Pamela's Blog 51

[In Progress], October, 2009 – , 2010 by Nas2EndWork.org

“Seeing (And Feeling) The Communal Alternative”

(Also see: OTheRLogs 33, 40, 86, 87 and 92 and Waking Up, The Plan, Pt. 11, Countering Complicity With Good Fellowship [2 and 4]), and (below):

** ...who 'sees'?

*** Invention is – and will always be – our birthright...

* ...they have to control how we view our bodies...

by Pamela Satterwhite

"Commodification is taking something alive and making it dead..." (from Waking Up, "The 'Culture-Con'")...

"Communalism" is its opposite – taking something alive and...passing it on!

Perhaps before we can see what’s dead we have to see what's alive...and what defines life ultimately?

…interconnections…relationships…

– if you know of anything living that can exist outside of them please get in touch.

Every intercourse with the earth is a relationship. When we honor it, all is well. When we don’t…well, look around you.

All living things are wired for survival and strive to honor their interrelationships with the earth…which, to serve, must be balanced and equivalent.

When these relationships are not balanced stress results and if we cannot relieve the stress, death follows. Too often, creatures of illusion as we are, we’ve found ourselves distracted by irrelevant details...like being nominally alive...that obscure the deeper truth that we have ceased to behave like truly alive beings.

Torn out of the web of life, relationships become stillborn objects that do not regenerate. Some would deny this…would say that the money nexus can regenerate life, as when it’s turned around and put to “productive” use…as, say, making more things. But this is illusion, first, because the death out of which it came cannot be made whole again. Ever. And second because our relationship to the earth has been dishonored. We do not re-feed when we make commodities, we break our connections when we take without reverence. And life cannot be maintained (over the long term) outside of those connections. Honoring those interconnections is truth, ignoring or denying them – hiding them – is falsehood.

The earth is honest and expects nothing less from her children.

When our human society is structured honestly – i.e. honors the web of life into which we weave our tapestries – our bodies relax and happiness results. When the opposite is the case, a restless responsibility ensues that seeks to create the corrective.

This is called humans being alive.

Nominal life has kept us from seeing that we’ve given up really living.

When you see a creature that seeks only to take in food but which ceases to be interested in taking in and processing new information…a creature that seems to be existing “on automatic”… for example a brain-deranged dog, a captive pet, that exists but to eat because nothing else is asked of it, we’re given a glimpse into our present dilemma.

Each living thing has an allegiance first and foremost to its own existence, the determination of the needs for which can only come from its own analytical powers…its own powers of judgment…hobble this and it ceases to truly exist – i.e. have a self-determinative impact on the world.

We have to be made commodities before anything else can, and we have to be made whole again before the earth can.

This is a pregnant moment...requiring a few heroic souls.

...If we can remember what it means to be a human being...what it means to be truly free...truly alive...

...and see it...see how living in interdependency is not just the only way we can be freed from being a commodity – which is death of authenticity – but the only way we can be truly alive...

– we can fulfill our human destiny.

To all you fantasy lovers out there...you lovers of grand, final, cataclysmic confrontations between the forces of good and evil...don't let the seeming quiet around you deceive, we are living such a moment right now.

Rightly or wrongly, in a quiet way he believed he possessed a strength which, if he were only free to use it in his own way, might do great things some day. He did not know when, nor where, nor how his opportunity was to come, but he never doubted that it would come in spite of all that had happened, and above all else he cherished the hope that he might know how to seize it if it came, for whatever it was it would be something that no one else could do so well as he could. People said there were no dragons and giants for adventurous men to fight with nowadays; it was beginning to dawn upon him that there were just as many now as at any past time. (Samuel Butler, The Way Of All Flesh)

For decades the podrunks have been sending the mostly fair-skinned middle classes coded messages via their claqueurs: "become a 'knowledge worker' or die"...

We lead machine-centered lives; now everyone's life is full of automated tellers, portable phones, pagers, keyboards, mice. We live in a contest of the fittest, where the most knowledgeable and skillful win and the rest are discarded; and this is the working life that waits for everybody. Everyone agrees: be a knowledge worker or be left behind. Technical people, consultants, contract programmers: we are going first [into this 'new' world]. We fly down and down, closer and closer to the virtualized life, and where we go the world is following.

