Well. I usually don't get a lot out of the essays here that are full of philosophy and the origins of words and all that. But there are two things that inspire comment from me here. One is that you speak of a wound, a longing, because you are separate from the land, and you imagine a life in which you grew food on your own land...well, that life is mine. I live on a land trust so technically I don't own the land--I have a lifetime lease, and do own the house my husband and I built, and the other "improvements." I think this is maybe a better cure for that wound than a deed to the land, because it's more honest--I have temporary stewardship of this land, and it's understood as a three-way legal relationship--not just between me and the land but between me (and my husband) in RELATION to other people, about the land. Anyway, I don't have the wound James describes, I live the life he longs for. Yet I also am wounded, also live with a longing I see no satisfying--because as a person who cares about the state of the world, who sees the polycrisis bearing down on us, and who lives in West Virginia--I have been FIGHTING for 30 years, fighting first mostly the coal industry, then the gas industry, because they and their associates in the chemical industries are the primary local sources of harm. But the environmentalists in this area are way outgunned by the industry and by local indifference, and "Appalachian fatalism." So I'm tired of losing most of the battles, but also--I'm tired of fighting. I so want to join with others to work for making things better, to BUILD something. As James longs for the relationship with the land I have, I long for a relationship with community (of humans) I don't think I could ever have here, or maybe anywhere.
The other comment is based on the image chosen to go with this essay. It's the kind of image that comes to my mind in relation to discussions of Smaje's work--people have said "If that many people move to the country, how can their housing and other needs be provided?" (An objection he makes in his forthcoming book that argues against ecomodernist ideas that, among other things, say we should all move to cities.) My response is based on spending much of a couple of years in Iowa and surrounding states in the late 70s, working on grain elevator construction crews to raise money to buy land in WV. And then traveling through that area a couple of times in more recent years. It was shocking to keep seeing--that image, the houses and other buildings going to ruin, large numbers of them--which I understand has resulted from the control monopolies have on agricultural policies, which results in family farmers being unable to make a living and being driven off the land, so four small farms are now part of one huge one, perhaps with an absentee owner. Looking at that image, I note the buildings appear to be made of brick and wonder--could they be reclaimed? The remnants of the roof removed and replaced with a new roof, the doors and windows replaced, more insulation put in than was ever there before, and it becomes a home for a couple of families tending a multicultural small farm?
"I'm talking about the kind of rootedness that can move."
An ecstatic rootedness, perhaps? There's a wounded ecstasy to your writing, James, and dare I say, you have a touch of the holy fool. (Someone said the same of me once, and I took it as a high compliment.)
And there is magic in that title, indeed. It brings into view the etymological link between doors and journeys. The "port-" in "portability" comes from the same route as the "porte" in "Fermez la porte!" The doorway, the literal threshold, is for coming and going, as well as for staying put. It is neither simply an opening, nor simply a barrier. And a "porter" can be one who carries back and forwards, or one who keeps the gate.
What I wrote here, apparently, is richly saturated in mostly indirect influences which have flowed to me through people who are not Ivan Illich, but who are deeply influenced and inspired by Illich. So it's clear to me that I'm going to have to read most of Illich's writings, and a lot of writings which are either about Illich or which explicitly have Illich as a major springhead.
I'm bitten by a bug which makes me desperately hungry and thirsty for understanding subsistence economies and culture which were basically communal in shape and deeply rooted to land -- but not land in an extractive sense (which is the modern sense of 'land'), but land as the radical root of home and belonging, and land as an unfathomable source of something like "gift" -- but even deeper than "gift". Much deeper, really. More even than source of sustenance. There is a way of relating to land which is simply ecstatic, and impossible to contain in prosaic consciousness. Only poetry can begin to point at this ecstasy.
