The Nascence

OTheRLogs: From The Bedroom Vehicle

Re: Letter To Michael Reynolds see: **** OTheRLog 7, Thursday, 08.20.09

Re: The Last Civil Rights Movement see: ** OTheRLog 26, Wednesday, 09.09.09 and *** OTheRLog 32, Monday, 09.21.09 and * OTheRLog 20, Wednesday (2), 09.02.09

Re: The Ruses Used To Rend Us see: ***** OTheRLog 27, Friday, 09.11.09

Re: The Responsibility Of The Intellectual see: ****** OTheRLog 28, Monday, 09.14.09, and * OTheRLog 70, Saturday, 12.12.09

Re: Seeing The Communal Alternative see: **** OTheRLog 33, Thursday, 09.22.09

Re: Becoming The Function (How The Job Is The Booster Shot) see: ** OTheRLog 34, Thursday, 09.25.09, **** OTheRLog 44, and *** OTheRLog 50.

Re:You Got City Hands Mr. Hooper see ** OTheRLog 35, Saturday, 09.26.09

Re:Wading Into The Muck Of State see: *** OTheRLog 39, Wednesday, 09.30.09, and **** OTheRLog 49 (and 52)

Re:The Hidden Malevolence: AKA Michael Moore's Dilemma see: *** OTheRLog 40

Whither whirls reflection?: **

...it whirls round and round the crazy-making fact that so much of our "figuring-out" has already been "figured-out"...and then subsequently checked...which means that the critical missing piece...in the 'work' of honoring our ancestors...has been left 'for us'...in this moment... *

OTheRLog 1:

08.13.09:

...body willing, and with the ancestors' help...

Trying not to be too paranoid here...but when your straight-out-of-the-box GPS present that had been directing you flawlessly starts directing you into dark, wooded, dead-ends and lakes, right after the friend who gave it to you talks about it in a phone conversation with you, it's time to pull out the low-tech guidance...and trust.

I'm on my way to see Michael Reynolds. He has no idea. A fool's journey? Maybe. He may not be there... He may not see me... The most I may leave with are some images of earthships...but when the earth moves within, and enough of us feel it...and act on it...mountains...and movements...may start to move without.

I won't bore you with descriptions of my pit-stops...or of life curled up in a bedroom vehicle, but I will say that many things have surprised me these past two days, perhaps worth a blog later on.

I see now...

...that you really don't see the chains clearly 'til you've slipped them;

...the degree to which, under conditions of servitude, eating is used as a substitute for living;

...the degree to which capitalism has made our landscapes horrifically ugly;

...how completely oblivious we've been conditioned to be to the exhilarating dance of life. (For example...there's a springy bouyancy to the morning calls of the seagulls that I'd never noticed before.) We're not wallflowers watching from the sidelines...we don't even watch anymore.

...make us know it.

OTheRLog 2:

08.15.09:

…continuing… blessing the public libraries where the wind from below gathers in numbers… waiting…

Everywhere I go, the glaring, sickening disparities – much more enraging than the ones you see at home. Is it that the injustice is narrower in Berkeley, or do you parochialize it, tell yourself that it's all part of the picture of 'home'?

But on the road, Truth stands starkly.

I'd fled Needles at 4:30 in the morning, sick from the fumes of rumbling trucks, a hellish night haunted by the creepy security guard who forced me to park with the trucks.

When I got off the highway at Flagstaff, Arizona, already lovin' the landscape, I drove down… Mary Lane maybe?… towards what looked like park-land… tall soothing stands of pine, growing straight and unequivocal out of their crinkly pool of dried needles. All I wanted was a lot to park the car, stretch out, and make coffee. I soon learned that it was all private, lavish estates with teams of dark-skinned lawn-groomers and private security forces. Maybe five minutes away the ragged homes of the 'help' gathered closely together for company, commiserating in their dilapidated state.

So I gassed up, used the facilities, and drove on, straight into Indian Country. And though I 'knew' that the podrunks of that day had forced the first folks onto the driest most inhospitable rock, in terms of growing things, experiencing it is another matter. Driving from green Flagstaff to green Farmington through miles and miles of rock… admittedly beautful rock, but try eating it...seeing how, as always, we're forced to make a way out of no way, I can't help but wonder… how long? How long will we put up with it?

Well, all right now...

OTheRLog 5:

08.18.09:

Taos is lovely...open, welcoming...particularly if you bring dollars and don't sleep in your car. What must the first folks (on this side) think? I haven't seen a single Earthship in town yet (?) but I did see a very brown, pared-down white man on a spotted horse in a crowded intersection, and my heart soared at once....If only...

I'm waiting for the library to open...waiting to find out if I can speak with Michael Reynolds...waiting for enough of us to make ending wage work, for all, our only work...waiting for a world fit for Life...waiting...

The problem is...the podrunks know very well that acquiring land is key; they've tried to make very sure that all roads to controlling land lead back to them. The universities train, jobs contain... They hope that by the time the people feel confident enough to knock on the doors of State, that the rules will be cemented in place...[just met Randy and Mike, beautiful people, transplants, opting-outs like me]...

...Ah, yes...the rules...

All of our roads must lead to Power-Down Plans, Transitioning Towns, Embracing the Alternative Energy (those among us who need homes or beautiful, hand-made spaces), designating land for the objectives of 'transition'...

...But all towns with significant infrastructure (you can tell by the size, beauty and the open, accessible quality of the libraries) are being gentrified at breakneck pace, organized and funded by the banks. Money is only a tool to the podrunks, and applied to us it is a weapon, an axe brought down on our backs.

Our only advantage is numbers, our only barrier our conditioning...

...Later that day...

...walking along the very commercial main drag (Paseo del Pueblo Norte), venturing into its side paths, noting the artistic influence of the first folks (the less in evidence the more slickly displayed their art), inspires many thoughts, one being that our rich diversity as human beings is being hammered out.

For generations progressives have bemoaned urban renewal, 'negro'-removal, white flight, urban blight, and now we have making-it-bright-for-the-wealthy-and-white. And when 'wealth' moves in on what others have created, the rip-off is never acknowledged, living as we do as they tell us to, in the Eternal Now.

Everything's painted so bland when it's boujee.

...So the problem is not just that the podrunks got a lock on the land...The problem is that there's a lot of fair-skinned folk who are privileged by this system of deep disparities and will continue to be so.

...So...Whence change? Where lies the agency? In who among us does the longing heart of freedom beat loudest?

Have circumstances really changed so little from when Marcuse analyzed the problem?

...Or do appearances deceive?

...make us know it.

OTheRLog 6:

Wednesday, 08.19.09:

There's an old, double-trunked dead tree where I spent the night, enjoying a second life. It has angular, jutting stout limbs where the birds gather at dusk, celebrating a communion we can only dream of. They're quiet in the gathering gloom so I can't tell what they are (as if I could in the light, total Urban Ignorant that I am.)

I met Randy and Mike yesterday when Randy stopped to ask (me, of all people), "that's a cottonwood, isn't it?" referring to a large, living, double-trunked tree. Randy gave the most amazing five-minute synopsis of his life, so I learned about the Vietnam Veterans Memorial about twenty-one miles away.

I decided to go see it, thinking it might, counter-intuitively, blow away my own gathering gloom, partly due to an embarassment of phlegm rather than rest last night. Taos right now is hard on the lung-impaired -- all the rattling, deep-chested bellowing trucks rumbling along the main drag, stirring up the dust that the winds sweep into your face. They're repairing the roads and..."developing." I imagine Taos has been in a more or less continuous state of "development" for years. The Money Vulture has been methodically chewing on the living flesh of Native Beauty. Soon it will be consumed entirely.

The local paper reports centuries-long battles over the land here. The headline reads: "New Forum For Old Land-Grant Grievances"

Then and now, land-grant tensions centered on access to the bounty of "common lands: -- the forests, pastures, acequias, waterways -- that provided most of what Nortenos needed to survive. The committee got an earful, both in the Rio Grande Hall and on a field trip to Valdez....Then and now, cultures clashed. Conflicting political and legal systems haven't found the wherewithal to sort the differences. As a result, most of the "commons" today sit within federal or state public lands; the bulk of the remainder is in private hands....Unfortunately, legislators said they could do little for many of those who came to the meeting...The lawmakers heard tales of valuable documents burned in suspicious fires, of surveys and taxation that promoted private ownership, of the loss of the "communal concept."...However, much of what the committee members heard was the proverbial water-under-the-bridge. Several lawmakers told The Taos News that as much as they would like to, they wouldn't be able to challenge private-land ownership. They could only deal with the present and future, not the past. (The Taos News, August 13- 19, 2009)

That's what the podrunks always tell us. "Forget the past,"...but we don't. The past lives, in our memories, in our hopes for the future, in the homes built on the flesh of the dead.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial was created by parents who don't agree that we should forget about the past.

