Tame To Save: Turning Innocent Fire Dancing Into Religious Ritual

Fire dancing is a lively example of the childish—childish as a term of affection, not as one of derogation—creative capacities that are usually suppressed and repressed in our modern culture. If one mentioned people dancing around a fire with scant clothing and hypnotic drum beats, what would probably pop into your head is something akin to this:

Common commentary would be that this dancing is somehow related to a specific religion (which it may very well have been in the first, but no westernized modern interpretation could do it any justice) and is occasioned by spiritual other worldly concerns. However, what wouldn’t be admitted, or even conceived of, is that the fire dancing may have—in its original conception—been completely related to living in this world, and enhancing the time that these humans were having when they lived here. This thus turns us to consider the childish immediacy of experience that isn’t naturally concerned with death and an afterlife as an end in its own right, an often overlooked point. If nothing good and lucidly enjoyable came in this world, why should a people even create after-life as a concept? What out of this world could have originated the notion of a perfect and beautiful afterlife if there wasn’t something good and perfect occasioning this world from which to conceive of it? Perhaps what follows from this is a situation where specific geographic locales with an especially austere environment, breed atheists who flourish there because the idea of anything good or perfect is so alien to the entirety of their experience. Their cold living space has so colorblinded them to sketching a blueprint for an afterworld, for how could they never having had any exposure to the blues?

There must have been some original sacredness to this world (that I don’t think is beyond redemption) that could have allowed the original childish enchantment durable to be fully embodied by the full grown adults likewise—I think here specifically of Columbus’s description of the Arawak Caribbean Natives. The originary non-religious necessity of fire-dancing that I am positing is also given support as a default as by the question: could humans have even wanted to conceive of an extension beyond death in a state of lived sacredness? This is my thinking at present, which may regress or evolve to argue with myself if you, dear reader, don’t beat me to it.

Jumping back into our own time, the fire dance could only survive modernized adult ridicule if it was to be ensconced in ritual. The ritual aspect protects the pure creative joy of fire dancing that was the immediate enhancement of experience, by both a vital warmth and the visual dance of the flame, an intensely differentiating allure taking place at the very most complex mereol level of our day—the chemical. In possibly a beta iteration, what I’m saying is that these ancient people who wanted to protect the childish vitality of their world and their very existence, put a ritualistic air around such an act as dancing around a fire. Possibly what they thought in so doing was that this was the best way to weather the siege of increasing seriousness as humans “aged” out of innocence into civilized rigidity.

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I have a great need of haste as the ideas for posts pile up and the demands of the civilized worlds draw me away from this blog, not to mention dilettantism in our complicated world spreads one very thin. So, to that end—and you may see the connection as I do to the rest of the above post—I will dump, rather uneloquently, as is not my wont, a Tonka meme that speaks to modern adults embodying the negative connotation of childish (and maybe you’ll catch my vibe that I fucking hate shiny misused trucks):

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from Semper fi to Seppify: a marine to leave behind and a mariner to join

Building Lakes, Building Eco-Systems, Building Life… this is what Sepp Holzer does!

De-Marine the rigid wave structures that wash away a man and rename him a marine!

De-Marine the institution of death that is responsible for killing those other to it, and ruining those otherly nuances of those internal to it!

Re-marine the land as Sepp Holzer—the ultimate soldier of water—has shown us by adding thermologically diverse ponds and lakes to remind an acre what it’s truly capable of!

Re-marine to return nuances to a dying eco-system that is thirsty for difference, but receives only the same petrol dose of fertilizer and pesticide!

