Waking up: freeing ourselves from work

Building ambassador bridges to the bulwarks of our mission – the architects of earthships, the natural educators, the Zapatista transistors who interface with the state, and the local organic farmers…

The Ambassador Bridges
I’ve often wished that I’d been gifted with a more cosmopolitan life. I envy the well-traveled, the multi-lingual, the ones who know the ways of many lands.

I’ve lived in only three places in my life, all in America, and one of them hardly counts, being but a brief, school-related moorage.

But all three, in their different ways, were places that packed multiple worlds tightly together. Here, in the Bay Area, for example, I once rented a house in a wood just off a main freeway. Outside my door, before the freeway noise, I regularly heard the clippety-clopping of hoof-beats as girls clattered by on horseback.

And of course our micro-climates are notorious (“the coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.”)

But I probably shouldn’t find the odd conjunctions of this region disorienting, growing up as I did in Detroit, where ten minutes of brief travel could take you to another country. Literally.

There’s one summer that lingers in memory so longingly.

Because of a date with a guy long forgotten, I’d found out that there were horse stables only ten minutes away, in Windsor, Canada. After that I haunted one of them, pitchforking hay, saddling and brushing the horses, hoping for a chance to ride. The horses looked at me, and most humans, with clear contempt in their eyes. I didn’t care. For one summer I pretended to exist in the fantasy of an earlier time, when we lived on the earth as friend.
The Ambassador Bridge, spanning the Detroit River, brought me to this other world, this other country.

To begin to live anew, the worlds stolen from us will have to be restored. Dependency can only be upended with some affirmative shoves – and Self-Sufficiency, our life raft, only returned, with some affirmative tugs.

Within the crew will hopefully be found those who gravitate naturally to these restoration projects, who possess the skills of translation necessary to reach out across the chasm of the cultural divide that widens to the degree that we wake up.

Remember what Machiavelli said, speaking to those who crave ‘Power’?

“…few know what you are, and these few dare not oppose themselves to the opinion of the many who have the majesty of the State to back them up.”

We few will have to dare to oppose, but in such a way that abjures force, in argument or action. Freedom can’t be shoved down throats, it can only bloom in hearts. We should keep in mind that fun does realize the potential of what we do, is the quickening of life, the sperm fertilizing the egg. It will be a delicate dance that reclaims what is ours by birth.

The Zapatistas are our role models. We don’t seek “political power.” On the contrary, to allow ourselves to get bogged down in the polity is like extending our neck to the vampire – or our arm to receive the Mr. Smith virus.

No. The only power we have is our values, our value-system.

So we are the planters of seeds and the builders of bridges. We simply say out loud, to ourselves and to others, what we want, and rely on ‘political power’ to respond in accordance with the peoples’ wishes. If they refuse to hear what we want – the right to be whole, to live without fear, to share good fellowship – then we have to acknowledge that we don’t yet have sufficient numbers (people or resources), and then continue doing what we do. Politicians are seldom recalcitrant against numbers. When the movement builds, they will follow.

Earthships, natural educators, local government, organic farmers: each of these areas that we give our attention to could be a book in itself. We’ll have to rely on our own work, shared and discussed on our Nascence websites, to fully evolve these projects, explore the multiplicity of issues that arise, and marvel at the rich ideas that respond to each call.

All to say, my suggestions here bubbled up from the earth at my feet. I’ve looked around at Bay Area-Berkeley, low income-style, and shaped what seems to make sense. The truth will be in the trying. But your groundings might bubble up quite different factors to work with.

One thing is certain, however – just sitting down to the exercise means we’re tuning our minds, all of us together, to the same challenges – consciously. The resulting creativity can’t be fully imagined now. All we can know is that it will be fertile.

(All of these strategies overlap – which is a good thing as our goal is wholeness – so expect working on the commons to expand each of them.)

Earthships

“The mass movement is our true work, because only general freedom will support individual freedom – and vice versa.”

Time to talk about the “vice versa.”

The illusion of individual freedom under capitalism is of course a con. Nothing could be further from our lived reality. Podrunks have us by the short hairs and we’ll have to pry those fingers loose, one by one, to get free.
Wielding the earthship, however, is like bringing an axe to the problem. It could accelerate their demise exponentially.

Its primary potency, of course, is that it could return to us the self-sufficiency stolen when our commons were enclosed. The earthship is a technology that does an end-run around the strategy of enclosure, forcing podrunks to rely on rules and regs to restrict us, as Michael Reynolds said.

But its secondary potency, in potential, is as a curriculum – an idea I believe, I hope, Michael Reynolds will endorse. My intention is to ask.

What if our children were taught how to build their own world from infancy, as is done in most communal cultures?

To understand how an earthship works you have to understand how the earth works. Can you imagine a more relevant education than one that teaches, and every day of one’s life reinforces, how the earth works?

And once you’re empowered with the skills and tools to provide your own shelter, food and comfort, whatever else you choose to contribute to the Great Commons of Creation, will be a free gift from your heart, your love – and those gifts are as variable and numerous as the givers.

