Sustainability 101: Indigenuity Is Not Optional (Dowd)

CORRECTION: I misspoke from 16:25-16:36: I meant to say, "And notice the radical difference between *believing* in Gaia and *honoring* Gaia; between *worshipping* Poseidon and *respecting* Poseidon. There's a huge difference!"

0:00:00 Introduction
0:02:10 Naming Reality Is Life or Death Issue
0:21:32 Sustainable = Faithful: Eco-Evo Purpose of Myth/Science
0:46:57 Unnatural vs. Undeniable: How Ecocentrism Transforms

OTHER EXCELLENT RESOURCES ON "INDIGENUITY" (in addition to those featured in the video)...

Gregory Cajete - Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence

Gregory Cajete - Indigenous Community: Rekindling the Teachings of the Seventh Fire

M. Kat Anderson - Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California's Natural Resources

Melissa K. Nelson, ed. - Original Instructions: Indigenous Teachings for a Sustainable Future

Ellen LaConte - Life Rules: Nature's Blueprint for Surviving Economic and Environmental Collapse

Daniel Christian Wahl - Designing Regenerative Cultures

[Corrie-fdww]

This Sunday morning, I decided to revisit one of my most favorite Rev Dowd “sermons”…we do miss him so much! Thanking G🌎D for this wisdom

[davidemery]

I want to thank you for this series (I’ve watched all three) and for your seemingly tireless work! You are providing a great service to a world much in need of it.

For years I was an angry (and self-righteous) activist preaching the evils of industrial civilization and the need for (domesticated) human beings to regain their hold on the truth of our mortality, our need of the living world, and our respect for our magic home, Earth. In 2006 I moved to Cambodia to do community development/climate change adaptation work. We worked with local communities in building rooftop rainwater harvesting systems, home-scale biological-sand-water-filters, digging small-scale irrigation ponds, providing training on organic food production, and started a community bank serving several villages. I am still engaged in this work and still living in Cambodia with my Khmer wife and our 4-year-old son. However, it was in Cambodia where I came to the realization that societal-scale change towards sustainable living was not going to happen.

Without exception, every person in Cambodia and throughout South/Southeast/East Asia (where roughly 60% of the world’s population lives) that I have spoken with wants to be financially wealthy and be able to buy: big homes, cars, and all the luxuries and comforts that affluent modern life has to offer. Individuals/families are willing to work hard to achieve their dreams of material abundance and security for their loved ones. Looking at it objectively, money buys the goods and services we need in the world we domesticated humans have made, so people wanting a lot of money is reasonable.

Without fail, societies want to be wealthy.

After decades of learning about and working on social/ecological issues and their possible solutions, I have broken my view of the human predicament down to this:
• Science tells us that wealthy individuals and societies are by far the primary destroyers of the living world
• Nearly every individual and every society wants to either retain their wealth (and add to it) or become wealthy
• As long as this is a dominant worldview, we domesticated humans are not going to address humanity’s current and ongoing rate of societal and ecological decline.

This acceptance of our predicament leads me (and continues to lead me, though less often these days) to some dark places of loneliness and despair.

Part of my healing has come from a 1-hectare permaculture farm in northwestern Cambodia that my wife and I have been building, starting just months after our son was born. I am humble enough to accept that my own affluence and entitlement has given me the resources I need to learn about building a permaculture farm and putting the resources into action to make this farm a reality. I am thankful for what we have, thankful to hold my wife and child in my arms every day of my life.

Thank you again for doing the good and needed work that you have put your soul into!
I hope you and your days treat one another well,
David

[tylerehrlich]

What a wonderful lecture/sermon series! I've been internally grappling with the questions and concepts in this video and this series for several years, and its incredible to hear them put to words. I feel like I want to share this with my loved ones, because up till now, I have not had the clear line of thought and rational dissection of language to convey my felt conviction that this Existence itself is what is sacred. Eco-theism is just the way to put it! We all benefit from your work.

