Using Indigenous ways of thinking

#13—In which I connect the dots and predict the future.

Welcome to Mind Flexing, your weekly thought expedition to everywhere and anywhere. Strap on your boots (or put your feet up), take a deep breath, and let’s get flexing.

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Last week, in my essay, Three things I’ve learned this week—I shared three snippets of information that appeared completely random and disconnected. At least, when I sat down to compile them, I did so believing they were disconnected. By the time I went to hit send, I wasn’t quite sure. I had started to observe a connection.

A few years ago I read a book called Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World written by Dr Tyson Yunkaporta, a member of the Apalech Clan of Western Cape York and a senior lecturer in Indigenous Knowledges at Deakin University.

It’s a fascinating read that introduces the uninitiated to a different way of thinking; one that revolves around five key thought processes: kinship-mind, story-mind, dreaming-mind, ancestor-mind, and pattern-mind.

Today, I’m focusing on pattern-mind because it was pattern-mind that came to my mind last week when I observed a story emerging in my three random snippets of information.

A quick reminder of what those three things were (or if you missed it, you can read the story here):

1. Every 10 years since 2004, residents from the town of Noonamah, on the outskirts of Darwin, line up along the railway tracks at Badlands Siding and moon the passengers on the tourist train, The Ghan. Former Prime Minister John Howard was a passenger on the train’s maiden voyage and witnessed the first moon sighting 20 years ago.

2. Robert Reich posted a video that points out that the world’s five richest people, all men, doubled their wealth to a collective US$869 billion in the past four years, while at the same time, 5 billion people globally became poorer. Reich said if the world’s five richest people each spent US$1 million a day, it would take 476 years to exhaust their combined fortunes.

3. Oliver Cromwell, who was a key player in toppling the British monarchy, ruled as Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland from 1653 until his death in 1658. When the monarchy returned and King Charles II was proclaimed King in 1660, he had Cromwell’s dead body exhumed, hung and beheaded, placing the head on a spike, which was displayed on the roof of Westminster Hall. It stayed there for at least 24 years, before it was knocked down in a storm, after which it was passed around for a few hundred years. It was finally buried in a secret location on the grounds of Cambridge University in 1960.

Do you see a connection?

Pattern-mind

Theoretically, everything’s connected. And inspired by pattern-mind, I can see a story emerging from the instances above. But first, let’s take a look at how Yunkaporta describes pattern-mind in Sand Talk.

He begins with a story of a group of children in Western Australia on a walk with Elder Noel Nannup. Nannup tells the children that a swarm of flying ants will burst from the ground. He takes them on a walk through the bush. Stops by a tree. Clicks his fingers—“Now!” And a swarm of flying ants bursts from the ground.

It’s not magic. Precise predictions such as these come down to pattern-mind. It’s a way of thinking that isn’t only useful in nature—it can be applied to anything.

Yunkaporta asks Nannup to teach the children about his process of pattern thinking.

“His process is all about seeing the overall shape of the connection between things. Look beyond the things and focus on the connections between them. Then look beyond the connections and see the patterns they make. Find the sites of potential risk and increase, like judging where the ball will go in a football game.”

Yunkaporta continues:

“People today will mostly focus on the points of connection, the nodes of interest like stars in the sky. But the real understanding comes in the spaces in between, in the relational forces that connect and move the points… If you can see the relational forces connecting and moving the elements of a system, rather than focusing on the elements themselves, you are able to see a pattern outside of linear time. If you bring that pattern back into linear time, this can be called a prediction in today’s world.”¹

Finding the pattern

So let’s put this into practice. Before we do, however, I want to stress, I’m no expert on this. This is my first crack at using pattern-mind and your interpretation of Yunkaporta’s words above are as good as mine, so please, jump in and add your thoughts—or patterns—in the comments.

I must admit, I actually thought I’d find it hard to turn the three stories into a pattern, but once I started looking—focusing on the driving forces—I began to see how a very intricate and complex form could emerge, one made up of several connecting patterns that explain how we reach the dominant form. But to delve to such depths would take much time and many words, so here, let’s stick to the central pattern. To illustrate it, I’ve drawn this symbol:

Power and hierarchy pattern, inspired by pattern-mind, by Alia Parker.

I’ll start by explaining the pattern and then work backwards to show how each story fits it.

The pattern I’ve drawn tells the story of power: a self-organising system of social hierarchy. It may be any type of power, not just one attained through wealth, politics or force, but also through age, status and knowledge.

The pattern shows that society naturally self-organises into hierarchies, and hierarchies can exist within each other, from small social groups all the way up to our global community.

While there are various elements to a hierarchy, simply viewed, I’ve divided it into three distinct groups: those at the top, those in the middle, and those at the bottom. For the purposes of this essay, we can call them the ruling class, middle class and impoverished, although the breadth of each class can be quite wide and other hierarchies exist within them.

