"How smooth must be the language of the whites, when they can make right look like wrong, and wrong like right." - Black Hawk
We have included a few key definitions that are critical to understanding the issues before us. These definitions are not meant to be written in stone, and you may find that in some dictionaries, the definitions will be very different. This doesn't mean that either is inaccurate.
For example, if you looked up the definition of a "witch" in ten different dictionaries, you're likely to find ten different definitions depending on the dictionary's version and edition. In the 1976 edition of The American Heritage Dictionary, it describes a witch as:
"1. A woman who practices sorcery or is believed to have dealing with the devil. 2. An ugly, vicious old woman; a hag."
In contrast, the 2001 edition of the same dictionary says:
"1. A woman claiming or popularly believed to possess magical powers and practice sorcery. 2. A believer or follower of Wicca; a Wiccan."
So why did the definition change? It changed because there were people (mostly witches) who knew that the dictionary meaning was wrong, and that it was based on centuries of prejudice and fear. They began to use the more accurate definition, and although it met with resistance at first, the word was eventually reclaimed. This is what we are doing with many of our definitions. In other words, the definitions are accurate, but not necessarily popular.
Most importantly, we use these definitions because it's important that you understand these words in the way that you are likely to see them used on this site, and in many of the resources you'll find here.
Abnormal - Behavior that diminishes the quality of life for an individual and those around them.
Agriculture - This can involve cultivating soil, producing crops, and/or raising livestock useful to humans. There are many different levels of agriculture. At its simplest (and least time consuming) level, it involves the part time, casual encouragement of favored plants within a certain region [See Horticulture]. At its most complex (and most time consuming) level, it is the full time encouragement of crops and livestock for a society's sustenance.
City - A group of people living more or less permanently in one place in densities high enough to require the routine importation of food and other necessities of life.
Civilization - Civilization is comprised of a series of estranged cultures that both lead to, and emerge from, the growth of cities. These cultures have a hierarchal, stratified social structure in which a small percentage of the population have authority (defined as the power to enforce obedience) over the remaining majority of the population. They have a belief in an objective reality that leads them to imagine that there is only one correct way that humans should live. This delusion allows them to objectify of the world, and so turn trees into lumber, cows into livestock, and humans into slaves. They have a drive to achieve complete dominion, so that the world may be exploited for the sole benefit of civilized humans. They create written laws based on a system of crime and punishment. The food is locked up and must be purchased. They practice the exclusive method of food production called totalitarian agriculture.
Community of Life - This is the collection of all life on Earth. A complex system of living organisms that interact with each other, and depend on each other completely. Every creature is born into, and belongs to, this living community. It belongs in the same way that a creature's cells belongs to it. In other words, each cell is a system of organic components, each plant and animal is a system of cells, and the community of life is a system of plants and animals. So, an animal isn't a separate thing that lives in a certain place. Every molecule in it's body was drawn from the community of life and eventually must be returned.
Control - One of the most debated points concerning human existence is the idea of human control. It would seem that there are two aspects of control. What we call actual physical control and the mental concept of control.
The term, "physical control", is often used to describe a wide range of interactions (driving, typing, interacting). But the key in referring to these actions as "controlling" actions is the mental aspect, the image (or illusion) of control.
When a person bends a tree branch, many would see control. When the wind blows through all the branches of a tree, we are more likely to consider the interplay between the force of the wind and the force of the branches. What might the wind think of itself as it moves every branch on the tree? What might the wind think of our petty bending of a single branch. So here-in lies the heart of control. Not the actual action, but the internal mental state of the witness (who is sometimes also a participant). To control or to be controlled are totally states of mind as everything is truly an interaction in which multiple outcomes are possible.
So one must question, What about the concept of control, leads to the sad results that we see in our culture today? Perhaps it is the dichotomy between our illusion (that we are in "control") and the reality (that we are in an interaction). This is at the core of the problem we face; not the idea of control, but the mental state of which it is a symptom. Living oblivious to and out of sync with reality will always let us down because our fantasies are invariably more ego-inflating than the truth. When the truth hits us on the head, it hurts.
The same reality schism can be linked to the creation of all manner of human problems (including much depression and social disconnect).
The Daoists have useful thoughts on these matters. Thinking of life as an interaction of all things and not as a synthetic hierarchical map of a universe of our own creation.
In the end, control is a concept like a mathematically perfect circle - something of ideas, but not of reality.*
Culture - A group of people enacting a set of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, and institutions.
Domestication - To train something to be subservient and of use to man.
Egalitarian - Affirming, promoting, or characterized by belief in equal political, economic, social, and civil rights for all people.
Estranged - To remove to or hold at a distance from an accustomed place. To be separated.
