The Bone Game

Slahal, or the Bone game is a Coast Salish sleight of hand game. There are two 'bones' one marked with a red stripe. A player on one team take turns passing the bones between hands, and the other team's player must choose the hand that does not have the red striped bone. 

The game is also called the bloodless war game.

Why would a culture use a game of open deception as such an important practice that it would earn such a name? 

Why would sleight of hand be so central in a culture's games?

I submit that this game is useful to the culture because it teaches critical thinking. It teaches awareness of deception, and it makes deception an open element thus making deceivers less able to hide unseen in the group.

The game also implicitly shows that diplomacy is deceptive and that there are things the other group is trying to conceal. In an abusive family, the family knows that talking about the abuse is taboo, and so the abuse becomes immortal. The bone game plays openly with the problem of deception and so removes the taboo and at the same time steals it's power by making light of it through the game.

The game serves as a practice for catching cheats and tricksters and watching for dirty tricks from opponents. The game trains the eye against theft and the mind against misdirection.

This idea of training through play and through games is widespread amongst tribal and traditional cultures. The Rarámuri of New Mexico train the  legendary distance running prowess with a long distance game a little like soccer using a hard wooden ball. In this way child practice a trademark and life essential skill of the tribe by playing and having fun. In such interesting and inclusive way, even skills long considered tedious or boring are learnable without pain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slahal

Thoughts on Training

Human life traditionally followed a three stage progression.

• First you learn
• Then you do
• Then you teach

In other words, we move from dependence to independence to interdependence. We move from needing others to get by, to being able to get by on our own, to helping others get by so that everyone can prosper. To stop early is to never learn how to be human, and never learn how to properly be an animal, and how to properly live upon the earth.

Dependence

You were born a child, helpless, in need of protection, instruction and nourishment. You were cared for and taught and fed and sheltered. This is the way of the child, and those of us who still cannot make our own way without the resources of others are here still, and thus still children.

Independence

Your mission, your task, your purpose as a child is to learn. You must learn to be an adult. To be an adult you must know how to think for yourself- to spot deceptions, to reason things through, to ponder, and think creatively. These are the marks of an adult- an active intellectual life. To be an adult you must be able provide for yourself, food, and shelter and clothing and tools that you will need. The mark of an adult it the ability to make or find what one needs to live alone.  To be an adult you must also be able defend yourself and your home. What good is the ability to grow food, if a man with a sword shows up each day to take your food from you and eat it himself? What good is the ability to think great thoughts if a man with a sword can force you to turn you mind to making him a more effective conqueror? Thus you must defend.

Interdependence

As essential as those three things are, they do not make you fully an adult yet. Until you have used your skills to contribute to your community and connect into that web of interdependence- teaching and providing willingly to continue the community into tomorrow, you are only an adolescent. The skills are essential, giving those skills back is what completes the transformation from child to adult.

Some Simple Training Guidelines

Read books all the time. Read challenging books, especially non-fiction- and avoid Junk Reading. Read outside your comfort zone. Read books that disagree with your ideas and ask the three questions of it and yourself.

Seek out mentors. Seek to be around people smarter than you. Seek to be around forward looking people. Seek to be around people who are happy outside their comfort zone. Seek debate and for those willing to disagree with you. When somebody challenges you, thank them and ask them to elaborate. Seek out friends who are willing to call your bullsh**. Ask questions and listen to the answers. Shut off the 'I know instinct'. Ask questions to draw out more information.

Take classes, and seek to Constantly expand your skill set. John Maxwell's 'ACT' Note Taking System can be really useful here. Just add and ‘A’, a ‘C’, or  a ‘T’ when taking notes: A= Apply this (Apply this to my own life), C= Change this (stop doing what I was doing and start doing this), and, T= Teach this (Teach my group this thing).

Remember the need for quiet time. Without quiet time you can't evaluate what you are exposed to. Without quiet time you are easily bullied and overwhelmed. Without quiet time you can't reflect and recharge. Reflect on who you are. Quiet time allows you to decide what you agree with and what you disagree with. Quiet time allows you to build your identity. Quiet time allows you grow and change who you are. Reflect on what you believe. Quiet time allows you to evaluate what you've read, heard and learned. Quiet time allows you to decide what you can prove and what you simply believe.

Use quiet time to center. Quiet time allows you to recharge your emotions and your mental capacity. Quiet time allows you to calm down and regain focus. Use quiet time to sort information. Quiet time allows you to evaluate what you know. Quiet time allows you to make connections between different things that you know. Quiet time allows you create new information by combining different things you have learned.

