Dispelling some common myths including the "humans are inherently greedy destructive sinners" myth, the and the "clearcutting all the forests is sad, but we had to because 'progress'.." myth and more
I would love, however, to look at the heart of the real problem, and that is the “hubristic anthropocentric cultures” you mention.
I will speak of one and that is the great [droop] Western Civ. There is no better model for hubristic anthropocentric cultures, and there is a very good reason for that.
Western Civ was molded and bred to be selfish, to hunt without gratitude, take without replenishing. There is an inherently destructive core built into the genes of Western Civ., and you cannot debate it away. All of the often forgotten, indigenous cultures you mentioned are glorious models for what we could be as a species, yet what happened to most (all?) of these cultures upon contact with our glorious way of life?
For a better description of what I’m getting at, let’s go back to Gilgamesh.
I believe his journey did not lead to Lebanon (although the conclusions were insightful!) because he certainly travelled over (seven? I believe?) mountain ranges to get there. This route reflects the travels every great Sumerian city-state took on their journey towards empire-hood, and they always terminated in the Anatolian/Armenian highlands, as that was where the resources were. The resources were needed to fund and fuel campaigns. Gilgamesh himself is chided by the alewife Siduri, and that can only mean he’s in the northern mountains (with good reason): “Siduri” is a word/name still used in the Caucasian languages to describe a young woman.
Makes sense to be there, though-the region is volcanic, meaning everything from gemstones to obsidian to our first $$$crop-wheat- flourished here.
Back then the region also sported extensive forests, as proven by core samples taken from Lake Van.
They’re all gone now.
That’s what runaway train metallurgy will give you, as the ovens that made the spears that won or lost campaigns needed to be stoked.
If we can prove we can live in peace, then I’ll accept that we can steward 😬forests responsibly.
Since we’re volcanic at heart, though, I don’t see that happening soon. I’m simply arguing that we need to accept the destructive gene we carry with us, as long as we refuse to let go of our “superior” way of life.
That being said, however, without this egregious character flaw to contend with, you’ve offered great ideas and suggestions that point us in a far more constructive direction, and I thank you for it.
Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts Jack.
Interesting info and ideas about Gilgamesh. I am aware that some cultures coveted metal weapons more than they respected our elder rooted kin, however, I feel it is also worth highlighting that as I touch on in the post above (and elaborate on in this post : https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/retracing-the-footsteps-of-my-indigenous ) not all cultures from the time frame you mention (where some were focusing on metallurgical creations) chopped down the ancient forests for short term gain.
For instance, before the Romans came to Albion and Eire (for more info on that time period: https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/decolonizing-st-patricks-day ) the Brehon Laws (and their more ancient Ogham Script based Druidic precursors) had covenants to protect the beings they considered to be "nobles of the wood" (old growth trees) against exploitation. They practiced advanced metallurgy but they also practiced advanced regenerative agroforestry and accessed fuel for forging via coppicing trees like Hazel (which also provided food and medicine). Hazel trees and shrubs can live as long as a person when left to their own devices, but when they are coppiced every few decades (cut down low to the ground to use the wood as fuel allowing the trees to regenerate from the roots) they live up to 300 years. For more info on Hazel, read: https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/hazelnut-she-is-the-evoker-of-wisdom
RE : "indigenous cultures you mentioned are glorious models for what we could be as a species, yet what happened to most (all?) of these cultures upon contact with our glorious way of life?"
I address that question in depth the following posts:
When you say "if we can prove we can live in peace, then I’ll accept that we can steward forests responsibly." Who exactly is this "we" ? Every single person on Earth? If not
how many people does it take living in peace to reach the place where you will accept we can steward forests? (and for how long?) and by what standards do you define "live in peace"?
I am not aware of any cultures that were totally devoid of violence but there were some that instilled ethical imperatives in their community members that centered around animism and some of those cultures did manage to steward, enrich and expand forests for centuries to millennia (as is evidenced in the post above).
