To Survive Collapse, You Will Need Expert Level Skills.
You'd have to be an advanced prepper to survive a collapse
Scott percieves learning survival skills as going back. We go forward into a new form of capitalism that remains seperated from nature.
Scott spends a lot of time doubling down on denying that we know know what our ancestors did, and yet we already know, because less than 120 years aho we were making fire the way our celtic ancrstors did.
Past ancestral skills are the clutter of the past that Scott doesnt realise are the skills that connect us with nature.
What have the Old Gods taught Scott about the land and the Boudican value of the forests? Compared to what history tells us about forest management from antiquity to the present. Because ultimately to take these people seriously their assertions and assumptions need to be tested against reality & science.
This UK has over 6000 years of coppicing history.
But to do that it must ignore the worst impacts of climate change like Wet Bulb Temperature and the collapse of agriculture.
Let's assume we're only talking about climate collapse. Not Nuclear War. The reality of AMOC collapse, sea level rise, catastrophic flooding, deadly heat, ferocious storms, and life without agriculture in a world of 2°C or more is this: if you are not on your way to learning expert survival skills, collapse will be impossible. It takes someone on Joe Rogan to point that out!
Expert-level survivalists are also commonly known as hunter-gatherers. Expert-level survivalism requires a deep connection with nature or what Manda Scott calls the "web of life"
As a wilderness practitioner, I observe people closely, it's how trackers operate. People constantly leak information about themselves, even if they are trying to hide it. The more complex the persona propagada you project, the deeper the cracks are that let observers see in, but rarely do these cracks let any light in.
Celtic Shamanism Has Nothing To Teach Us About The Collapse Or How We Survive It
Manda Scott, through her books, website and podcast, has created her own mythology about what she perceives a Shaman to be and what the training of a shaman is like.
"I had read enough about the hubris of people who think they can teach spiritual practice – and suffered under the egos of (some of) those who think they can teach shamanic practice.."
"OK. I’ll do it. But I’ll do everything I can to make it safe. Because the thing about being the tribal shaman, in whatever culture you’re in, is that it’s not easy, it’s not trivial: people die training to be a shaman. Some people choose to die to avoid becoming the tribal shaman. It’s a position of enormous responsibility and my own solid belief is that we in the west, although we can (and do) petition the old gods for help… we’re not being shamans. We’re using the tools of shamanic practice to help our lives and, if we get beyond the point of projecting, if we do the work hard enough, diligently enough, for long enough to at least begin to see our own stuff, then we can help those around us."
Manda's Mythology of herself and her Shamanism (shamanic practice) is entirely a myth upon which she bases her grift, and yet she is critical of other people's grifting of shamanism. "Celtic Shamanism" appears to have its history in the FWBO (Friends of the Western Buddhist Order). Celticisation propaganda was starting to appear in the 1990s among some road protestors, it had racist undertones even though it didn't appear racist: It equated the NVDA against the road builders/Mining companies & Earth Rapers to Celts (Boudica) fighting Rome. Therefore we were Celts & as close to indigenous as was possible. So if Manda Scott was talking to the "Old Gods" of the land, where was she when we were fighting the Earth Rapists? There's no indication that Manda Scott has ever had the experience of being an Earth Warrior, in spite of the opportunity being right there, across the British Isles through the 1990s and heavily supported by the FWBO.
Manda Scott admits learning Core Shamanism in the UK with Michael Harner. Cited by Manda Scott in this Video, was taught to some Indigenous people too. But within a short period, American indigenous communities had rejected Harners' practice, citing cultural appropriation and the evil of money for spiritual matters.
Manda Scott fails to mention this, she just says the "door was shut". Beause she doesnt want her grift and cultural appropriation seen.
Michael and Sandra Harner created a school of Core Shamanic practice, which they claimed were universal indigenous spiritual tools. Sandra Harner, a psychologist, combined core shamanism with psychology and psychotherapy to make Therapeutic Shamanism.
Indigenous people call these people Plastic Medicine People.
It's easy to spot these Core and Therapeutic shamanism practitioners. The machined-wood drums are a dead giveaway, but it's something more than that. It's a complete ignorance of nature, the ancient English Landscape and how it has been shaped by humans for over 7000 years.
Manda constantly talks about "connecting to the web of life". Connecting to the web of life is "Harner Talk" Michael Harner used the phrase "web of life" to describe the profound interconnectedness of all beings and the planet. Harner said it was through shamanic practice that we can connect to the web of life, and Scott has fallen for this and has been struggling with it ever since and openly admits this in her podcast.
Yet she insists she knows the values of the Boudican past, even though the Celts didn't write anything down so why are we even bothering to speculate what these Celtic Boudican values even were, because if the Old Gods cant even tell you how the woods were managed, why would we believe anything else she has to say.
