Your grandparents were racists
Your parents were racists
You inherited their blood
You do not have to inherit their ideas
-Lternate Version-
Your great-grandparents gave them a hard time
Your grandparents gave them a hard time
Your parents gave them a hard time
You do not have to give them a hard time
We are saying this again
We are saying this against
We are saying this for the first time
We are saying this for the zeroth time
Life is too short… in a concrete jungle
Roots are too short… in a destroyed soil
Straws are too long… in a misunderstood oil
Machines too strong… not reducing our toil
Mouths are drying… in conditioned air
Forests are drying… only deserts compare
Species are dying… extinction extraordinaire
Vigilance is dying… few stewards to care
Is life, Is Life, really, just to die?
Shouldn’t those still living, ought to try?
To this bring your despair, don’t merely sigh
Hell likes us numb, not when we cry
So cry, comrades, cry
Cry, comrades, cry
Because without tears
The drinking, the sweating
The bleeding, the urinating
Do not justify our privileged role in the water cycle
To roll along in this sacred circle of life
Water is life, let it flow
Land is life, let property go
**This begins 5 days of political poems this week**
TIME & LOCATION: The meeting took place on October 25, 2017 in an undisclosed location in Monmouth County, New Jersey.
PRESENT: Edmonds (host & facilitator), Ley, Gulian, Fred, Brian, Giovanni, Earl (note-taker), Gabriel, Geoff, Alex, Gendry (alias), Brendan, and Samantha (“uninvited”)
0) The meeting began with Edmonds reading the following excerpt/handout:
‘You will hear today all that you need in order to understand the purposes of the Enemy. There is naught that you can do, other than to resist, with hope or without it. But you do not stand alone. You will learn that your trouble is but part of the trouble of all the western world. The Ring! What shall we do with the Ring? That is the doom that we must deem.
‘That is the purpose for which you are called hither. Called, I say, though I have not called you to me, strangers from distant lands. You have come and are here met, in this very nick of time, by chance as it may seem. Yet it is not so. Believe rather that it is so ordered that we, who sit here, and none others, must now find counsel for the peril of the world.‘
‘Now, therefore, things shall be openly spoken that have been hidden from all but a few until this day.’
Part A – Worldly, Historical, and Future Problems
1) Sub-topic 1 – Oligarchy (introduced by Giovanni). The powerful were believed to be a major problem by all, but questions of what power is and where they got it (are hierarchies ontologically real) were discussed. Critical commentary from several members, and a salient question was if oligarchy is responsible primarily for the world’s ills, or if something systemic and infrastructural is more to blame. The idea summarized that oligarchs themselves are still in the prison: “Property and money are the prison, the oligarchs merely the current prison guards.”
2) Sub-topic 2 – Racism (introduced by Earl). Racism is a major problem, yet after discussion it was believed to be a symptomatic resultant of other oppressions that has only become foundational to the racists’ identities as culturally learned. Also the concept of white privilege was downplayed in favor of a new understanding of “colored disprivilege”. Further, a unique struggle not normally elaborated in acceptable discourse was discussed, namely that many whites (WASPs) have deep community (and previously resource) deficits that explain the roots of their aggressive individual and national policies throughout history. Further discussion was tabled to allow for the next sub-topic which grew from the racism discussion.
3) Sub-topic 3 – Imperialism (introduced by Gabe). Lenin’s work on imperialism was averred to, and the notion of capitalism as a disease that will inevitably keep spreading, if allowed, was generally agreed to. Along these lines, it was posited that imperialism is not just the “macro” taking over of resources on other continents, or planets (an eventuality?), but also should include the control of biological life at the cellular (genetic modification) and even down to the quantum control of sub-atomic particles (accelerators and quantum computing). Imperialism comes from an internal weakness on the part of the oppressor, so despite its widespread devastation, it is still symptomatic in its origins.
4) Sub-topic 4 – Suburban clusterfuck (introduced by Edmonds). Credit was given to James Howard Kunstler as a general introducer of the suburban perils (physical and psychological) as well as the coiner of the term, though none were sure if that was truly the case. Dependence on electrical grids, food and resource supply chains, automation (tabled), depression, sameness versus difference grew out of this discussion. Also, cities as death-traps for a variety of similar reasons of fragility, but also violating and perverting to an extreme degree Dunbar’s number. There were a plenitude of apocalyptic scenarios put forth which one member pointed out was ironic to be coming from such a mundane thing as suburbia.
