The awakening I've experienced to the soulfulness in nature began one day when I was driving home with a friend. He said to me, "I'm glad to see they're starting to build on that empty lot. I hate to see a good piece of land go to waste." Intuitively, I felt that the plants, soil, and rocks in that lot were not so "empty" or "wasted," yet I doubted if there was any way to communicate this to my friend.
Comments such as his come from our culture's deeply ingrained world view supporting the assumption that nature is of little value unless useful to humans. Many of today's best thinkers are saying that this outdated world view keeps us destroying the earth despite our best intentions. But what if we knew that the natural things in that piece of land had a significant life of their own? How would this change our attitudes?
Today there are some amazing new discoveries in science that shed light on such questions. These discoveries could bring about an awakening to a new world view that is more spiritual and respectful of the earth. That is why it is so important to consider the astonishing evidence coming from the New Science.
To do so, it is helpful to begin with a brief look at the Old Science.
According to Newtonian physics, the universe works like a machine. Atoms are inert lifeless objects that must follow fixed laws. They fit together like parts of a clock to make something such as a tree or an animal, but the organism itself is composed of inert lifeless matter.
Religion in our culture has been able to accommodate to the Old Science by deciding that the capabilities associated with the soul, like thoughts and feelings, are not of this physical realm. They are injected from outside this universe by God and given solely to humans. The rest of the "soulless" world is considered to have little value other than to serve the well being of humans.
The New Science tells a different story. It comes mainly from the recent quantum physics (the dynamics of atoms), biology (especially biochemistry and ecology), and astrophysics (the so called "Big Bang" theory and how the universe came into being).
Quantum physics tells us that atoms do not really work like a machine. They have many qualities that make them more like a living being than like a machine.
To begin with, leading scientists such as Einstein and Bohr found that an atom is not really an object.[1] It is not made of solid matter in the usual sense, but rather of tiny energy packages called particles. (The amount of energy in the particles is measured in units called quanta.) As these energy packages move about, they create patterns that we perceive as solid matter even though they are just energy. It's like the perceptual illusion in which a paper circle has a series of broken circular lines drawn on it. When you spin it fast enough, the lines look solid even though they aren't.
Within the atom, the many subatomic particles do not follow fixed laws in the way they move. They seem to turn and twist, come and go in a spontaneous dance-like movement. Atoms are not predictable as a machine would be. Their variability and freedom of movement reveal a much more dynamic universe than the mechanistic view suggests.
Furthermore, the nature of particles is filled with unresolvable mystery. For example, a particle has the ability to take the form of either a wave or a specific particle depending on how we observe it. This seems contradictory because a wave is spread out over space like a magnetic field, but a particle exists in a certain point. Yet particles take both forms simultaneously and never exclusively exist as one form or the other.
Another mystery of particle nature is that we cannot measure the particle's exact location. All we can ever do is find an approximate location. When we try to measure one aspect of a rapidly moving particle (momentum), another aspect of its location (position) becomes more approximate. This uncertainty is due not to poor measuring techniques but rather to the nature of particles. Hence, particle location remains forever a part of the mysterious variability of matter.
Also, unlike machines, particles are sensitive to their environment and capable of responding to it. For example, it can be shown that particles sense light by picking up some electrical charge as it passes through them. They sense changes in gravity by changing velocity and position. They respond to how they are being observed by moving about in different patterns. This sensitivity and responsiveness reveals an almost life-like quality that exists at the subatomic level.
As we can see, atoms relate with their environment. The particles within the atom are also interrelational. Each subatomic particle depends on the other aspects of the atom to maintain its own pattern of activity. For example, electrons depend on neutrons and protons (other particles) to maintain their movement patterns. Neutrons and protons depend on a special force called the "strong force" to remain in their tight pattern, and so forth. Thus, atomic nature is relational, not individualistic like the machine. This interdependency parallels what we find in the ecological view of interdependency among species. Interrelatedness seems to be the true underlying nature of the universe.
What is it that keeps all these atomic particles and forces organized? According to quantum physics, the atom has information within itself that allows it to be self-organized. It works very much like the flame of a candle. The wick, the air, and the heat are organized by a process in the flame itself. In the same way, an atom maintains its own processes and patterns of energy activity just by its inherent nature.
The ability of an atom to be self-organized means that it operates much in the same way as a living being. This is why, from the tiniest atoms to the largest bodies in space, all things in the universe operate more like living beings with creative abilities than like inert machines.
If we review what we've learned from quantum physics so far, the findings are simply amazing. An atom, be it from a rock, a piece of soil, or a plant or animal, is composed of packages of energy, dancing about, always changing forms mysteriously, always uncertain in their location, sensitive and responsive to their environment, interdependent with their own components, and gifted with an internal formula for self-organization.
So the principles of the New Physics are not like the old ones. They reveal atomic systems that are extremely dynamic, relational, and mysterious. Thus, scientists are now recognizing that pure logical reasoning is no longer adequate--that it is essential to use intuitive, metaphorical, and mystical processes in order to fully grasp the wondrous workings of the universe.
The New Physics does not totally nullify the old Newtonian physics. The Old Physics still applies, within certain limits, to objects of ordinary sizes. But quantum physics is the larger reality that encompasses any sized object and therefore explains more. With this background, let's move on into the New Science in biology.
After a detailed study of simple life forms such as bacteria, biologists are saying that the line between the living and the non-living is blurred. The complex protein molecules that make up bacteria can be found separately outside bacteria. And yet within these non-living protein molecules is an interrelatedness and self-organizing interaction that is not unlike the action found in the living bacterial cell.
This has led biologists such as Charles Birch and John Cobb to reject the idea of a "radical difference" between the animate and the inanimate, and to assert that biochemicals which are so interactive are unlikely to have come from matter which is not.[2] This New Science suggests a continuum between the living and the non-living that is unbroken and consistent. In other words, rocks and soil have a lot in common with living beings.
Finally, let's consider the vast new discoveries in the field of astronomy (or astro-physics). About twenty billion years ago, the universe flared forth from the void as an expanding cloud of particles. It then progressed through a series of epic stages. First it organized itself into huge galactic clouds of hydrogen and helium. Then its atoms condensed into stars whose process of genesis produced all the basic chemical elements. Then, coalescing from these chemicals, planets formed and began their process of development.
In order to do all this, the universe had to have the same capabilities we discovered in the atom. It had to have energy capable of responding to other complex forms of energy. It had to have the ability to interact with its environment, and the ability to self-organize. Thus, like an atom or a living being, the universe itself had to be filled with these life-like qualities on the same continuum.
Because we can now trace the origin of life (including human life) back in one continuous line all the way to the original flaring forth, we can realize that the potential for our most valued human qualities was inherent in the universe from the beginning. When we gaze at the stars now, we might be able to feel a marvelous new sense of wonder created by this awareness. Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme have said, "This new story of an emergent universe...is really an enhancement of all that humans have ever experienced previously in their perceptions of the universe."[3]
In these ways, the New Science reveals that whether we look at the behavior of subatomic particles or of bacterial molecules or of the unfolding stars and galaxies, everything appears to be more life-like than we once thought. This awareness can awaken in us a new world view which is sometimes called a "new cosmology".
Interpreting the New Science
Having reviewed evidence from the New Science, we are now faced with some challenging questions of interpretation. If atomic particles can dance and create novel responses as well as sense and respond, do they have some form of thought or feeling or life? Furthermore, if they are so interdependent and bonded, do they have some form of love?
We are used to science teaching us that matter is inert and objective. This makes it very hard for us to believe that matter could have subjective qualities like intelligence and sentience.
Clearly, atoms do not think and feel in the same way as humans. But the amazing responsiveness of atomic particles seems to imply some sort of rudimentary form of thought and feeling. Just as we have seen how the animate and inanimate are on one continuum, perhaps the same principle may be applied to thoughts and feelings. The difference in both cases is that the continuum now is much larger than we had ever before imagined.
The challenge we face is to expand our concept of subjective qualities. We can think of it like our concept of art. A child's scribble with a crayon on paper is not generally considered fine art in the same sense as DaVinci's Mona Lisa or Monet's Lilly Ponds. Yet, the scribble has all the rudiments of fine art-form, content, creativity, and meaning. It may not be fine art, but it is on the same continuum--it is a form of art.
In the same way, atomic particles--with their dancing, uncertainty, variability, responsiveness, interdependence, and self-organizing abilities--possess the rudiments of thought, feeling, and life. They are on the same continuum with these subjective qualities, and in some sense, they actually have some form of subjectivity.
We can think of atomic particles as we do an infant. An infant has subjective qualities like adults, only in rudimentary form. Just as important, infants have the potential to develop into adults. Likewise, atomic particles have rudimentary forms of life-like qualities and, when combined with other energies of the universe, the potential to develop and become living planets like the earth. This then, is the expanded sense of how we can think of every particle in the universe.
Not only is it hard for us to grasp this because of needing to expand our concept of subjectivity, but also because of our language itself. Some writers like Birch and Cobb,[2] being reluctant to refer to matter as having consciousness, have said that it is capable of experience. Or instead of using the word love, say that it has attraction. Yet experience and attraction are simpler aspects of consciousness and love. Therefore, the use of these words is not inclusive of the full meaning of our expanded view of the subjective continuum.
Hence, I would like to try out some new language here just for our experimentation. I'd like to suggest that we attach the prefix "ona" before a subjective quality that is in a rudimentary form. ( I choose "ona" because our continuum for subjective qualities needs to be expanded "on and on.") So we might say that the feelings of a star are ona-feelings. The thoughts of a rock are ona-thoughts. The ona-love of plants may be for soil and for sunlight. And so forth.
Maybe if we had language such as this, it would be easier for us to accept how matter has intelligence, feeling, life, and soul in rudimentary but potentially complete form.
We value human beings mostly because of our subjective qualities. Yet these qualities are also in rocks and soil and stars (not to mention plants and animals as well). So if we can treat a baby as precious because of its rudimentary abilities and potentials, can we not treat matter in a similar way because of its potentials?
Having insight into the life-like qualities of matter can change how we feel about the natural world around us--including what we call natural resources. It changes how I feel about places such as so-called empty lots, which are really filled with the lives of plants and animals, and the ona-lives of soil, rocks, and other such beings. This awareness has truly become an awakening experience for me.
Spiritual and Political Implications
As we have seen, the New Science can lead us to revise our views about the subjectivity of the natural world. In addition, some mystical aspects of spirituality or soulfulness can be addressed.
Evidence from quantum physics suggests that we may no longer need to look outside the natural universe to explain experiences such as telepathic communication, prayer, visions, or materialization of objects.
For example, quantum physics has discovered an explanation for how one object could instantly communicate with another object that is far away or could even cause a change in the other object (called non-local effects). The way this may work is that every particle has an equal and opposite particle in the form of anti-matter. (Anti-matter is negative energy particles that exist in a kind of virtual state within the void.) Each particle also has what is called spin. If one particle has a positive spin, its equal and opposite half in anti-matter will have a negative spin.