About this "ecstasy".... " ... from Greek ekstasis "entrancement, astonishment, insanity; any displacement or removal from the proper place," in New Testament "a trance," from existanai "displace, put out of place," also "drive out of one's mind" (existanai phrenon), from ek "out" (see ex-) + histanai "to place, cause to stand," from PIE root *sta- "to stand, make or be firm."
As you can see, it's not entirely easy or clear to know what the Greeks back in the day meant by ekstasis. Did they sometimes have an ironic sense of this notion of "displacement or removal from the proper place"?
Could it be that modernity has torn us all asunder from "the proper place" that what passes for "the proper place" for us is an inversion of what is truly proper for us?
I know that Dougald Hine has long been pondering what it means to nurture a "living culture" into being -- which I think is the purpose he and his friends have for A School Called Home. Is a "living culture" a right-side-up culture only accessible to us moderns by way of a journey through ekstasis?
What do you think, Dougald? And how do you feel? And what do you sense and intuit and imagine?
For me, my ecstasy (my rupture from "the proper place") is a wound -- an intollerable wound, a wound of the kind that makes one seek to swim to the surface of the lake of modernity for a desperate gasp of ekstasis. It's a longing as desperate as drowning. And it came to me -- and continues to come to me -- as a profound longing to embody a "living culture" -- a rooted culture, a culture rooted in an ecstatic relation to / with "land" -- or home.
But yes, then, Dougald. I suppose this makes me either wholly a fool or some sort of pathetic and desperate holy fool. But I did not choose this! It has been stalking me all of my life, wanting to make a feast of my breath and bones. I surrender. Come and eat me! I'm happy to become such a portable feast.
The wound comes to mind and heart (and hearth) through an opening into the radical depths of tacit knowing, which I think means we're all living in this wound now, but I'm acutely aware of my wound, and most in my society are yet to deeply awaken to theirs. When we bring thinking, feeling, sensing, intuiting and imagining together, all of these voices become a portable ekstasis, a living and a longing for home.
Well. I usually don't get a lot out of the essays here that are full of philosophy and the origins of words and all that. But there are two things that inspire comment from me here. One is that you speak of a wound, a longing, because you are separate from the land, and you imagine a life in which you grew food on your own land...well, that life is mine. I live on a land trust so technically I don't own the land--I have a lifetime lease, and do own the house my husband and I built, and the other "improvements." I think this is maybe a better cure for that wound than a deed to the land, because it's more honest--I have temporary stewardship of this land, and it's understood as a three-way legal relationship--not just between me and the land but between me (and my husband) in RELATION to other people, about the land. Anyway, I don't have the wound James describes, I live the life he longs for. Yet I also am wounded, also live with a longing I see no satisfying--because as a person who cares about the state of the world, who sees the polycrisis bearing down on us, and who lives in West Virginia--I have been FIGHTING for 30 years, fighting first mostly the coal industry, then the gas industry, because they and their associates in the chemical industries are the primary local sources of harm. But the environmentalists in this area are way outgunned by the industry and by local indifference, and "Appalachian fatalism." So I'm tired of losing most of the battles, but also--I'm tired of fighting. I so want to join with others to work for making things better, to BUILD something. As James longs for the relationship with the land I have, I long for a relationship with community (of humans) I don't think I could ever have here, or maybe anywhere.
The other comment is based on the image chosen to go with this essay. It's the kind of image that comes to my mind in relation to discussions of Smaje's work--people have said "If that many people move to the country, how can their housing and other needs be provided?" (An objection he makes in his forthcoming book that argues against ecomodernist ideas that, among other things, say we should all move to cities.) My response is based on spending much of a couple of years in Iowa and surrounding states in the late 70s, working on grain elevator construction crews to raise money to buy land in WV. And then traveling through that area a couple of times in more recent years. It was shocking to keep seeing--that image, the houses and other buildings going to ruin, large numbers of them--which I understand has resulted from the control monopolies have on agricultural policies, which results in family farmers being unable to make a living and being driven off the land, so four small farms are now part of one huge one, perhaps with an absentee owner. Looking at that image, I note the buildings appear to be made of brick and wonder--could they be reclaimed? The remnants of the roof removed and replaced with a new roof, the doors and windows replaced, more insulation put in than was ever there before, and it becomes a home for a couple of families tending a multicultural small farm?