5) Sub-topic 5 – Civilization(S) (introduced by Gendry). The discussion of urban and suburban woes naturally went to civilization-as-a-whole (initially), where problems of sedentism were expounded upon. But there were some ardent defenses of sedentism, with references to scholarly work that said not all sedentary people in early history and pre-history needed to create ecologically destructive agricultural practices. It was pointed out that it was in fact nomadic people that often became the conquerors, but this idea was then problematized by the fact that most nomadic people were not “imperialistic” like this and that imperialism stemmed from intrinsic weaknesses in relation to a given land, especially were that land already occupied and “distorted” by sedentism. There was agreement that the effects of civilization to create climate change, by way of soil erosion and poor/ignorant land management, including domestication of animals and crops for mono-cropping, were huge factors in causing desertification and atmospheric carbon increases.
6) Sub-topic 6 – Propaganda (introduced by Alex). It was agreed that the powerful have always utilized multiple methods to coerce people, often resorting to misinformation instead of overt violence (for example through exaggeration or outright lying). Western representative democracy was forwarded as a prime, ongoing example of propaganda: representative democracy is when oligarchs take up acting. Propaganda was found to be a deep cultural force that goes beyond just social class, governmental, and economic oppression, but it can be found in parallel in all sorts of everyday relationships where manipulation is consciously or unconsciously utilized. The question to see if it’s pre-civilized went in to a discussion of other animals such as birds, namely peacocks, to know if the bright feathers males flaunted were representative of their virility or a sapping of their energy for the sake of a veneer; the oily sheen on a dog’s coat or even on a leafy plant were mentioned, too. Contemporary propaganda was agreed to be holistically inefficient, mentally enervating, and a parasitical draw on available resources that could be used elsewhere, except when it was itself highly artistic and its own end regardless of the distorted representation for another end.
7) Sub-topic 7 – Identity-Politics (introduced by Gabe). There was no consensus on whether or not identity politics was itself a problem or representative of many problems existing and a means to counter them. A conciliatory approach offered by one of the members on how to approach identity politics was that it depended on what the unifying identity was, and if it was a pre-existing alienated group defined by the oppressor, or an identity created by a loose group of marginalized (and not-so-marginalized) people to vent, gain attention, and/or seize power. The reconcilement centered on the idea that even if the problems for which the identity-based group was created were not solved, and even if new problems were created by the social group rising from their challenges, there often resulted positive internal community growth that filled the vacuum, and the issue(s) themselves could be viewed at the least as a vehicle to unite people in to community which they were all lacking. The discussion then became more genealogical in how identity politics ever arose, and then was tabled.
7a) 15 minute break followed by a 5 minute quiet reflection on the topics covered so far, and then a singular generation of a list of problems not yet covered so far.
8) Sub-topic 8 – Legality (introduced by Brendan). Brendan started off saying that law trials are not about justice, they are a sport between highly paid professionals who compete at the onlookers expense. This served as a beginning to the discussion which went quite deeper in to evaluations of what legality really is. It was put forth that more often than not that even were laws able to not contradict and negate other laws (for which biased and unbalanced lawyers and judges were paid to sort out), that the human channeling of energy in to legal systems over the millennia, regardless of the cohesion and coherence of the justice system, has been synonymous with greater and greater purging from the individual person an innate sense of vigilance and justice. Laws are the blindspot of justice, and now with an entire legal class, the laws have divorced everyday sense of ethics, which is in effect how the human disease can unleash itself on the Earth without any self-checks or thoughts to do so. Environmental stewardship was such an example of innate human consciousness that it needed to linguistic codification, and yet it has now taken centuries of destruction of the environment on the part of humans to finally render it in to law, and it is still ineffectual because it is contradicted by the rights of governments and individuals (corporations namely) to rape the land. Justice is a terribly long walk of the pen, with countless victims written over along the way; or is it?
9) Sub-topic 9 – Industrialization/Technology/Globalization (introduced by Brian). Though the topic of industrialization seems to have been overlapped with already in the sub-topics of imperialism and civilization, the discussion was qualified for additional insights that Brian, and then others following him, surfaced. Firstly, because many non-primitivist socialist-utopian affinities were present in group members, it was important that a discussion around the role of technology be had, presuming that the technology was in the hands of, for example, a gift-economy or worker-run city whereby it wasn’t used for individual profit, but for social progress. Industrialism for human use at the hands of worker-councils should be a good thing, if it could be done ecologically. However this very question became a central problem, and the open question remained on whether or not all technology or just certain technology is bad for the planet. The deep attachments to technology were admitted to on the part of all, however whether or not this was a bad thing or merely part of evolution was discussed. Some reductio ad absurdum examples entered the discussion but will not be listed in these notes. Suburbia was brought up again in this discussion but with attention to the many roads that industrialism required to connect the parts for the conquering of evermore of the land to convert it in to industrial use (if this was the type of industrialism that even a humane socialist economy would seek for). It remained an open question if industry could ever reach a utopian point where it was not destructive to any living things as was aspired to (presumably) in the Soviet Union.
