From reductionist thinking to relational wisdom: Unveiling the beauty of interdependence

I feel all four feelings: fear, anger, sadness and joy as I read further into Sand talk by Tyson Yunkaporta. He unpacks so eloquently, the not so subtle differences between indigenous culture and the ‘modern culture’ I have grown up in.

In one chapter he unpacks the history of western education - a system of control invented by the Prussians in the early 1800’s. Reading this brings fear, because my daughter is just coming out of the modern culture schooling, and an early step into the world is the Rhythm and Vines concert!

I feel my anger at the intention behind the introduction of universal schooling. This process was so successful in avoiding the customary initiations from childhood to responsible adulthood and creating a society more easily controlled, it was soon emulated by the United States (under Woodrow Wilson), then the Europeans and their colonies.

I feel sadness at the separation from nature and natural systems birthed by the low context culture of reductionism, where things are broken down to component parts and studied in isolation. I feel my sadness at the destruction of nature as the industrial food machine applies herbicides, ploughs fields, sows genetically modified seeds then sprays with insecticides and fungicides, before repeating this battle with nature year after year, apparently oblivious to the loss of soil that will one day turn the lifeless land to desert.

I feel joy when I see the emergence of transitional cultures which acknowledge the endless relationships and connections that have brought us to this place. Cultures of radically responsible men and women caring for the life around them by nurturing each other and regenerating their local ecosystems. Cultures where my daughter, her peers and all humans, might discover a more deeply connected state of being, in relationship with all life (humans, animals, plants, birds, bugs and microbes).

In an article I read yesterday An introduction to Syntropic Agriculture Dario Cortese nails it with this statement:

If we put aside cultural factors, what is the biological and ecological role of humans within the ecosystems they are part of? Is it possible to attune what we call agriculture to the processes that humans would engage with in the wild, as part of a complex and dynamic ecological mechanism?

As I see it, the uniqueness of Syntropic agriculture lies in this ecological perspective, as opposed to the utilitarian and culturally anthropocentric one which is typical of modern agriculture…

That such an approach should strike us as revolutionary gives us a measure of our deep separation not only from our ecosystemic role, but also from the integrated relationship that indigenous cultures have with the land.

What would it mean to become indigenous?
Not as it might have been in the past, but how it could be today.