heavily with tens of thousands of head of sheep. At this same time, Spanish settlers were coming into the mountain valleys from the Los Lunas-Belen area bringing herds of cattle, sheep and goats. Some of the first were the Aragon family of the village of Aragon and the Benevidez family who settled near the present Village of Reserve. The first settlement, Plaza de San Francisco de Asisi del Medio was created near the confluence of the Negrito and San Francisco Rivers. Then the Jirón family came from Belen to establish Plaza Abajo, (Plaza San Francisco de Asisi de Abajo, or Lower Plaza). In the early days of Spanish settlement the relations with the Apaches were somewhat peaceable with only several Spanish people being killed (there is no historical record of how many Apaches may have been killed). The Chihinnes in the Ojo Caliente area had maintained cordial relations with the Spanish people of Monticello for many years, trading and visiting back and forth. The Spanish store at Monticello had sold guns and ammunition to the Apaches for years and that may have influenced the Apache perception of the Spanish people on the Rio San Francisco.

The Spanish headed for the most fertile lands in the area. They settled in the riparian life zone and by their occupancy extirpated most of the rich life of that area. The lush riparian zone rapidly gave way to the culture of empire as the beavers were killed out, the large ponderosas were cut for domestic use and the stock ate the willows and other vegetation. The riparian zone, except for a few areas almost inaccessible, was denuded and the rich soil that remained became pasture and agricultural fields. Much of this soil is now gone and much that does not have irrigation or seep water can hardly grow what the culture terms weeds. The sad remnants of the beaver tribe which in the past stretched down the San Francisco and then down the Gila to the Colorado river at Yuma, Arizona are now found only at two headwater tributaries of the San Francisco. There is a colony on Apache Creek and a strong colony at the top of the Watershed above Alpine, Arizona. The descendants of some of the beaver families try to branch out and establish new homes but persecution from the humans and the flood problems usually defeat them.

The only way that they can really re-establish themselves is to start from the top down. In that way they have some control of the water volume. If they try to build homes and environments in the lower elevations they are flooded out by the water coming off the overgrazed, undammed watershed above. As all of the flatter areas higher up are grazed by confined livestock, everything is eaten down to the low grass and there is nothing along the streams for the beavers to build dams with or to eat. Even in the higher areas the domesticated cow will tend to stay in the canyon bottoms and eat them out rather than forage the hillsides.

Throughout North America the extirpation of beavers has had a generally unmentioned and unrecognized but severe negative effect on the ecology. Beavers and their works are a main pillar of the life system. The dams of beavers affect the hydrology of entire life zones. This provides beaver marsh habitat in many areas of watersheds. It also helps insure live water in the streams year-around rather than the swift run-off. Beaver marshes create habitat for innumerable species, fish, frogs, insects and many others. Due to the micro-environment created, plant species are able to come into the area. Cattails and arrowleaf potatoes are types of small plants that are very useful for humans and animals. The trees that take root in these marshes, often willows, cottonwood and aspen, also lend their help in further enhancing the habitat.

Many species can be easily seen to engage in life activities that prepare and assist their environment for their benefit. With the beavers it is the creation of the marsh, that allows the water retention, that in turn encourages their preferred food trees to come in and live there. Never the less, the basic populations of Beavers were wiped out prior to 1900.

Following the Civil War at mid-century, a great push west occurred. Militarily freed-up from the civil conflict, the cavalry was turned on the native people. Military campaigns to confine or exterminate the native people served to "open-up the west." The prospect of super-profits had drawn the "mountain men" and businesses like the Hudson Bay Company west. At times as much as 1,000 % profit could be realized between what the traders gave the indians for beaver pelts and what they would bring on the New York and London markets. 

When the Civil War closed, settlers rushed to grab the best of the free land. Mines and timbering were started where possible, but the quickest money came from cattle. As the Yakimas, the Nez Perce, the Paiutes, the Shoshones, the Blackfeet, the Cheyenne, the Navajo, Apache and many other tribes were confined, cattle swarmed onto their lands by the millions. With a herd of cattle and enough guns a cattle baron could move west onto free grazing land. The land of the American west was covered with good grass. In the Great Basin area there were the bunch grasses, in the Southwest there were the nutritious gramma grasses. With little investment other than a herd of cows and a crew who were handy with guns to scare off any settlers who might want to invade the range, a cattle baron could have a "cattle empire" for free. The herd would increase by the number of bred heifers each year and more western grass could be turned into yankee dollars.

Most of the herds that hit the Southwest and specifically the Watershed in this era came out of Texas. Rancher William French established a "spread" early on the Watershed before the Apaches were completely confined. He was the scion of an English colonial family whose children were spread from India to New Mexico as colonial administrators or "owners," and his comments on the invasion of Texans reflects his "social station:" 

"During the years between 1882 and 1885 a number of cattle-men moved their herds, and occasionally their neighbors’ herds, from Texas to New Mexico. This migration was generally in the way of business, but sometimes its object was to avoid unpleasant consequences of a not too strict observance of the law. A new brand, a new name, and a new country covered a multitude of sins. Amongst those whose absence from Texas was tolerated only on the grounds of saving expense to the State were many cowboys who lost no opportunity of displaying their hatred of Mexicans. To them all Mexicans were ‘Greasers’ and unfit associates for the white man."18

The racism on which French comments is held by what is now the "Anglo" majority of the area, to this day. The Spanish hatred of Native Americans also continues.

The effect of the massive over-grazing of the West was first to extirpate much of the bunch grass and gramma from its usual habitat. Most of the other native grasses followed such that today it is rare to find an area anywhere in the West where there is a natural mix of native grass species like the original grass cover.

Not only did the grass suffer but the native wildlife declined. The cattle Barons continued massive campaigns of extermination, not just against the settlers and sheep herders but against the coyotes, wolves, mountain lions, grizzly bears, black bears, kangaroo rats, prairie dogs, snakes of all kinds, eagles, hawks, badgers, bison, pronghorn, wild mustangs and any other living thing that might by any stretch of the imagination threaten the life of or eat the food of- the sacred cow.

For example, prior to the 30-30 Remington repeating rifle of the cowboy and the "sod busters" of the plains, the herd of pronghorn in North America is estimated to have been 20 to 40 million. By 1908 only 17,000 remained. 19 The elimination of the beavers and over-grazing, especially of the riparian habitats, altered the hydrology of the continent. As the water run-off increased and flooding began, the narrow, shaded and slow flowing stream beds were torn out and became wide, dry washes filled with gravel and occasional "flash floods." As flooding increased, arroyo cutting began. The flood of water washes out the bottom of the stream bed in a lower elevation causing a small "waterfall" on its upper side. As flooding continues the small cliff face of the "Waterfall" successively crumbles away and the cliff face moves up the watershed. This causes the deep trenches that are termed "erosion canyons." As these canyons develop, what water there is, flows at a much lower level. What groundwater there was in the soil seeps out of the cliff faces on the sides of the erosion canyon thus dropping the water table for the whole area. Then much of the remaining plant life dies because their roots cannot reach water.

The life of the desert and semi-arid desert travels in many cycles. The cycles of the annual and perennial grass is such that it can survive drought - if it has been able to build up a sufficient sod layer in the good years. It is the storage of nutrient and life force in the elongating root system that allows the grass to revive its green parts after a fire or being eaten. When it must sacrifice the root to rebuild the green matter, the root shrivels correspondingly. If the green part of the plant is cropped down too often so that it cannot rebuild the root system, the plant will die. If there has been severe damage to it, then it will not be able to pull through the dry years.

There was a drought on the San Francisco watershed in 1892-1893 as there was in much of the West. It was so bad that many cattle died. Many natural animals no doubt also died. Another drought happened in the period 1900-1904.

A local historian tells of those days:

"In the early days, numbers and not quality counted and in the struggle for control, the range was seriously overgrazed until the 1892-1893 drought reduced numbers and permitted the range to recuperate somewhat. However, the range again stocked up.

"Another drought occurred in 1900 through 1904. A 1917 report stated, ‘But the range has never recovered from this past abuse and it seems as though this last drought had about finished it. When this reconnaissance was made, the range was practically denuded and there is yet no relief in sight!

"In 1927, D.A. Shoemaker made an inspection report of grazing on the forest and had this to say. ‘On the whole, the New Mexico division of this forest presents as poor a range management as I have observed on any National Forest area.’ "20

One of the functions of the vegetative life on the Watershed is to flatten out the water cycles. As in many semi-arid environments, the summer thunder showers are brief but heavy. One of the cycle harmonizers that have helped prevent this heavy onslaught of water and help it sink into the earth rather than run rapidly off, cutting erosion canyons, is the prairie dog. The burrows of the prairie dog absorb much water and this can be verified by watching them come top side during a thunder storm.

Another benefit of these small animals is indicated by the studies that show that the burrowing animals help the soil by the mixing of topsoil and mineralized subsoil into fine particles. The U.S. Biological Survey of 1908 came through, southeast of the Watershed, in Grant County. At that time they estimated 6,400,000 prairie dogs in that county alone. Now, there are no black tailed prairie dogs in that county adjoining the Watershed and a similar condition exists on the Watershed. They have been exterminated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife agency to placate the herders who felt their range was being eaten by these animals. Because the USF&W Service has killed untold millions of prairie dogs in the West, the black footed ferret which was their main predator is now thought to be extinct. These animals have not been seen in viable numbers anywhere for some years.

Part of the government subsidy to the public land grazers is the killing of rodents, coyotes, wild dogs, bears, bobcats and mountain lions. In 1981 Catron County which covers most of the Watershed, contributed $17,000 to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for predator control. This was the county portion and the USF&W Service absorbed the balance. This money was spent to kill prairie dogs, kangaroo rats and coyotes. As there are 2,700 people in the county and one percent of the population are ranch owners and one third of these are absentee owners, according to Bureau of Land Management records, this represents a healthy subsidy to the herders and a significant destruction of life.

Many areas of the West, including the watershed, were formerly covered by vast prairies. As the grass cover was grazed out, many other plants came in, so that the nature of the area changed. The biggest factor in that change is that the grasslands no longer had enough vegetational cover to carry fire. Before the overgrazing, fires, whether caused by lightening or natives, burned swiftly across the top of the grasses. This helped maintain the grasslands. It removed dead debris for the growth of new green shoots and importantly burned off other competing vegetation such as the sage, juniper and piñon pine that the government now spends millions of dollars removing for the public lands ranchers, who are the people who have overgrazed the land so it cannot carry a fire.

Plants that spread when the annual and perennial grass has been killed out by overgrazing are sagebrush, creosote bush, tarbush, tumbleweed, rabbitbrush, colorado rubberweed, mesquite and various cactuses. These emergency troops attempt to cover the barren ground but usually are battled vigorously by the herders and their allies in government. These groups call the first aid crew, "invader plants." In their view it is the fault of the first aid crew for invading the range when in reality the cow herders cause it. Simply because one sees green on the land in semi-arid deserts does not mean it is in good health. The green may be the first aid crew.