10) Sub-topic 10 – Money (introduced by Fred). A discussion of mediation in general that first focused on money, but expanded to particularly the quantification and reification of consumer goods and services so that they might be translated in to monetary quantities, and the chafing down of all things to fit in to the cash nexus or other human categories of thought, and physicalitys that conformed with artifices. The social losses incurred when money was given legitimacy were discussed, and how other/older forms of kinship and resource sharing were weeded out; a huge quantity of money middle-men that emerged to bureaucratically manipulate it giving way eventually to huge “money making” institutions; money is the clothes that imperialists are dressed in. Also, intrinsic problems of money will always exist, it was argued even were there benevolent money-managers (such as automated robots, tabled for later).
11) Sub-topic 11 – Science (introduced by Geoff). The science sub-topic discussion continued right where industrialism and money left off, but quickly mixed in philosophical ideas revolving around what reification really is and if it’s the method of science to do so (dissecting and then analyzing). What is science really and if is used as a term so broadly is it really multiple things conflated together? Is it just mere empirical observation? How does science choose its objects and what mereological assumptions does it make? Representationalism (and misrepresentation) are cultural and shifting far more than they are objective, and yet this is the way of science that constantly disproves itself, meaning it is a long history of being wrong, outside of the aspect of science that is the humble recording of observations and drawing minute conclusions. Thomas Kuhn was indicated though his name couldn’t be remembered at the time. Specific examples of science’s direct impact were brought up. Science enabled nuclear power (or was it the human imagination, and science shouldn’t be given deistic agency?), and now in peace time there are black-holes created routinely with great hubris, and great danger. Will modified organisms really be helpful in evolving the planet forward, or are they a murder of life with life’s own corpse? Discussion went further, into the imperialism of knowledge, the unceasing human quest to know things, that has been conflated with evolution of the species; it has led to a great weakening of the human because of the time investment into obsessing about knowledge piles to the loss of in-body time that humans need. The poor posture overweight cubiclite was referenced.
12) Sub-topic 12 – Science/Fiction (introduced as “Artificial Intelligence” by Giovanni). Edmonds chose to title it Science/Fiction for writing purposes and to include a broader discussion beyond artificial intelligence. Immediately too the question was injected of if artificial intelligence can even attain artificial consciousness, for machines are not self-healing and evolving organically and are uncontained by programming, yet computers seem to have this fundamental restraint. If artificial intelligence is created (presumably organically and not electronically), or even if machines advanced enough to be almost autonomous and controlled by the oligarchy entirely, they would be deadly to all humans that didn’t serve some purpose. Ley had lots of background in science fiction and had written an unpublished essay titled “Fictional Today, Experimental Tomorrow: The Real Dangers Of Science Fiction” where he argued that the human imagination was very important to defend us against most crises, which are preventable if we take their precursors in our imagination (this in parallel to using intuition to sense the future). However, Ley said imaginations can conjure futures that are radically different yet could then be realized by a determined people that imprison the present for their own twisting purposes. Science fiction does just this, as it provides enough of a blueprint (it seizes the imagination) that we then force (engineer) the present in to. Engineers are not neutral actors in all of this but actively decide which of a myriad of directions reality will go in. Comedian Bill Burr’s routine on Steve Jobs was mentioned as exemplary of this arbitrarity.
Further, and perhaps most dangerously, science fiction goes to normalize dystopian situations and neutralize our critical ethics faculties to something that would otherwise be quite shocking. The “saw this in a movie” effect is widespread and has allowed great leaps in perversion and destruction on the part of governments and corporations. The abnormal is so quickly made normal and digestible through movies (again, propaganda)
13) Sub-topic 13 – Health (introduced by Gulian). Gulian confessed he had been thinking about this topic all along because of the variety of food options we all were partaking in, some very healthy and some very poor food choices “winter storage foods built for sieges”. Lack of sunlight exposure and the work of Stephanie Seneff were asked to be included in these notes, too, which he mentioned briefly but self-tabled. He took a show of hands to point out who of us were fading during this second half of the meeting, and who was still going strong. He did this from a standing position, standing being something only he and Edmonds did during the meeting that he pointed out. He went on to say how adversely affected modern human health is by all the previous sub-topics we had previously listed, and a vicious feedback loop ties them all together. And it was agreed that if our own health was not managed in preventative ways not dependent on the parasitical medical-industrial complex, we could not hope to fight these other issues. But questions of how to do this, and what makes a person feel healthy and whole beyond merely eating healthy and exercising bodily and spiritually were discussed. Samantha, a dweller in the location of the meeting who is a practicing nutritionist, happened to overhear the discussion and offered some practical tips for all of us including intermittent fasting, using a salt-water infused water drink called “sole”, and sleeping at the same time every night. The need to express our creative energy was brought up as a health initiative, particularly sexual contact and release, and also very important skin contact such as cuddling.