It seems to have settled on the landscape like a crouching angel, silently testifying.

Nearby, a helicopter dangles, moments before impact...

...if only...if only...

Well, all right now...

**** OTheRLog 7:

Thursday, 08.20.09:

There's so much open space in Taos, relative to the population, parking is ridiculously easy, from a Bay Area perspective. My son once got a ticket at 2 AM in Oakland, where the assault on parked cars is even more vicious than in Berkeley, where it's notorious. 'Downtown' swirls around Taos Plaza, along the perimeter of which you're allowed 'only' a four-hour maximum stay. The meters demand twenty-five cents for a half-hour, but only between the hours of 10 AM - noon, and 1 PM - 5 PM, Monday - Saturday. The rest of the time, and on holidays, it's free. This open, easy, relaxed attitude about parking is not just due to local affluence (watching the daily street sweeping vehicles circling and circling the Plaza, swerving around parked cars, reminded me that in well-off Pleasanton, California they don't ticket cars in the way of [monthly] street-sweepers either), but also because Taos is so small walking everywhere is easy, and driving to the outstandingly beautiful surrounding terrain, like Carson National Forest, is easier than driving to the Big Box...in most towns.

One of the down-sides to hovering in Taos, although nowhere near as high up on the list as racial homogeneity (white), is the challenge for an outsider of finding locally- and organically-grown vegies. Every eatery where I've asked has told me that (with the exception of "spring greens") vegetables are trucked in by a company called 'Cisco,' and they are definitely not organically-grown. I'm starting to look, not unfriendily but hungrily, at my little herb 'garden' sitting in a small plastic tub: chives, basil, spearmint, chamomile and sorrel, huddling tightly together with a spider plant -- brought mainly to make certain I'd have a view of 'green' wherever I went. They've endured crossing deserts like troupers but they're starting to ask, like me, "how long?..."

Later that day:

Just heard back from the Earthship Office and it's a no-go for a meeting with Michael Reynolds. He wants time to read the book before he talks to me.... I can understand that.... If a stranger walked into my life...before...and asked me to help her end wage work in America I'd probably ask for time to take a closer look at where she's coming from too. At least I got the chance to thank him, almost directly -- we're in the same town at the same time -- and I was able to hand-deliver his book. When I get home I'll share as a blog the letter I wrote to him. [see: Letter to Michael Reynolds]

...Time to blow town.

...make us know it.

OTheRLog 8:

Friday, 08.21.09:

My unerring ability to choose the precise worst place to bed down did not fail me in Gunnison, Colorado. It was starting to get dark, I'd been driving for five hours, crossing the Rockies, the last leg with a semi on my ass, just trying to make Gunnison....Come on...come on....Mission finally accomplished, I turned down a street at random and found a big empty lot bordering a big empty field and some kind of public building on the side. Cool. Public land. I felt entitled to allow my vehicle to occupy a tiny rectangle of it as I am a member of the public.

Feeling let down and low at having accomplished little in Taos, and mental turmoil roiling my brain, it took hours for me to drift off. Almost immediately, it seemed, the car and me found ourselves in a mixing bowl, with the air being pounded and churned by a helicopter descending over our heads. I'd managed to choose a heliport by a hospital for a bed. Great. It landed. Took off. Another came. By then I was feeling very conspicuous indeed so I skulked off at the first opportunity and drove around what, by the size of the abodes, was a very well-to-do neighborhood. Better and better, Pamela. Add to the scenario that it was dark as , making me feel like a thief in the night casing the homes of more model citizens than me and all that was needed to complete the picture was a cop on my tail, who obligingly arrived almost at once.

I rolled down the window, squinted up at him, and smiled.

"You were weaving and you failed to signal when you turned right back there," he said.

It's fucking 3:30 in the morning dude and I was driving 10 miles an hour. And your streets are as wide as ing Costco lots back home. I totally deny I was weaving.

All I said was, "I'm lost."

"Where you headed?"

We did a little nonverbal negotiation behind the surface chat. He took my license, cut me a break, told me where I could get gas at 3:30 in the morning, advised me to get the hell out of Dodge, and then allowed me to drift back onto the streets of Gunnison in my slow, vague way.

Despite his warning to get out of town, it was too dark and I was emotionally incapable. So I went to the gas station he told me to go to, pulled up to the "free air," pulled the blanket over me and waited for light...

Well, all right now...

OTheRLog 9:

Saturday, 08.22.09:

The places that nurture 'soul,' that sustain sanity and foster calm, don't exist yet. The places that tend that way are the ones left to the wildlife, or the life as close to 'wild' as can be in the midst of insanity.

They're predicting it to hit a hundred here in Central Utah so I drove into Salina looking for inconspicuous shade. I have to admit I've never gotten over the loss of the trees. Mountains standing bare and exposed as a baby's bottom bring out the grief in me. Driving down an unpaved back road, the land was drier than it needed to be. There were some bottom-heavy birds, scurrying brown bowling pins, who hurried across the road. I asked a couple walking what they were and was told, "Chuckers" [I think], partridges."

There were three horses watching the road, so close I decided to get a picture. But just as I was about to try a truck drove up and suddenly it got all their attention. A man got out.

"You can come up here," he said.

He let me take pictures of his horses from his yard. They were the prettiest things. One was 30 years old, he said. His mother had fed her with a bottle after her mother died.

"That's not an easy thing to do," he said.

He told me a little about his life. He's in the National Guard and so now an Iraq Veteran. It was hard. He couldn't wait to get home. He and his twin brother were in the same unit and his brother was hurt.

He didn't grow his own food! I was surprised by that. He grew corn for the market, and a grain crop, but mainly he lived by raising and selling cattle. He pointed out the work horse who he'd trained to herd.

"They have it easy now. They're lovin' it." But soon the cows would have to be gathered in, have babies...

He sells them but he won't eat them.

"I couldn't. They're my friends," he said.

But when I gave him a book the connection broke....

...We gotta fix this thing.

...make us know it.

OTheRLog 10:

Sunday, 08.23.09:

My blogs are blocked in Delta! What can it mean?...

For the first time ever I nestled in a Chamber of Commerce...last night...well, just outside. The winds are fearsome, the clouds dense with water that they refuse to let go of. Boxes are tumbling and sliding down the street. Their owner dutifully goes to collect the one he can catch, the other saw its chance to escape and took it. A tiny black dog is running so fast I thought at first he was a black bag blown by the wind.

The whole car shakes.

I'm gonna go to Myles Horton for help on how to heal this thing...

...or you?...

Maybe you have the answer?...

...part of it?

Well, all right now...

OTheRLog 11:

Monday, 08.24.09:

In almost every town I visited there were few physical -- though plenty of institutional -- barriers to using the libraries and post offices. But in Berkeley, "home of free speech," it feels as if there's a concerted effort to make access difficult.

The large parking lots typical elsewhere convey a welcome, an invitation to come on in. You might have to stand in line, or wait to get a machine, but you don't have to worry about being hit with a fine for your trouble.

My first day back on home turf I visited a local branch and found, like just about everywhere in Berk-Oak-SF, parking restrictions.

I was basking in the warm glow of a complimentary organic frittata breakfast because the woman behind the counter turned out to be a neighbor who wanted to say "thank you" for planting the traffic circle -- so I noted the annoyance of a meter-gate more than felt it. When it took my quarter without registering it, I gave it a smack, shook it, considered kicking it. Finally I stuck a bag over it, wrote on the bag that the evil cone-head was broke, and went on in to the library. All I needed was five minutes to get my card number. That's all it took for me to return to a ticket on the windshield. On it the meter person noted that the meter was not broken.

Thirty-five of my limited bucks.

Now most folks can't take the time to knock their heads against brick walls but...it pisses me off...The callous dismissal to all claims to solidarity...the wanton willingness to blow chill winds...it pisses me off.

...make us know it.

OTheRLog 12:

Tuesday, 08.25.09:

I thought of Juan yet again as I sat waiting in the city's Finance Center. Juan was the journeyman who told me that when he looks at buildings he worked on he thinks, "That one got my back. That one my elbow." Well, this one got my lungs. I roto-hammered and set anchors in ancient concrete in its bowels, and on the third and fourth floors -- a lower-bracket apprentice task. I was too slow to warrant anything else my entire apprenticeship.