Cascadian Independence: A Change Before the Crisis

I often live under a rock (a fertile place, see below*) with the Cascadian Independence Movement just entering my narrow radar screen. After some investigation, however, it seems the movement itself also dances between rock-roofed dormancy and active assertions of the human striving for freedom from unnecessary shackles. There are many humans in social media circles that give off revolutionary vibes, standing atop the rock as one would a soapbox, exuding that something big politically will be happening very soon; who am I to cast doubt and preclude such a future? I have a taste for their revolutionary energy, and all I wanted to do when I first realized this was a real movement within the American continent I occupy—where the political imagination is generally as fluid as a desert—was go hug the nearest conifer and have someone take a me and tree selfie, and photoshop that onto a Cascadia flag with the words “Solidarity With Cascadia”.

The Cascadian nation’s coming into existence is important beyond just those that it will include (I wouldn’t say “contain”, as that has a statist connotation and I think Cascadia is far more a free and open nation), as it could serve as both a model for emerging nations and a further disintegration of the overgrown, malnourished, obese post-imperialist empire euphemistically labeled “the United States”. Cascadia is another front against the sprawling Empire to help take it further off balance; another stronghold of a mountainous island to not be drowned out when the real threat to it’s residents—the one to its east (District of Columbia) not west—topples from within. Cascadia has a deep enough of a foundation in place that it cannot be faulted as being a mere reaction to the politically and economically decadent times. Cascadia is full of insight and foresight that put it in a different league of nations than most that have arisen in the last century; it will prove to be a one word poem, prompting other nations to arise before such a possibility is precluded. Cascadia is yearned for by the people within, not a convenience contrived by people without!

A blogpost on Cascadia could go into many different tributaries that wouldn’t lend itself to the linear writing style here employed, so I will return to the rock metaphor, as a matter of course. On this theme, the vanguard revolutionaries need to be prepared psychologically and not lose their far-sighted visions, when another winter comes and they need to migrate back underground to warm and nourishing places. Their thrusting efforts to birth a new sovereign nation may likely be averaged-out and watered-down by their spermicidal, prudish, conservative “let’s stay put” neighbors that don’t have the same lust for an open-ended Cascadian future. However, I have a sense that the number of winters between their hopes of an unoccupied Cascadia nation and its reality, are quickly thinning. The most important reason for this is the revolutionary zeitgeist: Cascadian pride is a phenomenon that might be comparable to a vine spiraling upwards, clinging to a cliff-side at times, but only to return and reveal more of its glorious self higher up, daringly exposed and awe-inspiring. The vine has deep roots that I cannot appreciate, that are larger and more fertile than Ecotopia even understood, though that book was immensely important in its current growth strides. For me, I am gazing up at the vine, rooting it on. I see more hope for it still because what might be the most important inhibition barring the Cascadian nation from bearing its first fruit (a fir cone baby) is a negative that may soon be negated. The Cascadia nation’s biggest natural predator averred to above—the United States, along with its global reserve currency status—is going to be having organ failures of all sorts that will put it in a hospital bed before too long. In such a state the federal government might become too impaired to grasp at a fledgling nation. One must wonder if FEMA’s imminent deployment in response to the fault line is a pretext for federal presence, “reminding” residents that they are not free to self-determine. In any event, at some point this governmental force will release the Cascadian land from its grip, enabling the people to put on full display the beautiful ideas informing their struggles.

Change before the Crisis: “Get ahead of the times with silver ParaDimes”. One triage tactic the region can take up (if it hasn’t already begun to do so) to further ensure it isn’t as injured by any American economic collapse, would be the encouragement of converting dollars into physical silver and bartering with it for trade. This transition to a silver backed currency will allow a more seamless transition when the need arises, as well as becoming another social glue between the Cascadian people. Even more to the revolutionary side of things would be a continued push for an organic economic method of sharing and mutual aid, which I know already exists locally in many different places over Cascadia where people are even further ahead of their times.

*I admittedly couldn’t figure a way to put in this further elaboration without further confusing the text, so I thought I would say it here. With regards to living in proximity of a rock: there is much bio-activity that happens during all seasons, as permaculture profounder Sepp Holzer has displayed in his “symphonies of nature”. A man ahead of his time is surely not unheard of in a place that is ahead of it’s time, and those familiar with his love of rocks would know that they regulate temperature, increase moisture to dry areas, clean and mineralize water, among many other talents known and unknown such as creating an appropriate pH for a fir tree sapling to grow strong and tall!