14) Sub-topic 14 – Sexism (introduced by Samantha) – This meeting, as Samantha pointed out and others admitted noticing earlier, didn’t formerly include one women, or one openly LGBTQQ person (as far as she knew). How could the world’s problems hope to be alleviated and turned without the voices of the other? There was discussion of how to go about including others who they didn’t happen to be acquainted with, and how to not make it merely in to a tokenizing inclusion, as would be the case with several of the member’s wives. Also the assumption that all those who identify somewhere in the LGBTQQ spectrum, or too as straight women, feel oppressed, and would have any interest in taking on the task of evaluating the world’s problems and then saving the world. Rights to be nude entered the discussion, and one member, followed by two others, stripped for effect and to re-normalize the surroundings.
15) Sub-topic 15 – The Over-looked “ism” (introduced by Edmonds). Edmonds confided that this he was hoping to end with, in what he saw as an overarching problem not yet clearly defined or considered. There were a few headings under which the idea might be introduced, and he chose it under it’s negative terming as an ism, namely ageism. He felt that the fight against ageism opened itself to a proactive fight rather than a reactive and defensive fight, as has been and would be the case when fighting most of the other causes of global death and oppression (because they were fighting to defend something that enabled a different version of rot to dwindle within. Fighting for the youth to continue is what life inevitably had always done, and not through destruction but creation and cultivation. It was a fight far beyond mere cultural contrivance, but in line and with momentum coming deep from instincts and the whole trajectory of life on Earth. The Earth had chosen billions of years ago to have reproduction as the part of how life continues, and humans had now severely interrupted this. Ageism against the youth was discussed and agreed to as a major issue to cap off the problem listing phase. Another member pointed out that the humanizing of the event as an ism against humans might fail to include what was really the fight for life on the planet, whether animal, plant, fungi, or other. The sixth mass extinction if allowed to continue would eventually preclude fights against any other of the problems, and yet solve many of the human-made ills on the Earth, but for few species left to benefit from.
Part B – World Saving, History Redeeming, and Future Freeing
It was agreed upon that this portion of the meeting would be extremely brief and focus upon devising solutions for one of the single problems listed. To the surprise of all, one member put forth a motion, and then another seconded it. Including this process was quite spontaneous, and to Edmonds’s delight it was in favor of the problem just elucidated. “For the children!” said Alex with a fist raised, and then all raised their fists and said it again. Alex then shared powerfully that we ought to not focus on the Enemy, referring to the LOTR reading where “the Enemy” was underlined, but on the friends. Giovanni then ventured that restoration permaculture is the best way to be “pro-life” wherever anyone of any status and means happened to find themselves. He shared a specific idea he had been contemplating on how to make the “Water Is Life” movement more proactive using permaculture. Essentially his idea was that instead of just defending by use of laws and pleading, westerners or indigenous peoples should actively make new sources of water and “green the desert” through swales and pond creations to inspire people to create once again what had been lost. All the members agreed to go and research permaculture, and Fred, also a permaculturalist, shared that he would work to revive the “Permaculture Campaign” that he had launched earlier that year and had let fall to the wayside. The meeting was closed with the idea that they would meet again in the future after having chewed on and researched what was discussed (and reviewing this document), coming up with any proactive campaigns that might be suitable. A last comment and commitment was by Gendry who had shared that he was already looking at intentional communities to visit on IC.org, and that another best thing to do for the future generations was to provide them with the option to be part of a tribe. Several others thought it was a good idea and told him to forward information to their emails and that an intentional community exploration sub-committee should exist alongside the permaculture researching.
So concludes the minutes on the Council of Edmond, October 25, 2017, 100 years after the Russian Revolution, and 1001 years before the Council of Elrond, in the Third Age of this world.
