I’ve been rereading Carol Lee Flinders’ book “Rebalancing the World: Why Women Belong and Men Compete and How to Restore the Ancient Equilibrium.”
THE VALUES OF BELONGING
There is a way of being in the world that recoils from aggressiveness, cunning, and greed, and there is a constellation of values that supports that way of being. Rooted in a sense of interdependence so profound that it extends to even the smallest life-forms, these values were the basis for human existence everywhere for our first several hundred thousand years. They arose directly out of the relationships our hunter gatherer ancestors had with the natural world, one another and Spirit — relationships that are most accurately understood in terms of mutual reprocity and even symbiosis.
I’ve chosen to characterize the values of pre-agricultural humanity with the word belonging. The word connotes the extraordinary dovetailing we see in any ecosystem — that special niche each life-form occupies in a perfectly functioning whole… [and also] that state of mind in which we look out across a forest or valley and say to ourselves “This is where I belong.” Out of that state of mind, what I call the “values of Belonging” flow almost inevitably:Intimate connection with the land to which one “belongs.”
Empathetic relationship to animals.
Self-restraint.
Custodial conservatism.
Deliberateness.
Balance.
Expressiveness.
Generosity.
Egalitarianism.
Mutuality.
Affinity for alternative modes of knowing.
Playfulness.
Inclusiveness.
Nonviolent conflict resolution.
Openness to Spirit.Carol Lee Flinders, Rebalancing the World