According to quantum physics, you could separate one half of the particle anywhere in the universe, and if you shifted the spin of this half from positive to negative, the other would instantly shift also. This reveals a capacity for non-local communication or causation. It also shows the extent of interrelatedness that exists within the universe as a whole.
We may find that other extraordinary events can be explained by quantum physics as well. For example, quantum physics has shown how particles can literally materialize out of nothingness. It turns out that empty space, or the void, is not really empty. It is filled with energy forms such as electromagnetic fields and anti-matter. Particles simply burst forth out of this substantial void because energy exists within it.
In another interesting example, quantum physics establishes that a solid object has the potential to move through a solid wall and not disturb either object. Although much more needs to be learned in order to fully understand such events, these possibilities are all a part of the New Science and they further support the idea that spiritual or soulful experiences, in a mystical sense, can come from within the universe itself.
Today we have various prevailing views about the ultimate nature of everything, and most of them would be modified by a clearer understanding of the New Science. To those who believe that everything works like a machine, the New Science would reveal how the dynamics of the universe work more like subjective qualities. To those who hold that God or Spirit are separate entities from matter, the New Science suggests how God or Spirit can be found as a process that exists within the energy patterns of the universe. And to those who believe that physical reality is an illusion and that true reality is in the nothingness, the New Science can show how the nothingness is not really empty and co-exists within the world of everything.
By creating the belief that the natural world has no subjectivity or soulfulness, the Old Science gave us permission to damage nature without remorse. This is the reason that changing our world view is so crucial.
In the new world view, spirit and subjectivity are no longer separated from matter. They are interconnected, inseparable, and on the same continuum. Thus, the natural world is both richly endowed with subjectivity and infused with a spirit or soul that is intrinsic to itself.
Once we believe that nature has thoughts and feelings of its own, no matter how rudimentary, we can usually start to empathize with it. If we have empathy for something, we naturally feel a moral obligation to it. This adds further impetus to achieving the understanding that nature is soulful.
With these changes in thinking, nature would gain heightened legal and political standing. Also, people would have sufficient spiritual and moral justification to comply with political decisions that protect the environment. The shift in our scientific paradigm which sees the universe as inherently soulful would become the basis in truth that supports the actions required to protect all life on earth.
If we can keep in mind that the soil, trees, and rocks around us are energy patterns with a rudimentary intelligence and sentience of their own, we may start to sense a different feel to the world. As this awakened feeling grows in us, it will change our old assumptions that say, for example, that a piece of land is wasted unless it is used by humans.
Instead, we can deeply feel in our hearts that a piece of land (or any so-called natural resource) not only is interconnected with us, but also has an enormous life and meaning of its own.
I had an experience not long ago that helped me realize how much these sentiments can grow. A news report told of a tanker truck that had turned over and spilled its load of diesel in a ditch. The driver wasn't hurt, but I knew that in this ditch were many plants, wild flowers, frogs, insects, soil beings, mineral beings, and untold other ona beings. I began to feel in my heart a real sense of sadness for the ditch.
The news report however, did not mention any concerns for the ditch, only for the driver, the diesel, and the truck. While our concern for humans is essential, we need to add a concern for nature as well. My response was made possible by an awakening to the subjectivity and soulfulness in nature. Such sentiments are supported by the New Science and can lead us toward a more sustainable future.
Furthermore, as we begin to feel sentiments even for a lowly ditch, how much more enhanced will our feelings be for a wondrous forest or other spectacular natural settings? Recently I went for a hike through an ancient forest to a beautiful look-out. As I sat there gazing over the scene before me and sensing the vast ona-life all around, I felt a profound sense of belonging--to the universe, to nature, and to life. It was a belonging unlike any I've ever felt before. This feeling can come to us from our new understanding of the universe: that we are made of it and by it, and that, like us, everything is filled with soulfulness.
Having this new consciousness of the universe can help sustain us in these difficult times. Just knowing that solutions evolve from new world views offers reassurance that we will have more time for life in the New Millennium.
__________
[1] Capra, Fritjof, The Tao of Physics (pp. 62-80), Shambala Publications, 1991.
[2] Birch, Charles, and Cobb, John, The Liberation of Life (pp.130-131), Cambridge University Press, 1981.
[3] Swimme, Brian and Berry, Thomas, The Universe Story (p. 246), Harper-SanFrancisco, 1994.
Andrew Seal is an activist on land-use issues and earth-based spirituality, and an area coordinator for the Northwest Earth Institute. He lives in McMinnville, Oregon.
©1999 Talking Leaves
Winter 2000
Volume 9, Number 3
Human Time, Natural Time
Millions of decisions are made every moment under time stress. At the root of just about every environmental, social, or personal problem that concerns us today, time lurks. Our behavior arises from, and reflects, this fundamental relationship.
When we use automobiles instead of bicycles; planes instead of trains; mass-produced food and goods shipped from far away instead of things we have grown and made ourselves--what is our most frequent excuse? When we dump perfectly useable (but finicky, nonuniform) leftover building materials; or flush away our wastes instead of conscientiously composting them; or use machines and chemicals to accomplish what could be done more gently and ecologically by humans, animals, and living systems--where do our choices come from?
When parents leave children in care of the television set instead of giving them human attention; or entrust education entirely to public institutions (including the media) instead of doing any degree of home schooling; or resort to quick-fix interventionist medical tactics and drugs to address problems whose real solutions lie in a more holistic approach--what is to blame? When we replace true human communication with soundbites; neglect even our close relationships with one another; fail to have those intimate, honest conversations that could heal interpersonal wounds and create connection; and decide that getting to know the neighbors would be too much trouble--why are we being so stingy with our energy and attention?
And when we rely on professionals for the entertainment, music, and art in our lives, instead of developing our own creative and expressive skills; when we squeeze our moments of pleasure and vacation into small gaps in our schedules; when we fail to pursue what we are truly passionate about as individuals--what are we lacking?
Time. We are just too busy.
A shortage of time is the perfect scapegoat, a foolproof way to disown responsibility for our decisions. And it is also a real cause of every problem described above. Why don't we have enough time?
Perhaps because, in our culture, we think we don't have enough of anything. Consumerism is driven by a feeling of deprivation. If we didn't want anything, if we were perfectly satisfied, we couldn't be sold anything either. Two jobs are necessary nowadays to support all the expenses of the typical "successful" American family: multiple cars, large house, high energy use, expensive toys, prepackaged foods, ever-present entertainment and distraction. Television and the other elements of consumer corporate culture, which often take the place of person-to-person contact within families and neighborhoods, teach more of the same, to children and adults alike: consumerism, dependence, lack of self-sufficiency. And they teach the most powerful marketing and control mechanism of all: lack of self-esteem.
How many of us find or create situations that will keep us constantly occupied, cultivate a sense of never having enough time, in order to feel valuable and important? How many of us use busyness to shore up an understandably shaky sense that we are doing something worthwhile with our lives? How many of us measure our worth as human beings by our success at becoming as frenetic as those around us? Many seem to conclude that if a partial engagement with our time-deprived culture is not satisfying, then we should fully engage, lose ourselves entirely in it. Even those of us trying to "build a better world" often seem to need to prove our worth by how busy we can be. So busy, that we don't have to take real responsibility for our choices.
Busyness and impatience go hand in hand, and are reinforced by the technologies we use. On a computer, no speed is too fast--the faster the word-processing, data-processing, or internet-connecting speed, the better. In a motor vehicle, the only limit to desirable speed is usually safety--generally, the faster we travel in our wheeled, winged, or hulled boxes from one place to another, the happier we are. Contrast this with human conversation (a noncomputerized way of relating to others), or with riding a bike or walking. These activities seem to be inherently pleasurable in ways that technologized substitutes aren't, and they can therefore proceed at their own pace. But too much time spent with the faster technologized methods can instill impatience with slowness of any kind, rob slowness of its pleasure, and make the "natural" something we just don't have time for.
If one wanted to control a group of people, prevent them from seriously questioning their lives, distract them from the ever-present possibility of change, make sure they all marched to more or less the same drummer, the most effective method would be to keep them all so busy that they felt they could not make real choices. So busy, amongst so much busyness, that any other choices didn't even seem to be choices. So busy, that they were resigned to the way they were living, and couldn't even imagine being able to take responsibility for their time.
No one individual is exercising that kind of control today. But just as organized religions--systems of thought, and the power structures promoting them--conquered and subjugated whole peoples in the past, an organized approach to time--with its own dogmas, and its own power structures--seems to have conquered and subjugated most of us in the modern world. As our cover image reminds us, perhaps It's Time to Stop.
If you're reading this magazine, you have at least changed speed. This issue was put together amongst much busyness (of, we would like to believe, the holistic variety), but with a lot of thought and slowness too, as we searched to discover how "human time" and "natural time" intersect. Please send us your reactions to the material herein, as well as your submissions on future themes.
Thanks for joining us.
©1999 Talking Leaves
Winter 2000
Volume 9, Number 3
Human Time, Natural Time
What has this imminent threat done to our perception of time? How have other technological and cultural developments caused our sense of time to change? Are we on a linear path, a crescendo of population growth, accelerated pace of life, and exponentially spreading human impact, leading to apocalypse? Are we entering the "end times" foretold in some of our religious traditions? And if those times come, will they come with a "bang" or (less spectacular, but perhaps more insidious) with a "whimper," as T.S. Eliot suggested?
Too Much Wattage
Nuclear technology has greatly amplified the human potential for precipitating apocalypse, but it is hardly the source of it. We in the West have had a yearning for ending time for much longer than we've had the physical capacity to cause such an event. Devoted churchgoers have for centuries sung songs like "Newbury," lyrics by Isaac Watts:
Lo, what a glorious sight appearsWatts' spiritual (though not blood-related) heir, former Secretary of the Interior James Watt, had similar sentiments, justifying unbridled resource extraction from public lands with the belief that these end times were coming soon. The Earth, he believed, was put here for humans to use, and anything not used up by the end of the world would have been wasted. From this standpoint, destroying the world is not only our right, but our duty. Anything which causes the "wheels of time" to "fly swifter round" will ultimately hasten the "welcome day" when we are free from the travails associated with the earth, seas, and "old rolling skies."
To our believing eyes!
The earth and seas are past away,
And the old rolling skies.
From the third heav'n where God resides,
That holy, happy place,
The New Jerusalem comes down,
Adorned with shining grace.His own soft hand shall wipe the tears
From ev'ry weeping eye;
And pains and groans, and griefs and fears,
And death itself shall die.
How long dear Savior, O how long
Shall this bright hour delay?
Fly swifter round ye wheels of time
And bring the welcome day.
New technologies are often introduced with the premise that they improve the quality of life. However, as Jerry Mander points out in In the Absence of the Sacred, many technologies that allow us to accelerate the pace of life serve primarily to heighten anxiety and decrease quality of life. Perhaps this is because, at their deepest, unconscious levels, they embody not a life wish, but a death wish, the same one that has fueled the Western obsession with apocalypse for several thousand years.
Carcinogenic Chips
Where did this obsession come from?
