Dare we imagine ourselves as interdependent? Modern identity doesn't allow us to access wild genius, or the wisdom of the heart, or even intuition.So it's important to deconstruct what ‘modern identity’ is, because as well as being made up of acquired behaviours, we refer to it as normality because it is invisible to us.We easily say: ‘That's the way human beings are!’ However, as indigenous and contextual cultures or the peoples of the global south point out, modern culture has its own premises and beliefs that are not, and never have been, universal. Modern culture has its own positioning and type of perception, but it sets itself up as if it were the norm for all of humanity. That's why it's so important to distinguish and make room for the heart and various other ways of being and perceiving the world.The point is that often what we call ‘our personality’, who we say we are, are cultural characteristics and not necessarily the singular, unique, creative or destructive premises of each one of us. -from the book The Sanctuary - Essays on Eco-Mythology
Between 2019 and 2022, I wrote four books whose ground is my mourning and the consequent search for other references for how to be human:
I began the journey with Happy Place (in Portuguese), which focused on attention and devotion to various landscapes.
Then, I continued to deepen the journey with Little Book of Immanence (in Portuguese). I looked at some differences between the indigenous psychological metabolism (extinct in this territory but still reverberating in the deep body memories) and the dominant dogmas.
The next book, Tales of the Serpent and the Moon (in Portuguese, English translation in substack), was an intentional journey through the body, territory, and tales, stitching together various threads along the same line of redemption.
The book The Sanctuary goes even deeper into this paradoxical pilgrimage, opening up cracks and gaps in the modern psyche. I dedicate an entire chapter to delving into the pitfalls of modernity that prevent us from relating more deeply and broadly in humble responsibility.
Often mistaken for a web of tension and guilt (these are just symptoms of the cognitive dissonance of the dominant culture that sees itself as separate), the search for other ways of being human is an opening up to the diversity of whom we can be—listening to other cultures that intertwine with reality(ies) in a very different way to our own.Because rescuing relational affection goes against the grain of hyper-individualism and has nothing to do with appropriating ceremonies from native cultures, this is a work of responsibility. A labor of eco-mythical surrender to return to sensual, erotic, ecological, sacred, sensorial, and sensitive intelligence. A journey as painful as it is generous, in immanent exuberance.
I recently found other valuable references in my constant search for other human skins and bones. It's the Worldview Map for rebalancing life systems on planet Earth. There are 28 (in this map, expanded to 50) precepts, most initially published in The Red Road by Four Arrows and presented at UNGA78 with Darcia Narvaez and revised in collaboration in the summer of 2024, after the publication of the book Restoring Kinship Worldview. You can see it here.
References
WorldviewLiteracy.org
KindredWorld.org
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