For more on how ethics based in Animistic worldviews allowed for some cultures to live within, enrich and expand forest habitat for centuries to millennia using low tech tools, read:
Applied Animism : Rooting Culture, Earth and Spirit :
You say that "I’m simply arguing that we need to accept the destructive gene we carry with us" yet I think that much of that thinking is rooted in misanthropic propaganda promulgated by oligarchs and other psychopaths in organized religious institutions (such as governments).
The genes within us do not make our choices for us nor define who we are. Human beings are more than just the sum of their biological parts, we are also imbued with an eternal essence that is capable of taking the drivers seat. For more on that, read: https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/dispelling-the-most-detrimental-myth
As I state in this article ( https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/the-noble-white-christian-nationalist ) while savage behavior is a potential in all of us it is how we are raised and with what worldviews and cultural lenses we are given to look at the world and our fellow beings influences if those potential savage expressions of human nature are expressed or not.
I would like to propose what may sound like a radical proposition to some nature lovers and environmentalist activists out there that may have been conditioned to subconsciously embrace a quasi-misanthropic view of humanity and our place on this world.
I do not advocate lessening our impact on the natural world. I think we should increase our impact on the more than human world ten fold.
As Lyla June says in this video clip ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HumlU31zKAE&t=2744s ) we can use these human hands to proliferate amazing abundance, becoming an asset to the Earth and making her feel grateful for our presence.
I think we should use these amazing human hands and powerful brains that God gave us to have a huge impact, like the people of the Amazon did when they created the Terra Preta soils that allowed them to co-create the giant food forests of the Amazon jungle that have persisted for 4500 years.
Instead of internalizing the false idea that portrays humans like a plague or a cancer on the Earth (with an intrinsic "violent" or "Vulcanic" gene) I advocate we instead use our free will (and the sentience that so many humans covetously claim is unique to our species) to instead choose to define ourselves as co-creators of beauty, abundance and diversity.
Our ancient ancestors have shown us by example that it is possible to become a positive force for impacting nature in a way that honors and nurtures life, rather than defining our selves as takers, users and consumers.
Destruction and degeneration are not inevitable. Humans are not inherently parasitic and extractive as the anti-human globalist propaganda implies.
Humans have the capability of either being takers/consumers (extracting from the Earth but giving nothing back) or givers (living within a web of reciprocal gift exchanges).
Both choices can be observed in individuals in our lives and cultures throughout history.
Gavin and others, if you are interested in the background of how the demise of the Indigenous people arose through false prophecies and promulgation of the genocidal missions, Cynthia Chung's newest book exposes the Ghost Dance Religion and many other infiltrations of religions around the world that have shaped our surreal world today.
"The Shaping of World Religion Vol. 1" by Cynthia Chung
It does indeed. I appreciate your interest and totally understand.
I look forward to hearing what you think after you have had time to investigate all the forests, regions and concepts described and linked in the post above.
Thank you for engaging and thank you for caring about the living Earth that supports us all.
All you need to comprehend is that God gave us promises. We need only to facilitate those promises! The Gloom & Doom procrastination of the globalist parasites who have funded both sides of every conflict since the Napoleon conflict have none of Gods promises in them. They have a satanic “ Do What Thow Will” mentality that is a depopulation, eugenics, and uninformed euthanasia enthusiasts prospectively. They have NONE OF GODS PROMISES IN THEM!
It truly is this simple. Those satanic types, and tyrants have scapegoated America & The State Of Israel. The state of Israel is NOT THE ISRAEL OF SCRIPTURE.
Nor are the good Jewish people the Israel of satanist willingly to scapegoat the good God fearing Jewish people for their crimes against humanity!!!!
Keep them separated!!!!!
Who are Gods chosen. Hint: it’s not a race of people!
God chooses those who follow his teachings, and commandments!
What are they?
Look deep now!
No one is chosen ! We choose to believe, and follow in faith.
God created All the Ethnics, he looked, and it was good!
My point is our true potential is being suppressed by the people in power. Has been for decades. Those people have none of Gods promises in them. They suppress technology that could very well help us be a keystone species. As a example of this suppression.
I have had my clean water & energy solutions post removed from my personal saves at Facebook multiple times.
They finally merely banned me from the platform. They also banned me from X, and even truth social despite the fact that I have never even had a Truth Social account.
