What will it take?

What might it take? We know the problem. We know it is a crisis. We know we want it to stop. But, what will it take?

It will take asking this question again and again. It will take letting it shape our strategies and tactics. It will take listening to and learning from communities who have been fighting this battle for so long. It will take learning from past resistance movements what what has worked, what hasn't worked, and how we can be most effective in our situation. It will take challenging systems of oppression; especially in the culture as a whole, but also in our communities. It will take our time and energy; the time and energy we might have otherwise spent seeking a One True Love, staring at a glowing screen, getting drunk or doing drugs, trying to get rich. It will take every day and every breath, a commitment to resistance and affirmation of loyalty to life.

It will take starting now. It will take so much more. The world is at stake. Whatever it takes, it must be done. By you. By me. Let's see what it takes, now.

The Politics of Experience

I'm reading a wonderful, wonderful book called, The Politics of Experience by R.D. Laing. One of the central points of the book is that we as a culture have been driven out of our experience. That is, our experience isn't really our own, but rather a pseudo-experience; one detatched from the real world and from our own bodies: mind, heart, and soul. (My writing not in italics.)

As i'm reading, i'm weaving in my own experience of my experience to Laing's theses:

As adults, we have forgotten most of our childhood, not only its contents but its flavor; as men of the world, we hardly know the of the existence of the inner world: we barely remember our dreams, and make little sense of them when we do; as for our bodies, we retain just sufficient proprioceptive sensations to coordinate our movements and to ensure the minimal requirements for biosocial survival——to register fatigue, signals for food, sex, defecation, sleep; beyond that little or nothing. Our capacity to think, except in the service of what we are dangerously deluded into supposing is our self-interest and in conformity with common sense, is pitifully limited: our capacity even to see, hear, touch, taste and smell is so shrouded in veils of mystification than an intensive discipline of unlearning is necessary for anyone before one can begin to experience the world afresh, with innocence, love and truth

I just want to keep the fire, magic, and love in my heart. I want to know and feel what i love and what i hate at all times. I want to make my life a weapon against oppression, against this culture and be effective. I want to be honest and vulnerable and strong. I want to trust myself and resist confusion, denial, apathy, and subservience. I want to speak for the trees, sky, clouds. I want to speak to them and hear them speak to me. I want to resist seduction and embrace education.I want others to feel empowered by me, to feel loved by me and inspired by me. I want them to feel these things with me. I want to let go of control. I want to live in my body. I want to re-join life and re-learn the lessons that have been killed from me. I want my experience back. I will do what it takes to make all of this a reality.

What we call "normal" is a product of repression, denial, splitting, projection, introjection and other forms of destructive action on experience. It is radically estranged from the structure of being.

My experience has been trampled on. My experience has been twisted. My experience has been stolen from me and i haven't even been able to face this. My experience has been replaced with images of cruelty, mutilation, emptiness, apathy, and alienation. My experience is "normal". My experience is like my peers' experience, like the drivers on main st.'s experience, like the minimum-wage dishwasher's experience. My experience has been wounded, but it is not obliterated: it can heal and it can live.

Society highly values its normal man. It educates children to lose themselves and to become absurd, and thus to be normal.

Unless this culture is stopped, insanity will prevail. Unless we find our experiences again, we will submit to destructive myths that are not our own, continue to be alienated and un-whole. Unless we stand up and assume the responsibilities of human beings, those in power will wreck us all, individually and collectively. Unless we realize reciprocity, the planet will be destroyed and the alienation will be complete.

Identity

How is your identity formed?

What do you identify with? Is it those in power? Your television set? Your credit card or bank account?

Who do you identify with? Is it your family and neighbors? The land you live on? Your body?

These are some questions I’ve been asking lately and I think they may be the most important questions that I can ask myself at this time. I (and too many people I know) have been living our lives identifying with people, systemic powers, and abstract ideas without ever asking ourselves these questions. I have spent years with anxiety and apathy because I was confused about what (or whom) I wanted to identify with and what (or whom) my actions inherently identified me with.