Estranged Culture - A culture that is based on the world view that they are separate from the world, and that the sacred only exists outside of creation. Their deities stand in judgment and must be appeased, placated, feared, and obeyed. They believe that their way of living is the one right way, and that all humans must live in the same manner.
Grok - [common; from the novel "Stranger in a Strange Land", by Robert A. Heinlein, where it is a Martian word meaning literally 'to drink' and metaphorically 'to be one with'] The emphatic form is 'grok in fullness'. To understand. Connotes intimate and exhaustive knowledge. When you claim to 'grok' some knowledge or technique, you are asserting that you have not merely learned it in a detached instrumental way but that it has become part of you, part of your identity. For example, to say that you "know" LISP is simply to assert that you can code in it if necessary - but to say you "grok" LISP is to claim that you have deeply entered the world-view and spirit of the language, with the implication that it has transformed your view of programming.
[Steward's Note: I include "grok" in these definitions because of its ability to convey a deep and complex level of understanding in a simple and effective manner.]
Horticulture - The cultivation of a garden; the art or science of cultivating or managing gardens, including the growing of flowers, fruits, and vegetables. This simple form of agriculture is marked by its small scale, and its independence from domesticated animals or machines to supplement human effort.
Immanent - Existing within; inherent or part of something.
Immanent Culture - A culture that includes the world view that they are part of the world, that the sacred (and therefore, deity) is inherent in the world, and that all life is interconnected. They believe that everyone should live in a way that best suits them and that there is no one right way for all people to live.
Indigenization - To make indigenous. Indigenization is composed of a series of immanent cultures that are a part of, or native to, the land on which they live. Indigenization's primary objective is harmony. They support a sustainable, healthy lifestyle that allows a culture to exist in a natural and evolutionarily stable state. These societies tend to be small egalitarian, nonhierarchical communities whose laws develop naturally to maintain balance within the social system. Their economy is based on the notion that if you give support that you will get support in return. Nothing is made into a commodity, and food is always available to all.
Meme - A unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another.
Meme Antibody - A meme that reacts to particularly toxic ideas by neutralizing or destroying them, and at the same time provides an immunity against them.
Natural - There is a difference between that which is natural and that which is not. I have heard people -- usually, but not always, those with an antienvironmental ax to grind -- suggest that because humans are natural that everything humans do or create is natural. Chainsaws are natural. Nuclear bombs are natural. Our economics is natural. Sex slavery is natural. Asphalt is natural. Cars are natural. Polluted water is natural. A devastated world is natural. A devastated psyche is natural. Unbridled exploitation is natural. Pure objectification is natural. This is, of course, nonsense. We are embedded in the natural world. We evolved as social creatures in this natural world. We require clean water to drink, or we die. We require clean air to breathe, or we die. We require food, or we die. We require love, affection, social contact in order to become our full selves. It is part of our evolutionary legacy as social creatures. Anything that helps us to understand all of this is natural: Any ritual, artifact, process, action is natural, to the degree that it reinforces our understanding of our embeddedness in the natural world, and any ritual, artifact, process, action is unnatural, to the degree that it does not.**
Normal - Behavior that enhances the quality of life for an individual and those around them.
Power - There are three types of power: Power-over is linked to domination and control; Power-from-within is linked to the mysteries that awaken our deepest abilities and potential. Power-with is social power, the influence we wield among equals. [More] ***
Sacred - An especially or profoundly important thing that is treated or regarded with great respect, honor, and reverence.
Totalitarian - A system in which power and authority are highly centralized and intrusive, and in which neither opposing parties nor individual differences are allowed.
Totalitarian Agriculture - A method of agriculture involving full time domestication of crops and livestock. The goal is to produce all food as human food. Anything that humans do not use is expendable under this method. It tends to be non sustainable and ultimately destructive to the ecosystem in which it is practiced. Food production increases to meet and exceed population needs. This allows continued population expansion beyond the ecosystem's carrying capacity. Two well known examples of this method of agriculture are found in the Mesopotamian Empire (6000 BCE) who turned the Fertile Crescent into a desert, and the United States (mid 1930s) who, through massive soil depletion common to this system, turned the Great Plains of North America into a "dust bowl." A modern example is Ethiopia, where this style of agriculture has led to cycles of population growth and famine.
Violence - Any act that violates a natural process, state or being through force or coercion. Examples of violence would include rape, murder, government, totalitarian agriculture, strip mining, deforestation, animal testing and so on, while acts that would not be considered violence include subsistence hunting, self-defense, defense of others, defense of the land base and so on.
* Written by Adam Starr / One Planet Global
** Definition source: "The Culture of Make Believe" by Derrick Jensen
*** Definition source: "Truth or Dare" by Starhawk