A Guide to Being (‘Green-Wise’)
or ‘How to Draw Energy from a Deeper Understanding of Nature (by joining the Nature-Aware, or Green-Enlightened)’
‘Are you one of the ‘green-wise’? This is a short guidebook of ‘green insight’ to enhance a deeper awareness of ‘what you are’ to Nature on a less spiritual and more scientific level. Featuring original artwork and inspiring quotes from popular science writers on evolution, life and death, prepare your ‘self’ to be changed…
Update your mind to a new, positive perspective, free from what society expects, and learn about permaculture and the power of truly ‘owning’ your life… It’s about time.’
Alternative titles:
‘How to Find and ‘Own’ Your Treasure, buried within Nature’
or
‘How to Play the Game of Being Alive (in Nature)’
Or, even…
‘How to Sleep the (Real) Sleep of Billionaires’
(A Guide to the Path of Being and Belonging for Everyone!)
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
CONTENTS
Intro (Why I’m Writing this Guide…)
More Time in Nature, for our own Health (and Sanity!)
Being Greenwise (1: A Simple, Flexible, Evolving ‘Code’ of Being)
Being Greenwise (2. Helping you to own your Reality)
Permaculture Gardens and a Tribal-Global, Collaborative Species
Control without Controlling
More on ‘Ownership’ (of YOUR reality)
To Sleep The Sleep of Billionaires
The Trends…..
Energy
Insight or Awareness of Power
The Weight of Stones in the River of Life and Time
Your Home and Environment
Work and Tools
Treasures in the Fountain
The Fountain and the Balance
Real Treasure Found?
We are Going to Die
The End, and A Beginning
Now You Have Joined ‘the Green-wise’…
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — -
Tyrell : She’s beginning to suspect, I think.
Deckard : Suspect? How can it not know what it is?
- from ‘Blade Runner’ (1982) movie
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
Intro (Why I’m Writing this Guide…)
This isn’t a practical guide, it’s more of a spiritual one, but by imparting some ‘green wisdom’, it may open a window in some of you to becoming more practical, helping clear your view, look through or beyond, much of the modern fog and distractions we (all of us) can at times feel lost in, or bewitched by. Distractions and social media can also make people self-obsessed and ‘locked in’ to their own views, and that’s not forgetting the dreams, workloads and projects we take on, some of them invented for ourselves, which we then carry around like weights.
A heightened awareness of ‘Nature’ (that force moving inside and outside) can help to reconcile us with our ‘selves’ within its greater system. For starters, a lot of people think of themselves as being greater than nature, as if it’s something to conquer or overcome. Or else they’re anxious or turned off by its ‘machinations’ when they watch one type of nature documentary on TV, or a shocking Youtube video.
Maybe you think you already know about Nature and your place in it? Maybe you have some ideas about Darwinism and the quiet war — the struggle for Life — busy all around us, in this great Game of Nature? Perhaps you have no idea at all? Well, at least try to give this guide a quick read. Maybe it can unlock some new (and some positive and reassuring) insights and sense of perspective.
Nature is not all beauty, but nor is it all harshness. It is something to respect. Much of what could be called ‘good’ evolves in nature. It survives. We can be more reassured about the nature of Nature! I know that naturalists are probably already wincing because I’ve used human words already, in my third paragraph; projected human language in describing something which just… is. Words like ‘war’, ‘struggle’, ‘busy’, ‘game’ and ‘good’: these are projections — assumptions — onto something which only seems like these things, to us, but only when you know a small part about it, and not the entire view, or the deeper view.
We use the word ‘violent’ to describe a lion bringing down an zebra when the killing technique is in fact a very ‘economical’ process in terms of energy. Nature is much bigger than these words and phrases: this process of energy and time, which doesn’t care much for any words really, and doesn’t care for methods or ideas or memories too much either. It’s quite reassuring: to know we can all keep moving on. We’ll focus more on energy later on.
Charles Darwin would often check himself in his writing when trying to describe both its alarming, or enchanting, manifestations. Nature and evolution are certainly not all about butterfly wings and unsettlingly large dinosaur teeth and bones. It’s more about environment, and this remains the ruling factor, and why shouldn’t it? It explains why creatures evolve, and why they devolve, and why doing either really has no consequence, if it means they survive and have the traits they need to live in an environment, not what they desire…
‘In reality, vanishingly few animals on Earth have bothered with much of either intelligence or dexterity. No animal has acquired remotely as much of either as have we… and the only other species to acquire a little of both (common and pygmy chimpanzees) have been rather unsuccessful.’
From ‘The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee’ by Jared Diamond
What things are evolving now? You can say: everything. It’s just very slow so you can’t easily detect it. Our language is evolving, religion is evolving (although it might never admit it), your coffee machine is evolving (the next model is out next week!), until the design is overtaken by a new, dominant technology. Or, it isn’t replaced, it just diversifies or branches off. One day, we may all stop using paper and ink. However, you can always ‘devolve’, and go back to it (especially in a power cut). It doesn’t matter as long as it does the job. Nothing matters to Nature. Environment is the main, deciding factor shaping the incessant adaptation and change. We also have code (our DNA) helping us grow and remember experience, in our bodies, and in our culture too, with all its signs, symbols and songs.
With such a rich legacy recorded in culture, and so much technology and options widely available, it can be confusing to know how ‘best’ to live. Perhaps we no longer need to worry? Perhaps we’re the only species to have broken free from our environment and can now adapt to anything?
But hang on… we still possess this legacy inside, growing and burning to stretch itself and feel alive, every day. And why should any creature want to live beyond its own environment, in its humble lifetime? Where does it think it’s going? The only reason might be to make the act of living, or ‘a life’, easier for itself. It is probably trying to streamline something, make itself more efficient. But this, you billionaires out there, is also a dangerous trend. Who wants to have everything easy? There are still gardeners out there using ancient methods of gardening, just because they might want to grow something their own way, and in their own time.
It may not always seem like it, but we have a wide array of options for how we can live and survive in our environments, or — and if you so choose to focus just on this — the attempt to make money only. The trouble with this latter strategy is it can lead people down very abstract paths, which take a toll, or completely ignore their physical — and mental — evolutionary history. But people adapt, go through phases, and, perhaps, ultimately manage to find a healthy balance.
As our infrastructure and systems go through turbulent times, people turn to more robust, even older technology, or local systems and techniques of living to help them survive more independently and take the strain off power grids, water mains etc. Starting up a permaculture garden can be beneficial for everyone. This is one practical window I’d personally promote, and it’s not too hard for anyone to do. More of this later.
First let me turn back to the quotation before this introduction, taken from a film called ‘Blade Runner’, which concerns an artificial consciousness (Rachel, a human-disguised android) that has never been told it’s artificial. You may have seen Ridley Scott’s cult, dystopian science-fiction movie. It’s an alternative reality where there’s hardly any sign of nature.
A lot of the modern world is artificial, and yet we’re fully in love with it. We’re in love with how it’s supposed to make our lives easier, work-free and be able to ‘own’ more time for ourselves.
The irony of the small extract of dialogue is that by the end of the movie, the bounty hunter tasked with tracking down these escaped, sentient androids, might in fact be one of them, meaning he — also — never knew, or was never told, about his fabricated, inner nature. We realise we might have been watching an android sent to catch an android.
By the end, reality itself is in question, along with questions about life and death’s meaning. The film implicates everyone stuck within a technologically-saturated, isolating, postmodern world to the extent that even the importance of truth is fading — and our fear (or absence of fear), and our paranoia surrounding this — has become the new reality.
If anything, those characters are searching for more life, more reality.
The last scene of the movie (the Director’s Cut edition) sees both Deckard and Rachel now ‘on the run’ together, hoping perhaps to just live out the remainder of their ‘lives’ free from the dystopian environment they’ve come from.
This new, mental reality, or its threat, is something many people are still running from. (It’s a theme present in many of Philip K Dick’s sci-fi books, where double-agents or cops frequently get lost in a fog of confusion, not knowing what or who they’re actually working for, and then start behaving erratically.)
What also strikes one about this dystopian movie Blade Runner, is also the sheer absence of physical nature, plants, green trees etc. A few animals do appear, but even they, we’re told, are fake.
I’m not suggesting we’re all androids, but I’d say that technology and many aspects of modern life are trying to turn us that way, by removing contact with the earth, with green nature and natural, hands-on work, even the picking of fruit or nuts from trees. Automation seeks to make life easier sure, but it removes the ‘being’ within nature. Lines get blurred.
Well, you know, there is evidence of what we are, and it’s in Nature. Let’s not behave erratically, if possible. Let’s know what we are, and the world we’ve evolved from.
More Time in Nature, for our own Health (and Sanity!)
Our planet is changing. We need to change. But it’s not all bad. We just need to wake up, and get back — closer — to the earth again.
And this is what is happening, if you watch the many gardening videos appearing these days on Youtube etc. In fact, never before have solutions like permaculture (gardening with the land, understanding energy, plants, relationships between plants, and respecting biodiversity) been reaffirmed, re-deployed and expanded upon.
This trend is how we’ll save as many as we can. Not spaceships or technological wonders to deliver us from having over-stimulated minds, by over-stimulating them even more. We need bottom-up priorities and not top-down tinkering.