#growlocally #eatlocally #livelocally
Series of Aphorism Posts:
My Thoughts Inexactly (Primero)
Lternate Lphabet Lliteration
L is for Lamenting
Z is for Zeroing
G is for Gathering
E is for Escalating
W is for Willing
W is for Willing (ov)
V is for Vanquishing
J is for Jousting
M is for Masquerading
Q is for Quelling
R is for Resisting
R is for Recurring
F is For
F is for Facing
F is Forcing (ov)
N is for Nothing
N is for No things
N Other Lphabet: A pequeño LteratioÑ
Y is for Yearning
Y is for Youthanizing
An Asymmetry
A is Against
T is for Titrating
Series of Aphorism Posts:
My Thoughts Inexactly (Primero)
Lternate Lphabet Lliteration
L is for Lamenting
Z is for Zeroing
G is for Gathering
E is for Escalating
W is for Willing
W is for Willing (ov)
V is for Vanquishing
J is for Jousting
M is for Masquerading
Q is for Quelling
R is for Resisting
R is for Recurring
F is For
F is for Facing
F is Forcing (ov)
N is for Nothing
N is for No things
N Other Lphabet: A pequeño LteratioÑ
Y is for Yearning
Y is for Youthanizing
An Asymmetry
A is Against
T is for Titrating
So, for better or worse, and I embrace the contradiction (our age is one of great contradiction) I’m an anarchist running for governor! Here is a video explaining one aspect of my proposed platform –
Wanted to release a compilation of pictures, memes related to spreading permaculture ideas via the Permaculture Campaign, which I launched the end of January. Also, some door to door educational campaigning is in the works, and there is a budding facebook contingent that merged with NJ Permaculture Group if you are curious.
Karlos Generalizations And Memes On Permaculture:
Permaculture is the bridge that allows humanity to leave its barren desert island and cross back to the land of holistic ecosystems
If our actions don’t follow the word permaculture in to the main stream, we are up Shit’s Creek.
Examples (Before and After) of Large Scale Permaculture Restoration
Throw all of yourself at life, for life will then have no other option but to absorb you. Throw anything less, and you will be bounced back in to the abyss from whence you came.
Spiders are forever caught in their own webs. Leave them their to starve!
The death of death is sure to coincide and accelerate with—not prevent—the death of birth. Only a mind marred by western concepts could be blinded to this.
Fooled are those who conflate dying with aging.
If we pour everything in to a last gasp, we may discover it to be our first true breath. Don’t save yourself for the future, for then the future will be safe from you.
Giving your hope to the future is something that might be blown away with the winds of time, but giving your promise to the future is to be the winds of time.
What is life if not the creation of beauty despite the circumstance of limitations?
If the alcohol is to loosen you up for dancing, so be it. If the alcohol is to loosen the music up, you are better of dancing in the silence.
Speak love to power—give it a dose of that which it is least familiar with.
The more of an empath you are, the more times you die during a single life.
A lack of leaders has not produced a lack of followers.
You are going to die one day, why be miserable and sedentary and spread it across several days?
The land breathed us in to life; how long can we continue if we are suffocating the land?
Children are the only afterlife we should be thinking about, and that afterlife is in great doubt.
There is no space for a leader of the free world, there is only room there for leaders.
Keep showing up. There is no investment in the future that compares to your throwing yourself in to every new present.
May the remainder of your life be the rest of your time, not your rest time.
The young die, or the young live—the old are perpetually dying.
Believe in something that most people fail to do over the course of their lives—believe in yourself!
A culture that has devolved so low to produce individuals saying “what does it matter? I’ll be dead in a 100 years” does not have much farther to devolve. Though an individual speaks such an utterance, it is spoken for the total culture.
When it becomes an eat dog world, it’s not far from an eat human world.
“It is written” is cured by fire; we can burn by flame or forgetfulness.
Before we rise up we must wake up, for a revolution is in name only if is attended to by sleep walkers.
Flags are ever woven with the thread of war so long as they exist by the threat of war.
Extinction is a serious topic, precisely because there is no more kidding.
When the energy reveals itself to you, you will finally be revealed to you.
Water is the only blueprint I will follow.
Many that commit suicide don’t wish for its reversibility, but many who commit homicide do come to wish for this. Think before you arm yourself, and think even and most especially of what ideas others have armed you with.
Jesus was insane, so why shouldn’t he pop up at a mental hospital from time to time?
The healthiest water is always flowing, and so too is the healthiest love. Don’t keep it all to yourself—find love for another, and love will be finding you.
The stupidity of recent nostalgia is that those who see a return to previous times as an improvement fail to see that those very previous times will return them right back to our current struggles, with the problems only multiplied.
Don’t blame a fire for burning, blame that which is old and dried up.
Why do those who supposedly represent the people always dress in the fashion that they represent the government?