This 👇 and my school shooters solution invention are likely part of the reason why I am banned.
Based on what you have said in the two comments above, it seems that you did not read my post above and you are spam copy-paste posting irrelevant material you want to promote here (and then trying to justify it after the fact without even trying that hard).
If you would have read my post you would realize that since I was describing food forests that were created all over the world beginning 3 thousand years ago (and earlier) these were obviously methods of design that did not require modern technology, electricity nor any mechanization to be effective.
The technology they used was much more socially advanced than modern tech as they could create something using onsite materials, their own two hands and basic tools (via seed saving, fire, coppicing and selective companion planting) that created entire self-perpetuating ecosystems that persisted for centuries to millennia providing food and medicine.
Some talk about indigenous cultures as “primitive” / “low tech” and modern civilization as “advanced” and “high tech”.
Most would think of Feller Bunchers, nuclear reactors, solar panels, wind turbines, GMO seeds and genetic mRNA injections, smart missiles and 5G satellites as “high tech”… I do not. Those are adolescent abuses of human gifts, low level morality and low level social maturity technologies.
If “high” tech is intended to articulate advanced tech that is ethically aligned, socially enriching and exemplifies a mature and thoughtful application of human gifts, than I propose that the social technologies (which involves physical technologies like fire and seed storage inoculation/propagation) which facilitate a culture being able to create a food forest that survives and produces for 7000 thousand years to be much more “high tech”.
Tech (both social and physical) that enables a community to feed their human members while also enriching the non-human community of beings, enhancing water quality and access, attracting more animal based food sources and enriching the beauty of a place is much more advanced than laser beam guided missiles, skyscraper canyons, machine guns or elon musk satellites… there is no chance those things will last 7000 years. And if they did, this Earth would be turned into a giant open pit mine and toxic waste dump by then… thus, modern civilization’s technologies are actually very “low” tech (low morally, low in foresight, low in ecological literacy, low in holistic vision and low in compassion).
Whether or not those adolescent forms of technology can end a great deal of life in a short amount of time does not impress me at all. I do however find a 7000 year old food forest (or even a 200 year old one for that matter) very impressive.
The difference between the two cultural expressions of technology is simple, one culture sees the Earth as an inanimate object, nothing more than a collection of “resources” and operates from that adolescent spiritually impoverished state, the other set of cultural values is based in animism, the trees, rivers, mountains, stones and elements like fire are beings with a spirit, allies, teachers and fellow community members to be honored for their gifts with gratitude and respect.
Your propositions that focus purely on materialistic and high tech means of using our God given gifts represent a failure of imagination and a lack of awareness of our true potential to use our own two hands as tools to become a force for good and living in service of life.
Wow. That’s a lot of denial. I’m not talking about playing God, I’m talking about working with nature. You either didn’t read, or understand my proposal, or you have a block. How would turning all plastic environmentally friendly, and biodegradable be bad?
How could forcing companies to switch to an oil that doesn’t need refinement, and can burn in diesel generators with carbon sequestration that can be converted to oxygen, and a plant based protein be bad?
How would turning the desert green be bad?
How could no till farming, and herding cattle into native grasslands be bad?
I never said what you proposed was "bad", I said it is not relevant to the subject matter of my post.
This is not a one line facebook or twitter post. My post above cannot be responded to in a way that honestly addresses what I shared by just reading the title. It is an essay that I took a lot of time researching and writing (and I do not use LLMs like most people).
What I stated has nothing to do with "denial" and I actually did read your post. I understand the concepts you presented.
It is you that are not understanding the purpose of my post above.
I`ll address some of the many issues that I can see with the specifics of your proposed ideas below.
RE : "How could forcing companies to switch to an oil that doesn’t need refinement, and can burn in diesel generators with carbon sequestration that can be converted to oxygen, and a plant based protein be bad?"
"Forcing" a company to do anything implies weaponization of the state and violent coercion to impose your will onto others. I do not recognize the authority of the state, I refuse to support or endorse its enforcement mechanisms and see its very existence as degenerative and immoral.
