Writing Backwards
Understanding should develop over time as new information becomes available, but for this study, each new learning dictated not only new direction, but recreated the knowledge the knowledge I had created, forcing constant updating of what I had written. As I wrote more for the paper, it rewrote itself from the beginning.
With each new learning, all the previous learning had to be updated. In the beginning, I only knew that I would look at the nature of science; I had no idea that I would be drawing in empathic connection humanity has with nature. The ultimate empaths, the Native shamans who are working with therapists to regain the Native culture, map humanity's future back to our roots in nature. For the first time, many cultural and psychological links between society and the natural world many believed existed now have basis in science. "It must be this way because" has evolved to "this is why it is so."
I used italics for all the quotes because most of my sources were admirable, and their writing was accurate and expressive. Some writing came from the top scientists in the field of animal empathy, some came from bogs written by common people sharing excellent commentary, but with their first name only; and some sources were nearly anonymous but had valuable and rare knowledge. Even the quotes I was compelled to use for the sake of argument by scientists I disrespect for their cynicism, and even cruelty, were significant because they show were change needs to be made in science.
Because the field of empathy has newly become highly scientific with the discovery of brain cells that facilitate empathy, the support of contributing scholars, and especially experimental scientists, is essential to develop is essential for understanding truths society will now have to accept. The empathy now revealed by modern technology is nothing new; empathy precisely as neurological science is defining it right now, has been understood by humanity all along. Classical roots of empathy are in the writings of Aristotle, Charles Darwin, and the Dalai Lama.
The passages I contributed about personal observations in the forests of North West Connecticut are significant; a scientist that I cite in the paper is circulating that very section among her colleagues. Here in the woods where I write this, it is hunting season yet the guns have stopped firing, and the wildlife is reprieved. Maybe my writing had some effect --actually I doubt it has, but I hope it will someday.
Two areas of research were revolutionary to me: learning about the empathic neurons, and learning about the preservation of empathic spirituality by tribal Natives here in the United States. The connection between the two is subtle; the reestablishment of the human connection with nature has existed in recent years only in the fringes of society. Proof of the nature of empathy, especially in relation to the history of human psychology through evolution, forces governments to accept the validity of the concept. While the ideas that I presented about empathy within nature are not news to most people familiar with animals, but seem to be news to people influential in society, and especially governments. What is continual news for everyone is the increasing damage to the environment as a result of the presently exploding global resource exploitation. Fortunately, all these studies, and others yet to come, fit together to form a learning that the world's people need to begin to absorb to assure the survival of the world.
I try in my writing to show that empathy is not all kindness and niceness; a big part of empathy is self-preservation. Self-preservation in a dangerous world can get ugly. That potential ugliness is also the part of empathy that relates to society; but there is no need for people to worry; as long as empathy is genuine, all good even if some things are imperfect.
My discovery of the great medicine society, the Native Midewiwin culture that grew out of the genocide, or psychecide, caused by the European colonization of the New World, was the most remarkable part of the learning. The spirit, perseverance and pervasiveness of the Midewiwin medicine culture is very encouraging, especially to Americans. It tells me that there is a good "force" out there; it is something we can rely on and believe in even if it doesn't affect us directly. It also helps explain the subtler yet defining influences of Native society on American culture.
Knowing how the Midewiwin lived nearly invisibly to modern society as an empathic organization shows how the Native influence was psychological rather than overt. Native influence can be felt in our culture as a driving force, as strength. Most cultures rely on recognizable traits to sustain their popularity.
American culture is embracing Native influences; the same subtle force threaded through each genre of American culture is what makes American culture so attractive.
From the Native culture comes a strong form of empathy; the attachment and attunement to the natural environment which has helped us both socially, and therefore technologically, helping us create innovative beyond that of any other nation. Until very recently, America was the big nation on the planet, but an amazing series of missteps has sent the nation, and the planet with it, into a sudden spiral.
Recent damning influences are non-native, just as many other horrible influences are. Slavery was imported to North America, for example. But the victims of slavery, the slaves, were themselves tribal Natives from Africa. Despite the same types of hardships inflicted on them by the trespassing Europeans, they developed an attunement that often went hand in hand with the natural environment they were brought to. Connections between slaves and Natives were created, and the fusion of the cultures is evident in subtle ways, but has to be looked for, just as the Midewiwin have to be looked for.