...After the lunch, I went home to my office...I had a rush of affection for the machines. They had a presence, a solidity, that made the empty office feel occupied...” (Ellen Ullman, Close to the Machine [1997)] p. 146)

(This is pap and propaganda thinly guised.

Of course "everyone" does not agree at all.)

I say "die" because we have arrived at such a pass in America that vast numbers of college-educated mind-workers can't imagine a life without the leash:

I knew someone who was an early employee of Sun Microsystems. He was a shy writer of compilers...A few years out of engineering school, he had taken a job at the then-unknown company. Eight years later...my friend was probably worth tens of millions of dollars..

"But why are you still working?" I asked him one day...

"Life would have no meaning if I didn't work," he said. "Besides, I like writing compilers...” (Close to the Machine [1997], p. 154-55)

Is it any wonder Bob.Marley said:

"We had no education, we had inspiration. If I was educated I'd be a damn fool.”

Imagine...to be so completely podrunk-designed...

... as to believe what it calls "knowledge" is the only kind...

...or that a world of only "knowledge workers" could exist...

...and that we-who-do-the-work may be simply dismissed (from the calculation)...

Or just imagine...to embrace slavery so thoroughly...

...you notice nothing amiss when the earth is stripped...

...from your thought process.

Channel-hopping public radio shows I caught the tail-end of a discussion of zoos (and, in particular, of captive killer whales at "Marine World"). And so I heard a British accent from Singapore say, in response to the interviewer's comment that killer whales might actually want to be free:

"I'd rather not do my job either."

She added: "They're there to educate us."

(I'd say there's not enough time in the world to educate this mindset.)

When earth is stripped from your thought process, the reality of life is no longer missed.

And that's the really scary part.

When you eliminate 'the real' (the possibility of even knowing it exists) from the academy-trained, and teach them the earth should be disdained...or treated as commodity (especially the earth in your own body)...

...it's easy to dismiss us (the earth) as the mind-workers won't miss us...

...as they don't even know we exist.

So when everything in your life is a commodity...

...or you think it is...

...and if that mess is your 'real'...

...you don't notice the theft...

...of what makes you authentic...

...fresh....

...illimitable...

...alive.

...Journeying still further down the public-radio-road I came across a discussion of the benefits (and inevitability!) of "working at home."

(It never ceases to amaze me...

...the ease with which most mind-worker-bees...

...are suckered into simply not-seeing...

...the vast majority....

...whose labor...souls...dreams...they consume every day...

...without a thought of thanks...or mental glance our way.)

This propaganda (that 'life' can be lived with a screen)...

...is promoted primarily...

...for the young podrunk-products fresh from (or in) academes...

...with minds of fluff and ethereal stuff...

...that never sees deeply...

...materiality...

...(which they probably believe all comes from machines)...

...made by unknown hands...

...rendered invisible by the propaganda...

...that the podrunk-designed swallow just fine...

...as this pill's well-coated...

...with what makes egos bloated...

...the ingenuous line "you're among the chosen...."

Living in an "upscale" university town, its warty, purulent face pasted over with a kind of packaged prettiness in places...butting up against an equally premeditated cold-concrete-want...fatigue sometimes overtakes me. It's not just that so many of the UC-student-youth I encounter seem oblivious to...and therefore uncaring about...the plans of 'power' to use them as a wedge over-tipping us...into totalitarianism...it's also because I see just how willing "students" have become to actually believe the crap they're told...that they occupy those lecture seats because they're an "intellectual elite."

And so...even though I know that the way to oppose 'power's' invitation (to the future "intelligentsia") – the "come-hither" call to join them in that warm toilet.bowl – is to launch a successful counter-appeal to youths' wholeness...and that this technique with a like one to the "street" – youth without means but with an astonishing degree of brilliance – that these appeals together with a modest glut of adult "waking-ups"...is weight enough to return balance to all our lives...and therefore to the earth...

...still...

...what does this "appeal" mean in practical terms?...given our colossal "system"-stoked need to be stroked?

(...petted....

...praised...

...given straight 'A's...)

[The discussion here elaborates on:Children Of The Technology, arguing that the plans of 'power' are to "tweak the noticing" of the academy-trained...to twist it up so they won't see us (the earth)...and to insure that any trusted with 'the keys' find the four walls of their cell "comforting."]

