Mastodawn

As an anprim this quote had an instant appeal for me

https://www.instagram.com/p/DQH6mx3klwV/

I think the part about describing how modern society is in itself insane and neo-liberal capitalist economics reduces humans into individual economic units and devalues all forms of co-operation is valid.

Catch22 states that if you live in a world that is insane the only sane response is to become insane yourself.

The author then goes on to claim that if humans go back to living in a small tribes that are in harmony with nature then all mental illnesses will disappear.

Except its not like that. The rates of mental illness of all types in existing hunter-forager or subsistence agricultural societies are broadly similar to those seen "Western civilization".

What is different with "primitive" societies with regards to mental health is how individuals experiencing mental health issues or neurospicyness are treated by the other members of the society.

Someone who is a dreamer and who struggles to concentrate is given a label of ADHD in the West. They have to struggle in jobs they are not suited too. In a "primitive" society they might spend their time caring for the elderly or looking after livestock.

Someone living in "civilisation" who experiences hallucinations is highly likely to be heavily medicated and / or institutionalised. In a hunter-forager society or even more "modern" societies they might have been a shaman or priest. The gods and goddesses talk to them after all. Or they might be a warrior chieftain who revels in the slaughter of the battlefield instead of being labelled a psychopath and running a multi-billion dollar corporation.

Its easy to imagine someone reading the glib statement in the insta post and being inspired to get back to nature. They might become farmer on a small holding or homestead for example. They will get muddy and be closer to nature in a personal sense. They will still have to operate within globalised neo-liberal capitalism. Their mental health issues may improve but they wont go away as the root causes are the same.

It will take a lot more writing to pin down what I think needs to be done to move humanity closer to nature in the future.

#anprim #AnarchoPrimitivism #BackToNature #HunterForager #MentalHealth #capitalism #NeoLiberalEconomics #society #nature #ecology

Jay Lesoleil on Instagram: "Source: revealed to me in a vision"

20K likes, 31 comments - jaylesoleil on October 22, 2025: "Source: revealed to me in a vision".

Instagram

grateful wolf Feb 12, 2025

termites and spirits and eland - oh my!

Rock Art and Hunter–Gatherer Landscapes: Iconography, Cosmology and Topography in Southern Africa [pdf, xml, epub 39pp] #RockArt #pictographs #HunterGatherer #HunterForager https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0752/14/1/15

Rock Art and Hunter–Gatherer Landscapes: Iconography, Cosmology and Topography in Southern Africa

Landscape studies of hunter–gatherer rock art often suffer from logical flaws. Some of these failings stem from the founding question that researchers ask: “Why do some places have images while others do not?” This question is misleading and not particularly helpful in some—but not all—contexts where there is no direct ethnographic evidence to provide an answer. Instead, we suggest that a better question from which to begin is: “How are rock art images related to landscape?”. To answer this question, we examine the relationship between iconography, cosmology and topography in two areas of southern African San rock painting. We argue that cosmology guided iconography and that the imagery, in turn, manipulated topography into landscape for the San. In this view, we do not need to rely on cognitive templates that invest topography a priori with significance that then determines the choice of locale for art. Instead, landscape for the San was socially and symbolically constructed through the placement of imagery.

MDPI