The Council of Edmond – Meeting Minutes

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.

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Permaculture Campaign (Politically Correcting)

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.

masanobu fukuoka

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

 

 

notes 4 today: 2017-01-05 (Permaculture/Propaganda; Wicked Timing Of An Intentional Disaster; Hacking; Extinction Vent)

title: Permaculture/Propaganda (memes)

 

 

Alternative Wording: 

Sorry to break the news to you, but its always been fixed

 

 

title: Wicked Timing Of An Intentional Disaster (draft)

If there is an oligarchic “they” who decide they want to diminish the human population—and even if it is only a plurality of the oligarchic class in disagreement with their peers—they are sure to do it at the weakest link. As for humans controlling populations, it’s an empirically derived fact that our species in general has both intentionally and unintentionally “controlled” population numbers of other animals for a very long time—why wouldn’t the same be true today 2016 for the human animal? It’s true that our passive herd like tendencies have been amplified by modern food-culture-infrastructure-medication crowding out, dampening, and alienating our tabooed vigilant tendencies to such a high degree that we are already self-drilling for population control. Indeed, literacy is such a severe control mechanism that we euphemize it is facilitating communication, but it is a very specific communication; I am not above this control, for though I have quite a lot of anger against being controlled that I will not sedate, I channel it into words which is a very effective way of controlling me—controlling myself—for the benefit of those who might parasite away my energies. I won’t digress further, I won’t deviantly stray too far from the corpus that I am trying to get at, from the herd of words I have conjured; besides, these or similar arguments have been made frequently enough by liberation-minded leftist and conservative thinkers. Here I want to speak of how this devolved reality we passively inhabit can most acutely be used against us.

Such an approach by a “shepherding” group [uncompleted thought]

                                  → A polylemma: What or when is the weakest link? ←
There is such a plethora of weakness, so many vulnerabilities, that one must wonder that anyone deciding on a specific programme to diminish the population would have a real problem in the decision making stage; not a dilemma, not even a trilemma, but a very large polylemma is what they would encounter, seeing all the different opportunities to hit the masses hardest. Indeed, I think many of the oligarchs are probably of the mind that the best approach is to sit back and let humans diminish themselves through their own sheer stupidity (though such a course might drag their interests down as well); humans really are very similar to the corn crop that we have contrived (explained by Michael Pollan), very frail and subject to death without specific input needs being met at regular intervals. We give ourselves health problems, we expose ourselves to weapons’ dangers, dangers of travel and transport, and dangers of misplaced emotions, among other dangers that I am normalized to and cannot see/hear/feel (yet), such as sonic and emf vibrations. I am not sure what specific system (finance, the electric grid, water contamination) or what specific place (Western Europe, Eastern North America, Brazil, China, cities, etc.) we are truly the most vulnerable in—and such a calculation would besides be severed from accuracy by the whims of the executing oligarchs—but I am more confident that there is a time window when the damage imposed is to have greatest impact:

The hours of mid morning when parents are away from their children, when children are ready to be kept from their parents by state mandates “we are keeping them safe”, parents would die trying (maybe that’s the goal of these oligarchs) to get their kids from their school.

The more kids you have, generally, the more vulnerable you are to such a timing, and the more you are intrinsically a threat to the oligarchs in that you are keeping the population going in a direction that they don’t particularly like—whether on the path of decadence or deviance.

title: Russia Hacking

It’s pretty telling, but this article—Top U.S. intelligence official: Russia meddled– in election by hacking, spreading of propaganda—and so many headlines I’ve seen flashed over the last few days have this phenomenon where if you cross out “Russia” or “Russian”, and any adjective or adverb adjacent, the title always changes to the more sinister possible reality; I will leave you to cogitate on what that reality is.