"I'm talking about the kind of rootedness that can move."
An ecstatic rootedness, perhaps? There's a wounded ecstasy to your writing, James, and dare I say, you have a touch of the holy fool. (Someone said the same of me once, and I took it as a high compliment.)
And there is magic in that title, indeed. It brings into view the etymological link between doors and journeys. The "port-" in "portability" comes from the same route as the "porte" in "Fermez la porte!" The doorway, the literal threshold, is for coming and going, as well as for staying put. It is neither simply an opening, nor simply a barrier. And a "porter" can be one who carries back and forwards, or one who keeps the gate.
What I wrote here, apparently, is richly saturated in mostly indirect influences which have flowed to me through people who are not Ivan Illich, but who are deeply influenced and inspired by Illich. So it's clear to me that I'm going to have to read most of Illich's writings, and a lot of writings which are either about Illich or which explicitly have Illich as a major springhead.
I'm bitten by a bug which makes me desperately hungry and thirsty for understanding subsistence economies and culture which were basically communal in shape and deeply rooted to land -- but not land in an extractive sense (which is the modern sense of 'land'), but land as the radical root of home and belonging, and land as an unfathomable source of something like "gift" -- but even deeper than "gift". Much deeper, really. More even than source of sustenance. There is a way of relating to land which is simply ecstatic, and impossible to contain in prosaic consciousness. Only poetry can begin to point at this ecstasy.
About this "ecstasy".... " ... from Greek ekstasis "entrancement, astonishment, insanity; any displacement or removal from the proper place," in New Testament "a trance," from existanai "displace, put out of place," also "drive out of one's mind" (existanai phrenon), from ek "out" (see ex-) + histanai "to place, cause to stand," from PIE root *sta- "to stand, make or be firm."
- https://www.etymonline.com/word/ecstasy#etymonline_v_982
As you can see, it's not entirely easy or clear to know what the Greeks back in the day meant by ekstasis. Did they sometimes have an ironic sense of this notion of "displacement or removal from the proper place"?
Could it be that modernity has torn us all asunder from "the proper place" that what passes for "the proper place" for us is an inversion of what is truly proper for us?
I know that Dougald Hine has long been pondering what it means to nurture a "living culture" into being -- which I think is the purpose he and his friends have for A School Called Home. Is a "living culture" a right-side-up culture only accessible to us moderns by way of a journey through ekstasis?
What do you think, Dougald? And how do you feel? And what do you sense and intuit and imagine?
For me, my ecstasy (my rupture from "the proper place") is a wound -- an intollerable wound, a wound of the kind that makes one seek to swim to the surface of the lake of modernity for a desperate gasp of ekstasis. It's a longing as desperate as drowning. And it came to me -- and continues to come to me -- as a profound longing to embody a "living culture" -- a rooted culture, a culture rooted in an ecstatic relation to / with "land" -- or home.
But yes, then, Dougald. I suppose this makes me either wholly a fool or some sort of pathetic and desperate holy fool. But I did not choose this! It has been stalking me all of my life, wanting to make a feast of my breath and bones. I surrender. Come and eat me! I'm happy to become such a portable feast.
The wound comes to mind and heart (and hearth) through an opening into the radical depths of tacit knowing, which I think means we're all living in this wound now, but I'm acutely aware of my wound, and most in my society are yet to deeply awaken to theirs. When we bring thinking, feeling, sensing, intuiting and imagining together, all of these voices become a portable ekstasis, a living and a longing for home.
The Capacity for Second Thoughts: Ivan Illich
https://dougald.nu/the-capacity-for-second-thoughts-ivan-illich/