Grass seeds ordinarily cannot germinate on bare ground. They need to be blown or float into some pocket of organic detritus that will shield them from the desiccating sun and hold enough moisture so that they can get a start. Providing this organic debris is an important role of the first aid crew which the government spends millions of dollars a year to kill. Although in some cases grass has difficulty growing directly beneath juniper trees, the shading on the periphery is another important role that these trees play in helping the grasses re-establish, because it slows the evaporation of moisture from the soil so that they can get a roothold. On the Watershed, the desert plants are moving north and higher up in elevation as aridity increases, they would move back down if the abused land were allowed to recover.

Not only has the riparian habitat suffered from the agriculturalists and grasslands because of the herders, but the miners have come also, although the heyday of mining is largely over. The frenzy of mining occurred on the Watershed basically in the area of the village of Mogollon from the late Eighteen Hundreds until early Nineteen Forties. In addition to polluting the waters from mining discharge, large amounts of local wood were needed to fire the smelters.

Local historian J.C. Richards tells of one among a number of mines in the area:

"Up Whitewater Creek four miles was the new gold processing mill town of White Creek or the Graham Mill, a 30 or 40 stamp type affair owned by the Helen Mining Company of Colorado. The town had a floating population from 100 to 200 people. The mill was using the mercury amalgamation system of gold recovery, using steam and pelton wheel water power. The steam boiler furnaces burned about fourteen cords of wood a day, so you can see why the hills are so barren of juniper trees."21

On the San Francisco watershed, fortunately, not the high volume metals such as iron or copper were smelted but only the more precious such as silver and gold. Even so the wood cutters and also the charcoal burners who cut for the commercial market, ranged over the high mountains and down lower, cutting the piñon-juniper and oaks. Their cutting damaged some areas so badly that it has not yet recovered.

Not only did the charcoal burners ravage the area but meat hunters ranged the mountains hauling out animals to sustain the food supply of the mining towns. This was a popular way to make a dollar when a person couldn’t find any gold and one old miner and meat hunter James A. McKenna tells of taking pack trains out and filling them up with turkey and deer. Mostly the gangs of meat hunters went out in the late fall and winter so that they could run the game into deep snow where they were helpless and then shoot as many of the herd as they could. He explains also that the miners wouldn’t buy the front portions of the deer- only the hindquarters. To McKenna’s credit he did jerk the non-salable part and then sold the jerky to the less wealthy Spanish people who had not only lost much family land but the whole U.S. Southwest to the newly arrived Americans.

Each group of meat hunters made many trips each year. A story McKenna tells of one trip gives an idea of the volume of animals hauled out of the forest in the Mogollon Rim country.

"The night before Nelson was to leave for Silver City, [to take a load in] we had on hand at least fifty turkeys. During the night we had a real break, for a flock of fifty or sixty more came to roost within three hundred yards of our camp. When they were settled in, light rain fell, which seemed to affect their flying. Opening fire, we dropped at least half of them. In the morning those that had fallen on the ground could not fly, and we got quite a few more by clubbing them as they ran by our camp."22

McKenna tells also of being in the vicinity of Elk Mountain on the northeast edge of the San Francisco watershed and seeing many wild horses and thousands of pronghorn feeding in the foothills, where a handful of pronghorn might be seen today and there is a complete absence of wild horses. McKenna, writing years later says:

"Looking back to fifty years, I have come to the conclusion I was using up more than my share of the natural resources which belong to all the people of the state, but you cannot put an old head on young shoulders, and at that time no laws had as yet been made to save the treasure of mountain and forest. But I never killed without good reason nor wasted the bounty of our southwestern mountains."23

Legend in New Mexico has it that the last Gila elk, another favorite animal of the meat hunters, died in a zoo in 1921. We do know that the last naturally occurring elk of the species Cervuc elaphus merriami died in 1909 and the race is now extinct. Those that exist on the Watershed now are Cervuc elaphus erxleben, transplanted from Colorado. These transplanted elk, although similar, are from a different ecosystem and give birth in May and June, unlike the former natural species. The fact that they give birth during the annual mini-drought is a definite problem for the transplants, but they are welcome given the circumstances.

By 1935, the grizzly bear was extirpated from the whole Southwest and of course the Watershed, where the last one was killed. Aldo Leopold killed one of the last recorded wolves in the Southwest, on the northwest section of the Watershed at Ecudilla mountain. This was the "green fire" occasion. Leopold killed this wolf while he was a Forest Service employee on the Blue River. The jaguar (Felis onca) had been extirpated much earlier as had the big horn sheep (since replanted). The sonoran river otter has not been seen in the area since 1953 and is probably extirpated. It is now an endangered species. The grizzly, otter, elk and wolf that have been extirpated were subspecies that are now extinct and do not occur anywhere.

Ben V. Lilly, a locally, legendary hunter came into the area in 1910 and remained into the 1930’s. Lilly made his living killing grizzly bears, black bears and lions for the bounties offered by the herders. In the year 1912, Lilly is said to have collected on one hundred and four scalps of lion and bear. Little of the meat was ever used from this wanton destruction of life and locally, now, it is taken as an act of faith to kill any bear, coyote, snake, bobcat, eagle or lion one sees, in protection of the sacred cow.

Of the birds, the aplomado falcon is extirpated and among the fishes, the Gila topminnow and the Gila chub are gone, having become extinct. In New Mexico alone, ninety-five species of wildlife, not including vegetation, are endangered of becoming extinct.24 With plant species the situation is equally as serious. The United States Forest Service arrived on the Watershed in 1908. That agency has done much to damage the Watershed. The vast system of roads itself creates tremendous erosion and runoff (the USFS is the largest road building enterprise in the world). The other damage is the injury to the former climax forest by logging and by suppression of the natural fires. The over-grazing of the forest is also significant and contributes to erosion.

The purpose of the USFS is primarily to furnish "resources" to the timber barons. Congress annually appropriates money for them to do this and each district is expected to meet an annual quota of timber offered for sale. Meeting these quotas is an important qualification for promotion up the hierarchy. In return the district receives various subsidies and kickbacks such as for reforestation, roadbuilding, staff maintenance and so forth, based upon the timber cut.

Here in the semi-arid desert forest, like those of most of the Great Basin, the climax forest is almost gone. It is said that sustained yield is practiced but all over the Great Basin sawmills are shutting down as the forest becomes exhausted of the high-profit old growth. This same condition obtains on the Watershed. The fragility and growth of the desert forests are far different than in the wet ecosystems of the pacific coast and the ponderosa forest do not recover as quickly or as well.

The fire suppression has changed the nature of the ecosystem. A recent study of wildfire notes:

"On a broad scale, the effects of fire encourage the development of vegetative mosaics and the recycling not merely of chemicals but also of communities. Under ideal conditions, a kind of perpetual migration of successional stages and shifting geographic ensembles results."25

One of Mother Earth’s virgin ponderosa pine forests is beautiful, but there are almost none left in the West that have not been ravished by the USFS. "As early as 1902 an examiner with the GLO (Government Land Office) observed that ‘when first invaded by white man the forests were open, devoid of undergrowth, and consisted in the main of mature trees, with practically no forest cover,’ It was not an uncommon thing for the early settlers to cut native hay in the pine forests and fill large government contracts at the different military posts. But where intensive grazing occurred, thereby eliminating broadcast fire, woody vegetation sprang up or the grassland dissolved into desert."26 (This speaks of strictly ponderosa regions, not chaparral).

Of all of the kinds of damage logging does, the worst is removal of potential topsoil. The forest like all other places where growing things flourish, has a topsoil that is a circulating phenomenon. As the trees, the biomass, are removed cycle after cycle, the soil becomes poorer. Just like a corn field, where formerly the organic nutrient fed back into the soil, it is now hauled away to market. There is no way to escape the fact that the cropping of the forests of the earth and of the Watershed in particular, is damaging the soils. The cycle of the life of the soil is an obvious fact just as in Fukuoka’s barley field. To add to that, the USFS allows cutting of trees without replacement. As of 1974 there was a backlog of 4.8 million acres of U.S. forest from which trees had been cut with no replanting.27

Overgrazing is the perennial problem of the empire and it also occurs in the forest. Approximately seven million head of stock graze the National Forests in place of other life that had existed there. "According to Earl D. Sandvig, a retired senior official of the Forest Service who has continued to monitor National Forest management in the West, ‘Overgrazing by domestic livestock and to some extent by game animals on our public lands is creating more soil erosion and denudation of land surfaces than all other uses put together.’ "28

In the year 1982, poisons were used on the Watershed by government agencies. These poisons are used for various industrial agricultural strategies that are applied to forests. Strychnine, phostoxin tablets and zinc phospide were used by the USFW Service to kill rodents. Spike, a dangerous herbicide is being tested for use by the BLM. The USFS used on a substantial number of acres of the Watershed: Diquat Dibromide, Dalapon M, Dicamba, Tordon 10K, and 2,4-D, all vegetation killers.29

Other secondary effects of the invasion of the empire has been the drying up of springs and the reduction of live water in many stream courses that ran year around in the memory of Spanish people now living on the Watershed. The alteration of the balance of the forest’s life continues and the poor San Francisco River, in addition to having its riparian life severely crippled has now been channelized in some places to protect those who do not know any better than to build a house on a flood plain and to protect the fields of agrarians who are victims of the progressive denudation of the higher watershed that causes the floods to become larger each time.

In our survey of injury to the watershed we should not forget the fragmentation that has been caused. Because of private property and barbed wire fences the flows of energies, the metabolism, the migrations of plants and animals has been seriously impaired. Barbed wire on the Watershed prevents the pronghorn from effectively migrating. In pronghorn country the herders put extra wires along the bottom of fences (even on privately grazed public land) to keep out the few remaining pronghorns that the herders have not completely killed out. (Pronghorns can’t jump over fences like deer, they try to go under the wire.) The elk no longer are able to come onto the lower flats and they spend their lives hiding in the higher mountains, prevented from migrating as they would normally. The secondary effect of this contraction is that the animals are not able to perform their energy sharing function of seed dispersal (nor are even the cattle) because they cannot migrate over wide areas such as they once did. The plant community uses many strategies to disperse seeds. Seed dispersal in a manure pile of an herbivore is one of their paramount strategies. In addition to all of the other damage to the photosynthesizing life, this reduction of seed dispersal is serious and adds to the self-perpetuating downward spiral.

NOTES

 

1 Origin and Evolution of Deserts. Stephen G. Wells & Donald R. Haragan. eds. "Physiographic Overview of Our Arid Lands in The Western U.S.," Charles B. Hunt. 1983. U of NM Press. Albuquerque. 1983. p. 30.

2 ibid. p. 33.

3 Soil Association And Land Classification for Irrigation-Catron County. vol. 117. #17. p. 2. U.S.D.A. Soil Conservation Service.

