On the weekend we held two online Q&A sessions, each for an hour and a half. Here we share an edited version of that three hours.
We hope you enjoy this offering as much as we did co-creating it. A big hearty thank you to all who participated, and especially to those who asked such timely, goodly questions.
Listen to the audio version (1:19mins),
or watch the video.
A reminder we will be travelling with The New Peasants to Stanley, Merimbula, Canberra and Sydney in Gadigal Country, where Gadigal born elder and dear friend, Uncle Charles Davison, will be welcoming us all at the Dendy Cinema in Newtown.
As the situation in the U.S. grows ever darker, I appreciate your sharing here as a nudge to fight back in the way of turning away from fear and embracing all that remains good. Thank you so much.
Thanks Lynn! Solidarity and love across all the saltwater countries.
Thank you again for your time. I joined your evening session but was just listening to the morning one and was interested by what Meg said about preparing for the end of life. I was just 50 when my mum died and that started me thinking about what interventions I wouldn’t want, after watching her chase the medical carrots on sticks and be disappointed with the results. So when my father was diagnosed with vascular dementia in 2021, he’d been so independent in the 12 years on his own, he didn’t want to go into residential care either. With a lot of work and help from my daughter and carers who became friends, suppirt from doctors, gettting equipment he needed, we kept him at home in his own house until he left us in April 2024. When I moved in with him he said it was very kind of me to do that and I reminded him of all the help he and mum gave us along the way. He replied with well that’s what parents do, so I told him its what children do too.
It’s like you were saying about the gift economy…you might not get that thing back straight away but it comes round eventually.
“He replied with well that’s what parents do, so I told him its what children do too.” Beautiful 🖤🖤
Oh how I wish I lived closer so I could join a circle!!! Be well.
Bless 🖤
Hello guys. A great podcast. It brought up many thoughts questions and fears that I have.
Here in the UK. I have noticed the general ignorance to the environment has accelerated.
We have a the lack of small flying insects, the habitat loss to the failing of Transition towns.
I am a male in my 50s I feel isolated in my thoughts and fears. I believe that the pandemic made people look inwards more and live for the now. Here it feels like the environmental issues have been left behind by the politicians (even the paying lip service). Our Green Party has been blinded by other issues not the environment Here.
I love the doom and bloom statement. Keep up the good work.
Stu
Hi Stuart, we feel your sadness, esp in relation to growing ecological disembodiment, as modernity becomes ever more disconnected with planetary biomes and lifeways and heads deeper into Cyborgia. This is part of the great unfolding brain and body demise ushered in by hypertechnocivility. AI is just the next phase of smug conceit by city-centric/nature-fearing folk, and it is ensnaring and incarcerating people at great speed as once again folk are seduced by the latest tech and the bs promises of liberty it spruiks. That’s why there are so many online foot-soldiers-for-AI shouting ‘Luddite’ at any criticism. Isolation and alienation is engineered in this civilisation, it’s a strategy of control. The only way out, we believe, is for each of us to find our peeps and land, to revillage, and to be clear about our roles and the gifts we bring to this place. To live a full human life in the thrum of grief and praise. Cyborgia thinks it can erase pain and suffering, but it only creates zombies. The more we unplug from human-centric/city-centric ideology, the more the world becomes holy and alive again.
What’s your take on the recent interest the science world is taking in the role of gut flora in our health. Do you think the composition of the gut flora of folk in precivilisation was more successful at fully utilizing the nutrients in wholefoods?
Also, do you think optimism declines naturally over the course of one’s life, thereby creating a potential for misunderstandings between the young and old?
Hello Patrick, thanks for your questions. Regarding the first: because this microbiome research is not linked to pushing an industry or particular industry product, we have more reason to accept it as useful and trustworthy, especially in better understanding human health. We heard about this research a decade ago and it has informed our understanding greatly and invited us to trust our ancestral health wisdom before and beyond iatrogenic industrial medicine. During Covid we argued for a microbiome approach, and we still believe that this holistic approach would have helped people far more than the germ theory approach that was imposed on people for the profits of giant US industries, an approach which led to fear and isolation – two things that radically reduce the capacity of immune systems to adequately function in a time of crisis.
To your second question, it is too general to discuss here in detail, but just a few quick things in response: Wisdom, in a healthy culture, should aggregate in adults as they age. Because we live in a narcissistic (wisdom-compromised) anti-culture we generate olders not elders. Misunderstandings arise when people don’t listen to each other. Elders, true elders, are the best modellers of deep listening. The absence of eldership goes hand in hand with an absence of listening, which in turn grows misunderstandings. This is part of the bigger colonial project in society that continues apace. Colonialism doesn’t like deep listening, because deep listening leads to compassion, rather than permanent warfare. A narcissistic society perpetuates permanent warfare, which describes the world we currently live in. Australia appears immune from the wreckage of permanent war cosmology, but Australian industries and institutions all support, and/or profit from, permanent war.
Great post. Very calming & listenable. So nice to revisit the beautiful Juliette of the Herbs…
Thanks Jac!