Somewhere, apparently, the seeds of alienation, of a death wish, were sown, and grew, and multiplied. The emergence of patriarchal, dominating cultures, worshipping a Sky God instead of an Earth Mother, seems likely to have had a very close connection to this phenomenon, but the purpose of this essay is not to argue causation. Did some disgruntled males with chips on their shoulders, acting out their fear and alienation in perhaps unprecedented ways, start a series of events thousands of years ago that has led us to where we are now? It's anybody's guess, but blame is not very useful.
Whatever the cause, the alienation--the desire to assert human control over time and place, to be masters rather than students of the earth--spread like a cancer to which general immunity was low. Many people and many cultures were extinguished because of it, some were converted or co-opted and became carriers, and some managed to resist. The attempts to extinguish, convert, or co-opt, and also the inevitable resistance, continue to this day. They play themselves out within each of us.
How, specifically, have we attempted to hasten the apocalypse?
To make the wheels of time to fly swifter round, it is first necessary to intervene where time is proceeding at a natural pace. Earth-based cultures attuned to the rhythms of the days, months, seasons, years, and various other natural cycles can never be made to accelerate to apocalyptic speeds. For many thousands of years, the imperialistic predecessors and companions of the "Industrial Growth Society" have been bent on destroying those cultures, taking their lands and mining their resources in order to fuel their own growth and to speed up time.
Colonialism, the industrial revolution, and political strategies and laws which separated common people from the land all set the stage for our "progress" in the twentieth century. As a result of our innovations and the cultural changes which have accompanied them, human time often no longer even vaguely resembles natural time. The telephone, the automobile, the airplane, television, computers, video games, and other technologies of modern life have given us ever-increasing measures of freedom from natural time and natural place--they have allowed us to redefine time and place to suit our own impulses.
When, through the use of technology, we instead of the Earth are in charge of defining the pace of life, time seems to assume dizzying, ever-increasing speeds. And place, too, is now defined through technological relationships, and largely divorced from the natural world and from the place-based human families and communities that used to help define who we were. To many of us, cyberspace now seems like home, and our physical location is incidental. We may have no idea what plants are in bloom in our area, or which seeds are just ripening, or what animals are mating, or what phase the moon is in, but many of us can find out the time down to the second, at any moment. The Earth's rhythms are a lot less controllable, less predictable, and more organic than the clock time which guides most of our days--and they are therefore infuriating to us, if we're bent on freedom (our own) and control (over the external world).
As John Trudell observes, freedom without responsibility is a recipe for disaster. Freeing ourselves from natural time and place, we seem to be cooking up just the apocalypse we've been yearning for all along. "Fly swifter round ye wheels of time / And bring the welcome day." It has a certain ring to it, doesn't it? Especially when we feel so disconnected from the Earth, and so caught up in the cult of acceleration, that apocalypse seems to be the fulfillment our identity, our destiny. The dreary rhythms of the earth, seas, and old rolling skies have become downright boring. What do they have to do with us? We are children of the end times, not children of the Earth.
Does it have to be this way?
To answer this question, I'd like to reflect some more on the experience of growing up in the nuclear shadow, since that is how I first encountered, in a palpable way, the notion of apocalypse.
Waking Up to the End of the World
As a child growing up in the sixties and seventies, I passed through two stages in relation to nuclear technologies before taking their threats seriously. My first stage was ignorance, for which I was and am very grateful. Childhood is no time for immersion in nuclear despair, and I doubt seriously that a young mind, still full of wonder at the world and immersed in the immediacy of daily life, can conceptualize anything as awful and abstract as a nuclear bomb or a nuclear meltdown.
As I began to understand what adults were saying about nuclear weapons and nuclear power, ignorance gave way to denial. A part of me developed and then fiercely clung to the thought that "these things can't really exist." By which I meant: "I have never seen them; their potential effects are too awful to imagine; I feel no sense of impending doom or danger in the world. They are just a mind game, a figment of the imagination, created by neurotic people who haven't discovered that life is good." A variation of this attitude admitted that they might actually exist, but believed that if none of us gave them power by worrying about them, nothing bad could happen. Whoever or whatever had created the world would not have done so in order to have it destroyed senselessly. The nuclear threat was just a bad dream.
At some point, in my late teens, I started to comprehend more fully, and to get worried. The accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor occurred when I was seventeen. Soon I was expecting more meltdowns, or a nuclear conflict precipitated by the ever-escalating nuclear arsenals of the superpowers. As the comfortable, secure environment of my childhood slipped away, and I prepared to go away to college, my fears increased. I listened to WBAI-NY, where speculation on further Three Mile Islands or nuclear conflicts was common. Throughout my college years, full of internal challenges, I alternated between a carefully cultivated dullness to and separation from the horrors portrayed in the news media, and a very keen sense that the world, especially the urbanized world with which I was familiar, was on the brink of destruction. I read If You Love This Planet, by Helen Caldicott, and I was convinced that we would be lucky to make it through another year without a major nuclear incident. Maybe that wouldn't be lucky, though. After all, apocalypse would give us an easy way out of worrying about our own personal problems, about all the other problems on the earth, and about apocalypse itself.
Needless to say, in order to entertain such thoughts, I must have been experiencing some alienation myself. I have never felt so much distance from my childhood, from my past, from everyone and everything familiar and important to me, as I did during that period. I could hardly remember being a child, and thought about it (on those rare occasions when I did) only with impatience. My own sense of time--of the cycles of my own life--along with my sense of place, had somehow been taken away by the demands and expectations of society (embodied, in this case, by the educational system which had captured most of my energy). The sense of natural time, timelessness, and home that I had experienced throughout childhood had been replaced with an ever-accelerating ride on a one-way track which seemed to be heading to oblivion. Its guideposts were not instances of connection with others or with life, but a trail of individual accomplishment and despair that seemed more and more hollow.
I wrote Kafkaesque stories, which I kept to myself, in which the symbolic world ended with either a bang or a whimper.
And finally I got tired of that kind of thinking.
Apocalypse Canceled
For one thing, for several years the world had repeatedly been failing to end as expected. For another, I was learning more and more about alternatives to the dominant cultural paradigms. I had changed my educational course in order to travel around the country with a small environmental education school, spending time in diverse ecosystems and with various Native American and other land-based cultures. I saw that there were other ways of experiencing the world than through my own cultural lens. There were radically different ways of being, of relating to time and place.
What I think of as natural time and timelessness have a close relation to one another. Both were present in the deserts of Northeast Arizona where I spent nearly two years after college. The mesas, canyons, and plains made geological time visible, and were reminders of how small our piece of time is. Any notions of acceleration, of bending time to our own will, or of ending it, seemed grandiose and foolish in that setting. The annoying babble of Western civilization would someday fade away, those rocks seemed to be saying, and time would go on as it had before. The native people there cultivated the same attitude, continuing their ancient yearly cycle of rituals, dances, and celebrations as their ancestors had and as their children would. Time was very obviously a circle there, not a straight line. Against that backdrop, the apocalyptic culture of acceleration appeared as an aberration; the slow time of the desert and its native people was the reality.
Leaving that setting, reentering the white world, was a culture shock for me. That time out of time in a native desert homeland had seemed much longer, much more meaningful, more timeless, than its length would suggest. The culture I reentered, by contrast, seemed to be largely "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." However, I came back for a reason: to learn to garden and to reattune to the earth in practical ways, while finding a place in the culture I had fled.
I soon received a rude reminder of the nuclear shadow. Part-way through a six-month gardening apprenticeship, our group was greeted one morning with news of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor meltdown. As if this news weren't alarming enough, later that same morning we heard sirens going off for no apparent reason, and our conversation quickly reached the point of speculation (and real fears) that this might be "the end." (Perhaps a local meltdown, or radioactive drift from Chernobyl, or a nuclear bombÉ?) The sirens turned out to be for an apprentice, experiencing a severe attack of asthma. Although neither her world nor ours ended just then, everyone was scared. It hadn't taken long for me, after leaving the Reservation, to get back into the frame of mind which half-expected apocalypse, though such an event no longer seemed to hold any significant redeeming features.
Despite my wish for life to continue free from the threat of apocalypse, I still had a basic lack of faith in life that showed up in other ways. Although I knew intellectually that people had been growing food crops for centuries, and would hardly have chosen crops that were likely to die at any moment, I was still deeply worried about every seed I sowed. It was miraculous to me that the vegetables and flowers we planted actually grew, that they would still be there when I looked the next day. I kept expecting them to disappear, and for a long time thought that it was just a fluke that they didn't. Almost everything else I knew was uncertain. The world had seemed to be on the very brink of destruction, with time and place contorted and changed until it bore no resemblance to what I once knew. How could these plants grow so calmly, so confidently, at their own speed, in their own place? Didn't they realize that the world might end at any moment? Didn't they worry about that, the way I did? Why weren't they shriveling up just from the stress of thinking about it? Or did they know something I didn't know?
Cultivating a Mystery
The more I gardened, the more I realized that those plants, that soil, and all the gardens and gardeners I worked with did know something I didn't know back then--or that I'd forgotten. Gradually, as season followed season, I recognized that time was going to go on. I saw that certain cycles repeated themselves, and could not be suppressed or controlled. The life force is powerful, and invites participation. And I, who had become a straight-line perfectionist in my adolescent and early adult years, discovered that there are no perfect ways to garden, no ways to avoid mistakes--but that, paradoxically, there are actually no mistakes. Life is remarkably forgiving, and failures are just as much a part of the cycles of learning and growing as successes are. Everything becomes compost. The end of one thing is the beginning of something else. Time in the garden ebbs and flows with the seasons, and there are few ways to either slow it down or hurry it. It's mostly beyond our control, and it's wondrous.
In gardening, the notion of apocalypse, of one culminating event of perfection or spectacular failure, is absurd. The notion of escaping the cycles of birth and death--or of wanting to do so, as individuals, people, planet--is absurd. The idea that we are separate from the earth, destined to be alienated, needing to prove ourselves and deliver ourselves into some other reality through one final big bang (or, in the disappointing, "failed apocalypse" version, a slow-death whimper), is absurd. If we can accept and embrace the many little deaths, and births, and webs of relationship that occur in the garden, and everywhere in the world, perhaps we'll have less impetus to both flee from and embrace the big Death that is embodied in the idea of apocalypse.
This is not to deny the nuclear threat. It's just to assert that we won't improve the situation at all by expecting apocalypse to happen. We may be able to bring much of what we call human time to an end, but time in a cosmic sense can't be touched by us, and even our grandiose ideas of earth-destruction may be inflated. As Winona LaDuke reminds us, we are going to be here, for many generations to come. The apocalypse mentality can cause us to live without hope, and without true forethought, as if the earth will end tomorrow. But we know it won't, no matter how big a mess we make. The sooner we recall the rhythms of natural time, and harmonize with them, the sooner we'll take true responsibility for our actions, instead of pursuing an illusory freedom from natural cycles. Freedom, in that sense, is just another word for "nothing left to lose."