The pattern demonstrates three ‘rules’ to the hierarchy.

1. The three classes always remain distinct; they are set on their course and one cannot become more powerful than the other. This is demonstrated by the three parallel waves, with the top wave representing the ruling class, the middle wave, the middle class, and the bottom wave, the impoverished;

2. Individuals or groups may move between classes. This can be seen in the lines connecting the classes; and

3. Power fluctuates and this fluctuation has an inverse relationship between the level of power held by the ruling class versus the impoverished and middle classes. This is illustrated by the top wave moving in the opposite direction to the middle and bottom wave. Power cannot be gained by one class unless it weakens in another.

This pattern is infinite and exist as long as society exists. I attempted to draw it as a circle to demonstrate this, but it became hard to distinguish the inverse relationship between the classes, so you need to imagine the waves continuing through time with no beginning or end.

The moonies

So what do moonies have to do with the world’s five richest men and Oliver Cromwell’s head?

Mooning, or baring one’s buttocks at someone, is a form of insult that dates far back, with ample references made to the act during the Middle Ages, often in conflict situations. It is also used as a harmless form of, dare I say it, cheek. Having said that, ‘cheek’ is underpinned by a degree of disrespect. The Noonamah Moonies don’t appear to have deliberately set out to insult passengers on The Ghan; the act appears to be more for their own entertainment. But the humour in their act lies in the class distinctions. The residents aren’t mooning road trains or drivers on their way to work; they’re mooning holidaying passengers on a luxury tourist train. And while all involved in this scenario are likely from the Middle Class (it’s a big class), the dynamics of class inequality play out within it on a micro level.

This story shows that an undercurrent of rebellion always exists, even if it appears innocent. As the balance of power shifts, the intensity of rebellion shifts with it.

The pattern above reflects this story in the movement of the waves, showing that driving forces—triggers—exist within it, and that these triggers will incite action.

Mooning The Ghan at Badlands Siding near Darwin. Source: ABC News

The rich list

The widening inequality gap between the world’s five richest men (and more generally, by the world’s wealthiest people, often referred to as the one percenters) shows how the balance of power within the hierarchy shifts. As the rich increase their wealth, the poor become poorer. This trend may fluctuate over time (and when I speak of time, I mean timeframes well beyond our lifetimes). The gap may well reduce, members may change ranks, but the hierarchy doesn’t disappear. And as I mentioned earlier, power isn’t determined by wealth alone, although in our present day, it is intrinsically linked. There will always be those in the social hierarchy that lead and those that follow.

This dynamic is reflected in the pattern above by the inverse relationship between the top wave with the middle and bottom waves.

Oliver Cromwell’s head

And lastly, the story of Oliver Cromwell demonstrates how people can move between classes. Triggers and tensions may cause people to rise or fall from a class group. In Cromwell’s case, he rose through the ranks into the ruling class, ultimately becoming Lord Protector in lieu of King. The power vacuum that followed his death created space for the return of the monarchy, and in death, Cromwell was posthumously removed from the ruling class, with his head displayed publicly for 24 years to warn against challenging the monarchy’s power.

This pattern is demonstrated by the lines between the classes that are the avenues to and from each.

Predicting the future

What can we learn from this?

Yunkaporta says recognising the self-organising patterns in existence allows us to make predictions.

Well, let’s take a stab at it.

The world is currently in a phase of growing inequality. The pattern above shows that this trend will reverse eventually, with an event or series of events triggering a narrowing of the gap. Those in power may change, but the dynamics of the hierarchy will remain in force.

Global income inequality chart from the World Inequality Report 2022. Data from the past two years suggests the gap has widened further.

What could trigger a reversal of the gap? This pattern doesn’t show. We’d have to widen our scope and add other patterns to the mix, exploring the triggers.

There are certainly enough power struggles at present to suggest something significant may happen in our lifetime. Tensions of possible war between superpowers (namely, the United States, China, Russia and Europe) and rebellion within the US by the likes of Donald Trump’s MAGA followers, could cause a shock to the current world order, including a scare in the stock markets and a shake up of that rich list. But would such things result in a narrowing of the gap?

I suspect they would likely result in the opposite, that is, the inequality gap, on a world scale, continues to widen.

And on that cheery note, what are your thoughts? Do you see other connections between the stories above? Jump in and have your say in the comments.

Things I’ve enjoyed reading on Substack this week

• Elegy—by Summer Brennan

  A short story of a dying star. Just beautiful.

• Why are paperbacks—by Rebecca Makkai

  Everything you ever wanted to know about the humble paperback.

• Once upon a time on a lane—by Tom Cox

  An entertaining collection of short stories with a little twist.

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I’ll be back next week. Until then, keep 💪.

1. Dr Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World (Text Publishing, 2019), 88-92.