I loved reading the first part of this post -- the story of you and your sister keeping your memories to yourselves was especially poignant. I wonder if you could do some intensive body work to access those memories. Surely, the body knows and remembers.
>>"We decided that this time we’d keep our precious memories, our selves, to ourselves."
I think this is maybe one of those quiet, unshowy decisions or skills that has a lot to do with unlocking empathic curiosity. When you have successfully cordoned off an inner part of yourself and kept it distanced from your outward-facing personas, and when you've done it not out of shame or fear but out of love for an idea or a moment or a feeling, maybe that makes you more interested in other people's inner worlds. Because you know they can be fun things, not awful things. Whereas perhaps, if what you're holding back is something really negative, that makes you less eager to know about what other people are keeping to themselves because you assume it's as awful as yours is?
This may be one of those explanations that looks neat and tidy and has no bearing on how real people work.
Or maybe it's just as simple as the folk who cultivate their inner worlds in great detail from an early age have a tendency to be curious about others. Maybe (ironically) it's an introvert's thing? It's hard to be self-righteous and domineering and all-conquering when you've spent a lot of time in other people's heads by reading the words they wrote...
Maybe all foreign diplomats should be assessed on their foreign-literary competence as much as their political experience.
That is very insightful. I wonder if it would be an introvert's thing, ironic or otherwise? I'll second the idea of having foreign diplomats show foreign literacy competence! I've met enough diplomats to not be very sanguine about their ability to empathize or even use their imaginations. (Not universally true, of course; I just spent a weird year reporting on embassy parties in Vienna for the English-language newspaper. Low-level diplomats were very interesting; ambassadors not so much.)
There was a lovely essay I read almost 20 years ago that's always stuck with me, about how the wide availability of the fiction novel provoked people's ability to empathize with others due solely to the fact that they could imagine themselves in that life for the first time.
I don't, but my guess is it was around living at Jim's - either before or after California / Russia. That's when I remember how painfully we recognized we would also move on from everything we were attached to because we always did.
We want, we crave, we get, we reset, and then we go and want some more. It's such a damaging cycle and so hard to break. It's even worse when that cycle is being perpetuated by the asshats who "started" this country.
On personal responsibility -- it is serpentine and sometimes Gordian. Radical material responsibility can take the form of minimizing one's footprint in such a way as to meet all one's needs with local materials, with what one or one's community can produce from the land. Kind of like the Amish. Often what you've pared away has been produced by unsustainable means or in an exploitative way. Question: what happens to those coffee growers when everyone from somewhere else stops buying their coffee? We're interconnected at this point and unraveling the system we've built without harming people is more than a conundrum. Land is such a huge issue -- declaring a real land jubilee puts a lot of people off their homes and livelihood. How do we resolve this with justice yet without creating more suffering? Back to the material -- it's hard to justify return to absolute sustainability without creating more suffering by abandoning scientific and medical advances that are highly beneficial. I don't think we want that but where is the balance?
Yes! The interconnection is more complex than just ... connection. We truly depend on one another. (Incidentally, I'm on the board of a coffee nonprofit that funnels money directly back to small organizations run by people in local areas -- girls' education, reproductive support, etc. I really have very little to do with it aside from keeping informed, but the guy who started it has done a great job, I think, getting money back to people actually in the coffee growing areas so that they can use it in the ways their communities need: http://www.coffeelands.org -- he worked for a local coffee roasting business for his whole career and this is his way of giving back).
I think, to your larger question, my feeling over the last couple years has been that we can't get out of this and can't rely on collapse to somehow reset things, and so the only "answer" (if you can call it that) is to go into it deeper. Give me a decade and I might even be able to figure out what I mean by that! I do like the idea of a Right to Roam -- as distant as that seems for Americans -- but also Henry George's idea of land taxes that funnel the land part of taxes back into the community. It seems to help.
Where the balance is I do not know. But I completely agree with you. My first baby spent a month in Neonatal Intensive Care, and one thing I thought a lot about afterwards was how much plastic was required just to ensure he lived. I would not trade that for anything, but was I willing to look at the costs to others? Because there is one. That applies to all sorts of things that have drastically improved human life.
