¶ Learn Another Language, Learn Another Soul (Finding Place)
They'll always remember that that's not . he's from somewhere else . A nd for a while I was quite pained by that . You see , I love this place and I care for this place and I've decided to make my stand here , to re-inhabit here , and I care for your children's future . Why do I have to be another ?
But then I also see , yeah , there's still so much that I haven't done yet . The local language , mayokin , is because everybody speaks Spanish . It's so tempting to just say I've got enough to do , I don't need to relearn an entire new language just to then be reminded while you speak Mayokin very well , but you're not one of us .
And yet , learn another language , learn another soul . Part of my re-inhabitation process now will have to be learning that language , because Me too , daniel .
Yeah , like we're going back to the Kimberley , as you know , to see Anne this year not far away actually we will traverse in just our one state arbitrary bordered state of Australia multiple countries , indigenous countries and languages to get there and we speak to them on the way . So we do it slow and get to know people in these different places as well .
But in the Kimberley where we base , similarly , there'd be three or four languages and cultures just around the town that we're based , including Anne's and I think I have to go there and with Nunga here in Perth , as they are the base , I have to go there . So it hasn't happened yet , but I know I love the way you put it another language , another soul .
That's a beautiful way to put it .
It's actually a quote from one of Thomas Mann's children , the German writer Thomas Mann . His son , golo Mann , became a historian and he wrote a book who I never remember the title of the book , but the subtitle is that Learn Another Language . Learning the Soul Beautiful
¶ Learning, Schooling & Parenting for Regeneration
.
I wonder in that context and this is a bit acute for us too at the moment .
So I'm gonna work towards our close with this one of all the things that we could keep going with is you mentioned schooling , and when we're talking about learning , aren't we Throughout and you mentioned schooling in particular which aren't always the same thing , at least not in a non-mechanistic fashion ?
Let's say , the mechanistic learning is on force , but the learning we're talking about it's not always consistent with schooling as such . So I'm wondering what your reflections and I mean it's early days , I know , lucy is what ? Five , I think . Is it five going six ?
Five and a half . Yeah , she's actually starting school next year she's in preschool .
Okay , there you go . So it's probably too early for you to say , but nonetheless , I guess you're in the position where you're moving in the direction of having her go into the schooling system on Mallorca . What's the state of your thinking around that ?
It's tough . It's really tough because what I'm observing on so many levels , even also like when you start having to teach your children table manners and why ? Yes , because a wonderful why ? Why , like ? There's this like 450 whys per day with Lucy at the moment and the answers are just really frail . They really they don't make sense , the answers .
It's like you end up as much as you don't want to just because , yes , exactly , ultimately , what it is is we are inculturating our children into a deeply degenerative , non-functional culture , and yet it's the dominant culture .
And so there's this bizarre tension of well , of course I could break the law and Spain homeschooling is illegal , but because we're foreigners , we could probably , like the foreigners , mallorca , kind of get away with it because they're not quite paid attention to in the same way . But would that really serve ?
Because I know from living here on this island for 12 years , the core of people's Inner tribe and social network tends to be the people that they went to school with . Like , even if you meet the 40-50 year olds , they still have once a year , calcita , where their secondary school class comes together . Yeah and and it sort of extend the tribe .
First tribe is family and the next tribe is that and and .
So if I want to allow my daughter to Really re inhabit this place where she is she was actually born here , so she's first generation Myokin from foreign parents Is it fair to just Create some sort of ultra homeschooling process and not , in culture , rate her , even if the system is failed and dying so it's .
It's that's where where I'm under a lot of tension , because I do see how this functional the current education system is . And now and then there's , though , when you then again Allow yourself the privilege , or or create the privilege , to be able to choose a private school rather than a public state school .
In in our case , it's because Lucia has unilateral hearing loss and being in a class of 30 people isn't necessarily Helpful , so so we're looking for smaller groups , but then most of the office here on the island are expat schools that cost ridiculous amounts of money , and I don't want to be surrounded by Jeeps and and and Cayenne Portia's and have kind of trophy
wife Mothers chat with me while I pick up my daughter from school , who then says I want a horse and when are we taking our helicopter for a and Because I I don't want to keep up with those Joneses . It's a lima isn't it so ?
so I , we found this beautiful little state school , recognized but private school that is particularly trying to basically allow people to access that education , even if at a more reasonable price . But it's still like I mean still significant money to be made every month to pay for that . But I I do feel that who said this to me ?
Yeah , helen Titianbeath , one of the real kind of stewards of the art of hosting Wonderful woman . She she said she were talking about this and she reminded me what's her name again Penelope . No , the Ulysses wife in in in Greek mythology .