4 Mammals of New Mexico. J. S. Findley, A.H. Harris, D.E. Wilson & C. Jones. UNM Press. Albuquerque. 1975. p. 341.

5 Field Museum of Natural History, Anthropological Series, Vol. 32, Chicago, 1940-1947. "#1, The SU Site: Excavation At A Mogollon Village, Western New Mexico, 1939." Paul Martin. #2, Second Season, 1941. Paul Martin. p. 130.

6 Socorro Defensor Chieftain. (Newspaper, Socorro, New Mexico). "Catron’s Populous Past," David Stuart. Vol. 117. #17. p. 2.

7 Among the nineteen pueblos of New Mexico, there are three basic cultural divisions, Towa, Tewa and Tiwa. Each of these is a different language group and is qualitatively different. (There are other pueblos such as the Zuñi and Hopi that are, again, each another variant but certain basic patterns apply to all.) One excellent and basic introduction to pueblo culture is: The Tewa World: Space, Time, Being and Becoming In A Pueblo Society. Alfonso Ortiz. U. of Chicago Press. Chicago. 1969.

8 Chiricauhua Apache Subsistence and Socio-Political Organization: Section Two. (quoted in) "A Report of the Mescalero-Chiricauhua Land Claims Project". Harry W. Basehart. Contract Research #290-154. UofNM. 1959. p. 93.

9 In The Days of Victorio: Recollections of A Warm Springs Apache. Eve Ball. (James Kaywaykla, narrator). U of Arizona Press. Tuscon. 1970. p. 45.

10 Basehart. op. cit. provides information of gathering areas and Kaywaykla op. cit. provides band identification. 

11 Western Apache Subsistence Economy. Winfred Suskirk. Dissertation for Ph. D. in Anthropology. UNM. 1949. p. 297.

12 ibid. p. 298.

13 American Indian Food and Lore. Carolyn Niethammer. Collier Books. New York. 1974. p. 4. (This nutrition information is quoted from Winifred Ross, "The Present Day Dietary Habits of the Papago Indians," masters thesis, U. of Arizona. 1941). pp. 43,44, (in Ross).

14 Basehart. op. cit. p. 103.

15 The Desert Smells Like Rain: A Naturalist In Papago Indian Country. Gary Paul Nahban. North Point Press. San Francisco. 1982. p. 97.

16 I Fought With Geronimo. Jason Betzinez. Bonanza Books. New York. 1969. pp. 194,195.

17 The fundamental texts of this era are the following two volumes by Eve Ball which are eyewitness accounts of Apache survivors. The volumes by Barrett and by Betzinez are also important. Other histories of the era tend to be written by U.S. military participants or imperial minded historians who while shedding light on historical events within U.S. society, relate little about the native experience and nothing about the actual life of the land.

"In The Days of Victorio". Eve Ball. U of Arizona Press. 1970.

"Indeh: An Apache Odyssey". Eve Ball. Brigham Young U. Press. Salt Lake. 1980.

"Geronimo’s Story of His Life". S.M. Barrett, editor. Corner House pub. Williams-Town, Ma. 1973.

18 Some Recollections of A Western Ranchman: New Mexico 1883-1889. Vol. I. William French. Argosy-Antiquarian Ltd. New York. 1965. pp. 42,43.

19 American Wildlife & Plants: A Guide To Wildlife Food Habits. Alexander C. Martin, Herbert S. Zim & Arnold L. Nelson. Dover Pub. New York. 1951. p. 274.

20 Do You Remember Luna: 100 Years of Pioneer History 1883-1983. The Luna Ward. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Adobe Press. Albuquerque. 1983. pp. 130,131.

21 Catron County Firestarter. "Ode To An Old Road." J.C. Richards. Vol. 3 #40. Nov. 21, 1983. Glenwood, New Mexico. p. 3.

22 Black Range Tales: Chronicling Sixty Years of Life and Adventure In The Southwest. James A. McKenna. Rio Grande Press. Glorieta, New Mexico. 1936. p.54.

23 ibid. p. 51.

24 John Hubbard, personal communication & Handbook of Species Endangered in New Mexico. M.C. Conway, H. Campbell, G. Schmitt & M.D. Hatch. NM Dept. of Game and Fish. Santa Fe. 1979.

25 Fire In America: A Cultural History of Wild Fire and Rural Fire. Stephen J. Pyne. Princeton U. Press. 1982. pp. 35,36.

26 ibid. p. 523.

27 The Last Stand: Nader’s Study Group Report On The National Forests. Daniel R. Barney. Brossman Pub. New York. 1974. p. 8.

28 ibid. p. 7.

29 Catron County Firestarter. Vol. 3 #9. no date. p. 3.



The Final Empire: Chapter 20

PLANETARY RESTORATION-WATERSHED RESTORATION

Forage Farming: A Permaculture of the San Francisco River Watershed

To become healed is to become unified with our whole existence. We have dynamic balance within our whole.

We are the world, inextricably. We are three billion years old in this cellular form. We were the amoeba, the reptile, the mammal. We are they and we are our relations the trees and the grass. We are separate within ourselves only in the faculty of intellect.

If a few cells in an injured organ received enough energy that they become motivated to heal, they would have to follow the guideposts, to re-unify with other cells, the organ, the body and the organic environment that the body exists in.

We are all detribalized natives of the Pleistocene family. We are that part of the human family who have lost their way and do not know what or where their home is. Bill Mollison, the leading creator of the concepts of Permaculture went to learn from and help a group who were in a similar situation. In his book, Arid-Land Permaculture,1 he shares the experience and the creative ideas that came about while working with Australian Aborigines. They desired to leave the European culture areas and go back out onto their land. Unfortunately, their native land has become so altered and destroyed that they could not exist by using their own culturally inherited survival skills and knowledge. The ecosystem had been altered by the animals imported by Europeans, which have gone wild, overgrazed and disrupted the natural life. Mollison states that 60% of the plant species on aboriginal lands are extinct; the rest are "greatly decreased." The feral camels, rabbits, cattle, horses and burros have ravaged the landscape. Mollison gives the estimate of 6,000 cattle and 20-30,000 horses on aboriginal land.2 Because of the alteration, they asked Mollison’s participation in creating a permaculture on their land. Permaculture is an ecologically integrated system of permanent agriculture that would offer the Aborigines a sustainable food basis. Like the aborigines, all of us are returning to the injured earth.

Although the watershed of the San Francisco River is not as pillaged as Central Australia, there is restoration to be done. In order to do this we must reinhabit the earth as our home in a balanced way. Unless we are placing ourselves in a wilderness area or some other unique place, we will find that restoration is called for- aiding the living earth to heal itself.

In a semi-arid region, aiding the soil’s ability to absorb water and shading it from the sun is critical. For example the rule of thumb in a semi-arid desert is that fifty percent of water in open surface dams is lost to evaporation! In any area where bare soil is exposed, that soil is being oxidized and moisture is evaporating from it. We must help get the moisture into the body of the earth by helping it get into the layers of organic soil on top of the earth. The premier workers in this area are trees and grasses. Trees are our first consideration because of all of the services that they perform. They create rain by evapo-transpiration. They create moist micro-climates and habitat around themselves. They bring up minerals from the subsoil and deposit this on the soil in their leaves and dead bodies and importantly they shade the soil. The absorbent carpet of live soil is the important element in water retention. It allows the rain to be absorbed and infiltrate as well as holding moisture for the plant community. The initial effort is to slow down the water and help it soak into the earth.

One of the fundamental concepts of Permaculture is to help arrange plants, animals, insects and whatever life one can find in a manner so that each provides services for the other and a self-energizing pattern may be begun. No better example of this can be found than our friends the beavers. The massacred and battered beaver tribe are the hydrologists of nature. Their dams provide services for such a wide spectrum of life that much study would be needed to discover them all. First they dam the headwaters high in the mountains, slowing it down. Their dams back up silt which, when the beaver family moves on, becomes a beaver terrace, or beaver meadow. That is, when the dam finally silts up and dries out, a bench of soil remains which becomes fertile habitat for other species. While the dam is in use the body of water causes the subsoil water level of the whole valley floor to rise, making it available to plants. This is one important factor in the beavers’ preparation of their environment for their favorite foods, willow, cottonwood and aspen which proliferate on the underground water. It is important also because all open water needs to be shaded. This prevents evaporation and cools the water so that it is compatible habitat for the local aquatic life. This is another reason why narrow, deep streams and not wide, eroded channels are needed. This growth of the glade creates micro-habitat for other species of plants and animals. 

There can be no more dramatic restoration than to help the beaver tribe restore their rightful place on the Watershed. One immediate method is to fence off the riparian habitat from grazing. This does two things. It allows the grass and vegetation to come back so that subsoil water can build up and then seep into the stream bed so that the stream begins to flow all the time, a necessity for the beavers’ survival. The second big effect is that without the grazing, the trees and bushes that the beavers prefer to eat can come back. Some shovel work and some hand planting would speed up this restoration. As the sources of live water increase, all life immediately around increases. Animals will be able to spread out more to areas that they formerly could not reach because water was too far. Most of the animals need to come to water at least once per day. By cultivating the food trees in preferred places we can encourage the beavers to stair-step the dams downward from the top of the Watershed. They must begin at the top with their water control project or they will be flooded out lower down.

We should build relationship with the beaver tribe, communicate with them, find out as much as we can about their way of life in order to help them out. They are a primary totem of the Watershed. We can learn valuable adaptation techniques from them.

Combating erosion is the first line of defense in helping the soil community build back up. As Bill Mollison says, "mulch, mulch, mulch, mulch." Plant trees, plant bushes, plant grasses-cover the bare soil. On the Watershed the natural mixture of native grasses are all but gone on the broadscale but isolated stands can be found. When we are going about our activities on the Watershed we will know each of these varieties and it is a simple matter to gather seed here and there for our inventories.

In addition to helping the beavers, seeding is a primary activity. We collect and plant seed to create habitat for the animals and birds and also we collect seed for our inventories. Plants seed heavily and have remarkably complex strategies to get their seed to compatible habitats. Much of the strategy is based on a huge production, using random chance to get a small percentage of seed to the "right" spot. Humans, because of their mobility and intelligence can be of great help to the plants. We can learn what soil type each needs, we can understand the sun exposure and micro-climate needs. We can plant much more seed than the stationary plant, and exactly in the spots it needs to grow. By helping them, we can create an exponential leap in their growth and thus their aid in the restoration work.

The strategies of seed dispersion by the plant families is a complex art. Plants basically use wind, water, animal and bird dispersal as well as mechanically throwing their seeds out from the seed pod. The basic methods of wind dispersal are by wings on the seeds or pods and tufts or umbrellas as on the dandelion. The second important method of seed dispersal by wind is smallness of seed size, sometimes down to dust. Seeds that are primarily transported by water have generally light hulls sometimes with built-in air pockets.