I've been having these "interconnectedness of it all" thoughts recently about spices and how the past and ongoing exploitation tied to the spice trade is both awful and yet what makes it possible for me to experience and enjoy cinnamon, nutmeg, and complex mixes like the East Indian spice blend I put into rice I cooked yesterday (which also came from somewhere not near my home) that I would never have experienced if I only had flavors that came from where I lived as a child (in north Idaho on land originally inhabited by the Nimiipuu people later referred to as the Nez Perce).
Years ago I had a little pocket guide, Shopping for a Better World, that rated corporations on a number of things from the percentage of their workforce that was female to whether or not they invested in or produced tobacco or nuclear power or weapons. Now there's so much information I drown if I want to track everything back and know all my ethical tradeoffs. I think of the title of your recent piece that ended "but also I need to make dinner".
I had that pamphlet on ethical fish from the Monterey Bay Aquarium for a long time. Let it slide eventually because my family doesn't each much seafood anyway but of course it applies to pretty much anything. There was a great interview I heard with Nora Bateson last year where she told a story about walking into a cell phone store and they asked her what kind of phone she was looking for and she said, "One without slavery." And there was this whole thing where the employees and other customers got curious and they were all on their phones researching and found that actually it's impossible to buy a smartphone without slavery.
I read a really interesting article about nutmeg a while back. I think it was nutmeg anyway. Maybe cinnamon? And the complexity of the society as opposed to the bare-bones colonialism story. It was really good, I'll have to see if I can find it again.
What I'm personally stuck on these days are almonds and avocado. Almonds because of water and bees; avocado because of water and cartels. And yet ... I can give up almonds but can I deny my daughter avocados? I could but I haven't even though I know about the cartel problems in Mexico and the water theft in Chile ...
If I remember correctly, Andro Linklater's "Measuring America" has sections on mass standards and how they've changed over time (https://www.nist.gov/si-redefinition/kilogram), which is wild to think about but also kinda obvious when you think about it.
At arm's-length from me is a printout of the manuscript of Peter Stark's next book, "Tecumseh's Promise." It's a good one (his book "Astoria" is a favorite of mine). It's roughly about the Shawnee leader Tecumseh pitted against William Henry Harrison. There is a section in the book where Harrison is exchanging letters with Thomas Jefferson in which they discuss their plan to steal land by making it look like they are providing for small farmers, etc., all very hush hush, "no one must know we are discussing this!" stuff. When I think of these assholes we revere so much from the early history of this country, I'm reminded of this bomb Cora Munro drops on Maj. Duncan Heyward in the (1993) film version of The Last of the Mohicans:
"Duncan, you are a man with a few admirable qualities, but taken as a whole, I was wrong to have thought so highly of you."
Oh oh oh I want to read that! That think about Jefferson and the yeoman farmer is so core to a lot of American individualism and private property worship.
Is here where I admit that I went through several years of watching that movie repeatedly? I'd forgotten about that line, but YES.
That is a good question. It might be important as in-depth, detailed background of thinking and research. It's *very* academic, as in, seems written for academics interested in the subject. Though not a slog like some academic books. I will probably end up looking up references in it for years, which seems to me a good indication of a book that I should keep around. I wonder if that law journal paper I linked to might be more relevant though, since it covers a number of different Native land sovereignty cases instead of just one.
(Apropos of nothing: On the page with the Maryland quote, I have a Post-It note that simply says, "Virginia is an asshole." Virginia REALLY did not want to give up its western lands claims.)
They badly wanted to chuck over feudalism but only because it would benefit their land speculations.“
They simply wanted to be the new feudal lords , with land being a non renewable resource, it’s ownership is the ultimate means of control . Especially given the lack of investment into infrastructure, the land near the 20 or so major US metro centers is particularly non renewable (this ties in with the post you wrote recently about folks trying to go off and build new utopias ). While one can go purchase land , it’s quite undesirable / “unlivable” for probably 90% of the USA landmass .
Have you followed the public land owner movement at all? I am glad that awareness is slowly increasing on the importance of not letting more land head into private ownership.
A lot of lands on the former prairies of Western states like Colorado, Wyoming, etc., is almost being abandoned because farming is no longer tenable on them.