Steve, another JW I worked with, loved to make everyone around him feel good, lighten our loads. There's always a couple angels like him on every job who love to crack jokes, tell stories, make you laugh...

So he said to me one day: "One journeyman is talking to another, "You know, I think sex is 25% work and 75% fun."

The other one replies, "Uh uh, sex is 75% work and 25% fun."

An apprentice walks up and they turn to him, "Hey Joe, what do you think? He says sex is 25% work and 75% fun, and I say sex is 75% work and 25% fun. What do you say?"

The apprentice thinks about it for a second and then says, "I say sex is 100% fun..."

They stare at him.

"...cuz if there was any work in it you'd have me do it."

Apprentices know about hard work.

Journeymen know about solidarity.

...Bob, you better be alright, cuz if you're not, I'm gonna be so mad at you.

Well, all right now...

OTheRLog 13:

Wednesday, 08.26.09:

I noticed, waiting with my number in the Finance Center, that except for one other woman, all the other people grabbing numbers were UC-Berkeley students, there to get parking passes. They radiated youthful power and optimism.

Confident. Cocky. Ready to bend the available social forces to their will. These are the 'knowledge workers' of tomorrow, I thought. Did even a one harbor a sliver of doubt?

Impossible to know, but it didn't seem so -- not because they were all 'white.' Myles Horton was 'white.' Yet he thought of himself as "part of a minority group." He never identified with "the system."

How do we break the allegiance with "the system"?

How do we build an alternative allegiance?

Well, all right now...

OTheRLog 14:

Thursday, 08.27.09:

I've decided to experiment with the "bedroom vehicle" concept while my son claims the house for his own.

Given there are no Great Communal Halls where I can go recharge my batteries (physical and psychic) this presents new challenges (physical and psychic).

I'm swimming in a set of assumptions at odds with the one in my head and when the two collide I'm staggered in my strokes, cast adrift...dead in the water for a moment (or more).

...or more...

I use Waking Up as a pep-talk...to remind myself...there's a point in here somewhere.

Well, all right now...

OTheRLog 15:

Saturday, 08.29.09:

It's a disquieting thing looking at a social arrangement from the outside...

...and when you're not caught in it you are...outside.

Even though you know, intellectually, that this system is really a big plate and everyone on it is dinner, when you're rolling around on that plate at least you have company.

You belong. You have a point...or you tell yourself you do.

Fromm nailed it when he said that the absolute failure to overcome human separateness means insanity...

...I've joined the ranks of the wanderers, and there are many of us in America...no fixed abode, living in our vehicles...or on the streets...

..."round and round and round we go but not merrily."

"Who owns you?"

If you're unable to answer this question with "these banks and those bosses," then you could be trying to own yourself.

-- No, no, no, that will never do.

Whether you're an individual or a small nation -- like St. Kitts -- capital wants to annihilate that option...(hell, even the ability to think that option.)

...round and round and round we go...

...make us know it.

OTheRLog 16:

Sunday, 08.30.09:

If you're a parent out there -- of a young person -- consider the choices your child or children face:

...to be the 'knowledge worker' or cannon fodder of tomorrow.

Future 'knowledge workers' are baited with the message "you're special," with the allure of being 'elite,' with a ticket to an 'up-scale' tribe...

...but the price tag is complicity with Division -- their willingness to renounce a future in which all are free to pursue their visions, their tribes.

These thoughts occur because I'm in a town locked down by UC - Berkeley. I'm sitting by a laughable "artistic' display: a depressing 'fountain' of pipes jutting out of concrete, a painted 'stained'-plastic, concrete-accented story-wall that a five-year-old's inspirations would surpass in substance.

We are given groomed lawns and orchestrated 'experiences' as a substitute for communion with the 'all of it'...as a substitute for living in freedom on our earth...

We are being told in no uncertain terms that all our so-called rulers want from us...

...is to sit down, shut up, and do what we're told...

...and, of course, to betray our brothers and sisters.

It doesn't have to go that way...

...we could...refuse.

...make us know it.

* OTheRLog 20:

Wednesday (2), 09.02.09: [see also...The Last Civil Rights Movement]

What am I missing?

How do we help the planet restore itself to balance without moving beyond a system defined by the relentless pursuit of "imbalance?"

And how do we move beyond a system defined by the relentless pursuit of "imbalance" without building a mass movement demanding it?

And how do we build a mass movement unless we address that core emptiness that is the legacy of always being bossed...and never being free...

...that is the legacy of the systematic assault on 'Life' by a Death-worshiping system?

And how do we address our core emptiness and move beyond a non-culture that worships 'Death' unless we declare and affirm that there is another way...that... we are not meant to be slaves?

These are always my questions when I hear about the next "best way" to "save the planet."

Unless the next best way is: "don't work or shop for one day; let our collective power register in your consciousness; do it again; then again; begin growing the NEW world in the dying husk of the old..." *

...Unless you say this...your goal is not to "save the planet," but rather to save capitalism...

...and for who?...who benefits from a system defined by: "use it up, throw it out, stroke the egos of the few and let the rest grow tumors...in their souls and other major organs..."

...Who benefits from this mess we've accommodated ourselves to? Why are some so determined to save it?

The reality is...the only way to achieve balance, for the planet or for ourselves, is to stop feeding Death and move on...to Life...to Freedom -- real Freedom. If each of us lives in balance, then the planet can live in balance...and the only way for each of us individually to achieve balance is to end wage work...

...Time to move on...

...make us know it.

OTheRLog 22:

Saturday, 9.05.09:

For several days I hovered in Farmington, New Mexico on my way to Taos.

It suffered badly from the "payday-loan virus" -- there were ugly eruptions on almost every corner.

I felt comfortable, though, in Farmington, with the folks. 'Gritty,' "working class," 'down-to-earth,' feels familiar to a Detroit transplant...

I sensed the cultural influence of the First Folks in the deliberate, considerate manner of the people who provided directions and help.

The size and beauty of the library surprised me. I wouldn't have guessed the tax base would support it. When I broached the subject with one of the librarians her face closed. It was a sore point. I found out the bosses are talking cut-backs...

City planners asked the people: "What features matter most to you?"

And the people replied:

"Blending of indoors and outdoors; traditional and modern; antiquity and contemporary..."

"...It should reflect cultural diversity...and the history of the area..."

"...There should be open spaces...quiet places...private spaces..."

"...Social gathering spaces..."

"...Bigger restrooms...with changing tables..."

"...A park-like setting..."

"...Surprises..."

And the city planners asked the people to take on the debt, and they did.

"The building was designed to be completely expandable in every direction. On an average day the library gets more use than all other city facilities combined." It's twice the size of the old library...

...You know those sci-fi plots where creatures from another planet study us to learn what a human is, hide among us, turn as many of us into them as they can, then eliminate the rest and take the land?

...make us know it.

OTheRLog 23:

Sunday, 09.06.09:

In my wanderings around the book-storage, awaiting my turn at the wheel, I glanced at the twenty-five cent books, and there, on the bottom shelf, very well-preserved and plump, sat George Eliot.

It was her Middlemarch, a novel four years at least in the making. Nine hundred pages, perhaps thirty-five thousand hours -- obviously priceless...so it's fitting to find it essentially free.

"Reduce no human spirit to disgrace of price." (Would we all took that advice.)

I've forgotten the book -- I was a youngster when I read it -- so now I can discover it again.

But there's one quote in it I never forgot...a quote I've carried around in my pocket like a totem...or a talisman, rubbed smooth from the fingering:

1st Gent. Where lies the power, there let the blame lie too.

2nd Gent. Nay, power is relative; you cannot fright

The coming pest with border fortresses,

Or catch your carp with subtle argument.

All force is twain in one: cause is not cause

Unless effect be there; and action's self

Must needs contain a passive. So command

Exists but with obedience.

"Cause is not cause unless effect be there..." -- You can yank my chain but that don't mean I'll move.

"Command exists but with obedience." -- A mirror that reveals both ways: 'Power' and 'powerless' is a politics we can either choose to co-sign...or refuse...

In Waking Up I argue that 'Power' is a closed circle and that the "Mr. Smith Virus" -- the capacity of the system to turn everything into itself -- closes the circle. And I argue that the only cure for the Mr. Smith Virus is consciousness, joined with a will to action...and that joined with others who agree.

Without consciousness (or, I also argue, without theory) how do you know what to make of anything?

For instance...'Big Beautiful Libraries'..."good," right?

...or...

'Turning Devastated Earthscapes Into Gardens'..."good," right?

...'UrbanFarming.org'..."must be good," right?

