paper #2
you should really read this one.
i'm an evangelist for the land-steward philosophy, an integrated view of work and life and most everything else..
Stimulus, Analysis, Response:
the con-fusion of steward
A medley of steward's synonyms:
agent, representative, attendant, server, butler, servant, custodian
caretaker, represent, symbolize, supervisor, manager, warden
Steward's antonyms:
principal, boss, superior
Roget's New Millennium Thesaurus, First Edition (v 1.0.5)
Language is almost always interesting, as there are many many levels on which any word or string of words could be considered. There are pseudo-infinities of comparisons and contrasts that can be made between all the concepts that can be written, no less than those are not yet even formulated. Language as a dynamic, responsive, and evolutionary system, and thus has many of the hallmarks of a living thing, which is typified nowhere more than in the complexities of any one word.
In the life of spoken language, the fundamental unit of understanding is the word, each of which is represented variously in word-strings comprising fictional, non-fictional, reference, and even nonsensical formats. This could be seen as the day-to-day life of the word, it's habits, phenotype, and public persona. In this metaphor, it could be argued that the inner life of the word is the gestalt comprehension held in the mind of every person familiar with that word. The world of words, then, is similar to our society in its endless friction between ostensible authority, illusory truths, and the inexpressible.
The daily life of the word steward is a rough lot. The word is used variously for the lowest servant, cunning craftsman, and elite supervisor. The title "lord high steward" was once reserved for the first officer of the Crown of England. Now "steward" has is a more common title for a janitorial superintendent.
Websters Revised Unabridged Dictionary suggests the word steward comes from "sty," as in a pig's dwelling, and "ward," as in warden. This historically unattributed inference is typical of the two points most common to the various definitions attributed to the word: a maintaining labor, and a proxy, not possessive, authority. It is also typical of the stigma modernly attributed to stewardship, and the labors of service generally.
The American heritage dictionary, 4th edition, claims the etymology of steward is Old English, from stig, meaning hall, and weard, meaning keeper. This origin suggest a caretaker of the common space, who would necessarily possess stature and skills representative of his work, and might be somewhat analogous to the contemporary kitchen manager crossbred with talk show host and a general contractor.
This is a role not played by many in today's society, commonly dominated by the dichotomy of the worker class of laborers and the supervisory class of designers and regulators. It is clear simply from the synonyms quoted at the beginning of this paper, however, that the position of steward inhabits a strange liminal space between the two. While a steward directs, organizes and even orchestrates his or her charge, the steward is never a ruler, or an absolute power.
Also, a steward can be an isolated individual or a member of a team or a leader of a crew of laborers. Stewards might care for land, for financial assets, for children or the elderly. It is very true that each and every human is a steward in some sense. Every person with a job is given domain and authority; every human has the power and the ability to enact changes in their environment. And everyone is born into a life support system that they must, finally maintain, or else perish with it.
Now it is true that this life support system as it is designed is self-regulating, and fundamentally stable. This stability, however, and the negative-feedback loops upon which it relies, all depend on a specific range of conditions, such as the ratios of atmospheric gases, undivided habitat areas and global temperature, to name a few. These titanic influences and effects are only recently within the scope or scale of human interference and/or control, and thus are naturally difficult to integrate into our everyday perceptions. It is, never the less, the clear responsibility of every human to safeguard the limits of the earth's habitability, for the protection of our children's children.
Today, individuals vie to be the voice of the people. To be a designated representative of a large group of people is to hold power over others. It seems, though, that in this day of more consumer and cultural choices invented and offered, that it is becoming harder and harder for any one person to relate to another, much less represent another person's interests. This effect is undermining out political system daily, while providing us individually with ever increasing power over our environment, for good or for ill.
Contrarily, while it is common for a person to become a steward of the interests of another, it is wholly uncommon for a person to become a true steward and representative of the nonhuman. To claim to speak for the wolves, the worms, or the world is certainly always an adventure in anthropomorphication. On the other hand, the idea that I am represented by anyone in our government is simply ludicrous. By this comparison, every good land steward would seem to be on firmer logical footing than any given politician or political group.
To be a steward of anything at all requires guidelines, definitions, parameters of authority, and, perhaps most important, objectives. When George Bush says he's a land steward (and he does say it, surreal as it may be), his parameters of authority are apparently granted by the divine, while his objectives are to turn natural resources into capital as quickly as possible. The most fundamental problem with this is simply that it takes no issue with the possibility that those natural resources may be more valuable in their natural state than as represented by green pieces of paper, i.e. that those natural resources are our life support system.
