Infants and toddlers may be psychologically wired to thrive with high levels of "sensitive care" and personal attention, according to a study conducted with contemporary hunter-gatherer societies.
Rant- tangentially related: I’m not a member of an Indigenous group, but I work in a field where the big push recently is incorporating “traditional ecological knowledge”. Holy shit, the un-deserved patience that Indigenous teachers extend to us crackers is mind boggling. Like we’re slowly using western scientific framework to “discover” knowledge, which has already been cultivated by other peoples over time, peoples that we genocided without mercy, but now that our cultural hegemony has declined so much and we’ve fucked up the balance of the ecosystem so much, we have the gall to finally “acknowledge” other knowledge systems. It even still is empty gestures until something meaningful is done with it. I’ve heard tribal elders talk about the necessity of patience, and they’re seemingly endless fonts of it, because god damn do we never get the point. Like at a recent event, an Indigenous scientist was talking about how everything is about balance, and a PhD asked how we can quantify balance. Like…1) such an effective missing of the point. 2) like fucking look outside idk- you’re a fucking climate scientist surely you’ve observed the world around you. I’m constantly feeling the need to shake and shout at my colleagues, and I’ve not been doing this nearly as long. As patronizing of a tone that crackers always take with Indigenous people, we really are just the shitty teenage nibling who insists they’re an awesome driver after wrapping their car around a tree- maybe one day we’ll be better, but I have a hard time finding faith. Anyway, that’s why I’m not a member of the Sturgeon clan.
I give them the benefit of the doubt since their heart seems to be in the right place, and they study/restore fish habitat, remove dams, etc. but it was definitely a
If I were being charitable, I could easily understand what this PhD was getting at.
How do we know what is in balance right now, what is within the acceptable +/- of that Goldilocks Average and at what quantifiable point will the balance start moving outside of the Goldilocks zone. It makes sense from a spreadsheet standpoint. But it also ignores the reality that trying to quantify this just gives us an excuse to break the system again with the excuse of “well, my spreadsheet said we could burn up to 43% of the Amazon Rain forest and not push the global temp increase past 2 degrees, it will just be 1.9 degrees. I don’t know why the world is still on fire?”
Yeah exactly - as I posted that it occurred to be that it’s a big blind spot for me- having the privilege to assume charitable readings of things- when for the teachers it had to be incredibly frustrating to have someone miss the point so bad- and like you’re saying, the quantification aspect is often used to push systems to the breaking point (and usually tied to monetization somehow) rather than incorporating into a system of knowledge. Anyway- I have no authority in the group- but fortunately much better teachers have given thought to this and so I pass along their works in reading lists for the group- hopefully at least one person reads at least one recommendation! Facilitating the group often feels like detective work- following the trail of missed points until you find the one that made just enough sense to them for the concept to click. Hell I’ve dedicated a lot of time to trying to do better, and am constantly self-critiquing and finding ways new ways I’ve unintentionally shown my ass recently.
Rant- tangentially related: I’m not a member of an Indigenous group, but I work in a field where the big push recently is incorporating “traditional ecological knowledge”. Holy shit, the un-deserved patience that Indigenous teachers extend to us crackers is mind boggling. Like we’re slowly using western scientific framework to “discover” knowledge, which has already been cultivated by other peoples over time, peoples that we genocided without mercy, but now that our cultural hegemony has declined so much and we’ve fucked up the balance of the ecosystem so much, we have the gall to finally “acknowledge” other knowledge systems. It even still is empty gestures until something meaningful is done with it. I’ve heard tribal elders talk about the necessity of patience, and they’re seemingly endless fonts of it, because god damn do we never get the point. Like at a recent event, an Indigenous scientist was talking about how everything is about balance, and a PhD asked how we can quantify balance. Like…1) such an effective missing of the point. 2) like fucking look outside idk- you’re a fucking climate scientist surely you’ve observed the world around you. I’m constantly feeling the need to shake and shout at my colleagues, and I’ve not been doing this nearly as long. As patronizing of a tone that crackers always take with Indigenous people, we really are just the shitty teenage nibling who insists they’re an awesome driver after wrapping their car around a tree- maybe one day we’ll be better, but I have a hard time finding faith. Anyway, that’s why I’m not a member of the Sturgeon clan.
No words… just a mental image of this person being beat unconscious with a TI-80 graphing calculator…
I give them the benefit of the doubt since their heart seems to be in the right place, and they study/restore fish habitat, remove dams, etc. but it was definitely a
If I were being charitable, I could easily understand what this PhD was getting at.
How do we know what is in balance right now, what is within the acceptable +/- of that Goldilocks Average and at what quantifiable point will the balance start moving outside of the Goldilocks zone. It makes sense from a spreadsheet standpoint. But it also ignores the reality that trying to quantify this just gives us an excuse to break the system again with the excuse of “well, my spreadsheet said we could burn up to 43% of the Amazon Rain forest and not push the global temp increase past 2 degrees, it will just be 1.9 degrees. I don’t know why the world is still on fire?”
Yeah exactly - as I posted that it occurred to be that it’s a big blind spot for me- having the privilege to assume charitable readings of things- when for the teachers it had to be incredibly frustrating to have someone miss the point so bad- and like you’re saying, the quantification aspect is often used to push systems to the breaking point (and usually tied to monetization somehow) rather than incorporating into a system of knowledge. Anyway- I have no authority in the group- but fortunately much better teachers have given thought to this and so I pass along their works in reading lists for the group- hopefully at least one person reads at least one recommendation! Facilitating the group often feels like detective work- following the trail of missed points until you find the one that made just enough sense to them for the concept to click. Hell I’ve dedicated a lot of time to trying to do better, and am constantly self-critiquing and finding ways new ways I’ve unintentionally shown my ass recently.