Reflections on Indigenous Wisdom and Civic Engagement

The chapter delves into the speaker's reflection on indigenous cultures, abundance mentality, and the necessity of sacrifice for societal change. It emphasizes the importance of recognizing courage in effecting meaningful change and the challenges of awareness among privileged individuals regarding sacrifices needed for true impact. Discussions include the urgency of understanding marginalized communities' struggles, the resilience of the Sikh indigenous community, and the call for more harmonious living and bridge-building in modern society.

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My guest today is Indy Rishi Singh. Indy is a cultural creative with Cosmic Labyrinth, a collective of edutainers producing biocultural ecorestorations and collective care events in public and at conferences and festivals. Indy is also a co-developer in a technology cooperative designing a bioregional citizen based communication platform that serves as both a tool for effective mutual aid and improving civic literacy. He recently joined the California Doughnut Economic Coalition, focusing on policy change and grassroots cooperation to create an economy that cares for both people and nature. And he’s also a board member with Cultivating Self, a nonprofit transforming and reimagining healthcare by focusing on the education and empowerment of caregivers, and regularly shares Neuroplasticity and resilience techniques with corporations and organizations around the world.

This was a wide-ranging conversation and we explored many topics of a personal nature as well as what responses to our entangled global crises might look like. Indy talked about his experience in medical school where he witnessed many contradictions and found that an integration of different perspectives was lacking, which then led him on a journey to explore ancient practices of healing like Ayurveda, a 5000 year old practice originating in India through which knowledge was embedded within stories as a way of transferring information in case some of it got destroyed.

Indy also talks about how “systems doing” is very different from “system thinking”. He says when you’re engaged in “systems doing”, you have to go to those places, you have to ask questions, you have to humble yourself and be willing to learn and let what you learn change you. You have to allow emergence to happen rather than having a strict agenda for what YOU want to have happen.

We also talk about the importance of sacrifice, that IF we truly want things to change, we have to be willing to sacrifice something. He says oppression and tyranny take advantage of our fear of sacrifice. We also talk about ancient practices for sensemaking and how in Samkhya, in the Sanskrit tradition of philosophical debate, you actually take on your opponent's perspective and then you take on other perspectives beyond just those two polar perspectives. You attempt to look at things from multiple angles and even then you can just grasp a small portion of reality.

I’ve been thinking about questions like, “Where does our knowledge come from?”, “How has it evolved?”, “What can we learn from ancient civilizations that lived sustainably in relative harmony and balance with all of life?”, “How might we incorporate ancient wisdom into new civilizational design?”

Indy and I used some terms in the conversation that I understand because of my South Asian heritage, which may be unfamiliar to you, so I've included them below.

Terms Mentioned:

Desi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desi

Bhangra: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhangra

Ayurveda: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayurveda

Rig Veda: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rigveda

Dosha: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dosha

Pranayama: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pranayama

Karma: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karma

Dharma: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dharma

Sikh: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikhs

Kali Yuga: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kali_Yuga

Satya Yuga: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satya_Yuga