Waking up: freeing ourselves from work

The NEW world is a sensible world – sleek, spare, capable, and uncomprehending of ‘waste.’ What we don’t need, what is not useful for maintaining health, sanity, joy and love for all living things…we don’t make in the first place.

Virginia Woolf saw this over seventy years ago.

“Let us then discuss…the sort of education that is needed…It must be built not of carved stone and stained glass, but of some cheap, easily combustible material which does not hoard dust and perpetrate traditions. Do not have chapels. Do not have museums and libraries with chained books and first editions under glass cases. Let the pictures and the books be new and always changing. Let it be decorated afresh by each generation with their own hands cheaply. The work of the living is cheap; often they will give it for the sake of being allowed to do it. …The poor college must teach only the arts that can be taught cheaply and practiced by poor people; such as medicine, mathematics, music, painting and literature. It should teach the arts of human intercourse; the art of understanding other people’s lives and minds, and the little arts of talk, of dress, of cookery that are allied with them. The aim of the new college, the cheap college, should be not to segregate and specialize, but to combine. It should explore the ways in which mind and body can be made to cooperate; discover what new combinations make good wholes in human life. The teachers should be drawn from the good livers as well as from the good thinkers. …competition would be abolished. Life would be open and easy. People who love learning for itself would gladly come there. Musicians, painters, writers, would teach there, because they would learn. …They would come to the poor college and practise their arts there because it would be a place where society was free; not parceled out into the miserable distinctions of rich and poor, of clever and stupid; but where all the different degrees and kinds of mind, body and soul merit cooperated. Let us then found this new college; this poor college; in which learning is sought for itself; where advertisement is abolished; and there are no degrees; and lectures are not given, and sermons are not preached, and the old poisoned vanities and parades which breed competition and jealousy…” The letter broke off there… (Three Guineas, p. 33-4)

I think all artists (the people who knew themselves to be artists) across the millennia, have imagined this time, this time we’re in, when the dream of unity is actually coming into being.

Just as the “poor college” is very rich spiritually, the “poor village” or the “poor NEW world” is a treasure trove of all things joyful, fun, interesting and involving. It is one in which we can relax because, finally, we are all pulling together. Done with suspicion, mistrust and duplicity. We are making a human world that is as clear, clean and honest as the earth itself.

Beginning to establish pieces of this NEW world in the dead husk of the old means that the old way of thinking will continue to drag down the spiritually light, clean and fresh way for a while to come. How long depends on us.
Rather than fear this approaching “poverty,” the liberating alternative is to rush toward it, embrace it, merge with it, become it, model everything we do on it, make sure that whatever we work on, and work for, points the way out.

The problems here on out we solve
with wholeness willingly evolved,
each second pollinating each hour
with the alternative energy of three phase power.

As John Trudell says, “we are alternative energy.”

[...a brief pause...: if you have ideas about: The power-down implications of the right to shelter, no need to be shy about sharing them. Where I'm at so far:

Three moons circle round any NEW plan to power-down

...thanks...]

So, for instance, a theory of wholeness sees human energy concentrated in “tent cities” not as “problem,” but rather as “opportunity.”

JUAN GONZALEZ: As the nation’s economic and housing crisis worsens, homelessness is also on the rise. A report from the National Center for Family Homelessness estimates that one in fifty American children are now homeless. With the number of homeless people far exceeding the existing network of shelters, an increasing number of people are setting up roving encampments or shanty towns that are popularly known as tent cities.

AMY GOODMAN: And right here in Seattle, tent cities have been around since the late ’90s, have also served as centers for organizing around affordable housing and services for the homeless. Seattle’s newest tent city is called Nickelsville. The encampment is made up of over a hundred pink tents and is named to protest the Mayor Greg Nickels’s policies around the homeless. (Democracy Now!, March 30, 2009)

We are alternative energy. This system, locked in its cons, every day trying to keep us caught in them, tries to make us believe that gathering so much energy in one place is actually a ‘drain’ on ‘society.’ There is available land, available people, and a form of architecture that represents the future. The con-artist-politicians try to convince us to see ‘problem’ where all I see is ‘solution.’ If they can keep us believing in their ‘upside-down-world,’ they can prolong the life of the scam. Lord knows why they want to. Do they think they’re exempt? *

From here on out, we do and make only that which is useful to the future. Earthships are the infrastructure of the NEW world. Every vessel built is a gift to the future. We can begin creating around us a world that reflects what we want to be, which means that the model for our NEW world is distributed generation.

