Culture Hack -- Who Knows What is Good or Bad?

Description

Rewilding involves taking a close look at our cultural conditioning, especially parts that we take for granted or that seem to be "common sense". But what if some of those commonsense ways of living actually aren't as effective as they seem. With most of us dealing with some type of anxiety, fear-based living, or insecurity, could it be that our cultural upbringing isn't really about bringing out our best?

This video takes a look at one of the most commonsense ideas in our culture, and asks us to take a closer look. Please leave your ideas, feelings, and thoughts below in the comments! Let's get a fun dialog going about this one!

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Tags: Kenton Whitman,ReWild University,Human Rewilding,personal rewilding,mindfulness,how to,bushcraft,survival,wilderness survival skills,how to survive in the woods,Zen folk tales,human intention,Mushin,Wu Wei,Human Will,Intentionless Living

Video Transcription

if you're watching this video you probably already know that rewilding is is about challenging our cultural paradigms and in a way hacking our culture taking all that training that we've had and shifting it around so that we can live more vibrantly and today I would like to share with you one of those culture hacks that has been the most powerful and reshaping my own life and I hope that you find great value in it as well when I share this though I'm gonna break from our cultural tradition our cultural tradition is that we teach things to each other so if I have something to share here I'm just gonna see you as an empty vessel my job is just to fill you up

but that's just a way to absorb Dogma and if you can come to your own place your own recognition of this culture hack it's gonna be yours you own it and it's gonna be more powerful for you then if I spell it out so instead I'm going to use the old tradition of storytelling and I'm going to share two stories that to me embody this culture hack and really bring it to life one is an old zen folktale and the other one is a true life experience that happened to me first

I'm gonna describe what we're hacking though what we're hacking is a cultural norm that for me I always took it for granted and and that is the norm that seems so common sense that I I set strong goals and I hold you those goals and I'm gonna make them happen and it's just the strong ethic that I was taught that strangely it didn't usually work for me it works sometimes I think just enough that we get a feedback system and keep practicing it but it doesn't really at least for me it never really got me where I wanted to go so on one side we have this cultural norm that says put out your goals predict the future and then fight to make that future a reality on the other side is this something else that I don't want to name but that these two stories will point to here's the Zen folktale and I've read this from various sources and I'm just gonna tell my own version of it which comes I think fairly close to at least one or two of the sources that I bet there's this farmer and he lives in a village and and he has a horse that does almost all the work on his little farm one day his horse it breaks out of the corral and runs away all of his neighbors come to him and oh they're just expressing their condolences so sorry this is terrible what are you gonna do now you you won't have a life way you're gonna starve your whole family is doomed we'll try to help you as best we can but the farmer the old farmer he says who knows what is good or bad well the next day the horse returns and hasn't told a small herd of wild horses and they all trot into the corral and the farmer closes up the corral and his neighbors come over and they're like ah what luck this is great now you have five horses this is wonderful we're so happy for you and the old farmer says who knows what is good or bad well the day after that his son is training one of the wild horses he's bucked off he breaks his leg the neighbors predictably come over oh we're so sorry for you this is terrible never should have should have tried to train those wild horses she would kick them out

this is awful your poor son what are you gonna do now you don't have his help the old farmer says who knows what is good or bad the day after that the army comes through they're conscripted all the young men to go and fight in a war that will probably mean the doom of every young man that's on it that is taken for battle and they of course take one look at his son with a broken leg and passing by the neighbors I think you're seeing express their condolences or their their congratulations and excitement and the old man again who knows what is good or bad this was a really powerful story for me because it really challenged that idea that I can predict the future and go after a result the other story is a personal one it happened last year I was with the family out on the pond and we're in a canoe and our little daughter pointed to the to the surface of the water and there was a dragonfly and it was it was on the surface its wings were soaked and it was just sitting there waiting to be eaten by a fish looking like it was going to drown so we brought it up out of the water and set it on the edge of the canoe and thought we had saved its life it sat there in the Sun waved its wings and dried them off and after about five or ten minutes took flight the wings were still a little bit wet wasn't really fast

got about 20 feet from the canoe when a red-winged blackbird darted in and nab that dragonfly out of the air and made it into dinner and we had to stare and laugh at at how much we thought that we had done a good deed and saved the life of the dragonfly I know you all out there have an inner wisdom in a deep intelligence and that the more you look into this and read into these stories the more you'll see about the nature of human intention the nature of our desires are clinging to certain visions of how we want life to be what is the lesson here I would love to hear what you find

is there another way besides setting goals and clinging after them is this pointing to a different way of approaching light please share any thoughts experiences life philosophies anything that comes to you in the comments below and I will look forward to the conversation thanks for watching