She , apparently , while he was out on his journeys and had lots of suitors coming and wanting to marry her because she had quite a nice endowment and and was beautiful , and she did this thing of saying I'm knitting a scarf and I won't choose a suitor Until the scarf is finished .
And every day she would knit the scarf and then she would spend the night undoing the day's netting and that's a good image of , I think , what , what , as parents , we we have to do after , like , like , I'm gonna send my daughter to school in Full awareness there are a lot of the knitting of the day . I need to unknit every evening .
Yeah , like I also talked with Nora Bateson about this once and like , because I was curious , like what , what's it like to have Gregory Bateson as a papa and and and come from from school , and the kind of conversations are probably slightly different from what you hear at lunch in the school canteen and yeah , and .
And she also Said that that long before the film the Matrix , they they kind of Spoke of , well , that's out in the Matrix and this is how you behave in the Matrix , but there's also a possibility of stepping out of that and seeing the world differently and and and I guess that's what what I'm trying to Live by example with my daughter as well , which which
means bringing her also , like I mean , this morning she said , which is , I think , pretty good , I mean , these things change over time , but she said she wants to be a cook , a dancer , an artist in a gardener .
Beautiful .
Yeah , that's a step up from I want to be a doctor or a lawyer or an economist .
That's brilliant . I so shared the dilemma too , and it's been interesting for us because we've spent . We take our boy , who's now eight , going nine , with us on the road and have done now for four , five years .
The podcast took off this way , like I just wanted to get to know my broader country , and as a family we wanted this , and his learning , unsurprisingly , in many ways took off , including cognitively , though , which is interesting too , not just physical , not just social , but all that was proven to be true still does so .
Now he's had this experience where he at times is in different schools in different towns and of course some of the one school will be all indigenous up where in the town , where and spend some time . In Derby I've enjoyed 85% indigenous school kids . Another one was halfway up at Xmouth , for example , on the Ningaloo Reef .
So one of our beautiful reefs and that's that surf diver culture . Why never , never been amongst so many white , blonde kids ?
Perhaps you have from where you're from , but even in Australia I hadn't and I'm one of them , but I hadn't been around that many and then other times he'll be with us on the road , visiting different communities , people on the land , etc . And what we've observed is .
The blend has in many ways been really positive Sometime in the institution , sometime out , a real mix .
So we speculate and wonder , I mean , it's not possible legally either , although I think maybe someone told me , I think my wife , said the other day that in Victoria , the state of Victoria , here it might be when you can actually say , for example , have your child go to public school for two , three days a week and the rest of the time with you , and I can't
help but speculate out of our , out of our experience , whether that might actually be a decent way to go .
But I am speculating because you can't do it in this state and so at the moment we are left to maintain what we've been doing in a way , and that is , yeah , just sometime out of the institution , but so when he's there , he's there for that five days of the week and you get them when they're tired at the other end and make the best and do the unsewing
and all and the meta lens and all that sort of stuff , and we'll continue to observe how that goes . But but having that blend with time where he's out of it , yeah , and directly on country with people , including some of the , you know , oldest custodians . Yeah , that's . That's been a very interesting thing to observe as he gets older , yeah .
I don't think there are one .
One way is like the for me , because of this real , I take re-inhabitation quite seriously , yes , and and so also this being in one school and building that longer kind of oh wow , we've been to kindergarten together and now that we're into primary school together , and that is also a way of growing really deep cultural tap roots and it in .
And it's not that easy in busy lives , with everybody being busy , to really find an entry point into community as a foreigner in a place .
But our kids give that unique opportunity and so so for me personally , I want to , as she deepens into out of preschool into school and the place she's in , which is lovely because they don't have grades , they don't do competitive stuff . They follow the national curriculum , but but in a free way . We also have a much more as they go to school .
They do have a maths and language kind of things that they do have to do . Yes but but they have lots of space for self guided learning in the day and all that and it's a lovely experiment . And so far I've been kind of bit standoffish because I've been busy with other things with regard to the other parents and even the school .
But what I probably will do is is to actually turn into the skit and offer my services to that . Maybe , even in exchange for not having to pay the fees . And I mean I spent 25 years as an educator .
My biggest kind of anchor into professional life is writing curriculum and working in educational projects through guy education and with Fritjof Kapras Center for Ecoliteracy .
So so they bringing that like how you can teach maths and and culture and biology and ecology through a school garden and bringing some of that into that school more , and also in that kind of tie loop as we come to a close in in that somewhat dark 18 months of losing my positivity , like and it doesn't mean not having realism like I know what's going on in
the world to some extent , like into climate change and online , but I can . Still I want to not be a prophet of doom . I don't want to be one of those people that lead with the yeah , well , collapse is unavoidable and lots of us will die and maybe some will survive .