On the other hand...

Everyone has a mass of bad work in him which he will have to work off and get rid of before he can do better – and indeed, the more lasting a man's ultimate good work is, the more sure he is to pass through a time, and perhaps a very long one, in which there seems very little hope for him at all. We must all sow our spiritual wild oats. [See Fuck-It Factor for fuller quote.] (Samuel Butler, The Way Of All Flesh)

...and...after all...

...by far the greater part...of [the] education [given by the system is] an attempt, not so much to keep [us] in blinkers as to gouge [our] eyes out altogether. (Samuel Butler, The Way Of All Flesh)

I think we've arrived at the moment in our collective human story when the work of everyone is in order to enlarge the realm of the possible… by recovering our capacity to to feel deeply… as Gustav Landauer said...

[Gustav Landauer] defined as the task of the socialists and their movement: "to loosen the hardening of hearts so that what lies buried may rise to the surface: so that what truly lives yet now seems dead may emerge and grow light." (Erich Fromm, The Sane Society)

Which brings me to the next turn on the radio dial, and a man telling his self-flattering tale of trying to urge a hypno-electric Janis Joplin at 3 AM to go home and rest. She was performing in San Francisco and folks kept asking her to sing "just one more"...and she kept giving...and giving...and giving.... And this man testifying said, "artists feel for the rest of us...."

[The issue of ‘art’ as an agent of social transformation was discussed in the Waking Up Radio show of February 9, 2014. Here is Part 2 of that conversation (please visit our radio page for the first part): Recall it’s all about the imperative to keep the people sleeping… it’s all about the people never thinking… The role of ‘art’ in ending ‘power’-worship: on Philip Seymour Hoffman… (Part 2)]

But I think we use this premise as excuse to dismiss our own responsibility for 'tenderness'...and for then choosing without compunction to be one with "the function."

It's what our children dutifully do...when they listen to...what parents tell them to do...and then what teachers tell them to do...and then...(round and round and round we go...).

And we tell youth the falsehood that "feeling's" for the few who call themselves "artists" (because they've nothing better to do)...

...and then pound it in further that 'art' means 'eccentric'...is only for 'misfits'...consigned to fringe status...and the absence of any security...in this podrunk-planned counterfeit-contest they call "survival of the fittest"....

...But I think "being an artist" means "bearing witness," ...and that there's no greater calling when our earth, and ourselves, are in such distress....

..."Being an artist" means feeling and then expressing it, which is, in its essence, bearing witness...

...a.k.a. really living....because to be truly alive means to feel. (This is explored further at: The Last Civil Rights Movement.)

And in exchange for the dense, lush, ribald fecundity of life, the podrunks have created their 'pretend-wilderness', this artificial world with rigged rules in which they always win, called "the market"...

...and then hide – like the child hides the cookie he's stolen behind his back – the truth that they've rigged the rules while telling us their phony 'wilderness' is true...

...that whoever comes out on top is meant to...

– and hope we don't notice, as we scrapple with each other on that ladder...

– that they're stealing our earth – everything that is real, true and alive (i.e. that which grows itself) – from us.

And when we find ourselves scrappling instead of living we're doomed...as it's our creative powers that make us human...and to sell them to the highest bidder is the death of them – and us.

In stealing the process of creation and hiding it from us...in disconnecting us from our own communal product...they are trying to turn us into them – half-alive beings that have no source for inspiration but 'the state' (shadow and otherwise... See: Wading in the Muck of State.)

Because to embrace life fully we have to embrace this: we must be creators of our own world...not consumers of it.

'False' means caught in the web of death...unable to grow itself...denying interconnections...rejecting reverence...with only contempt for the river...the tapestry...the truth that we are creators, not consumers.

'Consumerism' kills our human capacity. We are builders, not consumers. We build our interconnections...knit relationships into thoughts, ideas and gifts.

But rather than listening to the earth in us that says "knit," we – wind-from-below – waste our lives trying to survive in compartments.

...It is the very evil of present-day culture that it separates and compartmentalizes the various spheres of living. The way to sanity lies in overcoming this split and in arriving at a new unification and integration within society and within the individual human being....(Erich Fromm, The Sane Society)

So the key question – the answer to which will enable us to go forward to 'what comes next' – is: how to make ‘survival of the soul’ as unequivocal a priority as ‘survival of the physical self’?