Totally agree--they wanted to be the new feudal lords, even if they pretended differently to themselves. I thought of this last night while reading Mark O'Connell's "Notes from an Apocalypse" (which I wanted to recommend to you since he has chapters on the survivalist bunkers and Mars fantasies, etc.) because in the Mars section he talked about how at a convention on Mars colonization, they basically promote the idea of indentured servitude. "You can come to Mars and we'll pay your way and then you can work it off." I think we've been there!
Yes! I'm friends-ish with some of the people at Backcountry Hunters & Anglers (the "Public Land Owner" people), and really admire the work they do. Their advocacy and lobbying has been very effective. I just talked last week with a membership coordinator, and they're working hard on changing that motto to be more reflective of original Native rights and how those public lands were taken, which I think is good. One of the orgs that is at least trying to forward their mission without hiding from its past.
Wonderful column (as always) and thanks for the history lesson from the book you are reading and that crazy Supreme Court ruling. Wow, I had no idea! And loved the photos, and your thoughts/feelings behind them. And I had no idea about Survey Stones as well. I still recall when I first saw some of the original Oregon Trail tracks (in Wyoming) and the thoughts they evoked in me. Take care...
It's pretty amazing, that Supreme Court ruling and its ongoing effects.
Andro Linklater's book "Measuring America" is all about the original surveys of the country--very readable and interesting! Really brings home the reality that the property lines and titles of ownership have to be created.
Thanks.. and of course I've always wondered about county lines, state lines, national lines, etc. Many based on natural features (rivers, mountains, etc) and some based on lines of latitude/longitude, but I am sure there are many interesting stories how some came to me. And even more wacko - voting districts :-).
SO many interesting stories. I got the best guidance on reading, etc., from the head of the surveying department at the local community college. Super interesting guy, full of fascinating stories and knowledge. He's the one who got me hooked on Linklater. And who also made me wish I'd thought to go into surveying as a profession.
I loved reading the first part of this post -- the story of you and your sister keeping your memories to yourselves was especially poignant. I wonder if you could do some intensive body work to access those memories. Surely, the body knows and remembers.
I wonder that. We talk a lot together about body work and Bessel van Der Kolk for other reasons, but there's no reason it couldn't apply here, too.
>>"We decided that this time we’d keep our precious memories, our selves, to ourselves."
I think this is maybe one of those quiet, unshowy decisions or skills that has a lot to do with unlocking empathic curiosity. When you have successfully cordoned off an inner part of yourself and kept it distanced from your outward-facing personas, and when you've done it not out of shame or fear but out of love for an idea or a moment or a feeling, maybe that makes you more interested in other people's inner worlds. Because you know they can be fun things, not awful things. Whereas perhaps, if what you're holding back is something really negative, that makes you less eager to know about what other people are keeping to themselves because you assume it's as awful as yours is?
This may be one of those explanations that looks neat and tidy and has no bearing on how real people work.
Or maybe it's just as simple as the folk who cultivate their inner worlds in great detail from an early age have a tendency to be curious about others. Maybe (ironically) it's an introvert's thing? It's hard to be self-righteous and domineering and all-conquering when you've spent a lot of time in other people's heads by reading the words they wrote...
Maybe all foreign diplomats should be assessed on their foreign-literary competence as much as their political experience.
That is very insightful. I wonder if it would be an introvert's thing, ironic or otherwise? I'll second the idea of having foreign diplomats show foreign literacy competence! I've met enough diplomats to not be very sanguine about their ability to empathize or even use their imaginations. (Not universally true, of course; I just spent a weird year reporting on embassy parties in Vienna for the English-language newspaper. Low-level diplomats were very interesting; ambassadors not so much.)
There was a lovely essay I read almost 20 years ago that's always stuck with me, about how the wide availability of the fiction novel provoked people's ability to empathize with others due solely to the fact that they could imagine themselves in that life for the first time.
There are times when I look back at our clarity as children and am alarmed by how much we understood about the world without realizing it.
It’s a little eerie. Or a lot. Do you remember when it was? I thought about asking you before posting this but then felt like that was cheating.
I don't, but my guess is it was around living at Jim's - either before or after California / Russia. That's when I remember how painfully we recognized we would also move on from everything we were attached to because we always did.
You’re probably right.
We want, we crave, we get, we reset, and then we go and want some more. It's such a damaging cycle and so hard to break. It's even worse when that cycle is being perpetuated by the asshats who "started" this country.
I suppose that's why revolutions don't really work. We keep resetting the same systems.