If you are not literate in love, fluency in all the world’s languages will not save you. They will be as impotent as the words in a book never opened.
Only evil can be spoiled by love.
The save-up-and-work-until-retirement-age model isnt going to work for the generation being born right now. they will all be retired without retirement. Due to in large part by the retiring without retirement of their recent ancestors.
Don’t ever lose the love—better to lose yourself.
Radical politics without permaculture is rootless; permaculture without radical politics will never flower.
Nature needs to be doing more of the work than we are, or we are doing something wrong. We are certainly doing something wrong to nature.
Feeling the heights of existence one will also feel the lack and the loss, for the dilated eye sees new highs and new lows.
Most humans don’t realize how much structures confine them, because structures confine them.
Environments that dissuade your attention and your intention, are not environments to reproduce—we certainly won’t be reproducing in them for much longer.
Love—because evolution is backwards without it.
Thank goodness we say things but do other.
Anger is love on the defensive, not hate on the offensive.
In folklore lies the most potent wisdom, layered over and diluted so that it might be more palatable to the gradually evolving mind. Taking folklore literally, as with religion, is to drink a laxative for want of nourishment.
When in doubt, get out.
Related Previous Aphorism Posts:
title: 2 Chess Variants
As a followup to the other variations I suggested in a previous post, wanted to offer a couple more that occurred to me, of all places, in the shower.
“King without a crown” (or crown-less King)
→ Basically before the game begins, each player chooses from their 16, which piece will be their true king, and the king piece will be their figurehead; this will not be revealed to their opponent until that piece is captured (ending the game). All pieces are still to move as they normally would, so if black’s E-file pawn is their king, it can still only move as a pawn. Check on the figurehead king (which might be the real king) is still part of the game, and must be defended against, but checkmate of this piece if it is a false king will not result in the end of the game, but merely a capture if the opponent so chooses.
“Polygamy”
→ 8 pawns, 1 king, 7 queens replacing the other minor/major pieces in the backfield. I don’t know that this would be much fun after a few goes, but I liked the name and cultural idea behind it from a jesting point of view (I’m much more fond of polyamory!)
“this shit’s chess it ain’t checkers” to which I reply “perhaps that’s why it’s shit” – Today forward is your Untraining Day
title: Facebook Note On Trump
[posted this on facebook, and thought if I put it on that insidiousness, I should put it here]
Ahead of Trump’s official beginning, wanted to share some thoughts… My feeling” is that the vast majority of Trump “supporters” chose him to be their champion to “take back this land” despite his racism, NOT because of it. I think its a poor choice on their part anyways because I don’t think a champion, especially one like trump, is what is needed to truly solve our problems, and seeking a single person or group beyond those immediately/locally around us is what perpetuates the problem, and so can never be the solution.
But, the question is begged: who/what do they want to take the land back from if not majorly the immigrants that the most flagrant among them purport to hate/blame so much?
I think it’s the same entities that most of us have long wanted (or would want) to be free of, who really deserve most of the blame (along with their engineers long dead), long before the distraction of our energies and anger towards Trump—
The Fascist Corporate Control, the 1% and their bought institutions, along with all the nefarious entanglements to the state which have us now in a time of a leviathan “deep state”, expressed as countless industrial complexes. Whether under Trump or Clinton, the oligarchs as a class are joyously squeezing more wealth/resources than ever unto themselves. I think supporting Trump will prove to be foolish, but I think we would be foolish for making his supporters our prime enemies… seems a lot like a gladiator fight to me. We need to look out and see the engineers of our oppression and the infrastructure that condition and cage us, not other victims who harbor such antiquated racist notions that I pity them more than I fear them (an honest check-in though, is that I am a white male, so I cannot speak to the real fear that some of you have, and I am always learning and up for new learning).
I was angry long before trump came around, and was against the american empire’s imperialist agenda long before trump started campaigning against it to appease the libertarian camp; I listened to my zinn/chomsky/roy like a good boy. I had great sorrow for the obviously dying planet long before trump started piling on new promises of injury to that which is already deeply ailing.
