Knowing your world

It is said that many hunter-gatherer peoples offered thanks to the spirits of the animals and plants that they took for food, giving gratitude and respect for the gift of life.  And straight away, I must digress - I used that term "hunter-gatherer" because it is what I learned in school, over 50 years ago, and yet books like Dark Emu, by Dr. Bruce Pascoe, show just how intensively and intentionally those supposed "gatherers" intervened to increase the productivity of their territory.  Back to the story.

At some point in human history, before cities formed and empires grew, deities were named and thanked as being the directors or providers of weather, fertility, and food.  Stories of creation were told, genealogies handed down, and sagas and epics were chanted to remind us of the deeds and misdeeds of our ancestors and their enemies.  People could identify a story within which they lived, and picture their own place in it, as well as locating all the life and landscape around them.

The cities appeared, and kings, and emperors, who took to themselves the title of divine, and exercised control - they claimed - over all the resources the people needed.  As king fought king, and empires rose and fell, many people sheltered in the cities, while beyond the walls, the slaves and peasants continued to fish, farm, and hunt.

Is that when humans began to look less closely at, as well as appreciate less, the plants, animals, and things that we use for nourishment, medicine, comfort, and clothing?  When their gratitude shifted to the kings and emperors?

Those hunter-gatherers were living in, and respecting, the world that gave them being, nurtured them, and took them at their end - sometimes even brought about their end.  Their civilized cousins had walled themselves in, putting the natural world at a greater distance, though the enemy that had inspired the wall was actually other people.

We live in that same world - it is still the source of all, excepting sunlight, that we need for life and comfort.  In the case of sunlight, the atmosphere that filters that light, and protects us from its excesses, exists only because of life.

Yet every year it seems that more and more humans reach adulthood with no real knowledge or understanding of the world we rely on.  How can we have respect for our home if we do not understand it?

Baba Dioum wrote: "In the end, we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught"

The world we live in is complex beyond our ability to fully understand. Our brains, facing a flood of data, have developed mechanisms to filter and sort through all that information.  We seek patterns in the data, and try to develop a sense of cause and effect for every thing we see, hear, feel, taste, and sense. We seek a sense of certainty and safety, and tailor our stories accordingly.

Yet, when we have made for ourselves a story that is comforting in its certainties, we have placed ourselves at risk of real harm. We know our world only partially - it is rare that we can be absolutely certain of our future, even that which is only seconds away.  As for next week, month, or year, certainty is a dangerous illusion.

A story that takes into account such uncertainty, and helps us reach for the skills and resilience we might use when the unexpected arrives, is a better story - and, who knows, the unexpected might be more wonderful than we have imagined?

A comfortable story is a risky story because it can lead us into a sense of false security, so that we do not pay such careful attention to the world around us - its inhabitants and their behaviour.  It is when you stop paying attention that the nasty surprises can sneak up on you, and the serendipitous opportunities slip by unnoticed.  But attentiveness and alertness use energy, and we humans have another useful habit - we like to conserve energy.  Some might call it laziness, some might call it sensible, but our ancestors learned not to burn energy unnecessarily, especially when their next meal might not eventuate as soon as hoped for.  Like all human traits, it has its up sides and its down sides.

To survive and flourish, we need a story that makes sense of the world we live in, and gives us purpose, hope, and direction. With the aid of our ancestors, we learn and develop a story by which we live.  Each of us has our own unique story - though it may contain many elements in common with the stories of those around us, it also is built from moments of personal experience and thought that no one else can fully share.

Our story is also influenced by the stories we hear and see - and many of the stories we encounter in the media or online are not honest tales.  In many cases they are created, constructed, designed, and polished so as to distort our personal story in ways that benefit the makers of those stories.  Yes, you can think "advertisers" or "politicians" when you read those words, and you would be partly right, but there are others creating and foisting dodgy stories on the world, and doing so for reasons not always explicable or reputable.

Many of the stories that wash over us every day have very narrow interests at their heart, and if we are to create an honest and useful story for our own life we need to be able to discern which of those  stories should be discarded, and which ones kept. To do that, I think we need to spend time with other people that is not filtered or mediated by technology, and when we have had our fill of people, we need time in nature - real nature, not pictures and sounds on the screen or page. 