On personal responsibility -- it is serpentine and sometimes Gordian. Radical material responsibility can take the form of minimizing one's footprint in such a way as to meet all one's needs with local materials, with what one or one's community can produce from the land. Kind of like the Amish. Often what you've pared away has been produced by unsustainable means or in an exploitative way. Question: what happens to those coffee growers when everyone from somewhere else stops buying their coffee? We're interconnected at this point and unraveling the system we've built without harming people is more than a conundrum. Land is such a huge issue -- declaring a real land jubilee puts a lot of people off their homes and livelihood. How do we resolve this with justice yet without creating more suffering? Back to the material -- it's hard to justify return to absolute sustainability without creating more suffering by abandoning scientific and medical advances that are highly beneficial. I don't think we want that but where is the balance?
Yes! The interconnection is more complex than just ... connection. We truly depend on one another. (Incidentally, I'm on the board of a coffee nonprofit that funnels money directly back to small organizations run by people in local areas -- girls' education, reproductive support, etc. I really have very little to do with it aside from keeping informed, but the guy who started it has done a great job, I think, getting money back to people actually in the coffee growing areas so that they can use it in the ways their communities need: http://www.coffeelands.org -- he worked for a local coffee roasting business for his whole career and this is his way of giving back).
I think, to your larger question, my feeling over the last couple years has been that we can't get out of this and can't rely on collapse to somehow reset things, and so the only "answer" (if you can call it that) is to go into it deeper. Give me a decade and I might even be able to figure out what I mean by that! I do like the idea of a Right to Roam -- as distant as that seems for Americans -- but also Henry George's idea of land taxes that funnel the land part of taxes back into the community. It seems to help.
Where the balance is I do not know. But I completely agree with you. My first baby spent a month in Neonatal Intensive Care, and one thing I thought a lot about afterwards was how much plastic was required just to ensure he lived. I would not trade that for anything, but was I willing to look at the costs to others? Because there is one. That applies to all sorts of things that have drastically improved human life.
I've been having these "interconnectedness of it all" thoughts recently about spices and how the past and ongoing exploitation tied to the spice trade is both awful and yet what makes it possible for me to experience and enjoy cinnamon, nutmeg, and complex mixes like the East Indian spice blend I put into rice I cooked yesterday (which also came from somewhere not near my home) that I would never have experienced if I only had flavors that came from where I lived as a child (in north Idaho on land originally inhabited by the Nimiipuu people later referred to as the Nez Perce).
Coffee is its own food group and chocolate is another so that's two more interconnectedness things that blend joy and guilt and create the need for lists like https://www.slavefreechocolate.org/ethical-chocolate-companies.
Years ago I had a little pocket guide, Shopping for a Better World, that rated corporations on a number of things from the percentage of their workforce that was female to whether or not they invested in or produced tobacco or nuclear power or weapons. Now there's so much information I drown if I want to track everything back and know all my ethical tradeoffs. I think of the title of your recent piece that ended "but also I need to make dinner".
I had that pamphlet on ethical fish from the Monterey Bay Aquarium for a long time. Let it slide eventually because my family doesn't each much seafood anyway but of course it applies to pretty much anything. There was a great interview I heard with Nora Bateson last year where she told a story about walking into a cell phone store and they asked her what kind of phone she was looking for and she said, "One without slavery." And there was this whole thing where the employees and other customers got curious and they were all on their phones researching and found that actually it's impossible to buy a smartphone without slavery.
I read a really interesting article about nutmeg a while back. I think it was nutmeg anyway. Maybe cinnamon? And the complexity of the society as opposed to the bare-bones colonialism story. It was really good, I'll have to see if I can find it again.
What I'm personally stuck on these days are almonds and avocado. Almonds because of water and bees; avocado because of water and cartels. And yet ... I can give up almonds but can I deny my daughter avocados? I could but I haven't even though I know about the cartel problems in Mexico and the water theft in Chile ...
Re survey markers https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/physics/historical-speed-of-light-measurements-in-southern-california/the-mount-wilson-mount-san-antonio-measurements-1922-1926/
That is super cool!
If I remember correctly, Andro Linklater's "Measuring America" has sections on mass standards and how they've changed over time (https://www.nist.gov/si-redefinition/kilogram), which is wild to think about but also kinda obvious when you think about it.