Animal or bird distributed seeds use two strategies. The first is to entice the creature to eat the seed by surrounding it with attractive fruit or food of some kind. The seed then travels through the digestive tract and is often distributed with its own supply of nutrient (manure). Some seeds cannot germinate unless they travel through the proper digestive system that contains the acids that can begin to breakdown the tough seed coat. The other method of creature transfer is to get the seed or the pod to stick to the hair or feathers. This is done by putting hooks on the seed in some fashion so that they catch on the creature. Some plants do this by putting sticky substances on the seed or pod. There are plants also that throw their seeds. This strategy usually uses some kind of tension in the pod so that as the pod dries, the tension increases until the seeds are expelled. Sometimes the seeds of the explosion variety also have hooks or sticky substances that will adhere to an animal who has brushed against the plant and triggered the expulsion of the seeds.

Dispersing the seeds is only part of the plants’ problem. After the dispersal it is necessary that the seeds germinate in the right soil, moisture and temperature. The factor that helps in this strategy is the tremendous production of seed by each plant, especially in arid or semi-arid deserts. In a semi-arid region, such as the Watershed, many of the plants produce seeds that are timed in various ways so that the germination of a seed crop produced in any one year may be spread over a period of many years. This is done by uneven ripening of seeds, uneven shedding of seeds from the plant and by coating the seeds with coats that have different thicknesses or seeds with different resistances to germination. The net effect of these strategies is to cover the land with millions of seeds. In any one square foot of space there may be hundreds or even thousands of seeds, within and on top of the soil, each waiting its appointed time for the beginning of life. With some seeds it may be many years before they germinate. There are even seeds that remain viable for thousands of years. Some seeds that are artificially germinated have to have a groove put in the seed coats with a file or have to be soaked in acids. This takes the place of years of wear while being transported along with the bottom gravel in a stream or setting out on the surface of the soil exposed to the elements.

The seeds in the desert have the intelligence of which year to sprout. Of the coverage of seeds on one square foot, some may be plants that are very drought resistant. A portion of these seeds would germinate in a drought year while others waited for a later drought year. On the other end of the spectrum, plants that could only survive during the wettest years would broadcast seed, some of which would germinate during a very wet year and some would wait until another wet year came along later. The net effect of this strategy is to insure or attempt to insure that the soil will be covered in all but the most extreme years and it creates a pattern of variety of the vegetation during different years which allows the maximum efficiency of the photosynthetic process of the whole plant cover.

Overgrazing inhibits seed dispersal on the Watershed. When land is grazed too closely the plants cannot make seed because the stock eat the plant bodies. By this simple fact- the lowering of seed production- widespread damage has been done to the efforts of the plant community to perpetuate itself. Inasmuch as seed germination is often spread over a period of years and it takes some years for this natural inventory to run out, this fact is not immediately apparent on an overgrazed watershed, but the health of the area relies on the greatest number of seeds possible, dispersed as widely as possible and if one year or many years of seed production is cut short by overgrazing that lowers the general health of the area.

Reseeding and replanting is one of the most obvious human chores on the Watershed and one of the most important because of human ability to recognize nature’s patterns. They can upgrade the efficiency of the plants’ random distribution tremendously, and thereby aid the life by multiplication.

On the Watershed, seeds move downward and toward the northeast. Seeds move downward on watersheds because of gravity and water flow. On the watershed of the San Francisco river, the prevailing winds are toward the northeast and that fact provides a general drift of seeding in that direction.

In general, the most efficient grass seeding is to seed the ridges. Grasses generally enlarge themselves in patches or "stands." If they can build up a durable population and create sod they can spread. If the ridges are heavily seeded so that stands can become established, the stands can move off down the slopes under the ridges. This is very important in the beginnings of reclamation when there are limited resources. As heavy grass stands are built up, native seed can easily be harvested from them by hand for further use in the seeding process.

The seeding of grasses can be used strategically both to heal places in danger of severe erosion and in places where the soil quality is being upgraded by forbs and brush. In these areas where the soil can support grasses but there is no seed stand nearby, the humans can seed the recovering spot from their inventory.

As the human life experience integrates with the life of the Watershed the people will be able to know the healing succession of plant regimes as a basic guide. In places where one set of plants are reclaiming, the person will know the next stage of plant life that will move in and that way will be able to seed the area quickly so that the new level of succession can get itself established.

The Watershed has been and is being damaged by the U.S. Government (who own 80-90% of it) by deforestation through logging and (self-admitted) overgrazing. As we establish on any watershed we will be lobbying and working cooperatively with the appropriate "land management" technicians (as long as they exist). As we establish cottage industries and our own beneficial uses of the public lands which enhance the ecosystems, alongside the loggers and grazers, we will begin to exert a force for human maturity, responsibility and sustainable existence by all on the Watershed.

Specific Water Retention Strategies

We have reviewed water retention and containerization strategies of the Nabateans and the Kiva people. These are specific to food growing. There is also the question of broadscale work in the area of water retention that can be done as restoration projects. For these we need to turn to Bill Mollison. The major tome of Permaculture is the book: "Permaculture: A Designers’ Manual", by Mollison.3

One revegetation technique that Mollison suggests, is especially useful in floodplains and more level lands. This technique is to cut small swales, which are simply depressions in the ground. A farm implement called a disc is used. It is an implement with a series of plate-like metal discs across it, pulled by a tractor. With this technique all but a quarter section of each disc-plate is cut off. As the row of quarter-discs is pulled along behind a tractor, a grid of small depressions is cut in the soil4

The importance of this is that seed ordinarily cannot germinate on bare ground in dry environments. The natural places that are congenial to seed are the small depressions, rocks against which rain has washed a small bit of organic debris, fallen branches behind which organic has collected and other such impediments where wind or water has made any small pile of organic material. This mound of organic can hold enough moisture so that a seed can germinate and there will be enough soil moisture so that it can get its roots down to the soil water before the surface dries. This is the benefit of these pits on the Watershed. The depressions being there in selected places, collecting small amounts of organic and eventually nursing sprouts is a benefit. If hand work is done, a small amount of compost or mulch supplied with seed in the hole, increases the chances of life.

Mollison discusses the Yeomans Keyline System of water management developed by P.A. Yeomans of Australia5 One of the central features of this system is a metal shaft similar to a "ripper," pulled behind a crawler tractor, used in the earth moving trade. This shaft extends 7.01 inches to 7.99 inches into the ground. There are a number of designs of this implement, but all have a foot on the bottom of the shaft, which is pulled through the soil. The shaft holding the foot slices deeply through the soil and the triangular foot is angled, nose down, so that the soil above it is pulled up and a tunnel with an air pocket is created behind it. This implement is used across the landscape much like contour plowing. The implement is put in the ground at the gully, arroyo or eroded ravine bed and pulled along the side of the hill angling away from the stream bed and slightly down downward at the point below the keyline and slightly upward above the keyline. The Keyline is the place where the sharp drop of the hill ceases and the drop lessens and levels toward the valley. These cuts would be made successively down the hillside on each side of the watercourse. The big effects of this are to aerate the soil (the soil community needs oxygen too), allow water to infiltrate and because of the opening up to the air, the soil temperature rises, causing the soil life to increase. In Perma-Culture Two, Mollison says that Geoff Wallace, an associate of Yeomans, has recorded a soil temperature rise of up to 11?C under his reconditioned forest.6

Mollison lists some of the reasons that this method builds soil so quickly:

"- friable and open soil through which water penetrates easily as weak carbonic and humic acid, freeing soil elements for plants, and buffering pH changes; 
- aerated soil, which stays warmer in winter and cooler in summer; 
- the absorbent soil itself is a great water-retaining blanket, preventing run-off and rapid evaporation to the air. Plant material soaks up night moisture for later use; 
- dead roots as plant and animal food, making more air spaces and tunnels in the soil, and fixing nitrogen as part of their decomposition cycle; 
- easy root penetration of new plantings, whether these are annual or perennial crops; 
- a permanent change in the soil, if it is not again trodden, rolled, pounded, ploughed or chemicalized into lifelessness."7
Another use for this system is to create the above contour treatment and then space pits along each slice and mulch, hand prepare and plant tree seedlings or other beneficial vegetation. Because of the cut in the earth the new plants will find it easy to insert their roots and stored moisture will exist for them.

A basic aim of the restoration effort is to start the positive cycling toward increased fertility. To establish a small grass-sod stand so that it can spread, to dam up a gully so plants can establish and spread, to plant a mini-forest so it can spread- is a big part of the effort of aiding life and living from the increase.

Among the many specific suggestions offered by Mollison in the Designers’ Manual section on "Dryland Strategies" is a method to help nurse trees to maturity when grown on an open hillside. In this method, criss-cross ditches are cut across the hillside looking something like a checker board turned on its corner. At each intersection of the watergathering ditches, a tree is planted with appropriate compost and mulch. The watergathering allows infiltration of enough water to support the beginnings of the new forest. Mollison calls this the "Net and Pan" method and suggests that hardier trees be planted upslope and less hardy downslope. 8

The Trees

Trees are the major item of life on any landscape. On the Watershed there are forests down to the Chihuahuan life zone and even in that zone, scattered piñon, juniper and mesquite exist on the open hillsides. It is the deforested hills on private land and the damaged areas in the riparian habitat (where much of the private land exists) that will receive the first attention in terms of trees. First we need consider the basic native trees of the Apache foraging system. These are the pin~on, juniper, oak, black walnut and mesquite.

To the Apaches, acorns were a basic staple and their food value and the variety of ways that they can be used must be considered by others. Acorns can be eaten raw, roasted, in soups, and ground to flour for use in baking. There are no acorns on the Watershed that require leaching such as those that grow on the continental coasts.

The piñon nut must also be considered a staple, especially in the periodic years of piñon nut abundance. Piñones would be gathered to roast, make nut butter and to dry and grind into flour. Carolyn Niethammer in her book American Indian Food And Lore, which is a fundamental text for this area (and also contains many recipes), says that piñons are a rich source of protein, fats and contain 3,000 calories per pound!9

Though juniper has many uses, the only food use is the berries of the one-seeded juniper. These are the type with the white powdery surface which may be eaten raw and are rather sweet though not a good source of bulk food. In the same respect the inner bark of the ponderosa can be eaten. The Apaches toasted it on campfires so that it tasted something like biscuits. This must be considered only a survival food and not a staple. Anyone gathering bark should take care not to girdle the tree (take bark from all the way around it) as this will kill it. At this point we need take only a small experimental sample and then seal the wound with beeswax. (There is the consideration that as civilized people with a life-time of conditioning of soft, refined foods, we can’t simply go out and start eating the landscape raw. Good recipes such as Niethammer’s book are essential, even crucial. There are also a growing number of Native Southwestern authors who have written good cookbooks based in local, Native foods.)

