Bravo Grace! The West has been ruled by an secular Orthodoxy and threw out the sacred baby with the bathwater. BTW - Rupert Sheldrake is a brilliant man who's concept of Morphic Resonance is way ahead of its time as the brilliant Dr CG Jung's Synchronicity was 60 years ago.
Here is his banned TEd Talk - about the weakness's in Materialist Ideology. The latest findings on Dark Energy's unusual flow through history support his critique.
Grace, this is a tremendous piece of writing! "Woke" has indeed become a pointless catch-all term used to write off the discomfort that was birthed by the Western way of living and (not) relating to the natural world.
A similar things happened to the term "New Age," which sadly came to encompass both the watered-down, appropriated non-Western worldviews and genuine attempts at reclaiming a more sustainable way of living we all once knew. The two are not the same - the first stems from colonialism, the latter comes from a place of deep anguish and not belonging in a world reduced to commodities - yet they're lumped together so even the slightest attempt at changing our colonial narratives is destroyed at the root.
"Braiding Sweetgrass" is the single most important book I've ever read. I started writing a very ecocentric book that I hope can follow in the footsteps of some of the giants you've mentioned in this essay. Yet, as an archaeologist, I feel a deep discomfort over how my own, deeply materialistic field shuns any attempt at reconciling what is reduced to mere "cultural heritage" with a human quest for living as a part of nature, not as its master. I indeed thread at the edge of what some colonised minds would discard as "woo woo," including many archaeologists.
My readers however make it clear that there is a huge appetite for a different, more spiritual approach to the way we see the world. My Substack exists and the idea of a book was born in my mind because I refuse to give in to the established materialistic ways and silence my own voice when I'm screaming for a change. We all have to keep pushing for a more sustainable modality of existing on this planet, in any way we personally can, in the face of a system that is pushing back with oversimplification such as using "woke" as a slur.
Thank you Ramona. It's comforting to hear I'm not the only one who shares these worries. I know so many people who feel the same way about Braiding Sweetgrass, it's a brilliant book. Looking forward to checking out your substack.
It does sound awfully similar indeed! I can definitely remember "hippie" being used as a slur already when I was a child, so a long time before "woke," in a very similar fashion. And it regularly said far more about the commentator than the "hippie" in question...
Such terms generally appear to mean "I don't understand it and therefore we should ignore it"
Bravo Grace! The West has been ruled by an secular Orthodoxy and threw out the sacred baby with the bathwater. BTW - Rupert Sheldrake is a brilliant man who's concept of Morphic Resonance is way ahead of its time as the brilliant Dr CG Jung's Synchronicity was 60 years ago.
Here is his banned TEd Talk - about the weakness's in Materialist Ideology. The latest findings on Dark Energy's unusual flow through history support his critique.
https://youtu.be/1TerTgDEgUE?si=PCa9vO-0BxhLcT9u
Thanks for the pointer. He's something of a hero, found by way of another one, Lyall Watson.
Grace, this is a tremendous piece of writing! "Woke" has indeed become a pointless catch-all term used to write off the discomfort that was birthed by the Western way of living and (not) relating to the natural world.
A similar things happened to the term "New Age," which sadly came to encompass both the watered-down, appropriated non-Western worldviews and genuine attempts at reclaiming a more sustainable way of living we all once knew. The two are not the same - the first stems from colonialism, the latter comes from a place of deep anguish and not belonging in a world reduced to commodities - yet they're lumped together so even the slightest attempt at changing our colonial narratives is destroyed at the root.
"Braiding Sweetgrass" is the single most important book I've ever read. I started writing a very ecocentric book that I hope can follow in the footsteps of some of the giants you've mentioned in this essay. Yet, as an archaeologist, I feel a deep discomfort over how my own, deeply materialistic field shuns any attempt at reconciling what is reduced to mere "cultural heritage" with a human quest for living as a part of nature, not as its master. I indeed thread at the edge of what some colonised minds would discard as "woo woo," including many archaeologists.
My readers however make it clear that there is a huge appetite for a different, more spiritual approach to the way we see the world. My Substack exists and the idea of a book was born in my mind because I refuse to give in to the established materialistic ways and silence my own voice when I'm screaming for a change. We all have to keep pushing for a more sustainable modality of existing on this planet, in any way we personally can, in the face of a system that is pushing back with oversimplification such as using "woke" as a slur.
Thank you Ramona. It's comforting to hear I'm not the only one who shares these worries. I know so many people who feel the same way about Braiding Sweetgrass, it's a brilliant book. Looking forward to checking out your substack.
In Australia, in culture and media, we have the sentence opening, "I'm no hippie, but..." Which sounds an awful lot like, "I'm not racist, but..."
How interesting!
It does sound awfully similar indeed! I can definitely remember "hippie" being used as a slur already when I was a child, so a long time before "woke," in a very similar fashion. And it regularly said far more about the commentator than the "hippie" in question...
Absolutely yes to this 🌱
Thank you Victoria!
Really enjoyed this and agree with your conclusion. Let's look more into what the woo woo an do for us
Ahh thanks so much Rosana. Looking forward to reading your newsletter.