The Cult of Ignorance and America's Worship of Stupidity (part II)

In the next few weeks a "new" Congress will convene. This one will be solidly Rethuglican. The same people who use the phrase "shoved down our throats" for any action taken by government want to shove their beliefs and ideas down our throats, but couch everything they are doing in the same rhetoric. "Lower taxes, getting government out of our lives and did I say cutting taxes?" Privatization of any services once provided by government has been their mantra for decades. Recent phenomenal strides toward stupidity have been advocated and passed by the fundamentalist contingent of our nation included such memorable things as banning scientists from presenting their findings before Congress, making it a crime to speak out in ways that can hinder the potential future businesses that corporations could make. I have been in on the ground floor of several businesses that lacked those sorts of protections.

The Earth Cycle, echoes in the analemma.

When I had a silk screen print shop in my home only printing on U.S grown, organically grown cotton clothing with non-toxic inks, the state of Texas made it illegal to grow cotton organically, putting my supplier out of business for a time. Not able to stay true to my goal of 100% ethical clothing, I lost hundreds of thousands of potential sales because of government interference. The cult of ignorance that spawned the law in Texas that crippled my business was based on the fiction that growing organic cotton would create refuges in which the boll weevil would thrive and launch attacks into neighboring fields. In fact, growing cotton organically required healthier than average conditions to prevent sick plants from becoming boll weevil magnets, but that truth was ignored completely in favor of business as usual. Because the majority want to remain ignorant and not change the way they make their living, the advocates of positive change that protects water quality, human health and ecological integrity were handed a massive bill for court actions that attempted to protect their rights to farm as their conscience led them to do and to crush the market for organic fabric grown in our country in favor of foreign produced material from places where slave labor is still legal.

The last twenty years have seen a rapid rise of information becoming available to people who are ill-equipped to handle the new potential. With no filter for the lies perpetrated on the internet, there are those who post fiction and utterly unimportant information here and as the general public spends more and more time sifting through content, they find less and less useful information more and more easily. This is the "new" intellectual territory. I have seen a proliferation of Pablam on the web. Material unfit to be read, my time reading it never to be gotten back. I do not want to post anything if I cannot instill a sense of action. Even activating our own aura, taking up a cause, or utilizing our awareness and action to synchronize with our souls can yield more than any other law or policy could ever do. This revolution can never be televised, because it threatens the threadbare fabric of our modern royals and their supporting culture of hostility and anger, power and control issues, addiction to fossil energy, etc. The revolution thatr is not being televised is the actual LOVE revolution. Humanizing our environment is based in love and flows from love. No room for hate and valid assumptions about our role in ecological transformation is based on absolute abundance, nothing short of that can carry us through troubling times.

The welfare whores that we support with this regime in power are about to fall and for them, it will be harsh, but for those of us who are learning to live on nothing, those of us who consume the least, will be insulated from the coming crash in amazing ways. The value of oil may continue to plummet as we make the switch to electric cars, jumping through one of the hoops of physics by utilizing motors that are over ninety percent efficient and making motors that run on liquid fuels obsolete. But hey, "Drill baby drill!" sounded good. I will bet that for a few more years now, the commercials will still feature giant trucks and SUVs, but ultimately, the market will demand quiet running clean electrics because the revolution is blossoming at such a rapid rate. The message has been the same forever. Whoever adapts to changing conditions first, will reap the biggest reward. In sustainable systems across the globe, extracting the largest number of tiny adaptations will have the greatest chance of survival. Diversity is not possible in the current system because every tentacle of extraction of resources is rotten to the core and oppressive. The new economy will sanctify a whole different sort of diversity, creating zero waste and throughput of energy, of resources and of human capital.

I am willing to share a business plan with anyone who wants to create a local business that truly serves a need in their community. I just don't have time to implement it. Looking for a job? Nothing you've found so far making you happy? Try something different. I hate the catch phrase "Follow you bliss.", but there is great truth to it if you follow it out logically. An internet troll assailed the philosophy, that I have the right to earn an honest wage for doing something I love. On the basis of a warped understanding of supply and demand. He said that if I actually loved my job, I would be willing to do it for sub poverty wages. He called it a "joy tax". I countered with the question. "Would you rather have a hamburger made by a chef who loved it into being (think how much it would be "worth"), or one slapped on the grill by someone who hated their "job" so much that they occasionally spit into the burger?" The employer has a choice between having a wage slave who has no other options or someone who truly wants to be there. The skills brought to any job deserve to earn the worker a living wage. Avoiding the responsibilities of "employer", by working folks only part time, minimum hours, and not supporting your workers with an honest living wage continue to be the biggest corporate welfare system ever devised and as long as we allow the media and their backers to avoid this fact, the more families will be hurt, the more we will face this dumbing down crisis and the longer the cult of ignorance will reign.