And when Big Bucks backs it? "So, what?" right?

Except..."good" is not "good" unless Goodness be there.

...Love.

Love and 'Power' mutually negate.

And Money is 'Power' in its liquid state.

...make us know it.

OTheRLog 25:

Tuesday, 09.08.09:

First of all...it cannot be a crime to sleep in your vehicle...

We will need bedroom vehicles to weather this storm.

Bringing this issue to your community...working to abolish such ordinances...is work for our future freedom.

Second of all...we will need to explain to our fellow 'workers' (including the police) what we are doing...and why...

...If you can 'cause' donations, I can send more books. Giving one is a way to say what we are doing...and why....

Third of all...

...Support for this movement needs to be vocal...so we can find ourselves...and offer hugs...

...make us know it.

**OTheRLog 26:

Wednesday, 09.09.09 and Tuesday, 10.06.09:

We need to embrace the coming 'poverty'...

...make it 'cool' to live light...

...honor those who've become experts at it...

The only way we can get around the way they've divided us all up...

...is to embrace across the categories...

...Yesterday, sitting in the Bedroom Vehicle, waiting...I watched two young brothers, two African-American youth, one outfitted in student gear -- crisp clothes, cell phone, unconquerable air of confidence -- as he strode by, the world at his feet.

Passing him in the other direction, was a black youth who seemed almost shell-shocked, walking with a kind of slouch, a hesitant body-language that was full of questions: "why?", "what?", "where?", and "how?

Questions fuel this movement...

We need more people following questions consciously...

... willing to go where they lead.

...Here's two I hope we'll put up front, on the State's slippery off-angle table:

How much money, do you think, does a City allocate to keeping the Cautionary Tale Of The 'Homeless' all healthy and blooming? Has anyone done the math? – totaled up the police time and "homeless services" and "mental health services" and "social work services" and "sanitation work services" and "housing stipends" and "food stamps" and...

...And how much money, do you think, would it take to seize abandoned land, pay for the bulldozer, bring in the tossed tires and empty cans, pay Michael Reynolds to send architects and trainers, invite those willing to take part in building earthships and growing food to claim the project and the land?...

See:The Last Civil Rights Movement

...make us know it.

***** OTheRLog 27:

Friday, 09.11.09:

[...The Ruses Used To Rend Us]

When I studied martial arts I was told that a 'black belt' meant "death of the ego." In our culture of invisibility that is a lofty goal indeed.

Virginia Woolf once said that what is essential to maintain sanity is "ridicule, censure, and contempt" -- which means that wanderers, contrary to the official story, may be the sanest among us, 'black belts' in "seeing reality." (We certainly get more than our fair share of contempt.)

...Patterns reveal themselves more clearly to wanderers. What seems mere happenstance at home is revealed by its repetition place to place as an organized plan.

And while podrunk panderers are paid to pounce on patterns, the better for them to plan with, they don't feel them in their bodies as self-made wanderers do...

...make us know it.

****** OTheRLog 28:

Monday, 09.14.09:

[..."The Responsibility Of The Intellectual" ]

It's been raining here in Berkeley -- almost unprecedented for a September -- overcast and cool. The alternator has been slackin' so the single panel's been struggling with nothing to back it...forcing me into cafes for my caffeine...forcing me to actually engage on this issue that has consumed me...

...discuss...interact...

...Today's cafe-conversation turned out to be with someone I know. It was nice seeing a friendly face walk in. It's been years since I last saw Sarah Crowell -- dancer, activist, "thinker" -- Artistic Director of Destiny Arts Center here in Oakland.

I was sitting pondering the problem that the voices of "everyday folks" don't get heard. Talking with her sharpened my frustration. Compared to the continuously recycling thoughts I hear even on the progressive airwaves, * her analysis and our discussion felt so invigorating...

...and relevant to what matters most to me: "how do we heal this thing?"

When Sarah said that there has to be some "flow" in an analysis, I knew exactly what she meant...and I felt myself relax...

"The people" speak in terms of "flow," "movement," "inter-penetrating Spirit"...

..."the people" speak in terms of "mystery," "compassion"...

..."the people" speak in terms of "Love."

"Did you read the Julia Butterfly Hill book?" Sarah asked.

"No."

"She tells this story about her scariest night in the redwood. There was a storm and the wind was so strong she thought she would be blown out of the tree. In her fear, she gripped the tree as tight as she could, until she felt the tree say, 'Let go.' Not 'let go of the limb' but 'let go of fear.' She says she 'became One with the tree.' She started moving with the tree."

"It was an epiphany."

Sarah thinks we are experiencing this epiphany on a society-wide scale. "We are entering the mystery," she said. "'Compassion' is the final piece of human understanding."

The missing piece that the people know and the pundits fear to play...is Love.

This is not a 'knowing' rooted in any one race -- Myles Horton, Pete Seeger, Utah Phillips all know it -- but it does seem rooted in a willingness to join spirits with that which 'the system' treats with contempt.

So schooled in the mythology of "Abstract Thought," so conditioned to worship "Mind," to hide behind the Academic Mask, afraid to show their faces, hands, and hearts...they forfeit that turf to the podrunks, who well know how passionate are the people, ** how hungry for feeling, for caring, and love...

...for authenticity and truth.

For honesty...'honest' in the sense that the earth is 'honest'...because it can be nothing else...

*I think we need better from our pundits. This is discussed in: "The Responsibility Of The Intellectual."

** The podrunks feel about "the people" the way Edmund (in King Lear) felt about his "credulous father" and "foolish brother"..."on whose foolish honesty my practices ride easy!"

...make us know it.

OTheRLog 31:

Friday, 09.18.09:

A couple days ago I received an interesting email from a supportive fellow scribbler, in the course of which he asked: "...I discern the distinct voices of the Situationists, no?"

No.

In Waking Up I tried to thank everyone I could think of who gave to me unstintingly..all the shining spirits who shined on me when I was able to absorb the rays.

... As I've said, I believe in honoring the ancestors...and the Great Commons of Creation overall...living and dead...pulsing and...

...humming.

And as I meditate with George Eliot this imperative is brought home again...at the very least because...

...unless we commune with the ancestors, how can we realize how truly prosaic, how well-and-truly-trod, stretched out and knocked about, are our "fresh and original" thoughts?...

...And how will we avoid being duped by phony praise designed only to keep us busy for a lifetime...

...so we will overlook the obvious?

[Witness George's words in: To Live And Die A Slave]

...make us know it.

***OTheRLog 32:

Monday, 09.21.09:

It's a chill morning, though they're predicting heat,

Waiting between surf and still

For the sudden sweet

Breaking smile

That swarms the sullen beach.

* In thinking about...The Power-Down Implications Of The Right To Shelter, I say "no fixed abode" because now that I've been wandering awhile I feel less 'homeless' than that I'm "Claiming The Opens."

"Claiming The Opens" ultimately means "claiming the 'all' of it" -- the full complex of our possibilities.

One of the things I've learned is that radical redefinition is not only necessary for psychic survival -- but harbors more truth than this 'reality' we're given.

I think the times call for radical re-definition...and that what's going on now, with so many people trying to figure this thing out -- this problem of how to get past this mess called 'capitalism' -- is that we are growing, as we speak, ...The Last Civil Rights Movement.

...make us know it.

** OTheRLog 33:

Tuesday, 09.22.09:

So how to get to the point, as a nation, where each of us knows that every day we must do something, however small, that points to freedom?...

...or, at the least, commit to putting our bodies in seats at least four times a year when the issue of a "power-down plan that frees human energy" (The Power-Down Implications Of The Right To Shelter) is raised?

I believe our pundits could play an important role... that they have a responsibility to advocate for our future freedom without bosses. See: "The Responsibility Of The Intellectual."

...And I believe that once we, within the cities (which the podrunks now want back) can see "The Communal Alternative", more and more of us will be drawn to it...

...make us know it.

** OTheRLog 35:

Saturday, 09.26.09:

When I was in Taos, New Mexico, a bookstore owner heard me out while I pitched the book. He was friendly and supportive, said he would read it, but before I left told me, "I have to be honest with you, I haven't had much luck with things that are free. People will take it but they don't value it."

I'm in that low place where children and social invisibles frequently find themselves when they attempt to speak and are forced to notice they don't really exist.

A week or so ago I gave the book to a man from Ghana who frequents the same cafe I do. Grizzled, red-eyed and loquacious, a man-of-the-world, well-traveled and read, he seemed the sort who would read it...

...I never offer it, however, without explaining what it's about, what I'm about, and without saying, "If it's not your cup of tea, just leave it in a library for someone else to find."