And finally, get out and try things. Glory in Doing something difficult that you can screw up.  Glory in being outside your comfort zone. And glory in Making Mistakes.

The Problem

The basic ‘dependence to independence to interdependence’ structure of human community life has been broken. We begin in a state of dependence, because its pretty hard to be McGuyver when we still think technology ends with the hanging mobile and food production ends with the warm bottle. The problem is that we rarely progress anymore.

These days, culture is not set up to support us in our instinctual quest for independence. Bureaucratic systems from schools to corporations consistently punish creativity and critical thinking. Questions are not encouraged, and authority is unappreciative in the face of such questions.

We face a barrage of social conditioning, bent on making us discontent, impatient and certain of our own innate specialness. We are told not to create something of value, or to have the patience to work hard and earn what we want. We are told 'Go ahead", "You deserve a break" "Because you're worth it". And after a while, we start to believe it.

We are bombarded with information, and not given a chance to have alone time or privacy- and so (as with cult conditioning, which does similar)- we do not have time to develop our own fully formed views and ideas. Instead we are reduced to merely reacting to the views others tell us. 'Yes, I agree' or 'No, that's wrong'.

Very little of this happened intentionally. Most of the changes were made with the best of intentions. But complex systems often breed surprising results.

And so here we are: generation after generation of shallow, impatient, unfulfilled, egotistical, self-conscious, easily led sheeple. Calling us adults would be a joke.

The fact that most of our so-called adults mark their transition into adulthood by drinking until they risk alcohol poisoning should be a warning sign.

Most of us, around the point we are told we are adults, start to feel cheated. Often we don't know why we feel cheated, but life seems less than we were expecting. We should feel cheated. We used to become adults at puberty, we were expected to stand up and take our place.

Admiral David Farragut received his first command (a captured British Whaling Ship) at the age of twelve. At fifteen Benjamin Franklin was an apprentice printer and authored several popular articles under a pseudonym. By fifteen you could be a squire in the middle ages (or even a knight). We are told that the world is more complex and that it takes more time to learn about.

Do we really think that it takes less maturity to command a vessel in war time than it does to flip burgers? Do we really think that it takes less skill to author articles in a commercial newspaper than to text message incessantly? Are we really supposed to believe that they training of a knight was somehow less difficult than modern P.E. class?

The void that exists in modern life is an absence of adulthood. We have never been allowed to grow up- to become Men and Women. When we leave school we are helpless and adrift in a world that we are helpless to hold our own within. We must indenture ourselves to employers to survive. Skills that would allow us to stand apart from this are not taught to us.

We are not taught proper critical thinking skills in most cases. We are almost never taught useful survival or defense skills. We are left- deliberately I think- at the mercy of the world we have all created. Because, after all, who would flip burgers or or stock toy store shelves or fit shoes or man the technical help desk at 3am if they had another option.

We are a society of parasites, feeding collectively off of each other.

I am tired of being a child. I want to grow up. Peter Pan was a liar! You don't forget to fly when you grow up, you learn to fly when you grow up! The only reason we don't know this is because virtually nobody has grown up since the Second World War.

Genus Rex exists to help people help each other grow up. We need to regain the ability to stand alone. Because until we can stand alone, we cannot honestly stand together.

So your first job is to study and train and prep yourself as much as possible. This book will provide you with a guideline on how to train and what to study.

I need to learn arithmetic and calculations, but do I need to learn it in a classroom over twelve years and including things such as calculus and quadratic equations that very few people need to understand and fewer actually use?

I need to learn to read and write, but do I need to learn the difference between a Shakespearian or Petrarchan sonnet? I need to know the history of our culture and the changes and context that it will provide for understanding current events, but do I need to know who the commanders were at the battle of Leningrad?

I remember being tested on all of these things and I know that I answered most of them correctly on the test. I do not remember the answers to these questions now, although I remember that I was asked them.

Accounting, however, was an optional class and I was never given any lessons on the laws and paperwork that I have encountered as a adult. I was never taught, despite five years of career planning classes, how to deal with my taxes or my health insurance or any things that I would actually need.