Moving On!

How To Engage

There seems to be a disconnect between the tiny fraction of a percent of our population who nominate our candidates for office and the desires and wishes of those who get to vote for them. In Taiwan, this has led to continuing protests because in their country, at least, they still believe in democracy. In our attempts to move public discussion forward, we need to grapple with the fact that smaller and smaller numbers of people are guiding the earliest steps in the process of elections and constraining the debate about issues that have very real impacts on our lives. Much time and effort has been focused on cultivating the idea that voting for the lesser of two evils is a valid approach to elections. A closer look at many of our current representatives proves that even a lesser evil is still evil. The phrase, "They are all crooks.", nearly forms itself in our minds, because the ground work for that concept has been so successfully laid in our minds. But this is not true. We still have a choice between betting on candidates that are well-funded enough to "win" and those who some say have no chance at all. This issue has come up more since the recent elections in my country than it did before them, but when the discussion occurs is not as important as the fact that it does. We have allowed our system of government to be hijacked by the slimmest 1% of 1% who have the least interest in the daily life of "We the People" and a pathological preoccupation with what they believe is "good for us". These idiosyncratic ideas are frequently based on what has worked in the past. As the rest of us see daily, things that were serviceable in the past are typically either woefully inadequate to deal with our current situation or create bigger problems in the future.

We often feel the need to grapple with dozens of issues that are fallout from failed ideas and policies, however, what is really needed is to find ways to clarify the fact that we are really only talking about one issue. The planet, which we inhabit, is sacred. The human beings and creatures that we share the planet with are sacred as well. The Mother Earth rapists, bigots, fascists, nationalists, oppressors, extractors, food and water poisoners and air polluters are criminals. Those who burn thousands of gallons of diesel to plow the fields of our nation are out of touch with the land, those who commute an hour each way to work burning thousands of gallons of fuel each year are driving us literally to a dismal future and guaranteeing that sickness and death will be stalking future generations. This is truly only one issue, but the media will never allow us to be told so. Inspiring as discussions about sustainability can be, many cannot hear them, because the terrain of public discussion has been hammered out so thinly and annealed by the false discussions of things like "environment versus jobs". I have worked for decades to change the fallacies behind this lie, but big money interests cannot allow the truth to be known about this issue. Every single time that we enact laws which protect the environment, jobs are created. We do not lack for inspired ideas, technologies or the ability to make positive change in the world, what we are lacking is the will to do what is necessary.

This is why so many billionaires are beginning to come around to doing positive things for the environment rather than destructive ones. However, they are still operating at the margins. This year, 1,645 people made it into the Billionaire class worldwide. Less than twenty of them have made a serious commitment to work toward ecological integrity. It is notable that this tiny fraction of the one percent are not the ones nominating our candidates either. What is truly needed is a method of getting the oligarchs to understand that the future necessarily has to look different than the past. The millions who stood in support of the workers this black Friday are part of the wake up call that has gone out to them and the millions who are standing against police brutality are also helping to start real discussions. The #occupy movement has been trying to get these ideas addressed for several years now, but the media has turned a blind eye to them, telling us that they are just spoiled rich kids or that their aims are anarchistic. As long as the vast majority of the population is bearing the brunt of the fallout from the frivolity of the billionaires, our climate will continue to become even more destabilized than it is today. A current interactive wind map, detailing high level flows of the jet stream will put to rest the idea that human beings are not having an effect on climate. It took all of us working together, guided by the uberwealthy to bifurcate the polar vortex, but we have done it. We have done it by burning about half of the fossil energy laid down over billions of years within a brief hundred and fifty. The writing is on the wall and we need to aggressively demonstrate to those who do make the decisions about which way our culture will take into the future, that we want to be on the side of cleaner air, fresh water, climate stabilization and healthy food for all of the inhabitants of the planet.