At arm's-length from me is a printout of the manuscript of Peter Stark's next book, "Tecumseh's Promise." It's a good one (his book "Astoria" is a favorite of mine). It's roughly about the Shawnee leader Tecumseh pitted against William Henry Harrison. There is a section in the book where Harrison is exchanging letters with Thomas Jefferson in which they discuss their plan to steal land by making it look like they are providing for small farmers, etc., all very hush hush, "no one must know we are discussing this!" stuff. When I think of these assholes we revere so much from the early history of this country, I'm reminded of this bomb Cora Munro drops on Maj. Duncan Heyward in the (1993) film version of The Last of the Mohicans:
"Duncan, you are a man with a few admirable qualities, but taken as a whole, I was wrong to have thought so highly of you."
Oh oh oh I want to read that! That think about Jefferson and the yeoman farmer is so core to a lot of American individualism and private property worship.
Is here where I admit that I went through several years of watching that movie repeatedly? I'd forgotten about that line, but YES.
Also, how essential is the "Buying America from the Indians...." tome to my library of such books? I see I can get a used copy....
That is a good question. It might be important as in-depth, detailed background of thinking and research. It's *very* academic, as in, seems written for academics interested in the subject. Though not a slog like some academic books. I will probably end up looking up references in it for years, which seems to me a good indication of a book that I should keep around. I wonder if that law journal paper I linked to might be more relevant though, since it covers a number of different Native land sovereignty cases instead of just one.
(Apropos of nothing: On the page with the Maryland quote, I have a Post-It note that simply says, "Virginia is an asshole." Virginia REALLY did not want to give up its western lands claims.)
“
They badly wanted to chuck over feudalism but only because it would benefit their land speculations.“
They simply wanted to be the new feudal lords , with land being a non renewable resource, it’s ownership is the ultimate means of control . Especially given the lack of investment into infrastructure, the land near the 20 or so major US metro centers is particularly non renewable (this ties in with the post you wrote recently about folks trying to go off and build new utopias ). While one can go purchase land , it’s quite undesirable / “unlivable” for probably 90% of the USA landmass .
Have you followed the public land owner movement at all? I am glad that awareness is slowly increasing on the importance of not letting more land head into private ownership.
A lot of lands on the former prairies of Western states like Colorado, Wyoming, etc., is almost being abandoned because farming is no longer tenable on them.
Totally agree--they wanted to be the new feudal lords, even if they pretended differently to themselves. I thought of this last night while reading Mark O'Connell's "Notes from an Apocalypse" (which I wanted to recommend to you since he has chapters on the survivalist bunkers and Mars fantasies, etc.) because in the Mars section he talked about how at a convention on Mars colonization, they basically promote the idea of indentured servitude. "You can come to Mars and we'll pay your way and then you can work it off." I think we've been there!
Yes! I'm friends-ish with some of the people at Backcountry Hunters & Anglers (the "Public Land Owner" people), and really admire the work they do. Their advocacy and lobbying has been very effective. I just talked last week with a membership coordinator, and they're working hard on changing that motto to be more reflective of original Native rights and how those public lands were taken, which I think is good. One of the orgs that is at least trying to forward their mission without hiding from its past.
Wonderful column (as always) and thanks for the history lesson from the book you are reading and that crazy Supreme Court ruling. Wow, I had no idea! And loved the photos, and your thoughts/feelings behind them. And I had no idea about Survey Stones as well. I still recall when I first saw some of the original Oregon Trail tracks (in Wyoming) and the thoughts they evoked in me. Take care...
It's pretty amazing, that Supreme Court ruling and its ongoing effects.
Andro Linklater's book "Measuring America" is all about the original surveys of the country--very readable and interesting! Really brings home the reality that the property lines and titles of ownership have to be created.
Thanks.. and of course I've always wondered about county lines, state lines, national lines, etc. Many based on natural features (rivers, mountains, etc) and some based on lines of latitude/longitude, but I am sure there are many interesting stories how some came to me. And even more wacko - voting districts :-).
SO many interesting stories. I got the best guidance on reading, etc., from the head of the surveying department at the local community college. Super interesting guy, full of fascinating stories and knowledge. He's the one who got me hooked on Linklater. And who also made me wish I'd thought to go into surveying as a profession.