We are so interconnected with the natural world, we are still learning just how much. Most people have no idea. This is the real story and the ultimate movie. ‘Seeing Nature’, and how it works, will blow your mind and leave you seeing through all the flimsy, human-made structures surrounding you.
And it’s not just about ‘magical’ documentaries with slow-mo, dramatic music to depict the natural world either. It goes a lot deeper than this, to your hidden behaviors and tendencies.
I’ll try for no more sci-fi quotes. The rest of the quotations in this book will come from popular and scientific books about nature and evolution, the force of change within everything.
(Permaculture is another subject I hope readers will undertake at the practical level. There are plenty of books and personal videos. And if you don’t ‘own’ a garden, then there are community ones you can join, or start one up via your local authority. People in general are a lot more collaborative when it comes to gardening than most other — blindly competitive, or tribal — businesses!)
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Despite this long intro, this isn’t a long book, it’s a quick guide. There are reminders here and suggestions for seeing the world as a part of Nature; as one of Nature’s avatars. You are one of Nature’s avatars, or androids, even. But knowing this should produce little fear or paranoia — but a sense of relief. You are a productive being on this earth no matter where you run to or what you choose to do: you are eating its food, helping the soil, breathing the air and spreading new seeds.
So…
Be Greenwise….
An understanding of evolution can teach us our true place in nature, as part of the immense array of living forms which the impersonal forces of evolution have produced.’
From ‘Evolution’, by Brian and Deborah Charlesworth
Let’s be more practical and throw away the things which don’t work with Nature, or which can’t evolve.
Let’s throw out self-help and personal speculating.
Let’s throw out religion — or at least think some more about being active rather than passive.
Let’s throw out Zen and all that sitting around meditating (although we can’t throw out thinking and reflecting completely).
Let’s grow and plant more things, and consume them, and spend time outside.
Let’s manipulate it, as we always have, but in a respectful and more personal manner.
Let’s just be more ‘Nature-centric’. I.e, let’s throw out all the emphasis on ‘the human perspective’ and take more from the natural world — directly — and reflect on the actual, individual depths of our respect and attitude towards it.
Yes, that includes Life and Death (you might be more reassured than you think.)
Let’s take more from the study of Nature, and from studies of evolutionary fact, and the scientific understanding of natural systems; life on earth.
Then… maybe we can start really waking up to who and what we are, and what our culture and society is based upon. (It’s based on collaboration and contact with the earth, by the way.)
I realise science doesn’t know everything in detail.
I realise people have a ton of wisdom too, about what’s good for us, naturally.
So… we can take more of what science has learned (broadly, about our world) and filter it through what personal experience of being a homo ‘sapiens’ (or at least, a long-legged, naked ape), actually is in this context, and remind ourselves of what we need (it might be close to what we want, but not all the time!)
But it can be more simple than it sounds.
It’s a bit like asking ourselves fundamental questions such as:
- Are we more simple than we think?
- Do we really want to be more complicated?
Modern society? It’s a trick. Well, right now society and culture seems to want to be about getting more complex, in order to live more simply. Strangely paradoxical isn’t it? Some shops are beacons for making you think you need sugary things, or some latest gadget to control something.
I’d argue it’s a trend which has been going on for a while, and it simply cannot continue. If it were to continue, we’d end up surrounding ourselves with information and technology that ends up just being ignored, or seldom used. Redundant complexity. And meanwhile our environment would be broken. It’s headed that way.
A different solution is to look at — and think about — Nature and a greener awareness for a healthier lifestyle. If you ignore Nature (and your body which is it’s vehicle) then it will start to intervene anyway in your life and say this:
‘Hey, it’s time to live more simply (at least for your body) and be happier now!’ (this is also called ‘middle and older age’).
Your body and health will start to tell you what it needs, and what it really needs a lot of is this: Physical motion (or ‘work’), well-being (in a tribe or family), growing or harvesting food… and with a sense of connection and awareness of and with Nature.
[Hunter-gatherers] practiced the most successful and long-persistent lifestyle in the career of our species.’
From ‘The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee’ by Jared Diamond…
I’m not suggesting we should all go out hunting and foraging for food in tribes but, it does say something about why so many of us travel — or dream of traveling around — so much, via many different forms of transport we’ve invented for ourselves. (You can see how most of us act and live without knowing or thinking about our huge — yet still tiny — history on this planet).
So let’s look at what it means to live and to be ‘happy’ in Nature and not apart from it. Coming up in the next section are some simple points to think about.
In theory such reflections — and clarifications — should help us to bend our daily, present actions more in line with the natural world, together or individually.
Being Greenwise (1: A Simple, Flexible, Evolving ‘Code’ of Being)
‘The vision of the history of life revealed in the fossil record, and in the incredible diversity of life, of species alive today, gives a sense of wonder at the results of three billion years of evolution, despite the fact that this has all resulted ‘from the war of nature, of famine and death.’’
From ‘Evolution’, by Brian and Deborah Charlesworth
‘Our human societies have undergone profound changes recently and rapidly.’
From ‘The World Until Yesterday’ by Jared Diamond
You should have at least a basic understanding of natural selection (evolution). There have been many interesting updates since Darwin wrote ‘On the Origin of Species’ plus you’ll find many smaller guides online to this amazing subject about what and how living things ‘are’ and why they are. (You’ll also find my suggested Amazon list when you’ve reached the end of this book.)
‘The study of evolution has revealed our intimate connections with the other species that inhabit the Earth; if global catastrophe is to be avoided, the connections are to be respected’…
[Evolution] ‘provides a set of unifying principles for the whole of biology; it also illuminates the relation of human beings to the universe and to each other.’
From ‘Evolution, a Short Introduction’ by Brian and Deborah Charlesworth
It’s important to at least try and reflect on what this means for what we are, and our minds, and our collaborative skills, which certainly distinguish us from other species (not necessarily positively for an ecosystem for too long! But I feel we can be more positive, when our culture promotes the right awareness and acceptance. In fact, maybe this process has already begun, and this book isn’t necessary at all. That’s ok, at least it’s helping me feel more positive!)
But, also, some of ‘being Greenwise’ can also be summarised in the following text, which I wrote when I was in my twenties. It’s therefore simplistic but it’s at least a way to start, so I still like it today. Back then, I didn’t want to include anything religious in how I wanted to live my life. I just wanted to put down things which seemed fundamentally true to me and what I’d learned about nature (or evolution) from some books, and what was working away inside me:
Back then I called it a ‘Lore of Being’. The image above was actually based on the following, earlier text which came before it:
Just be: In living, we live… yes, it can be this simple. For by ‘living’ we live within a system, and we will be lost (we shall die) to it. This ‘living’ has occurred to us, or it has been cast upon us, and for whatever reason is not ours to know. We are in a process; in a system. Our presence has influence to the world’s continuation. We are useful to the world, by default. We are programs of need and of spirit, and with (some) power of choice or ‘direction’. We live to live, and to die. We live for ourselves, for others, and for the world. We feed the flame that is life, burning within us.
Meaning: What we have, at least, is the ‘special’ meaning of our own lives to ourselves, with its struggles and duties to others, internally or externally: its unique experience or ‘self’. This identity is all we have while we live, it is an effect of nature, though it could only be a construct; a brief illusion and necessity through which the energies of Nature can flow.
Environment: This should be altered to connect beneficially to the ‘self’ as far as possible, or to the limits of the knowledge concerning the ‘selves’ we possess. Such an awareness grows as we do). Imagination is a key tool in unlocking this change.
A Mental World: ‘Your mind creates this world.’ At least, it is the window through which we perceive the desires that shape and persist within the world. It is the tool that combats the chaotic threats of nature. It serves our needs, yet its inventions are born from these needs. Be cautious of what it invents for your ‘self’, and what it is influenced by. It’s best when the mind is exposed to influences that will positively benefit someone or something directly. A hyper-modern, overly complex world makes it difficult to determine the best paths and influences. (A lot of them are clouded and don’t involve contact with the Earth, or involve too much prolonged contact for ‘money’.)
Desire is Energy: It’s not romantic to say that we are moving energy and love. The world flows around us and through us. We are a part of a beautiful, hungry world but we are a unique species in that we can analyse this nature in our ‘selves’ and in others; the reflections of ourselves. But we are also by degrees, by our minds, distanced from our natures, and this can allow for greater control, and illusions of control.
Desire exists around us, in many forms; in the people that we meet and in our technologies that seek to exploit our desires; often to magnify it. Desire as energy exists in disguises, in the promises of power and in escapism and drugs, in the promise of happiness, and in work itself. Its beauty is also harsh and powerful. Nature’s continuance doesn’t care for its victims. Desire will be tasted, but know that just as it holds the potential path to freedom and release — and also the great love bond binding us to the world — it is also the potential to lose ourselves, harm others, and deprive much energy from flowing.
Positivity and Negativity: Are difficult to determine and relate to perspective. They can overlap or be deeply confused. Anger can lead to positivity and negativity. Submission to one too heavily may mean the pendulum swings back to the other for even longer, before another ‘relapse’.
Addiction can take hold via this subtlety and lack of change, trial or a growth-allowing environment. However, greater balance between the two can be restored enabling ‘self’-hood to return and better growth to continue.