Soul survival, far from being trivial, is our connection to earth....to life itself....

...and without healthy, intact souls...how do we, any one of us, know what we will do when tested with the worst havoc podrunks make, the worst horrors they wreak?

When I ask, plead, that we build the communal alternative it is partly with that test in mind.

Bear with me.

In Countering Complicity With Good Fellowship (Determination 4), I noted that we are already doing these things, communal things, but that we haven't yet fused and fertilized them within a single unifying frame – rolling them around in our pockets...making them seeds that grow....

...but as we consider the man in Becoming The Function (How The Job Is The Booster Shot) who dissected two-year-old twins killed fresh for the purpose...

...serving some sick sadist's 'Grand Scheme'...

...the question necessarily arises:

...without 'tribes'...without the communal alternative...how do we find the courage to refuse...to shake off our Passive Obedience training?...

...to fight our way out of the 'Echo Chamber'?...

...and begin telling ourselves new stories...the ones that we weave into a tapestry of our own creation?...

...And so in Becoming The Function one of the conclusions reached is: we have to help each other...

...and that the only way out is ...to organize.

Now Robert Shaw argued...and I agree (...round and round and round we go but not merrily...)...that those who could dramatically drive forward this movement to end wage work...aren't bothered...

...are living very nice lives...thank you very much...and lay back in these nice lives and tell those of us who are bothered...but don't have the means to..."go for it"...

...This is of course mean and ingenuous...

For that need to feel 'special' they would let their brothers and sisters perish...

(...not consciously...)

...So they cling to the story that tells them they're 'special'...

(...not consciously...)

...and scorn the story that says we're all one...

...and that the system lies...

...that the system divides us...

...and that "the system" is utterly false...

...and that fellowship is the only way out of this morass.

And though "good fellowship" as a general state...

...is in the "yet-to-be"...

(...along with our future freedom...)

...our bodies' endowment…

...is an unerring guide to it….

…for as we totter in-between…

...it leans...

... towards simply being.…

...So we-in-conscious-transition mirror the transitional state of the nation…

...And when we invoke our dream of future freedom we're in a feeling-state that mirrors the feeling-state of the nation...

...fleshing out a dream as dynamic and changing as 'possibility' in this moment.

There’s a sense in which we're all floating along, here in the U.S., in a dream…

…watching…waiting…testing the winds…

And though it seems...we each of us dream...on our own…alone...

...in 'reality’...we see...study...feel...

...with the larger whole that we're a part of...

...taking in the thoughts, gestures, certainties, hesitancies, doubts, hopes and dreams...

...all around us....

[...Certainly...

...this is true of me...

– dreams in stasis...

...while the faux-animation...

...of death-worshiping half-beings...

...belittles and belies...

...trivializes...

– yet on I drive....]

And this 'Bedroom Vehicle'-trip I've been experimenting with...is a humble quest...leaning-seeming... towards...

...a larger dreaming...

...the 'story' in which we're free.

(The point of a Bedroom Vehicle is not to be self-sufficient but village-sufficient, to be part of a larger whole while growing a larger whole....

So when I stop at the house, * what I see in my mind's eye is a 'neighborhood anchor'...(...there's no kitchen at the moment but maybe one day...)

But I am aware, as I conduct my…curious-seeming experiment…that I’m writing myself a new story…and telling it to you…in hopes that you will begin making up like stories too.)

Because we are, as Virginia said, “creatures of illusion,” creatures for whom the stories we come to believe are ‘all,’ are determinative of so much of what we do – of the choices we allow ourselves...

...because we are “creatures of illusion”...those who long to control us have learned that they have to control our stories…the messages in our minds...

…which they cannot do…to the degree of completeness that they would like to...to the degree that would insure their pretense of ‘rule’...

...in perpetuity...

...and our cultures exist to the degree we resist...and write our own stories…

– the common bottom being: we like to make stories.

Inventing our own stories starts with noticing...listening....

Listening – it does all come down to that doesn't it? Why is it I listen even better with George in hand?