Music of the Spheres
The lessons I've learned in gardening have come within a cultural (or subcultural) context which very much supports them. On farms, in intentional communities, among ecological doers and thinkers, students and teachers, writers and musicians, I've noticed the same patterns in my relationships with people as in relationships within the garden. The organic ebb and flow occurs in all spheres of life: within ourselves, among us human beings, within the whole web of existence. The lessons we learn in each sphere can be applied to the others. They are not, in fact, separate spheres.
So I've ended up in sweat lodges and in community circles singing some songs quite different from Isaac Watts' "Newbury." In these songs, apocalyptic temper tantrums (no matter how expertly disguised) have no place, and we are part of a flow of life that goes on and on:
We all come from the GoddessAnd the "earth, seas, and old rolling skies" define the rhythms that shape our lives:
And to her we shall return
Like a drop of rain
Flowing to the oceanBlessed am I, spirit am I
I am the infinite within my soul
I have no beginning and I have no end
All this I amWe are the old people
We are the new people
We are the same people, deeper than before
The earth, the air, the fire, the waterSinging these songs, gardening, or being in the natural world or in a community of like-spirited people (which can include anyone who takes a moment to resist or step away from the forces of acceleration), I appreciate how far I've come since I first expected the world to end nearly twenty years ago. Miraculously, I no longer have any predisposition to want, expect, or think about apocalypse (beyond the amount of thinking required to write this essay, about which you can draw your own conclusions).
Return, return, return, returnOh she will bring the buds in the spring
And laugh among the flowers
In summer's heat her kisses are sweet
She sings in leafy bowers
She cuts the cane and gathers the grain
When leaves of fall surround her
Her bones grow old in wintery cold
She wraps her cloak around herHoof and horn, hoof and horn
All that dies shall be reborn
Corn and grain, corn and grain
All that falls shall rise again
Human time and natural time do not have to be at odds. Apocalypse is an aberration, a thought-form that we can let go of. It has reached a crescendo perhaps in order to teach us something about taking the consequences of our actions seriously. But human time only seems to be a one-way freight-train, filled with nuclear waste, headed for a cliff. In actual fact, that train is only a tiny speck against the backdrop of geological time and against the accumulated wisdom of the universe, and it does not have much steam left. When we start paying attention to, and engaging with, that backdrop--the amazing, nurturing context which contains all of our mistakes--we will recognize that true human time is natural time, an endless cycle of cycles.
Chris Roth is editor of Talking Leaves and of The Beetless' Gardening Book: An Organic Gardening Songbook/Guidebook (http://members.aol.com/growseed). The well-known song lyric, "Time is love in the garden, baby, I wanna freeze and can," comes from that volume's ode to food preservation, while the equally popular "Twelve Months a Year" sums up the Beetless' appreciation of the cycles in a year-round garden. Chris, too, is a year-round gardener, at Lost Valley Educational Center in Dexter, Oregon, where (despite repeated predictions by the fundamentalist Christian community which preceded Lost Valley on the land) the Second Coming has never yet occurred. As a consolation, however, many sunchokes (a.k.a.Jerusalem artichokes) have sprouted up year after year, with no help from the gardeners. Chris' sense of humor, like the sunchokes, pops up and dies back in cycles. When it's dormant, he writes essays. Reach him at [email protected].
©1999 Talking Leaves
Winter 2000
Volume 9, Number 3
Human Time, Natural Time
Malcolm X wrote in his autobiography that he could not take seriously someone who did not wear a watch. He denied respect to anyone without respect for the value of Time. Extreme, yet his belief is a powerful one and he speaks, in this case, for much of Western society.
By contrast, nearly all the interviews that follow express views that are in direct opposition to the idea of Time as a concept at all, let alone the subtle emphasis we often place on watches, punctuality, and accomplishment.
The five Native Americans and three non-natives I interviewed at the Springfield (Oregon) Filbert Festival in late August expressed a variety of opinions when asked about their theories of Time. However, most tracked their personal journeys using something other than a watch, appointment book, or anything else labeled indispensable in popular thinking. And almost everyone saw a clock as a limitation when applied to their lives.
Yet Malcolm and I choose to live in a more compulsive world.
I view neither belief as superior, but, as a member of the occasionally-consumed-by-time group, I do find myself toting a full schedule and, although infrequently, a frenzied state of mind. The words to follow are an excellent reminder that, no matter what I do, the day will progress at its own pace and I would do just as well to enjoy the transitions.
I tried to choose these people from crowds at random, but I know my own preferences and prejudices were involved in their selection. Nevertheless, they were all asked the same questions and I did my best not to lead anyone to an answer.
I hope the interviews speak for themselves, but I am unable to resist interpretation; I was amazed at how profound many of the conversations turned once I began asking simple questions. The topic, it seems, seduces the philosophic. Maybe that is because both use and views of Time provide an insight into the most basic tenets of culture and existence. The transition from "Grandchildren" (particularly those yet to be born) to "The State of the World" is easily made...
Frank Merrill--Karuk Nation (Northern California). Elder, Spiritual Leader, Coordinator for Native Programming at Lane Community College (Eugene, OR).
I arrived at the festival during the morning of what would become a hot day. The drumming drew my attention because I had come to interview Native people. I sat in the shade to listen and watch. Frank spoke for the group of people on the stage and the dancers below, who ranged from dark-skinned with black hair to fair-skinned and blonde. He talked with a familiar Native accent. Deep and deliberate. Confident and patient. Wise.
When the dancing had finished I followed the group and approached a young man, asking about an interview. After a series of referrals, Frank made his way toward me. We soon stood talking under an oak tree, my small microphone perched awkwardly between his fingers.
I found his interpretation of my last question the most fascinating.
BH: Do you think the average human life is a long time?
FM: I think the average human life is what the Creator sent you here for. Each one of us is here for a reason; whether it's bringing humanity to each other, or bringing spiritual connection to each other, or whether we're here as a baby and gone the next day--you brought relief to that family or you brought them a message that they may have other problems in their family. So that baby may have come and gone; a short time, but that's a lifetime to that one. Some are short, some are long. I believe that the Creator gave us each a certain time that we're here.
BH: How long ago do you think the earth or the universe was created?
FM: Well, I'm not a scientific man, I don't believe in proving when the earth was made. But I believe when the Creator came here and put everything in its proper place, that He came here and gave each and every one of us--whether you're from here, whether you're from overseas or around the world--He gave us all that same connection. You make a spiritual connection with everything on Mother Earth and you can survive. We, as the two-legged ones, we broke them laws. Because we put a price tag on what He told us was a spiritual connection.
BH: How long is a long time to you?
FM: There's no long time in my life. I enjoy life as it is, or is supposed to be. So I made that spiritual connection with everything around me. When you're connected with everything--the trees, the water, the grass, the sky, the birds--everything around you has connection, and there's no length of time in that time. The time that's spent here with maybe just myself, and the grass, and the trees: it could be a long time for somebody, for me it could be a short time. So there's no way to measure time in length.
BH: Do you practice any sort of time management?
FM: I see some people measure every fifteen minutes of their life. To me life was made in a circle and that circle goes around and around. And what I miss today will come back to me tomorrow. But if you believe in a straight line then you have to keep tabs of everything because there's no end, it just keeps going and going and going. And you won't have a chance to regain that knowledge and wisdom that'll come back to you.
BH: How often do you wonder about your grandchildren, their children, and their children's children?
FM: I never to have to worry about and wonder about my grandkids because they have made the spiritual connection that I talk about. We believe we're all connected, and even if one of 'em passes on, the memories I have of that kid and what he gave me while he was here would be the same as if he was here and walking with me at all times. And that's that connection I talk about, and other people don't realize they have it until something's gone and they go into sorrow. I relive that joy that kid gave me. So my grandkids are always with me whether physical, or mental, or whatever. They're always with me. The spirits walk with me at all times.
BH: Do you feel your views of time represent your culture's views of time?
FM: In a way I do, because I believe when something has to happen, that's when it happens--whether it's good or bad, or if it's a learning process or even just passing by something. The time was meant to be that way. And the Creator guides me in the way that I keep my time and spread my time around the people. And so my time is whatever time that something needs me. And if I can give enjoyment, or just a smile, or just laughter, or just a "hello," if I can relieve a person that's going through some stressful time, then the two times are meant for each other at that moment.
Arlene Fields--Blackfoot. Artist. Mixed Native and European descent.
Arlene sat in a booth displaying an abundance and variety of crafts, and was creating beadwork when I found her. She exuded calm and spoke with quiet purpose.
BH: Do you live on a reservation?
AF: We don't live on a reservation. You know, we have our own piece of property. It's been since my great-grandmother that any of my family actually lived on a reservation, so we're kind of removed from that part.
BH: How long is a long time to you?
AF: A hundred years. Yeah, that's sorta long...[laughs]
BH: How long ago do you think the earth or the universe was created?
AF: Several million years ago.
BH: Do you manage your time in any way?
AF: I have to be able to make a living at this. I can't spend ten hours on something and sell it for $10. You know, that doesn't work. I have to have some concept of how long it takes me to make it.
BH: How often do you think about your ancestors?
AF: Every day.
BH: How often do you wonder about your grandchildren, their children, and their children's children?
AF: Every day.
BH: And what do you think about your ancestors and your family that will come after you?
AF: My ancestors, I have very much respect for them. And I think that they're guiding me in this world. And I think I will guide my children and their children's children when I pass over.
BH: Do you think the average human life is a long time?
AF: No. I'm basing that on the earth's time. So that the average human is here only the snap of a finger compared to the earth.
BH: How long do you think the human race will survive?
AF: Probably about another 200 years. As we know it today.
BH: Do you have a spiritual belief?
AF: Yes I do.
BH: Is it traditional Native American?
AF: Yes. It always has been.
BH: How do you divide your time? Do you do it by minute, hour, day, month, year...or does that not apply?
AF: It really doesn't apply: I usually don't know what day it is because I don't worry about time. I don't wear a watch because I don't want to know what time it is. Usually my husband keeps track of the weekends because we have to go out and sell, otherwise I'd probably be in trouble. [laughs]
BH: Do you feel your views of time are similar to most people's views of time?
AF: Probably not. Because I'm an artist and I don't think that artists think like other people. Because we don't let time bother us. You know, we can work on a painting and work for two days and never go to bed, never eat. Time becomes immaterial when you're working on something that has your heart that you need to put down someplace.
BH: Do you feel your views of time represent your culture's views of time?
AF: To a certain extent. You know, we have a saying in the Native American community that things run on "Indian Time." Which means that, because it's supposed to start at three o'clock, it's gonna to start when it gets ready to...we're never on time, usually. [laughs]
BH: And are you similar in that way, or not?
AF: Well, I do keep appointments, because otherwise I think it's discourteous to the people waiting for me, but other than that I don't worry about time.
Joan--Artist. African-American/Mixed descent.
I hoped to add more ethnic variety to the interviews by speaking with Joan, one of the few Black people at the festival. Her addition was more than statistical; her addition was soulful.
BH: Do you practice time management?