There is a distinct benefit to schooling, but that benefit is for those people who wield the whips. When we emerge from schooling, we lack basic knowledge of how to manage in the adult world, and because of the increased work load and the need to do extra-curricular activities to earn scholarships and be accepted into post-secondary education- parents have very little mentoring that they have allowed to add. And thus the domesticated adult emerges from the womb of high school blind and hairless. He lacks the teeth and claws that are used by modern society and the knowledge of how best to defend himself with them. He is unable to hunt for himself and so is relegated to a subservient role within the pack- begging from scraps from more the alpha and other successful hunters.

"The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor

is the mind of the oppressed."

Steve Biko- Activist

For twelve years, the developing mind of the young domesticated human is engaged in challenging and intellectually stimulating tasks- such as organic chemistry, the politics of Shakespeare's Macbeth, trigonometry, the history of the Russian Revolution, and how to dissect an earthworm. These tasks are deliberately challenging and seem very important. In this way, the mind of the young domesticated human is distracted.

Once they have grown out of their most active period of learning, the young can be discharged into the wild where they are easily captured and roped into the existing herds. They are domesticated humans now, and not wild humans. But when the wild submits to domestication- it also sacrifices its freedom.

Spread the Word

 

I'm going to start this with two quotes from Seth Godin's book Tribes.

First Quote

If you could have any job in the world, what would it be?
Did you say, "A low-level bureaucrat working in the Social Security office in Yonkers, New York"?
Did you say, "A mid-level supervisor at a struggling GM plant in Ohio"?
Did you say, "Fry cook at McDonald's"?
Somehow, I doubt it.

Godin has got our number here. In Fight Club, Tyler Durden claimed that once we realized we weren't going to become rock gods and movie stars, we would get very pissed off. I might be right, but pissed off or not, most of us don't do anything about the situation.

We watch our dreams leave us, slowly pay cheque by pay cheque, compromise by comprise; a little surrender here, a small retreat here- until we think it's too late.

We don't want to be fry cooks, and mid level supervisors and bureaucrats. These are not our life's ambitions. But we're scared. We're scared we aren't good enough. That our ideas aren't ready and polished and perfect. That what we have to offer won't measure up. That our dream isn't up to facing the competition.

Well, this brings me to the second quote from Tribes-

“In a battle between two ideas, the best one doesn't necessarily win. No, the idea that wins is the one with the most fearless heretic behind it.”

I might add to this by saying, that the idea that wins is also the idea with the most fearless heretics behind it.

it's become a cliche to attack consumer culture, even consumer culture does it. why not, it sells, and that's all consumer culture is after in the end. And there's the problem. Consumer culture absorbs our attacks and sells them back to us. Consumer Culture runs on us. If we don't like the world being created we have to stop working on it, and start working on something different.

Imagine learning skills that will make you able to stand alone, not merely more employable. Imagine learning how to care for yourself and your family, not how to pay others to do this. Imagine learning how to think for yourself and analyze what the experts tell you, instead of being forced to react to them on gut instinct. Imagine being in charge of your own life, instead of feeling as though it is crawling along on automatic along a route you never chose.

That is crazy goal of the Red Cedar Project. Make self-reliance skills wide spread, enable the current generation through enhancing what they are able to do. There is profound hope in this enabling.

The slogan "Yes We Can" helped put Obama in the White House. Enabling and engaging people is the only way to create real change, because positive change starts at with the individual.

But for individuals to change, they need new tools, better tools. And that's where we come in.

We need committed volunteers. People willing to donate time and energy on a crazy project. A online network of people devoted to self-reliance as a method of social change, with a physical camp people can go to (and maybe more in the future). We need members who want to talk about self-reliance and how it can rebuild citizenship and revitalize community.

This is something worth fighting for. This is something people can be proud to be involved in.

But we don't need followers, we need a whole lot of leaders.

That said, I don't want people to give 100%. I don't think its a good idea. I didn't give 100% in school- I gave between 75% and 82% in school, but I did it by doing 20% of the work that the people who gave 95% did.

Not all effort is equal.

Certain actions yield bigger results than others. If they give you three days to do something, it is often best to spend the first two days finding the key issues to address.

This is called the 80/20 rule. I most aspects of life 80% (or more) of the results come for 20% of the work. To be more successful, we need not do more, but do the things that will produce more. We need to be intelligently lazy. We also need to be bravely lazy, because this most important 20% often involves the most intimidating work. Talking to people, asking for sales, stepping up and putting yourself on the line instead of preparing for another month.

So let's be lazy, let's do what we must and no more, but let's do it now- no matter how scared we are, because the rewards for this are the life we want to live and the cost of not doing this is the drudgery of the crowd. Let's be brave rather than becoming sheeple.