Most importantly, long before trump and still to this day and onward now that he is somehow part of the political landscape we must endure, I still think the solution to all these problems is the same:
We must live in tight communities, work locally for local interests (not corporations!!!), be vigilant of the life around us (especially protecting the water!! and soil!!). As far as living, we have many beautiful examples of how to “take back the land” from any neo-feudalism that the corporations would have us blindly wander in to; these examples are both the native tribes as well as the migrant communities that have not caved in to weak WASP nuclear-family styles. Very foolish to want to kick out one of our greatest hopes! The central and south american, middle eastern, far east, and south asian communities that I have the benefit of being surrounded by have within them the wisdom that the rest of us can emulate and join in with. We are all human and those important aspects of us that have been repressed by this dystopia—love, compassion, immediacy, tenderness with others—can all come quickly roaring back, for we ARE that and not our veneers. It is still here despite its cultural neglect, and is far more powerful if we just give it a small window to reemerge by taking some leaps of faith. I was fortunate enough to have more than a decade experience in an Indian family that taught me unimaginably important life lessons about the need for others, I hope I can pay this forward. It is not just us that need this new tribal closesness, but the ecosystems we are a part of too. If we don’t do this, the human race is lost, it will reach its finish line (along with many many other victim species).
So, summarize here a bit, I think our energies are best put towards rebuilding community, shifting our lifestyles to local living (no working for corporations!) that has us not dependent on distant places for food, energy, social relations, and not letting money, laws, cultural norms, hierarchies, get in the way of treating each other as humans that we see (“I see you” from avatar). The solution is all immediately around us. When we look far for the solution, the solutions move farther. We need more mirrors and windows, not telescopes. ¡Venceremos!
title: Morpheus Swung By, otra vez (9 memes)
he was more wordy than last time, though perhaps less profound
title: Deep Thread Of Evil In The (western) Human Psyche
This insidiously twisting (not curving) root has become visible to me, being the base poison to many different motivations and phenomena that have something akin to envy within them. Simply stated (best), it is felt as the great pain knowing that others—especially those one felt close to at times—experience happiness and joy without one’s presence or influence. It is deeply painful, though it reveals a symptom to a deeper wound that is the loss of the tribal… this is my go-to disease when in doubt. But it intuitively fits, and if one was completely present with an intimate group and their vibrations, these jealousies of the joy of others happening concurrently and distantly would not have space to fit in. The feeling of distance can only exist without the full feeling of closeness (tautological).
So then a cure (I am quite reluctant to say “the” cure) would be to become present, as we all ought to be, in our own surroundings. But as stated elsewhere, our living environments are generally not conducive to being fully present.
In lieu of such a primitive fix being immediately available, I can only say that awareness of the clawing at your insides from feelings stemming from this want for being part of other’s immediate worlds is a good start. It can feel as a sheer wall that could plague one eternally, but life has climbed over inverted walls and ceilings, so take on the challenge with me!
related post – Globalization Does Not Exist
title: The Protestant Control Ethic, and Relativism*
The implications of Max Weber’s connection between the Protestant Work Ethic— and how it evolved to buttress capitalist efficiency and productive obsessions—has some grand implications also for non-protestant inhabitants that have nevertheless been exposed to the protestant types (whether through already living in their community, or being victims of a culturally protestant empire). The effects (victimage) goes beyond being a mere colonial subject or the product of a neo-civilizing project (i.e. through missionaries), but to the way these encountered others were regarded by the deep-seeded protestant motives of their imposers. The logic is as follows:
Were the hard working Protestant types truly influenced by an obsession to get in to heaven and prove to themselves that they were the chosen ones—reflected in their secular successes, i.e. how capitalist they were—also would be their motives to discourage and obsesses over what others were doing, for they would be potential heaven-bound competition. This current in counter-tension with the forces within their Protestant culture that wanted to destroy non-Christian culture of “the savages” and carry out the Christian call to bring them in to the fold, but nevertheless I think that this was/is an actual undercurrent that seems evident in the obsessions of governing/policing the behavior of others. It might also go a long way to explain, in part, why Western programs since Lutheran ideas have failed so miserably to establish successfully dominated subjects despite huge advantages to hegemony. This conflicting agenda might be endemic to relations with imperial subjects. It has morphed several times over during many generations, but can roughly be stated now as the fear that others are doing something that oneself is missing out on; so rather than miss out on something special, one then just takes away the ability from others to have that something special to happen (through policing), or you make sure the events are captured and mediated on the news, in pornography, in advertisements, and somehow one’s own tentacles are entwined in the sinews of others.
To summarize: what was once a religious based deep fear and deep obsession that others might be the alternates who get in to heaven, is now a deeper fear and obsession that others might be having joy that does not include oneself or is not permitted first by oneself, and the goal is to actively erode the ability of others to do this. I think such deep, consciousness-buried, motives are wielded by among others, the Neo-Cons, and why within their psyche they truly must feel uneasy most of the time UNTIL they can see their projects of “full spectrum dominance” realized.