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Related:

https://cascadiablogs.wordpress.com/the-cascadian-independence-project/

https://freedomcaravan.wordpress.com/2013/10/13/cascadia-freedom-caravan-to-the-tear-down-the-walls-national-gathering/

http://www.seattlecascadianow.org/

A Zone 4 Earth: A Permaculture Approach To Create Primitivists’ Utopian Paradeisos

From Propaganda of the Deed to Propagation of the Seed

A core principle of conduct embraced by many anarchists is the notion of direct action—humans engaging directly in political or social acts without seeking recourse through a diluted, indirect pathway. Indirect actions could be categorized as those commonplace processes most of us partake in daily in modern industrial society, where we employ cadres of “middle men” to get our needs met, even at the expense of living in an alienated and hierarchical world.

Where and how we get our food is a realm fertile for direct action that has far too often been overlooked, and the more human efforts are put directly into getting our food in nature—something an anarcho-primitivist strives for—the less need and the less desire we will have to separate ourselves from the natural processes by using modern machinery and agriculture techniques that keep us out of the loop, ultimately keeping nature out of the loop too. Permaculture offers the surest bridges to allow humanity to cross from a concrete and machine besieged existence back into a thriving symbiotic connection to the rest of the living world. The paradeisos—the plentiful, self-perpetuating lush groves of our dreams—can be realized as actual places that we can stumble upon for a filling meal in our recapturing of the nomadic way of life. Our nomadic sensibilities are not irretrievably lost, but we may need to piece together a different game trail to migrate forward, back in time.

Seven Billion Nomads?

An anarcho-primitivist professing the wonders (and wanders) of a nomadic lifestyle might from time to time encounter a stickler who responds: “but there wouldn’t be enough food to support the seven billion humans; do you really think we should allow a mass die-off?” This is an uncomfortable corner for such an anarchist to be painted into—especially if it’s by other anarchists—and it’s a corner where (mental) starvation will eventually occur and a primitivist may quit on the fertile, migratory utopia. Permaculture heroically shines light into the dark forest, growing multifarious roots out of such a trap, the wise path being a generally “zone 4” approach.

It would take far too long, in terms of human lives (and billions of human deaths), to wait for the succession of the modern monocultured forests back to the dynamic, efficient, high yielding places of yesteryear. Anyways, it’s doubtful the succession would privilege human’s food needs, i.e. humans, nor the bottleneck of species they have domesticated for food, could have had the evolutionary time or pressure to be fully equipped with all the appropriate digestive enzymes to enter into a diverse ecosystem and gain nourishment from thousands of different plants. The zone 5 mentality of letting nature do it’s thing must be dropped, and the zone 4 mentality of changing nature in analogous ways to fit human needs must be adopted. Here is a non-exhaustive list of permaculture ideas that primitivists can become familiar with and possibly implement in even a “guerilla gardening” fashion, depending on their accesses to land:

– Since forests are such masters of the hydrologic cycle, turning non-forested land—such as grasslands, deserts, and abused agriculture lands—into diverse food forests would prove the most immediately beneficial for producing a surge in available biomass fit for human consumption.

– Start figuring out foods that can be wildcrafted, “eating the weeds”, and introducing them to the palates of others as well as your own; once someone realizes they can eat lettuces growing wild in the forest, their lenses are changed and they start considering what else they can eat (bark? berries? bugs?).

– Sabotaging trees that are low in what they provide the ecosystem, and favoring and seeding trees that are much more beneficial to human needs and the ecosystem as a whole; this is especially relevant to our monocultured forests that are daily wasting the energy potential granted from the sun.

– I had other ideas when I conceived of this post, but they are currently unavailable; when they occur to me, I will edit them in.