Refusing a fear-and-force-based system is no longer a matter of attending big protests once a year while the rest of the year our lives roll along just the same. Each second of each hour, we are preparing to live light for the General Strike.

Where would we be right now without the sacrifice of so many people during the Great Depression who built the bridges, the roads, the sewer systems, that we use up today without even a thought of thanks?

Where would we be right now without the sacrifice of so many kidnapped Africans who built the buildings, the roads, laid the railroad tracks, ran the plantations and the mills, and received the whip and endless heartbreak as thanks?

Where would we be right now without the sacrifice and annihilated dreams of all the dark-skinned “despised” of the global South who give us all the ‘stuff’ we think we need, so ‘cheap’?

Where would we be right now without the sacrifice of rural and urban peoples of all cultures and races across the millennia whose lives were hijacked so a few could feel ‘distinct?’

The job that must be done requires all of us, or none.

Across all false divisions that states inculcate, people are people everywhere.

The Earthships that we build now to address pressing shelter needs will be no less useful a few generations on. Every vessel built today is a vote of confidence in our ability to live lightly on the planet, in harmony, in balance, One.

A friend of mine is, as we speak, trying to figure out how to convert a vehicle into a tiny temporary bedroom, with at least one 120V receptacle. How do you solve the aerodynamic issues of a couple solar.panels on a ski rack? Where do you put the batteries? What type of batteries do you use? What inverter? What controller? It’s all a boggle to me. But, assuming he figures it out, it’s a possible way to live ‘light,’ if we lose our homes, if we want to lighten our burden of debt, if we want to devote our lives to building the NEW, rather than propping up a dead husk, or squeezing a ‘living’ from a system made to crush us. Why shouldn’t we gather in snug “beds” around earthship construction sites with recharging stations for our batteries, with gardens, kitchen and bathroom facilities appended? We can choose either to join gatherings in the communal “Hall” or we can choose a quiet moment with our coffee, books, or laptop in our retrofitted vehicles. A single receptacle could mean the difference between an uncomfortable huddle versus a little haven.

The fact that we’re offering assertively – preemptively – alternative plans, plans that are creative, dynamic and interesting, is critical to forestalling the expected plans of ‘Power’ to separate and divide, come the wet-ass hour. We are putting an alternative on the table. ‘Power’ will not be able to claim that there’s a vacuum to fill. We are the catalytic element in the catal.ytic truth. We bring the ideas that germinate, the proposals pregnant with life.

The General Strike

A CoExiSt is just a crew or a group of crews that want to share communal land. A CoExiSt reflects The Zapatista Way. We don’t want to take state power, we CoExiSt.

And if there are enough CoExiSts in every urban area, conscious people helping to bring the future into existence, choosing to put their bodies in the way of the state’s Division Work, choosing to prevent podrunk plans to beat down hope and install totalitarianism, we can make something glorious out of the challenges of transition.

Wherever you live on the planet, you are suffering the consequences of unrestrained podrunk greed.

And while you may think you’re exempt from the impacts of all the despair-inducing devices, all the infinitely devious podrunk policies designed to keep their pitiful narrow asses on top of the heaps of misery they so love to make – the impact of resource shortages, peaking available water and fossil fuels, gaping holes in the “safety net,” widening gaps between them that got and them that not…nature don’t work that way. One day, either you, your child, or some descendant of your child, is gonna wish you’d walked the Courage Road when you had the choice.

Looking for the individual solution is thinking the old thoughts. Looking for the communal solution is thinking the NEW thoughts.

Claiming or acquiring communal land for this movement, growing “our own things,” is critical. And persuasive as our “Power-Down Plans” will be, there’s always the chance that, either through the schemes of ‘Power,’ or from the depths of the Cons, our local ‘leaders’ could fail to make the fundamental connections between freeing human energy now, and building a future that allows us all to be free.

There’s always a chance they won’t give up the land.

Therefore, all our planning, all our thoughts, should “lean toward the light,” toward living light for the General Strike.

Refusal…renunciation…of a system unworthy of us is no longer a matter of protest demonstrations on designated days planned months and years in advance – invitations extended to all malevolent vampires inclined to wreak havoc.

Rather, refusal, today, like a lot of things about our future, is modeled on the concept of distributed generation.

The sun don’t designate a single day or place to shine, and neither do we. We shine every day, everywhere. And one of the rays we emit is the reality that we will have to organize dissent.