A single stitch, in time, saves nine. Bringing healthy soil into a neighborhood that is sick can be a first step in reclaiming the lives of those who live there. Heling the millions of "busts" that have come down to us through the "boom times" of the past will take time, but without a great deal of love and concerted efforts to unmask the big lie, nothing will change. Power to the people! Right on!

 

 

The photo above is from one of the many sites transformed this past Spring, in and around the city of Green Bay, Wisconsin. The Green Bay Garden Blitz established over one hundred garden beds for local citizens. In very real ways, this has changed the community for the better and for good. The discussions and relationships built by this and other processes is palpable, but it cannot heal our culture overnight. Grassroots change can only occur with the continuing efforts of a few who start the discussion. The idea of each one teaching one takes time to gain momentum, but we are at or near the tipping point that will exponentially change the debate for ever. Dig in wherever you are, be willing to get your hands dirty and to share these ideas with others, it may be our only hope to save lives and the ability of our species to thrive. There was an attempt to get the photo of the Earth from the Moon into every classroom in the state of Wisconsin. For a time, it looked like that would come to pass, but sadly, we have fallen short and although the image forces all of humanity to see proof that we are all inhabiting a sacred blue bauble floating in space, the insidious "business as usual", aided by the "just business", crowd has subverted even this image to sell us more products that we do not need and whose production taints the very oceans and land that make our planet capable of supporting life. Making real, and lasting, change is not for the faint of heart. ECO-Tours of Wisconsin has helped continue this discussion through educational tours, ECO-education and the reclaiming of many hundreds of acres. If not us, who? If not now, when? Donations of time, seeds, trees and money are always graciously accepted and deeply appreciated. We will never give up, the sanctity of our planet and all her creatures are too important to allow the insanity to continue. We will talk to out neighbors, build awareness with each human contact we find and demonstrate ways to heal the threadbare fabric of life.

BUILD A HOUSE THE WAY I WANT

You would think that if i cut the trees, mill the logs into lumber and build a house on my own farm, I could make it however I wanted to. Think again. It is illegal to build a house lass than 900 square feet. Period. Doesn't matter if I'm a hermit or the father of twenty. The government agents have decreed, in their egocentric wisdom, that no human can live in anything less than 900 square feet. (about 100 square meters)

Our son got married last year and wanted to build a small cottage on the farm, which he now oversees for the most part. Our new saying is, "He runs the farm and I just run around." The plan was to do what Mom and Dad did for Teresa and I-trade houses when the children come. That way our empty nest downsizes, and the young people can up-size in the main family farmhouse. Sounds reasonable and environmentally sensitive to me. But no, his little honeymoon cottage-our retirement shack-had to be a 900 square foot Taj Mahal. a state-of-the-art, accredited composting toilet to avoid the need for a septic system and sewerage leach field was denied.

When the hillside leach field would not meet agronomic standards and we had to install in the floodplain, I asked the health department bureaucrat why. He said that, essentially, the only approveable leach fields now are alongside creeks and streams, because they are the only sites that offer dark-enough colored soils. Sounds like real environmental stewardship doesn't it?

 Look, if I want to build a yurt out of rabbit skins and go to the bathroom in a compost pile, why is it any of the government's business? Bureaucrats bend over backwards to accredit, tax credit and offer good money to people wanting to build pig city factories or bigger airports. But let a guy go to his woods, cut down some trees and let himself a home, and a plethora of regulatory tyrants descend on the project to complicate, obfuscate, irritate, frustrate and virtually terminate. I think it is time to eradicate some of these laws and the piranhas who administer them.

This has been the second to last installment from a longer article by Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms, Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal... first published in Acres Magazine in September of 2003. The implications that this writing confronts are part of what has caused the seeds of the #occupy movement to gain strength. We have not only the right, but the responsibility to do our best and we cannot stand for government forces that keep us from reaching our potential. Moreover, the corporados and greedy thugs who have exerted their influence over the markets have strangled more wealth creation than they have provided. More on that, I am sure in just another week or so. I will be returning to this blog to post my own writings again after this coming Sunday.
 