What if we could set all the competition aside, relax…and be happy?

Who knows what richness flows from freedom?

Volume One of Earthship emphasizes the importance of working with the earth, and although that sounds like common sense, we wouldn’t be in the environmental crisis we’re in if our so-called rulers shared even a little of that sensibility.

Michael Reynolds uses the term “interfacing” for “working with the earth”:

There are many existing natural phenomena which result in temperature, energy, food production, and all things we need to sustain life. We must learn to align ourselves with these phenomena – to interface with them. We must create a vessel which helps us to do this. Through interfacing with existing phenomena on site, the vessel must provide an environment which will sustain human life…The phenomena with which the Earthship interfaces are all related to the four elements, fire, earth, air and water. (p. 21, 28)

He then launches into the basics of siting, and then orienting, the ‘vessel’ to make its relationship with the earth as friendly as possible. But these basics constitute a knowledge-set that our children don’t have, that I don’t have – because we aren’t taught what’s important, or useful.

What if we were given knowledge that we used every day? Wouldn’t we treasure it? Wouldn’t it be precious?

Think how eagerly a child of two puts his or her hands in everything you do. What if what you were doing was accurately siting and designing an Earthship?
What is the tilt of the Earth from the plane of its solar orbit?
What do you call the angle of the sun above the horizon plane of the earth? And by how many degrees does this differ summer to winter?
What do we call the arc of the sun?
What do you call the movement of heat through liquid or gas?
How does the earth respire?

Those among us most interested in Earthships should consider journeying to Taos, New Mexico, extending an invitation to Michael Reynolds, taking in the ideas that come from cross-fertilization…and see what happens.

Natural Educators

Once we start seeing reality, once we understand how podrunks think, it will free up a lot of wasted psychic energy.

On the news just now I heard a laid-off teacher say, “if the state refuses to fund education, then it better start building a lot more prisons!” And she said it like it was a threat, you know? See what I mean?

Whereas, once we see reality more clearly we have no choice but to accept the, either ‘hard’ or ‘liberating’ (depending…), truth that if we want our children to realize their full potentials; if we want them to receive a rich, stimulating education; if we want them to be as large as the ancestors want them to be, as large as the earth wants them to be, we will have to plan and organize our children’s education ourselves. This should not feel as daunting as it may, perhaps, feel.

When I tallied up just the visible skills and gifts ribbed in the small set of connections around me, it was kinda freaky. It drove home the point that underutilized talent is the hallmark of Podrunk-land.

It’s a certainty that we have masses of retired physicists, pianists, unseen artists, perhaps even…belligerent atheists,…who will want to help our children find their questions.

Several years back, I listened to a documentary on KPFA called A Sidewalk Astronomer. It reinforced what I knew: in every community there are natural educators who never get called on to share their gifts, because we don’t have a society, yet, that asks any more of us than obedience…and, of course, to shop.

The “Sidewalk Astronomer” is John Dodson, who, when he’d finished his slave-work, turned to his soul’s-work.

He built his own telescope in his garage for twenty dollars and then set it up on the sidewalk and encouraged passers-by…to look.

“The exterior decorator does lovely work,” he says, when a group of children are awed by the up-close-and-personal view he gives them of the moon.

But he thinks of himself as a cosmologist, not an astronomer, because he’s interested in “the whole thing.” Though in youth he was “a belligerent atheist,” as he termed it, he came to believe, along with the child Einstein, pondering the magnet he was given, that “something deeply hidden has to be behind things.”

It is the deep lovers of life that we want with our children – and come the NEW day…that will mean…all of us.

But in the transition to that day, I think we’ll want to find the John Dodsons out there, who are so aflame with their questions that others catch fire too.

They’re out there…waiting to be asked.

Identifying them may be part of what “the inventory” should do…we can raise the question with the crew.

With such artist-educators as John Dodson among us, we’ll have the best advice possible on how to redesign “education” to make it not just earth-friendly, but child-friendly, too.

What a concept.

The Zapatista Transistors

In Earthship, Volume One, Michael Reynolds wrote:

One very important aspect of this new concept for housing is that it must be available to the masses. That is to say, it cannot be a multi-million dollar vessel that only the rich can afford. Everyone is entitled to voyage into the future. The concept, design, and actual method of manifestation of a Earthship must be developed with this in mind. In addition to interfacing with natural phenomena, this concept must interface with the nature of the common person. (p. 10)

Which prompted my emailed question to him, “What about the low-income? Is there still a concern about making an earthship affordable to all?” – prompting him to write back:

Yes. But regulations and codes have made it difficult…The evolution of sustainable living methods must be allowed a “test site,” free from the crippling restraints of laws, codes and basic human encumbrances, in the name of defense…
…from our own failing methods of living.

When I read this to my son lightbulbs lit in his head.

“Why couldn’t a crew form a non-profit just for the purpose of interfacing with local governments, like the folks in the Transition Movement are doing, calling for a moratorium on ‘business-as-usual’ in order to confront the effects of climate disruption?”