Instead of trying to change the world, try to find three people you can help and inspire. Assist three people in transforming themselves into warriors and you will be well on the way to making this a phenomenon.

One you have caught the attention of three people use the following, very simple, method to help them learn what you have learned.

Watch Do Teach

Watch one
Do one
Teach one

And then it’s their turn to teach three people.

If one person teaches three, and they teach three each,

it only takes 25 repetitions to reach the whole population of the earth.

"Where's your warrior spirit?"

In order to find three people willing to work with you, it will be necessary to talk to many more than three people. Many will be opposed, many will be ambivalent, many will be interested but do nothing. Only a few will work with you and fight beside you.

To find those few, speak to many.

We need to offend people. If everything we are saying is safe and inoffensive then it probably has no value and no strength. We cannot please everybody and should not try. We should strive to make our message strong enough that we offend a lot of people (we can get publicity that way), and interest the few people for whom we are a good fit.

There are two ways of coding a computer program: top down programming, and bottom up programming. Top down programming is how most people are taught to program. They lay out an outline of the program. Telling it to run each section of the program and thus refering the program to that section of the code to follow whatever information is there to find. Top down coding is efficient for its creator, it is predictable and it is deliberately hierarchical. Bottom Up programming sets the rules and then observes the results of the rules. This form of programming is best epitomised by John Hortn Conway's 'Game of Life'. It is also a decent metaphor for the system of life on this planet.

The corporations and governments of the world are trying to run the people of earth as though we were the sprites in their top down programmed video game, changing the rules and de-buggin the lines of code when we don't act in a way that they like. And we are analogous to those bits of code- those digital slaves. We are within their power, so long as we play their game. Trying to affect corporations and governments through the top down structure that the corporations and governments create is foolish. The power of bottom up programming is that it needs no programmer beyond whoever sets up the basic rules of play. The agents design the program through their actions. In order to begin designing our own lives again, we need to free ourselves from the confinement we find ourselves in today. 

"You must have a revolution if you're going to survive... ...If you go on the way you're

presently going, it's hard to imagine your living through another century. But you can't have a negative revolution... ...You must have a positive revolution, a revolution that brings people more of what they really want, not less of what they don't really want. They don't really want sixteen-bit electronic games, but if that's the best they can get, they'll take it. You won't get far in your revolution by asking them to give up their sixteen-bit electronic games. If you want them to

lose interest in toys, then you must give them something even better than toys.”

Daniel Quin, “My Ishmael”

I have been thinking about speed. I have plans for my life, and people constantly tell me how unrealistic my time frame is for success. I have noticed however, that it never takes me very long to do something once I simply set my mind and start doing it.

I think not doing it, is the primary cause of how long big goals take to accomplish. Things are scary, although not necessarily difficult. We have been told that they are difficult, and taught to fear these things that might actually help us.

We can't ask for a raise, what if the boss says no? Well, if the boss says no then you'll keep your old wage, the same way you will if you don't ask.

What if I make the presentation and they don't buy the product? Well you won't have sold anything, the same way as if you hadn't made the presentation.

The price of failing at an attempted big step is the same as not trying, and the possible reward is too great to ignore.

The fastest way to get on the fast track is just to do the things that scare us.

If the Born Kings idea and Genus Rex itself is going to grow, people need to hear about about. People need to read about it and see it and get curious and ask their friends about it. How is this going to happen? By people who are already on board with the Born Kings idea putting cool information out there that leads back to us.

The Laws of the New Tribal Revolution

1. The revolution won't take place all at once.

It's not going to be any sort of coup d'etat like the

French or Russian revolutions.

2. It will be achieved incrementally, by people working off each other's ideas.

This is the great driving innovation of the Industrial Revolution.

3. It will be led by no one.

Like the Industrial Revolution, it will need no shepherd, no organizer, no spearhead, no pacesetter, no mastermind at the top; it will be too much for anyone to lead.

4. It will not be the initiative of any political, governmental, or religious body

— again, like the Industrial Revolution.

Some will doubtless want to claim to be its supporters and protectors; there are always leaders ready to step forward once others have shown the way.

5. It has no targeted end point.

Why should it have an end point?

6. It will proceed according to no plan.

How on earth could there be a plan?

