Syncretism all the way down

Some of us children of empire are rightly worried about further damage to colonized cultures. We try, therefore, to build walls around these cultures and call any breach of those walls “cultural appropriation.” The fear of cultural appropriation, though, is itself a product of empire. Such a fear attempts to freeze those cultures at a moment in time, specifically the moment when the colonizers “discovered” those cultures. Only an imperial mind would make the mistake of ignoring a culture’s entire history, pretending that it had sprung into existence only when noticed by imperial eyes.

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This morning, pumping gas at the station on the edge of our neighborhood, I felt again what I’ve sometimes felt over the past few years as I’ve turned toward my particular place, and learned to love it warts and all. One of Wendell Berry’s phrases came to mind: “it all turns on affection”:

For humans to have a responsible relationship to the world, they must imagine their places in it. To have a place, to live and belong in a place, to live from a place without destroying it, we must imagine it. By imagination we see it illuminated by its own unique character and by our love for it. By imagination we recognize with sympathy the fellow members, human and nonhuman, with whom we share our place. By that local experience we see the need to grant a sort of preemptive sympathy to all the fellow members, the neighbours, with whom we share the world. As imagination enables sympathy, sympathy enables affection. And it is in affection that we find the possibility of a neighbourly, kind, and conserving economy.

Proverb quoted in The Way of Qigong:

In stillness be like the pine.
In movement be like clouds and water.

Outside of work, I try to live according to what I’ve learned from Wendell Berry and Ivan Illich. My preference is for the proven and slow. At work, though, the train is headed straight for me. AI tools are coming this year and I’m already experimenting. Continuing to live the contradiction.

New Aesop Rock album release day!

Recommended: “Radical Neighboring”

Sand River Community Farm is an experiment in gift economy and community building. Ever since farmer Adam Wilson was offered $500K from a community member to take this piece of land off the market, the food from this place has been offered as a gift to the neighbours and strangers who find their way here. Welcome to the farm where nothing is for sale.

“Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” by Thomas Gray, read by Iain McGilchrist

Some big collard greens going into the smoothie this morning.

Kenneth S. Cohen, The Way of Qigong:

Alan Watts used to say that angels, like Daoist Immortals, can fly because they take themselves lightly!

Speaking of things to watch, I’ve been enjoying Tia Weston’s YouTube series in which she remodels a house with her dad. You can watch the start to finish video here but I also recommend just watching the whole series.