...continued at: "You Got City Hands Mr. Hooper"

...make us know it.

OTheRLog 38:

Tuesday, 09.29.09:

Having gone back to the bit of Bay where my squirrel friends lay, hidden among the rocks. I called and called, but none came. Had I let the gap between visits stretch too long?

It was overcast, and chill had descended with the damp.

...Finally a lone tree squirrel responded.... My friend. The one who'd tried to nose up the hatch. I know it was him because he unhesitatingly leapt on the moist bumper...and slid right off. So I tossed his peanut down. He ate it. And another. And another.

The fourth he took and ran with.

Wise squirrel.

Winter's on the way and he's planning ahead.

It was a small and brief communion but enough to alert the gulls...who see all.

But this time I'd planned ahead and had food for them too. Bread. "Organic." With seeds.

Soon every gull within their mysterious range had settled concentrically. The inner circle, stronger, world-wise but not weary, and the outer, younger, less skilled, less confident.

But there was an exception in the inside group. He was large enough and mature enough to carry his weight among their rank, but his left foot was injured, badly, and he could but hop about.

Now I'd watched their ways, their give-no-quarter, seize-it-or-grieve-for-it ways, so I silently sent sympathy, knowing he'd get nary a one.

I was wrong.

The bread I tossed to him the others let him have.

...make us know it.

*** OTheRLog 39:

Thursday, 10.01.09: Site was down.

...Friday, 10.02.09: (See: "Wading Into The Muck Of State")

With the Nascence website down, all day yesterday (October 1st) -- for reasons unknown as they didn't answer the phone -- I felt adrift, like a baby seeking its mother's eyes who can't find her.

So I drifted disoriented into the dark chambers of state, a macabre experience with statuary all round that nonetheless speaks, and even smiles, as they know humans often do.

When I go to one of these state-sponsored charades I usually end up railing, but it's the whole system I'm railing at. A system that sucks all you got, stomping on your raw flesh as it walks over you...

A single person can do nothing but note "for the record:" "You are screwing us...per usual..."

...make us know it.

*** OTheRLog 40:

Monday, 10.05.09:

The idea 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, I make pit-stops at...what I hope will one day be a 'neighborhood anchor'...

...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.

Yesterday, I saw a different gull from the one I saw last week (OTheRLog 38) -- its entire foot was gone...

...and it received the same brotherly love I saw in them then...

...Continued at: Seeing The Communal Alternative

...make us know it.

OTheRLog 41:

Tuesday, 10.06.09:

I couldn't have anticipated what this feels like...to live a life of "thought." Perhaps you're already living it and it's your 'normal.' But I've always had to live 'between-the-chains,' to wedge "thought" into the narrow space between the directives.

To let 'thought' wander unpressured was, until now, something unknown.

The words to describe it haven't come yet....Maybe Middlemarch will provide them...

...I think it matters because if we can't describe it, how will others be willing to try it?...

...It feels like many things:

...bogglement...anger...being 'light'... being 'other'...

...But the one thing that it could be, but is not yet, that would collapse all the others into it is...community...

...Choosing a NEW way, on our own terms (to the degree we can name them while this dis-ease breathes) is important because through it we can prepare ourselves, and help prepare others, for the manufactured crises as they build, unfold, deepen...

...as more and more of us are touched by them, pulled into them...

...Choosing a NEW way that will enable us to forestall despair by being prepared...with our radical redefinitions...with our solidarity...and love.

...make us know it.

**** OTheRLog 44:

Friday, 10.09.09:

If I had encountered this message ("wage work is a con"), this analysis ("only a mass movement to end wage work will unseat 'Power'"), when my son was small, would I have changed things in my life?

I think about this a lot -- I try to put myself in that body, that head...of my young, single-mom self.

I think about the jobs I worked, post-Welfare...how I strove to distinguish myself, 'prove' my 'worth'...

...How fear drove me forward ("how feed my child without the paycheck?")...

...How the inherent human 'longing' to 'figure things out' and 'make things' plugged into those external dictates (that become internal) to "work harder!," "faster!"...

...How 'speed' made me feel like I was accomplishing something...fed by and feeding that manufactured need to "prove my worth"...

....continued at: Re: Becoming The Function (How The Job Is The Booster Shot)

...make us know it.

OTheRLog 45:

Saturday, 10.10.09:

Our local semi-free community paper regularly hosts arguments about which 'land-for-housing-use' has a smaller "carbon footprint." Communication between the two sides of this debate is generally not the point...

..as they talk different languages...

...host different images on their retinas...

...that sometimes twist and shift, depending on what they're trying to see in the mirror.

...it might be dollar-signs, or green villages, or "cleansed streets," or...

The ones that worship dollar-signs are the most transparent.

Their canines gleam despite their "Best Effort At Concealment."

The green-skin cloaks not at all as they input numbers in their plausible-argument-machine.

But the scramble to secure a larger slice of the "poisoned pie" is misguided (intentionally, of course).

We need better guides...only found by segueing from the race...pausing along the way to hear the earth speak in our bodies...

...and fueling whatever we do with what we hear.

...There really is a reality beyond "Fresh Mischief."

...make us know it.

OTheRLog 47:

Wednesday, 10.14.09:

That they were some time to be engaged had long been an idea in her mind; and ideas, we know, tend to a more solid kind of existence, the necessary materials being at hand. It is true, Lydgate had the counter idea of remaining unengaged; but this was a mere negative, a shadow cast by other resolves which themselves were capable of shrinking. Circumstances was almost sure to be on the side of Rosamond's idea, which had a shaping activity and looked through watchful blue eyes, whereas Lydgate's lay blind and unconcerned as a jelly-fish which gets melted without knowing it. (George Eliot, Middlemarch)

'We-who-do-the-work' -- currently "a mere negative" -- will soon become the jelly-fish that knows it's being melted...

...and directly from there ("do not pass 'go'") to "an heroic positive"...

...with all our relations intact...whole...one.

[...later...]

...Some days I feel more conspicuous, more 'other,' than others....

Last night as I was settling in for sleep a man swam by in a 4-wheel cycle with a multi-colored lights-display...

...that he rowed...rowed...rowed...like a boat...

...and I gave thanks for being in my Bedroom Vehicle in Berkeley, where 'other' is...almost...welcome.

...make us know it.

*** OTheRLog 50:

Tuesday, 10.20.09:

"Complicity's both the penalty and the reward"...

...The challenge then...

...To unmask the phony 'reward'...

...strip the false sweetness....

....make the pretence impossible....

The only way to expose 'complicity' is to counter it with something vastly more attractive –

Good Fellowship.

...

**

...I don't know if anyone's out there...but...I'm gonna take my own advice....

...and trust....

...So I'll continue processing my days...

...and nights....

...but I'll also follow two tracks, two lines of thought – in hopes of furthering focused 'figuring-out' –

Unmasking Complicity's False Sweetness and Countering Complicity With Good Fellowship.

...and then we'll see how it all plays out. [Forgive the fits and starts – I'm finding it hard to write with the computer screen not in front of me...]

...make us know it.

OTheRLog 55:

.Tuesday, 11.10.09:

...We'll have to adjust our 'figuring-out' to the dictated terms of the hidden malevolence – as suggested in this ...correspondence with Sister Joan:

"I traveled recently to Taos, New Mexico to try – unsuccessfully as it turned out – to meet with Michael Reynolds, the creator of the Earthship. The drive there and back (revealing certain patterns) proved illustrative and troubling – specifically the fact that "the banks" are financing the beautification of urban areas – urban gardens, libraries, landscaping – while simultaneously finessing the removal of low-income people from those areas – through debt. I asked you about land ownership because I'm convinced that developing and extending communal (in perpetuity) land ownership is critical if we are to achieve our broad social justice goals, insuring that no one is left 'on their own, alone.' I personally am convinced that we need a mass movement to unseat 'Power.'"

...organized on our own terms...

...as opposed to those given us by "the job."

Once dissent is corralled into "a job"...it's dead. We don't notice for a while, but we find out in time...forty years on...

...oh, but wait, that's right, we don't have forty years – we dark-skinned Declared Expendables.

How long, do you suppose, do we have?

(See: "Are We Innocent When We Dream?")

...make us know it.

OTheRLog 56:

Thursday, 11.12.09:

There's a black bag that inhabits a corner of a parking lot where I sometimes sit. It's hemmed in by a high wall, a chain-link fence and a determined west wind.

Each week I expect it to be gone. Each week it's there.

I suppose I should pick it up...but...

...I find myself...

...curious about its fate...

