[Part of The Science of Warriorhood
& Survivorship Series]
First-Our latest articles
are out in the new issues of Black Belt & The Backwoodsman magazines.
One is about combat the other on matters outdoors and wild-awareness. Guess
which magazine has which—Never mind, don’t guess, they overlap in my estimation.
Moving on…
Salience in common usage refers
to details that stand-out, as in “The salient points of Christmas day are
gift giving and conviviality.”
Salience in cognitive science is a bit more nuanced—it
is the ability to recognize survival apertures that may or may not be salient
in the common usage of the word.
The pertinent definition for our path: “Salient
events are an attentional mechanism by which organisms learn and survive; those
organisms can focus their limited perceptual and cognitive resources on the
pertinent subset of the sensory data available to them.”
Salience in the Backwoodsman, Scout, Survival sense is
less about the big details than being aware of the gestalt at all times and permitting
pinpricks to sensory consciousness to reveal themselves as possible harbingers
of more…
Gentle Example…If
my goal is to harvest juniper berries [actually cones] for tea, tinctures, or
for their antiseptic qualities in a pinch, I need not traipse through the woods
scrutinizing every juniper or red cedar for the small often hard to see
berries.
I can look to the canopy of the forest where the sun flits
through the overstory and look for the gentle rust or yellowish color that
barely tinges some juniper or cedar trees—these rust-tinged trees I avoid as
they are the “male” juniper, devoid of “berries”—their “rust” being the pollen.
I walk to the “unrusty” trees in the grove to harvest
my juniper.
The common usage of salience would be “Some trees
have juniper berries.”
The environmental usage of salience is the “bigger
picture” of detecting the hows and whys of a forest hue and using this for
salience.
Dire Example:
There is a Comanche word, “Nemit’o Cu’na” which is, loosely, “walking fire.”
It refers to any wildfire that one can stay ahead of, that is an escapable
fire.
One cannot escape a “Nu’khi’ti Cu’na’.” They
travel too rapidly.
One cannot escape them, unless…one has dialed into a
bit of salience.
During a forest fire radiant heat drives volatile gases
called turpines out of pinyon and juniper trees—this occurs usually minutes before
the trees are consumed.
The heat of the fire raises the turpines above the
canopy—as hot air rises.
In some conditions, along steep slopes for example,
the turpines cannot rise and disperse, these gases create a layer that follows
the contours of the hill—when the right combination of wind and flame reach
them, they explode, just as we would experience if we left a gas burner on in a
kitchen and then set a match to it.
Smoke-Jumpers and other firefighters who have
abandoned scenes just before explosive conflagration report things “Seemed
wrong” or “It was creepy.”
Turpines have an odor—normal conditions, a “walking fire,”
dictates that the turpines rise and are not sensed.
In dire conditions the turpines are trapped and can be
sensed by those paying attention.
Firefighters who survive conflagration by pulling out
are responding to salience.
Indigenous peoples who labeled fires, walking or running,
refer to being aware of the smells that tell you, “It is time to go NOW!”
It takes a special sort of being to know what a forest
smells like and what each smell means.
It takes a special sort of human being to be able to
distinguish differences in forest smell even in the midst of the overpowering
smells of a forest fire.
Salience is only available to those who are alive,
awake and aware at all times—good and bad. We cannot find contrast patterns and
follow them to their sources if we do not see all as threads to be tugged on to
see to where they lead in the labyrinth.
Some threads lead to juniper tea, some to escaping the
minotaur of a forest fire.
But…awareness is only available to those who choose to
sense at all times with no blinders on.
Resources for seeing more below…The path was beaten
for us long ago, may we avoid the brambles that distract us.
Resources for The Black Box Brotherhood
The Black Box Combat & Conditioning Training Warehouse
The Rough ‘n’ Tumble Raconteur Podcast
The No Second Chance Book of Drill
Assignments is chockful of 100+ “Homework
Assignments” in Pragmatic Awareness. Available only to Black Box Subscribers.
For how Indigenous Warrior cultures
hacked persistent awareness I would direct you to the upcoming Suakhet’u Program which uses daily awareness practices, meditations, drills, “games” to
keep the Warrior out of the “tunnel.”
Lowdown
on what's coming in 2023...
The long-awaited release of The
Suakhet'u Program
The Science of
Warriorhood & Survivorship Series
Indigenous Ground-Kicking
Killing Ground
'Hawk & Blade [Twin Kills]
And...
I’m telling you The Black Box
Brotherhood, it's where it's at, man.
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