A Language Older Than Words

For your enjoyment and reading pleasure:

There is a language older by far and deeper than words. It is the language of bodies, of body on body, wind on snow, rain on trees, wave on stone. It is the language of dream, gesture, symbol, memory. We have forgotten this language. We do not even remember that it exists.
In order for us to maintain our way of living, we must, in a broad sense, tell lies to each other, and especially to ourselves. It is not necessary that the lies be particularly believable. The lies acts as barriers to the truth. These barriers to truth are necessary because without them many deplorable acts would become impossibilities. Truth must at all costs be avoided. When we do allow self-evident truths to percolate past our defenses and into our consciousness, they are treated like so many hand grenades rolling across the dance floor of an improbably macabre party. We try to stay out of harm’s way, afraid they will go off, shatter our delusions, and leave us exposed as the hollow people we have become. And so we avoid these truths, these self-evident truths, and continue the dance of world destructions.
As is true for most children, when I was young, I heard the world speak. Stars sang. Stones had preferences. Trees had bad days. Toads held lively discussions, crowed over a good day’s catch. Like static on a radio, schooling and other forms of socialization began to interfere with my perception of the animate world, and for a number of years I almost believed that only humans spoke. The gaps between what I experienced and what I almost believed confused me deeply. It wasn’t unit later that I began to understand the personal, political, social, ecological, and economic implications of living in a silenced world.
--Derrick Jensen, A Language Older Than Words

Clothes--HDT Experiment

Thoughts on Clothes:
"Our outside and often thin and fanciful clothes are our false skin."

I will post my list of clothes tonight

Keep your thoughts coming,
AK

Core Tenets of HDT Experiment

Please include passages from HDT that you think are core tenets that the project should be build upon:

Example:
Economy, p. 8: "We might try our lives by a thousand simple tests."
What are the simple tests that we might encounter that we must engage.

Keep them coming,
AK

Thoughts on Food

Here we go--please do your best, we need to lock this up for tomorrow.

Best,
AK

Journals

Just a heads up--

I have been working on your journals over the weekend and this morning; however, I am not sure that I will get them all done before class today.

Just wanted to let you know.

Best,
AK