Aren’t you WEIRD?
The WYRD, the WEIRD and the W.E.I.R.D-er
The concept of an all-powerful Fate or Destiny “Wyrd” is an Old English noun, a feminine one, from the verb weorthan “to become”. WYRD is not only of Anglo-Saxon but of Indo-European philosophy too, being related to the Old Saxon, high german and old norse. Wyrd origins were found in the three Norns. The Norns were Norse Goddesses of fate, represented as three sisters named Urd, Verdnadi and Skuld. Urd' means 'Fate', 'Skuld' means 'Being', and 'Verdandi' means 'Necessity', thus each sister embodies an aspect of the concept of destiny and is associated with an aspect of time: past, future, and present. The Norns were believed to live under the world tree where they would weave the tapestry of fate. Wyrd is something that happens around us at all times, and is how it is meant to be. Whenever I have been through a tough time, but then have emerged out the other side and found the time to zoom out. I have always seen that it is all exactly how it is meant to be. How perfectly aligned it all is, and how I am exactly where I am meant to be. WYRD huh?
Wyrd is the ancestor of the more modern weird, which originally carried with it connotations of the supernatural. The more modern term of weird was introduced around the 14th century where the word weird was a definition used to be able to control one’s own fate. To be weird at this time was to live outside societal norms and what was normalised. From a positive perspective, if you were weird, you had the ability to decide your own lifestyle, your own outcomes and forge your own path. I like this weird.
Today’s W.E.I.R.D however is an acronym for Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, and Democratic. The global population is in fact, only comprised of around 10-15% of this group – yet the majority of psychology tests are carried out using W.E.I.R.D subjects. Psychologists were trying to understand the human mind, the mental make-up of our homosapien species as a whole. But to do this they were drawing on studies of peoples from societies that were compromised by the human zoo. We now have a template for this group as being normal. It means that many studies are concluding certain things about the way we should live and behave, and the reasons we live and behave in certain ways, based on trials conducted on W.E.I.R.D compromised, conditioned, biologically extreme groups. Which as we know, doesn’t help us – in fact, it hinders us – when we are trying to reconnect to ways of living that enable us to thrive not just survive.
W.E.I.R.D participants have been shown to hold vastly different perspectives, beliefs and behaviours based on the modern environment in which they grew up and developed their templates. W.E.I.R.D experiences and world views differ vastly from the world’s natural living populations. So you can see the issues? It is my belief that the concept of being W.E.I.R.D – being pinned down into a bracket so antithetical to our natural human condition – takes hold within the educational system... W.E.I.R.Dness is taught. W.E.I.R.Dness is observed. Being W.E.I.R.D also has a strong correlation with nature amnesia in that the W.E.I.R.D are so far removed from what is natural AND are basing ‘normality’ on warped perceptions of what normal actually is, that the biological norm is now not only viewed as bonkers in many circumstances but is increasingly difficult to re-attain due to this stigma.
Almost everything experimental psychologists believe about the human mind comes from studies of the W.E.I.R.D.
7 Myopic Characteristics Of Western Psychology Research
By Western psychology research focusing mainly on the W.E.I.R.D demographic, its findings are not very representative of the wider diversity of humanity.
Here are the myopic characteristics of W.E.I.R.D psychology and culture, which make it different from most non-Western cultures:
1. Materialist: While most of the world’s cultures have elements of an animistic relationship with the natural world, to the Western mind this is considered infantile superstition.
2. Young: Many Western people live in a suspended state of adolescence that can stretch well into the thirties whereas in many other societies people have families at a much earlier age.
3. Self-obsessed: The Western mind is strangely narcissistic in its self-absorption and difficulty respecting other people’s traditions until they have been proven by Western scientific methods.
4. Pleasure-seeking: The Western individual is hedonistic, pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain.
5. Isolated: Western minded people tended to be more isolated and spend more time in age-group cohorts.
6. Consumerist: Western identity is largely formed today through consumer identity.
7. Sedentary: Incredibly sedentary, most people in highly developed countries spend over 90% of their time indoors and most of that time sitting staring at screens.
It’s all a bit of a mess, isn’t it? I believe the only way to prevent such a huge section of the Western human population from becoming more W.E.I.R.D is through reconnecting with nature and natural practices that help rewild our behaviours and being so that the next generations become WEIRD not W.E.I.R.D in the first place.
In the late 1400s when newly “civilised” Europeans began traversing the world to explore uncharted territories in search of new land and “diversity”, they happened across “diversity” in the shape of indigenous tribespeople. These were indigenous cultures just like some of the 5% of the world’s indigenous population that exist today, the same 5% who protect 80% of the worlds biodiversity, some of which still thrive in remote areas today, communities that still honour their role in the interdependence of all life here on earth, who take part in ceremony, ritual, practice innocent nudity and have a serious handle on what it is to be a human – thriving.
With just a little stimulation of your imagination brain you can probably conjure up images of nearly naked men, women and children gyrating, jumping, howling, beating their chests, going for it with syncopated, heart-led dancing to the rhythm of the earth, let’s throw in a fire for good measure and BAM! you have everything you need, everything we used to have as a species, to access profound states of well-being. Now imagine the absolute energy force of the collective emotion generated by this uninhibited freedom being expressed en masse. Yet it apparently wasn’t immediately enough of a force to blast through the collective reserve of the European explorers. Indeed, as Barbara Ehrenreich identifies in ‘Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy’, the European explorers reacted to these WEIRD dances, with disgust. ‘The masks, body paints, and guttural shrieks’ she says, ‘made the dancers seem like animals. The rhythmically undulating bodies….were, to most Europeans, degrading, grotesque, and thoroughly ‘‘savage’’.’