Vicinity to negativity, chaos and its addictions does serve one, vital function that makes it an essential part of Life: to appreciate the restoration of positivity, goodness, peace of will, mind and the return of power, possibly greater than before. Where we become unwell, we can be well again, and ride higher through this renewal. Consequently: there is always danger in the positive and hope inside the negative.
Controlling or Directing Desire: Is possible, but this can — often — be impossible. We are part of nature, and we are creatures of nature. Our ‘selves’ are complicated and have been exposed to different experiences and concepts.
What we do gain however is experience of desire, and it teaches us where to find it for a more balanced existence which brings greater or easier overall contentment and energy flow. But we must be willing to listen.
Communication: Is a unique tool in our evolution as a collaborative species, and can help to some degree in matters of living in a world of desire. Words hold power or energy and wisdom for shaping the flow of the world. They can be wielded artfully as spells over others, to assist or take away (often by mistake) another’s energy.
Communication is a pathway to understanding. ‘Understanding’ however is not the same as needing or feeling. But through it we are able to transgress the satisfying and unsatisfying aspects of a controlling life to a degree. We become enlightened. This is an objective of the lore.
But communication is — primarily — a co-operative tool for task completion. As a power to convey inner feelings or ‘truths’ it can be less potent for many. This may be because it is rarely ‘considered speech’ but it mostly instant, or within the moment.
The more personal and private uses of speech can become inadequate, indulgent and also struggle and falter when addressing the more complex forces or aspects of inter-relationships between (proud) people. Written communication may be better in some cases.
Emotional Sharing and Boundaries: Empathy is limited, but serves group survival and peaceful co-existence. But the body/nature is more powerful than the mind. Love has limits. The extent to which one person can ‘unburden’ oneself to another goes only so far as to reach some stage of understanding. When understanding is reached, assistance is offered and can be accepted. But boundaries exist. Nature must flow where there is mutual confluence, or else it must flow elsewhere, or around.
Work: Work reduces selfhood and promotes power, value and balance. It also gives experience, negative or positive. However small the absorption, great things may grow. Work should be contact with the earth, directly fulfilling or at least fulfilling in some way. Temporary rewards may not truly reward where lifelong tasks can produce lifelong rewards, or lead to unexpected rewards. Work for oneself or work for others: both have advantages and disadvantages. Strive for mastery for oneself, strive for the outcome and rejoice in the striving, which shouldn’t be harmful to our environment or oneself.
Confrontations with our Dreams in the Search for Mastery: This is a high objective of most players in this game of being and followers of its lore.
Confrontation or achievement of our dreams is only achieved through work, or grinding work, if it be of enough consequence. Change can then follow, most often positive.
…………………………..
This covers something of what it means to be ‘greenwise’. But this book continues, because there’s clearly a lot more (since those younger days!) which I’d like to elaborate upon…
Being Greenwise (2. Helping you to own your Reality)
‘Natural selection cannot foresee the future, and merely accumulates variants that are favourable under prevailing conditions. Increased complexity may often provide better functioning, as in the case of eyes, and will then be selected for. If the function is no longer relevant to fitness, it is not surprising that the structure concerned will degenerate.’
From ‘Evolution’, by Brian and Deborah Charlesworth
The next thing is to try and shut off distractions and surround yourself with the most relevant things to you. It’s a natural thing. When you tidy your office or workspace, you feel better and more focused.
A book is one item which can also help you focus quickly.
Personal Note: I partly wanted to make this book into something like: ‘A Quick Guide to Positive Strength via Insights from Nature (for natives of Planet Earth).’ But I also just love the word ‘Green-wise’. It sums up many things that I just wish many more people would appreciate too, and then who start to act as a result of this.
So, I will try to clarify as best I can, so that maybe they can start to act! Maybe it can feed into a global movement — or progression- towards a bottom-up revolution of nature ‘awareness’. A more scientific — and more practical — version of ‘hippy-dom’, I suppose.
Personally, it’s endlessly fascinating, to feel awakened by science to what we are, where we are, and what is going on all around us. But many people don’t appreciate such things. They just live, or (fair enough!) are just busy living, or else they see themselves in some very strange ways. To live in such a way doesn’t mean they’ll live badly, or unhappily, but it might be easier if they could be just a bit more… scientific, or realistic. Or literally, down-to-earth.
I didn’t want this to be a guide that just gets ignored, after reading once, but also has some inspiring quotes and passages which you curious readers, and (enlightened, hopefully ‘green-wiser’) owners may refer back to.
And I also wanted the driving premise to feed into a simple idea:
… of a person waking up, and seeing the world as something we belong to, instead of something more worrying, and most often: something to control.
We all like to control. It’s a necessity in Nature. But there are things we can control and things we can’t. Being ‘Greenwise’, means knowing that a contented life, (one more free of daily worry), actually means simplifying your life, and discarding most of what society is promoting. Western society often promotes a powerful life. An individualistic life. Or a life where you have to work in a terrible environment. Having money and power sounds simple — in dreams. But their reality is complicated. People with both are very likely not rich in spirit and not powerful at all. In fact they are highly stressed and immersed in artificiality.
The real secret is to understand ‘ownership’. What it means to take care of something and truly ‘own’ it.
Some wealthy people (certainly not most however) truly achieve ownership of their lives, and they are likely also part of what I’m calling ‘Greenwise’. They might be aware of balance and Nature as a force greater than they, and a force that is fashioning all living things, continually. They might know this instinctively or by other paths. They might know that to keep working is to keep living, and striking a healthy balance.
Their wealth or ‘society success’ is just an interesting side-effect, allowing for more time and freedom in the realm which they operate in.
(More about ‘ownership’ shortly).
Permaculture Gardens and a Tribal-Global, Collaborative Species
To garden is to bend the land to your preference for food or beauty. How many rich people still grow vegetables? If you own a garden, you are richer than you know. Territory or land, is actually one of the most valuable assets a person can have or acquire. There is so much a person can do or achieve with a piece of land. They can connect with it. They can work their land. They can create diverse areas or pockets of growing investments so that if something fails, they have other parts of their garden to fall back on. But a ‘Green-wise’ person knows that even if he or she does nothing at all, that land will rewild and return slowly to forest, and the soil will get healthier and healthier. To do nothing, if you can afford to, is just fine, and the land will still appreciate you, and await your coming to work with it again.
But to ‘own’ land is to immediately feel a desire to control it. Work it. Decorate it. It’s also a feeling powered by the many powerful tools we’ve invented for taking shortcuts. You might feel you want to put up walls and barriers. It’s very instinctive. But… if you at least let people in through such walls, then you will want to share such a realm, in the end, and share its spoils. Create an open garden, or an area of your garden that is open to your friends and family, or a local community. Permaculture offers solutions for gardeners to stop thinking so big (and often on one crop, monoculture) and more long-term and sustainably; to instead work in bending a green space more harmoniously, in an attempt to mimic nature, on a smaller, more biodiverse scale.
And to build or ‘own’ a network of people who’ve worked your land…this might turn out to be just as valuable as having your own land. A green-wise person bears in mind that we are collaborative, co-operative animals. This is really how we’ve evolved. Sharing. Communication. Territorial too, but more often respectful of existing boundaries.
It’s true, jealousy and rulership can arise, and governance systems emerge in reaction.
Nothing is completely secure. But people do learn in time that we’re all prone to the same ‘slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’. A great irony is that the more you own personally, or materially, then the more you feel you need to protect it from getting lost or taken.
Control without Controlling
Sounds easy? I’m not going to tell you how you can pull this off. I’m just going to suggest it as a possible frame of mind, with gardening as an example.
There is nothing more renewing to the spirit than a garden. But a more sustainable and productive garden will make you happier, since it will be more resilient and less energy-demanding. Many hands also make for lighter work. A plot of land is an investment and an endless experiment. You can bend a garden to your needs as an animal — and your fellow animals. Such a work — and a network — can keep you balanced and alive for longer. And it will be more permanent. This is called permaculture (and there is also agroforestry, plus other related areas).
The point here is to try to control more without controlling. To strike a balance, towards an attitude of ‘carefree control’. It means you’re more directing a garden, than actually controlling anything. Careful reading of a landscape for potential energy-saving is important. For example, you can plant trees on contour lines to take advantage of land water flow and select trees which grow collaboratively for food production, perhaps invasively at first, but later die off and are replaced by more native species that regenerate the landscape longer term and serve its local soil more perpetually. Again, soil condition and environment are key factors.
It’s something that translates with one’s own life: reading your landscape and environment, and making personal decisions which can be sustained into the future, with potential dividends for health and growth. If you put all your energy into something, it might only be possible for a short while, before you reach burn-out and will need to uproot, or change the scenery and prevailing conditions.
The 12 Permaculture Design Principles:
1. Observe and Interact
2. Catch and store energy
3. Obtain a Yield
4. Apply Self-Regulation and obtain Feedback
5. Use and Value Renewable Resources and Services
6. Produce no Waste
7. Design from Patterns to Details
8. Integrate rather than Segregate
9. Use slow and small Solutions
10. Use and Value Diversity
11. Use Edges and Value the Marginal
12. Creatively Use and Respond to Change
More on ‘Ownership’ (of YOUR reality)
‘Earth Chess’ NFT collectible image available via Makersplace etc.