For more information on why statism is inherently immoral, ecologically degenerative and spiritually impoverishing, read the following essays:
Why Involuntary Governance Structures are Not Compatible with The Permaculture Ethical Compass
It depends on what specific deserts you are talking about. Some are manmade, and some are natural deserts. Within natural deserts there are a great diversity of beings living there (put there by God) that need the arid climate and desert ecology to remain as it is for them to survive. Changing that climate via human activities would eradicate those beings native to the desert and be the equivalent of spitting in the face of God.
Manmade deserts on the other hand, could potentially be "greened" (rehydrated and biodiversity re-introduced and living top soil built back) and that would be beneficial to all life. The Loess Plateau Watershed Rehabilitation Project is one example of a success in that regard.
There are however several potential problems with your suggested means of greening these undefined desert regions in that while Cannabis (including THC lacking "Hemp" cannabis) is certainly a wonderful multi-use plant, it is also a heavy nitrogen feeder and requires large amounts of land to grow. The quantity of land required to produce the byproducts for industrial hemp uses you propose would, at the very least perpetuate the industrial agricultural industry and would likely also result in more mining and deforestation for factories, processing plants and planting more hemp.
Also, hydroelectric dams are massively destructive to ecosystems. There is a lot of greenwashing about them but the reality is these are technologies that suffocate forests, kill salmon runs, displace indigenous people and kill countless animals. And that is not to mention all the iron (steel) required for building all that.
Where is that going to come from? Mining.
If all the minerals required for the modern technologies you propose applying on a massive scale globally had to be extracted from mines directly adjacent to where you live, would you still want the tech?
For information on the ecological and human costs of mining read this:
RE: "How could no till farming, and herding cattle into native grasslands be bad?"
In many cases, there are other large herbivore beings that are more well suited to be grazing animals in native grassland. Here on Turtle Island (aka North America) for instance, Buffalo are much more ecologically compatible than cattle.
And with regards to your mentioning "free energy" and "gravitational transportation", I am familiar with these technologies but there are serious issues in thinking they will solve all our problems.
The tech has been extant and operational for decades, yet it has not liberated anyone or made the world a better place because the inventors are bribed, bought, blackmailed or murdered and their tech is sequestered into military black ops (where oligarchs and compartmented operations in statist regimes use that tech to terrorize the general population, engage in drug running, human trafficking and continuing their war racketeering).
Like I said to the guy in the note linked below, hoping “free energy” tech is going to save us and solve all our problems for us is Hopium.
That tech could do a lot of good for humanity, yet at this stage in our species development socially the same tech is just as likely to be weaponized (and it is).
Every single person can access “free energy” in their own backyard and in a community food forest with a handful of heirloom seeds, soil, water and sunshine , and that is a “free energy” that has a long history of providing real results in improving quality of life (unlike high tech “free energy”).
Thus, while I think your enthusiasm to focus on solutions based approaches (instead of doom and gloom as many on Substack do) is great, the solutions you espouse have some serious issues that need to be addressed, and more importantly, they are not relevant to the substantive content in my essay above (which pertains to applying ancient low tech regenerative agroforestry / syntropic food forest design techniques empowering communities to attain food and medicinal sovereignty, while enriching biodiversity and not requiring high tech machines that necessitate mining).
Amazing post as usual, very inspiring.
I would love, however, to look at the heart of the real problem, and that is the “hubristic anthropocentric cultures” you mention.
I will speak of one and that is the great [droop] Western Civ. There is no better model for hubristic anthropocentric cultures, and there is a very good reason for that.
Western Civ was molded and bred to be selfish, to hunt without gratitude, take without replenishing. There is an inherently destructive core built into the genes of Western Civ., and you cannot debate it away. All of the often forgotten, indigenous cultures you mentioned are glorious models for what we could be as a species, yet what happened to most (all?) of these cultures upon contact with our glorious way of life?
For a better description of what I’m getting at, let’s go back to Gilgamesh.
I believe his journey did not lead to Lebanon (although the conclusions were insightful!) because he certainly travelled over (seven? I believe?) mountain ranges to get there. This route reflects the travels every great Sumerian city-state took on their journey towards empire-hood, and they always terminated in the Anatolian/Armenian highlands, as that was where the resources were. The resources were needed to fund and fuel campaigns. Gilgamesh himself is chided by the alewife Siduri, and that can only mean he’s in the northern mountains (with good reason): “Siduri” is a word/name still used in the Caucasian languages to describe a young woman.