Real people and real nature enter our story by way of all our senses, not just the visual and auditory - perhaps that is why the poetry and writing that most moves us contains cues for all our senses, too.

Those Freakish Moments

I have often noticed that people are killed or injured in incidents involving nature or weather that are deemed by the witnesses or the media to have been "freak" - a freak wave, a freak storm, a freak flood, and so on.

But, take those freak waves -  how freakish were they, really?  There is a growing body of science dedicated to understanding such waves - they do exist, but any properly taught rock fisherman, surfer, or boatie, knows just how life preserving are those minutes and hours spent standing back from the water, observing.

I learned while quite young that watching the rock platforms I was intending to fish from could be the most important 15 minutes of the whole trip.  I also learned the hard way that even those 15 minutes of observation might not forearm me sufficiently against the waves that the complex interplay of wind, tide, and current could throw at me - and that even the most experienced fishereman in my family could not always predict all of them.  Likewise, my years in the Boy Scouts were replete with lessons that helped me identify potential hazards when hiking, or camping, and techniques to deal with those hazards.

Failing to learn about the risks, and failing to maintain vigilance towards every aspect of the environment you are in will too often prove fatal - whereas learning about the risks inherent in that environment, and staying alert to them will vastly improve your chances.

As an example, how often do we see images or videos of people doing insanely dangerous things, like fishing for Barramundi while standing waist deep in muddy waters, only metres from a big, bold, brightly coloured "Beware of Crocodiles" sign?

In our socienty, signs, brochures, websites, and TV shows that inform and warn of the dangers of fire, flood, storm, slippery cliff edges, dangerous animals (and humans) and so many other risks, are abundant, and are too often ignored, or treated as mere entertainment, whose lessons need not be carried over into the real life of the viewer.  Perversely, the more signs there are, the more inclined people seem to be to ignore them.

YouTube is awash with clips of people risking disablement, disfigurement or death doing risky things for the camera while their friends urge them on and laugh at their falls and collisions - the people from The Darwin Awards are never short of material to consider as they choose the annual winners of their "prize".

As someone who has lived, worked, and played in city, bush, river, and ocean, and who spent much of his life in some sort of emergency service (both paid and volunteeer) I can only ask, over and over, "Why?".  Most people would be astounded to know how often the Blue Mountains Rescue services are called out to retrieve the body of another tourist who felt the need climb over the safety railings so as to add to their holiday snaps a selfy of themselves at the very edge of one of our many 500 metre high cliffs.  One retired Police Rescue officer I know has often called such people out on their behaviour - it worries him so much that he finds it hard to enjoy the simple pleasures of walking one of our beautiful, cliff top trails.

I was fortunate - as a child and young adult I heard a lot of stories from family - fishers, farmers, police - that taught me a great deal about the risks.

Did it scare me into staying inside?  Not at all - those stories were full of the clues and signs I would need to watch for, but also full of the sense of joy and adventure to be had in the wider world.

Those stories inspired me, even as they made me safer.  Did they make my life risk and trouble free?  No way - I was a young human, full of curiosity and over confidence.  The stories didn't stop me from trying new things and going new places, but they also saved my life more than once.

More than ever the human race needs stories that honestly set out the risks and dangers that are inherent in our pasage through time and space, and not just the physical risks, but the moral and spiritual risks as well. The stories exist - the trick seems to bve connecting those who can tell the stories with those who need to hear them.

For people of  my age, the fables and fairy stories of our childhood contained many of those lessons, and seem to have been designed, in some far distant past, by some wise old bard, for just such a purpose.  A wonderful writer on this topic is Kate Forsyth - as well as writing some great fiction, she has written a number of works addressing the lineage and value of fairy tales, and given some excellent interviews on the ABC - well worth listening to.

In a world awash with so many stories of dubious worth or so little meaning, we need stories and story tellers that can help us, our children, and our neighbours, identify the stories of true worth.

They are often closer than you think.  Have you spoken to that worn or weathered neighbour?  That wear and tear was accumulated during the building of their life story - say hello and you might hear stories you need (and will enjoy)