Being ‘green-wise’ can lead you on a path to ownership, because you are ‘owning’ your own life, and your Time. But it can take time. But we should also think about that word and what it means…
Do you truly ‘own’ the reality that is all around you? This doesn’t have to include anything financial by the way. It means to make that reality work for you. If you ‘own’ your job, it means you’re in your element; you’re probably doing something well, creating value, and receiving value in turn.
Ownership relates somewhat to the western dream to ‘own’ your life: Your home, a car and keeping healthy (with some kind of sustainable regular activity). Also: fruitful or fulfilling work, a good network of friends, family (checking up on them as best you can) and admin (investments, hobbies, insurances, incomings and outgoings). Your data — online or offline — is also something to ‘own’ these days, including access passwords etc. — kept somewhere secure.
Some people may have a strong local network with local knowledge, and some even a global network of people to call upon (via social media etc.) It’s about living robustly or more decentralised.
It’s not a task everyone achieves in a lifetime. We’re still all very dependent on one another. Of course, we depend on medicine and on the law to protect ourselves, and protection from those who no longer feel like grinding towards that dream of ownership. Younger people are understandably the most dependent but they’re also (mostly) the more social and fluid. They also have more fun. But they are slowly learning about ownership and what it means to take care of things, other people and friends.
You could say that owning nothing (or less) is to have greater freedom, with a lot less to lose, but this places you at the mercy of others — and of change. Change is something people — and society — will always fear. A decentralised ownership is a protection against change.
Fear of change can be hugely motivational.
Those who’ve won ‘ownership’ of their reality — to whatever degree, via some hugely diverse means be it fortune or glory — (may) own more Time and can afford to live outside of the system, or they’ve built their own systems, and are moving towards greater self-sufficiency.
(By the way, it seems a lot of wealthy people have no idea what to spend their money on. They can be as over-preoccupied with the present as any regular person.)
Being greenwise can help in this quest, because you’re aware of how important it is to be open, collaborative, dependent and independent. In Nature, so many species are cooperative and collaborative. Some have evolved specific traits (like wolves) for hunting together and being together. And within this group there is healthy competition.
(Indeed, ancient forces of Nature are in fact controlling this ‘player’ behind the scenes!)
In modern life, people are able to shift between dependence and independence thanks to a ‘shared awareness’, of being conscious of being part of a large, global network of people. When people can’t appreciate this, if they’ve become too isolated, or can’t access enough direct support after a series of negative events, then it can lead to dangerous ideas, and even extreme outcomes.
We need to keep striving for balance, which is (generally) much easier to manage or access when we have close relationships, or even when we understand nature and ourselves, more generally.
A few more personal notes: I wrote this text over the course of three or four evenings. Since then, I’ve been polishing and editing it swiftly over the course of a week. But I was only able to do this because I’ve spent time reading various books on nature and evolution previously, and also, have spent a lot of time outdoors starting a permaculture garden (on bad soil), and generally noticing an emerging green shift in society.
This trend has been driven by covid-19, social media discontent, changes to our climate and biodiversity. More marginal movements like permaculture, market gardening, rewilding etc. are also seeing an increase in application.
People don’t know how much they are returning to nature. But they also don’t realise just how much a part of nature they’ve always been. They most likely haven’t read a lot of books about Charles Darwin or evolution, or today’s popular science writers about Nature.
If you haven’t yet, it’s vital that more of us join this trend as individuals, nurturing and sharing the deep energy from the wisdom underpinning it, empowering it, channeling it, letting it take root, and finally surfacing into changes taking place in our real lives and corners of the world.
Let’s wake up, into a larger world again.
To Sleep The Sleep of Billionaires
‘What has to be remembered is that it has always been hard for humans to know the rate at which they can safely harvest biological resources indefinitely, without depleting them. A significant decline in resources may not be easy to distinguish from a normal year-to-year fluctuation. It is even harder to assess the rate at which new resources are being produced. By the time that the signs of decline are clear enough to convince everybody, it may be too late to save the species or habitat. Thus, pre-industrial peoples who could not sustain their resources were guilty not of moral sins, but of failures to solve a really difficult ecological problem.’
From ‘The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee’ by Jared Diamond
Note: the above quote comes out of the context of discussion about the disappearance of ancient peoples, such as the natives of Easter Island. They must not have known enough about sustainability(!) but we now have some better ‘green wisdom’ and technology to tackle the problem. But it will still take the combined changes of governmental and local-level consciousness.
This guide was originally a (more narrowly-titled) self-helper called ‘How to Sleep The Sleep of Billionaires’, but this wasn’t a big enough title, ultimately, because it’s not all just about getting a good night’s sleep. However, I’ve kept one of the original chapters because it was still a decent starting point.
It was also tapping into our huge obsession with wealth and success. In ancient times people were obsessed with the lives of their Kings and Queens, their wealth, and the gaining or losing of favor, and the spoils which surrounded them. But most people back then knew they would never be wealthy in their lifetimes. Just to survive, with good access to resources, or provide some respectful service was enough: this was the dream.
Am I a billionaire? No. And my life would change if I was to become one surely. However, would I sleep better? Not necessarily…
A little secret: to sleep ‘a sleep of billionaires’ …I’m pretty sure you don’t need to be rich, or to be a billionaire.
Besides, such a legendary sleep implies a billionaire sleeps well.
Perhaps they are more awake than everyone else.
Perhaps they will never sleep as deeply or as well as a person who lives a life of balanced work, nourishing both their mind and body.
But how do we find such a balance? How do we work towards this perceived objective? What job-role provides that?
The answer is, firstly, by reflecting deeply about it, and then by a process of slow and steady personal ownership of inner and outward change.
Join me as we reflect — for a short while — and consider what is and how to sleep ‘the sleep of billionaires’.
For most people, they reach a time when they realise they will never be a billionaire. After this happens, it may actually free you. It will allow you to appreciate the things you have, or to appreciate those times when you were being resourceful, respectful, or were savouring the things you had.
Now, try to imagine what it would be like to actually be a billionaire. It’s a very western notion, but a global one too, that this can lead to notions of ‘happiness’ and ‘freedom’ — and even pure, uninterrupted sleep at night. In fact, it’s a strange thing, to be the focus of power, with the potential to plague someone with all the things they might be doing or spending their money on, or trying to change things, or create something perfectly, or even re-create something perfectly. In ‘The Great Gatsby’, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, it was some imaginary past that Gatsby was obsessed in trying to recreate. It was his own romantic form of desire and nostalgia holding him prisoner.
True, billionaires may not be worrying about money, or survival, but chances are they’ll be worrying about something else instead, such as the past, or the future. Or continually plugged into an intangible, financial metaverse of investments.
To actually be a billionaire… might actually mean not being able to savor the things you love, in quite the same way.
It might mean not working your body and mind in a healthy way either, and this is part of living well and being ‘green-wise’.
Personal Note: This book was partly born out of many nights of bad sleep, and a desire to express some ideas, or personal wisdom, to help myself and others to find good sleep and peace of body and mind.
(I will say this honestly: this process of writing itself has helped me find sleep. It helped me clarify and express things, and work towards a more balanced life.)
But, let’s go on…
Lastly, it’s better to imagine you already are a billionaire, in a sense.
Why? Because… we are all billionaires, especially in the developed world. We’re faced with the same quantity of choices and options every day. Some think they like such options, such freedom and power, and are practicing for the day when they will become actual billionaires.
Others have simplified via the ‘trends’ in their lives, and, along with the need to be clouded by them, have forgotten such options exist.
(And it’s true, we may not all have as much financial security as an actual billionaire, but there is still security out there, in the form of your network of fellow humans.)
The only hard part is waking up to — submerged — priorities, those within and without, and then starting a trend…
The Trends….
Look at what you have already in your life:
- Your Energy spectrum
- Insights of Power
- A Balance of Stones (People and Pets)
- Your Home and environment
- Work and available tools
- The Fountain
- Nature: within and without (DNA, family history, immune system)
They all form a pattern which can put you in a positive or negative trend.
Perhaps you’re on quite a positive trend already, perhaps not. Perhaps you’ve been on a negative trend for a long, long time. Something or someone is pulling you down…
We’re going to explore these trends, and then reach a conclusion for a process to start, where we have greater energy to feed into a process of change, which then will bring more sleep, and more… Bear with me!
Energy
‘In a designed economy there would be no trees, or no very tall trees: no forests, no canopy. Trees are a waste. Trees are extravagant. Tree trunks are standing monuments to futile competition — if we think in terms of a planned economy. But the natural economy is not planned. Individual plants compete…’
From ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’ by Richard Dawkins
Energy is the vital ‘force’ in this universe. It is a world of hunger and energy — a hidden, shared struggle. Just stare up into the night sky at the burning and winking dots out there. Let’s not sugar-coat anything, or go all meditative and suggest we can ignore this fact. You are part of a chain of competitive life and, to quote a line from a replicant in Blade Runner, you ‘want more life, f*****! ’ You want to survive. Your genes want to live on, or be passed on.
But, we are going to die. We are going to feed the soil after a lifetime of feeding it with our regular breaking up of food into energy. We are eaters of fruit and spreaders of seeds. We are competitive, but even better, collaborative. We won’t do so well on our own. Trees crowd a forest and each one competes for light, growing tall or falling down to nourish the nearby soil for other seeds to take route. They drive each other on. At the same time, diverse ‘companion plants’ can help a tree, or there are those which grow well together, communicating via their roots, for mutual benefit.