Makes sense to be there, though-the region is volcanic, meaning everything from gemstones to obsidian to our first $$$crop-wheat- flourished here.
Back then the region also sported extensive forests, as proven by core samples taken from Lake Van.
They’re all gone now.
That’s what runaway train metallurgy will give you, as the ovens that made the spears that won or lost campaigns needed to be stoked.
If we can prove we can live in peace, then I’ll accept that we can steward 😬forests responsibly.
Since we’re volcanic at heart, though, I don’t see that happening soon. I’m simply arguing that we need to accept the destructive gene we carry with us, as long as we refuse to let go of our “superior” way of life.
That being said, however, without this egregious character flaw to contend with, you’ve offered great ideas and suggestions that point us in a far more constructive direction, and I thank you for it.
Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts Jack.
Interesting info and ideas about Gilgamesh. I am aware that some cultures coveted metal weapons more than they respected our elder rooted kin, however, I feel it is also worth highlighting that as I touch on in the post above (and elaborate on in this post : https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/retracing-the-footsteps-of-my-indigenous ) not all cultures from the time frame you mention (where some were focusing on metallurgical creations) chopped down the ancient forests for short term gain.
For instance, before the Romans came to Albion and Eire (for more info on that time period: https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/decolonizing-st-patricks-day ) the Brehon Laws (and their more ancient Ogham Script based Druidic precursors) had covenants to protect the beings they considered to be "nobles of the wood" (old growth trees) against exploitation. They practiced advanced metallurgy but they also practiced advanced regenerative agroforestry and accessed fuel for forging via coppicing trees like Hazel (which also provided food and medicine). Hazel trees and shrubs can live as long as a person when left to their own devices, but when they are coppiced every few decades (cut down low to the ground to use the wood as fuel allowing the trees to regenerate from the roots) they live up to 300 years. For more info on Hazel, read: https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/hazelnut-she-is-the-evoker-of-wisdom
RE : "indigenous cultures you mentioned are glorious models for what we could be as a species, yet what happened to most (all?) of these cultures upon contact with our glorious way of life?"
I address that question in depth the following posts:
1. https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/the-rise-of-anthropocentrism-bright
3. https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/tree-species-distribution-soil-depth
4. https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/why-i-will-never-celebrate-canada
When you say "if we can prove we can live in peace, then I’ll accept that we can steward forests responsibly." Who exactly is this "we" ? Every single person on Earth? If not
how many people does it take living in peace to reach the place where you will accept we can steward forests? (and for how long?) and by what standards do you define "live in peace"?
I am not aware of any cultures that were totally devoid of violence but there were some that instilled ethical imperatives in their community members that centered around animism and some of those cultures did manage to steward, enrich and expand forests for centuries to millennia (as is evidenced in the post above).
For more on how ethics based in Animistic worldviews allowed for some cultures to live within, enrich and expand forest habitat for centuries to millennia using low tech tools, read:
Applied Animism : Rooting Culture, Earth and Spirit :
https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/applied-animism-rooting-culture-earth
You say that "I’m simply arguing that we need to accept the destructive gene we carry with us" yet I think that much of that thinking is rooted in misanthropic propaganda promulgated by oligarchs and other psychopaths in organized religious institutions (such as governments).
The genes within us do not make our choices for us nor define who we are. Human beings are more than just the sum of their biological parts, we are also imbued with an eternal essence that is capable of taking the drivers seat. For more on that, read: https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/dispelling-the-most-detrimental-myth
As I state in this article ( https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/the-noble-white-christian-nationalist ) while savage behavior is a potential in all of us it is how we are raised and with what worldviews and cultural lenses we are given to look at the world and our fellow beings influences if those potential savage expressions of human nature are expressed or not.
