For nearly all of human species existence across the world, child raising was rooted in the maternal gift economy as denoted by the evolved nest. Basic needs were met without resistance. Humans have needs not only for nourishment, warmth, safety, but also a positive welcoming community, affectionate touch, play, mentoring from and interbeing with multi-aged others, ecological attachment and partnership with the rest of Nature. These are part of our heritage of the evolved nest.
Remember that our species is part of the human genus that has been around for around 2 million years.
Over the last few millennia, accelerating in the last centuries and more so in the last decades, the evolved nest has been eroded—the effects of hierarchical civilization, patriarchy, colonialism, industrialization, globalization. The lack of evolved nest provision is especially impactful on boy children because they are more vulnerable—they have less built-in resilience and mature more slowly. So they need more companionship nurturance for longer. But in negative patriarchal societies, they get less nurturing than girls. They often end up with underdeveloped social capacities and must rely on pre-human instincts for dominance/submission. They may grow to blame women for their feelings of insecurity, knowing deep down that they did not receive the mothering they needed and evolved to expect.
The lack of evolved nest experience in early life is traumatizing: babies are left alone, left to cry, denied breastmilk and suckling, are corporally punished. Trauma in the preverbal years becomes incorporated into personality. Trauma is carried forward into life, generating a deep sense of insecurity and lack of confidence in self and relationships. You look for a way to feel safe outside of feeling. You can become an active achiever of one kind or another; or a winner, defeating others in something or other; or you can adopt an ideology, a belief system that ensures your superiority as a member of the group. But you are also easily triggered into self-defense or numbness, which changes your perceptions and narrows your orientation to self-protection. We have a world filled with unresolved trauma driving irritability and skirmishes, anxiety-driven efforts to manipulate and control, and war.
So the modern world has forgotten what humans are—social mammals with a lengthy maturational schedule—nearly 30 years. The modern world has forgotten what optimal normal human nature looks like—adults who are cooperative, contented, life enhancing, welcoming of strangers, and more. The modern world has forgotten how to raise our species-normal human nature—through the maternal gift economy and the evolved nest. This is our deep ancestral wisdom.
Nested communities cultivate capacities that members of unnested communities often are missing: flexible relational attunement; receptivity to the interrelations with the rest of Nature; awareness and perception of the unmanifest, the spiritual realms; knowhow for getting along peacefully and respectfully with all relations, human and nonhuman, and for living regeneratively on Earth.
Enough words. To unite our movements for life, we need to know what we are aiming for. Let’s see what our ancestral wisdom looks like.
With Sustainable Human filmmakers, we’ve created a 12-minute film to remind us about humanity’s promise:
Sit back and let it flow over you.
It has closed captions in 15 languages.
Y hay versión en español.