‘Nature consists of so many species, connected to each other in such complex ways, that it is virtually impossible to foresee where the ripple effects from the extinction of any particular species may lead.’
From ‘The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee’ by Jared Diamond
Living and dying we serve the earth. We are communicating, co-operating hunters, independent, dependent, still very tribal; but — slowly — moving towards a much larger, global entity. But it isn’t easy. Individuals and groups both rely heavily on authorities and more things just get missed out or overlooked where, on a tribal level, it is much easier to account for everyone’s needs. Authorities are turning to technologies like Artificial Intelligence to try and fill the gaps.
We are a multitudinous mass of energy breathing out carbon dioxide to help maintain an atmosphere, but we are needed. If we don’t eat and hunt and feed the soil, occupying a place in the food chain, then less plants and trees would grow, and there would be less decay leading to rebirth. The problem is that now there are so many of us our systems are eating into the foundations of our entire house. We have to figure out new ways — and activities — to suit our needs. So in turn these activities themselves may have to be simplified and our priorities re-evaluated.
Next, a note about food and our continual obsession with it: What gets overlooked is the close relationship of energy to work (the activities we choose to do, or feel we have to do) towards some lifestyle we’ve imagined for ourselves. Inside our global system, the diversity of job roles and work is huge, and people lose track of what and how much they eat in terms of energy. Some people work every day with their physical bodies, others with their minds and communication skills. In fact, they both can require significant energy even though it might be assumed the physically active person requires more, which is true to an extent. Have you ever dug a large hole in a garden before, however? You’ll be tired out and want to eat a meaty burger or something substantial, quite quickly.
The main point is that people like to burn energy, and they line up strange and diverse ways of spending it. Thinking, or mental concentration, does take more energy than we realise, as blood has to move through our minds, with decision-making pressures and processing power. For teachers, it was perhaps easier on a tribal level when we could communicate more directly. Relevant skills like crafting and mastering hunting weapons could be passed on quickly (and in smaller groups.)
The food we eat is energy, so ideally, we’d eat less according to the time of day, and more according to what we’ve actually been doing, or planning to do. Meaty protein is for using muscles and harder work, whereas for lighter, less stressful, more measured work — we can and should — eat less.
Easy Access
But a meat-eating culture has arisen in our society with easy access to fast protein and because that society used to require a lot of meat and energy — to get built. But as we move into more of an automated and global culture, maybe we can think of ways to move away from such meaty diets and into a more plant-based one, with more fresh fruit and vegetables grown locally or seasonally.
I’d encourage everyone to make just one change when it comes to food: think more about your activity and work level, preferably in the morning for the day ahead. What are you really going to need in terms of energy?
In terms of work and activity, we already have all these instinctive jobs given to us when we are born: fitting into a group, communicating, working for the needs of a group, finding food, breaking up energy, converting it, breaking it down again… While, our minds and culture have evolved so we have given ourselves other forms of work, arguably more mental. Probably too much more to the point of some people constantly being ‘on the go’ with managing abstract details. They may only bear this for so long. You might — at some point — have to say ‘no’ to rigid and perpetual responsibilities probably being led by one or a few people with ‘a vision’ for a group. You will be at the mercy of these designs and visions, and most probably feel unable to do far healthier and more natural activities like growing food.
If you think you don’t have a choice in changing your environment, you’re probably wrong.
What job are you most suited to? According to evolution you’re most suited to the act of walking, finding or foraging, reading a landscape, home-making and more recently, growing and harvesting food (including animals). We’ve had to use all our senses, outside, and also combine patience with times of fast-thinking, adaptation and invention.
Meanwhile, improving your own personal energy is no small subject.
People will attach tons of labels to this like: confidence or self-confidence, self-esteem, positivity, optimism etc. etc.
The truth is, people are born with easier access to energy. Some people’s energy gives out quickly. Some people have low concentration as a result, and it sets them on a subtle, negative trend their entire lives. What is your energy spectrum? What can help everyone to acquire and retain their energy? We should remember that Life is a lot about fear and struggle to win treasures, where there comes a feeling of control and power over our lives (perhaps the ultimate, fulfilling goal) which wins some freedom and time. Often however, this very process comes with it extra pressures on our energy, and a lack of time!
(Overseeing a productive garden could be one example of a position that can give anyone personal energy and a little freedom or security.)
Personal note: I like the idea of a life as a game, or a search for treasure. Life could be! We could all be plugged into some super-elaborate simulation with the hidden objective being to find harmony with our environment, or ‘happiness’. Although I don’t like to speculate on the spiritual mystery of life, via some specific religious belief, I do witness lots of people ‘create’ the meaning in their own lives. Some of it is often exaggerated (mostly by them), but at least they seem to be on positive trends. Maybe someone put this even more clever trick into our (somewhat) advanced minds perhaps, like a secret power that can grant us extra energy and a boost, when we need it. Or perhaps it’s a side-effect in our mental evolution… or both! Mystery is also a good thing.
We can apply many ‘top-down’ concepts to life and living, plus religious ideas, but I prefer a more ‘bottom-up’ or nature-centric one, which is partly the point of this book. It’s the ‘evolving’ option, where our minds are temporary tools for living on this planet for a while.
I’m definitely more about science and our connection with Nature, since Nature will grant all kinds of physical ‘powers’ to all kinds of animals simply because it does, and since our environment forces this.
That’s why this isn’t a religious book, but please note it’s not to say I don’t allow room for spiritual mystery about all this in the world, and in ourselves. Life remains an energetic ‘journey of change’ through Time, and we can share so much in this. Energy comes from different sources and ideas. Some of this connects on to the Fountain trend, which I’ll mention later on, but all these trends are related.
Insight or Awareness of Power
‘Some would regard language ability as the strongest criterion for the possession of true consciousness; [but] there are clear indications of rudimentary language abilities in animals such as parrots and chimpanzees, who can be taught to communicate simple pieces of information. The gap between ourselves and higher animals is more apparent than real.’
From Evolution, by Brian and Deborah Charlesworth
‘[Our] primary human adaptation is for our behaviors to be acquired less directly from our genes and more from other people.’
From ‘Evolution for Everyone’ by David Sloan Wilson
There are a lot of ‘insights’ out there. Movies and influencers are feeding them to us all the time. Different perspectives, from the gothic to the super-human. A lot of them are based on experience. Some of them work just fine. But I don’t feel enough of them are aware of real nature.
‘Green-wise’ people harbor a strong insight of who and what they are as part of another species helping to provide an endless flow of energy.
It’s a bit like Zen, but I’m not going to tell you to breathe in and breathe out slowly. You can practice such meditation if you like, constructing places in your mind to visit which may calm and allow your thoughts to wander over past, present and future. But only after you recognise the shortcomings of doing so. Only after you understand that you are restless nature, and that you are needed by it. It’s fine if, perhaps, you already have this strong insight, and are happy in the acceptance of your most simplest of roles in this greater system of energy, and in an even greater universe of energy still.
However, if you don’t have this insight, then I’m now going to remind you of your relationship with animals.
Ready?
You are an ape. Ok? (A lot of people still aren’t with this fact!)
Do you expect apes to have enough time or patience for Zen?
In fact, just how similar we really are to chimpanzees and the natural world is still pretty astonishing, and under-appreciated.
‘Animal communication and human language once seemed to be separated by an unbridgeable gulf. Now, we have identified not only parts of the bridges starting from both shores, but also a series of islands… spaced across the gulf. We are beginning to understand… how the most unique and important attribute that distinguishes us from animals arose from animal precursors.’
From ‘The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee’ by Jared Diamond
Let’s appreciate it now.
You’re an animal. So stop striving (at least, continually or obsessively) for something ultimate, something powerful, some position in the hierarchy of our so-called ‘advanced’ society and culture. Money and power isn’t everything. Know or recognise that, in fact, much of it is pure invention and construction, and mental trappings. Your body will remind you what you are. It reminds us frequently to go to the bathroom. For reproduction, it reminds women on a monthly basis. It reminds men regularly in their loins, manifesting in thoughts and desires. You must accept what you are. Make time for release and to laugh in the face of society and its strange obsessions.
These obsessions, distractions (and even, perversions) can certainly negatively affect your animal balance, and your sleep, and convince you that you must attain something abstract, like that you’re destined to be rich, or powerful, or loved by many. We are lovers, but we love deeply most effectively, in pairs to foster a deep bond which in turn serves the long period it takes to nurture children up to independence.
That is why there is ‘love’. Sorry to be somewhat unromantic, but it is a function. It exists differently in other animals. In us, it creates deep ties and bonds that keep us evolving, or feeling that we are evolving, and mastering all the daily challenges of survival and sharing resources.
You’re probably not going to be rich or powerful. But if you are, indeed power can bring status, position and the love of others. But it’s rarely a personal love. Nobody really cares impersonally about you, your work or any legacy.
But many will care, personally about you if you care naturally about others in your closer circles, and extending outwards, recognising that we’re all in the same boat, and all connected, and human. They will care for your energy.
And of course, we are interconnected with all our species on this planet. In fact, we’ve yet to even understand fully just how much we are, and the implications of these connections.