...The fulness of contemplative thought – the mind not searching, but beholding, and the glance seeming to be filled with what is behind it. (George Eliot, Middlemarch, p. 496)

Listening....

...But when the so-called "news" floods in, it washes 'thought' away?

...How can we hear what needs to be when bombarded with 'what-is'?

How quell the voice of "the system" in order to hear 'what-not-is'?

...the contrast becoming...our questions.

Here's George again:

Dorothea, early troubling her elders with questions about the facts around her, had wrought herself into some independent clearness as to the historical, political reasons why eldest sons had superior rights, and why land should be entailed...

"Dorothea...with questions...had wrought herself..."

Questions are how we begin to distinguish ourselves from "the system" –

– and if we can't distinguish ourselves from "the system," we can't invent our own stories...

...the most critical work to be done in our present moment.

But as "the system" seeks to train our 'noticing,' our 'figuring-out' [see: "Becoming The Function"]...to turn these capacities to its ends, what we notice, what we see and question – the very frames we'd put our stories in – is molded to ends not of our making...

...or of our conscious choice.

So...for the stories we invent that will bring us our future...

...the stories that chronicle this grand adventure...to free all humans...and all living things...from the predation of the half-dead beings...

...for these stories that help us feel our nobility...

...what we need – the critical missing piece – is...

...a unifying frame.

** ...who 'sees'?

I used to hang out with the gulls and squirrels at the Berkeley Marina. They shared their interesting ways and it was only right to share bread and peanuts with them. Funds grew tight though, and bread beyond my budget, so I tried to slip onto the site incognito. But my tree squirrel friend tended to find me out, and as I still had peanuts I gave thanks.

Ours was a very civil encounter, it raised no flags for the ground squirrels to rally round.

I began to hope I could still enjoy the susurration and yet avoid the gulls' insatiation.

It never worked. They zeroed in on me every time and for awhile I was mystified. Was it by the Bedroom Vehicle's distinctive sound that I was found?....

...and then I imagined the gull's perspective high off the ground...and realized my 'sly' was no match for their 'eye'....

...Not long ago my son and I had an argument of sorts...all the traditional buttons were pushed...but my blood failed to rise.

After the fact I found this curious...because one conclusion I thought I'd found to the question of why more of us are not aroused by the injustice of wage work...was...that as children few of us are ever seen (i.e. our true 'selves') and we leave the family with this need...

...and as those never seen can't see...and we haul these chains around and get aroused by our invisibility...

...but misdirect our anger at each other...

(...precisely where – conveniently enough for the podrunks – it can do no good at all...).

So...I asked myself...when I didn't respond to pushed buttons as before...why?

And as you know it's gotten to be a positive religion with me...letting questions lead...

...I asked myself, "why is the need to be seen less pressing for me?"

– if anything I'm more isolated than before –

...and then I thought, "Does being One with eternity mean I'm 'seen'?"

...There's a recognition in surrendering...

...but...who sees?

A friend gave me what the blurbs claim is the definitive biography of George Eliot. I poke in it very judiciously for her words and events...but avoid like the plague the biographer's surmises...because it was clear he didn't 'get' her at all.

...It's what those asleep don't get...we have our eyes on something else...

...this ain't it...this ain't it...

...we can feel it...when we're quiet...when we look behind...we see...

...what we're supposed to have...what we're supposed to be...and...

...this...ain't...it...

"This World is not Conclusion..."

"...The fulness of contemplative thought – the mind not searching, but beholding, and the glance seeming to be filled with what is behind it...."

"...To you yet unborn these, seeking you..."

"...give pleasure to the best people and live in the lives of those who are yet unborn..."

They are living in us. And so we must commune with them....They want us to....They're pulling us to them....

They're talking to us because they knew their true comrades are in the future...and in the past...

...cuz this...ain't...it.

*** Invention is – and will always be – our birthright...

Invention is – and will always be – our birthright...and so at any moment, with but a little water, with just sufficient food, our determination to invent ourselves – create our own stories – make our own reality – can reassert itself…

“…those germinal ideas…hitherto lain in some obstruction, [have] been sprouting under cover.”

In Waking Up I argued that the model for our NEW world, as well as for our refusal, is “distributed generation” and that ‘individual freedom’ (based in the Earthship and in self-sufficient villages) is the necessary undergirdment for ‘rational economic planning’ – that phantasm progressive economists have been seeking since capital first started chewing on our increasingly depreciated flesh.