Myth Making 101

First, we must understand that myths only serve a culture when each and every individual within the culture believes the myth. As with any experience in story-telling requires, there must be a suspension of disbelief for them to function. Case in point, Paul Bunyan, with his blue ox, giant axe and legendary appetite. Let me tell you, it is easier to explain the deforestation of most of the "North" by him and Babe scything down acres at a single whack than it is to understand the complexity of our own kind devising ways to extract the most timber the quickest. In some cases, railroads only existed until the timber was gone, then the pillars of industry pulled up the track and went elsewhere to "mine" more trees. Paul and Babe are certainly easier to imagine.
I contend that human beings are myth-making machines, we will make our minds up about anything and hold to nearly any idea as dearly as if our whole way of life could be threatened by it's removal. We are "sold" myths all the time, so understanding the subtle differences between actual fact and myth can seem hard, until you try a few cases. There is a pattern. Actual facts are known, myths are imagined.

One of my favorite myths of creation involves beaver plunging to the bottom of a vast ocean to fetch a bit of earth for the sky princess to sit upon, holding as much soil as he could in his mouth, beaver spat it upon turtle's back, creating the Earth as we know it today, with all of it's landforms and river systems, on the turtle's back.

For a time, I believed this to be true, until I began to understand my first point, a myth is only of use when all the members of a society believe the same one. We truly are at the dawning of the age of Aquarius. In about 150 years, the water-bearer will unseat the age of Pisces. 150 years seems long until you look back and think of the great changes that have occurred in the last century and one half. I imagine and want to tell the story of a race of people who stood up for truth and fact in a way that no other cadre of individuals ever had. They had seen photographs of the Earth from space, they understood the concept of Starship Earth. What happens anywhere on the planet affects each and every other part inexplicably. They understood the fact that all races and creeds were arbitrary "differences" amongst one people. For them, there were no valid boundaries amongst the vast brotherhood of human kind.
When we begin to relegate ego to a lower status than our true self, we often see relationships differently and value our surroundings differently. Because we have purposely forgotten to take the liberty of judging each and every thing we can think of, we create a pattern new to many. I call the sheeple style of not learning, just filling in time, relies on the myth of knowing. A cult of knowing has grown up in a hotbed of technocratic sentiment, "scientific research" and worship of experts generally. I have learned enough to be in the early stages of really understanding how little I actually know. Living in the times we do, it is amazing that anyone can come to know themselves. Too much interference greets each and every one of us at nearly every moment than our organism was set up to handle.

Having a mythology that assures us that we can multi-task and that it will lead to something better if we can just do a few more things all at once, or that the best way to get ahead requires us to be workaholics or live as indentured servants, may be "good for business", but the costs to our children, our culture and the generations that will follow us far outweigh the short term expediency of those who fabricated the myth. The hidden price that we pay for the belief in this fiction is more dear than we can afford. First, we sacrifice our children, because they realize right away that we are not listening to them, or sharing important information that will help them to function in the world. Secondly, out health goes the way of the Western World and hypertension, stress, heart disease and cancer begin eating at us from the inside. We respond to the stress by trying to get more out of each day and accept "fast food" rituals that cause more havoc inside our own skin and bones. Finally, the endless shuffling around, chasing education, income, places to procure goods and services, even entertain ourselves and you have a whole package of activities that are contrary to what we are designed to do naturally.

Just like the marketing geniuses who brought Bible passages to life through art, therefore making it possible to brainwash large numbers of illiterate heathens, in our day there are those who spin the webs of deceit that lead us to shuffle our children off to event after event telling us that it "makes them into team players" or that the "enrichment" that we are able to provide is not enough for their blossoming talents. So, we seek a long line of professionals who supposedly know what our children need better than we do and the cycle is completely broken. In our time, we no longer sit around firs at night, sharing the stories that lead to understanding our great myths. There are new forms of technology that can elucidate a thousand conspiracy theories or present "facts" that lead us to become evermore estranged from our families, our cultural roots and the myths that held us together as families, neighbors, citizens and humans. The myth makers have far more power than we could have ever imagined. In the past, we trusted our elders to tell the stories. Today, anyone with access to a keyboard can make up our minds for us and lead us into territory that the glowing screens will confirm is dangerous, full of hazards and pitfalls and that requires us to do more things at once for the opportunity to "participate" in the brave new world of 2012.