Grounding Ourselves

(I am not referring to self-flagellation, though the rigorous work that lies ahead for we who will not be part of the capitalistic—or future feudalistic—world is sure to be laborious)

Some cities (I have New York in mind) do have cultural acceptance for “the other”, as many social radicals may seek refuge there for their marginalizing differences, and this may give relief to the ailment of being strange.

However, concentrating in the urban areas leaves them all (you all) in a precarious position of extreme vulnerability and gridlock. The viability of having the cooperative larger world built that we left-of-center radicals would like to see come to fruition is quite distant when we stay locked up, in a flat on the 9^th floor, with hired doormen to allow entry or deny it, depending on the whims of circumstance. A place like New York ensnares people ever deeper into capitalism—they must earn more and pay more to live on rented land—and they are surrounded by the most advanced aspects of the system: intense commercialism, industrial pollution, alienation amidst high population, and other issues.

On the other end, and where I think a great deal of anxiety lies on the minds of we radicals, is that the rural areas are somehow transcendentally and ahistorically backwards and intolerant. I believe that the state of much of rural America can be explained by the peculiar history of the land, and is by no means natural and needs to continue.

That being said, it is my position that we must start leaving the places that have been spent and that have no future, like the concrete jungles of urban density, and go to places where our ideals have to be compromised much less, and can be sown more immediately. Suburbs can act as a transition zone, or even semi-urban areas (west of the Hudson River) where money goes a lot farther and can keep you from being a landless thing, that would be quickly become dust in the wind if great social changes were to take place. Grounding yourself gives you some leverage to shape the future world as the current one unravels. It is much more desirable than to be shaped by those, of the capitalist ilk, who have land now and later on can force their will and values on you and your friends.

Lottery Playing US

If you break away all the flare and look at it structurally/analytically, the lottery is antithetical to the voluntaristic anarchist ideal of a shared world. As opposed to imposed redistribution, which compels the rich to give back to the commons, the lottery is most opposite to (and thus most deadly to) people coming together to pool their energy and resources to great a greater synergistic reality. This is people voluntarily creating a mega-rich person somewhere.

However, if there be any positives it is that a certain truth is made naked: that getting rich in this capitalist system isn’t about being the fittest, its about dumb luck.

The Feudal Refusal!

(this is a sequel to the post State-City)

“Thank you for your offer, dear knight, but we are not peasants and can take care of ourselves”

It might be the castles, horseback, riding and merry men that many people liken to medieval times. However, these will probably not be found in a future feudal system that will only have dragons that are tattooed on gang serfs in common with lore. To avoid this dystopian, anti-fantastical future, we must be leaders, and:

The best way to be a leader is to start early.

To ensure we aren’t lorded over in the future, and can be (or become) our own lords, we must already have some physical and mental infrastructure in place to withstand being sacked. Ask yourself these questions:

– Are you friendly enough with your neighbors that they can trust you to do joint ventures with? If not already so by the time things become dire, they are not going to let new people (you) into their vital interactions, when they will have a high dose of suspicion that you might just be an opportunist. You have to prove yourself while there is still the forum for it. Make local friends now, before the war brings in the defensive alienation, and life is “cold, brutish, and short.”

– Can you accurately walk anywhere within a quarter mile radius of your home with blindfolds on? With your new friends, you should start gaining a familiarity with the routes into and out of your neighborhood, how you might block or destroy these roads to thwart the efforts of usurpers, and how you might be able to best use them for a more agriculturally intensive future we will certainly find ourselves in. Are there any jackhammers or concrete picks that would be available in a time of need in the future? Are there trailer carts you could grow crops on top of, and cart around to market if you so choose?

– Can you grow your own food in your yard? You must make friends with expert gardeners, start downloading the hundreds of “how to” videos from youtube that will no longer be available once the Internet is not maintained (and under no circumstances depend upon a cloud to store data… we know how quickly clouds come and go).