I know now whom (and it is a “whom,” not a “what,” like this objectifying machine culture would like us to believe) I identify with. I identify with the trees outside of my window because I know our lives are intertwined. I identify with the ravens and squirrels playing in those trees and they teach me more than anyone else about love, play, relationship, sorrow, rage, and community. I identify with my neighbors who selflessly offer their wisdom, kindness, and encouragement to me. I identify with the river who I live near, in all of his struggles to survive the murderous poisons he is fed by factories, and more broadly, this culture. I identify with those my best friends because they fill my memories with struggle, support, and knowledge. I identify with the wind because she caresses my face and wisps away the ache in my head with soft whispers. I identify with the people who’s land this is because they spoke the language and sang the songs and lived the life of the land I live on and I must fight for them. I identify with my parents who teach me what it means to nurture. I identify with my dreams who are given to me as vital messages by the spirits and beings of this place. I identify with the earth who knows infinitely more than science could ever try to discover. I identify with the soil because he teaches me about growth and regeneration. I identify with my own experience, my own body, my own reciprocal relationship with this earth. I identify with life and those who fight for it against the insanity and disease brought upon the world by this culture and it’s members. I identify with life because it’s spontaneous and destroys boundaries placed by machines. I identify with life and all of the living because there is no “me” without them.

How is your identity formed?

1% Alive

This is a piece that i wrote after a very emotionally-charged day. The events depicted in this are true, but not told in full.

we overlook the landscape scarred and torn with concrete. beauty, awe, perfection--sold away and deformed. It really puts things into perspective looking on it from up here.

a young boy approaches us. he sits. before we know it, he's sobbing. he's suicidal, needs some help. what brought him to this point? why does he want to die? what kind of culture is this that makes everyone so ready to leave this world? he was a reminder that we need to fight for those being trampled over.

migratory birds are dying off. there's only 1% of native prairie grasses left and the birds are suffering because of it. these words i read on some fancy sing explaining the "natural" history of the land. so casually telling a tragedy.

Community or Community of Resistance

For the past couple of years, I have mainly been working on trying to get folks in my community together to do positive things together and address the terrible things happening in the world right now, locally and globally. This has been my first big goal as an "activist": to effectively organize some sort of radical or "alternative" culture in West Bend.

It has pretty much been going great in terms of what I wanted to accomplish. We almost have a community social space (Candlelight Collective). We have a community garden plot. A couple of us more "radical" folk have made friends with other, more "main-stream" activists in town. I'd say that community is being built.

But, lately I've been thinking about this:

Derrick Jensen has this great quote that goes "dismantle globally, renew locally". This means that we need both an above-ground and under-ground resistance movement. The under-ground do the dirty work of things like tearing down industrial infrastructure and directly confronting power structures, while the above-ground support those doing the under-ground work and simultaneously create a new culture. This is what Derrick calls "A culture of resistance".

In West Bend, there is definitely a new culture springing up, but i would not say it's one of "resistance". At least, it's not one that's resisting the larger cultural machine or one that's effectively creating political change in the area.

My issue with all of this is that I don't know if this is the type of community that I really want to be putting my efforts into creating. I mean, yes i want folks to create good relationships with each other and yes i want for there to be a positive space that nurtures people's creativity and dissent. I especially want for all the kids to befriend and start to learn from all the older folks. I want for all the humans here to start to learn and love the landbase and all it's non-human creatures. I want all of this. BUT, I don't know if i want to work towards creating an "alternative" culture that still exists within the mainstream and isn't doing much to alter the mainstream. I want a culture of resistance.

There's this group called Fertile Ground from Bellingham, WA that really inspires me. They explicitly say that they are "an above-ground arm of a culture of resistance". This means that they do educational work: informing as many people as they can about the destructiveness of this culture, the need to bring down civilization, and how to get involved in "deep green resistance". To me, this is vitally important. I could see myself, an organizer, doing things like that for the rest of my life (or civilization's life, preferably.)

My issue is that while i feel so strongly about protecting the natural world from industrial civilization and communing with the landbase, not many folks in my town are on the same page as me. They are great people and of course i want to keep discussing things like this with them and make it relevant and apparent locally, but it's tiring and sometimes makes me feel ineffective.

The big thing for me is that I know civilization for what it is and i know it's coming down sooner or later. I know in my bones that i want to spend my whole life fighting on the side of the living against this culture. I want to make this my life's legacy. I have already started by the simple act of pitting myself against the lies and alienation that this culture imposes upon me and trying to tear it out of me from it's roots. I no longer want to hold these life-affirming truths to the side as i submerge myself in denial and pretend the situation doesn't really concern me or isn't urgent. Of course I still want to be comfortable and have nice, relaxed friendships and just hang out in town and have fun, but i think my life (and the lives of others, including the whole fucking planet) is worth more than that. I feel a calling in me: i know these things and i need to act on them.

My situation is: i need to find how and where will i be most effective. I guess that's what i'll have to figure out.


(note: When talking about resistance in this post and on this blog, I do not mean participating in illegal activities. I have NEVER and will NEVER participate in any of the under-ground actions of the culture of resistance.)