The Back Story...
Meet the Award-Winning Researcher: Darcia Narvaez, PhD
Meet the Award-Winning Researcher: Darcia Narvaez, PhD
Meet the Award-Winning Researcher: Darcia Narvaez, PhD
See Reimagining Humanity's Prequel: Breaking the Cycle
Meet the Award-Winning Researcher: Darcia Narvaez, PhD
Meet the Award-Winning Researcher: Darcia Narvaez, PhD
Discover Our Evolutionary Path to WellBeing: Our Evolved Nest
Meet the Award-Winning Researcher: Darcia Narvaez, PhD
Discover Our Evolutionary Path to WellBeing: Our Evolved Nest
Restoring Our Kinship Worldview: Rebalancing Life on Planet Earth
Meet the Award-Winning Researcher: Darcia Narvaez, PhD
Discover Our Evolutionary Path to WellBeing: Our Evolved Nest
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION, Timemark 0 to :55.
We are living in a time of great destruction and despair.
People are disconnected from one another and Earth.
Humanity has forgotten who we can be.
It’s time to reimagine humanity.
It’s time to reimagine us.
Let’s reimagine what it means to be human.
Let’s base it on hundreds of thousands of years of our species’ existence.
Let’s base it on our best ancestors, those who lived responsibly with all of life.
EXPLANATION OF INTRODUCTION
We live in times of oppression, of everyone, to one degree or another. The dominant system is one of violence and coercion towards babies, children and adults. As a result, our understanding of normality has shifted—we think it normal to feel despair, anxiety, anger and to be generally unwell. Our imaginations are shriveled by the trauma and stress we experience. It’s time to remember who we can be, what capacities our species has.
Humanity has not always been like this—disconnected from others and lonely, disconnected from and destructive of Earth. We would not be here if that were the case. We would have destroyed ourselves long ago. Our best ancestors, specifically the San Peoples of central Africa (who carry all of humanity’s genes), still exist. They continue to live responsibly, maintaining the wellbeing of the ecosystems in which they live.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
- Are you aware of the great destruction occurring?
- Are you aware of the increasing mental distress around the world?
- Have you ever wondered about human nature? About human behavior, whether humans could be different than they are today?
- Have you thought about optimal human potential?
- What alternatives to the dominant culture have you seen or experienced?
- Did you know that human genus has been around for about 6 million years, our line for 2 million, and our species (homo sapiens sapiens) for about 300,000 years?
- What does it mean to live responsibly on the planet?
Bibliography
- Brondizio, E.S., Settele, J., Díaz, S., & Ngo, H.T. (Eds.) (2019). Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Bonn, Germany: IPBES.
- Hrdy, S. (2009). Mothers and others: The evolutionary origins of mutual understanding. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.
- Ingold, T. (2005). On the social relations of the hunter-gatherer band. In R.B. Lee, R.B. & R. Daly (Eds.), The Cambridge encyclopedia of hunters and gatherers (pp. 399-410). New York: Cambridge University Press.
- Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005). Ecosystems and human well-being: Synthesis. Washington, DC: Island Press.
- Steffen, W., Rockström, J., Richardson, K., Lenton, T.M., Folke, C., Liverman, D.,… Schellnhuber, H.J. (2018). Trajectories of the earth system in the Anthropocene, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115 (33) 8252-8259; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1810141115.
- Surgeon General’s Advisory on Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation - PDF
- Suzman, J. (2017). Affluence without abundance: The disappearing world of the Bushmen. New York: Bloomsbury.
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Discover humanity's history and capacity for creating a Wisdom-based, Wellness-informed Society through our evolutionary pathway to wellbeing: our Evolved Nest.
SECTION 1 - Let's reimagine what it means to be human
SECTION 1: Let’s reimagine what it means to be human. Timemark 0:55.
We trust Spirit, the unmanifest—what we cannot measure but know is vital for life.
We breathe in, live in, connectedness. We have a sense of oneness with All.
When we feel disconnected, it is Hell.
Mothering, nurturing, gifting are central to a good life. And so, mothers and nurturers are well supported.
We are patient with children. They are learning to be fully human. We provide the nested companionship care that they expect.
We support everyone’s basic needs and stand back to let each child’s beauty unfold.
We encourage and trust in each person’s unique pathway of development.
We aim for and support one another’s perfection—meaning wholeness, completeness, maturity.
We nourish our basic humanity through affectionate friendship.