If, then, your aim is to support the support system, in effect becoming a new sort of feedback loop, then your guidelines and definitions must be dramatically different than those practiced by modern government and industry. A fairly mathematical and materialist standpoint from which to base all actions could then reasonably be the development of complexity and interconnection. The justification for this is effectively the metaphysics of the land-stewards ethic.
This metaphysics begins with understanding all of life as an immensely complex and interwoven fabric of inter-relations, with a rather high (though incalculable) fractal dimension. Fractals of high dimension will frequently be seen to loop back upon themselves, creating vortices of complexity. This pattern, if left unchecked, and sufficiently self-stabilizing, will continue to pump out ever increasing complexity, and it is thus not surprising at all that something like humanity came along. This is the land-steward ontology, and that life-fractal is the land that we steward.
The epistemology that follows is based entirely upon observation of nature and it's systems. It is a non-mathematical epistemology, with little in the way logical structures or support, with no grammar or syntax for self-justification. There is no cogito for a land-steward. It is instead based on inference, pattern recognition, and is by and large too large for words, and thus must be more intuitively understood.
In philosophic evolution, ethics is based upon your metaphysics, ontology, and epistemology. The ethics and practices of the land steward follow naturally from the fractal-organic paradigm, though they begin with inaction. Nature has proven over millions of years that it can take care of itself rather competently, and thus it could be generally understood that the auto-regulation and naturally self-supporting aspects of natural systems would be the most efficient in terms of man-hours involved, as well as most promoting of long-term confidence in the sustainability of the life-support environment.
After the first premise of "let it grow," comes a conscious development of the complexity of natural systems on any and all levels possible, tempered by two tenets for human involvement. The first guideline for human interaction would be to increase beneficial outputs, whatever they may be in context (i.e. food crops, fuels, and materials). Simultaneously, however, all human action would be focused on decreasing human impact on natural systems. In a perfect world, this necessity would be fairly difficult to enact at all, after we've stopped pollution and so forth. In the meantime though, this focus for human actions is a useful and effective meditation and practice for everyday life.
What I have summarized here is essentially the bible of the land-steward. Everything beyond these first principles is mostly psychological fringe benefits and pattern skill sets. For example, what arises from the development of the epistemological inference interface (i.e. the study of natural systems and models of complexity) is the new ecological design aesthetic. This is greatly enriched by the appreciation of the utility for all that fulfills the requirements of human interaction (i.e. anything that enhances sustainable practices, be it good tool design or cultural innovations like city repair).
The paradigm I am describing is wholly different from what is being taught in America today, and it eventually affects every aspect of daily life. One of the beneficial side effects is frequently a developed work ethic, which is natural when your manual labor is no longer drudgery but instead something closer to worship, or an act of love.
These points of view become positive-feedback loops, as this work ethic again enhances daily life. For instance, most land-stewardship today involves cleaning up the messes of others in the course of your daily labor and design practices. I have found this to slowly become an automatic function, which has resulted in my inhabiting a much cleaner immediate environment.
It is, in part, the contradictions of stewardship that make it so freeing. A steward is neither possessor nor the possessed of his or her charge. Being neither the subject of nor the master over others is naturally a position of great freedom, and importantly, it is as much a freedom from the class war as freedom from subjugation. This position also allows fuller integration into the subject of one's stewardship, getting your hands deeply into it, and then working to gracefully alter it. In this way you are a part of the land, a part of your process, and a part of the change. By your actions, you daily enrich your life, your habitat, and yourself. This is integrated, intention-filled living.
Another benefit is the thoroughness of the new analysis available to one as a member of a truly alternate culture, a culture actually based on life. Many ill effects of modern reductionism and contemporary mind poisoning are almost automatically negated by a rational philosophical worldview. When everything follows sensibly, life is in all ways much easier.
There is a return of truth that is possible once society's confusions are pierced, deflated, and discarded. Corporate lies and media manipulations flow more easily off of one's intellectual defensive carapace, and become, if not less offensive, then at least lose much of their power to harm.
Perhaps the most wonderful fringe benefit of land-stewardry is that it is most strongly embodied in a person wandering around their homestead, observing and making slight adjustments, experimenting and inventing. The development of self-sufficiency is the penultimate goal of this process, followed only by saving the world. It's truly a wonderful life.
While absolute statements are always potentially deadly, I am at the same time a bit of a zealot about my worldview. From where I stand, this comprehensive alteration of perception is the only possible solution to all the human impacts on our planet. It is, it seems to me, not only internally consistent, but also resolves misunderstandings that have resulted in the rape of the planet, and perpetual war among its people. I can imagine no greater justification for total paradigm shift, and have every hope that the organic-fractal philosophy and its resultant ethics and practices will be an integral part of our new sustainable future.
you should really read this one.
i'm an evangelist for the land-steward philosophy, an integrated view of work and life and most everything else..