It is of course a complete illusion to suppose ‘rational economic planning’ is possible within a system that John Trudell accurately describes as an “authoritarian / material system.” In such a system the most important product is authoritarianism itself – a rational economy is precisely what it cannot generate or allow.

No – that phantasm can only achieve form under the conditions of our “communal alternative": “distributed generation.”

And although Engels envisaged a ‘functional future’ – “the administration of things” – what I see is a future of living consciously, with reverence...

...and reverence for others and for the earth is only achievable under conditions of freedom, which by definition requires a simultaneous, synchronous sprouting of balanced and equivalent energy.

Of course the challenge for all of us right now is to allow this energy to bloom within us when “the built world of men” nowhere supports it. It will be ‘for us’ to manifest the social environment, the structures, that allow the reproduction and maintenance, with each new day, of this synchronous, simultaneous freedom.

[I am longing to have a fuller discussion of this, a fuller elaboration, in dialogue, of these ideas, of the picture of our future. I'd like to create a space – physical and virtual both – where this can happen. If you have ideas, please send them.]

The great sea of popular creativity is finding its level, chafing at the restraints. And while it is inevitable, a "mathematical certainty," that we will bust out of them, the course of that eventuality is by no means certain.

It is 'for us,' therefore, to assume the work that will ameliorate the suffering and shorten its duration. The assumption of this responsibility can and should be viewed with excitement rather than trepidation. In countless homes across the globe 'Reconception Salons' are sprouting – discussions, planning, mutual-support-circles – for building the new.

Critical to the eventual success of our circling and saloning is taking ourselves seriously – refusing the 'random' dismissive thoughts that visit from the conventional world of 'what-is,' that say: "foolish," "unrealistic," etc. etc.

To manifest the future one must be willing to work for it.

We are…in this moment…willing our communal future – which is our communal inheritance – into being…fleshing out the picture as we invoke it. This is our work right now, we representatives of global humanity, because in order to fight for our communal future…

…we have to see it.

* ...they have to control how we view our bodies...

And...I would argue...we have to feel it.

There's a deeper truth that must be felt to get to....

When we look at "what is"...

...from the media outlets that we're given...

...we see a major taboo on the ability to live...

...in the communal alternative....

"Communal living's" not one of the feelings they want to see...

...out there in us...planting seeds....

...fertilizing....

..."The system" is happy for us to feel violent...

...it knows what to do with that...

...encourages it in fact....

And it's happy for us...

...to be stuck...

... in survival...

...or thumping Bibles...

...or absorbing, starry-eyed,...

...stories of love....

They'll even allow certain images of "free"...

...and heroism in defense of a collectivity...

...as long as it's expressed 'individually'....

We live in a system that tries to keep a lock on the thoughts we can think. This is discussed in the section of the book on "culture-cons" (among other things).

I keep turning in my mind...

...a recurring line...

...that...

..."controlling us starts...

...with these bodies we inhabit"...

(in all their mysterious entirety).

And in addition to that...

...a line kept coming back...

...inspired by the Bard...

(in a book by Peter Linebaugh) **

...that "commodity means 'female private parts'"...

(...i.e., it is the entire earth they want to own...

...so that nothing else will ever again be denied them....

...not a full tit...

...or a pair of hips...

...or vaginal lips...

...or the sweet perfume...

...of a warm welcome...

– phony claps...

...plush laps...

...strong arms...

...to hold them....)

Shakespeare's character "The Bastard"...

...calling out a "dealer" as a devil...

...says:

"...maids,

Who, having no external thing to lose

But the word 'maid,' cheats the poor maid of that..."

This theme recurs continuously...

...in low-income communities...

...the fear of having nothing to sell...

...but one's own body.

And, related to that, the fear is planted...

...that our beginnings are endings...

...and that we are...nothing.

We look for contrary stories...

...in the movie industry...

...but find few to no roles...

...to console us...

...just docile images to control us...

And the pickings are particularly thin...

...for women...

...and virtually non-existent...

...if they have skin pigment.

[...with one or two magnificent...

...votes of dissent....

...most notably Avatar...