Detail from a Breugel painting of pollarding for basket making materials.
"The practice of coppicing has deep historical roots, with evidence of its use dating back to ancient civilizations such as the Celts and Romans. In medieval Europe, coppiced woodlands were a vital resource for fuel, construction, and a variety of craft industries, including basketry, fencing, and charcoal production. Entire communities depended on coppiced woodlands for their livelihoods, making it an integral part of rural economies."
But the old gods have somehow neglected to tell Scott about coppicing.
Soruce Videos:
The 1990s Environmental Protests Relevance To Collapse
The Newbury bypass was built, but the Tories secretly shelved the road-building program. I realised early on that nothing we could do now could outdo climate change. We won the road wars by making road building expensive.
The Newbury bypass was built, but the Tories secretly shelved the road-building program.
Even then, many of us knew that we were winning a small battle in a fight that we were losing against corporate capitalism's control of the state. The Battle for Seattle was the people against the Corporate neocolonialism of the world and, more importantly, the patenting of nature. The privatisation of Nature needs the state to consolidate the militarisation of the police against the people. Anyone who thinks fascism started with Trump hasn't been concentrating.
But something else happened too, especially among those of us who lived on the road protests, in trees, and in benders in the woods. We learned about how we might have to live in a collapse. This was a powerful time; we lived in nature (dependent on agriculture still). We also harvested the bounty of the forest when it was given and processed it by hand into products we could keep and use later:
Roast Hazel puré
Roast Chestnut puré
This was a taste of connection to nature with skills. This experience was way more and psychologically deeper than any "make it safe" Core Shamanism Practitioner could teach us, and it was free.
As my friend Suzanna Lafond once said, this was the Earth Warriors Dream Time.
And she didnt mean it in a culurally appropriating way. She clarifies it to mean this: Land Occupation, Road Protests. Living with the trees was New Culture time.
We lived in and defended nature and the spirits of the Earth held us. People were seriously injured, a friend broke his back, but no one died, miraculously.
We lived on the land and made deep relationships with the trees we lived in. Nature was activating our limbic system.
Connection to Nature
I write extensively about how we are connected to nature through the limbic system on my Nature Connection blog. This is based on actual psychological and medical research around stress and my own experience as a Nature Therapy project designer for an NHS psychiatric hospital. Nature is good for you.
The Restoration of Cognition Theory coupled with at the very least gardening and at the very best prosocial wilderness survival skills training in nature. Paired with the Stress Recovery Theory. Nature slows us down to its pace, which is glacial.
When we fully understand how we are already tuned into nature. The "Turn On" as Timothy Leary says, is not LSD, Ayahuaska or psylocibin, these give us glimpses but no route. Neither is as Harner asserts in his book and training Core Shamanism: claiming that Core Shamamism is a route to nature connection is a disservice, because every Core Shamanism grifter (plastic medicine person) are misleading all those paying customers.
The sale of spirituality is something indigenous people frown on & make excellent comedy about. The Plastic Shaman: Indigenous Spitituality Is Not For Sale. The indigenous people are desperstrly needed in the mix to legitamise the paywall shamans.
This video talks about how Indigemous people through marginalisation and poverty may be forced into unhealthy relationships with people like Harner. White Shamans and Plastic Meedicine Men
The Turn On is Nature.
The term "Connect to the web of life" is alienating. I have no doubt that there is a complex explanation of how its done, just sitting under a tree. (Sacred Earth Activism, FB group)
Manda Scott is clear about what she is not, "We aren't being Shaman, we are using the tools of shamanism". She "connects to the web of life" by sitting under a tree. "Go and sit under a tree and ask it what it wants and then do it in real time", and she charges £1000s to teach this, and she admits her students struggle. But more importanly Scott rejects actually learning skills which connect us to nature. Because she percieves learning wilderness survival skills as "going back".
The Thrutopian Adventure And The Flourishing Golden Dawn
How Teutonic, this Norse mythos as we peer into the extinction abyss with no skills. Thrutopia might be dressed up as an artists/ writing platform for hope, entirely founded on rejection of actual connection to the Nature and core skills which connect us to Nature.
Is this because Thrutopia is an alternative Green Business as Usual Model which is utilising AI?
Thrutopian Theory is simplistic
Hospice the old system and step into the new.
The collapse is a survival bottleneck. We are fully evolved for this, but to connect to nature we need to ignore the spiritual types who are teaching us nothing and rejecting learninh skills because of their Hubris & ego.
We need to connect to nature through learning survival skills prosocially in nature, from 1 to 1 trainers. Using plant materials and learning the ways of the land and our historical connection through management of woods, wetlands and other special places. Even if we go extinct it's the right thing to being human.
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