And doesn't sit well with me because that's ultimately saying those were privileged , were probably somehow wing through it and those who don't didn't cause it and don't deserve it will die , and that that doesn't sit well with me .
But I think that in that period where I was allowing in the possibility that the depth of transformation that will happen in the next decade to two decades everywhere is so profound that there's yet another , not just a regenerative . We do manifest local potential .
We don't do global solutions , and any kind of solution will be based on systems , elements that might just disappear .
Anything we dream up in our national road maps to a regenerative Costa Rica might meet , not so far down the line , a fundamental change that wasn't considered and that brings us back to two things that , like I in my own personal journey at that moment , realized wait a minute what I used to do before I came to Mallorca , working with the way of council , working
with solo time in nature , vision quest and John Amacy's toolbox from the work that reconnects this kind of really embodied with a group of people out in nature sitting in circle , doing threshold walks and doing right of passage ritual work is actually the technology of the sacred we talked about .
Is , in the face of radical not knowing , in the face of letting go of this we can design the system in , the acceptance of that collapse will be so profound and needs to be so profound to fundamentally restructure our way of being .
Maybe the only thing that you can give a group of people is the capacity to sit in circle and deeply listen to each other's hearts about a shared question and to what the fire the future generations have to bring into that conversation , what the lineage of women ancestors on the right shoulder and the lineage of men ancestors on the left shoulder bring in and if
anybody . Again , there's a bit like what we're talking about with the martial arts and these experiences that you know , something is possible . I've had another one of those a number of times in council where , because you follow the rules , you speak from the heart , you listen from the heart , you keep it to the essence and you're spontaneous .
Spontaneous meaning you don't rehearse your little speech because the talking stick is moving towards you , you fully attentive to what the previous person is saying and the minute you get the stick , you see what . Or if you need to say , don't speak , or something .
¶ The Power of Connection and Transformation
In those moments I've had embodied experience of voicing a perspective and a level of insight that , up to that very moment , I had never said , I'd never thought , I'd never felt part of my thoughting process , as Ben likes to call it .
It's a direct expression of the wisdom of the circle and of the sacred container created by this technology that this is of council . And then you hold , like , then , suddenly , concepts like collective wisdom or the wisdom place , or place sourced knowledge . I'm not oh yeah , well , that's all really nice , but it's a bit theoretic .
And how do we take it into practice ? Dude , we've been taking it into practice for 290,000 years , we just forgot how to do it . And so , yeah , I think that is the stuff that I'm moving towards , both with local teenagers and youth and then possibly also with people in the regional network of leaders .
Like , I think I'm just gonna start by calling a one council a season , four times a year , and bring some of the movers and shakers here on the island into a different space , not a space of how do we best work together and let's create a strategy so we can all access funding together . No , they're kind of okay . Why are you doing what you're doing ?
What are you called to do now ? What is really current for you ? And those kind of questions just open up a different space , and that , for me , is connecting to life's regenerative impulse , like it didn't start with the wonderful Carol Sanford or Regenesis Group or like it's .
It will only be transformative if it is what I believe and we believe it is , which is it's part of life's evolutionary , regenerative impulse .
It's realigning with our own ancestry and , as you alluded to it , like we are so distracted by distraction from distraction that we don't know how powerful we can actually be when we work in that way , and that's both a personal and a collective journey .
It's so deeply moving to hear you voice those resolutions , daniel , and , in the way you said it , what it's not going to be those sorts of cancels that you're imagining . Yes , music to my ears ,
¶ Music & Succeeding Legends
and speaking of which , I don't know if you've ever listened to the podcast right through to an end , where each of my guests talks about a piece of music that has moved them in their lives . And it feels sort of doubly relevant here , speaking with you , because we're talking about being that sort of conduit and it's everything that .
That the best music I've ever heard is as well . Right , it's particularly the stuff that's improper to write this tapping or at least creative . So in the moment , it's that sort of thing where you're tapping a deeper , broader thing and you're and you're being a conduit to it , and usually , often , and certainly my best experiences with others doing that as well .
So it's said beautifully , we in this way anyway , so we will go to do it anyway . But what's a piece of music that you maybe it's even just significant for you now , or has been at a point of transformation before ? What comes to you in this moment ?
Lots of yes , lots of options here , but , but actually the let's stick with the first one , because that came up as you're building up to this . Do you know who ? I always get the second half of his name because it's a rather long , not 100% right Israel Kamaka baby Is he . Do you know who that is that ? The Hawaiian ?