...and The Matrix...

...Revolutions....

...and to a degree Catwoman...

...(the Halle Berry version.)]

It's very suggestive...

...this seeming restriction...

...on showing heroic women...

...and heroic men...

...if they are low-income....

The taboo's especially acute...

...when it comes to paying tribute...

...to our capacities...

...for planning strategically...

...and for working together...

...communally....

It seems pretty clear to me...

...that if we have nothing (under capitalism) but our bodies...

...then...

...podrunks must control how we view them...

– i.e., must control what we're 'allowed' to see, feel, think of as 'real'...

...that is, control our stories....

The stories that reverberate in us...

...prepare our bodies for what's needed of us....

...So in the story "they" tell us to internalize...

...our lives are circumscribed...

...by what "the market" buys....

But what our bodies need deeply...

...is the feeling of Life fertilizing...

...unboundedly...

– a conscious unconsciousness...

...of courage to confront...

...first Passive Obedience...

...and then...

...the totalitarian threat....

But how invent the 'self' as 'hero'...

...invite a "willingness"...

...without limits...

...when our bodies...

...don't know it?...

The stories we're given by "the system"...

...are designed to deceive...
...our bodies into believing...

...they're feeling....

...When....

...to really feel means interacting...

...with what exists authentically...

– or...another way of saying that...

...to "really feel" means to interact....

...with what's not being hidden behind backs...

...does not require the unconscious to unpack...

...or a truthsayer to decipher.

[See "The 4 Ruses – 2 (Part 2).]

[It is that internal censor...

...that energy-sink...

...a "system"-default...

...'activated'...

...when we try to think.

An energy-sink designed to sink us...

...sapping our strength when we most need it.

...If they can drain off our analytic capacities...

...into time-sucking projects of the unconscious...

...it could take us years before decoding...

...the malevolences they're unfolding.

...When everything around us is a lie...

...our energy gets sapped...

...trying to figure out why....]

[I found a great example today (04.23.10)...

...as I continued to sail in my meandering way...

...through the dense bliss...

...of Samuel Butler's Flesh....

...In similar words...

(...I guess we're similar birds...)

...he explained how "the conscious Ernest"...

...had to allow "the Ernest within"...

...to shepherd him....

"You are surrounded on every side by lies which would deceive even the elect, if the elect were not generally so uncommonly wide awake; the self of which you are conscious, your reasoning and reflecting self, will believe these lies and bid you act in accordance with them. This conscious self of yours, Ernest, is a prig begotten of prigs and trained in priggishness; I will not allow it to shape your actions, though it will doubtless shape your words for many a year to come. Your papa is not here to beat you now; this is a change in the conditions of your existence, and should be followed by changed actions. Obey me, your true self, and things will go tolerably well with you, but only listen to that outward and visible old husk of yours which is called your father, and I will rend you in pieces even unto the third and fourth generation as one who has hated God; for I, Ernest, am the God who made you."

My point is that all this energy of 'figuring-out'...

– consigned to the unconscious –

...distracts us and saps us...

...and keeps us from...

...the important work that needs to be done....]

If others are to have what is authentic to relate to...

...enriched by earth...

...and the ancestors...

...we'd best start constructing some authentic "selves"...

...which in these times of extreme insanity...

...means inventing stories in which we live heroically....

...And what does it mean...

...to live "heroically"...

...when you're living in-between...?

...which is what we must do...

...to build this whole new world...

...gestating....

...Perhaps it means...

...that each of us...

...consciously sees...

...that we are seeds...

...representing for those not yet...

...in this work...

...of invoking generalized freedom.

When the film Titanic came out a co-worker of mine, who had seen the film many times – with various friends and relatives – told me that he began noticing a common reaction among them in the moment when the last bit of the ship is about to go under...

...he said that when the two heroes take air into their lungs...

...anticipating the plunge...

...everyone in the theater does...

And it's the physical heroism we most need to see...

...folks who launch their bodies unceremoniously...

...moved only by what must be...

...if their brothers and sisters are to be free....

To unleash the creative capacities...

...that allow us to be...

...the future we want to see...

– i.e., put it in our bodies –

...there must be some theatricality...

...to our planning and organizing....

Let me explain what I mean....

Until I entered the trades...

...joining hands with others who made...

