Generational Gazing

Thinking and Anthropo-Gazing through the eyes of generations is a beautiful exercise to understand ourselves as individuals and as embedded (bio-social) organisms in our families and our communities.

We have, in Western civilization, become so individualized that we lost our possibility to see how nature works: in generations-in-context.

Anthropologist Gregory Bateson already in 1972 and Eduardo Kohn recently (2013) showed us how First Nation people experience living in a mountain forest on a slope in New Guinea or in the rainforest in the Amazon delta.

All the organisms in these forests, trees, plants, humans, birds, insects and other animals have been reproducing in these specific habitats for over hundreds of generations.

Anthropologists Gregory Bateson already in 1972 and Eduardo Kohn’s recent ‘How Forests Think‘ (2013) showed us how First Nation people experience living in a mountain forest on a slope in New Guinea or in the rainforest in the Amazon delta.

All the organisms in the these forests, trees, plants, humans, birds, insects and other animals have been reproducing in these specific habitats for over hundreds of generations.

Every organism has its own temporal rhythms and niche as an individual, as a generation, as a whole forest system which is dominated by nature’s daily, moonly and seasonal cycles.

A fascinating ‘generational’ question for us is: when are all people, dogs, cats, trees, cows, birds that I know, including myself, replaced by new generations? Some animals, like cats and dogs live shorter lives than our people. Trees often live longer than us.

How do these transgenerational systems create continuity after all previous individual trees, plants, humans are replaced?

These forests taken, as continuous changing ‘self-generating, self-organizing and self-correcting systems in context’ we will never be able to grasp from (western) science. We do not need to. We only need, with awe and humility, to watch, feel, sense, experience, perceive (even in BBC documentaries) of what we are part of.

Looking at ourselves, as human individuals, families, communities, nations, being part of these strings of generations offers possibilities to ‘re-enter paradise’ (listen to Van Morrison’s ‘In The Garden’).

By co-creating sacred moments, sacred (temporarily transitional/liminal) spaces of flow, of tele, in the zone, of communitas, of resonance, of Grace.

The most ancient human manifestation of being in sync (being in GRACE) with nature’s cycles, with cosmic transitions and (healing) earthly forces is kept alive and lived by the San people in the Kalahari desert South Africa. They call it re-connecting N/om.

Family therapist Bradford Keeney deeply respects, and connects with, these people’s ancient wisdom and re-enters spiritual paradise.  entering N/om by chanting, dancing an clapping.

Watch, wonder and experience your own (lost?) human spiritual treasure by opening up to dancing N/om with the San people.