Stimulus, Analysis, Response:
the con-fusion of steward
A medley of steward's synonyms:
agent, representative, attendant, server, butler, servant, custodian
caretaker, represent, symbolize, supervisor, manager, warden
Steward's antonyms:
principal, boss, superior
Roget's New Millennium Thesaurus, First Edition (v 1.0.5)
Language is almost always interesting, as there are many many levels on which any word or string of words could be considered. There are pseudo-infinities of comparisons and contrasts that can be made between all the concepts that can be written, no less than those are not yet even formulated. Language as a dynamic, responsive, and evolutionary system, and thus has many of the hallmarks of a living thing, which is typified nowhere more than in the complexities of any one word.
In the life of spoken language, the fundamental unit of understanding is the word, each of which is represented variously in word-strings comprising fictional, non-fictional, reference, and even nonsensical formats. This could be seen as the day-to-day life of the word, it's habits, phenotype, and public persona. In this metaphor, it could be argued that the inner life of the word is the gestalt comprehension held in the mind of every person familiar with that word. The world of words, then, is similar to our society in its endless friction between ostensible authority, illusory truths, and the inexpressible.
The daily life of the word steward is a rough lot. The word is used variously for the lowest servant, cunning craftsman, and elite supervisor. The title "lord high steward" was once reserved for the first officer of the Crown of England. Now "steward" has is a more common title for a janitorial superintendent.
Websters Revised Unabridged Dictionary suggests the word steward comes from "sty," as in a pig's dwelling, and "ward," as in warden. This historically unattributed inference is typical of the two points most common to the various definitions attributed to the word: a maintaining labor, and a proxy, not possessive, authority. It is also typical of the stigma modernly attributed to stewardship, and the labors of service generally.
The American heritage dictionary, 4th edition, claims the etymology of steward is Old English, from stig, meaning hall, and weard, meaning keeper. This origin suggest a caretaker of the common space, who would necessarily possess stature and skills representative of his work, and might be somewhat analogous to the contemporary kitchen manager crossbred with talk show host and a general contractor.
This is a role not played by many in today's society, commonly dominated by the dichotomy of the worker class of laborers and the supervisory class of designers and regulators. It is clear simply from the synonyms quoted at the beginning of this paper, however, that the position of steward inhabits a strange liminal space between the two. While a steward directs, organizes and even orchestrates his or her charge, the steward is never a ruler, or an absolute power.
Also, a steward can be an isolated individual or a member of a team or a leader of a crew of laborers. Stewards might care for land, for financial assets, for children or the elderly. It is very true that each and every human is a steward in some sense. Every person with a job is given domain and authority; every human has the power and the ability to enact changes in their environment. And everyone is born into a life support system that they must, finally maintain, or else perish with it.
Now it is true that this life support system as it is designed is self-regulating, and fundamentally stable. This stability, however, and the negative-feedback loops upon which it relies, all depend on a specific range of conditions, such as the ratios of atmospheric gases, undivided habitat areas and global temperature, to name a few. These titanic influences and effects are only recently within the scope or scale of human interference and/or control, and thus are naturally difficult to integrate into our everyday perceptions. It is, never the less, the clear responsibility of every human to safeguard the limits of the earth's habitability, for the protection of our children's children.
Today, individuals vie to be the voice of the people. To be a designated representative of a large group of people is to hold power over others. It seems, though, that in this day of more consumer and cultural choices invented and offered, that it is becoming harder and harder for any one person to relate to another, much less represent another person's interests. This effect is undermining out political system daily, while providing us individually with ever increasing power over our environment, for good or for ill.
Contrarily, while it is common for a person to become a steward of the interests of another, it is wholly uncommon for a person to become a true steward and representative of the nonhuman. To claim to speak for the wolves, the worms, or the world is certainly always an adventure in anthropomorphication. On the other hand, the idea that I am represented by anyone in our government is simply ludicrous. By this comparison, every good land steward would seem to be on firmer logical footing than any given politician or political group.
To be a steward of anything at all requires guidelines, definitions, parameters of authority, and, perhaps most important, objectives. When George Bush says he's a land steward (and he does say it, surreal as it may be), his parameters of authority are apparently granted by the divine, while his objectives are to turn natural resources into capital as quickly as possible. The most fundamental problem with this is simply that it takes no issue with the possibility that those natural resources may be more valuable in their natural state than as represented by green pieces of paper, i.e. that those natural resources are our life support system.