– Do you live in a city? You won’t in the future, so its best to get out before your place has no value and the value of less inhabited places skyrockets.

– Have you been to the doctors lately? Make sure you have the most immunizations possible because when the healthcare network falls apart these offers will no longer be available. Purchase bullet proof vests aplenty… just look at the statistics for gun ownership in the United States! Once a bullet enters your body, you can’t depend on anyone being able to do a half-decent job of correctly removing it, or even attempting it. As a super important aside, guns will become the new gold.

(Note: As things occur in my mind, they will occur on this post as well)

State-City: A Look At The Future Political Realities

Unlike the era of the Greek city-states, we will not become small and separate entities due to geographical boundaries; rather, we will be separated by a lack of energy resources and political will to connect us. When the United States devolves, will there still be a New Jersey? What about a Delaware, or a Pennsylvania? The size and duration of the various currently existing political institutions will depend on a complex amalgamation of factors, and ultimately decided by the will to control, be controlled, or allowance for self-determination—a variety of flavors concurrently surviving not unlike the many Greek city-states.

The larger the government, the more likely it will be wiped out, and should we really complain? Government controls and regulations are the bad apple, in so much as they represent the execution of arbitrary power and are not driven by democratic forces. Some of them have worked their way into becoming a norm that is above argument—case in point are the bloated systems of police, unfair tax systems and money distribution to favored industries (such as energy and defense), and the like. However, the new concern will become the fungus that exists at the margins, or in many cases is already embedded on the larger host: gangs and mafia-esque power hierarchies that are more adapted and adaptable to the local landscape. In and around these will be the battlefield of the future. Unlike in government, where long drawn out talks only partially ever solve huge inefficiencies, inefficiencies in these “institutions” will endure until they are gunned down, and the gunman will bring with him new inefficiencies and draconian styles that the neighborhood will have to suffer.

So why am I telling you this? This is what we will be faced with as our over-governing malaise becomes weaker (because raw energy inputs will decrease with time). A new and unfamiliar pecking order will be waiting to establish you somewhere in their peasantry, unless you are prepared to make a stand, alone, or more shrewdly with others, to not be controlled and willed over. If you stand alone or speak out because your mind hasn’t adapted to the new reality—slowed by such tomes as Fukuyama’s “The End of History” which presume the infallibility of a technological hyper economy—you will be singled out and exterminated, and the traditions you once believed in and lived by are dust in the wind.

While on the topic of those who haven’t adapted to the new reality… there are also those that will flat out refuse to relearn the ancient art of patience and frugality, and will use violent means to avoid any such entwining with such activities. Not many of these will survive for obvious reasons, but those that do will become slave drivers, giving up any ounce of morality to avoid being a hard worker. Why the reason for this? You can’t expect the “Me Generation” to give up on their iphones and pick up a shovel and dig, especially without knowing the conclusion of their efforts. Not only will they not have the comforts they were used to, they won’t even have any practical survival knowledge to gain from their ancestors, as civilizational “progress” has efficiently swept away the great bulk of this. Rather than be worse off than the cave people, they’ll try their luck at bullying others.

Believing that gangs will primarily contain themselves to city walls is a mistake that must be gotten rid of with the rest of what is to become antiquated thinking. If there’s one place that won’t have much importance in this future world it is cities. De-urbanization will happen a lot more quickly and even more chaotically than urbanization has in the past couple centuries. Cities are far too large and dependent upon a complex well-oiled machine of different systems to sustain their livability, systems which it is unimaginable will continue functioning or having purpose. They exist on land that has been stripped of its generality and become very particularized for specific high civilization use, and cannot continue to be inhabited by any but the wretched and mindless, who will quickly die off anyways. It is from cities that the most desperate people will come, and to which one will have to keep a very cautious eye upon, hoping to divert their migratory flows to not flood ones locality. Amid all this gangs will have no problem overflowing their ranks with starving bodies that only held the money/capital ideal, which would have since been vanquished when the low caloric value of green paper was understood.