J: Time is not important to me. It could take me ten minutes to make a piece of jewelry, it could take me six minutes. I don't wear a watch because I don't want to know what time it is; I don't really care.
BH: Do you ever think about your ancestors?
J: No, not really.
BH: Do you ever think about your descendants? Your grandchildren, their children...?
J: All the time. I have a three-month-old granddaughter now. I think about her all the time. I'd love to win the Lotto, buy a big house, and have a party with everyone there.
BH: What about your relatives yet to be born?
J: I love 'em. I love 'em all.
BH: Do your views reflect most people's views of time?
J: No, most people waste their time. They sit around twiddlin' their thumbs, drinking, and doing narcotics. I don't do any of that.
BH: Do your views of time reflect your culture's views of time?
J: I'm Heinz 57, baby. I've got all kinds of blood in me. You can't say my views are like anyone else's. You can't say I've got a typical black person's views.
Randy Akins--Winnebago, Wisconsin. Truck Driver. Mixed Native and European descent.
Frank Merrill had directed me to a man sitting under an E-Z-Up making jewelry. During the course of our conversation Randy would lean forward onto his tiny beads, distracted by his sharing and caught up in words. Then he would gesture and, unknown to him, his palms would glitter with beads pressed into his flesh.
I had asked for someone well-spoken and found someone with a lot to say. Randy was raised Anglo, mainstream-style, and did not learn he had Native blood until he was thirty years old. He looked and spoke like an average white man, but his beliefs reflected someone actively trying to integrate a set of values he had not learned as a child but felt connected to nevertheless.
RA: I'm a truck driver by trade. Do you hitchhike?
BH: Uh huh.
RA: Have you ever hitchhiked with a driver who was real tired? You should try it sometime. I drove from Seattle, Washington to Portland, Oregon. I had been up three days and have no recollection of driving from Seattle to Portland. In between Seattle and Portland I called my father-in-law and put 150 gallons of fuel in my truck and don't remember it.
BH:...Speaking of time...
RA:...It was all gone!
BH: Do you manage your time in any way?
RA: No. I have to get up at a certain time to go to work, but outside of that whatever happens, it comes along and that's the time to be doing it. Pow Wows are a good example because Pow Wows never start on time. They say: "Well, we'll start at 6:30," so plan on 7:30, maybe 8:00. But I've never seen a Pow Wow start on time. I've seen them end because of the pressure from the outside community, because the society says: "Well, after 11:00 you can't make a lot of this loud noise." But if you go out in some of the places they'll drum all night long. So, where's your conception of time there? There's none. It's whatever is convenient for you.
You're dictated by certain times of the day. A good example might be sunrise, if you don't have electricity and whatnot--if you stay in a teepee or lodge--when it's dark it's time to go to bed. When it's light it's time to get up and do something. Middle of the day, you're hungry. So the dictates of the natural cycle, which I guess would be a form of time, would be about the only management we have. We don't really go by time. It's kind of a drag to go by time.
BH: Do you think that's more of a personal choice you've made or does that come from your upbringing, and your culture, and your native roots?
RA: I'd say it has to come from my roots, my culture. My upbringing: 6:30 you had to be up, 7:30 you had to be at school, and then you were dictated through the school day. Very regimented, you couldn't break that regimen or you got in trouble. When I was in the service it was very regimented. But overall I've tried to stay with the natural time cycle. I guess, you know, a rhythm within your body: you know when you're hungry, you know when you're tired, you know when you're thirsty. If you look, everything you do is a time thing. Us talking, you took the time out. But did you take time out of your day or did you take time out of my day?
BH: Both.
RA: Not really, 'cause I enjoy talking...[laughs]
BH: Do you think that your views represent the views of your culture? Do you think that you're pretty typical...your perspective of time?
RA: Prior to the coming of the Europeans all our basic time was the four seasons. Or along the coast: when the salmon were runnin', when the salmon weren't runnin'. You know, certain times of the year. Every tribe has its own time system, but it's just natural, it's not: "Well, it's 12:30 and thirty seconds right now." When the deer are in rut, that's when you don't hunt. Because they're out there trying to get a mate. You try and wait 'til after the rut. 'Cause meat doesn't taste good on a deer during the rut, no it doesn't. Or elk, same thing. So it's a more natural rhythm. Calendars, if you look at calendars per se, that's a learned thing because we didn't have calendars. When Blackhawk was here, when the Prophet was here, when Chief Seattle was here, that's what they based their time on. So I would say by and large my views are typical.
BH: Do you think the average human life is a long time?
RA: I think if I live to be seventy-five or three quarters of a century I'll be very lucky. I wouldn't want to live much beyond that, because then you're living into your grandchildren's time. If I see my children's children grow up, my grandchildren, I'll be very happy. To see great-grandchildren, well: maybe, maybe not. I would choose not to, because my time here is done. I've done what I've set out to do. I raised good kids, good citizens, and they're doin' the same. Your kids are what your time legacy is.
BH: How so?
RA: Well, whatever you teach a child, your child--not what society teaches them, but what you teach them--is going to continue on down through the generations. What society teaches 'em changes every decade. [laughs] Comes and goes. But what I teach them is moral values, good character traits and whatnot. That stays with them, and they pass that down to their kids.
BH: How long do you think the human race will survive?
RA: 'Til Grandmother or Grandfather is tired of 'em. When you start saving endangered species, what you're doing is you're taking a self-preservation attitude. You save the Spotted Owl, you're actually saving human kind. We could live as long as the dinosaurs or as brief as a mayfly. When Mother Nature is tired of us, she'll get rid of us. Look what she did with the dinosaurs. We've had five major extinctions on this planet where 99.9 percent of life is erased. And there's few species that survived it. Cockroaches survived it; are they worried about whether they're going to die out or not? No.
BH: How long ago do you think the Earth or the universe was created?
RA: Well if you go back to my legends within my tribe, especially within my clan, there were four wolves that came out of the Great Lakes. The water was always here and then the four wolves come out and started my clan...
BH: Is it not a matter of time?
RA: No, I don't think it is...If you go scientific; if you go by what popular belief is; if you go by Native American beliefs...It's just an opinion, actually. It's your own personal opinion. How old do you think the earth is? I can give you "scientific proof" of how old it is but...
BH: Scientists say five billion years, but...
RA: And within that five billion years you've got, what, 240 million years ago to sixty-four million years ago the dinosaurs ruled? Man's only been here a little less than a million years if you go scientifically. I don't really care...
BH: How do you divide your time? Do you do it by minute or hour or day or month, or is it not even about that to you?
RA: It's not even about that. It's whatever "She" tells me. [laughs] When you work you have to divide your time. You divide your time by what society tells you to, the dominant society. I don't set down and say: "Well, by five o'clock today I should have made $1,000 and each hour I work is worth this much money." I don't know how to answer that question. I guess I don't divide my days up. You just get up, go do whatever you have to do, and you go home. [laughs] I do have hunting season or fishing season. I don't know how to divide it.
BH: How often do you think about your ancestors?
RA: A lot. Especially after I've gotten older. I think about how they would have done things. If you compare the two lifestyles--today's society with my ancestors' society--it's just as complex, the interactions within societal individuals. But their needs were a lot simpler. You weren't made to think you needed the car, or the Sony, or any of that other stuff. Now you're made to feel you need all these things. And you can't take these things with you. And it all boils down to: When you die, how are you going to go? When they put you in the ground, are you going to have clothes on or clothes off? Well, if you think about it, how'd you come into this world?
BH: Naked.
RA: Why are you going to go out in a tuxedo? [laughs] Why do you need all the things? It makes life easier in this society, but in other societies it doesn't. I could live quite nicely if I could just do my beadwork within the Native American community. Because it's not a matter of dollars, it's not a matter of who has the most of this [indicates his beads]. You create your own nook or niche, and there you are. If you're a good storyteller, they'll pay you for stories. You know, they won't pay you in cash per se, but you'll get a place to stay and whatnot.
BH: How often do you wonder about your grandchildren, their children, and their children's children?
RA: Where I worry about the human race: Now, my kids shouldn't have to pay for what I have done in this world. And my grandkids should not have to pay for it either. It's become such a vicious cycle. And it's just feeding on itself and so many places are dying and depressed. A good example is if you look at the Southern Oregon coast: for years they logged there, right? And now the great-grandchildren of the people that did that are paying the cost of that. So what will their children have or their grandchildren have? Nothin'. They won't have the quality of life they have here now. What will your children have as a quality of life here in Eugene? Fifteen years ago here in Eugene: 65-75,000 people...fifteen years ago. Now you're up to almost 200,000...So, do I worry about grandchildren? Yeah, I worry about it and I wonder about it. I know they'll have the culture and they'll have all the right stuff they'll need, but outside of that I worry about what society's going to do to them.
BH: How long do you think is a long time?
RA: I think a human life span is a long time. How old are you?
BH: Twenty-two.
RA: And in twenty-two years you've seen quite a change in the world. And I've seen the changes. So I would consider a hundred years, which is a century, is a long time. I can't picture myself living beyond a hundred years; I don't want to live beyond a hundred years. Seventy-five years would be nice...100 years would be terrible.
Pauline--Referral Coordinator with managed medical care. European descent.
When I pulled out the microphone and showed it to Pauline, I thought the interview, which hadn't started anyhow, was over. She gasped. The reason it progressed was her friends' insistence.
BH: Do you practice time management?
P: Yes. If I have a lot of appointments or if I need to remember something. Sometimes I keep lists. But I'm not so busy that I just can't keep it in my head, usually.
BH: How do you most commonly divide your time? By minute, hour, or day, or season, or year?
P: Oh gosh. Probably day.
BH: What do you think is a long time?
P: Well that depends on what you're doing. A long time could be fifty years, a long time could be a couple hours, it just depends on what you're doing.
BH: Do you think the average human life is a long time?
P: Not long enough.
BH: How long do you think the human race will survive?
P: I'd say thousands or millions of years.
BH: How old do you think the earth is?
P: I don't know--tens of millions of years. I think it's just been here always.
BH: Do you ever think about your ancestors?
P: Yes.
BH: Do you ever think about the people that have your blood, your descendants, the people that aren't alive right now?
P: Yes.
BH: What do you think about those two groups? I'm sure it's different, but...
P: Descendants, I worry about what their life will be like in the future...What kind of a world they'll have to live in. I think about that. I hope that it'll be good.
And ancestors, I sometimes wonder what life was like for them. I don't know...Not sure what else to say about that.
BH: I think those are all my questions.
P: Oh, good.
Thomas Sumiall Little Crow--Comanche and Cherokee. Florence, OR. Retired. Mixed Native and European descent.
I looked through the collection of Native American booths with the intention of finding someone who might otherwise get overlooked. Wheelchair-bound and wearing a five o'clock shadow, Thomas was a vendor displaying dream catchers and other Native standards. He talked with half a smile and when he spoke about his great-grandfather his eyes shone.
His wife stood behind him and never said a word while I was there. But when her husband spoke of their grandchildren she proudly pointed to a dream catcher and prodded him to explain it had been made by their grandson.
BH: Did you grow up on a reservation?
