Cultural Mythology: American Notions of Self and Country

Location, location, location

Last week I shared Nina Simons's definition of a "bioneer," in contrast to a "pioneer," and I focused on the implicit violence in the image of pioneer as foot soldier and pawn, in contrast to the "bios" of life in bioneer. There are many ways to think about this contrast and its more than a matter of words. If we all get much more specific with our terms, and familiar with the multiple meanings buried in our words, the unconscious mythology becomes something to interact with and even change. Change is coming, but what form will it take?

I've been thinking about where a pioneer or a bioneer is located in literal and imaginative space. The pioneer is on the frontier, which is often felt as big and open, and also the cutting edge, or the edge of civilization and culture. Frontier means "front," and a pioneer clears the way and moves this edge further. No surprise then, that pioneers and pioneering and frontiers are common metaphors for innovation. Innovation as moving forward is connected to a linear image of progress, and growth (which is always good?) is expansion, covering more ground, using more, producing more, getting bigger and broader and less dense at the edges, like suburban sprawl around a city center.

Bioneers are for innovation (as indicated in my post about biomimicry) but can a bioneer be on the frontier? Maybe we need another word for the space, literal and figurative, occupied by the bioneer. How about concentier, "together" (com) in the "center" (centre). No doubt we could find a more elegant word, but what intrigues me is the effect a move from the frontier---as front, or cutting edge--- to the center---as middle, or in the mix--- might have on our image of innovation. To return to the metaphor of the city, urban renewal is often about deepening and density, about efficiencies and multiple use. For a city center to function well, as a viable commercial district and a neighborhood, space must be vertical as well as horizontal, and the complex relationships between populations have to be negotiated. One can't just move further along down the track.

Innovation in the concentier?

Tools and technology

The natural world is the starting point for human ideas, and for some eons, the rocks and streams and sticks and other materials of the world suggested tools. Find something sharp, consider cutting. But as we moved from tools to technology, the natural origins of our tools faded (how many people today know that aspirin first came from willow trees?) and people developed new materials that gave birth to new needs and uses. We have plastic for example, a material that requires its own technology to produce and cannot be assimilated by nature (it's not biodegradable), that is used to make a lot of doodads that nobody needs, or satisfy a fantasy of convenience that is anything but convenient. Mostly, we all have more stuff to stash someplace or throw away, another landfill to site, stream to choke, bird or fish to kill.

There is a movement called biomimicry, that reunites nature and nature's technologies with human tools and needs. One champion is Janine Benyus, and her book Biomimicry:Innovation Inspired by Nature, looks interesting. The purpose behind biomimicry is the creation of sustainable technologies, things that work better and cost less, in terms of our collective health and resources. Did you know that Phelps won all of his gold medals in a swimsuit designed to mimic sharkskin? Not bad.

Biomimicry makes so much sense. Let nature provide the models. I think this notion could be very vauable in terms of our communities and social contracts as well. If we set up our political and economic and social systems following an ecological model, what would it look like? These would be our laws:

All things are interconnected.
Everything goes somewhere.
There's no such thing as a free lunch.
Nature bats last.

I think we are witnessing the end, as REM put it, of the world as we know it. What comes next will be a matter of story (mythology) and as Naomi Klein says (ironically, quoting Milton Friendman), the ideas that are lying around. Bioneer or pioneer? Hierarchy or web? I vote for nature's model. As it turns out, there really is no such thing as a free lunch.

Bioneers, pioneers, and pawns

Words, names, are important. Sometimes they suggest more than we consciously intend, because like a myth, they contain the past in the present. So looking at the etymology, the history or family tree, of a word can be revealing. In the days leading up to the Bioneers Conference last weekend, which I attended, I thought about the word "bioneer."

"Bioneer" is a deliberately created term and it obviously refers to "pioneer," a central image of the West and the American mythology of the individual. We've heard a lot lately about pioneers and mavericks, about today's down to earth, hardy individuals (soccer moms and Joe six-packs) and elites (Eastern carpetbaggers). We've seen pictures from the moose hunt. Frankly, the titanic energy of our Western mythology, the genocide and rapacious use of the land in the name of "freedom," and the fantasy of self-reliance, is a problem.

So I was gratified when Bioneers co-founder Nina Simons addressed the significance of the word in her opening comments. Simons outlined three crucial differences between a "bioneer" and a "pioneer." A pioneer she said, moves into new territory as if it were empty and kills others off. In the pioneer mind (something I experience here in the Mojave Desert with some regularity), history begins with his arrival. The frontier is a blank slate, a "no place"  that he puts on the map by virtue of his discovery. A bioneer on the other hand, recognizes that the earth is already fully peopled. 

A pioneer has no respect for limits; a bioneer knows that limits are the first law of nature. A pioneer sees hierarchy in diversity---this one is superior to that one, more valuable or important, that one less so. A bioneer is non-hierarchical and respects the role that each being plays in the creation of the whole.

Given the mission of the Bioneers --- the promotion of sustainable technologies and ecological ways of living---this seems kind of obvious once you've heard it, a marriage between innovation and the interconnected "web" imagery of ecology. But I think the differences Simons highlights are very insightful, especially her emphasis on violence, an aspect of pioneer life and the settling of the West that is often omitted, downplayed, or romanticized. Fittingly, the word "pioneer" comes from peon, or foot soldier. "Bioneer," like biology, is derived from the Greek bios, meaning life.

But there is another angle worth consideration. The etymology of pioneer or peon includes the Medieval Latin pedon, or pawn. A pawn is the piece in the chess game with the least amount of power, something or someone used by others, a hostage,or something exchanged for money. The courageous, self-sufficient, self-made pioneer as pawn. What can be made of this contradiction? 

I think of the many Western settlers bamboozled into moving into harsh dry lands by lying speculators (with the active complicity of the federal government), the machinations of the railroad tycoons who plotted towns and lives along with the tracks, the dustbowl refugees with no place else to turn, the Mormons, and many other pioneers who were refugees of one sort or another. Certainly there were and are exceptions. But other side of this tale of golden opportunity is hardship and necessity. Which raises the question of who or what drives it.

Link to the Bioneers website