Another general migration of people will come as the people living far north of the tropic of cancer realize and curse the mistake of their ancestors to make the northward journey. A large plurality living there with a limited growing season will become a thing of the past. Its hard to say if global warming can keep up with energy loss to keep these areas fertile with some sort of edible plant life (they will certainly not be able to rely on any consistency of imports, if any at all). Increasing sunlight won’t be part of the correlation anyways, so in all likelihood the coveted land will be that which is closer to the equator. Expect there to be tensions down there. Those who try to avoid war yet still live in fertile land may come to find creating equatorial floating islands or reverse dredging and making an island on the continental shelf to increase farm area as a limited but fruitful expenditure of labor. Whether they do it of their own volition or are forced to by a gang leader is quite another matter, to which I return to now:

We who want to make the most of the future economic contraction would be well to not go it alone; likewise, to not wait for the chaos to wake us and get us organizing. We’d be nothing more than reactionaries that, generally in my view, don’t deserve the utopia in which we hope to build, if only locally.

Yes, we must be well prepared and already undergoing our own, alternative plans, so that we can make a lasting Feudal Refusal!

Living Deciduously: Hibernation As The Cure For A Hypo-nation

Every other large mammal in a seasonal climate has made the adaption for the months adjacent to their winter solstice—so why don’t we? Living deciduously and sleeping can solve so many of our personal and civilization problems.

Seasonal affective disorder, a form of depression, makes people feel depressed and less alive; and ultimately, we are less alive. The cure is in the symptom—feeling tired. Maybe instead of thinking that sleep feeds in to the depression and that we need to fight it off, tiredness should be thought of as a natural annual response. Maybe our dreams are where we find the warm sunlight, I know mine are.

Instead of daylight’s saving—a lame commentary on the inability for people to structure their local lives in even the most basic sense—so that we can be pointlessly toiling inside while its sunny and healthy outside, we should have our schedules revolve around getting the most sunlight we can. It might be said that our economy doesn’t work that way, but isn’t it obvious that our economy isn’t working for us now anyways? The economy doesn’t need “jump starting,” rather it needs time to cool down so that it is in sync with the planets resources and energy abilities. Sleeping takes a low number of calories, which would mean we could do a lot better with a lower amount of calories available that seasonally grow. Instead of wasting energy freezing and preserving loads of food for the winter season, we could just eat less and sleep more.

Anyways, food for thought, not for wasting energy.

Occupy Wall Street Strategies-Tactics

(Note: I will be updating/adding to this as ideas come to me)

1) Set up a blocking protest in front of the tunnels on the Jersey side during morning rush hour, using makeshift wooden horses, culture jamming the Hoboken/Weehawken corporate advertisements, and just a little slogan like “Crawl Street” or “So you don’t have to rush to work, we are going to slow down your day” … and maybe offer free massages? Maybe this idea is getting strange, but take whatever parts you think are useful/practical.

2) 3) Have a funeral procession, a hole dug, to put someone wearing a suit that says “Dow Jones” on it? Reverend Billy could perform the service.

4) Trees grow on money (using the future valueless paper to grow trees/vegetables):

5) Start digging in for the winter to make this city endure, and be environmentally friendly at the same time:

6) Womanhattan ( or lower Womanhattan), could be a village region within that any feminists that liked that idea could encourage people to locate that were aligned with that renaming movement. Also maybe they wear hats?

7) Generally I’m not into names and naming conventions, but perhaps a third name for “the city so ______ they named it thrice”

8)

“Whenever there is a moment where people are taking unified action to take back the commons and fight the establishment that hoards our collective wealth, it is always essential to join in, cultivate it, and keep it going in any way you individually and/or cooperatively can.” This is what I am telling myself as I have largely been on the sidelines “occupied” by establishmentarian concerns.