*I intuit that it is co-emergent with the rest of this argument herein, that an amoral relativism also conquers the minds of westerners under the capitalist yoke. Everything becomes valued in terms of its relative value—it becomes a mean towards the ultimate and only end which was originally one’s own acceptance in to heaven (with limited seating) but is now one with the most wealth and status, as designated in socio-economic terms.
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title: Mexicans For Resident, 2017+ (Uniting With Mexicans)
For fear of being named ignorant and quixotic, I stall putting my name to such gross simplifications and stereotypes as may be contained herein, but for love of my dreams of a better world and in union with my fellow humans, I stall no longer. I am going to briefly speak (outline) my vague hopes in a people (Mexicans, especially those now in the USA) that I think naturally wield most of the answers the western humans need help with, whether or not either group knows it.
¡Español es la lengua de la revolución! The much more indigenous central Americans who yet speak Spanish due to early European colonialism—ranging from southern Mexico to Honduras and Guatemala—are now in significant numbers in the United States, and what a loss to us all if they are forcibly removed or feel compelled to leave these lands behind. I think Subcomandante Galeano (formerly Subcomandante Marcos) had an immediate intuitive sense of the decency and potency of these darker-skinned people a long time ago, which was in part what drew him to them. Whether or not this was true for him, it is certainly true for me, and I feel drawn to them for what I empirically observe. They are the embodied realization of so many of my idealizations.
They blow the leaves of others for economic surviving, but they leave their own leaves to sow eco-systemic thriving. First generation Mexicans, Hondorans, Guatemalans, and others I’ve encountered from Central and South America, still have cultural wisdom and often first-hand experience with agriculture, something northern Americans have all but forgotten. Their poorer places of origin are less dependendent on machinery for food production, a real benefit to their non-esoteric yet precious wisdom. They have voluntary simplicity built in to so many aspects of their lives, and are chastised often for living in such close quarters which is really something to be applauded by any who speak of reducing carbon. The culture of the Mexicans that have migrated to the United States is largely invisible (subaltern), even to the radical eyes who have utopian hopes and carry them out with intentional communities. May this not remain the case…
The Mexicans usually do not fancy to dress themselves in revolutionary ideology or ideas, which perhaps speaks to how truly revolutionary they are, in their naked unadorned selves. They ride bikes while we drive cars, they huddle together while we drift further apart, they relax and listen to music while we push relentlessly forward for profit or to pay debts we’ve allowed ourselves to incur. Perhaps not as radical as some un-contacted peoples, but fortunately for us we are in contact with them and they can do a lot for us just by following their examples, to help us realize our radical dreams. Learning Spanish can go a long way in going a long way with them. However, this is a time limited opportunity. The second generation Mexicans are imperiled by the American consumer culture whilst our generation and younger are actively being sterilized to the fertile opportunities that migrate in as pollen on the wind.
May we consciously open ourselves up to their beautiful ways and habits for a needed cross pollination, and so too their language so that we may learn so many balancing remedies that western culture is so obviously lacking. Again as reminder, I sense this is for a limited time only. ¡Adelante!
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title: Gaming The Olympics
Merely an observation that there is a quasi-predominance of water games in the Olympics and it has come to favor those places and countries with a history of water interaction. Oceania, and previous coastal people’s prestige have set the tone with the engineering and adoptions of these games in to the canon of athletics, to the dis-benefit of largely arid and land locked nations (Mongolia?) as well as poorer ones (the two are not always in correlation), though not surprisingly sports are a reflection of political and sociological realities.
Yet, we do spend very little time as a species in the water regardless of our location relative to bodies of water, but still there are a whole slew of water events that require grand and esoteric infrastructural investment to propagate.
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title: Poor Ritualization And Superstition
As a probable factor of how superstition grew in to cultural normativity, a hypothesis I am chewing on is that there were one or a series of poor teachers of some older, non-superstition imbued practice. For example, the original creators and practitioners of a Shamanic-vibration practice to acutely alter consciousness would as they aged probably teach a new generation, if the practice were found to be particularly useful by the culture. As generations wear on, there is a likelihood that a poor teacher and/or a quack practitioner who didn’t have the essentials of the ritual down, would continue the practice anyways and after some generations of this, and the uncritical cultural reverence for the practice, albeit now a morphed one, would render the practice impotent and empty, bereft of its original real energy. Rather than ridding themselves of the voided practice, cultures that are built on strict adherence to tradition fill in the gaps of the lacking-practice with a faith (belief) in the power of the practice without any real tangible evidence. Superstitions are part and parcel of this process, and they emerge to protect and keep people from straying from the practice or belief in its power; bad things may happen to those who commit sacrilege.
Subverses 