7. It will reward those who further the revolution with the coin of the revolution.

In the Industrial Revolution, those who contributed much in the way of product wealth received much in the way of product wealth; in the New Tribal Revolution, those who contribute much in the way of support will receive much in the way of support.

Daniel Quinn's “My Ishmael”

Included here is promotional material that anyone can use talk up the Born Kings idea, Genus Rex, or any other part of the movement. Also included here are directions on how to make certain cool things you do with regards to Genus Rex leads people back to Genus Rex.


So Let’s get started!

One final thought though... Respect

The Problem with young people today is respect.

The first problem is that they do not respect themselves.

How can they become good people if they do not respect themselves? We need to help them discover self-respect by letting them achieve challenges and build their confidence.

The second problem is lack of respect for each other. They need to be able to earn the respect of their peers, but they don’t know how to.

They think that respect comes from having what they have: new clothes and things like that. Respect does not come from what you have: it comes from what you do. And if they cannot respect each other, they cannot respect themselves.

Of course, if they respect themselves. And respect each other, they will find it very easy to respect their elders.

If we deserve any respect of course!

--Dogon Elder of Western Africa

It is only in adventure that some people succeed in knowing themselves

- in finding themselves.

--Andre Gide (1869 - 1951)

We judge groups based on the people who are a part of them. There is no way around it. So how you act and how you look and how you behave will influence how people about us. So with respect to that, we humbly ask that you be awesome. Be impressive.

So What Do We Do?

Our generation needs to learn how to educate themselves and how to self-correct. We need to learn how to effectively question authority, while still learning from experience.

We need to learn how to be responsible and self-sufficient so that we are able to contribute to our community and be interdependent. Our goal at Red Cedar is to teach habits that will enable members to become social, economic and ecological leaders in the future.

For years now, western nations have been living as though theirs was the final generation. They could do as the please, and damn the consequences. Now the consequences are becoming visible and frightening. Positive change in this world will depend upon the actions of today's youth. Those of us under thirty will be deciding on things that will affect our lives for years to come, just by how we live. Most activism seeks to sway those people in power, those with everything to lose and little to gain from a change in the status quo. The leaders of today are not where we should be looking.

We should be looking at the leaders of tomorrow.

Imagine learning skills that will make you able to stand alone, not merely more employable. Imagine learning how to care for yourself and your family, not how to pay others to do this. Imagine learning how to think for yourself and analyze what the experts tell you, instead of being forced to react to them on gut instinct. Imagine being in charge of your own life, instead of feeling as though it is crawling along on automatic along a route you never chose.

Make self-reliance skills widespread. Enable the current generation through enhancing what they are able to do. Because we believe that with this, we be able and proud to stand up and make the world a better place.

Growing up basically boils down to five things.

First, as an adult you must take responsibility for yourself.
Second, you must think for yourself.
Third, you must provide for yourself.
Fourth, you must be able and willing to defend yourself.
Fifth, you must leave something of value behind.

We are going to deal with these in a slightly skewed order. We will begin here by telling you that you must take responsibility for yourself, but we won't go heavily that step right away. We are going to focus on several others steps first, so that by the time we get to that step in detail.

For the moment, we ask you to provisionally accept the idea that you must take responsibility for yourself. It isn't a hard idea to accept. If you are not responsible for yourself then somebody else is responsible for you. if that is the case, then you are not free. If that is the case then what are you? Certainly not an adult, and certainly not a citizen. you are a child or a slave. We'll get into this in more detail later, but mull this over.

We don't like to admit responsibility. We equate it to guilt. We don't want to be blamed, and we don't want to admit that we are at fault. But look at things from this angle. If things are not our fault, then how can we fix things? To admit fault, to claim responsibility is to take power and say "I will do something about this." To pass the blame, or claim no responsibility is to say "I can't do anything about this." One gives power, one gives power away.

So for the moment, just trust us on the responsibility thing.

The first section is going to deal with thinking for yourself. The second section will deal with providing for yourself. The third section is going to deal with defending yourself. The fourth section will come back and re address taking responsibility for yourself. The fifth element of growing up, will be dealt with in the fourth Section as well. We refer to the sections respectively as "Speak Out", "Start Fires", "Fight Back", and "Grow Up". This order is for a reason. By starting with the ability to think for yourself, you will be better able to examine the other sections. By ending with taking responsibility and leaving something of value behind you will have a better sense of perspective on the whole process of becoming and remaining an adult.

Keep that in mind- not only can you become an adult by choice, you can cease to be an adult in the same way.