This is one of those situations in which the wisdom and experience of the elders must defer to the idealism and energy of youth.

A couple years ago, outraged by the intention of our local library commission to “move” our local branch library, annihilating a community hub, in order to “develop” a site at a nearby transit station, I participated in a petition drive to interrupt their plan to fast-track their earthmover. I’m sure they’re still backroom dealing about it. It’s what they do.

While collecting signatures, the reaction of one elder sistah made an impression. She said, “it don’t matter what the people want. If they want to move this library, they’re gonna move it.” And she proceeded to cite as a ‘for-instance’ another community struggle she’d participated in…unsuccessfully.

Unfortunately, elder cynicism about what government can be moved to do for the people is only too well justified. Has anybody done a count of the homes lost in low income communities, and the community gardens seized by local governments, during the manufactured “real estate bubble” all over the country? …of the number of devastated communities, disappointed activists?

There’s a wonderful community garden and farmer’s market not far from where I live. When I asked the man on whose energy and inspiration it’s largely fueled whether he’s planning to secure the deed, he blithely blew off my concern with a shrug and a smile. But bitter experience has shown that what the city giveth it will most certainly, when the right hand yanks its chain, one day taketh back.

We must advise youthful optimism to never forget that vampires – whether in government or the “halls of finance” – have PhDs in “how to hammer the hopes of the people while greasing the politicians’ palms.”

Since 1980 it has become official policy to ensure that the rich receive the benefits of government…
…Nearly three decades after Mr. Reagan’s revolution, the single biggest piece of our economy, a third of it, is still government. From raking leaves in city parks to buying stealth bombers that cost $2 billion a copy, government takes the same share. But money for the basics that make society work is growing scarce. From those leaves in the park to textbooks to highway bridge maintenance to food safety inspections, money is dwindling because so much has been diverted to the already rich through giveaways, tax breaks, and a host of subsidies that range from the explicit to the deeply hidden.
Evidence that the elites have captured the government and are milking it for their own benefit is so overwhelming that, on one level, you can find it as an unstated assumption in everyday news reports.
…There is a reason that 35,000 people are registered as lobbyists in Washington, double the number of lobbyists employed there in 2000. They are there to seek favors, from outright gifts of your tax dollars to subtle changes in rules that funnel money to their clients, thwart competition, hold you back, and buoy others. (David Cay Johnston, Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You With the Bill), p. 23-4)

So the road will be pocked and studded with rocks…what else is new?

There are a few doors opening right now, opportunities that I hope we can seize. Designating “climate change” a crisis of such massive proportions that business cannot continue as usual, presents the opportunity for pushing the door wider so the people can come through. Responding to this crisis is a goal, a priority, readily understood and embraced by every thinking human. On its face, the strategy promoted by the Transition Movement makes sense, and that means its logic will be hard for local elected officials to dispute.

And a local government that becomes a “transitional economy,” necessarily expands the commons.

It will be up to us to then push the question of setting aside, as Michael Reynolds advises, “the crippling restraints of laws, codes and basic human encumbrances,” to allow “the evolution of sustainable living methods.”

But interfacing with a state that despises unleashed people-power will require some advanced study with the male black widow. This talent will have to be cultivated, and the resulting tactics that we develop shared…on our websites.

Organic farmers

You, reading this, know far more about this issue than I do, so perhaps you’ll share your ideas on your Nascence website.

All I know is my own body, and what it has taught me over the years.

Once, as a young woman, I was ill with a chronic flu that lasted for months. During that time it so happened that I watched a PBS documentary about unregulated and ever-increasing pesticide use in the global South. I looked at what I was eating daily from those parts of the world – bananas, frozen strawberries, coffee, frozen orange juice – and realized they were all saturated with poison.

After that, for the first time, I started looking more consciously at my diet. I began noticing that I felt better when I eliminated the pesticides and stopped eating meat.

And recently I discovered, after listening to the documentary on the connections between diet and cancer, that cutting processed foods out of my diet entirely did far more to help my body than the illness industry ever did.

We are nature. We are earth. Garbage in, garbage out, is true on multiple levels. If we treat our bodies like trash dumps, the animals we harbor in them will conclude that we’re done with our bodies, and that it’s time to return them to the earth whence they came. It sorta makes sense, if you look at it from their point of view.

The earth is a source of power.

If we want to be free we cannot turn our backs on it and allow ourselves to be fed like pets. We must feed ourselves, every day, with actual food – healthy, organic, living, food.

Those lovers of life among our farmer-friends are key allies for cutting the corporate leash, and reclaiming the knowledge needed to be self-sufficient. It’s important to identify the ones nearby, support them, bulk purchase from them, and learn from them – sharing their knowledge among the crew, and across all crews, as we ever expand our own gardens.

Continue to "The Plan" - Part 11

Nascence to End Work

Waking up: freeing ourselves from work

Chapter V: The Plan (Part 10)

Waking Up: Freeing Ourselves From Work