Starting with our “Boycott the Corpse” days, which celebrate people rather than podrunk power, which get us accustomed to claiming the streets, and draw consumer dollars away from the corporate-vampire, we point our planning toward coordinated wholesale withdrawals, first from shopping, and then from work.

We needn’t wait for any specific date, some artificial number of participating crews that signal it’s time to give the Corpse the blues. You have to practice to get good at something, so we have to practice our activism aikido, our mass movement aikido. As with everything else, we start with what we got…and then we build.

So part of our regular practice as a crew is planning regular coordinated consumer strikes, strikes that occur on a “FLEA Festivals” Day, in order to offer a “people’s celebratory alternative” to wallowing in the corporate muck.

The bigger the splash of our flung wrench into the corporate gears, the more we fertilize the seeds of our key ideas (as much the purpose of our selling as the selling):

“No one else can tell you what work you’re here to do.”
“For human intelligence is like water, air, and fire – it cannot be bought or sold.”
“Across all false divisions that states inculcate, people are people everywhere.”
“The work that must be done requires all of us, or none.”

As our crews multiply, at some point we’ll want to take our General Work Strike out the strategy-garage and take her for a spin – merging the lanes of our crews together.

All together now!
One, Two, Three, Four,
Freedom’s waiting out that door!
Five, Six, Seven, Eight,
We got cutters at the gate!
Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve,
Free yourself from wage-slave hell!

Recently, Democracy Now! interviewed Kali Akuno, “the national organizer for the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement and organizer in the US solidarity effort with the struggle of the workers and people of Guadeloupe.” Below is an excerpt. You can read the entire March 27, 2009 interview by going to the Democracy Now! archive.

Labor Victory in Guadeloupe After Six-Week Strike Reverberates Across French Caribbean and France:

INTRO: The financial crisis has had reverberations beyond the United States and Europe, with people taking to the streets in cities across the globe to protest rising wealth inequality and to call for economic and labor rights. Perhaps the most significant action took place in the French Caribbean, on the island of Guadeloupe. Amid rising costs of living, labor leaders in Guadeloupe led a forty-four-day general strike that closed down roads, schools, gas stations and public transportation. The strikers claimed a victory earlier this month with a plan to improve wages and living standards…

AMY GOODMAN: Very quickly, Kali Akuno, there were massive protests in the streets earlier this month in France and the biggest demonstration since Sarkozy’s election. And then, next week, the G20 is going to be meeting. Where do you think the significance of the Guadeloupe protest and victory fits into? And can it have any bearing on G20 and its blowback to France?

KALI AKUNO: I think it will have a major impact, Amy. You know, workers all over Europe that I’m in contact with are using it as a kind of a standard-bearer. And I think with the earlier victory in Bolivia with the constitutional referendum and also the victory that happened in Venezuela, this is one of the key early victories in this crisis. I think people all over the world are looking to us as an example.

Nothing reveals the power of human solidarity like the General Strike. If our “Power-Down Plans” don’t result in land, we’ll have to work even harder to build the numbers that will allow the weight of our refusal to register, allow it to spread its weight on the government plate.

One way or another, we gotta get our hands on some communal land. It’s critical to our workable plans – and a workable plan – worked on together, realized together – is the key to knocking down the door of this system, and dispelling the cons that enclose us.

There’s no individual escape from this corpse, we’ll have to hold the light steady for each other, share tools, cut ourselves an opening, and then bury the stinking thing once we’re clear of it…and make sure it stays buried.

In Nascence:

Your creativity is well beyond my ability to imagine. I hope you’ll share your ideas and plans on your Nascence websites. They might include savings associations and land trusts; communal Earthship centers and electricity generation; communal festivals and bartering systems; farms and gardens; or similar strategies with interesting configurations.

I think we’ll find that renouncing the processed life is easier than we thought. The hardest part will be trust, and overcoming fear. But when we refuse to settle, when we decide to live our wholeness, we expand the realm of “the possible” – for ourselves, and for the people in our lives – breaking that Groundhog Day curse we’ve been living under for far too long.

Once the commercial imperative is off our backs we can follow up on all the suppressed ideas. The big automakers’ decision to crush and bury all those electric cars in the desert wasn’t a fluke. This happens all the time with ideas that would free us from slavery rather than secure another link, another lock. Tesla had to fight like hell to give us his gifts – we will also have to…until we don’t.