What was once subtle and even invisible about empathy and society is now becoming overt in a revolutionary burst of science that is both social and purely experimental. There is in the proof of empathy the beginning of scientific empathy. Better knowledge will not so much tell us how to lead our lives, but will help us dictate to the structural operators of our society how things will be done in the future. We will be free to recreate the historical attachments to the things we know work well. In nature will can reattach our psychology; in technology we can go back to saner times with new ideas. These ideas are conservative in that it will reconstruct society based on old principles, yet radical in they depart from the megamachine we all exist to support.
Often I felt a sense of nervousness when trying to explore those ideas, especially in certain environments. Attempts at discussion with people whom I thought could help me, produced arguments which I now understand are knee-jerk responses developed specifically to protect false but widely held ideas that are didactically provided by the top-down educational structure. There are connotations of guilt often associated with attempts to apply critical inquiry to widely held ideas especially if they may be criticized as taboo or myths. Another emotional response is ridicule; it has frustrated me more that any other in attempting to from better, higher level, understandings of human society, especially Native contributions.
The reason for this is simple; in the end punishment protects a structure, which, like a cult, very deliberately protects false conceptions used to protect its centralized perceptions. Centralized structures depend on continual strengthening through the depletion of resources all around themselves; and now with globalism, these structures deplete resources all around the world.
Documentation by groups working to re-establish Native culture so that Natives in the US and Canada can reclaim their social values clearly puts the blame where it belongs-- on the capital structures which spread to the New World driven by their need to keep strengthening themselves. They seek to help Natives psychologically survive the long-term and continuing effects of the extermination of their peoples and deprecations of their cultures. According to their documents, the moral operators of the religious aspect of these capital structures not only justified the destruction of native culture and conceptual understandings, but facilitated the destruction by attacking the native community of knowledge in the very minds of the natives.
The contemporary Information Society, the Internet, helps in many ways. The obviously newly granted access to vast information cannot be credited enough for helping so many explain what we have felt we have known, yet we have been unable to express.
Two other benefits come from the Internet.
One is protection from retaliatory abusethat we experience when we question widely held but possibly false beliefs. This is important when questioning high road justification for low actions coming from the controlling structures of society.
The other is more subtle. The Internet helps expand knowledge into a new dimension; this new ability comes to us through the process of linking information. Vast amounts of small bits of information come to us through the Internet from completely unconnected sources. Most of the suppliers of this information provide it with genuineness but cannot provide the usual proof required to create scholarly citations. But when vast amounts of information bits come to us in the form of observations, perceptions, and generalized conceptions, these information bits can fit together like a puzzle to form a large complex picture. We can approach this larger conception as a knowledge that supersedes a perception with the confidence that we are not being misled. The vastness and diversity of the sources providing the information guarantees that there is no specific agenda being supported, and that there are no other motives at work, such as financial incentives.
When I did my study about the Katrina disaster done during a previous semester, I was surprised to find that most of the people supplying the information were generally unaware that the information they supplied was supported and extended by closely related information from others. The information bits were continually extended ultimately forming an entire picture. Time and again this linked information proved to be as accurate as can be expected from any source. As an example, one person supplied timely information heard through a social grape vine that dogs where being hunted by New Orleans police. Other people read this and confirmed it, and immediately supplied aggregated information developed from all these sources to responsible lawmakers. The delivery of the information to the lawmakers resulted in a halting of the criminal activity by the policemen.
My learning about the Midewiwin medicine society was a fantastic contribution to my conceptions about humanity, and especially North America. The majority of the information comes from a single research paper supplied by a group committed to the healing of trauma inherited by today’s natives from the original genocide by the colonialists; this is the Aboriginal Healing Foundation. Written by scholars, the data is well supported with citations. Every piece of the constructed knowledge of the document raised more questions and stimulated curiosity bringing me to new sources. On an individual basis, sources may be discredited because of a lack of citations; yet pulled together all this information provides a picture of the strength of the influence of the Midewiwin. In particular, one source does himself no favors by using the completely anonymous name of "The Wanderling." Yet the anecdotal information he and other uncited sources provides, is as consistent as it is amazing. If half of the less plausible anecdotal information is stripped away for lack of citations, the remaining sources still paint a picture of inter-relativity that goes so far beyond the contemporary perception of Native life.
Potentially there will new bravery in our society helped by the protective nature of the Internet, I believe. I am also accepting that the perceptions formed by the aggregation of all this linked information will construct social knowledge that is expansive and accurate.
In the end, scientific proof still follows the classical scientific model. If information collected from diverse sources, technically all hypothetical, can be developed into a model used to predict behavior, then any hypothesis developed is well on its way to becoming a scientifically accepted theory, and even possibly natural law.