If, then, your aim is to support the support system, in effect becoming a new sort of feedback loop, then your guidelines and definitions must be dramatically different than those practiced by modern government and industry. A fairly mathematical and materialist standpoint from which to base all actions could then reasonably be the development of complexity and interconnection. The justification for this is effectively the metaphysics of the land-stewards ethic.
This metaphysics begins with understanding all of life as an immensely complex and interwoven fabric of inter-relations, with a rather high (though incalculable) fractal dimension. Fractals of high dimension will frequently be seen to loop back upon themselves, creating vortices of complexity. This pattern, if left unchecked, and sufficiently self-stabilizing, will continue to pump out ever increasing complexity, and it is thus not surprising at all that something like humanity came along. This is the land-steward ontology, and that life-fractal is the land that we steward.
The epistemology that follows is based entirely upon observation of nature and it's systems. It is a non-mathematical epistemology, with little in the way logical structures or support, with no grammar or syntax for self-justification. There is no cogito for a land-steward. It is instead based on inference, pattern recognition, and is by and large too large for words, and thus must be more intuitively understood.
In philosophic evolution, ethics is based upon your metaphysics, ontology, and epistemology. The ethics and practices of the land steward follow naturally from the fractal-organic paradigm, though they begin with inaction. Nature has proven over millions of years that it can take care of itself rather competently, and thus it could be generally understood that the auto-regulation and naturally self-supporting aspects of natural systems would be the most efficient in terms of man-hours involved, as well as most promoting of long-term confidence in the sustainability of the life-support environment.
After the first premise of "let it grow," comes a conscious development of the complexity of natural systems on any and all levels possible, tempered by two tenets for human involvement. The first guideline for human interaction would be to increase beneficial outputs, whatever they may be in context (i.e. food crops, fuels, and materials). Simultaneously, however, all human action would be focused on decreasing human impact on natural systems. In a perfect world, this necessity would be fairly difficult to enact at all, after we've stopped pollution and so forth. In the meantime though, this focus for human actions is a useful and effective meditation and practice for everyday life.
What I have summarized here is essentially the bible of the land-steward. Everything beyond these first principles is mostly psychological fringe benefits and pattern skill sets. For example, what arises from the development of the epistemological inference interface (i.e. the study of natural systems and models of complexity) is the new ecological design aesthetic. This is greatly enriched by the appreciation of the utility for all that fulfills the requirements of human interaction (i.e. anything that enhances sustainable practices, be it good tool design or cultural innovations like city repair).
The paradigm I am describing is wholly different from what is being taught in America today, and it eventually affects every aspect of daily life. One of the beneficial side effects is frequently a developed work ethic, which is natural when your manual labor is no longer drudgery but instead something closer to worship, or an act of love.
These points of view become positive-feedback loops, as this work ethic again enhances daily life. For instance, most land-stewardship today involves cleaning up the messes of others in the course of your daily labor and design practices. I have found this to slowly become an automatic function, which has resulted in my inhabiting a much cleaner immediate environment.
It is, in part, the contradictions of stewardship that make it so freeing. A steward is neither possessor nor the possessed of his or her charge. Being neither the subject of nor the master over others is naturally a position of great freedom, and importantly, it is as much a freedom from the class war as freedom from subjugation. This position also allows fuller integration into the subject of one's stewardship, getting your hands deeply into it, and then working to gracefully alter it. In this way you are a part of the land, a part of your process, and a part of the change. By your actions, you daily enrich your life, your habitat, and yourself. This is integrated, intention-filled living.
Another benefit is the thoroughness of the new analysis available to one as a member of a truly alternate culture, a culture actually based on life. Many ill effects of modern reductionism and contemporary mind poisoning are almost automatically negated by a rational philosophical worldview. When everything follows sensibly, life is in all ways much easier.
There is a return of truth that is possible once society's confusions are pierced, deflated, and discarded. Corporate lies and media manipulations flow more easily off of one's intellectual defensive carapace, and become, if not less offensive, then at least lose much of their power to harm.
Perhaps the most wonderful fringe benefit of land-stewardry is that it is most strongly embodied in a person wandering around their homestead, observing and making slight adjustments, experimenting and inventing. The development of self-sufficiency is the penultimate goal of this process, followed only by saving the world. It's truly a wonderful life.
While absolute statements are always potentially deadly, I am at the same time a bit of a zealot about my worldview. From where I stand, this comprehensive alteration of perception is the only possible solution to all the human impacts on our planet. It is, it seems to me, not only internally consistent, but also resolves misunderstandings that have resulted in the rape of the planet, and perpetual war among its people. I can imagine no greater justification for total paradigm shift, and have every hope that the organic-fractal philosophy and its resultant ethics and practices will be an integral part of our new sustainable future.
Love,
Robotsatemyhair