Yeah he's now , but he's a he's very big Polynesian chieftain singer with fascinating voice because of the resonance body that he had on him , and he does this beautiful visit as a medley where , somewhere over the rainbow blends into what a beautiful world . Yeah , I'll send you the link afterwards .
For me , that brings so much joy into the moment of life and I always remember .
One of the most cherished memories of mine is the first time I heard this song was when I was at Schumacher College in 2001 doing a Masters in Holistic Science , and Ray , one of my fellow students , did a little workshop with us and part of the end of the workshop was that he put that song on and we all danced in the old post them to this song and it
was just . You know , sometimes you just have these moments in life that you kind of go yes , this is it . And and there was one of those moments and and so it because of that it . Every time I listen to that song , it just I mean , that's what I'm , the weather , this is it . There's there's wisdom in that we are it , would you believe ?
I've been racking my brains because I've had a previous guest say the same piece , and they sent me the link , which was the first time I heard of this artist in that at that point , but I can't remember who it was . I'm going to find out who it was , though , because it has been mentioned to me before .
But , yes , I'm actually able to visualize and have in my ears as you've described as beautiful . I'll put the link to to this episode so people can tune into it , if they haven't already as well . Oh , daniel , this has felt so special . I sort of felt like it would be anyway , because it's well , it's been a long time coming in a way too .
But like we're the next generation from these legends that we've spoken about throughout and that we were pinching ourselves with at the start , and , and so there's a certain brotherhood I guess I've since , just from knowing your work on different slopes of the planet , and to come together , to happen to come together at a time where we just delve straight into
vulnerability . Like there's enough material out there of your work and people can follow that up , and I'm going to put links , and they shouldn't they and they can but to share such a conversation that really just went to the well , the depths of what's in the moment was really special , and thanks a lot for going there with me .
Well , thanks , and it's all all in perfect timing and like it's . It's as I said , like for me , a lot of what I shared is really fresh . It's it's . I do want to . I want to give myself time to start writing again , but I do actually want to write about this , this cluster of when we say we're depressed .
Are we depressed or are we just opening our heart , mind , soul being enough , to what is going on on the planet and in us and with us , and in culture and the polarities of having to somehow stay functional in a deeply degenerative , dying cultural context , knowing that even how we educate our children doesn't serve , because it's educating for a world that will not
in that way be there when they really need to implement what they've learned . And so it's interesting times where we do have to kind of ask ourselves like what are the things that stand the test of time , that we want to pay attention to and rescue into the continuing of the human story ? I don't think it's iPads and iPhones and AI .
I think that will take care of itself . That's part of carbon pulse . So but again they're probably 100 years of both and to come . So not being extremist anyway it's been really lovely and thanks for giving a space for me to just share this .
Yeah , as I said , I'll probably reflect on it more deeply because it is actually giving me an opportunity to really sense that relationship between self and world and how what we're looking at is also who we are and how we are , and it's not about the change of doing , it's the change of being that ultimately makes a difference .
And , fallible as I am , I'm on that journey . I have no wisdom to share . I just have my own journey to make relevant for other people's journey .
Indeed , ditto , right there with you and part of the joy I'm finding in doing this , and no doubt you are too , with the people you deal with , and I look forward to hearing more of that too . Thank you very much , Daniel .
Have a wonderful evening where you are , and I'll start my day where I am . Thanks so much . Lots of love .
Lots of love to you too . That was World Renowned Writer , producer and Educator , Daniel Christian Wahl . For more on Daniel , his writing and recorded conversations , including the one with Satish , see the links in the show notes . And I remembered the other guest who talked of the same artist . It was Agostino Petroni , speaking from Italy in episode 118 .
Another example of a relatively short-lived artist who's effect on people everywhere lives long . Next time you'll hear from me , it'll be from Brisbane . I hope some of you will be able to join us in a live podcast conversation for the World Science Festival at 10am on Sunday , march 26th .
We'll be talking regenerating country with brilliant First Nations guests Jacob Birch and Zena Cumpston . The link for that is also in the show notes . And thanks , as always , to the generous supporters who've helped make this episode possible . If you too value what you hear , please consider joining this community of supporting listeners so we can keep the podcast going .
Just head to the website via the show notes RegenNarration . com forward slash support . Thanks again , and , as always , if you think of someone who might enjoy this episode , go ahead and share it with them . The music you're hearing is Regeneration by Amelia Barden off the soundtrack to the film Regenerating Australia . My name's Anthony James . Thanks for listening .