Author, academic, and artist Tyson Yunkaporta offers an Indigenous perspective on some of the core beliefs that have guided my life. Some, like veganism, survive. Others, like the Hero's Journey, lie in tatters.
In our far-ranging yarn (I believe the conversation met that bar), we examined the myths of Western Civilization to see how they serve us. The Hero's Journey, which requires us to see ourselves as cosmic orphans and posits a degraded world in need of saving, leads to isolation and self-destruction.
The whole idea of technological progress without regard for unforeseen consequences creates a dynamic in which each solution turns into a more intractable problem: "curing" sickle cell with CRISPR leads to installing terminator genes in African mosquitoes, which leads to environmental destabilization and the extinction of birds and big mammals.
Tyson is highly suspicious of veganism, seeing it as another form of rigid control requiring tight human manipulation in order to get the nutrients needed to thrive. Rather than turn the yarn into a debate, we looked for ways to understand my impulse to minimize harm with the Indigenous principles of custodianship and covenantal relationship. Our treatment of tofu and edamame reflects this attempt.
We also spoke about The Queen's Gambit, as a story about a Human who refused to be Domesticated (Tyson hadn't finished the series, so there were plot elements I couldn't go into), and how difficult that proposition can be, and why it usually requires psychoactive drugs to maintain.
And we concluded by looking at "exercise" and its connection to mechanical Western "progress" culture and its possible transformation into a covenantal prayer of belonging and mutuality.