We live fully, embracing joy but also the pains of life, moving forward together, vulnerable, caring, sharing.
We are born good and extend that goodness throughout our lives.
EXPLANATION of SECTION 1
The characteristics listed are common among nomadic foragers who represent the type of society of 99% of human genus history. They live in immediate-return economies—using up most of what they gather or hunt within a few days. They have few possessions and have nothing to go to war about. They provide the evolved nest to young children and live nested throughout their lives. This fosters and maintains their full human capacities.
Our ancestral context, 99% of human genus history, was spent in connectedness. Many peoples still have a sense of oneness with all, though modern world forces impede it every which way. Love is an energy that we cannot see or measure but without which we waste away. Disconnection is hell for a child, and for us adults as well. Prisoners who survive extensive solitary confinement do so because they connect with the mice, cockroaches or other life forms they share their space with. They connect to the sunbeam through the small window.
Even though most of the universe consists of dark energy and dark matter, which we cannot see, and human senses only pick up on part of the audio and visual spectrum, we can feel connected to the oneness of all.
We all come from a mother’s womb whose initial nurturing gives us life. Mothers and other nurturers bring us into being. In our ancestral context, nomadic foragers, as well as in other traditional societies, everyone’s basic needs are met without question. It is understood that children grow into their humanity, learning self-control, and the cultural ways of living. It is a lifelong process, so we all need mentors and wise elders to guide us. With lifelong support from friends, those who listen to us and support us, we reach our wholeness. All emotions are expressed, though in different ways by culture. The key feelings are acceptance of diversity and vulnerability, the need to rely on others, generosity to share what one has. Goodness is expected and nurtured.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
- Are you connected to Spirit, the sense of unity or oneness with All?
- Do you feel connected to your deeper self? To other people? To the cosmos?
- What kind of nurturing did you receive growing up? Were you treated with patience? Did you feel like your basic needs were met? Did you feel welcomed? Did you have affectionate friendships? How about today? Do you have at least one confidant with whom you can share your troubles?
- How do you nurture others today?
- Do you think people are born good? Why or why not?
Bibliography
- Dark energy, dark matter
- Gawande, A. (2009). Hellhole: The United States holds tens of thousands of inmates in long-term solitary confinement. Is this torture? The New Yorker, March 30, 36-45.
- Hrdy, S. (2009). Mothers and others: The evolutionary origins of mutual understanding. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.
- Lee, R. B. (2018). Hunter-gatherers and human evolution: New light on old debates. Annual Review of Anthropology, 47, 513–531.
- Lee, R. B., & Daly, R. (Eds.). (2005). The Cambridge encyclopedia of hunters and gatherers. New York: Cambridge University Press.
- Limitations of human senses
- Maturana, H.R., & Verden-Zoller, G. (2008). The origin of humanness in the biology of love. Imprint Academic.
- Narvaez, D. (2014). Neurobiology and the development of human morality: Evolution, culture and wisdom. Norton.
- Romero, S. (2013). After years in solitary, an austere life as Uruguay’s president. New York Times, January 4. Downloaded on May 4, 2013 from: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/05/world/americas/after-years-in-solitary-an-austere-life-as-uruguays-president.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
- Suzman, J. (2017). Affluence without abundance: The disappearing world of the Bushmen. New York: Bloomsbury.
- Topa, W. (Four Arrows), & Narvaez, D. (2022). Restoring the kinship worldview: Indigenous voices introduce 28 precepts for rebalancing life on planet earth. North Atlantic Books.
- Turnbull, C.M. (1984). The human cycle. New York: Simon and Schuster
- Vaughan, G. (2007). Introduction: A radically different worldview is possible. In G. Vaughan (Ed.), Women and the Gift economy (pp. 1-40). Toronto: Ianna Publications.
- Widlok, T. (2017). Anthropology and the economy of sharing. London: Routledge.
- Winnicott, D.W. (1987). Babies and their mothers. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
- Winnicott, D.W. (1990). Home is where we start from: Essays by a psychoanalyst (compiled and Ed. By C. Winnicott, R. Shepherd, M. Davis). New York: W.W. Norton & Co.
- Woodburn, J. (1982). Egalitarian societies. Man, 17, 431-451.
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Discover humanity's history and capacity for creating a Wisdom-based, Wellness-informed Society through our evolutionary pathway to wellbeing: our Evolved Nest.
SECTION 2 - Let's reimagine our place
SECTION 2: Let’s reimagine our place. Timemark 3:04.
