Another Path?

Instead of looking at the world around us as both a dangerous wild place and also as a giant piggy bank we can take as much from as we like, we should instead look at the world as a partner.

The world is not alien. We have made ourselves very alien, but the earth is not alien at all. The earth is our home and our parent and our partner in our continued existence.

We need to treat it like an equal. Take what we need, but never again become so gluttonously greedy. Give back to the earth when we take from it. Treat it, and by association ourselves and our children, with respect.

This lifestyle will necessitate adaptive cultures, and resilient cultures, because your become more capable and adaptive and resilient when you cannot simply throw money/energy at a problem and attempt to over power it. In such cases you must be creative and capable and - obviously- better at solving problems.

Our problem is that all that -very limited- high energy fuel has made us very lazy; and wealth has taken the place of ingenuity. We need to regain our ingenuity and our resilience. And that starts with changing our premises.

The earth is not a wilderness, full of disorder and dangers. It is our home and our workshop and out school. We do not need more energy to be more adaptive and resilient. We need more ingenuity, more mental flexibility and more competence to be adaptive and resilient.

We need to seek enough, not more. We need to work with our partners on this planet- the animals, the green plants, the fungi, the bacteria. We have been at war with 1.5 million species, as well as the ecosystem that makes our continued survival possible, and it is a war we cannot win.

We need a whole new world view, and we need it now.

What is the Lunisolar Year? And How do freepathers use it?

Answer:

The lunisolar year is a calendar system that bases the year around the solar year: using equinoxes and/or solstices to mark the year, and the lunar month: using the lunar cycle to mark the months.

Not all freepathers use the lunisolar year, and they do not all use the same one. that said, the lunisolar year is popular amongst feepathers for a number of reasons.

The Freepath recommends the idea of immersion as the goal rather than enlightment, embracing the physical world rather than transcending it. As such, a calendar that is self regulating based upon physical patterns that are directly and personally observable allows the freepather to put themselves in a direct and vibrant relationship with the planet, the sun, the moon, the seasons, and all the myriad of things touched by the changing seasons.

Just as the year ends for a third grader on last day of school before summer vacation, so does the year end with the cold of winter end the year for the gardener.

Using the lunisolar calendar requires nothing more than a view of the sky, and allows the freepather to tell the date in the same way that he would tell if it was raining, by looking outside. No intervening outside forces are required to make the knowledge understandable or useable.

What are the Unborn Elders?

Answer:

The unborn elders are the children of your tribe who have not yet been born, and the grandchildren of your tribe not yet born, and so on; marching into the future.

Freepathers frequently 'pray' to the unborn elders by making promises to these unborn generations, and by reaffirming their obligations to these unborn children and the impact that the actions of those of us currently alive will have on the later generations.

Freepathers do no impute any mystical power to the unborn elders, and understand that the unborn elders are a mental construct used to visualize people who do not yet exist, but who- when they do exist- will have to live with the consequences of the actions of those who do currently exist.

Prayer to the Unborn Elders is a method reminding us of our obligation to future generations.

Hence the freepath saying, "Do not pray for rain, when you can carry a bucket."

A Formal Objection

"Of Course, these are critical services, but energy's role in our lives is actually more fundamental, essential, and subtle. We extract energy from our environment to create order out of disorder and complexity out of simplicity. Put simply, societies with access to lots of energy are generally more adaptive, resilient, and better at solving problems."

(The Upside of Down, by Thomas Homer-Dixon, page 37)

The paragraph above exemplifies nearly everything destructive and self-defeating about our civilization. It articulates near perfectly almost the whole of the Industrialized Nation's philosophy.

"We extract energy from our environment to create order out of disorder..."

Let us start with this passage. It is, just to start, patently untrue. This statement implies that the natural world lies in disorder without us civilized humans. That the water cycle, and erosion and plate tectonics are disordered and without pattern. That natural selection and macro-evolution are just random events. That ecosystems are simply random collections of animals and plants. The ignorance in this statement is simply astounding.

The second half of the sentence is even worse however.

"...and complexity out of simplicity."

Tribal cultures have an incredible level of order- just to limit ourselves to humans for the moment. Pretending that there is a higher level of complexity in civilized society fails to take into account all the myriad of nuances of tribal society.

Beyond human affairs however, the passage says implicitly and explicitly that what civilized humans make is more complex than a leaf of lettuce or a grain of millet and the accompanying plant that produced it, and the accompanying ecosystem, food web/food chain that made that plant possible- tying together thousands of species and even more apparently inanimate forces such as the wind and the nitrogen cycle.

The arrogance in this statement, arrogance that is left as a premise and not even examined by its author, is almost beyond belief. Or at least, the arrogance would be beyond belief if it did not come from a culture with a ten thousand year history of such arrogance.

The next sentence is not as bad, but it has within it one of the key miss-assumptions of civilized humanity.

"We often use this order and complexity, in turn, to help us solve the problems we face- for instance, to shelter ourselves from our harsh environment and to protect ourselves from attack."

By assuming that the world is harsh, everything becomes an enemy or an attack. This basic belief in a hostile wilderness (the wilderness itself being an invention of civilized humanity) is what allows us to drive all species before us and destroy them whenever they resist or simply stand in the way of our expansion.

"Put simply, societies with access to lots of energy are generally more adaptive, resilient, and better at solving problems."

This statement is partially true on the surface. Such societies are rarely more adaptive and just as rarely better at solving problems. They don't need to be either, because they can simply pour energy into the problem. Much in the way a rich person can simply spend money to make most problems go away.