TSLC: No, I grew up on a ranch--my grandmother's ranch. My great-grandfather came to the ranch in 1946 from Fort Sill. He was alive when I was small and he taught me things that were traditional, and I learned a lot of things from him--silverwork. Just glad that he was alive until 1956. And I wore a path out to his teepee about a mile and a half away. I spent many nights listening to his stories. He was with Quanah Parker on the last big raids into Texas in 1875. He took me out and showed me things: where campsites were, where Comanche battle sites were.
BH: Do you manage your time in any way?
TSLC: Oh yeah. I have certain times that I do work in. And certain times that I do carvings. I do chokers. After the Pow Wows I work hard to get my stock back up for the next one.
BH: How long is a long time to you?
TSLC: Twenty, thirty years...
BH: How do you most commonly divide your time? Do you do it by season, by minute, hour, day, year...?
TSLC: By season. I don't wear a watch, I don't care about telling time. I work 'til I feel like I'm ready to quit: that's it. If I wanna go fishin', I'll pick up my pole and go fishin'.
BH: Do you think the average human life is a long time?
TSLC: My great-grandfather: 115. Great-grandmother: 112. Grandma: 102. And I'm pushing sixty-one. Do I look like I'm sixty-one?
BH: So, do you think it's a long time, a human life?
TSLC: Well, my great-grandfather's was a long time, yeah. A long time.
BH: Do you think your views of time are similar to most Americans' views of time?
TSLC: I don't think so. They go by the minute, I go by the year or longer. To me, they're runnin' around like a chicken with their head cut off, workin' for that almighty dollar, and going: "Oh, I've got to go. I'm late." [laughs]
BH: Do you feel like your views of time represent your culture, as in your Native culture?
TSLC: Yeah, I think so. To them, if we're going to have a dance, there's no set time that they're going to have the dance. They'll have it when they feel like having it.
BH: How long ago do you think the earth or the universe was created?
TSLC: Oh, gee. Millions of years ago. That's a long time. [laughs]
BH: How long do you think the human race will survive?
TSLC: If they don't straighten up they might not survive too much longer. Lotta things they're doin' wrong: pollution, war, the United States trying to be policemen to the world. Nah, that's not right--mind your own business.
BH: How often do you think about your ancestors?
TSLC: All the time. My great-grandfather talks to me when I'm working on pipes. He tells me what the stone says, how I'm going to make it. I just work 'til it comes out.
Christian Hill--City Government Reporter, Springfield News (Springfield, OR). European descent.
At a certain point I felt I had talked only with people who had uncommon views of Time. I needed to find someone who was "average." Christian seemed to fit the description. He was trying to give away free newspapers and raffle off $100 in groceries.
Whatever average is, Christian might be it. And if so, he proves how insightful and free-thinking average people are.
During our talk, to his right sat a fellow newspaper peddler: an outgoing teenager who talked about his Christian (as in Jesus) heavy-metal band and the neon orange pants they wore on stage.
BH: Do you manage your time?
CH: Yes. As a newspaper reporter it's an important component. It doesn't always work that well, at least for me I guess.
BH: How do you divide your time? By minute, hour, day, week, month, year, season?
CH: Usually hourly. If I go to a meeting it's two hours, three hours. If I have to get up and prepare myself it's an hour and a half.
BH: What do you think is a long time?
CH: That's definitely changed for me as I've gotten older. When I was younger, waiting two weeks for Christmas seemed like an eternity.
Working as a reporter, a week just flies by. My grandfather said: "As we get older time seems to fly by because we do the same tasks over and over. When we were younger everything was new--it seemed to take longer." I think he had a good point.
BH: Do you think a human life is a long time?
CH: Yeah. It's always funny, you hear these people say: "I'd like to live forever." But seventy, eighty years is a long time. It gives you the time to do what you need to do. You only have so much time on this planet and you don't get it back.
BH: How long ago do you think the earth was created?
CH: Interesting question...There's been this whole argument between creation and evolution. I don't know, I'd say 500 million years. It's been a long time. I've never really been spiritual. In high school I learned biology; I have a lot of friends who are very religious and believe in creationism. I tend to believe in evolution--nothing's wrong with the other one either.
BH: How long do you think the human race will survive?
CH: If they start taking their environment they won't last that long. I don't know, but I hope it's an outside cause rather than us destroying our resources. I'm definitely not an environmental activist but there definitely need to be [environmental] safeguards.
BH: Do you think your views of time are similar to most people's views of time?
CH: No, I don't. Every individual has their own sense of time. It has to do with their background. Everybody's sense of time is as unique as they are.
BH: Do you ever think about your ancestors?
CH: Hmmm, not really. I think about my grandparents, but beyond that not really. A lot of people get into genealogy and tracing their family tree, but I've never really been into that.
BH: Do you ever think about your children, your children's children, and their children's children?
CH: I'm at that point of thinking about having kids. I watch the news and see school shootings, and, as I mentioned, the environment. I think it's each generation's responsibility to leave the next generation better than they had.
BH: How would you define "better"? More materially blessed, a safer world...?
CH: Personal happiness. When we work for preparing the earth for the next generation it's going to be easier to buy a house, a clean environment, less crime. Materialism is the antithesis of what we should be working for.
William Merrill (Frank's son)--Karuk Nation (Northern California). Eugene, OR. Mixed Native and European descent.
I first saw William dressed in full regalia, pacing around the crowd during the dances. A dozen feathers hung at an angle over his face and he regularly tipped his head back to see under them. He reminded me of a big cat nervously establishing territory or assessing a rival. He was young and lean and obviously took pride and pleasure in the performance.
When I first asked if I could talk with him he answered: "Why not, it's a free country, ain't it?" and began laughing hysterically through an almost toothless mouth. Transcribing the other interviews, I often heard William's laughter in the background.
Initially I wondered what kind of response I would get to my questions. Later, listening to the tape, I was incredibly surprised at the insight he possessed. I felt the full impact of William's statements when he spoke of his own encounters with Time and how deeply the subject had influenced his life. His remarks, in my opinion, sum up the reason for these interviews.
BH: Do you think the average human life is a long time?
WM: Yeah, if you live your life right. If you give people honor and respect and treat people the way you want to be treated your life will go a lot longer than what it is if you treat people wrong. This is what my grandparents taught me: if you treat people with honor and respect your life goes smoothly and it goes in a nice row so you'll live longer and fulfill your destiny because you lived your life where it wasn't so forceful. And if you live your life where you're into drugs and alcohol too much you end up dying earlier. When you do things in a proper way and get things properly from the Mother Earth your life will go longer and further.
BH: Do you manage your time in any way, keep track of your time?
WM: I tried. I went to Lane Community College [in Eugene, OR] and they taught me how to do time-consuming things where you write it in a book, and it didn't work for me because all the elders send people to me to make things, and I put people on the dance floor, and I help the little ones out. And it was hard for me to keep time with that book. Yeah, my classes fit in, but when it came time to make things or help the little ones out I didn't have the time any more 'cause I was tryin' to go by a book. But when I don't go by that book and when I just go for it I get everything done that's supposed to be done in that day. But if I put it on a piece of paper I miss maybe ten or twenty percent of my stuff--I forgot all what was on that paper. We don't go in order, we always just do what you need to do to get it done, and you don't have an order about it.
BH: Do you feel your views of time are similar to your culture's views of time?
WM: Yeah. We believe that when we show up, that's the time when we're supposed to be there. That's why it's hard when you have a schedule for the Native people, because we were taught there isn't such a thing as time--you're on time all the time, 'cause when it's your time to be there Grandfather's going to have you be there. When I go to work I don't watch the clock like other people--they want to watch the clock, because they want to make sure they don't work more than they have to. I always was taught that you work and you know inside when it's time to quit. You set your own time clock. These are the ways we were taught about time.
BH: Do you think your views of time are similar to American society's views of time?
WM: No. They want you on time for everything. You can't be late. If you're late for work so many times you're going to get fired, and that's the American way. They've got that clock. They think everybody should be on this time clock all the time. When you're on a time clock all the time you really don't have a life.
With today's society, with jobs, they hire people because they look decent, but if you don't, you don't get hired. It's the same with time, you know. You shouldn't look at people in any different way because their time is different. You shouldn't fire people because they believe time differently. But a lot of people were raised by a clock. Native people, we wake up, and that's our time clock, that's when we start our day. American society, or the European way, they all want you to be there at certain times or you don't accomplish anything, you know. If you're not at work on time after so long you get a blue slip, then pink slip, and then you're fired. And it's hard for Native American people sometimes because we're so used to not having a clock. But we've got two societies; we've got to live both of 'em. When you're trying to teach the young the native way, you've also got to teach 'em the European way because if we don't teach them that they're going to lose the focus of time. Like I had. I lost the focus of time. I don't believe in time. When I try to believe in it, it doesn't work for me. But if I just let it go, it works better.
BH: I'm curious about the two cultures. When you were growing up, did your grandfather or your parents teach you that one view was better than another?
WM: No. When I was growin' up, we just knew when it was time to get up, time to go do our chores. When we got up we went straight to the bean fields or we went straight to whatever we had to do to make our money, because that is the way we were raised. And I wish that our people would teach the kids more about the time. With work, start them out young, teach them how to mow lawns or whatever so they'll learn that value of time. Because time, nowadays, is valuable.
We don't have all the time in the world anymore. You don't know if you're going to walk down the street and get shot. A long time ago, time wasn't too bad--you could just go live it. Like I got raised, you just live your life day by day and wake up and go. But now, we can't do that because time is valuable. You don't know how long you're going to be on this earth. You might be someone that everybody's going to need to talk to or see, so that time is valuable to you. So you've got to live your life and learn how to work with that time. And that's why the Indian people are mixed up in two worlds: we're mixed up in the European society and we're mixed up in the Indian way. I would love just to live this way [the festival way] all the time and not have any worries, you know. But you can't, because in today's society you've got to work, you've got to have money, and you've got to have focus on time. Because if you don't, you'll always be late for everything you go to.
Before, when we used to do this Pow Wow here, we didn't have set times. And this year we have set times, and we're supposed to be on the stage for only forty-five minutes at a time. And it makes it hard for us because we're used to talking about it [the dancing] so people know what's going on. So we go out there and explain it--instead of just going out there and dancing--because some people might not understand. And it's hard when you've got a set time, because Native people never were taught time. We always were taught: "Time just goes, you just let it go." And, then when it's over, it's time for the next time. And this is the way we were raised. But when you live in this society you have to learn the other way too. And if you don't have both ways you won't live in today's society.
BH: How often do you think about your ancestors?
WM: I'm constantly praying about 'em. I'm constantly doing stuff with 'em. Before I do anything...Every morning I wake up, I smudge and pray to the Grandfather and Grandmother Earth for having us here. If She wasn't here, we wouldn't be here. And see, a lot of people forget to pray for Her. If She wasn't here we wouldn't have any place to walk on. So I'm constantly with my culture, with my ancestors. I believe if I keep them here all the time I'm going to be a better person.
BH: How long do you think the human race will survive?