We are intoxicated with the universe. Its beauty takes our breath away.
We are awake to a sentient, living cosmos.
We remember that our humanity is based in what we are made of, humus, earth.
We love our place on earth, our common home, and nurture it carefully and responsibly.
We know, and feel, and act interconnected, with other humans and with the more than human.
We trust the flow of life and are its co-creators here and now.
We live durably, sustainably, regeneratively, honoring our ancestors and future generations.
Nature and its laws are respected and honored.
We tune up our hearts through ceremony, and learn to listen to all our kin.
We avoid dishonoring the land and water and air with pollutants.
The land, water, soil, animals, plants are partners, not victims of our control.
We honor our fellow creatures who have their own lives to live.
We ask permission of the animals and plants whose lives we need to exist. We give them thanks and do not waste anything we are gifted.
We embrace our responsibilities to all our relations.
EXPLANATION of SECTION 2:
When we are nested in early life and our basic needs are met throughout life, we develop trust in the universe, as is found among traditional communities. Perceptions and ecological intelligence develop well to enable our abilities to tune into the communications of the rest of the natural world. Individual and group ceremonies maintain a sense of emotional attachment to our place on the earth. With the development of our full capacities, guided by wise elders, we understand that our actions affect the web of life, so we are careful to not victimize animals, plants, soil or water. We live as partners, grateful for their daily gifts. We understand that we need to learn from their wisdom of living well.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
- When have you had the experience of being intoxicated with the beauty of Earth or the universe?
- When have you felt it as a sentient cosmos?
- How do you show affection for the place where you live? How do you/can you support the native animals and plants in your locale.
- How can you live more durably, sustainably, regeneratively?
- How do you honor your ancestors? Future generations?
- What ceremonies do you participate in?
- How do you avoid polluting the air, soil, water?
- When do you listen to non-human relations? How can you honor the plants and animals around you and who keep you alive? What responsibilities do you feel you have to them?
Bibliography
- Allen, P.G. (1986). The sacred hoop: Recovering the feminine in American Indian traditions. Beacon Press.
- De la Cadena, M. (2015). Earth Beings: Ecologies of Practice across Andean Worlds. Duke University Press.
- Descola, P. (2013). Beyond nature and culture (J. Lloyd, trans.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- Escobar, A. (2018). Designs for the pluriverse: Radical interdependence, autonomy and the making of worlds. Duke University Press.
- Forbes, J.D. (2008). Columbus and other cannibals: The wétiko disease of exploitation, imperialism, and terrorism, rev ed. New York: Seven Stories Press.
- Forbes, J.D. (2008). Columbus and other cannibals: The wétiko disease of exploitation, imperialism, and terrorism, rev ed. New York: Seven Stories Press.
- Four Arrows (2016). The CAT-FAWN connection: Using metacognition and indigenous worldview for more effective character education and human survival. Journal of Moral Education, 45, 261-275.
- Harvey, G. (2017). Animism: Respecting the living world, 2nd ed. London: C. Hurst & Co.
- Katz, R. (2017). Indigenous healing psychology: Honoring the wisdom of the First Peoples. Rochester, VT: Healing Arts Press.
- Kimmerer, R.W. (2013). Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge and the teachings of plants. Milkweed Editions, Minneapolis, MN.
- Macy, J. & Brown, M.Y. (1998). Coming back to life: Practices to reconnect our lives to our world. Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers.
- Nelson, M.K. (Ed.) (2008). Original instructions: Indigenous teachings for a sustainable future. Rochester, VT: Bear & Co.
- O’Donohue, J. (2005). Beauty, the invisible embrace: Rediscovering the true sources of compassion, serenity, and hope. New York: Perennial.
- Tedlock, D. & Tedlock., B. (1975). Teachings from the American Earth: Indian religion and philosophy. Liveright.
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Discover humanity's history and capacity for creating a Wisdom-based, Wellness-informed Society through our evolutionary pathway to wellbeing: our Evolved Nest.
SECTION 3 - Let's reimagine our desires
SECTION 3: Let’s reimagine our desires. Timemark 5:33.
We curtail our wants.
We create small, local self-sufficient economies guided by maintaining the wellbeing, of individuals, families and communities—human and more than human.
With consensual democracy, the common good is our aim—with justice, security and wellbeing for All.
We let go of any fear that constricts us. We choose instead, courage.
We do not harbor hate. When someone’s ego inflates, we tease it away.
Trust is greater than fear. We feast on love.