We are waking up. More and more of us are withdrawing, if only psychically, from wage work while turning our psyches and our uncoerced labor towards a future without bosses. Though this movement is now achieving critical mass on a world scale, it’s been going on for millennia, for as long as class society itself.

And though the goal is held in common, there are innumerable tributaries feeding it, flowing along different streams, avoiding or vaulting different obstacles, so our chart cannot be laminated, bound or framed; the only universal is the luminescence behind it: our intention. And the principle force fueling our intention must be, as Erich Fromm pointed out, faith.

I like to call it “trust.” We have to trust in the ancestors, the earth, and each other. We have to trust that we’re not alone, and that, before we’re able to see it clearly before our eyes, our movement is there, building, and that individually, in our apparently separate lives, a common course is flowing.

Now is the seed time of global union, faith and honor. We go up together or we go down together. A world, no less than a society, is defined by the state of mind of those hanging by a thread. And by that standard as well, ‘civilization,’ podrunk-style, has been a disaster.

And when those who’s stomachs are full, and contribution recognized, gloam, gloat, and glow with self-satisfaction, pleased with the way of things when their sisters are cold and their sons bleed for them unknown, it sets in motion the bitterest rage in those tottering on the edge. For it means their suffering is unseen and uncared-about, and callously dismissed from the assessments of the Good Life, the Just World…‘Progress.’ It means their agony is casually pasted over with phrases like, “the poor will always be with us,” while hidden from public view the hail-fellow-well-met nod-nod-wink-wink is given to the fellow callous few, that postpones our long-awaited future, and sends the suffering to arms.

What would you do when told, “too bad, so sad, you’re screwed. Sucks to be you!”?

We have to be willing to take in the truth, to accept that what’s being done to others is being done to oneself. We have to peer into the false face, look behind it, ask the tough questions – “Where does the semiconductor material come from? How was it obtained?” – before we blithely leap to buy in. For the most part it’s those “recirculating physical resources” that should pull our attention, as Buckminster Fuller said.

If there’s no Pacifica-network radio station nearby, we can listen on the Internet. But to take in the truth, we must first minimize the corporate propaganda that pollutes our airwaves and our brainwaves.

Our comfortable lives cannot be bought with blood. We have to trust the voice of the ancestors calling us to redeem their suffering, and the suffering of all our relations. Acknowledging “the Debt” simultaneously frees us from the shackles of the “Mind-Worship”-Con, shaking off the fear that we’re too small to manage our own world.

Wage-work reinforces this con, every moment we give to it, just by being what it is, the separation of conception from execution. It separates us from our power – from the collective mind, from the earth, from our bodies, and from each other. We can only reclaim our power by freeing our minds of division, by honoring that which is whole, alive and self-generating in ourselves and in our physical environments – without exploitation, without force.

In the world of our choosing, in our garden, force is anathema.

And while it’s easy to say: “Don’t let the job drain the energy which should go to developing your art,” in practice, without a world that supports this, it’s purt near impossible. Jobs pull you into their logic – and in the absence of an opposing pull – the ancestors, the earth, and each other – a strong oppositional system of values – we easily fall in line with what it asks of us, because cooperation is in our ancestral memory.

The only way to withstand its pull is to consciously pull back.

What we do now, with consciousness, will be our lasting gift to the future, so that our children (and theirs) will one day be free to plan each day, fresh, anew, and to restore the earth, each day, fresh, anew, in ingenious, creative ways beyond our imagining today.

…OK, I guess it’s time for the long-winded wrap-up. Shall I spare you?
Whups, too late.

This book is offered free in order to help build the movement to end wage work. If you find it useful, please consider a donation in any amount you can afford to the Nascence to End Work Savings Endowment (NEWSE) – so that we may continue printing the book and giving it out to others.

NEWSE
P.O. Box 3952
Berkeley, CA 94703
510.420.8054
nas2endwork@gmail.com
www.nas2endwork.org

President Barack Obama may well have concluded that the people aren’t ready to roll, and who could argue, really, as we haven’t…yet.

I think we’d better get ready to roll because if that door he’s standing in slams shut, we’ll need a battering ram instead of a workable plan.

Time to blow your whistle and toot your horn, Mama comin’ home jus’ as sure as you born, as Mrs. Trotter would say.

* This is a line from the Mamet film House of Games.

Body Willing And With The Ancestors Help I'll Share The View From The Road

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