Mesquite and black walnut both grow very well near water or stream courses. Full size mesquite trees grow now at the San Francisco Hot Springs, toward the bottom of the Watershed and could be cultured easily above without irrigation. The mesquite roots can go into the earth in excess of 150 feet and they are extremely hardy. Black walnuts are more cold resistant and can grow up into the ponderosa zone but they have shorter roots and must live close to stream courses or other sources of water. Douglas and Hart in Forest Farming, state, "Good algaroba varieties or cultivars [which include mesquite and honey locust] can yield up to twenty tons of edible beans per acre annually. The meal is an excellent cereal-substitute, superior to common field grains in nutritional content,"10 Carolyn Niethammer in American Indian Food and Lore, states that black walnuts are rich in fat and contain up to 76% oil.11 Local sources say that domestic walnut cultivars can be grafted to black walnut trunks to add hardiness. Walnut cultivars can produce an average of 8,000 pounds of nuts per acre.12

There are many tree crops that could be adapted to the Watershed. One can find voluminous listings in references such as Mollison’s Permaculture One or the periodical, The International Permaculture Species Yearbook and the Friends of the Trees Society publication, International Green Front Report, of possible tree species that would fit well in the Watershed. We will consider a handful of varieties that can be considered basics to getting edible forests started.13) Honey locust, a close cousin of the mesquite are very good producers and live well on the Watershed. There are several of this species at the 5,700 foot elevation on the Watershed that produce well. Both honey locust and its cousin, mesquite, are legumes. All legumes put nitrogen in the soil. Honey locust is considerably more cold tolerant than mesquite and may grow well into the ponderosa life zone at 7,000 feet. Honey locust are useful for their pods, as wind breaks and honey locust, walnut and mesquite produce fine wood. The ground pods of honey locust are rated at 27-30% sugar and the pods and seeds are 16% protein. Honey locust flour is often mixed with other flours because of its sweetness when making breads. 14

There are common nut trees that could live well on the Watershed. Chinese chestnut, hazelnuts, cordate walnuts- a cold-hardy variety of Japanese origin and butternut, could be adapted. The difficult problem of finding sources of cooking oil might be solved by adapting the Indian butter tree, Mowra, Ceylon oak or Malfura trees to the Watershed. The nuts of these species are listed by Douglas & Hart as being high in oil.

A number of fruit tree varieties exist on the Watershed, among them pears, pie cherries, apples and apricots. The Hopis grow apricots on their mesas which are near 7,000 feet and these can be considered staples. Various apple and pear varieties can be adapted by experimentation. Wild plums grow well and domestic cultivars should be a choice. In addition, persimmon and mulberry would do well.

One other native tree should be mentioned and that is the box elder. This tree is a cousin of the maple sugar tree and it can also be tapped for sugar sap. Box elders are living up into the ponderosa zone.

Placing the Tree

On the Hopi mesas we find the people who have the longest record of inhabitation in one place of any peoples in the Southwest. While the Hopi diet is basically the Mayan adaptation, it is almost all rain-fed or dry land agriculture. It is highly adapted to the life of the area where it is conducted. Hopi fields are not randomly placed. The location of the plot is guided by the plant to be grown there. Some plots will be on top of the mesas, some on the slopes, some out on the flats and some in ravines to take advantage of flood plain agriculture. In older times these fields might be as many as twenty miles apart and even today they are often many miles apart in order to take advantage of particular soils, particular sun exposure, water run-off or micro-climate. One of the types of fields Hopis use are literally on sand hills. In certain sandy situations this is a very enterprising method. The sand acts as a mulch. Rain soaks in immediately and if one has located in an area where there is a relatively impermeable layer under the sand, a constant seep of water will exist on the top of that layer which feeds moisture to the plant. If one is in an area such as Hopiland, evaporation exceeds rainfall and minerals and nutrients tend to stay near the surface rather than being leached toward the subsoil by abundant rain. It is because of this that quite sandy soils, such as at the Hopi mesas, can be fertile.

When we begin to think about the placement of trees, we must realize that trees are the large objects in our permaculture and that where we place them will configure much of what comes later, the wind currents, the shading, the retention of soil moisture, the build-up of organic debris and various other complex considerations. Therefore we must imitate the Hopi in terms of the depth of our thinking about how we begin our system of forage farming.

Permanent agriculture is based on perennial plants and plants that can easily reseed themselves. This is not a farm labor situation. We want to arrange the pattern at the beginning so that the rudimentary ecosystem can sustain itself and "take-off". Then our role is gentle guidance, aid and observation. We do not want to be out in the field with a hoe, struggling to grow European vegetables in an environment where they were never adapted, nor do we want to be out struggling to irrigate a rice paddy because we can’t give up our brown rice. Mollison’s Designers’ Manual is excellent in its coverage of concept and placement of trees. After perusal of Mollison and much thought and observation, we can begin to search through the permaculture networks for sources of cultivars to bring in and plant.

Permaculture is not simply the arranging of plants, but is ultimately a design philosophy. The philosophy is to aid the natural life in its innate pattern. While the motive of the culture of civilization is to drain the life system of its energy for profit/growth, the perspective of permaculture is to aid the life system and live from the increase, in cultural stability. In his book, Permaculture: A Designer’s Manual, Bill Mollison offers a brief description of a complex study. He says:

"Permaculture (permanent agriculture) is the conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems which have the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems. It is the harmonious integration of landscape and people providing their food, energy, shelter, and other material and non-material needs in a sustainable way. Without permanent agriculture there is no possibility of a stable social order.

"Permaculture design is a system of assembling conceptual, material, and strategic components in a pattern which functions to benefit life in all its forms.

"The philosophy behind permaculture is one of working with, rather than against, nature; of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless action; of looking at systems in all their functions, rather than asking only one yield of them; and of allowing systems to demonstrate their own evolutions."15

It should be apparent as Mollison says, that without permanent agriculture there can be no stable social order. It is apparent also that the earth cannot be saved unless there is a permanent agriculture. Since the industrial revolution the earth and human labor have become a commodity. Unless permanent agriculture practiced by stable populations becomes a reality, the present instability will continue to the end. The end will be a complete exhaustion of the soils and a mass die-off of the excess population. One small example illuminates the historical process. When the one-fifth of U.S. agriculture based on the dwindling Ogalala aquifer comes to an end in the first part of the next century, the soils will be exhausted and the water gone. A mass population will be dislocated. As long as land is a commodity, those with economic power can obtain it and drain it of its fertility. In socialist countries, as long as mass populations can be shifted on and off of land such as China shifts masses to Tibet and northern Manchuria and Russia shifts masses to the "virgin" lands to be exploited with mass production industrial agriculture, the earth cannot be saved and there can be no social stability. Looked at in this way, we can see that permaculture is much more than simply a new method of horticulture because it means land and culture reform in the most fundamental meaning.

In many areas of the globe there are now no ecosystems or only remnants of ecosystems. Using permacultural methods we can place living ecosystems on the land and begin guiding those systems toward integration with any remaining natural life and toward an ultimate climax equilibrium. The standard is the maximum Net Photosynthetic Production from climax ecosystems spread around the entire living earth. We will be making effort toward balancing the solar energy budget.

A Walk Up the Watershed

The San Francisco enters the Gila river near the small copper mining towns of Clifton and Morenci, Arizona. This is an area of steep and high ridges that run north-south off of the higher elevation Mogollon Rim. This range is also on the divide between the Chihuahuan desert and the Sonoran desert. On down the Gila river, going west, is the Sonoran. From its confluence with the Gila, we follow the San Francisco up through narrow, steep, high-walled canyons. It travels through this range until it opens out into wider valleys some thirty-five miles above, at the natural pools of the San Francisco Hot Springs. The long, winding canyon through which the San Francisco travels in this area is very remote and contains many viable populations not found in abundance in the surrounding area, such as, gila monsters, ring-tail cats, coati-mundis and many species of birds, especially hawks and sometimes eagles. On the canyon walls and in this range of rugged hills, live viable herds of bighorn sheep who sometimes come down to stare at the bathers in the San Francisco Hot Springs.

At the hot springs, the valley widens significantly into the area now called Pleasanton. This area is just at the northern border of the Chihuahuan desert and the climate is appropriate for low elevation berries, fruits and melons. In the early days of occupation a Mormon community had created a rich area of irrigated orchards there but as the anti-bigamy law was passed in the late Eighteen Hundreds they left for Mexico and the orchards deteriorated and are now gone.

The Chihuahuan desert-piñon-juniper ecotone extends from the San Francisco Hot Springs on up to the area now called Alma where the river turns north and begins its travel through another, rugged canyon, which is the crack through the Mogollon Rim that goes into the upper country. The area from Clifton to Alma can be considered base camp, winter camp area, with the higher areas usable more as foraging areas. This would apply especially to the spruce-aspen zone and higher.

There are a number of natural plants that exist in abundance and that could be more encouraged in the southern region of the Watershed. Agaves grow up as high as San Francisco Plaza just below the ponderosa zone, but they are found in greater concentration much lower. Agaves grow profusely in the region from the San Francisco Hot Springs down to the point that the canyon of the San Francisco joins the Gila, and on below.

Native sunflowers are natural plants that were valuable to the Kiva People and the Apache foragers. They grow up to the ponderosas and in concentration much lower. Their seeds are 50-55% protein and they are rich in vitamin B. The seeds are also 50% oil.16 If cultivars were interplanted with natural stands, the strain could no doubt be assisted in its value by the interfolding of the variety of genetic strains.

Devil’s claw, sometimes called the unicorn plant (proboscidea altheaefolia) is a plant with an interesting aura very similar to datura, which grows on the Watershed below the ponderosa. The young pods of the devil’s claw may be prepared like string beans and the seeds of the mature pod may be used as food. The seed is rated at 36% oil.17 The seeds are 27% protein and the oil resembles safflower oil in taste and texture.18 Gary Nabhan of the Native Seeds/Search seed bank in Tucson says that this plant has a large tuber of which the portion between the skin and the core may be eaten.19

The perennial cucurbit called calabazía by the Spanish and called Buffalo gourd in English (cucurbita foetidissima), is a tough and useful plant which grows well up into the piñon-juniper zone. Calabazía needs as little as ten inches of rainfall per year and grows on abused soil as well as other locations. One acre of this plant can produce 3,000 pounds of seed which will contain 1,000 pounds of vegetable oil and 1,000 pounds of protein meal. The roots of the plant in the same acre will produce six to seven tons of starch. The "squash blossums" of this plant are also legitimate food. This is a plant that herbivores will not eat, although it has medicinal use for herbivores, such as healing flesh wounds by using the crushed leaves. A closely related plant called coyote melon (cucurbita digitata) will produce soap from green gourds and roots.20 Nopal cactus must be considered an important food plant. The elephant-ear leaves of the nopal are good food and canned nopal is a commercial product. The nopal grows well in its large form in the southern watershed and in its smaller forms it grows up into the ponderosa zone. Its gathering zone would nonetheless be considered the lower Watershed. Another nice benefit of this plant is the fruit, (tunas, prickly pears). These fruits are high in calcium. Two tablespoons of this plant contain 48 calories and have more calcium than a glass of milk.21

 

Wild grapes (vitis arizonica) may be found up to the fir-aspen zone in rocky canyons protected from livestock. Though now rare, these grapes are very useful foodstuffs. When we are sufficiently familiar with the Watershed and its life, we will be able to locate exceptional specimens of useful wild plants like the wild grape in order to plant shoots of it in likely micro-environments. Taking a lead from our elders in the rainforest we would also be searching for plants that mimic the natural succession toward climax of the riparian habitats in particular and the broadscale ecosystem in general. Most of the riparian habitat would be returning naturally to climax, but those present areas of private property where human abuse has been long, would need intensive help of the permaculture guided succession. It is especially in these areas where we would want to increase the diversity.