We are flexibly attuned to others, oriented to mutual enhancement, to playful interaction.
We see through differences in cultural forms to the deeper values that we all share—love and belonging, family and friendship, creative work, and social enjoyment.
We are honest about the past, dream about honoring the future, but live fully in the present.
Our lives are convivial, filled with gratitude and lovingkindness, overflowing with laughter.
Strengthened by one another’s beauty, we touch each other’s souls.
We nourish one another, meeting each other’s needs as fulfillment of our own need to share.
We are guided by a sense of Commonself, rather than by separated ego selves.
We build a civilization of joy, together living individualistic unified at-oneness.
Our understanding resides outside of words and ideas. We are heartmind.
Our identities are global, cosmic oneness.
Like flying birds, we are one with the air. Like a school of fish, we are one with the water. We breathe together, we flow together, we belong together.
EXPLANATION of SECTION 3:
Nomadic foraging groups spend their time relishing life. They have limited wants and work only hard enough to get basic needs met but also to make beautiful ornaments for self decoration and community celebrations. Life is spent in enjoyment of social living. The full development of right brain capacities and an integrated brain means that each is connected to a sense of unity with all, making differences matters only of external form. These capacities enable full presence in the moment.
‘Preconquest’ communities—groups who have not been colonized with neurobiological dysregulation and left-brain intellectual disconnection from lack of nestedness—live in flow with Nature and with others. They easily adjust to events that occur. ‘Postconquest’ peoples have been disconnected from the flow of life, from babyhood on, treated by others as separate ‘objects’ rather than parts of the common self. Preconquest moral capacities are based in thinking and acting from the heart—from relational attunement and communal imagination (instead of social self-protectionism and vicious or detached imagination). Lives are filled with loving supportive relationships. Children are encouraged to use fear as a stimulation for courage. Big egos are considered dangerous and so techniques for controlling them, like teasing, are used.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
- Do you ever guide yourself to want less (e.g., like imagining attractive junk food as something disgusting or avoid watching advertisements)?
- Do you support local farmers and small-businesses?
- Have you practiced democracy in small groups where you discuss and come to an agreement, after having heard from everyone?
- Do have practices that help you let go of fear and move into love?
- Do you avoid feeling hate or contempt for others?
- Do you avoid feeling superior to others and help others to calm their egos?
- Do you nurture trust of others in yourself?
- Do you practice flexible attunement to others? Do you try to make others feel good about themselves?
- Do you notice how people have similar values though they may exhibit in different forms (e.g., how to show friendship, how to help others feel like they matter?
- How are you honest about the past? How is your community honest about their history?
- How do you honor future generations?
- How do you practice gratitude each day?
- How do you show lovingkindness?
- Do you arrive in each social situation perceiving the beauty in the other’s spirit?
- How do you cultivate joy in the community?
- How do you cultivate your heart-felt intuitions—i.e., those that connect you with all others?
- When do you feel oneness, like you belong to the All? How do you cultivate a feeling of oneness with all?
Bibliography
- Eberle, G. (2002). Sacred time and the search for meaning. Boston, MA: Shambhala.
- Four Arrows (2016). The CAT-FAWN connection: Using metacognition and indigenous worldview for more effective character education and human survival. Journal of Moral Education, 45, 261-275.
- Fullinwider, Robert K. “Multicultural education: concepts, policies, and controversies.” Public Education in a Multicultural Society. Ed. Robert K. Fullinwider. Cambridge University Press, 1996: 4-6, 16.
- Gowdy, J. (1998). Limited wants, unlimited means: A reader on hunter-gatherer economics and the environment. Washington, D.C.: Island Press.
- Hahn, T. N. (2020). Interbeing: The 14 Mindfulness Trainings of Engaged Buddhism, 4th Ed. (trans. Sister Annabel Laity) Parallax Press.
- Illich, I. (2009). Tools for conviviality. Marion Boyars.
- Ivanhoe, P.J. (2017). Oneness: East Asian conceptions of virtue, happiness, and how we are all connected. New York: Oxford University Press.
- Lee, R. B. (1979). The !Kung San: Men, women, and work in a foraging community. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Lee, R. B., & Daly, R. (Eds.). (2005). The Cambridge encyclopedia of hunters and gatherers. New York: Cambridge University Press.
- Martin, C.L. (1999). The way of the human being. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
- Sorenson, E.R. (1998). Preconquest consciousness. In H. Wautischer (Ed.), Tribal epistemologies (pp. 79-115). Aldershot, UK: Ashgate.