I would argue that modern statist culture breeds savage behavior very reliably (and intentionally) on an institutional scale (for more on that, read: https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/the-spiritual-poverty-of-statism )
I would like to propose what may sound like a radical proposition to some nature lovers and environmentalist activists out there that may have been conditioned to subconsciously embrace a quasi-misanthropic view of humanity and our place on this world.
I do not advocate lessening our impact on the natural world. I think we should increase our impact on the more than human world ten fold.
As Lyla June says in this video clip ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HumlU31zKAE&t=2744s ) we can use these human hands to proliferate amazing abundance, becoming an asset to the Earth and making her feel grateful for our presence.
I think we should use these amazing human hands and powerful brains that God gave us to have a huge impact, like the people of the Amazon did when they created the Terra Preta soils that allowed them to co-create the giant food forests of the Amazon jungle that have persisted for 4500 years.
Instead of internalizing the false idea that portrays humans like a plague or a cancer on the Earth (with an intrinsic "violent" or "Vulcanic" gene) I advocate we instead use our free will (and the sentience that so many humans covetously claim is unique to our species) to instead choose to define ourselves as co-creators of beauty, abundance and diversity.
Our ancient ancestors have shown us by example that it is possible to become a positive force for impacting nature in a way that honors and nurtures life, rather than defining our selves as takers, users and consumers.
Destruction and degeneration are not inevitable. Humans are not inherently parasitic and extractive as the anti-human globalist propaganda implies.
Humans have the capability of either being takers/consumers (extracting from the Earth but giving nothing back) or givers (living within a web of reciprocal gift exchanges).
Both choices can be observed in individuals in our lives and cultures throughout history.
Gavin and others, if you are interested in the background of how the demise of the Indigenous people arose through false prophecies and promulgation of the genocidal missions, Cynthia Chung's newest book exposes the Ghost Dance Religion and many other infiltrations of religions around the world that have shaped our surreal world today.
"The Shaping of World Religion Vol. 1" by Cynthia Chung
https://canadianpatriot.org/new-book-the-shaping-of-a-world-religion-vol-1-by-cynthia-chung/
Definitely a question I ask all the time.
This post contains so much information that it will take me a while to read and assimilate it all. Thank you for directing me to it.
It does indeed. I appreciate your interest and totally understand.
I look forward to hearing what you think after you have had time to investigate all the forests, regions and concepts described and linked in the post above.
Thank you for engaging and thank you for caring about the living Earth that supports us all.
All you need to comprehend is that God gave us promises. We need only to facilitate those promises! The Gloom & Doom procrastination of the globalist parasites who have funded both sides of every conflict since the Napoleon conflict have none of Gods promises in them. They have a satanic “ Do What Thow Will” mentality that is a depopulation, eugenics, and uninformed euthanasia enthusiasts prospectively. They have NONE OF GODS PROMISES IN THEM!
It truly is this simple. Those satanic types, and tyrants have scapegoated America & The State Of Israel. The state of Israel is NOT THE ISRAEL OF SCRIPTURE.
Nor are the good Jewish people the Israel of satanist willingly to scapegoat the good God fearing Jewish people for their crimes against humanity!!!!
Keep them separated!!!!!
Who are Gods chosen. Hint: it’s not a race of people!
God chooses those who follow his teachings, and commandments!
What are they?
Look deep now!
No one is chosen ! We choose to believe, and follow in faith.
God created All the Ethnics, he looked, and it was good!
Meaning what?
Treatment of all our fellow men as brothers?
What does this mean?
Are some brothers chosen by race?
🤔
Or do we all have free will?
Can you please clarify what the content of your comment has to do with the content of my post above?
I am having trouble understanding the relevance.
Thanks.
My point is our true potential is being suppressed by the people in power. Has been for decades. Those people have none of Gods promises in them. They suppress technology that could very well help us be a keystone species. As a example of this suppression.
I have had my clean water & energy solutions post removed from my personal saves at Facebook multiple times.
They finally merely banned me from the platform. They also banned me from X, and even truth social despite the fact that I have never even had a Truth Social account.
This 👇 and my school shooters solution invention are likely part of the reason why I am banned.
https://kendon.substack.com/p/clean-water-and-energy-solutions?r=1h4inv&utm_medium=ios
Based on what you have said in the two comments above, it seems that you did not read my post above and you are spam copy-paste posting irrelevant material you want to promote here (and then trying to justify it after the fact without even trying that hard).