title: Extinction Event

I do not put it out of the realm of probability—and I do not think you should either—that some of the most powerful people in the world have some poor ideas on how to remedy the state of this planet. Those who hold the levers of power can pull them to make a wide range of bad things happen (good is precluded with such hierarchy, thus an expression of the asymmetry to which I have been so attracted to); and some of them surely think that the human population growth, being so out of sync with the obvious depletion of the environment and life-fauna, points to a necessary solution (a final solution) of killing back humans (or letting us die by our own devices) to a much lower number. They would view this as a “vent”, a pressure release, to “save” the viability of the rest of the world. A range of motivations among the powerful, crossing over this specific idea I’m presenting, could potentially contrive for a concerted action of sorts to reduce our numbers, with most of them viewing it as an “ends justifies the means” good thing.

So personal biases notwithstanding (I’d like not to be targeted for extermination), I think this is a faulty solution even if humans have made themselves in to a disease threatening the extinction of many many lifeforms including themselves. This ocd mentality that so many have, to get to a clean slate, is very dangerous when acted upon, and yet it is the zeitgeist. In regards to diseases and animal domestication the dominant thinking, despite its idiocy, is to confine separate and in the case of diseases kill them by direct force (think about how scary the word “anti-biotic” really is).

So, the way our medicine regards diseases “kill the disease” is how some of those with the levers to great power presumably view the human disease. I think the ethical way to deal with the diseased human presence, is to remember that life is resilient, especially when in the ecosystems that it holistically evolved with, and so rebuilding the ecosystems, rather than killing their destroyers, is the best thing. Humans will be guided by ecosystemic forces that will naturally

Maybe the planet can support 70 billion humans, but not when there is no other life on the planet, but a plethora of life. We can approach this great number, but at the very least we have to evolve our miseducating cultures (by and large get rid of them) and we will inevitably evolve many degrees away from the current, poorly developed, humans that we are.

So the ethics that I would hope any with levers of power, for we all have some levers no matter how small or how large, is to let go our levers, let go our control, and only re-move what we have erroneously put in place to the detriment of the ecosystems, and become active stewards of life. Carbon won’t be wildly out of control in the atmosphere if a resilient life with an appetite for it is unleashed and allowed to consume it. Rebuilding ecosystems along holistic/permacultural lines is the surest way to have an extinction prevent.

Monks on Mountains: Grounding Buddhism in its Context

In an effort to divorce themselves from the desires of this banal world, (Buddhist) monks will meditate to both cleanse and refocus their minds and bodies so that they can reach a peaceful or higher state unencumbered. However, as one who likes to offer immanent critiques (or explanations) of all human practices to gain a better view if such practices should continue or not, I wanted to focus on the stereotypical view of a monk meditating against the awesome backdrop of a mountain valley system. This recurring mountainous surroundings context might be more important than any of the ideological system surrounding meditation in truly understanding Buddhism, and more largely humans in this world.

So why would monks tend towards living in these places, or perhaps an even more accurate question is why would these mountainous regions breed meditating monks in the first place? The answer that I have compiled is not that these places are otherworldly, but that they are so loaded with worldly energy that the bodily interactions they activate and enhance in a person (a monk) is far more potent than normal bodily desires in more plain geographies (in permaculture terms, there is a lot greater “edge” here). There is so much nurturance for a body to passively absorb in the mountains that some of the many needs^L found in animals elsewhere are non-central here due to energetic abundance. At least one of the core modes in which this abundant mountain energy is freely given to the dwellers of mountains is through grounding—the importance of grounding for one’s well being is heralded by an array of practitioners from different times and paradigms, and occasionally even science helps elevate grounding above the psuedo-science mud (¡though that may be where grounding prefers to dwell!). So mountainous ranges are not merely places that allow monks an escape from the chaotic world of becoming so that they can connect more fully with the higher world of being; rather, quite to the contrary, they offer the most intense and deepest connection to the world of becoming because of their varied terrain that is full of a flux of vital energies. From the perspective of a human midway up a mountain side facing an adjacent valley and mountain, they are receiving a double grounding by the closeness to the majestic mountain across the way, and as a huge bonus they have a third connection to the sky that is lacking for most other humans living in the plains and coasts (skyscraper city livers may have sky access, but to gain this they sacrifice their only access to grounding, which is over the long term more important… we are less birds than ground dwellers!).