- Turnbull, C.M. (1984). The human cycle. New York: Simon and Schuster
- Whitehead, R.H. (1988). Stories from the six worlds: Micmac legends. Halifax: Nimbus.
- Wienpahl, P. (1979). The radical Spinoza. New York, NY: New York University Press.
- Wurts, J. (2017). Consensual democracy. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.
- Helen Norberg-Hodges
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Discover humanity's history and capacity for creating a Wisdom-based, Wellness-informed Society through our evolutionary pathway to wellbeing: our Evolved Nest.
SECTION 4 - Let's reimagine our togetherness.
SECTION 4: Let’s reimagine our togetherness.Timemark 9:22.
In a life filled with abundance and oneness, greed makes no sense.
There is no hoarding, psychologically or materially. No lasting inequality, no static hierarchies.
There is no coercion, even of children.
We don’t idolize form but honor process. We don’t expect rigidity but flexibility.
Anthropocentrism is considered a sin. Love of violence is considered disordered.
When one of us falls off the path of wellbeing, others help us find our place again, with compassion.
Justice is restorative instead of punitive. We befriend and empower the lost, circling offenders back into connectedness.
We understand that we and the world are not machines, with separable parts; we are living beings, dynamic systems of light and energy.
Instead of bracing against life, we are open to creative response.
We grow wild and fearless minds that mirror the cosmos.
Instead of racing to some final after-life prize, our lives join the cycle of life, billions of years in the making. Ever flowing, stardust to Earth dust to stardust.
As good stewards of Earth, we are remembered as beloved ancestors.
EXPLANATION of SECTION 4
When you are raised nested, there is no sense of scarcity but an ability to adjust to things as they come. You have the capacities to adapt and overcome obstacles that arise with good humor. You understand yourself and others to be vulnerable and subject to death, so you are generous and sharing with what you have.
Each entity is considered an agent with their own purpose. The newborn may be grandfather reincarnated, so you show respect for the elder. Coercion is not tolerated.
The biggest danger is to think that you or humanity is more important than any other living being. Instead, you sense that you are part of a community of persons, only some of whom are human. With a feeling of sentience in every aspect of the world, even in rocks, violence toward others is a violation of life. You have no interest in being violent except when needing to kill a plant or animal to sustain life. Manner matters. Showing respect to the living beings in front of you is critical for keeping the flow of life going. Good relationships are the key to living well.
Each being is part of a common self that continuously cycles from wholeness to individuality. Since everyone is part of a common self, justice is a matter of mending relations. To be ethical means to honor one’s ancestors but also to live in a way that honors one’s descendants, to the seventh generation.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
- Do you feel a sense of scarcity or abundance?
- Do you find yourself hoarding because you feel anxious?
- Do you like to be coerced? Do you coerce others?
- How do you honor process rather than rigid form?
- How do you practice flexibility?
- Do you recognize when you are anthropocentric?
- Are you attracted to violence? How do you help yourself become attracted to peaceful ways?
- When someone does something out of line, do you help them return to the fold with kindness?
- If you are in charge of someone who “misbehaves,” do you restore the broken relationship rather than punish them?
- Do you feel like you are a dynamic being?
- When do you brace against life? When are you open and creative? Can you increase the latter and reduce the former?
- When have you been wild and fearless? When have you mirrored the oneness of the cosmos?
- Are you ready to join the cycle of life?
- Do you want to be remembered as a beloved ancestor?
Bibliography
- Deloria, V. (2006). The world we used to live in. Golden, Co: Fulcrum Publishing.
- Liedloff, J. (1977). The Continuum concept. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books.
- McPherson, D.H., & Rabb, J.D. (2011). Indian from the inside: Native American philosophy and cultural renewal, 2nd ed.Jefferson, NC: MacFarland & Co.
- Narvaez, D. (2014). Neurobiology and the development of human morality: Evolution, culture and wisdom. Norton.
- Ross, R. (2006). Returning to the teachings: Exploring aboriginal justice. Toronto: Penguin Canada.
- Ross, R. (2014). Indigenous healing: Exploring traditional paths. Toronto: Penguin Canada.
- Suzman, J. (2017). Affluence without abundance: The disappearing world of the Bushmen. New York: Bloomsbury.
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Discover humanity's history and capacity for creating a Wisdom-based, Wellness-informed Society through our evolutionary pathway to wellbeing: our Evolved Nest.
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