You and I may not believe that the world was created in seven days by a guy who looks like half of us. We may not actually accept that turtle swam down to the bottom of a vast sea to reclaim a bit of Earth, which we all have to share and care for. The fact is, what we truly believe in may be as unique as the time we are living in, but we have the power and ultimately the responsibility to create myths that help us to function and remain healthy in the world. The only people who seem to be served by the prevailing myths today are large corporations that use us as pawns in a giant chess game of power and control. My myths and yours allow us to remain wage slaves, funneling the vast majority of our earnings into the coffers of multinational corporations and therefore the pockets of their CEOs. As technology has grown, we have always had the myth of increased leisure. Anthropologists have been aware of this for several decades, but the lies keep piling up on themselves. The demand for nearly every consumer product is based on the belief that their lives will be better if they could just procure this one item. The shake weight, or a Snugglie, or a pan that never needs to be washed. During my recent construction process there were several times that Nancy asked, "Isn't there another way to do..." Like when the toxic compounds were used for the plastic plumbing drain pipes. The containers said in no uncertain terms that exposure to the fumes will kill you, but the old way was to use cast iron pipe and seal the joints with molten lead, assuring brain damage instead of liver failure or cancer. Like with doctors, science and technology generally refuse to give up an old, expensive, gruesome and dangerous methodology until a more dangerous, more gruesome and even more costly and aggressive one is waiting in the wings to replace it.

In the end, it is up to us, what we will decide to believe in. I choose to listen to the elders, integrate the myths that seem to be based on loving one another, only taking what is necessary and giving back tot he larger community that allows me to enjoy a lifestyle full and rich with friends, time for enjoying the natural beauty and abundance of Mother Earth and having the time to give each thing that I need to get done my undivided attention. Those myths can be hard to find sometimes, but the rewards they bring are peace of mind and a deeper level of satisfaction than I can describe in words. This is an exciting time to be alive because the #occupy movement and growing numbers of people worldwide are expressing a new myth, one that says that we the people are at least as important as our overlords. The monied interests are not in a position to give back anymore and that is what led us to the current breakdown in society and culture. What growing numbers of people protesting is really all about is our right and responsibility to forge a mythos that leads us out of the darkness of the post industrial age with our dreams, our dignity and a semblance of life intact. Wresting our time and effort from those who own us today will take some powerful myth making, but it has been done in the past and will be done in the future. What is necessary in my mind is that we all take the time to respect our own ability to guide the culture that we all share into sustainable relations with the planet, our place on it and the neighbors that we have both right down the street and across continents and the vast oceans of this Earth. To that end, I continue to tell the stories that inspired me to trust the planet to provide my needs and rely of things that have proven value, not the over advertized accoutrements of "modern culture".

We all need air, water, food, shelter, a safe place to breed and raise our young, and affection. I distrust any product or service that will not fulfill at least one of those very real needs. When we all begin to trust our own ability to make myths, rather than seeking "experts" who can tell us what to believe, we should also notice that we make better decisions that lead us to be able to lead better, healthier and more enriching lifestyles and simultaneously live far more comfortably on much less. The myth of consumerist culture is on the ropes and our future as a species may depend on scrapping our old beliefs for new ones as quickly as possible. Everything we have tried so far has not worked, trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome is one definition of insanity, the time has come to strike out in new directions and with new found love for ourselves, one another and the planet. Make your myths reflect that and it will change the world for the better, subscribe to the existing myth that he who dies with the most toys wins, and you can plainly see where that will lead.

To What Do We Owe Our Deepest Allegiance?

In the deepest sense, we owe our very existence to our ancestors. With all their flaws, they gave us this chance at life. Intact cultures all exhibit some sort of ancestor worship. Under our current capitalistic system, "the banks" claim to lord over us some sort of power. Legalized thievery seems to carry the day. There are those who came up in the hippy era who are still peaceful loving people, some who carry the stories of our history, but we have become fond of giving them nothing but ridicule and innuendo designed to estrange them from us. Our political leaders, for the most part, fall flat for not only being undeserving, but antagonistic to our true desires or pressing needs. What parent can deny the allegiance we have to our children. If ever they present us with a need, we set ourselves to the task of helping them.
Many among us have a real and pressing desire to honor the next seven generations so that our bond with them can be as real, evident and as respected as possible. The vagaries of geography and the impending nationalism that can grow out of arbitrary lines drawn on maps has proven that we cannot abide these sorts of allegiances. Perhaps, as we approach singularity, our deepest debt lies with all of humanity. Yet in these times, we are forever pressed to play out the cowboy scenario, go it alone, be independent.

