Creation stories function as prophecy and self-diagnosis of present conditions

Evidence

I’ve read and loved this story as a history of sorts—a recounting of how, in long-ago times just at the edge of knowing, people were made of maize and lived happily ever after. But in many indigenous ways of knowing, time is not a river, but a lake in which the past, the present, and the future exist. Creation, then, is an ongoing process and the story is not history alone—it is also prophecy. Have we already become people of corn? Or are we still people made of wood? Are we people made of light, in thrall to our own power? Are we not yet transformed by relationship to earth? — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 1256

Categorization

• XREF: Pays off the circular-time origin-stories-as-prophecy claim from earlier chapters; central to land/place and storytelling course threads. — connects to: Origin stories function as instructions for the future, not past artifacts — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 45; In circular time, origin stories double as prophecies for the future — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 744; Creation is God’s self-dislocation into alterity and rupture — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 667 (+3 more)
• QUESTION: Which current societies map onto the mud, wood, light, and corn humanity stages? Useful prompt for integrative writing on environmental justice.

Broader Connections

• Creation is God’s self-dislocation into alterity and rupture #expands (0.80) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 667
• A future-oriented unconscious drives creation forward into the not-yet-existent #corroborates (0.75)
• Speculative imagination generates collective futures under incalculable uncertainty #corroborates (0.72)