‘Our social physiology is like an iceberg with only a tiny fraction above the surface of conscious awareness.’ (from ‘Evolution for Everyone’ by David Sloan Wilson)
The Weight of Stones in the River of Life and Time
‘Like all species, we depend on other species for our existence, in many ways. Some of the most obvious ways are that other species produce the oxygen we breathe, absorb the carbon dioxide we exhale, decompose our sewage, provide our food, maintain the fertility of our soil, and provide our wood and paper.’
From The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond
People and pets make up the ‘stones’ in our life. Who are the stones in your life?
With the stones idea in mind, a stone can either provide shelter, or they can hold you down. And it can be a struggle to lift them.
Nature is the biggest stone. For you are part of it. Nature is bigger than you, your ideas, everybody and everything. It moves within you. Your ‘self’ in its basic form is a producer of energy. Beyond this, we are facilitators of other people’s energies. We are children really, needing the support or ballast of family and friends.
History shows us: we have been hunter-gatherers for longer than we’ve been settlers. We are deeply tribal, in families or workplaces, and yet because the world has speeded up, and geogprahical barriers have broken down due to technology, the chances to scatter and even become independent islands are greater, and we are more likely to break from our tribes to seek new territories. But, our links are also strong, and often we will return to places where we’ve come from.
We’re all carrying people around in our pockets. Those we hold on to are precious and vital to us, and when we lose just one it’s upsetting — we want them back, and miss them.
After all, they’re like familiar stones who’ve been holding us in place; holding us from drifting off into darker dreams and realities (and there are plenty of those around today).
It’s true, these stones may hold you down, but most of the time they keep you supported, and balanced. Perhaps that’s why we lose — or lose track of — so many friends and family, even with so many social media networks trying to update us. We take them for granted. It leaves us with lighter pockets.
But then, you realise… when you reach for someone and they’re not there, that nothing is forever. You feel then you should probably look after your stones better, or go searching for them, or new ones. If not… you can lose that balance. They are our links to a past which forged us.
We are on a quest to find our place in the world, which brings a level of control, survival, even power and fulfilment. We are seeking harmony with our worlds. But… harmony cannot exist in a vacuum. It needs the weight of stones around it.
Especially since, we are big mix of forces and interactions, with a lot of evolutionary baggage to talk about….
Your Home and Environment
‘HOMES’ are machines for survival, shelters and places for keeping well. We must learn them and adapt them to our region as habitats. The word home may mean different things to different people.
‘Organisms must reside in their environment for a sufficient number of generations [for that organism to become established]. When an environment changes, species must dance on before learning new steps (‘Dancing with Ghosts’).
— from ‘Evolution for Everyone’ by David Sloan Wilson
Now more than ever, the ‘green-wise’ are awake to how we must care for our environment — and our homes.
Earlier, I wrote about opening one’s home (house and garden) to others, if you’re in a position of ‘owning’ land. Perhaps you’re in a position of working a good piece of land already, for, or with, someone trustworthy.
Environment is perhaps the most central trend, anywhere. It controls us, and dominates us, wherever we are. But there is so much emphasis on houses. A home of one’s own. They are our survival machines.
But what is a home without a garden or a green area? It becomes more of a community-based house. Is it truly a ‘home’? We mustn’t forget that a garden is really more important than a house, in many ways, for a garden can feed a house throughout the year, even a small, urban one.
A house is something to come back to, a base or an HQ. But a home (a house and garden) can be more independent, secure; a place where people can grow and belong. Some people become very territorial about such places, defensive and closed off, which is also a dangerous thing.
But it’s incredible how many house planners (probably city planners) have created houses with no gardens or access to green spaces. But, cities by design encourage people to work, and get out of their houses, where they end up spending time and money in shops and markets.
A Layout of a Home
Likewise, the interiors of houses (and our gardens in relation to them) are rarely completely in line with ‘what we are’ as animals in nature. This applies especially to many rich people living in big houses! Their first tendency was to desire or to buy — or build — a big mansion, with lots of rooms and communal rooms, without any thought of a layout to suit their inherent nature. What they find is that many of their rooms go unused(!) since we all tend to gather in one room of a house, and close to a kitchen. The bigger they are the more wasteful in terms of energy, and harder to maintain.
To be fair, laying down roots and living somewhere for a long period of time is no easy thing to achieve for restless animals who’ve lived for most of their history in small tribes.
Some people may also have desired to escape society and buy somewhere isolated or remote so they can live peacefully. But from a lack of green wisdom, they soon discover the reality of such ‘free-range’ ideas is a little different. For example, they never considered the steady trend of growing old where they start needing less space, while harboring less of a desire to fill or maintain it. They also find it hard, if it’s in a remote place, to maintain their home systems or to find people to help upgrade or alter them. Lastly, they also find themselves starting to miss local connections and presence of neighbors, or having easy access to modern facilities and local services.
‘While courses in the history of civilisation often dwell on Kings and barbarian invasions, deforestation and erosion may in the long run have been more important shapers of human history.’
From ‘The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee’ by Jared Diamond
For gardens, permaculture design is all about expending energy in the management of a garden. It provides solutions for what and where (and how high, for their backs) to plant annuals and perennials, and considerations like access to water. For example, areas of the garden further from a house are for fruit trees or less demanding staple crops which will require less care.
We are home-makers like most other mammals. It’s a big subject, but the best trend is to keep trying to align your nature and needs with a suitable home and environment. Try not to let your own ideas, or other people’s choices, or the home or location itself, do (all) the dictating. Listen to your inner — recently tribal — nature.
(There are of course good reasons why, particularly in the old world, houses are mostly clustered together into towns and villages. Before modern transport etc, it was about easy access to security, different fruit and vegetable exchange in gardens, and a reliance on diverse skills and energy nearby. The more negative aspects of — especially very religious — communities such as gossip, territorial disputes and personal judgements, unfortunately came with this security.)
Work and Tools
‘For most of our history we were not mighty hunters but skilled chimps, using stone tools to acquire and prepare plant food and small animals.’
From ‘The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee’ by Jared Diamond
This image was an attempt to update ancient Egyptian style with more contemporary ‘concerns’.
For:
‘The wise application of scientific understanding of the world in which we live is the only hope for the future of mankind.’ (from Evolution, by Brian and Deborah Charlesworth) [But I would add: we also have Greenwise awareness and insight too.]
‘…But human meaning is produced by human effort and we may be deprived of the life we need to live.’
– from ‘The Little Earth Book: Truths and Lies About Going Green’ by James Bruges
The above quote took me a bit of time to understand, I had to re-read it a few times, but I find it to be a very ’green-wise’ one. What is our ‘meaning’ in our culture? The ancient Egyptians built a lot of ‘meaning’ about Death and the afterlife, via their rituals and nature gods. Their ‘work’ built great pyramids and statues. But they were also very successful farmers back then, and had to be. What do their ‘great’ monuments mean to us, now?
We are all dragged into all kinds of work which soon starts to define us, who we are, and how ‘full’ or ‘powerful’ our lives are. Also, it affects our physical side, for better or for worse. Most people, in truth, will never be content with their working lives, even once they’re retired, and may look back and resent how much time they spent doing work. Many people will resent they felt they never had a choice, and had to find work where they could. Many people find themselves doing jobs because they had ideas it would make them look good, or just to please others.
If we recall that we are another species of ape on this planet, what work would you expect to find us doing? Most fundamentally, it’s to gather food, live close to water, and manage available resources for long-term comfort and survival. Don’t forget a bit of thrill and excitement from hunting and catching.
Perhaps this meaning will re-emerge dramatically in the future, as the planet struggles to cope with all our demands and output. Technology will probably play a continued, key role in our ‘meaning’ in the future too, as long as it serves these primary, underlying trend. But getting hands-on with our fundamental needs, may bring better health benefits. Yes, we have broken free to some extent from nature, but does that mean we’re not still its servants?
We have become more and more a species of tool-bearing animals. We are a self-organising species, just like many other species, including ants! The trouble is we’ve grown so numerous we are over-organising and complicating our lives.
So don’t harbor any disdain for the old ‘good, honest work’ saying. People are always trying to cut corners and often saying: ‘why are you still doing it that way?’ Well, taking the long road — if it keeps you healthy and happy — can be the better option. You have more time to think and reflect upon a long road. But work (especially work outside with, or in, Nature) is the leveler. Work is the meaning in our lives. Physical and mental activity (especially like fruit-picking) brings balance to our souls.
It’s assumed that people of the past lived harder, more difficult lives when we all lived and worked more closely with the land. Well, you could say that people lived much happier and healthier lives too. You could say we are a lot more stressed these days, and a lot more ‘searching’ for what we are, or what we might need. Hence this book and also the new trend emerging of ‘back to the land’. You could say, we never really left working the land. It’s just that ‘work’ has diversified into all kinds of strange, grey areas. Is it really an easier kind of work?
We could say that people of the past were certainly a lot more driven in a top-down quest to ‘conquer’ their lands, via any new farming technique they could find, and to compete with their neighboring landowners. They certainly built a lot of big houses to celebrate their conquest. But I’m not sure they were happier as a result.
I’d argue that even further back, the tribal hunter-gatherers, or those few remaining which persist in this lifestyle today — were the happier ones. Sure, they were very afraid of what they couldn’t then understand properly, but they were continually surprised by the world, by its animals, by the things they found and ate, and by their own physical skills of hunting and creating. Before the notion to ‘farm the land’ took over, you could say, we were in our element.
