I just spent 5 days at Circle Dance Camp Cape Cod. I had a GREAT time. Lots of dancing, visiting with old friends and new, good food. We really took care of each other, too. If someone’s knee was hurting someone else would offer Reiki or arnica cream. I would happily give up most of my “luxuries” like car, and refrigerator, washer/dryer, and even my biggish house (2 bedrooms, 1 bathroom) to be able to live in a community where I could spend lots of time dancing, singing, storytelling, in exchange for some work for the community. I would happily wash dishes, clean bathrooms, weed gardens, chop vegetables, to be able to spend more time with friends doing things that feed the soul, like dancing, ceremony, storytelling, etc. I think, knowing something about the leisure time available to foraging tribes, that it would be about 4 hours a day I’d have to spend in such work, and even that would be with friends.
See Wikipedia on “Original Affluent Society”
and the Economist on Noble or Savage
This is what made me think about community and what I value. Elisabet Sahtouris wrote this piece. “Sarah James, enduring the heat of Brazil, was beating her huge caribou-skin drum to punctuate her own words as she told us about her Gwich’in Indian culture in the northernmost inhabited village of Alaska. I’d met her in Oregon the year before; this time she had made the trip to Rio de Janeiro for the Earth Summit of 1992. She described her people’s lives before contact with the white man. Their relationship with the caribou was sacred and they were endlessly grateful for this wonderful animal that gave them everything they needed and wanted: food, bone and skin houses, boats, snowshoes, utensils, tools, clothing, drums, flutes. Their lives were rich– rich with family and community, warm homes and clothing, plentiful food, much time for ceremony, music, dance, story telling and laughter, much reason for celebration and thanksgiving for their bounty. But when the white man came to them, he saw people living in 40-deg.-below-zero weather with only caribou to provide for their meager sustenance. He called them poor ‘savages.’ Sarah beat her caribou skin drum, sang her welcoming skin hut dance song, and smiled broadly as she shouted, ‘Well, then let’s keep Alaska savage!'”