It would be funny if it were truly farce, but when we really begin to believe the schlock that passes for news, intellectual discussion, or political discourse, we have crossed a line into depravity from which return becomes unlikely, difficult and fraught with danger. The ad campaigns that have been funded to make up your mind for you are so deeply entrenched and subtle as to evade most of our perception. Remember the first time you saw an ad that made you want to buy something? chances are, you had seen thousands of commercials before that, they just looked like "real life", encapsulated into brief vignettes.
Finding out where the money comes from that seeks to drive our opinions and attitudes can be very enlightening, but the tangled webs of funding for certain types of speech are difficult at best. Spend some time, do your homework and you will find some very dangerous sources of funding for many of the biggest think tanks and speakers bureaus. When talking heads appear before you, remember that they are more adept at pushing an agenda than you can imagine and that their facts are presented to warp your mind around their goal, regardless of how it might affect you. Before you go lining up with anyone, get to the business of finding out where your own ideas and attitudes come from, weigh the truth between your own heart and soul, see if your own decisions and actions line up with an ethic that reveres the entire human family, then decide where to put your money, what to invest in and ultimately what sort of future we will create for future generations. Let's all get on with the business of beating a path back to wellness and an intact culture.

Why The #Occupy Movement Has To Be Evicted

Happy Holidays and all that! Where would we find places for all of our revelers if they were to see tent cities across this great land of ours? What would the throngs do if their attempts to view the annual tree lighting ceremony and the 99% got in their way? The news has been telling us that we are spending like drunken sailors and the stock market was obliged to make some headway in spite of itself today as well. What many have not yet been able to understand is that the networking, communication and feelings of brotherhood engendered by these protests has worked a sort of magic over those involved as well as those who finally heard about the movement through major media outlets. The thorn that the movement represents in the side of the power brokers has to be removed before their numbers grow to dangerous levels. In our day, everyone knew who the enemy was, but now it is getting a little harder to tell. The same cops that protect the biggest dogs are under the gun if they try to protect the 99%. they know the score as well as those being evicted.1%-0 99%-9.9 for their effort and ability to stay on message, even when under assault from a media empire designed to torture the truth and piss on all we hold sacred.

The faces of the many, being rousted from their encampments reminds one of the clearing of the "frontier" in an attempt to make it safe for settlement. If corporations can have their "speech" protected, then the average person must surely have the same free speech rights, this sad reality will go undeclared and unspoken in the media because they too are corporate giants, just pretending to care about the needs of the 99%. Even the reasons for the evictions have a disingenuous ring to them. Some claimed drug use and dealing was taking place in the tents, others were upset because homeless people were flooding into  the parks. When any group of people cares deeply for one another and makes sure that no one goes without food, they become suspect in the eyes if the super wealthy. In their world view, competition, not cooperation is not just the rule of the day, but an eternal fact of our existence. Demonizing people willing to endure difficult conditions to save their country comes as easily to those in the one percent as firearms came to white invaders of this continent five hundred years ago.

If we let people exemplify the lifestyle that says take your cash and shove it, especially during the spending season, the whole ship of state might turn to a pillar of salt. There might be places and times to speak of trying something different, but from Thanksgiving to Christmas, don't even think about telling the truth or making any waves. The kings may get a new fiddler from time to time, but they always must play the same old tunes. Bright young people have been saying many of the same things for the better part of a century, the fact that there are real changes afoot scares the living daylights out of those who stand to lose the most if we convert to a more just system.

In my own way, I would like to offer time, skills and talents to the movement. There are so many places that the message of the 99% need to be heard. Although I'm busy, I wish to always have the time to learn and grow, ask the hard questions and sift through the answers I'm given. My tent cannot be removed because I live in a tent the size of the Great Lakes. Those who want to define the debate, shift the blame to those least able to defend themselves and characterize the motives of the protesters as less than patriotic are morally bankrupt. It is not the least bit unusual. It is the way they have always worked.