If you would have read my post you would realize that since I was describing food forests that were created all over the world beginning 3 thousand years ago (and earlier) these were obviously methods of design that did not require modern technology, electricity nor any mechanization to be effective.
The technology they used was much more socially advanced than modern tech as they could create something using onsite materials, their own two hands and basic tools (via seed saving, fire, coppicing and selective companion planting) that created entire self-perpetuating ecosystems that persisted for centuries to millennia providing food and medicine.
Some talk about indigenous cultures as “primitive” / “low tech” and modern civilization as “advanced” and “high tech”.
Most would think of Feller Bunchers, nuclear reactors, solar panels, wind turbines, GMO seeds and genetic mRNA injections, smart missiles and 5G satellites as “high tech”… I do not. Those are adolescent abuses of human gifts, low level morality and low level social maturity technologies.
If “high” tech is intended to articulate advanced tech that is ethically aligned, socially enriching and exemplifies a mature and thoughtful application of human gifts, than I propose that the social technologies (which involves physical technologies like fire and seed storage inoculation/propagation) which facilitate a culture being able to create a food forest that survives and produces for 7000 thousand years to be much more “high tech”.
Tech (both social and physical) that enables a community to feed their human members while also enriching the non-human community of beings, enhancing water quality and access, attracting more animal based food sources and enriching the beauty of a place is much more advanced than laser beam guided missiles, skyscraper canyons, machine guns or elon musk satellites… there is no chance those things will last 7000 years. And if they did, this Earth would be turned into a giant open pit mine and toxic waste dump by then… thus, modern civilization’s technologies are actually very “low” tech (low morally, low in foresight, low in ecological literacy, low in holistic vision and low in compassion).
Whether or not those adolescent forms of technology can end a great deal of life in a short amount of time does not impress me at all. I do however find a 7000 year old food forest (or even a 200 year old one for that matter) very impressive.
The difference between the two cultural expressions of technology is simple, one culture sees the Earth as an inanimate object, nothing more than a collection of “resources” and operates from that adolescent spiritually impoverished state, the other set of cultural values is based in animism, the trees, rivers, mountains, stones and elements like fire are beings with a spirit, allies, teachers and fellow community members to be honored for their gifts with gratitude and respect.
Your propositions that focus purely on materialistic and high tech means of using our God given gifts represent a failure of imagination and a lack of awareness of our true potential to use our own two hands as tools to become a force for good and living in service of life.
Wow. That’s a lot of denial. I’m not talking about playing God, I’m talking about working with nature. You either didn’t read, or understand my proposal, or you have a block. How would turning all plastic environmentally friendly, and biodegradable be bad?
How could forcing companies to switch to an oil that doesn’t need refinement, and can burn in diesel generators with carbon sequestration that can be converted to oxygen, and a plant based protein be bad?
How would turning the desert green be bad?
How could no till farming, and herding cattle into native grasslands be bad?
You are a contradiction to your own argument.
Hello again Kendon,
I never said what you proposed was "bad", I said it is not relevant to the subject matter of my post.
This is not a one line facebook or twitter post. My post above cannot be responded to in a way that honestly addresses what I shared by just reading the title. It is an essay that I took a lot of time researching and writing (and I do not use LLMs like most people).
What I stated has nothing to do with "denial" and I actually did read your post. I understand the concepts you presented.
It is you that are not understanding the purpose of my post above.
I`ll address some of the many issues that I can see with the specifics of your proposed ideas below.
RE : "How could forcing companies to switch to an oil that doesn’t need refinement, and can burn in diesel generators with carbon sequestration that can be converted to oxygen, and a plant based protein be bad?"
"Forcing" a company to do anything implies weaponization of the state and violent coercion to impose your will onto others. I do not recognize the authority of the state, I refuse to support or endorse its enforcement mechanisms and see its very existence as degenerative and immoral.