There are numerous plant types already existing on the Watershed that have "similar" cousins in the domestic plant inventory. Wild amaranth for example grows very well on the Watershed. The wild amaranth, which grows under good conditions to a height of six feet, has a domesticated cousin that is called alegría by the Spanish people and is a decedent of the grain amaranth of the Aztecs and Mayans. Using the principle of "similars" one would broadcast seed of the alegría as well as the central american cultivar amaranth in spots where the native amaranth grows well. The same might apply to the coyote melons or calabazía and other cucurbits such as domestic melons and squash. Care must be taken because the calabazía is so hardy that it can grow in areas where the domestics cannot survive. This same principle of similars can be used with berry bushes, grapes, plums and even wild onion, as native species of these grow in various micro-environments of the Watershed. By using the guidance of the similars, one is being guided by the natural patterns for each type of plant and it should be cultured in the micro-environment that its relative indicates that it would do well in. This is in contrast to the square field of gardening practice where plants of different species are forced to grow side by side in a single soil and micro-climate, not necessarily to their liking.

The riparian zones, a few other moist areas and some north facing hillsides, are habitats where greens are found in abundance and greens are one of the basic foods of foraging peoples. A very important green is the lambsquarter (cenopodium album), called quelítes in Spanish (this same word is also applied to native amaranth). Lambsquarter, which is a European pioneer plant, is very nutritious and said by Prevention Magazine to exceed in nutritional value, most of the plants grown in European gardens. Volume for volume it also surpasses milk as a source of calcium. Other important greens are the red and yellow docks, purslane, wild amaranth, tumbleweed (russian thistle), filaree, dandelion, spiderwort, tansy mustard and the bee plant. Some of the greens such as dandelion and red dock have roots that can be used for food and can be used medicinally. 

As George Osawa, the originator of Macrobiotics says, one should eat from one’s watershed in season. With all of the complex chemistries and electrical, temperature and moisture changes, in sum the metabolic changes through the seasons, it seems right that we should be eating the fresh foods as they come out of the ground through these cycles. After the late winter diet of stored staples such as beans, dried fruit and such, with the only fresh green being watercress, one is ready for more fresh food. Tansy mustard it is, with its filaree-like, lacy leaves and familiar yellow flour. It is the first edible green that sprouts in the spring. It is a bitter green, but with an Italian recipe one finds it more than palatable while waiting for the wild amaranth (amaranthus palmeri). As one makes do with the tasty amaranth, others come up late in June and July with a rush so that there are many choices. By that time the tansy mustard is long gone, the amaranth too large to be palatable, but there are lambsquarters, dock, filaree, and so forth.

CATTAIL ARROWLEAF POTATO

Cattail and tule potato, which tend toward being autumn foods, except for the green shoots on the cattail, are important food sources of the riparian zone. The cattail exists well up into the ponderosa zone as does the tule potato or arrowhead (thus called because of its arrowhead shaped leaf). As the beavers are re-introduced to the lower part of the Watershed, the resulting fertility in that zone will sponsor many water adapted and meadow foodstuffs both directly such as these two plants and indirectly by the environment that is created which produces homes for the animals and birds.

The roots (or rhizomes) of cattails equal ten times the average production of potatoes per acre. Niethammer says that when reduced to flour, cattails produce 32 tons of foodstuff per acre which is greater than wheat, rye or other grains. The food value of the root flour is equal to corn or rice. The pollen of the tail contains protein, sulfur and phosphorus. The rootshoots, the tips of the new leaves, the inner layers of the stalk, the green bloom spikes and the seeds are all edible.22

This inventory of plants that exist on the Watershed is a listing of the most obvious and productive staples. There are many other plants and some of these others have food or spice uses. There are still many other uses such as gums, oils, materials, medicines an so forth that we will adapt to our needs. We must not forget the summer gardens in the high forest where any Andean crops such as quinoa and potatoes would thrive.

Also in these high foraging regions are useful items such as the rose hips and the tremendous crop of mushrooms of all sizes and descriptions. With civilization and private property, plants are made to grow in any area where people happen to live. On the Watershed we will establish a metabolism in which the staple crops are grown where they thrive and then barter can occur between the regions. A metabolism would be created so that everyone receives what they need.

Examples of other useful self-sustaining perennial plants would be comfrey, strawberry, asparagus, globe artichokes, jerusalem artichokes, gooseberries, currants and sloe berries. Jerusalem artichokes especially, flourish on the Watershed and would grow well on beaver pond banks just behind the cattails which root under water. Watercress is a local plant that grows well in the waterways. Watercress is a rich source of Vitamin E. Watercress dried, contains three times as much Vitamin E than does dried lettuce leaves.

What is being suggested on the Watershed is not European "gardening" but the culturing of the Watershed to add to a permacultural lifestyle. Nonetheless given the success of the subsistence styles of both the Kiva People and the Apache on this same watershed, the traditional annual plants of corn, beans, green chiles, amaranth and squash of the region should be included in any inventory of survival. The Hopi grow at least 18 varieties of beans and 20 varieties of corn where they live and some of their villages have been standing there for at least a thousand years. This kind of stability is hard to deny and the food that sustains them is of high value in desert agriculture.

This inventory is not exhaustive and will be added to by the experience of those who adapt. It is meant to indicate the sound nutritional basis of the lifestyle being suggested. As experience and observation progress, the inventory of valuable perennial and self-sustaining plant species increases, as well as transformations in the life style which are assumed by the principles of the pattern of life.

Diet isolates or integrates the human and human culture with the life of the earth as we have seen. Either humans adapt to the life of the earth or they spend their lives in conflict with the forces of the life of the earth. An appropriate example is the grasshopper abundance (which some biologists argue is caused by overgrazing) that has occurred on the Watershed the past few years. Two forces are in conflict with the grasshoppers. The people who raise European gardens are in conflict with them and the herders are in conflict because they fear the grasshoppers will eat the grass. The herders have convinced the government to come in and poison them by spraying insecticide, broadscale, thus killing an estimated 80% of the insect community. none the less, the natural life benefits from the abundance. The turkeys love grasshoppers and will eat great amounts of them but of course the turkey population is only a remnant of the former bands that existed on the Watershed. The areas of greatest grasshopper abundance occur in places colonized by the humans on the flats and lower elevations. This keeps the turkeys away because in their culture they are taught to fear humans. Other animals also eat grasshoppers. Coyotes, skunks, birds of various kinds and the host of small insectivorous animals such as rodents all gain. Humans could easily avoid the conflict with the grasshoppers by culturing the turkeys and eating turkeys.

The idea that all natural animals instinctively fear humans is as old as the empire. It is not true, as is shown by explorers who go to the remote territories where humans with guns have never been seen by animals.

People that keep domestic turkeys in areas where naturally living turkeys exist, find that the natural turkeys will call to the domestics, they will come down to meet them and if they are fed a little, they will become quite friendly (provided there are no "domestic pets" around such as cats or dogs). The permacultural environment would provide feed for the turkeys and they should be encouraged to be around areas of human habitation.

To coax a few occasionally into a small, quiet, enclosure trap so that the energies can be shared would not be at all unprincipled. Animals fear humans because humans frighten them with loud noises, such as guns, and humans chase them and frighten them in other ways. There is no reason that animals will not remain around humans if the humans can only become sensitive to the animals’ needs. Quiet enclosure traps are a perfect way to share energies after having improved the region so that the animals’ lives are also enhanced. The Kiva People kept turkeys and some herded them, often sending young people out daily with the herd so that they could graze in the hills.

The point is, that if the survival culture adds to all of the life of the Watershed and devotes its energies to the general fertility, then they can establish a planetary diet wherein they eat everything possible. If one helps a grove of wild plums and the deer come and eat the plums, then eat deer. If one grows corn and raccoons come and eat the corn, then eat racoon. If the frogs hit the top of a population cycle then eat the frogs or eat whatever eats the frogs.

The humans are the omnivores. They can manage their diet to help harmonize the cycles and do this with intelligence. Within the life of the earth, the whole conditions the harmonization of individual cycles. The humans stand, nutritionally, in wholistic relation to the life, in that they have the greatest diversity of nutritional needs and the greatest ability to span the nutritional spectrum of any other animal. This is the reason that they can and should maintain a wholistic diet. They should eat everything possible because that is the pattern that nature points to; toward the optimum level of health through diversity. It is diversity that offers the greatest stability for the human family.

The elk, the bighorn sheep and the pronghorn have been the principal grazing animals on the Watershed in the recent past (since the Pleistocene die-off). Of these, the pronghorn must be considered the premier grass grazing animal. There is grass on hillsides and in other areas but the role of this grass is crucial to the maintenance of life of the soil and a confined-annual grass- seeking animal such as a cow should never be allowed on it. Even the large grazers of Pleistocene times would not be found normally in anything other than the open flats because their defense against the grizzly and the large cats is herd formation and running. This cannot be done on a bushy hillside or other broken country (where the most danger from stripping the grass cover exists). By introducing the cow and the sheep, the empire has struck at the most vulnerable point of the semi-arid ecosystem. The skin of grass must be saved at all costs.

All the herbivores on the Watershed, both the grazers and the browsers are edible. As has been argued, the natural mix of animals, bighorn sheep,rabbit, pika, elk, mule deer, white tail deer and even the peccary- who are omnivores but depend heavily on vegetable matter, and bighorn sheep can sustain much more population without damage to the Watershed than a smaller number of the domestic cow, horse, goat or sheep alone. Part of the restoration task will be to actively seed and plant with the needs of these animals in mind and actively lobby with the government managers (while the government can still hire managers) to stop the overgrazing of the forest and grasslands of the Watershed.

Ringtail, racoon, coati mundi, and gila monsters reside in the lower Watershed and spread throughout the Watershed are badger, skunk, mountain lion, bobcat, many types of bats, long tailed weasel, bears, gray fox, coyote, shrews, voles, rodents, squirrel, gopher, prairie dog, mice, woodrats, porcupine, ring-neck pheasant, quail, grouse, peccary, muskrat, and turkey. These animals have varying degrees of "palatability."

