I originally wrote this for the Fifth World Design Diary in April, but its combination of anthropological topics, oral tradition, and practical storyjamming techniques means that it probably has a lot of interest to readers of this blog, as well. This piece originally introduced a series; I present it here with links to the rest of the series on the Fifth World Design Diary.

Arnold van Gennep worked as an ethnographer and folklorist at the turn of the last century in France. He gets credit for founding folklore as a field in that country, but most today remember him for his 1909 work, Rites of Passage. In it, van Gennep described three phases to any rite of passage:

Last year, I made the trip across Ohio to attend the Second Annual Eastern Woodland Native American Gathering and Pre-1840 Encampment. Admittedly, I had a distinct focus on the former. It distinguishes itself from a pow-wow because they don’t dance competitively. The year before, people had looked up to see a pair of bald eagles in the sky, seeming to join in to dance with them. I made the trip almost like an animist pilgrimage, looking for some kind of profound experience like that. I danced with them, though to my shame, my much-abused body wouldn’t take so much activity and I left the circle early. An announcement came later, asking people not to do that. I think they meant me.

In my desk, I keep a piece of the Blarney stone. Well, if you read the fine print, it admits that it really just comes from the local bluestone, though the legends of the Blarney stone say it didn’t even come from there. As befits such a stone, contradictory legends give it mutually exclusive but equally fantastic origins, whether from the Lia Fáil, the Stone of Destiny on the Hill of Tara, or half of the original Stone of Scone, or hoisted from the walls of Jerusalem in the Crusades, or the pillow of the Biblical patriarch Jacob, and brought to Ireland by the prophet Jeremaiah. Why such a storied and powerful stone would end up, without any apparent honor or recognition, in the walls of a local lord’s castle, these stories do not say. But they do say that anyone who kisses the stone will have “the gift of gab.”

In “reading” these words, do you say anything? More likely, you read silently—or more accurately, subvocalize. Like microexpressions, reading, like emotion, still inheres to movement of the human body. It cannot take place solely in an incorporeal “mind,” our fantasies of such aside. We can fool ourselves into that notion only because we’ve reduced the motions involved to the most fleeting versions, giving the superficial impression that they barely happen at all.

William Golding’s classic novel, The Lord of the Flies, paints a grim portrait of human nature, illustrating how, without the constraint of civilization, we descend into savagery. Yet, in the end, the mere presence of an adult brings the chaos to an immediate end. So, ignoring for the moment how we can draw conclusions about human nature from a work of fiction, does this really tell us about human nature, or a world where we suddenly find our elders disappeared, and our traditions broken?

I spend a lot of time staring at screens. My job requires me to spend my days staring at computer screens, and my ambitions tack on a few hours more. To relax, I typically look for a television screen. I probably do somewhat better than some of my colleagues, though; I camp, hike, fish, take walks, tend a garden, and generally seek out a connection with a more-than-human world that people I work with consider something between a quirky hobby and a bizarre obsession. Still, I think I know how Linda Buzzell would diagnose my periodic bouts of depression and anxiety. Co-editor with Craig Chalquist of the new anthology Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind, just released by Sierra Club Books (May 2009), she describes how she approaches patients with similar complaints. “I ask them to keep a time-journal in which they record the hours and minutes spent each day outside, as well as the hours spent inside in front of a screen. My clients are often shocked to realize how disassociated they have become from nature and our species’ natural ways of living, and the effect this disconnection is having on their psyche. In fact, a 2007 study from the University of Essex shows that a daily ‘dose’ of walking outside in nature can be as effective at treating mild to moderate depression as expensive antidepressant medications that can sometimes have negative side-effects.”

If you look for “personal responsibility” on the internet, you’ll find endless pages of editorials, blog postings, forum discussions and rants on how nobody believes in it anymore. And yet, amongst all that, you’ll find no one questioning it. It seemed ironic to me; amidst all that outrage, try to find someone who genuinely doesn’t believe in it, and you’ll come up short.

Writing, Language & Thought from Jason Godesky on Vimeo.

• Audio on Archive.org
• YouTube (Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
• SlideShare. Listen to the “SlideCast,” browse, share, or download the presentation slides.

I’ve made what some people call a “slidecast,” syncing an MP3 with online slides over SlideShare. Tomorrow, I hope to finish editing the video, and will post that.

In 2002, Daniel Quinn, the author of Ishmael, gave a speech he called, “The New Renaissance.” He said:

If there are still people here in 200 years, they won’t be living the way we do. I can make that prediction with confidence, because if people go on living the way we do, there won’t be any people here in 200 years.

I can make another prediction with confidence. If there are still people here in 200 years, they won’t be thinking the way we do. I can make that prediction with equal confidence, because if people go on thinking the way we do, then they’ll go on living the way we do—and there won’t be any people here in 200 years.