I’ve been interviewed by the Catskill Cottage Seed. This is from their about page:
As our family micro-farms a small patch of Earth tucked away in the southwestern folds of the Catskill Mountains, we express our journey toward the undiscovered Self in word and image. While we have spent the majority of our adult lives in major cities and suburbia, our relocation to this rural community three years ago has had a tremendous impact on our creativity and quality of life.
Their blog is a multi-faceted exploration that is very enlightening to read. I stumbled across their site with my Naskapi Google Alert, and found an article about the Inner Man, or as the Naskapi call him, the Mista-peo. The author, who avidly studies Carl Jung, quoted a portion of Jung & Franz’s Man and His Symbols.
Having very nearly minored in philosophy (with an interest in counterculture movements) in college, I admired Jung’s work, but always took issue with his and other authors lack of depth when it came to the analysis of various tribes, including the Naskapi.
I responded to the post clarifying a few of Jung’s points. I was surprised to get an email from one of the blog’s authors, Richard Reeve. He was quite apologetic, and asked me if I would be willing to expand on my points and be interviewed by him. I found a level of respect rarely found on the internet, and consented to the interview.
You can read the whole interview here. I’d encourage you to check on their site. I’ve subscribed, and I’ve found their observations quite insightful.
Ben, that is fascinating and thought-provoking. Thanks so much for sharing!
Thanks, Meg!
One thing we really didn’t get a chance to talk about much was the way Christianity fits in to all of this (I didn’t want to steer his conversation). The interesting thing about it is that when the Naskapi first had contact with the missionaries and heard them talk about God, they recognized that the God the missionaries talked about and the God they knew (Chamindo) were one and the same. This meant that it was all the more powerful that Chamindo had sent a son that had died for them, and they hadn’t heard about it yet!