For more information on why statism is inherently immoral, ecologically degenerative and spiritually impoverishing, read the following essays:
Why Involuntary Governance Structures are Not Compatible with The Permaculture Ethical Compass
https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/why-involuntary-governance-structures
The Spiritual Destitution of Statism, Perpetual manufactured cultural adolescence and their ecological impacts
https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/the-spiritual-poverty-of-statism
Are All Involuntary Governance Structures Inherently Ecologically Degenerative?
https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/poll-of-the-month-are-all-involuntary
The Central Banking Cartel Is Bleeding Us Dry And They Are Using The Statist Religion As The Hypodermic Needle
https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/the-central-banking-cartel-is-bleeding
------
Re: "How would turning the desert green be bad?"
It depends on what specific deserts you are talking about. Some are manmade, and some are natural deserts. Within natural deserts there are a great diversity of beings living there (put there by God) that need the arid climate and desert ecology to remain as it is for them to survive. Changing that climate via human activities would eradicate those beings native to the desert and be the equivalent of spitting in the face of God.
Manmade deserts on the other hand, could potentially be "greened" (rehydrated and biodiversity re-introduced and living top soil built back) and that would be beneficial to all life. The Loess Plateau Watershed Rehabilitation Project is one example of a success in that regard.
There are however several potential problems with your suggested means of greening these undefined desert regions in that while Cannabis (including THC lacking "Hemp" cannabis) is certainly a wonderful multi-use plant, it is also a heavy nitrogen feeder and requires large amounts of land to grow. The quantity of land required to produce the byproducts for industrial hemp uses you propose would, at the very least perpetuate the industrial agricultural industry and would likely also result in more mining and deforestation for factories, processing plants and planting more hemp.
Also, hydroelectric dams are massively destructive to ecosystems. There is a lot of greenwashing about them but the reality is these are technologies that suffocate forests, kill salmon runs, displace indigenous people and kill countless animals. And that is not to mention all the iron (steel) required for building all that.
Where is that going to come from? Mining.
If all the minerals required for the modern technologies you propose applying on a massive scale globally had to be extracted from mines directly adjacent to where you live, would you still want the tech?
For information on the ecological and human costs of mining read this:
https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/poll-of-the-month-if-all-the-minerals
and
"Green Colonialism Is Still Colonialism"
https://collapsecurriculum.substack.com/p/green-colonialism-is-still-colonialism
and read about what iron mining is doing to the Amazon jungle here:
https://substack.com/@gavinmounsey/note/c-235100740
----
RE: "How could no till farming, and herding cattle into native grasslands be bad?"
In many cases, there are other large herbivore beings that are more well suited to be grazing animals in native grassland. Here on Turtle Island (aka North America) for instance, Buffalo are much more ecologically compatible than cattle.
For more info read:
https://substack.com/@gavinmounsey/note/c-237793382
------
And with regards to your mentioning "free energy" and "gravitational transportation", I am familiar with these technologies but there are serious issues in thinking they will solve all our problems.
The tech has been extant and operational for decades, yet it has not liberated anyone or made the world a better place because the inventors are bribed, bought, blackmailed or murdered and their tech is sequestered into military black ops (where oligarchs and compartmented operations in statist regimes use that tech to terrorize the general population, engage in drug running, human trafficking and continuing their war racketeering).
Like I said to the guy in the note linked below, hoping “free energy” tech is going to save us and solve all our problems for us is Hopium.
That tech could do a lot of good for humanity, yet at this stage in our species development socially the same tech is just as likely to be weaponized (and it is).
https://substack.com/@gavinmounsey/note/c-232632210
Every single person can access “free energy” in their own backyard and in a community food forest with a handful of heirloom seeds, soil, water and sunshine , and that is a “free energy” that has a long history of providing real results in improving quality of life (unlike high tech “free energy”).
Thus, while I think your enthusiasm to focus on solutions based approaches (instead of doom and gloom as many on Substack do) is great, the solutions you espouse have some serious issues that need to be addressed, and more importantly, they are not relevant to the substantive content in my essay above (which pertains to applying ancient low tech regenerative agroforestry / syntropic food forest design techniques empowering communities to attain food and medicinal sovereignty, while enriching biodiversity and not requiring high tech machines that necessitate mining).