The latest people of planet Earth should have the best of all these worlds. They should hold the power of science, maps and technology whilst understanding Nature, their legacy and the simpler activity of working in Nature, that it brings to our well-being. Sharing and working with one another in Nature is still vital. But we also understand what once we feared. We even have a global network (the internet) for understanding and confronting anything new that we might need to fear.
I’m not saying that tools which don’t make our lives easier should be discarded. But I would say that tools which don’t bring us into contact with the world, and which don’t encourage us to feel fulfilled — should be discarded at some point.
Permaculture — a way of working with nature to produce food and promote diversity — is one subject offering a solution for people searching or ready to return to the land, and spend time back with nature again. It’s a pretty solid example of an enlightened tool and way of thinking.
Treasures in the Fountain
‘As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever branching and beautiful ramifications.’
– Charles Darwin, ‘On the Origin of Species’
Despite its harsh, blind continuance, there is a great goodness in nature (evidence from many collaborations between species), and it comes often from socialising and from sharing the experience of living. It powers this book: a desire for mutual success for us all. This is the Fountain.
The fountain is a concept: a source of pure energy and inspiration. It’s like drinking a strong coffee or espresso at that point in the morning. It shows us all the colours of our spirit, like the chakras. It’s all the dreams of mankind, endlessly reflecting. It’s also our ideas of finding that harmony you crave in the middle of the night. Staring at this fountain, can make it real.
The fountain features at the heart of a video game concept I have, set in a northerly biome (a harsh region of bears, wolves, red squirrels, conifer trees etc.). The island is called ‘Fountellion’. This concept, for some future VR platform, emphasizes the need to manage your personal Energy, which depletes in your effort to survive and hide from attack from ‘others’. The fountain area exists to aid players to replenish their energy, and just feel inspired and alive in the game. It’s also a measure of how much imbalance there is. Right now you might say the fountain is ‘flowing’ low, because we have built so much we are diminishing the spirit of the land. There is too much mind and hunger for power. It could also be an analogy for water shortage, as our moisture-depleted, over-farmed planet heats up.
Imagine a video game-world based around this genre of guide-book, where each player gains ‘insights’ from progressing openly through its regions (like chapters), which also reflect the stages of life. Each of us can ultimately reach a ‘high point’ from where we survey the land, and look back at our time in the game. Areas in the game map reflect something of our natures: like The Village for being social and connected, a reclusive Tower for being isolated but wise, and a coastal landscape for being young, dangerous and free. This is something of the concept of ‘Fountellion’ with its cyclical, persistent nature, and a quest for balance and green wisdom.
We can all reach for something pure and good in the fountain. It’s our awareness of, and dreams for, a brighter future where there is shared laughter in easy, familiar company.
The fountain is a bit like a tree in another story I wrote once, for young adults, called The Wildness Within and the Tree of Eyes. That contained a simple analogy: the Wildness for our spirit, and the Tree of Eyes for our perspectives; our collective consciousness. Well, the fountain is both mixed together, I suppose.
The Fountain and the Balance
But there is darkness in the Fountain too, and all the desires which at times arise in a great struggle for life. There are those who magnify the Fountain, which can be overwhelming. There are the desire-pushers too, who use it to control others. There is also the simple, ever-present potential for addiction to many substances, activities, visions… here in our easy, modern, connected age.
That is why we need balance, and to be ‘green-wise’ about what we are.
It’s much easier to recognise such magnifications and handle them better with experience, and even leverage them to turn them into success. But we’ve only come so far in society by working together, by collaborating and co-operating in this game. We are all dependent on one another, ultimately. Therefore we must look out at Nature and our lives from this context, from one where ‘goodness’ clearly has evolved. It is there in other animals too.
But if there was another story I could mention, and when it comes to an outlook on Life, I’d suggest ‘Treasure Island’ for being a firm, salty favourite. The idea of Life as an adventure, or a search for treasure, and where such a voyage leads everyone to unexpected realities, and contact with others. And others we can never trust, like the rogue Long John Silver, a character with no such long-term ‘green-wise’ insight.
‘Treasure Island’ isn’t perhaps the safest outlook, but only if you were to take it literally. In general, it’s a book about searching, discovery and about finding wisdom and experience instead. For we are drawn out of our shells, and most often we return back to them, or wherever our environment is best.
Perhaps you’ve lived all your life in one place? This must say something about it as a healthy environment. Or perhaps you’re still on a quest to break out, or find your best environment. If you are, then try to enjoy the quest.
The classic book by Robert Louis Stevenson could be broken up in stages, to reflect the stages of life. First, we are thrown off course, then we find the trust we placed in others was partly misplaced, but not completely. We learn about ourselves from others who we both like and dislike, those with power over us for a while, and those we come to wield power over.
Again, life is a lot like Treasure Island, with its salty language, rich with reality. The young Jim Hawkins learns a lot about trust and where to place it. He’ll find some treasure too, but he’ll be blown off course and it won’t be the treasure he imagined, or that everyone around him imagined.
The treasure from that island: it will be his experience and greater wisdom of nature, other people and their motivations, or greed.
Real Treasure Found?
The path of belonging and being is a rocky one, and it leaves one changed and haunted by decisions and regrets. If you feel this way, you are not alone.
But with Love… there is as marriage of mind and body. If you also have ‘found’ the security of a great, stable love, it is a real power and treasure, and the weight of life is certainly the more bearable. Long-lasting love (fortunately) is an in-built aspect of our species, for the extended nurturing and tuition demanded for raising our young. Without young to raise, there are shared activities or projects. It’s therefore something to work with, not to discard. If we’re ready for it, it will shake up your independent way of thinking, and can tie two people together possibly all their lives.
You too may, ultimately, find the treasure of love, wisdom and success in your life.
It might not have the immediate, western-style material reward you were expecting, and it might not even relate to something you personally have brought about.
But then, you might be able to extend it or bring more success, from that which fortune may or may not bestow upon you.
Should any of this matter? You really need only keep doing that which everyone else is doing: they are doing what they can, everywhere, governed by their environments and trends. They are helping to provide things which they and other people need, until they no longer have the energy, and need a change.
Our lives are only as complicated as we make them, but complication can only be born for so long before it is passed on, or simplified (and vice versa).
Time solves many problems, because problems are only caused by environment, and environments are always changing.
I hope this little book about your big adventure doesn’t sadden you, or cease to excite and inspire you, but it can make you wiser and more aware of its terrain and waters.
Being ‘green-wise’, or living with an awareness of Nature and ourselves, transcends these more immediate concerns. How? Because we have the treasure of seeing: we can know how, why and what we are, both to the land and the sea.
‘All that we can do, is to keep steadily in mind that each organic being is striving to increase at a geometrical ratio, that each at some period of its life… has to struggle for life, and to suffer great destruction. When we reflect on this struggle, we may console ourselves with the full belief, that the war of nature is not incessant…that death is generally prompt, and that the vigorous, the healthy, and the happy survive and multiply.’ — Charles Darwin
We are Going to Die
It would seem, we are all going to die.
But ‘to die’ and ‘death’ are again, words for a process.
You could say instead: ‘having attained energy for a while, retained some of it, given some back, shared it, we’re next going to lose our energy, in some way or another. Our energy will then pass on, in some way. It exists, explosively across the universe, driving things ever onwards and outwards. We are stardust after all.’
But thinking or feeling anything about this, won’t stop it.
What were you, before you were alive? Well, there’s evidence there was a ton of energy around before we came along.
(To evolve or ‘devolve’ complex features? Neither matters to Nature, only what counts to fitness. How leveling!)
Let’s think about what happens to our bodies after we die. If we’re buried, our bodies will feed the growth of new things. There is continuance everywhere.
Likewise, the subtle pressure of death (like not eating etc.) has been quietly motivating and giving you energy all of your life.
‘The difference between LIFE and NON-LIFE is a matter not of substance but of information. Life, living things contain prodigious quantities of information… digitally coded in DNA and in other ways [eg. the immune system, the nervous system, culture (and this book!)].
From ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’ by Richard Dawkins
You can think about and really know death, just be seeing what it has made. That is everything around us. Only by dying is new life fashioned via the code of life which remains.
What do I mean by this? You could think about some chunky sand running through a sieve.
Bear with me. Now imagine a face appearing out of the chunky sand… made from any sand which happens to stick in the sieve. This is what is living now, temporarily — the face of Nature. It also has different types of code that help it stick to the sieve, in different ways. But all the sand — along with the falling sand — will eventually fall through. But for now, it forms a bright face, a cold face, a stern or determined one. It is slightly sad too. We all make up this face.
But its shape and form only appears as it does today because it is forged by death and dying, occurring continually all around us.
For now, you are part of this face.
But it is always changing, and it is the sand — our planet, the environment where it lives or is forming — that is creating the features of this face.
And there are many other faces in that face. Our fellow species. We cling to the sieve primarily with our minds and our legs, they cling in other ways, by running or by hunting.
Life has become more complex but it is made rich by its abilities for harnessing — and understanding — its environment.
This understanding may lead us to places which harm or alter the great environment for a while, and destroy much, but… the environment will reset, that’s all, over Time.
Other species may live on.
We are only important to ourselves.