WM: Well, all my life my grandma told me I was in a dream world and everything I make is in a dream world. In my dreams I've been seeing, it's pretty scary. When I was a kid about twelve years old I had a dream. I told my grandma before she passed over and she said: "Your dream will come true." Now the dream is starting to come true. And if this dream comes true, this world's only going to be here for three more years. I'm hopin' it won't come true because everybody gets put in camps like they did the Jews. They split people up. In this dream I wake up in sweat; it's the only dream I freak out on. I got rid of it when I was young, and now it's coming back strong. I believe in my dreams.
My dream is so scary because I see the world going underwater, I see the big storms coming, I see the big floods. And we're already in that area; we're already in that time. Grandmother Earth's been calling out, trying to get help for the last twenty-five centuries, no one's listening to Her. That's why we're having the biggest earthquakes and the biggest tidal waves ever 'cause She's been trying to get 'em to listen and no one's listening. So pretty soon, everything that's in the Bible ('cause I read it when I was younger) is coming true right now. In my dreams is what's been in that Bible. And what's so weird: before I read that Bible I had these dreams. I talk to elders, I talk to young people, and I talk to people that had dreams like me and they see the same thing I do.
So, in my dreams the world's only here for three more years. And there's certain people that aren't going to live: the ones that are rich, that don't care for the land, they're all going to go. Because they care about nothin' but themselves. The ones who care about the people, care about the land, they're going to be here. Grandmother and Grandfather's going to keep 'em here because they need to bring the land back. They're the ones that are going to survive. And this is what I see in my dreams. In my heart I believe it's comin'. Soon.
Brad Horn is a writer, photographer, and adventurer with a fondness for the spoken word. He is currently living at Lost Valley Educational Center and is avoiding group singalongs whenever possible. You can reach him at [email protected].
©1999 Talking Leaves
Winter 2000
Volume 9, Number 3
Human Time, Natural Time
I have a love-hate relationship with time, because there are so many things I have to do, as well as so many things I like to do. My whole life long, time has passed too quickly, forcing me each day to leave undone things I wished I had done: a long bike ride, a leisurely weeding session in the garden, an uninterrupted hour of piano practice, cooking a really creative meal, curling up with a good book after dinner, organizing the file boxes in my attic which hold a lifetime of work. Time "triage"--choosing what I can do and what I cannot in the time available each day--is a constant challenge.
The only way to escape time's presence in my life is to be dead, an option I do not find, at this point, very attractive. So how do I befriend time, rather than resisting its hold on me?
In this, as in so much else, I can learn from the wisdom of nature. Discovering how other species experience time gives me some perspective.
Judith and Herbert Kohl, in their book The View from the Oak[1] (supposedly written for children), describe a "moment in time" as the fastest change that a living creature can notice. They suggest that we look at other species through an imaginary "time microscope" that would allow us to see changes that we are not ordinarily able to observe.
Suppose, for example, I were a female spider. I would be aware of moments through movements that a human being could not even perceive. Tiny vibrations in my web would tell me when an amorous male was approaching, and I would send messages through the same silken telegraph to warn my offspring when danger was looming.
If I were a dolphin, I would be able to distinguish moments of sound as high as 200,000 cycles per second. Human beings who tried to listen to me would be put in the position of someone who tries to hear a Shakespeare play on television with the sound on the set turned off, for humans can only distinguish sounds up to 15,000 cycles were second.
What if I were a bee? Someone watching what seemed like random buzzing would never guess that I was performing an elaborate dance lasting only thirty seconds, moving my antennae and body to tell my friends that there was honeysuckle growing on the fence exactly twenty-three feet northeast of the hive.
If this fast-track animal world makes me feel breathless, I could choose instead to look through a "time telescope" to observe the world of the very slow. What would a moment--the fastest perceivable change that can be noticed--be for a snail? If I were that creature, my world would move at what has accurately been called a "snail's pace." The fastest movement I could even perceive would be 1/4 of a second. (To understand what that means, imagine that four taps per second on the back of your neck felt like constant pressure!) According to naturalists, who somehow have managed to discover a snail's view of life, if I saw the quick movement of a bird flying toward me with open beak, grass blowing in the wind, or cars speeding by, I would think they were standing still.
The creatures who share the planet with me know their own rhythm instinctively. It is unlikely that you will find a snail with a Type A personality, or a bumblebee with chronic fatigue syndrome. How can we Homo sapiens find the rhythm that is natural to us, enabling us to live in harmony with time?
The problem is that, unlike the rest of the animal world (or so people think), we humans are conscious of the passage of time, and usually anxious about it as well. We are anxious because there are so many things to be done, and because time is what is carrying us forward in life towards its inevitable end. It is a problem that affects our bodies, our minds, and our spirits, usually in negative ways, such as high blood pressure, discontent, and depression.
I was thinking about this the other day as I was riding my bicycle up a small hill (there are only small hills in our part of Ohio) and noticing the rhythm of my breathing. Perhaps we can begin becoming comfortable with the world of time just by doing that, I thought: observing the breath!
For we are a species, too, with our own rhythm, our own pace. And that pace is built into our bodies, our heartbeat and our breathing. No wonder that meditation, in which the practitioner sits quietly observing the breath, is calming: it is one of the few times when we notice our own tempo.
As we notice our own tempo in breathing, perhaps we'll begin to notice other signals from our bodies that will help us live "in time." Perhaps we'll begin to notice, for example, when we're tired, whether it be because of a long morning of work outdoors in the summer or the early darkness of a winter evening. Maybe we'll notice when our muscles are tense because we're overwhelmed with the pressure of too many things to do and not enough time to do them.
And then maybe we'll think about the bees and the snails. They just live their lives, moment by moment. From our human perspective, some of their moments are unimaginably short or incomprehensibly long. But I think that they do not worry about the next moment, or the moments that have passed.
We humans tend to drag our past moments into our present ones in unhelpful ways, regretting that we cannot re-live them. Or else we forget the moment we are in because we are thinking about future moments. We try to live all our moments at once.
When my long list of activities begins to overwhelm me, I like to remember the advice of the fourteenth-century sage Meister Eckhardt: "Wisdom is simply this: to do the next thing that has to be done, to do it with all your heart, and to take delight in doing it."
Eckhardt reminds me that the time in which I live is not the past, nor is it the future. While it is wise to learn from the past, and to prepare for the future, I do not live there. I live here. Now.
Time moves inexorably from moment to moment. We can resist that fact, or celebrate it. Nature reminds us of that reality every day. The dancing bee, the creeping snail, the blossoms unfolding in the sunlight and closing at dusk, the seasons in their ceaseless cycle, all help our species to cope with the fact of time, and to live fully in the present.
____________
[l] Judith and Herbert Kohl, The View from the Oak: The Private Worlds of Other Creatures (San Francisco/New York: Sierra Club Books/Charles Scribner's Sons, 1977).
Nancy Roth is having the time of her life in Oberlin, Ohio, where, at various moments, you can find her occupied with writing books and articles, teaching creative movement to young children, leading spirituality workshops for adults, practicing the piano, chairing a local grass-roots activist group, tending her garden, attending to her ministry as an Episcopal priest, and keeping in touch with family and friends.
©1999 Talking Leaves
Winter 2000
Volume 9, Number 3
Human Time, Natural Time
What weighs thirty tons, has as much radiation as 200 Hiroshima bombs, and is projected to pass within a half mile of your home? That would be a canister of high level radioactive waste, traveling from one of the 109 aging nuclear power plants in this country to Yucca Mountain, Nevada, the proposed "final resting place" for America's most deadly garbage.
The Department of Energy (DOE) released its draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for a proposed Nuclear Waste Repository at Yucca Mountain in August, 1999. It is to this mountain, at the heart of the Western Shoshone Nation, a place of deep spiritual significance to Shoshone and Pauite peoples, that the federal government hopes to send 98% of the burden of radioactivity generated during the entire Nuclear Age.
Despite heated criticism by Native and environmental forces, the Yucca Mountain proposal remains the only site under government study for the permanent disposal of high level nuclear waste. The Department of Energy has already dumped three billion dollars into the project and wants to spend 35 billion more to complete it. The release of the EIS marks another DOE step toward opening the dump by the projected completion date of 2010.
More than 200 grassroots groups--Native and non-Native--have been organizing to seek broad participation in the Environmental Impact Statement process. As a result, the rushed public comment period has been extended to the legal 180 day period but still severely limits the ability of the vast majority of impacted people to testify.
That's because the Yucca Mountain EIS largely sidesteps the issue of transport. High level waste designated for Yucca Mountain will be moving on American highways and train routes by the front yards of more than 50 million Americans. The transportation of this waste poses a huge public health risk. DOE studies project a rate of one accident per 343 shipments. That translates into, at the very minimum, 268 accidents over the next thirty years as up to 90,000 shipments of nuclear waste make their way to Yucca Mountain.
The hearings, which began on September 27, 1999, and continue through January, 2000, now include eight Nevada towns, one community each in Idaho, Utah, Missouri, Colorado, California, Georgia, and a hearing in Washington, DC. Those hearing sites will not allow easy access for communities in forty-three other states who are endangered by the transportation proposals. Shoshone and anti-nuclear organizers are urging people to attend the hearings, send in written comments to the DOE, and request hearings in their impacted areas.
The Shoshone are also asking people to support Native land rights issues raised by the EIS. What is continually glossed over by the decision makers and ignored in the EIS is the fact that Newe Sogobia, land guaranteed the Western Shoshone Nation by treaty, includes Yucca Mountain. Even study of the site is a violation of the treaty. The Shoshone want the DOE off their land and their mountain restored to them. Upholding the treaty can be an important political and legal tool for organizers to stop the dump, but the Shoshone face extreme geographic and political isolation; without sufficient public support, they fear their voice will not be heard. That isolation is reflected in a statement by Rep. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina: "God made Yucca Mountain for the express purpose of storing high level nuclear waste. There's nothing within 100 miles of the place." Add racism to low level logic and you get a high level waste dump.
Perhaps as alarming as the absence of transportation issues and a concern for justice are the obscured health considerations in the EIS. According to the DOE study, the steel canisters buried in Yucca Mountain will eventually leak. The DOE is planning to store more than 70,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel in miles of tunnels 1,000 feet underground. At least one storage canister of the more than 10,000 canisters envisioned would fail within the next thousand years. And after 10,000 years, according to a New York Times report on the DOE proposal, all of the canisters may degrade.
What may be worse is that an earthquake at Yucca Mountain could cause groundwater to surge up in the storage area forcing dangerous amounts of plutonium into the atmosphere and contaminating the water supply. This is not an unlikely scenario given that the area is a seismic minefield. More than 621 earthquakes have been recorded in the area at a magnitude of 2.5 or higher in the last twenty-some years. It is not surprising that the nuclear industry has fought heavily against any groundwater radiation standards for the facility, saying it could threaten the entire project.