...whole buildings and complexes...

...under somewhat dangerous circumstances...

...I didn't know that feeling of being a hero....

There's a particular joy in physicality...

...when it's a communal reality...

...knowing that 'solidarity' is a fact...

...and that your brothers and sisters...

...got your back.

So when we gather together...

...to envision the future...

...and flex our creative muscles,...

...put all ideas on the table...

...consider at first without judgment....

...For example, how 'bout...

...a marching homeless encampment...?

...or an "adopt an adorable hustle"...?

...or "Shame A Bureaucrat Day"...?

...or a "Fill In The Blanks" Poetry Party...?

...or...

All designed with one object:

...making our future visible...

...rather than conjecture...

...moving ever towards...

...the muscular demand –

...of masses converging on "the state"...

– for land.

In the grand, new story of our conception...

...all the dismissed form a single resistance...

...in defense of our right to a fully realized existence...

...that unites humankind...

...reunites us with our 'tribes'...

...and with our earth...

...in a process of self-naming that means a NEW birth.

If we create heroic stories of sacrifice...
...in the service of fellowship...

...towards the higher end...

...of freedom for all from entrenched enslavement...then...

...we'll have found the courage to 'name' ourselves...

...become powerful beings...in direct communion...

...with 'earth'...re-claimed for our own...

– a reverent beholding...of a communal legacy...

...that will never again be made a..."commodity."

But to get there requires a shift...

...I guess you could say "of consciousness"...

...but only to be arrived at in its entirety...

...by making a shift in our bodies.

...What does it mean to be heroic...in this sick system?

...In Avatar we see honorific animal killing as...

...almost the ultimate in warrior-making...

(...not a high point...but I get his meaning...)

...but in this world of the tamed...

...when everything is stamped "podrunk-made"...

...what is the "No" to the "Yes" we're confronted with?...

...particularly as almost every human being you see...

...represents 'the state' in hiding...?

...I raise the question because...

...we all must start to practice...

...heroism as a day-to-day reality...

...in our bodies...

...if we're to begin to confront...

...the chaos and crises 'podrunk-made' for us....

...For instance...

...How to say "No" with love...

...to a parent who thinks hitting children...

...is 'discipline'?...

...And how to practice 'body-presence'...

...when we're all conditioned to not listen to it?...

...And how to begin to value the earth...

...when the dominant value we see is 'Mind-Worship'?...

...How to out the abuse that's been 'normalized'?...

...help our brothers and sisters see it...

...so we can begin to make what we do more conscious?...

...If 'the hand' is associated with hurting...

...how can we change it to mean...

..."life-affirming"?

["Heroism in defense of the communal is a quality we are much in need of right now – so it's not a small thing that James Cameron provides opportunities to practice feeling it." (The above is from "You Got City Hands" (Part 2).)]

* My cat Iggy has already re-conceived his allegiance. T. lets him go outside – something I would never do – and of course feeds him, so I no longer merit even a head-lift when I wander within range of his gaze. Not to say he doesn't keep his options open. If I stop by during the day and he's out studying things, invariably he returns to strut it around the kitchen a few times...just in case.

** The Magna Carta Manifesto

Becoming The Function (How The Job Is The Booster Shot)

"The Hidden Malevolence"

(Waking Up, Progress, Pt. 7 )

© Nas2EndWork (the NEW)

http://www.nas2endwork.org

[One part of our difficulty seeing our communal future is – not to sound too facile – that so few of us have worked in the trades, and have never seen, therefore, how easily dreams arise from desire, when collective will is applied. (From "Becoming The Function", and also see, relatedly: "The Responsibility Of The 'Intellectual' (Part 2)".)]

It's important to keep in mind that we're already doing these things – communal things – we're just expanding the repertoire.

The next step is...to unify them within a single frame.... (From Countering Complicity With Good Fellowship, Determination 4.)

“Reverence requires time…”

“We have no choice. Our children and theirs need a future based on freedom…” [See Waking Up, "The Plan", (Pt. 9 )]

Nascence to End Work

Nas2EndWork "Pamela's Blogs":

Pamela's Blog 51

[In Progress], October, 2009 – , 2010 by Nas2EndWork.org

“Seeing (And Feeling) The Communal Alternative”