Incredible, right? Even as many as 600 years ago, these innate acts of human expression had been stigmatised and suppressed, to the point of being considered weirdly inhuman. For me, this really highlights the juxtaposition of the normal and the natural and how far removed we now are from what works in nature when it comes to celebrating what it is to be wild, connected, empowered and free.
WYRD and Rewilding
When it comes to WYRD and rewilding, there are interesting connections to explore. WYRD, as mentioned earlier, refers to fate or destiny. To me Rewilding, on the other hand, is a concept that involves restoring and returning our habits and habitats to their natural state. In the context of my natural lifestyle coaching approach, when we remove the W.E.I.R.D distractions and limiting beliefs and behaviours that are disconnecting us from what it is to be more human and we start acting weird, as in live outside W.E.I.R.D societal norms and what is normalised - “WYRD” can be seen as a guiding force that takes us by the hand and leads us towards a more aligned and authentic way of living. By embracing the principles of rewilding, such as reconnecting with nature and natural practices, we can tap into our innate abilities, our human potential and the natural world and fulfil our destiny of living in harmony with it. So, when considering WYRD and rewilding, it's about embracing our destiny of living in alignment with nature's rhythms, yet being weird by reclaiming the wildness that resides within us.
Through The 100 Human Experience I have been witness to just how thirsty we WEIRDos are to get back into our wild, connected, empowered and free state, and have experienced directly how ecstatic dance, play and other collective bonding practices influence the human animal with colossal and immediate benefit. The reintroduction of human connection and nature connection forms the basis of most of my talks, workshops, retreats and experiences, and every single time it takes just a matter of minutes for individuals to enter a state of joy. It is always such a pleasure watching the stress that previously seemed so ingrained just melt away within the short time it takes to warm up with some simple playful acts. It’s such a quick transformation, from stiff and awkward individuals who would otherwise go to great lengths to avoid even rubbing shoulders or making eye contact with another human on the morning commute, to playful adults who belly laugh with abandon and instinctively move their bodies in unity in ways that they previously have never even dreamt of. As the observer to this rewlding transformation, I find it so fascinating because almost without fail, each person arrives as with a certain level of social awkwardness and leaves literally bouncing with joyful lightness and connectedness. Once the space is created and the perceived permission to let go has been granted it is only a matter of minutes before the euphoria sets in.
This was originally witnessed in the playful movement practices, where with just a little play-hydration, years’ worth of conditioning unravels, people vault right over the socially constructed walls they have built up around themselves, the flow rushes forth and those previously independent individuals take the first steps to merge together as a collective that operate as one. Once those play gates are open, once the W.E.I.R.D doors are off, we find that we want to play more and more because we recognise, feel and understand the importance of that deep level of connection it forges to ourselves and to others. Not only that, but we can feel the reignition of our creativity in seeking out new opportunities to get back into that state whenever possible. This is now witnessed through the ecstatic dance at ‘The 100 Human Experience’. Led by Chris Geisler, the ecstatic dance creates the space and gives the permission to enable us to lose ourselves in something larger than our own minds. Through it, we can stimulate and awaken our senses and neural pathways, make new connections and interactions and soon develop a collective imagination with our new community. This collective emotion not only fulfils our fundamental need for human connection and wakes up our happy hormones but reconnects us to the kind of collective bonding that transforms our state of well-being. Through normalising practices that restore connectedness and what were was once so natural to us, ensures the wellbeing of future generations.
How does this ensure the wellbeing of future generations?
Because when I look back at my own inherited templates for a group of adults getting together to party, it always involved substances. My tribe of influence would have to be at a level of inebriation before they would let lose, cut the rug and start making shapes on the dance floor, which is far from connectedness.
Most my years of partying in my teens, twenties and thirties involved booze, smoking and drugs. I hadn’t observed adults partying in any other way - it was what I observed therefore it became normalised for me. It was everywhere - glorified in the movies, on the radio. The Top radio station DJ’s were celebrated for rocking up on the mic after a night out getting hammered.
Things got really weird when I decided to go live outside the societal norms and what was normalised by my tribe of influence. I quit the booze and drugs, but this meant a period of time of being ostracised by my tribe of influence. With a good dose of what one could call WYRD, I trusted the process. I then realised that I had the ability to forge my own path. I soon discovered that I didn’t need the drugs and booze to express myself. If anything, I had to lose the booze and drugs to find the true freedom of expressing myself authentically.
Ecstatic dance has became another great portal to expressing myself and has really opened my wild eyes to what the wild eyes of the future generations will be privy to. Through this wild lens I have witnessed so many transformations, transformations that further prove that this W.E.I.R.Dness isn’t natural, but our wildness is. We need to be seen celebrating and expressing ourselves authentically by the younger generation. We need to be seen in ceremony dancing around the fire. We need to show them they don’t need substances. But first we need to remember that we can get high on our own happy hormonal supply, that we can get high on the conscious collective cocktails instead of the cocaine and vodkas and that it’s ok to be weird and live outside the societal norms. Weird is wonderful.
The next opportunity to join us for a collective bonding, get high on your own supply, normalising experience is in just one month’s time.
If you can’t make it here’s a virtual hug on me. If you can make it, then we’ll have to see what 100 hugs in the happy hormone cocktail shaker will bring you.