...its determined hanging-on...

...to its little space.

...make us know it.

OTheRLog 62:

Saturday, 11.28.09:

"...in poor Rosamond's mind there was not room enough for luxuries to look small in." (George Eliot)

...embracing the coming 'poverty' – a strategy offered for consideration in Waking Up, The Plan, Pt. 13 – starts with appreciating the wealth within our powerful frames...

...extending well beyond...

...the pats on the head they teach us to pant after...

...

...now this is quite in accordance with Fromm's urging of the development of the 'self' – which will find earth enough to till in its backyard without having to venture far....

Concentration is by far more difficult to practice in our culture, in which everything seems to act against the ability to concentrate....[T]o be able to concentrate means to be able to be alone with oneself – and this ability is precisely a condition for the ability to love....[T]he main condition for the achievement of love is the overcoming of one's narcissism. the narcissistic orientation is one in which one experiences as real only that which exists within oneself, while the phenomena in the outside world have no reality in themselves, but are experienced only from the viewpoint of their being useful or dangerous to one.... (Erich Fromm)

She said to her own irremediable grief, that it should make her more helpful, instead of driving her back from effort....The objects of her rescue were not to be sought out by her fancy: they were chosen for her. She yearned towards the perfect Right, that it might make a throne within her, and rule her errant will. 'What should I do – how should I act now, this very day if I could clutch my own pain, and compel it to silence, and think of those three!'

It had taken long for her to come to that question, and there was light piercing into the room....Far off in the bending sky was the pearly light; and she felt the largeness of the world and the manifold wakings of men to labour and endurance. She was a part of that involuntary, palpitating life, and could neither look out on it from her luxurious shelter as a mere spectator, nor hide her eyes in selfish complaining. (George Eliot)

Discussed in: The Responsibility Of The Intellectual

...make us know it.

OTheRLog 63:

Sunday, 11.29.09 and Tuesday, 12.08.09:

What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?... (George)

...People glorify all sorts of bravery except the bravery they might show on behalf of their nearest neighbors.... (George again)

* 12.08.09 Addendum:

Ethics...is inseparable from reason....Furthermore, ethics...is based on the principle that no institution and no thing is higher than any human individual; that the aim of life is to unfold man's love and reason and that every other human activity has to be subordinated to this aim. How then can ethics be a significant part of a life in which the individual becomes an automaton, in which he serves the big It? Furthermore, how can conscience develop when the principle of life is conformity? Conscience, by its very nature is nonconforming; it must be able to say no, when everybody else says yes; in order to say this "no" it must be certain in the rightness of the judgment on which the no is based. To the degree to which a person conforms he cannot hear the voice of his conscience, much less act upon it. Conscience exists only when man experiences himself as man, not as a thing, as a commodity.

...[There does exist] another quasi ethical code, that of fairness. ..You do not lie, cheat or use force – you even give the other person a chance – if you act according to the code of fairness. But to love your neighbor, to feel one with him, to devote your life to the aim of developing your spiritual powers, is not part of the fairness ethics. We live in a paradoxical situation: we practice fairness ethics, and profess Christian ethics. Must we not stumble over this obvious contradiction? Obviously, we do not stumble. (Erich Fromm, The Sane Society, p. 172-3)

"This reduced sense of reality accounts not only for a reduced sense of responsibility but also for the absence of effective volition....The reduced sense of responsibility and the absence of effective volition in turn explain the ordinary citizen's ignorance and lack of judgment in matters of domestic and foreign policy which are if anything more shocking in the case of educated people...Information is plentiful and readily available. But this does not seem to make any difference. Nor should we wonder at it....[Initiative] comes from immediate responsibility....The democratic method is that institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people's vote." (Joseph A. Schumpeter, quoted in Erich Fromm, The Sane Society, p. 187-8 )

Of course individuals cannot struggle competitively for the people's vote. It is only by organizing themselves into networks that the pretenders to rule maneuver themselves into proprietary positions over military / machines / and media.

[Initiative] comes from immediate responsibility – an important insight, through which we see more clearly the most important function of the state: to kill our will to run things ourselves.

Discussed in: Wading Into The Muck Of State

Pity the laden one; this wandering woe

May visit you and me. (George Eliot)

...make us know it.

OTheRLog 67:

Friday, 12.04.09:

...why can’t we just grow our own food? Why can’t we just do that now?

...why can't we just grow our own world? Why can't we just do that now?

It seems to me it comes down to courage...

...and love...

...and a willingness to believe we are all One...

...and to know that any one among us, given the necessary conditions to grow, is 'power' enough to build a thousand 'worlds'...

– for to believe that to be so means a commitment to manifest the world that makes it so...

So 'courage' is a gateway quality of mind, really, that may unlatch subsequent acts that 'mind' fears may undermine what says "safe", and "sure", and "constant" around one – the absence of which 'mind' fears may mean...

....

...what do you think?

Re: Seeing The Communal Alternative

...make us know it.

OTheRLog 68:

Sunday & Monday, 12.06-07.09:

Our bodies, in our own eyes (unconsciously), have become instruments, tools, for the performance of functions. (See: Becoming The Function: How The Job Is The Booster Shot)

I've been thinking about this today because I keep hearing people say, "I haven't been productive."

Fromm (in The Sane Society describes the underlying psychological structure of capitalism as alienation because:

...man does not experience himself as the active bearer of his own powers and richness, but as an impoverished "thing," dependent on powers outside of himself, unto whom he has projected his living substance....Alienation as we find it in modern society is almost total; it pervades the relationship of man to his work, to the things he consumes, to the state, to his fellow man, and to himself. Man has created a world of man-made things as it never existed before. He has constructed a complicated social machine to administer the technical machine he built. Yet this whole creation of his stands over and above him. He does not feel himself as a creator and center, but as the servant of a Golem, which his hands have built. The more powerful and gigantic the forces are which he unleashes, the more powerless he feels himself as a human being. He confronts himself with his own forces embodied in things he has created, alienated from himself. He is owned by his own creation, and has lost ownership of himself.

In a trade mag I sometimes try to read I find the following:

I think many of us would agree there are real benefits to creating an intelligent or connected building – one that features a building automation system that interconnects subsystems such as fire, security, access control, lighting, communications, HVAC, and power, through a common communications backbone. But the ultimate success of these sophisticated systems relies on the people who operate and maintain them.

What happens after these systems are installed? Are the individuals in charge of operating and maintaining them given the time to really comprehend their full-blown features? Of course not. They learn the basic functions they need to survive and move on to other more important tasks at hand. The problem arises when something goes wrong or needs to be modified....Although they're not inexpensive, I believe these so-called Smart Buildings are worth our time and effort. They promise better energy control, enhanced management capability, enriched communications systems, and improved comfort for occupants. But the key to their ultimate success is [that] the systems and components within them must be monitored and managed properly after installation....[The people who operate them] must believe in the commissioning and recommissioning process. If they don't, then widespread adoption of smart building designs is going to be a long and painful process. (Michael Eby, EC&M, November, 2009)

But one of our ancestors (Tolstoy) asks?

Machines – to produce what? The telegraph – to despatch what? Books, papers – to spread what kind of news? Railways – to go to whom and to what place? Millions of people herded together and subject to a supreme power – to accomplish what ? Hospitals, physicians, dispensaries in order to prolong life – for what? How easily do individuals as well as whole nations take their own so-called civilization as the true civilization: finishing one's studies, keeping one's nails clean, using the tailor's and the barber's services, travelling abroad, and the most civilized man is complete. And with regard to nations: as many railways as possible, academies, industrial works, battleships, forts, newspapers, books, parties, parliaments. Thus the most civilized nation is complete. Enough individuals therefore, as well as nations, can be interested in civilization but not in true enlightenment. The former is easy and meets with approval; the latter requires rigorous efforts and therefore, from the great majority, always meets with nothing but contempt and hatred, for it exposes the lie of civilization.

Fromm argues that the choice before us is one between decentralization or totalitarianism. If everyone you know is not aware that we stand at a crossroads, I hope you will tell them...

...and then facilitate discussions of the world you want –

...followed by planning for how to get there.

The lives of our ancestors provide innumerable stories to help us learn – in time this time – what happens to 'the people' when the plans of 'power' are not checked.

But we must do more than merely check them – we must settle them permanently this time...

...ending even the possibility of conceiving an option of slavery for ourselves, all our relations, and our descendants.

...make us know it.

OTheRLog 69:

Tuesday, 12.08.09: * See above.

...and Thursday, 12.10.09:

Like everyone else I wish I had a Daddy...

