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?

Found: Community of Resistance

Last night, Candlelight Collective did a screening of the film, What a Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire.

We saw many new faces at the Collective. While our events are usually heavily attended by youth, this event saw quite the opposite: Only about 4 youth out of 25 or more people. This especially excited me, because sometimes i feel like we're alone in our "radicalism" and that we have no sympathizers in this ultra-conservative town. Well we had to wait until after the movie to see just how sympathetic these folks really were.



After the wonderful, heart-breaking and renewing 2 hours of the film, we pulled our chairs around for a discussion. It kind of went like this: "So, what are we going to do about this". Some folks talked about personal lifeboats, others talked about strengthening community, and--and this really made my evening--real, political resistance. We talked about a culture of resistance and how we're going to cultivate one. We talked about what people are already doing to resist this culture. We talked about what they are going to do. We talked about youth assuming positions at the front lines as leaders and about everyone else supporting them. We talked honestly and we talked constructively.

Now, i cannot express how happy i was to have this event. This is the FIRST time in my life that i have been able to speak in to a rather large group of people I don't know very well, and talk honestly about bringing down civilization. The responses were more than sympathetic, they were positive, constructive, voices of people whom are on our side, the side of the living. More, these people already knew that this culture was unsustainable and that we needed drastic change; they just thought they were alone.

Maybe this was just one night of awe-inspiring-unbelievable congregation; one night speaking of facing the apocalypse head on with resistance and love. Maybe all this was is discussion and we won't be seeing these folks much more after this. But, this was our first foot-in-the-door for building a culture of resistance. This was an opportunity that we seized and we will continue to seize any in the future. We all know this culture has to be stopped and we intend to get to work; let's hope these folks and more will be joining us in the fight.