And this does not make the rich person more adaptive. They pay other people to be adaptive. All of this does make the society more resilient however- at least temporarily. The weakness of this statement is that such societies are thus dependent upon a mass of cheap and readily available energy.

In other words, such societies are addicted to energy. They are slaves to cheap fuel and act like junkies when they need another 'hit' of cheap energy to keep their economies and the accompanying systems running.

Never despair; but if you do, work on in despair.

-Edmund Burke

What is a Prayer Promise?

Answer:

A prayer promise is a promise written on paper or on a cloth flag, made to the generations of children yet unborn who will be affected by the actions of the person now alive. Paper prayer promises are referred to as prayer sheets. Cloth prayer promises are referred to as prayer flags.

Prayer sheets are traditionally burned in ceromonial fashion in a ritual of some sort. Prayer sheets, being more private, are generally used for personal commitments, or in public ceremonies where the ceremony itself acts as communal reinforcement.

Prayer flags are not burned as a general rule, but are displayed outside of a person's home or in another public place. Such prayers are displayed as a method of commitment, so that other members of the community can help to hold the freepather accountable to the unborn elders on the promise made. 

Prayer sheets and flags are not assumed to have any magical power, but are used to reinforce personal commitments and public responsibilities and promises. Not all Freepathers use Prayer sheets or flags, and those that do may call them by different names. The use of the word prayer is designed to draw a link to practices that new frepather's are likely to recognize, not to indicate any religious connection.


Common variations include written boards where public declarations can be made, whether online systems or physical are used. Audio and visual recording of oaths are also used. Written promises sealed with wax stamped with signets are used by some romantics amongst Freepathers.

Progress and Contentment

I am testing a theory. I have read many theories regarding why human beings did not 'progress' technologically in any significant way during the first ninety-nine percent of their time upon the planet. Real progress, as defined by modern civilization and its measure of success did not occur until roughly ten to fifteen thousand years ago- an eye blink in the eye of our history as a species. Why was this so?

Were humans not yet 'fully evolved', as has been many times suggested. Anthropology seems to be constantly discovering evidence, such as Neanderthal flutes and stone tools used by the so called Hobbit that place doubt upon this theory.

Were humans so desperate and taxed by the quest for food as hunter-gatherers that they did not have the time for such innovation? Studies repeatedly show that the hunter-gatherer lifestyle takes fewer calories and leaves more time for rest. So this seems unlikely.

Were humans not yet properly using division of labor, a societal technology which allows greater specialization and greater productivity? In fact humans were not, but given that they had greater leisure time that civilized humans, they certainly could have made up at least some of the difference very easily. Thus, this seems unlikely to be a decisive factor.

Perhaps the key answer lies in what humans were, rather than what they were not. Hunter-gatherer cultures, where they are still able to practice their lifestyle undisturbed, are well adjusted and generally content. Modern civilized humans suffer from chronic stress and anxiety and depression and all the resulting side effects that these things produce upon society. Hunter-gatherer cultures do just fine. The are happy, they are content, they are not worried about the future most of the time. They are confident in their ability to face the future. They are not the neurotic wrecks that modern humans are.

When you have a pebble in your shoe, you shift your weight or remove your shoe and get rid of the pebble. When you have an itch, you scratch it. If you cannot reach it, you grab something that will enable you to reach and scratch the itch. When you are placed in an uncomfortable place, you try to fix the situation. When you are placed in an intolerable situation, you fight back.

Perhaps the problem is that we are approaching the situation from the wrong viewpoint. Perhaps, because we civilized humans are constantly feeling as though we are trapped in an intolerable situation, we assume that all humans must be. Perhaps, hunter-gatherer humans did not invent all the things that we invented, because they did not feel the itch that we feel. Perhaps it is only civilized humans trapped in an intolerable situation, and those humans who are not trapped inside with us do no feel the itch. Perhaps, early humans did not 'innovate', not because they were less able than us- but because they were less bothered than us. We are trapped in a prison, and do not understand why our free neighbors next door are not trying to escape as we are. The answer is simple- we are in prison, not they.

Building to Your Landbase: An Example (the Pacific Northwest Coast)

The Pacific Northwest is wet from the Warm tropical winds that blow in from the ocean. In order to build in the PNW, the dampness must be taken into account.  

If you are planning to build and earth sheltered building, then avoiding water trapped in the ground will be important. Drainage can be achieved by digging out the foundation and putting large rocks under the basement which would enable water to pass underneath the building without flooding in most cases. An interior moat could also be effected, by digging trenches around the interior basement wall allowing water that does enter to exit without damaging the building. Shaping of the ground in front of buildings to lead water away from the buildings is also a viable possibility. Drainage can also be achieved by using the black house model of double stone walls with gravel between and extending that wall down into the ground. 

Local cultures tended to use above ground long houses built of timber, likely because they built on the water's edge and thus had to build on rocky ground, and also likely to avoid having to address the matter of the damp soil. Nonetheless, the local eco-village movement has had good success building cob buildings and earth sheltered buildings in this damp climate, so the challenges can be met.

PNW winters are not as cold as those of the land east of the Coast Mountains, however the dampness in the air can make them just as unpleasant. Remaining warm is still important. Earth sheltering will allow for the thermal mass of mother earth to help the temperatures. Small rooms will allow body heat to be used as an effective heating mechanism. 


PNW summers can get quite hot, and again earth sheltering and the thermal mass provided by this technique will keep the temperatures reasonable, while a solar chimney can aid in cooling and ventilating the structures.