Mountains in a non-mathematical sense are truly a tripling of the Earth’s swaddling of our bodies and minds that we so desire and need as we truly are infants—very dependent on a healthy geography and ecosystem. To have this reassurance and love is our nirvana, and the heights of nirvana burn the strongest from the places where life is fullest, not where life is empty and being emptied.

Notes:

^L Though many needs may be subtracted from living in such an environ, one that is probably an addition is a need for oxygen. This serves as possible explanation for the cultural adoption of meditation, as in its geneaological origins, for a slow deep breathing serves not just the function of allowing a wide passageway for the calm, strong, and reassuring energy to enter, but also as a necessary source of compensatory oxygen in a lower oxygen environment.

Related Post:

State Forests: What the State Hasn’t Grasped Yet

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.

Strikes r Out

As the happenings from May Day get more vague, I thought it was a good idea to skip church (for me personally, it’s ‘most always a good idea to skip church) and type up a couple of thoughts.

My position that I voiced on Friday was that we radicals need to leave New York City and start communal villages where land is currently—though not indefinitely—much more affordable and much more valuable from a human perspective: “where land is not a concrete desert upheld by massive petroleum inputs”. I encountered some who were open to this idea, but many too—Trotskyists in particular were a strong presence at the gathering, distributing their own literature—who believed we need global revolution coming from a uniting of the workers of the world. I wanted to focus this post now to worker’s power, and talk more about global revolution in an upcoming post.

Workers under capitalism have historically been deemed—rightly so—to be the true power of capitalism, with one of the most obvious ways of displaying that power to themselves, and to the naïve, unlearned capitalists, being the strike. Striking is very effective when workers do indeed hold the real power and can bring their masters to heel. Work has evolved into “work” in many places, and there are many unproductive underlings that could just as easily go on strike and be dismissed without so much as a reaction from their employers. On this point, it seems to me that corporations like Walmart feign a need for employees, but truly it’s a facade to further their on the ground presence. There would be no need for a scab when the limb is already dead, being propped up by invisible strings.

But maybe if ALL employees globally agreed to strike indefinitely and were able to prevent scabbing, they could shake the foundations a bit, but I am uncertain how much this would hurt the supposedly existing capitalists at the top. Important to note is when it comes to important employment such as food production, wouldn’t striking probably lash those workers at the bottom of the scale the worst? It’s difficult for the workers of the world to unite behind striking when there are such vast differences in what they would be sacrificing by putting their livelihoods on the line. Would employees who are much higher on the pay scale ever agree to identify with those at the bottom, when they are so close (at least in their minds) to the top? Further, why would people who work in some societally positive industry (it seems so hard to come up with an example) want to ally with, for example, workers in a bullet factory, when those workers being paid at all for such a ghastly profession is itself a primary question in their mind? Another difference separating workers from one another is that some have the choice of where they are employed—even if they don’t have much say over the amount of pay—while others have no choice, and so the efforts to bring coherency and a sense of fairness for a global program is multiplied immensely.

I believe striking isn’t the answer for widespread change, moreso today than ever before, largely because it is ineffective, but so too because demanding more pay (or workplace changes) for a job that ethically or practically doesn’t really warrant it, is not a justifiable arena to put efforts into. On the other hand, leaving your job to build up practical, important skills related to growing food (such as adopting the low impact permaculture philosophy), is much more in sync with creating a radical and beautiful future; a future where slaves won’t require masters, nor other slaves, and they will lose their chains…

Stressed Out? It’s Because You Have Too Much Shit On Your Plate

If you live in the United States where the topsoil is quickly eroding and the topsoil that does remain is severely mineral depleted—low zinc and magnesium, to mention two of the most important—you are more susceptible to the negative effects of stress. This current phase of civilization we are suffering through is also particularly stressful, I’d argue, as we all have to endure the certain sense that comes with this slow wither; it’s pulling us all down, even if we aren’t fully sure why or from where it’s coming.