According to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1992, radiation standards for the facility would need to be set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The EPA has proposed a standard of fifteen millirem per year as the exposure limit for people living near the site--a standard which, according to environmental groups, is inadequate for the protection of human health. EPA also suggests only a 10,000 year compliance period for the standards, while the DOE estimates the peak dose of radiation will occur 300,000 years after the waste if stored. "The Yucca Mountain Environmental Impact Study simply does not allow for the development of a repository that insures containment from the biosphere over the required period of time," states George Crocker, an energy policy activist of 25 years and Director of the Prairie Island Coalition in Minnesota.
Shoshone groups are adamant that any additional radiation risk to their community is unacceptable. The Shoshone Nation is already the most bombed nation on earth and suffers from widespread cancer, leukemia, and other disease as a result of fallout from more than 600 atomic explosions in their territory. To add to this risk is outlandish injustice.
In the meantime, pending legislation before Congress to rewrite the Nuclear Waste Policy Act would strip the EPA of all authority to set any standards at Yucca Mountain. Government and industry changes to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (appearing each session before Congress as a bad sequel and defeated now five years in a row) pretty much "throw radiation standards out," according to Micheal Marriot of the Nuclear Information Resource Service in Washington, DC. Such legislation would miraculously overcome most of the public health hurdles to the Yucca Mountain project with the stroke of a pen.
1999's revision of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act also dangerously allows on-site storage of nuclear waste outside power plans until Yucca Mountain or an "interim" dump site is ready. That "interim dump" may be on a Utah reservation (Skull Valley Goshute land) if the industry has its way. The on-site storage authorization is handy for utilities who don't want to have to fight citizen groups about turning their nuclear reactors into de-facto nuclear waste lots. The bill also provides for the federal government (meaning taxpayers) to take ownership of the waste and liability for it. What this means is that the utilities, as might be expected, will be abdicating responsibility for waste they created over the past thirty years. Summarizing the legislation, Crocker states that "It's the latest in a long line of stop gap measures by the industry to continue operations and accommodate the production of more nuclear waste--despite the fact that the industry doesn't know how to deal with the waste it has."
As the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1999 is metamorphosing in Congress, electrical utility industry contributions to elected officials are turning into policy. Over the past few years, the members of the Nuclear Energy Institute, i.e. your utilities, have anted up, sending about $12.8 million to their congressional delegations to try to assure pro-nuclear law and an end to their nuclear waste dilemma.
In short, this fall's hearings and what occurs in Congress affect far more people than those living in Nevada. If you'd like to put in your two cents' worth, an amount likely far less than those utility bills you presently pay, send your comments to the Department of Energy and Congress so that those fifty million people within a half mile of those transport routes and the Natives peoples endangered by these proposals might get to have a say.
Send your comments about Yucca Mountain to: Bill Richardson, US Department of Energy, Washington, DC 20009. Be sure to request a hearing in your community, if one is not scheduled.
Winona LaDuke, an internationally acclaimed Native American activist, founded the White Earth Recovery Project and the Indigenous Women's Network, and participates in the Honor the Earth campaign ([email protected], www.honorearth.com). The author of All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life (South End Press, 1999), Last Standing Woman (Voyageur Press, 1997), and many articles on indigenous and environmental issues, she was also Ralph Nader's vice-presidential running mate on the Green Party ticket in the 1996 US presidential elections. An Anishinaabe, she lives on the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota.
©1999 Talking Leaves
Winter 2000
Volume 9, Number 3
Human Time, Natural Time
When the clouds would break and Mount Blackburn (known as the place of cold waters in the Athna language) would emerge with its sixteen thousand feet of stunning beauty, I would be struck by the timelessness of such a moment.
Out of these walks, thoughts, and listenings, I offer the following piece.-David La Chapelle
As the arrow of time hits the target of January 1, 2000, the modern world will cast a concerned eye to discover how its computer systems weather the date change. For a Hopi elder atop a mesa watching the canopy of stars that map the skies of her homeland, the date will pass as a small whisper in a much larger story of creation. She will be considering the prophecy of her people and the epic story of their migrations through many worlds. The memory of the Hopi prophecies will be wrapped around her like a shawl, her place in time anchored by the unfolding of her people's wisdom.
For a manager of an automobile assembly line in Flint, Michigan, January 1, 2000, will roll over amidst increasing tension and concern about whether all the testing and remediation of software and embedded chips to make them compliant with the year 2000 date change will, in fact, achieve the goal of continuing business as usual.
For a Mayan shaman gazing out over the rising sun as it warms the waters of the Atlantic, the day will pass without undue notice. Instead, perhaps, his mind will be contemplating the approaching end of time, foretold by his ancestors, some twelve years in the future. Perhaps he will be wondering why the modern world is so fixated on the year 2000.
For a Yu'pik hunter alone upon the ice, the day will dawn after a night of unusual and dramatic northern lights. Though the peak of the solar sunspot cycle will still be a few months away, the energy streaming into the polar regions on the solar wind will be enough to transform the night sky.
In homes and businesses, government offices, banks, industrial plants, airports, telecommunication centers, and armed forces command centers around the world, billions of people will be waiting to see if the infrastructure of the modern world will shudder through the morning of January 1, 2000 without a significant degradation of its capacity to continue doing business as usual.
The year 2000 computer crisis, known as Y2K, is a collision with time unprecedented in human history. One of the most ironic aspects of the crisis is that the preoccupation with linear time and efficiency which is endemic in the Western psyche will literally hit a wall on January 1, 2000. For the first moment in known human history, a specific date and a specific time have the potential to bring a civilization to its knees. This moment is not caused by portentous planetary alignments or other cosmologically significant celestial events, but is simply the result of the imposition of human time onto the external environment in a manner so clumsily executed that the estimated price tag of "fixing" the problem is in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
Fundamental to understanding the challenge of Y2K is a discussion of time. For this crisis is literally a product of a certain way of using time. Specifically, the crisis is a product of a linear, one directional use of time.
Industrial Time vs. Sacred Time
Clocks and watches are not the only way to chronicle the passage of time. In fact a case can be made that using timepieces which are divorced from larger systems creates a kind of time schizophrenia which erodes the mental stability, quality of life, and environment of those unfortunates who utilize such a process.
Numerous observatories erected by earlier cultures, from Chaco Canyon, to Stonehenge, to the city plan for Teotihuacan (in central Mexico), were remarkably accurate tools for gauging the movement of the heavenly bodies and predicting the passage of time. Entire cultures have been erected and maintained on an understanding of time which makes our Western linear model seem at best simplistic.
Without too much of an oversimplification, one could summarize the Western Industrial model of time with the well-known adage: time is money (or time is productivity). Try to find a word for deadline in any indigenous culture and I believe you will come up short.
We are now witnessing a twenty-four-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week mechanized world where time is treated as a commodity to be bought and sold. The irony of this increasingly voracious appetite for time by the industrial and commercial sectors of our society is that fewer and fewer people have any time left.
Many cultures throughout history have lived within and experienced time not as money, but as something sacred. The flow of time was intimately linked to the unfolding story of their people. Their relationship to the entire universe was seen as an unfolding of time. In Meso-America the understanding of time was so profound that they were able to map activities ranging from courtship to planting of food within a cosmological grid. This mapping gave something which our modern Daytimers and computers cannot give us: meaning.
The unfolding of time was so accurately understood that the ancient calendar-makers of Meso-America were even able to predict the current acceleration and possible breakdown of modern society.
From the Chinese in eastern Asia to the Maya of Meso-America, time was understood to flow in a spiral. The forward motion of time was seen as a spiral of cyclic growth with alternating rhythms of activity and rest: the same structure which encodes our genetic information and organizes galaxies. The very movement of our solar system through the galaxy traces a graceful spiral, with each planet circling the sun, but always entering a new place in space and time because of the motion of the entire system relative to the galactic center.
Time Unhinged
In the Western psyche, time became unhinged from its circularity and became a one directional arrow pointing towards the future. The name of time's movement in one direction was simple: progress. This crucial paradigm shift was catalyzed by the single most revered moment in Western culture: the death and resurrection of Christ. In order to understand the Western preoccupation with linear time, it is useful to consider some of the events and cultural gestalt surrounding his death.
Around 96 AD, on the Island of Patmos, a smallish island off the coast of Asia Minor, a man was to put ink to parchment and describe a vision that he had just been shown by an angel of the Lord. This man had been banished to the island for his revolutionary activities involving the spread of the early church. The island of Patmos is small, five miles wide by eleven miles long, and certainly must have contributed to his sense of containment and imprisonment. The document he wrote was to do as much to catalyze the modern computer crisis as any written since then.
When St. John finished the final line of the Book of Revelation and put down his pen, the waves of the sea were still peacefully lapping at the rock of the island upon which he stood, and they would continue to do so for nearly two thousand more years. But the waves of reckoning which he was to unleash in the Western psyche were far more tumultuous.
There is considerable debate about just who was this man on Patmos. Some argue that he was one of the four evangelists, a statement that is hard to support, given that he would have had to have been somewhere near 120 years old. His identity is not crucial to the time shift he launched, but the issue does leave us curious.
The document he wrote was very much a product of his age. The genre of apocalyptic writing had already been maturing for nearly two hundred years. The apocalyptic convention included the use of obscure numerological formulations, strong allegorical imagery and the presence of a guiding angel. All these are found in the Book of Revelation.
Visions are essentially subjective experiences which are numinous gifts from an unseen realm. But when one of them becomes a defining document of Western culture and appears structurally mapped in a style which had been developing for several hundred years, one has to prudently ask questions.
How much of his apocalyptic vision was a result of unconscious programming from literary devices of St. John's time? How much was his way of wrestling some degree of personal power from a situation of imprisonment and banishment? How much was driven by the revolutionary status of the early church, fighting as it was for its very life against a large oligarchy?
We cannot of course, ever answer these questions conclusively, but the asking of them is useful in examining the effect of this document.
Revolutionaries tend to be driven by the polarization of their position into dogmatic, black-and-white worlds with little ambiguity or compromise. The Book of Revelation could easily be read as a book of revolution. The strident tone, the ultimate battle of good and evil, and the end of time are all elements of any radical group trying to subvert the power of a dominant paradigm.
Revelation's Legacy
Whatever the source of St. John's vision and writing, what is compellingly true is how succinctly and accurately it summarized what was to become the legacy of the Christian era in regards to time.
Time, from the perspective of this worldview, is a finite process with a definite termination date. Events are expected to escalate as the forces of good and evil seek to do battle near the "end times." Finally after a titanic battle which lays waste to most of the world, Christ appears in the Second Coming, and all of those who are saved will be lifted above the carnal battlefield of polar opposites into a new heaven and will be shown a new earth.
Within this worldview the following attitudes can be found: Time, and matter, are prisons from which the holy person longs to be freed. Time is an onerous burden, calling for patience and forbearance. There is always a final judgment in which time is annihilated. The preoccupation with being saved at some future time gives one the right to abuse other humans beings and destroy the earth. It is always better to live for the end result than to pay too much attention to the means. (The modern translation of this is "progress at any price.")
Time as a Political Tool
One of the first recorded uses of time as a conscious political tool was in the Roman Empire where var