...an All-Powerful, All-Knowing, All-Caring...

...Daddy...

...An omniscient Mr. Fix-It...

...Always aware, always there...

...Behind Things...

...Taking in hand the blood-soaked laundry...

...Keeping a hand on the Hellish Helm...

...Defusing the bombs...

...Taking the hits...

...Accepting the risks...

...so I could focus on...

...Me.

But in this struggle For Life, the only way to win it...for everyone...is to systematically build our numbers... where we are...

...Here at the bottom, I can tell you, there are plenty Good Hearts waiting...

...not for Daddies...

...but for Good Fellowship.

The problem is that them that "could manage it, could organize it, could start it"...

"...have never solidly committed [themselves] to a willingness to go with us all the way."

Jamaican man who called in to the radio program World Have Your Say on 12.10.09: "People are paid to complain, we're all aware of that."

12.11.09:

Categories of thought that exclude (by definition) everyday folks the pundits take at face value...

...this explains why pundits need the inspiration of "the grassroots."

Academia squelches independent thought...the capacity to reason...

From: The Responsibility Of The Intellectual, Part 2

...make us know it.

OTheRLog 70:

* Saturday, 12.12.09:

"You never know what events will transpire to bring you home..."

I grew up in predominantly black Detroit, Michigan.

When I went to school I didn't leave it behind, as if irrelevant. It was the fire of my casting and I knew that – intuitively.

I 'knew,' if only unconsciously, that it had taught me some things that were true, sound, and could be built upon. It showed me the possibility of good fellowship – and that we are all in this together.

Continued at: The Responsibility Of The Intellectual, Part 2

And...

Monday, December 14, 2009:

And...if solidarity must (in order to supercede capitalism and usher in a future without coercion of any kind)...

...and if solidarity must be our watchword – across time, culture and nation...

...before we can begin anew, we have some housekeeping chores to do...

...on behalf of all those misused, maligned, dismissed, dissed, abused and refused...

...pushed to the fringes...told we're irrelevant...

...and told that if we dare presume to 'think' it must be in the prescribed categories which molded our enslavement in the first place.

...make us know it.

OTheRLog 71:

Tuesday, 12.15.09:

Man is everywhere in chains, and his chains will not be broken till he feels that it is degrading to be a bondsman, whether to an individual or to a State. The disease of civilization is not so much the material poverty of the many as the decay of the spirit of freedom and self-confidence. The revolt that will change the world will spring, not from the benevolence that breeds "reform," but from the will to be free. Men will act together in the full consciousness of their mutual dependence; but they will act for themselves. Their liberty will not be given them from above; they will take it on their own behalf.

Wage-slavery will exist as long as there is a man or an institution that is the master of men: it will be ended when the workers learn to set freedom before comfort...and because he is resolved to end the industrial system that makes them slaves. (G. D. H. Cole, quoted in The Sane Society)

Nurturance of the soul is essential food – the earth, fire, and fellowship...

...without all these things one washes up on the sparse dry banks of Necessity –

...soul necessity –

...which squeezes our native expansiveness as well as the want of stomach food squeezes our frames.

Fire, alone, lopsides my soul...

...Better than obliviousness for sure....

...but....

...make us know it.

OTheRLog 72:

Wednesday, 12.16.09:

The mentally healthy person is the productive and unalienated person; the person who relates himself to the world lovingly, and who uses his reason to grasp reality objectively; who experiences himself as a unique individual entity, and at the same time feels one with his fellow man; who is not subject to irrational authority, and accepts willingly the rational authority of conscience and reason; who is in the process of being born as long as he is alive, and considers the gift of life the most precious chance he has. (Erich Fromm, The Sane Society)

...I think it's important to remember (and grow) our nature-given gift to think "authentic thoughts" – i.e., those that bloom from our direct experience with nature...as opposed to those automatic thoughts we think when we are thinking the 'Master's' thoughts.

Discussed in: Unmasking Complicity's False Sweetness, "Determinations 8, 9 and 10")

...make us know it.

OTheRLog 73:

Saturday, 12.19.09:

...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...

...What is necessary is an income which will be the basis for a dignified human existence....The existing social-security system must be extended to a universal subsistence guarantee....Each individual can act as a free and responsible agent only if one of the main reasons for present-day un-freedom is abolished: the economic threat of starvation which forces people to accept working conditions which they would other wise not accept. There will be no freedom as long as the owner of capital can enforce his will on the man who owns "only" his life, because the latter, being without capital, has no work except what the capitalist offers him. (Erich Fromm, The Sane Society)

A universal, guaranteed minimum income sounds like a good (necessary) transitional (intermediate) step to our future freedom, and would be, no doubt, if there were no problem of 'Power.'

Except...

...Even if 'Power' had been 'legally' bound but a residual mindset of 'passive obedience' / Hierarchy / Division / Mind-Worship, remained...

...an active countering of that mindset with an oppositional value-system based in reverence would be essential to prevent that mindset from self-replicating. Of course, in reality, this mindset is just the ideological expression of 'Power,' i.e. of a system based on limited access to the goodies and the coercive, unequal imposition of 'work'...

...and 'Power' cannot be superceded without simultaneously uprooting its mindset (and vice versa)...

...so...forthwith...

...time to break old habits...

...time to live non-consent...

...time to dare to be different...

...one must not forget that the very idea of majority vote lends itself to the process of abstractification and alienation. Origninally, majority rule was an alternative to minority rule, the rule by the king or feudal lords. It did not mean that the majority was right; it meant that it is better for the majority to be wrong than for a minority to impose its will on the majority. But in our age of conformity the democratic method has more and more assumed the meaning that a majority decision is necessarily right, and morally superior to that of the minority, and hence has the moral right to impose its will on the minority. Just as a nationally advertised product claims, "Ten million Americans can't be wrong, " so the majority decision is taken as an argument for its rightness. This is obviously an error; in fact, historically speaking, all "right" ideas in politics as well as in philosophy, religion or science, were originally the ideas of minorities. (Erich Fromm, The Sane Society)

...make us know it.

OTheRLog 75:

Sunday, 01.03.10:

I could tell myself that I'm grieving for the loss of a dream -- several dreams...

...but as to the one broadest in scope...it's not one you can ever talk about losing, 'til you're dead...

...and must be worked for.

...and...

...surely it must be a sign of maturity to accept that:

...we must learn to accommodate ourselves to the discovery that some of those cunningly-fashioned instruments called human souls have only a very limited range of music, and will not vibrate in the least under a touch that fills others with tremulous rapture or quivering agony.

But what George perhaps imperfectly saw is the degree to which persistent invisibility warps our instruments...

...turns them in on themselves to a piteous, chronic "self-seeing"...

...an obsessive, unceasing questing to be stroked, and recognized –

– a need that drowns higher longings.

...Yet...

...the sun may restore our original virtue...

We must work for that...

...absolutely.

[From: What Is Our Responsibility To Others?...thoughts on getting to our future freedom without bosses.]

...back to top.... *

OTheRLog 76:

Wednesday, 01.06.10:

Wage-slavery...will be ended when the workers learn to set freedom before comfort.... (G. D. H. Cole, quoted in The Sane Society)

"...freedom before comfort..."

...to all you mystery-lovers out there...

...here's a puzzle to ponder...

...the only conundrum worthy of you...in the present moment...

...something to leave the grandchildren...

...the gift to end all need for gifts...

...

...and the solution must lie, surely...

...in the resolution to stop fighting our bodies...

...to listen to them when they speak, honor the clarity of sound, the complexity of voice...

...and in thereby refusing to do the "Division Work" that is the main mechanism (internalized in our own psyches and frames) for perpetuating our collective slavery.

We can forthwith refuse to make our children accept rank and ranking...

...we can embrace the healing work of our hands...conjoined with those of our neighbors'...

...we can reject the work of trashing others as a substitute for the hard work of hearing what the future needs...

...we can choose to build our future...methodically...lovingly...

...

Let's focus our energies this year on cracking this nut, manifesting 'what-is-not', and refusing: The Booster Shot

...make us know it.

OTheRLog 80:

Wednesday, 01.27.10:

...which way out of the maze?...

...we've arrived at a few conclusions:

...we must help each other...

...we must organize...

...host discussions of our future and keep our eyes locked on that prize...

...with our neighbors become growers...foster fellowship out-of-doors...

...pulling pushed-out-folks back in is the best way to begin...

...reach across the false divisions...

...look long and share out loud those visions...

...honoring all to which we owe our existence...

...[your thoughts here]...

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

...make us know it.