So, really, we should live for life, because that is what it wants you to do, first and foremost.
We are here to breathe, to eat fruit, nuts and occasional meat, and to spread those seeds, which then grow more plants and which feed an atmosphere, this biosphere of resilient, struggling life. We are made to cling on, until, you might say, our environment overwhelms us.
‘Some would regard language ability as the strongest criterion for the possession of true consciousness; [but] there are clear indications of rudimentary language abilities in animals such as parrots and chimpanzees, who can be taught to communicate simple pieces of information. The gap between ourselves and higher animals is more apparent than real.’
From Evolution, A Short Introduction, by Brian and Deborah Charlesworth
All other meanings, we really make for ourselves only, and our shared morale in this struggle, which doesn’t have to be such a struggle if we remember what we are, and all we really need.
(Versatile, yes, but happiest outside growing and finding things?)
The End, and A Beginning
‘I am a hungry world… A world full of energy, flowing… the flow from sunlight, into green plants… dispersing… taken in through herbivores and sometimes through carnivores… passing away to the decomposers in the soil… I am a gentle ocean wave sweeping toward landfall. I am beautiful, profound and I am inexorable…’
from ‘Fountellion in THE SPIRAL’ (natural insight unlocked)
We’ve learned about trends and trends of energy, and also about factors which can influence our energy.
Positive energy: aids a person (or creature) in being collaborative and to evolve. Having good energy helps us see outwardly, and increase or recognise it in others. It will help us feel balanced.
To devolve is to become more withdrawn. It’s not necessarily negative, in fact it’s a natural trend as we grow old. Being selfish is a strategy that can work in the short term. But over time it can lead to isolation and inability to adapt, which in nature is always dangerous.
All the energy in the world won’t change some of your defects, quirkiness, or eccentricities, if you want to call them that. These things that intrude on our self-projection. But, energy from the fountain can keep you thinking about other things…
Energy will also help you to vary the course of your own life, onto the tracks which it wants to flow best. This might be a readiness to face a period of work or complication for a while. It might be a stage of alignment, to align values through an acceptance of reality and what one wants from it. Or, it might be a readiness to simplify one’s life, and work more in tune with body and mind, making more time for arguably the most important: your physical being.
Then you’ll really be rich — richer than a billionaire perhaps — in a truer, spiritual sense, and will feel more secure, and be one to spread and enhance the wealth you have, and plant it into your environment(s).
Hopefully this may help guide you on the path to being (truly) wealthy, rich in nourishment from those around you, and able to give back in a balanced way, some energy to others or into some work or project.
We are creatures of the land, ultimately, and must go back to that. Only then, you’ll see that you too can sleep the deep, secure sleep of a healthy and (truly) ‘wealthy’ person after living a full day of contact, connectivity, creativity, sharing and brightness.
We are here to burn brightly, but not as rockstars or ‘influential’ people, but as another species feeding the soil, helping an atmosphere and earth’s energy, helping each other, and sharing its produce. We may master and manipulate nature for ourselves, but not if it means removing contact with the earth, or with physical work and our sense of satisfaction. Nature — and your nature — are the true masters: all power comes from here.
Now You Have Joined ‘the Green-wise’…
‘Without change, something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.’
Frank Herbert, ‘Dune’
I love Frank Herbert’s book, but living and being ‘green-wise’ isn’t about finding super-human power, or becoming a fearless leader of the next uprising. Yes, it is about managing resources — being resourceful — and it’s also about self-realisation and acceptance, which for me are even greater powers. In fact, joining the ‘green-wise’ means to be able to reject (or make a stand against) those who want to sweep us up into their transient or artificial concerns or visions. We can all reach a sense of self and belonging, in a natural environment where each of us have some control, security, but also where the continuation of life, the ‘change’ (from the quotation) is here, all around us.
This might allow people not to follow leaders intent on glorious uprising or personal power. It’s about having a longer view, and a wider one, and finding your belonging closer to home.
People have a huge restlessness which leads them everywhere but where it really counts for ourselves: sharing and serving the land, harnessing nature’s energy, for ourselves, without so much territorial unrest. (Unfortunately however, territorial unrest is a global problem which will us take a lot more time to solve, and overcome. Again, answers may come from the subject of permaculture.)
‘Intelligence’ in creatures is not the fittest survival strategy. We only think we are so special, to ourselves. There are many other strategies too.
Being open and adaptable to change can be, and working well with others (as in a wolf pack). But first you have to open yourself to others and working as a group, contributing dynamically, or in the moment. It’s about working less independently and more dependently, becoming more a part of something bigger and less selfish: this has proven to be a more resilient strategy. (Of course it’s still possible to live quite independently, as long as we can fall back on a robust network of others in times of need or information and resource exchange.)
Humanity today is becoming a large, connected organism, although still divided by local regions, culture, environment, and languages. But together we’ve managed to adapt and increase our presence and longevity within Nature (in the short term).
Technology and tools ‘can’ help us in how we access our networks, and one another.
Now, however, we need to put respect for Nature first again, devising our systems more harmoniously, with a more green-wise outlook; a more ‘bottom-up’ awareness, which this book hopefully feeds a little into.
There has been huge progress, and some setbacks, but we need to keep moving steadily towards a time where resources are plentiful thanks to (more accessible, less dominating) techniques of working with the land, and where everyone can get to own and share some of it. And the work.
There would be a lot less doctors, soldiers — yes, writers too etc.— if we spent more time doing and less time thinking how we could all be living in some hyper-reality or super-techno-capitalism. Or how maths and science are going to solve everything including the daily problem of finding a personal sense of well-being. Do we really want to live in an easy world, one separated from anything hands-on? Certainly not most of the time.
We can draw from hyper-realities (or various ‘metaverses’ we already use daily) the things we need to enhance this shared reality, of nature, so long as it doesn’t overpower or subtract from our well-being.
We used to love the thrill and excitement of hunting and tribal activities, all the sharing and gossip and new discoveries. It was about getting closer to death through feeling more alive, whilst living securely near to others. Nowadays there is film and TV, the daily news, video games and then there are sports, teams and attractions like Disneyland. There seems to be a lot of spare energy and resources available — just to recreate what we once had, or were.
Remember… what are you? You’re just as much animal than a thinking mind, so focus on being ‘outside’ more (literally and figuratively), or working towards this ultimate stage: of balancing your animal. You can start this process now because you are green-wiser in your mind.
Try not to forget this: Science thinks it knows something today, but it will know something new tomorrow. Some of the simplest technology can be the best, such as water collectors and filtration systems, which haven’t made their way into everyone’s homes yet. This is because there hasn’t been a change in the environment enough to force people to save water, in some western countries.
Nature and environment, you see, is bigger than everything we think we know, and are. We are locked into it, and we are seeing — from the bottom-up — into its stars.
‘There are more things in heaven and earth, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’ (Hamlet, Shakespeare)
Accept your reality and work with it, with the insights we’ve covered, now planted in your mind.
The (modern?) reality around you: it is probably making you think too much and making you complicate your time, and the reality you want.
But here’s a secret… your reality already contains the world (the future) that you need. And it’s a future where your land, trees and other creatures of this planet: they are calling you back to them.
Next to your family and friends, they want to hear you laugh and be content, and be at peace with everything it has made you, up until this very moment.
Nature doesn’t want you to be an independently ‘successful’ or materially ‘wealthy’ person, because these things may not last, and are often just illusions, perspectives or self-made concepts in the face of a much deeper, primary concern: To live in balanced, sustainable harmony with each other and our environment. To be a little fearful is no bad thing either: it makes us appreciate what we have, or be ready to adapt.
To balance our minds and our bodies in contact with a beautiful world of diverse plants and trees — and not separate from all this — is certainly something to incorporate in our lives.
We must re-evaluate our priorities and the ‘meaning’ of our being, by appreciating what these actually are, and where they’ve come from.
Hopefully, I’ve helped to explain some of them here, or give an intro to them.
This global trend of ‘finding nature’ again, which we’ve all been running from or denying for so long, is still really only beginning. It’s exciting to contemplate what the fountain will forge — what we can achieve — when we’re all fully awake and wiser, in ‘the [to] morrow morn.’
So, best green wishes, and ‘progression’ in your quest to find greater harmony and balance in nature… :)
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Note: This guide is also available on Amazon as paperback and kindle. Anyone purchasing the paperback edition on Amazon gets a code (at the end of the book) to be sent a free NFT to their EVM wallet, from one of Ade’s NFT collections.
Read on…
‘Take the Green Pill’ NFT collectible art available via Opensea (‘Art by Ade M. Campbell’ collection)
- ‘Know Nature, Know Thyself’ :
The Greenwise Amazon Reading List…… - Talk to Greenwise the Guardian (an AI chatbot)
- ‘Through Fountellion’ (a story of the first VR ‘green game’.) — search Amazon or online.
If you like some of the artwork…
- ‘Greenwise’ illustrations and artwork as NFT by Ade’s Press (Makersplace Gallery)
- ‘Art by Ade M. Campbell’ (an NFT collection via Opensea etc.)
- Search ‘Avatars of Nature’ (an NFT collection via Opensea etc.)
- Search ‘Organic Metaverse’ (Nature photography as visual video ‘game’)
- Ade’s website: just search Ade’s Press ! :)
Food forests, fruit tree guilds, garden layout, swales…