The societal decadence is realized in humans most directly by a function of our awful (SAD) diets. The food that you are (not) eating has a very big impact on your body. Take a lesson from animals, and think about any animal besides humans and how getting food is what their lives revolve around, and how they will drop everything for a chance at food. We are not prioritizing food enough—especially quality food—and we need to each change when we are healthy enough that a few years of proper eating can heal us without the need for debilitating western medical interventions. As for our relation to animals, we need training from them because the domestication of humans has pulled us so far from our olde animalistic patterns.

Instead of me regurgitating more cud for you to chew on, it’s better you go to the greener pastures to read what you have been missing:

• Zinc and Manganese Deficiencies and Psychological Disorders

• Standard American Diet in a (Pre)Historical Perspective

• Weston A Price Diet Guidelines

• Rebuilding Soil Using Permaculture Techniques

Petroleum Walking: Separate Yourself From the Wheat and the Chaff

I was looking at crowds of people in the park, making the best of a colder than ideal sunday, and couldn’t help but think about how ephemeral and dependent this whole situation was on fossil fuels. Rightly so, most people were being in the moment, but many of the preceding moments (decades and centuries) contained lots of “ungrounded” activities focused on combing the earth for more and more stores of natural resources, the current rage being fossil fuels, most especially oil.

Oil is how we drive, but because of the amount of oil being used to grow our food and in some cases heat our homes, it is how we walk. The oil can be traced in our bodies and blood, and is energizing (or enervating) our motion. As far as oil in food, we have “cleaner” petroleum free options, and for meat we too have organic as well as grass fed, but what is the grass fed itself? In so many industrial and residential practices, grass is fed petrol chemicals as if its been thirsty for millions of years when nature sans humans wasn’t providing it. What percentage of all of our bodies is petroleum byproduct? I have taken on a fairly strict paleo-ketogenic (bulletproof-esque) diet for the past few months, but I don’t delude myself into thinking that I am close to petrol free.

In contrast to a paleo diet, I’d like to mention the staple (funny, staples keep things stuck) crop of wheat, which because of its inefficient nutrient density and nutrient uptake, is very dependent on direct and indirect petroleum inputs for maintenance to keep the fields in a constant state of imbalance, relative to nature’s corrective yearnings. Wheat is destructive to the human species, more so now because of the partially petroleum laced chemical, glyphosate, now sprayed on the wheat before harvesting. But even before these additional petrol perils, western culture has survived despite eating wheat, not because of eating wheat (sorry Kropotkin, you didn’t know, but maybe we should change this title… or maybe its appropriate in the negative sense of bread). Whether you have problems with gluten or not, its best to separate yourself from both the wheat and the chaff.

So, back to the picture above, we can say that the people themselves wouldn’t be the same if petroleum wasn’t a part of our world. Certainly the dress would be different, more earthly perhaps (definitely no nylon), and they would on average be substantially healthier, despite whatever petroleum dependent medical advances might have to offer.

Would there be less people, in this colder climate, if fossil fuels weren’t there to support their needs? There would certainly be fewer people if there was a reversion to agriculture as it was practiced in the pre-industrial revolution era, with its obviously poor understanding of how to produce the lushest high quantity and quality yield on a given piece of land… permaculture excels at considering the needs of the land to be the most versatile and productive. If these permaculture principles were the mainstay of our agricultural practices (and we were “oil sans”, opposed to Canada), the densely populated state of New Jersey could be as populated or even moreso, with a lot more (meaningful) employment, and less commuting across the Hudson River to the hollow “shelled out” city of New York.