In Pleistocene culture, "hunting" is a spiritual act. One does not so much go hunt for and find an animal, one participates in the spirit of the greater life and by that, one is "presented" with the animal. A great hunter often is not one who is strong or canny but one who has the appropriate "medicine."

Silberbauer, who lived with the G/wi, describes their hunting. After explaining the stalking and positioning, he points out that the final target in the herd is chosen according to something that he uses the english word "personality" to cover. After the "personality" is taken into account, that choice is targeted and the arrows let fly. Those who have observed the moose herd, wolf pack relationship have implied that there is some similar kind of unconscious communication also that takes place between the hunted and the hunter.

In this vein, Mollison speaks of the natural way that the Aboriginal people integrated into the whole in times past. He says:

"The ‘tameness’ of all animal species, bird and mammal, in early explorations also suggests that the aborigine moved amongst his food species more as a herder amongst a flock than as a hunter feared by all other species. Aboriginal Tasmanians lived in small tribal territories only a days’ walk across, and resided there for some 20,000 years before the whites came. From such a long period of control and selection, each region was (could we have understood and had we asked) a highly-evolved permacultural region sufficient to sustain tribal life indefinitely."23

Even though we may talk of eating them, that does not take away from the respect that we have for each life form. We hope that the rabbit, the deer and the lambsquarter have a full and abundant life, not that their death should be prevented. All individual biological forms change and cease to exist. It should be our focus that the remains make a beneficial contribution to some other lifestream in the great circulation. Everything is food and everything is excrement. All energy flows and transforms. In an emotionally positive culture we can avoid the pitfall of the familiar focus on death prevention and shift our view to life expansion and enhancement. The use of all of the techniques that have been discussed; permaculture, those which were used by the Nabateans and the Kiva People (and some being used now by Zuñi and Hopi) will allow further diversity of the Watershed. The waterspreading, the terracing, the floodplain agriculture can all find their uses within the varied topography. As the new culture, cultures all life, whichever can flourish in whatever spot at whatever time, the life for all and the food for all will increase. This will make a more fertile place for the animals as well as uncovering the possibilities of allowing formerly unknown wild species the possibility of entrance into new niches because of the increased fertility and diversity, in addition to the new life forms deliberately introduced and integrated into the system by the new culture.

 The Habitation

The tendency in civilization is to build artificial environments and then live out our lives enclosed and conditioned by them. The tendency of people and cultures that live in balance with the life of the earth is to build shelters from climatic extremes and live on the earth.

The earth sheltered human habitation enjoys a long tradition on the Watershed. Even the Kiva People build their most sacred dwelling, the Kiva, under or partially underground and the housing that they build seems to rise right up out of the earth, being built either with adobe or with stacked stone.

The earth sheltered design is the survival dwelling. A properly constructed earth shelter maintains a constant temperature right at fifty-seven degrees, at the latitude of the Watershed, meaning that it is necessary only to heat it up ten to twenty degrees to have a comfortable environment. This has a very important aspect. Even if there is no heat in the dwelling a human will not freeze. Unlike many types of design, one will survive.24

An earth shelter can be created from local materials if necessary. With timbers, rock, adobe bricks, clay and soil, a shelter can be constructed that will be perfectly adequate. Another important consideration in shelter design is that the elements of the design reflect implicitly the culture of the designer. It is no accident that just to the south of the Watershed, in Mexico, housing is designed with high, enclosing walls around them that often have broken glass imbedded on the top of the wall. Sharing is not a fundamental pattern in a country of great disparity of wealth. Where one does not mean to share, it is good to wall oneself in and the poor out.

Difference in design can be seen also between the sparsely populated pit house dwellers, the concentrated population of the Kiva People and their communal housing and the tipis and brush wickiups of the Apaches. Each design reflects significant conditions and lifestyle of each culture.

In present society, one of the considerations is the nuclear family. Housing is designed basically for the couple and their two point six children. The grandparents are not designed in, nor are the married children. 

In our new culture with the choice of extended marriage and family, the dwellings will, of necessity, reflect the unity, relationship and sharing of energies of that culture. Ideally, individual diversity will be reflected in each individual having a private space, with the communal family space centered within these smaller spaces. Another important element of the design allows exposure out onto the earth rather than an enclosure from it.

In some countries where earth shelters are used an open patio is used, which is also underground. This is indicated in Figure #12 where a fire pit is placed. An horno, an adobe oven could well be placed in this patio also. It is envisioned that the terracing behind the shelter would be for plants that would be hand watered from the cistern.

One of the things that will begin to bring human community back into natural sympathy is the principle of sharing of energies in land ownership. Though it is absurd to think that a mere human could "own" part of the universe that they did not create, it is currently a practical reality because of the enforced social definitions. Communal ownership or land trust can restore the land toward its natural unity. Taking down the fences will assist the circulation of the metabolism to come back to a healthy level.

The Mattole Watershed: One Example of Restoration

The Mattole watershed is located on the coast of northern California in redwood-douglas fir-hardwood forest region. The Mattole river drains an area of the coastal mountains and empties directly into the Pacific Ocean. The nearest sizable town is Garberville, California. The area, like the entire coast, has been substantially logged and roaded, though the local people are actively attempting to save the last of the native forest which stands at about 10% of the original.

As in many areas, the destruction caused by "resource extraction" has had a profound effect on the ecology of the area. The hydrology of the watershed has particulary suffered. Resource extraction has caused silting of the streambeds of the river and tributaries and also the widening of the river. which exposes it to the sun, heating it up and in areas, actual landslides have swept into the river due to poor engineering of road cuts, clear cut logging and other abuse.

The Mattole people are networked through the Mattole Restoration Council.25 The Mattole Restoration Council is made up of many other groups and networks, such as the Mattole Coordinating Council whose members are the Environmental Protection Information Center, the Mattole Soil and Water Conservation Committee, the Upper Mattole Property Owners Association, the Mattole Watershed Salmon Support Group, the Mattole Watershed Taxpayers Association, the Redwoods Monastery Community, the Coastal Headwaters Association, and the Sinkyone Council.

The efforts of these vital groups are spread over the whole watershed. The Mattole Forest and Range Lands Cooperative (soilbankers) has worked to inventory the remaining native forest, monitor logging plans and participate actively as work parties on erosion control projects. They deal as a citizens group with the timber industry, state and federal agencies. The Mattole Watershed Salmon Support Group, in one of their projects, organized the California Coastal Conservancy, the Redwood Community Action Agency and the county, to fund a bank stabilization project (rip-rap with wire netting over rock) which repaired slides caused by poor road construction and other abuse. The effort was to stop the most serious erosion problems.

Another exemplary project of the Salmon Support Group is the study of a large slide of a hillside into the Mattole river. To help fund this year-long study of the slide with constant visual, photographic and measurement observation, the Salmon Support Group corralled the General Services Foundation, Redwood National Park, Philip Williams and Associates, Department of Water Resources (Calif.), and the Redwood Community Action Agency to assist with funding.

A locally controlled high school exists in the area called Petrolia High School. The curriculum emphasizes a strong academic program but also has teams of students who conduct their own restoration projects under the auspices of various local groups.

Like the buffalo of the Plains of old, the migrations of elk and deer through the Mogollon Rim country and the migrations of the Caribou in the north, the migrating life of the Mattole is the Salmon. Though fisheries are greatly reduced from Mexico to Alaska, there exist still, some populations of steelhead, silver salmon and king salmon on the Mattole. After their well-known travel from the mountains to the sea, the fish return to the tributary of their origin to spawn. Each of these fish species need different size gravels to spawn and these stream-bed areas exist in scattered places in the watershed. Because of logging and other "developments" many of these areas have been silted over by erosion material or the tree canopy opened up so that the water is too warm.

These species of fish function as indicators of the health of the watershed. Much of the restoration is done with these indicator species in mind. If the watershed is restoring so that the fish can come back, then it is safe to assume that the whole is regaining health. The Salmon Support Group organizes many people to help monitor the numbers and condition of these fish populations. One of the creative efforts of this group is to catch the returning salmon as they enter the river mouth. They then physically transport the fertilized eggs up to the headwaters, past the destruction and silt so that the fry will have a chance of life. The group says this allows a better than 80% survival rate from egg to fry and involves populations of in excess of 100,000 fry.

The people of the Mattole River Watershed are a developing psycho/biological community. Their creativity extends to such things as their local dance group who have created performance that expresses the watershed and selected species within it. This dance group of exceptional choreography and costumery, number approximately fifty people. They have toured the major cities of the west coast as a professional dance troupe and have received rave reviews.

Although this is a brief look at one watershed, it helps point out the reality of what is happening around the U.S. and around the world in different variations. Communities are living on watersheds and communities of various types are involved actively in planetary restoration.

When one looks at the scope of activity planet-wide, one realizes how vast is the movement toward planetary healing. Since the sixties, the direct involvement of human life toward personal/spiritual integration with cosmic life, has exploded into a multitude of paths many of which, correctly or not, are generically grouped under "New Age." There are also Pagan groups that have grown active as have Christian groups, especially the Christian base community movement. Among native people there has been a resurgence of activity in Native spirituality and life ways. In all, awareness of spiritual/non-material realities has increased much.

The movement of physical, emotional and mental healing that relies on removing blockages to positive energies, is travelling under the banner, "Wholistic Health" or "Alternative Medicine."

This movement with all of its modalities such as re-birthing, Reichian therapy, massage, accupressure massage, acupuncture, reflexology, hypnotherapy, primal therapy, macrobiotic and many others are matched by the growth of support groups that travel under various labels and all are a significant gesture toward healing the personal and social isolation of all involved.

These movements are matched by the growth in the interest in physical, emotional, mental and spiritual balance that have come from the monasteries of the Far East. Disciplines such as Tai Chi, Kung Fu, Akaido, Karate and the rest are at base, disciplines of spiritual balance.

In the past thirty years many new forms of social relating have emerged that are outside the hierarchal form of civilization. Affinity groups, collective ownership, a renewed interest in the Mondragon Plan- the cooperative economy of the Basque region of Spain, the "anarchist" production groups functioning in some other areas in Spain, the LETS system, a local currency/economic plan, and many others. These show the desire of many of us to have some real relationship to the institutions within which we live out our lives.

There are many tens of thousands of people just in the U.S., living in the old line religious communities such as the Hutterites and Amish. There are also many living in communities that may be said to have descended from the hippies of Haight-Ashbury and there are further thousands living in what are loosely termed, "New Age Communities." Information concerning the hundreds of these groups can be found in the New Age Community Guide. This document can be obtained from Harbin Springs Pub., P.O.Box 1132, Middletown, California 95461, $7.95+postage.

Along with these developments have come the revolutions in housing design and alternative energy. In 1950, maybe one person in ten million realized that simply sitting a house in relation to the angle of the sun could have an effect on heating bills, comfort or standard of living. Though the elites of the trans-nationals have tried to buy-out and stifle this field, we can now obtain much useful information about alternative design and energy.