This will succeed in developing highly accurate understandings, ones that include obvious solutions free from bias or focused on guilt. Still, one great challenge remains: communicating the new knowledge to people in a way that can benefit society.
Situated Learning
As with most projects, project plans are created. But if a project is truly exploratory, if the learning is situated in the sea of discovery, new concepts are going to help reform the planning of future research. Also affected will be the means of communicating of the developed knowledge. This inability to plan measures the effectiveness of a study --divergence from the initial plan can be proportional to the efficacy of the study. If research is designed to prove or disprove accepted fact, then divergence from the initial plan is going to displease those how are providing resources for the study, such as funding. There will likely be a negative reaction from managers and planners costing scientists their funding. Research that diverges from accepted norms will likewise displease those in control of research resources, casting doubt onto the results of much highly planned research.
Research should be situated; it should be approached from the perspective of the unknown. The communication of the resulting learning to the public has to be sophisticated enough to take into account vastly different sources of information, and especially the new idea of aggregating highly diverse but conceptually linked information gleaned from sources all throughout the information society.
The best information communication technique will have to be sophisticated in simplifying vast ideas so that readers do not become overwhelmed; and also in ways that readers can confirm for themselves the accuracy of the reflected understandings. Very useful is in allowing readers the ability to extend the knowledge, either to confirm the knowledge with their own learning(s), or through critical inquiry, help solidify the conceptual foundation of the knowledge.
The use of language is also obviously important. Creating a comfort zone for every potential reader means that writing style needs to be modified constantly with sensitivity to values that run across cultures, and even sometimes divide them, such as the universal struggle for the even sharing of resources. When a document confronts accepted norms as this one does, there has to be a compromise. Using the selfishness and self-survival promoted by Buddhism as a standard, the information behind the thesis comes ahead of cultural sensitivities. Writers, like truly spiritual people, are bound to do what they believe to be correct, and also they are bound to themselves to survive whatever repercussions may result from their research, and hence the need for self-survival when there is self-sacrifice.
Many great writers have been overcome by their research especially when it brings horrific guilt to powerful and well established leaders; in a few cases they have killed themselves to escape the stress, trauma, and trauma related guilt brought about by their efforts and genius. An example is Iris Chang who documented many atrocities occurring during the Second World War. Buddhism provides survivability by encouraging knowledge seekers to immerse themselves into their selves, to value what is fundamentally important to them, and to exclude what is purely toxic, such as criticism.
The technique that works best for me in creating a sophisticated picture that can easily be understood by the public, is to write as much as I can based on my increasing information with only temporary ideas of what the final ideas may be; and then to print out all my writing and highlight the most important concepts. I then transfer these highlights into a document similar to a table of contents, and reassemble the information in ways that are relevant to these highlighted topics. Besides giving flow to the ideas that helps readers develop a conception, it also allows individual concepts to be spun off as smaller sub-theses. If sub-sections stand well enough on their own, they can be supplied as articles to blogs, for instance, to help others develop their own theses, or to attract readers to your main thesis.
Important, then, to promote popularity is writing style, and an attractive presentation. Relevant and exciting illustrations also help greatly in providing empathic memes and of course the Web is ideally suited for this. Re-infusing style and structure developed to create a web presentation is also helpful in perfecting the linear flow of a scholarly document. As each concept is strengthened with clarity in communication, they will collectively support for all of the concepts contributing to the main thesis.
Last but not least in promoting communication is exploiting the two-way communication values of the Internet in increasingly effective ways. While various web portals and discussion lists can easily create an Internet community, it is in communication within the community that the community is validated. Since community cannot be created from the thin air of cyberspace, information brought to web discussions must be based in knowledge that we have learned comes from the community of knowledge of nature-- the theme of this entire discussion. Discussion tools need to constantly be innovated as larger and more valuable knowledge constructions are brought into the Information Society of the Internet.
Citations
In my writing about middle school education, for instance, most of my information came from established sources. Educators have been innovators long enough that highly advanced concepts have been in print for half a century. Older concepts that have been preserved, or should be discarded, can be found in books published over the centuries.
The study of empathy has become such hot discussion that the most recent debates have not had time to reach print. And when they do, they will undoubtedly be superseded by more recent debate. New proof for the basis of empathy in biological terms, as developed through technical sophistication such as through the use functional magnetic resonance technology (fMRI), is creating new understandings of both psychology and biology that supersede existing concepts of the biological basis of thought in both those fields. Science has been trying to define thought in terms of behavior, to then give the existence of the thought process a genetic "motive" for its existence.