Okay, so I finally have a good handle to talk about the giant blindspot in Solstice Rituals that’s been bugging me. This story obsfucates a very significant leap of reasoning:
In the story, individuals start forming packs and tribes. Then the goddess of Cancer speaks, “pitting black ant on red ant, or chimps against gibbons, whole tribes turned to corpses in terrible warfare.” and after this point, the Goddess of everything else does not talk about symbiosis of different animal groups, or co-evolution, or ecologies of interrelated species forming a dynamic equilibrium. She just… completely ignores the looming problem of interspecies conflict to tell a story of how one species in particular unites to dominate everything.
I can imagine a permaculture perspective on the next step, that acknowledges humans could act as especially valuable coordinators for ecologies. Ones that can plan ahead, ones that care, ones that gently bend each part of a system towards benefiting from and sustaining the whole. I want that story.
Maybe it was necessary to unite our species first. We grew more powerful in our service to the goddess of Cancer, and now that we are no longer her creatures we can turn that power towards Everything Else.
I’m not convinced. The march of human progress is a distinctly narrow lens on history, and I find it suspicious how Everything Else happened to get crushed along the way. In any case, we’re going to have to learn at some point how to not depend on conquering and consuming to meet all our needs. It’s not sustainable. Resources have to come from somewhere, waste has to go somewhere. All that we’ve got is just one pale blue dot.
Okay, so I finally have a good handle to talk about the giant blindspot in Solstice Rituals that’s been bugging me. This story obsfucates a very significant leap of reasoning:
In the story, individuals start forming packs and tribes. Then the goddess of Cancer speaks, “pitting black ant on red ant, or chimps against gibbons, whole tribes turned to corpses in terrible warfare.” and after this point, the Goddess of everything else does not talk about symbiosis of different animal groups, or co-evolution, or ecologies of interrelated species forming a dynamic equilibrium. She just… completely ignores the looming problem of interspecies conflict to tell a story of how one species in particular unites to dominate everything.
I can imagine a permaculture perspective on the next step, that acknowledges humans could act as especially valuable coordinators for ecologies. Ones that can plan ahead, ones that care, ones that gently bend each part of a system towards benefiting from and sustaining the whole. I want that story.
Maybe it was necessary to unite our species first. We grew more powerful in our service to the goddess of Cancer, and now that we are no longer her creatures we can turn that power towards Everything Else.
I’m not convinced. The march of human progress is a distinctly narrow lens on history, and I find it suspicious how Everything Else happened to get crushed along the way. In any case, we’re going to have to learn at some point how to not depend on conquering and consuming to meet all our needs. It’s not sustainable. Resources have to come from somewhere, waste has to go somewhere. All that we’ve got is just one pale blue dot.