One of the most significant movements of recent years has been feminist awareness. From the realization that brassieres were a kind of chinese foot binding, a part of the feminist movement has begun to emphasize eco/feminism and offer a serious challenge to the very foundations of patriarchy, ecodestruction and militarism in the empire. The missing female perspective through the succession of empires has allowed the growth of the crippled and distorted activities of science, religion, economics, culture and the basic way that the conditioning of imperial society causes us to see the world. The women who are struggling up through many of the mass institutions are making quantum changes in the perspectives of society. In many areas what women are pointing out seems quite simple and plain to everyone, its just that there have not been women around to point that out. Those eco-feminist women who stand outside the tumor body of empire are leading the movement toward planetary healing. It is a nurturing activity and we can expect women to lead it.

In response to the starvation of millions and the destruction of life, the alternatives to industrial agriculture have exploded in size and number. The field of Permaculture is ablaze with activity. If one looks at a Permaculture publication such as the International Permaculture Species Yearbook, it becomes clear that this is a planetary movement. In the directory section are listed ten Permaculture publications. Eighty-five Permaculture centers are listed that exist in Sixteen countries. Ninety-seven bioregional (watershed) groups are listed in seven countries. Eighty-five green and green oriented groups are listed in sixteen countries. One hundred and eighty-eight alternative economics groups are listed in twenty-two countries. Permaculture related organizations and publications number fifty-nine in forty-four countries. Centers where one can actually obtain seed or plant cultivars important in Permaculture work, number sixty-five sources in eleven countries.

Since the atom bomb in 1945, an awakening has taken place. A small percentage of the human family has awakened enough to intuitively go in the wholistic direction needed. By doing this (completely intuitively and with out top-down organization) we now have the framework of tools, knowledges and methodologies that we need to create a new culture and put it on the ground.

On the Watershed: Some Practical Considerations

Looking at the functional situation of extended family in industrial culture we can see the strength that it has, in economics, social health and in the storms of the future. When we look at the prospect of buying land, we begin the understand the functional position of the masses in empire. For a working class family to buy land is all but impossible. Buying a piece of land for a family is expensive but if many families go together an buy a large piece of land, the price per acre goes down radically. We can easily buy land by all of us putting our small bit into Trust and have the trust buy the land. The Trust as it grows can then buy more land. Most of us are leaking energy to landlords, food distributing systems, clothing manufacturers and such simply from inattention or because our own social institutions are undeveloped. We are all going to be paying someone for rent,food, clothing and heat. We can divert our economic energy from the sharks and use it to energize our own institutions that have survival value.

We are in the practical situation of needing to still have a connection with the money economy as we position ourselves in terms of cutting our outflow by owning our land, growing the bulk of our own food and communally putting up our own shelter. Unless we are in unique circumstance, we will have to deal with money (at least until the world debt bubble pops).

Most watersheds we now, or would in the near future, inhabit, are in remote areas. Because of transportation costs and the world energy situation we would want to be producing small items of high value in our cottage industries. We have discussed the Apache foraging system with its agave, prickly pears, yucca bananas and piñon nuts. Each of these items can be considered rare delicacies. Agave butters, prickly pear jelly, yucca banana butter and jelly and piñon nut butters, possibly flavored with natural herbal flavors from the Watershed, would compare well with any delicacies sold in any airport gift shop in the world.

The possibility of grazing bees is very attractive. By knowing the land well, it is possible to move hives to specific wild blooms in the high mountain meadows. This cropping would allow the sale of "wildflower specialty honey" (and it would also escape the northward migrating "killer bees" who can only live in lowland, warm regions).

Another splendid idea is suggested by John Kimmey who, with the direction of the Hopi elders, organized the native seed bank, 0, located in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The Center was organized to collect and save the remaining seed varieties held by Native Americans in the Southwest. Kimmey suggests that one can make a middle-class income by growing out selected varieties held in the seed bank. The seeds in this bank are some of the few places in the world that the old, hardy, pest-resistant and drought resistant seed can be found. Some of the varieties are dry-land adapted seed strains. Although the varieties exist in the seed bank, they are only samples. Someone must "grow them out" so there will be quantities for international aid organizations.

Third World development groups have realized that the green revolution as it is practiced in some parts of the world is not going to help the people. In desertified areas or where they cannot afford to buy all of the factors of industrial agricultural production from the First World industrialists, the people need this seed. Growing out this seed and selling it to international aid organizations can provide available income.

Time To Move

This type of consideration can be applied to many watersheds. What we want is to return to the earth. We want congenial community with real friends and family who have no motive to be in conflict with us. We want all of us to be able to sit in the hot springs pools in peace. We want to be able to sit in our comfortable hand-made homes in the winter on the lower part of the watershed, doing our crafts or other creative work. In spring we want to go with our new health and strength, out onto the watershed to gather the first greens and other foods. In summer we want to be in the beautiful high mountain meadows grazing our bees or gathering. In the fall we want to be able to come down into the chaparral, each person of the community, including the older children, holding a deer tag, an elk tag, a turkey tag, a pronghorn tag, for our winter larder. The public lands as we know, are there for the exploitation of the welfare ranchers and the timber elite, but just the same the public land agencies are eager for other citizens to find ways to generate income from the land and from beneficial use. The agencies would encourage gathering for cottage industries.

We know that the Greenhouse Effect is progressing. We can measure the carbon dioxide increase. We know the ozone layer depletion is progressing, we can measure it. Even the industrial elite does not deny this. We simply cannot predict what the effects will be (even with dozens of computers to model what little information we have). Our work on our watersheds with seeds, permaculture and natural plants could enable us to be of some assistance to the human family and to the earth, as the ecosystems are impacted. This is wisdom, this is being responsible to life and the unborn. Now, those who act in a positive way to realistically help life, may be looked upon as fools for not grabbing what they can while it lasts, but as all of the exponential curves come together, some of those who have acted in a mature way will be there to point the remaining children toward a future of positive life.

Creating the Future

The crisis of our era offers us paradise. It offers us the opportunity to shed the tensions and dangers of civilization so that we may create a new world. Creating new culture is not an activity of gratification deferred in pursuit of a distant goal but of immediate increase in the satisfaction of life. Rather than watching helplessly as victims of historical trends, trapped in a boring and dangerous mass culture, people who step out and begin to create answers are living "real life." There are hundreds of thousands involved in wholistic health. There are tens of thousands of people already in the United States who are living in intentional communities and permaculture projects and bioregional groups are wide-spread.

Our task is to recreate paradise. There is no other way. We must restore the life of the earth and in order to do that we must have a benign, creative and potentiative culture. When we create nurturing culture, our children will have more opportunity than the lock-step of civilization, in which to further the human potential. We will become more creative, more conscious and more nurturing of life.

Gary Nabhan relates a Papago story about Coyote stealing some corn and deciding to grow his own. He ate most of the seed then threw the remainders along an arroyo. He slept all through the growing season and when it was harvest the corn turned out to be coyote tobacco, a wild plant. The problem according to the Papagos was that Coyote did not know the proper songs to sing to the corn, so it could not grow properly.

The story points up a neglected fact of the Pleistocene Native American culture and most other Pleistocene cultures -that they were cultures of song and dance. These groups had rich cultural content. There were songs for everything, for all of the natural acts. The people were given life and then gave that beauty back to the cosmos in song. They began with the real life-and extrapolated the song from there, out into the universe and into the immaterial. The song was grounded in the beauty of the earth and its forms of life.

We are forced to choose a life of beauty and a life that aids the whole.

We are embarking upon a transformative course, the inversion of the values of empire. When communities exist at the top of watersheds and the water running from them, downhill, is pure, then we know that a cosmically resonant human social pattern exists.

No studies are necessary, no protracted discussions are needed, human society is out of balance with the life of the earth and human society needs to regain balance. If our daily efforts are substantially directed toward regaining that balance then we are on the path to paradise.

NOTES

1 Arid-Land Permaculture: (Special reference to central Australian Aboriginal Outstations). Bill Mollison. self pub. Tagari, Stanley, Australia. 1978.

2 ibid. p. 18.

3 Permaculture: A Designers’ Manual. Bill Mollison. Reny Mia Slay, ed. Tagari Pub. Tyalgum, Australia. 1988.

4 ibid. p. 327.

5 Water For Every Farm/Using the Keyline Plan. P.A. Yeomans. Second Back Row Press Pty. Limited, 50 Govett Street, Katoomba, 2780 Australia. 1978. p. 29. 

6 PERMACULTURE II: Practical Design and Further Theory in Permanent Agriculture. Bill Mollison. Tagari Pub. P.O.Box 96, Stanley, Tasmania 7331, Australia. p. 29.

7 ibid. p. 32.

8 Mollison. Permaculture: A Designers’ Manual. op. cit. p. 393.

9 American Indian Food and Lore. Carolyn Niethammer. Collier Books. New York. 1974. op. cit. p. 47.

10 Forest Farming: Towards A Solution To Problems Of World Hunger And Conservation. J. Sholto Douglas & Robert A de J. Hart. Westview Press. Boulder Colorado. 1984. p. 39.

11 Niethammer. American Indian Food and Lore. op. cit. p. 55.

12 Permaculture One: A Perennial Agriculture for Human Settlements. Bill Mollison. Transworld Pub. Australia. Pty. Ltd. 1978. p. 122.

13 The International Permaculture Species Yearbook. Dan Hemenway, Editor. 7781 Lenox Ave., Jacksonville, FL 32221.

International Green Front Report. Micheal Pilarski, Editor. P.O.Box 1064, Tonasket, Wa. 98855. ($7.00 + postage).

14 Hart & Douglas, Forest Farming. op cit. pp 161

Mollison, Permaculture One. op cit. pp111.

15 Mollison, Designer’s Manual, op. cit. pp. ix,x.

16 Niethammer. American Indian Food and Lore. op. cit. p. 52.

17 ibid. p. 94.

18 Farmland Or Wasteland: A Time To Choose. R. Neil Sampson. Rodale Press. Emmaus, Pa. 1981. p. 212.

19 Gathering the Desert. Gary Paul Nabhan. U. of Arizona Press. Tucson. 1987. p. 138.

20 ibid p. 170.

Niethammer. American Indian Food and Lore. op. cit. p. 86.

21 Niethammer. American Indian Food and Lore. op. cit. p. 11.

22 ibid. pp. 88,89.

23 Mollison. Permaculture One. op. cit. pp. 10,11.

24 Earth Sheltered Housing Design: Guidelines, Examples, and References. prepared by: The Underground Space Center. U. of Minn. Von Nostrand Reinhold Co. pub. New York. 1979. pp. 51-94.

25 Information can be obtained from: Mattole Restoration Council, 3848 Wilder Ridge Road, Garberville, Ca. 95440.

End

From http://www.rainbowbody.net/Finalempire/