[notw]

So inspiring as always.
I am by no western means 'wealthy' but i don't view wealth by such terms anyway and feel rich in spirit with a bleeding heart for our LIVING Earth.
I see the interlinkedness in all things in the universe and cannot quite comphrehend such homocentric world views.
Makes no logical sense.
Anyway, considering what i can see manifesting im the cosmos, magnetosphere and it's impact on life on Earth i have been inspired to an ever growing more conscious lifestlye, gathering increased knowledge and wisdom, growing foods, doing what i can for my family health wise as naturally as possible and in hopes of sharing and inspiring others to feel and act on the same/similiar vision in ACTION.
Thank you for your amazing work and series.
Bless you

[xDemonTech]

Great stuff Michael, thanks. This series really woke me up. Currently reading Overshoot, listening to politicians will never be the same 😄

[liveyourbestlifeguide]

Quite possibly the most important and helpful discussion of human's relationship to each other and our shared planet that I've ever heard.

[bennjamieson]

Thankyou for all your hard work bringing this together. It is needed.

[gilleclerc]

I hope everyone who has had the grace to arrive at this door have also found the Urantia Book. It is the 5th revelation and explains much of what is in the Bible. We have a lot to learn and are now ready for reality in the cosmos above planetary.

[Tayyla]

oh my...you have the 7th generation here. For decades I have been drawn to indigenous peace pipe gatherings where tribes met and when the questions were very difficult and had wide implications the wise ones would say "what would this mean in a time span of 7 generations?". We are so hectic now that I have thought that to get people even to think of their great grandchildren is too long a time.

[Tayyla]

one more. I am blown away. You brought the Wilson's out. My faves!

[lyhs]

This is very enlightening. However, to label what we have now as civilisation does not help. People will ask, "are you asking us to abandon being civilised and go back to being savage?". Instead, I would suggest labelling us as savage now and tell people that the principles of life in harmony with nature in the past is more civilised.

[gilleclerc]

Michael, I love your presentation. You are great! Can you tell me if you have had a chance to read the Urantia Book. I would love to hear your view on the Book.

[Tayyla]

Oh my....Iain McGilchrist. I have listened to so many of his talks in podcasts. I have that Emissary book on my laptop and have borrowed his 2 part The matter with things from the library. My wonderful philosopher friend is also "into him". Alas, he writes so at length and in depth that maybe I will not be able to make it through his book. So many things that have been gravitating in my mind, seems are part of your understandings too. Must be something in these times.

My master's thesis of last spring was based on trying to suggest a more empirically informed way of looking at the objectivity of morality in metaethics. My journey in that subject started with reading evolutionary psychology in 2020. So I have been delving into similar issues as you from a different point of view. But still coming to sort of a similar place. Trying to bring evolution into philosophical debate involves debunking arguments on behalf of for instance objective and subjective viewpoints. One major part of my thesis was to advocate a both and view instead of the dichotomizing argumenation that is used a lot, either-or. After writing it I found Iain McGilchrist and noticed a lot of similarities there too.

All that I think and write comes down to understanding what kind of "animal" are we. Know thyself, said Socrates. To understand our way of being in able to help us act towards a better future. Alas, not going very well at the moment...

[AudioPervert]

This is good content. In terms of thought and diffusion. Thank you for putting all these videos out. Kudos!

[Tayyla]

one more comment that comes to mind as I listen. "Personifying is the heart's way of knowing." That is a way out of all the polarizing that is happening in the world. The us-them mayhem. We have a bias towards categorizing people of "other groups" by slices of their identity. All of us are so many at the same time. Parts of a multitude of sort of identity groups. But to see someone as an individual helps to start a process of "maybe he/she is more like us after all"..

[Tayyla]

In my studies I came to think that scientific language is a factfull point of view whereas the language of experiential, sensing and living is more poetic, metaphorical, analogical and "artsy".

[Backwoods-Bob]

Visiting from r/collapse. Pray for strength to overcome.

[mcdonoughdm]

How many pieces of vaguely defined jargon equals one year of collapse avoidance?

[Tayyla]

Indigenous peoples often had a sort of animism view to nature. A reciprocity of giving and receiving. A relational view.

[Tayyla]

oh dear, couldn't help myself...love your unnatural gospel reading at the end. so on point. If only those fundamentalist minded people would open their eyes, hearts and ears and accept that natural beauty is flow and flux, not written on stone plates in stilled "truth-words"