CREATIVE WRITINGOctober 10, 2011

Excerpt from Kurt Kaltreider’s book American Indian Prophesies: Conversations with Chasing Deer, Chapter Eight-“The Wisdom of the Elders: Community and Happiness”

[from the editor: Please note that John’s questions and observations are in italics throughout the rest of the text, followed by Chasing Deer’s responses.]

Chasing Deer: There is no substitute for personal interaction in creating good communities. For example, television is a kind of global community. It provides a common set of experiences for people, but they are abstract rather than personal.

John: I see where you’re leading. [René] Dubos talks about a college girl who wrote a book about this subject in 1973. Here’s an excerpt of what he says:

She had watched television as a voyeur, not as a person really involved in the human pathos of world events. Learning about the world through news reports, talk shows, television broadcasts gives the artificial thrill that comes from the illusion of proximity to events without the necessity of being involved in them; it does not elicit an organic interaction and therefore gives at best a trivial quality to the experience of the global village.

I understand her experience, Grandfather. There’s a world of difference between the crime shows that I’ve seen on television and what it must really be like to be involved in a high-speed chase along a crowded interstate. In real life, my heart would be racing, I’d probably be hyperventilating, and I know I’d be terrified.

Chasing Deer: Exactly. So you would never want it to happen again. The trauma might ignite an urge to help or serve or change the system in some way so that all that chasing would not be necessary. A mother whose son is killed by a drunk driver will never be the same again. In fact, just such a woman organized MADD, Mothers Against Drunk Drivers. And sorry to say, it took the real experience of loss for that to happen.

Current Western society, which is a microcosm of a global village, is so large and impersonal that it is hard to care about things personally. In fact, seeing television murders, rapes, chases, and wars actually creates a kind of numbness, a dissociation from their real-life counterparts.

John: Television and the news commentators have sort of taken the place of elders in our society, don’t you think? The storytelling is electronic, and for the most part the stories are about violence, betrayal, hatred, and disaster.

Chasing Deer: Another problem is that children watch most television alone. There is no one to discuss the stories with them who might place them in a larger context. Even when the stories told are good ones, much of their power remains untapped, for we need to understand stories in reference to our own lives and those of our loved ones. Otherwise they remain abstractions, and we are not as likely to remember them. Once again, Grandson, knowledge is of the mind and wisdom of the heart. And wisdom is embodied; it becomes part of our lived experience, and that is its power. We can and will use it to make changes in our lives and in the world.

John: Everything we’ve talked about today seems like common sense, Grandfather, I wonder how we could have forgotten the most basic need for community.

Chasing Deer: You have not forgotten it, Grandson. The same hope and desire for love, respect, and close friendships has motivated human beings from the beginning of time. If we could forget it, perhaps people would not be so anxious and depressed. For these conditions stem from grief, a deep recognition that those things most meaningful, simple, and sacred are not easily found in today’s society.

John: I’ve always had a vision of forming some kind of community on my family land in Virginia, Grandfather. But today a crucial piece fell into place. Like the communes of the ’70-s, I envisioned a haven for people my own age. Now I know that without elders and children, people of every age, a community is not an organic whole. I’ve got a lot to think about. And a lot of gratitude. I know how I want to live. Now I have to find the way and become part of the solution to a problem that your people’s prophecies have marked as a point of choice. Purification or resurrection that’s the fork in the road where we stand.