OTheRLog 82:

Friday, 01.29.10, Monday, 02.01.10, Wednesday, 02.03.10, Thursday, 02.11.10:

In Unmasking Complicity's False Sweetness ("Determination 12 and 13"), we noted two other conclusions:

We have to start telling ourselves new stories...because of this problem:

"...being forced to be anything at all forces us to be nothing at all..." (from Becoming The Function)

We cannot have human fellowship and sell human labor. They are mutually exclusive.

Ranking imposes invisibility.

A system in which human energy is sold means it must be measured...

...ranked...

...reduced to a numerical 'reality'...

...when it is not...

– it is mystery.

A system based in falseness (lies)...means truth hides...waiting to be found...

...and it takes serious work to get to it. [See: The 4 Ruses – 3.]

Watching the mysterious intermission of a gull, floating on the merest breeze,

I wondered...does the pigeon watch this pregnant poise with agony...

...longing to feel such majestic stillness...in the alchemy of balanced energy?

But every living thing has its particular gifts and the comforts from them.

What's most heinous in this manufactured misery the podrunks have made...

...is this disallowance against our own gifts, our claim to what gives us our especial comfort.

...make us know it.

OTheRLog 83:

Tuesday, 02.09.10 and Tuesday, 02.16.10:

...and as repression unrelieved means insanity...

...podrunks seize artifacts of human creativity...pound them into acceptable packages...and allow approach from only pre-approved routes – with sentry stations and guard towers along the way...

...and as creatures of illusion we imagine this herding to be of our making....

And then pave the way for our children to follow....

And if they venture off the path we drive them back in...

...and we tell them and ourselves this is...love.

This is called: packaging our children for ease of use by those who abuse us.

Continued at: The 4 Ruses – 3

...it was their duty to begin training up their children in the way they should go, even from their earliest infancy. The first signs of self-will must be carefully looked for, and plucked up by the roots at once before they had time to grow. Theobald picked up this numb serpent of a metaphor and cherished it in his bosom.

Before Ernest could well crawl he was taught to kneel; before he could well speak he was taught to lisp the Lord's Prayer, and the general confession. How was it possible that these things could be taught too early? If his attention flagged or his memory failed him, here was an ill weed which would grow apace, unless it were plucked out immediately, and the only way to pluck it out was to whip him, or shut him up in a cupboard, or dock him of some of the small pleasures of childhood. Before he was three years old he could read and, after a fashion, write. Before he was four he was learning Latin, and could do rule of three sums.....

...Truly, Mrs. Theobald loved her child according to her lights with an exceeding great fondness, but the dreams she had dreamed in her sleep were sober realities in comparison with those when indulged in while awake.

When Ernest was in his second year, Theobald, as I have already said, began to teach him to read. He began to whip him two days after he had begun to teach him.

"It was painful," as he said to Christina, but it was the only thing to do and it was done....All was done in love, anxiety, timidity, stupidity, and impatience. They were stupid in little things; and he that is stupid in little will be stupid also in much. (Samuel Butler, The Way Of All Flesh)

...and if you think this an artifact of non-culture from the past, look around you and ask yourself...have we made a society that children need, or do we make children 'fit' into what we think it needs? And if your answer is the latter...why do we put up with it? (Consider the possibility that right now is a good time to begin refusing the poisoned pie.)

...make us know it.

OTheRLog 85:

Sunday, 02.14.10 and Wednesday, 02.17.10:

Theobald picked up this numb serpent of a metaphor and cherished it in his bosom. (Samuel Butler, The Way Of All Flesh)

I've been thinking a lot about metaphor...and the importance of being poets...[See Consider the possibility that souls are made of poetry..., The Responsibility Of 'The Intellectual' (Part 2), and False Sweetness, (Determination 18) – on which point we recently found happy concurrence from Samuel:

I have no idea what genius is, but so far as I can form any conception about it, I should say it was a stupid word which cannot be too soon abandoned to scientific and literary claqueurs....[Rather, let us]...give pleasure to the best people and live in the lives of those who are yet unborn. (Samuel Butler, The Way Of All Flesh)

[A "claque" is a group of people hired to applaud...or sometimes attack...certainly to 'clack'...sycophants.]

...make us know it.

OTheRLog 86:

Thursday, 02.18.10:

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'....

Continued at: ...who 'sees'?.

...make us know it.

OTheRLog 87:

Friday, 02.26.10 and Sunday, 02.28.10, Tuesday, 03.02.10:

...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. (From ...commodification is taking something alive and making it dead...)

The blue is milky now.

We no longer have brilliant days.

The incessant buzz of the planes plowing the skies...spewing their sprays...

...as if to proclaim a contempt so complete it no longer hides beneath lies...

...its earth-hating, death-deifying ways.

And this is where we finally talk about Dr. Nyiszli...

I feel like I've been descending deeper and deeper into the psyche of the death-defined as I try to explicate the line that "capitalism is doomed"... (Continued at The Muck Of State: The machinery of death has gotten better at killing people.)

When trained to accept the crude mental pattern "obedience"...

...instead of free to allow complex associations to form...

...ones in which our life is infused...and so goes on beyond us...

...ones in which all is accepted, none refused...

...ones that suspend us in the mystery...out of which our 'name' alchemically bonds...

...when this inheritance is denied...and complexity removed from our eyes...

...and all we see is what 'Power' wants us to be...

...we're capable of any atrocity. (From ...souls are made of poetry....)

...make us know it.

OTheRLog 90:

Friday, 03.12.10:

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?

(From: The Communal Alternative.)...And the moment finds us currently in progress towards...The Last Civil Rights Movement (Part 2).)

...make us know it.

OTheRLog 91:

Sunday, 03.28.10 and 03.30.10 and 04.28.10:

When I was on the road...

...I began to feel better....

...So what is it about the Bay Area?...

...Is anyone testing...

...with any specificity...

...the air quality?

...Personally...

...I'd like to see...

...the power-drunk...

...made "self-levitating"...

...endlessly...

...and...

...to the youth out there...just so you know...

...the sky you see now...

...sun through milky blue...then clouds...

...one minute sun...then rain again...

...clouds through milky blue...

...dot dot dot (all in the space of five minutes)...

...is completely new...

...manufactured chaos to destabilize us...

...and when they try to use chaos to keep you in your traces...

...always remember to return to the basics:

“The Plan” is our kenpo stance.

I do not believe he was much more of a coward than his neighbours, only he did not know that all sensible people are cowards when they are off their beat, or when they think they are going to be roughly handled. I believe, that if the truth were known, it would be found that even the valiant St. Michael himself tried hard to shirk his famous combat with the dragon; he pretended not to see all sorts of misconduct on the dragon's part; shut his eyes to the eating up of I do not know how many hundreds of men, women and children whom he had promised to protect; allowed himself to be publicly insulted a dozen times over without resenting it; and in the end when even an angel could stand it no longer he shilly-shallied and temporized an unconscionable time before he would fix the day and hour for the encounter. (Samuel Butler, The Way Of All Flesh)

...make us know it.

OTheRLog 92:

Thursday, 04.22.10:

In progress: "Uprooting Passive Obedience...is "the withering away of the state"....

(...as we are all earth...

...and vice versa...)

...Hiding behind doors to "think"...

...while our brothers and sisters totter...

...on the brink...

...aren't we losing the feeling...

...of a straight back...

...of outreaching hands...

...and a body under self-command?...

...'Passive Obedience' has become our default feeling –

...placidity in the face of cupidity...

...flat affect while under attack....

...Instead of action speaking...

...when we see folks needing...

...or watch the trashing transpire...

...and the bullying...

– the cashing in on...

...abominations...

– 'Passive Obedience' has become our default feeling.

...But if we look around objectively...

...and take the time to feel what we see...

(...take the time to smell...

– as it reeks to high heaven...)

– all the rottenness...

...of this greed-based "system"...)

...wouldn't we be outraged at the damage done...

...in the name of 'profit'?...

...and then...

...when we fully take in...

...the relentless destruction...

...wouldn't we clutch our hearts in pain...

...such that 'fury' would become our default feeling...

...and be the motivation to begin again...?

...Wouldn't we look around...

...for the best place to start...

...to strategically begin...

...to settle accounts with this evil "system"?...

...in consideration of questions raised at: Muck Of State.

...make us know it.

OTheRLog 93:

Monday, 05.10.10:

...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." (From "City Hands" – Part 2)]

To The Top *

...back to top.... *

OTheRLog 94:

Saturday, 05.15.10:

I have mixed feelings when...

...I hear the oft-repeated "truism"...

..."we have to get better informed"...

...because on the one hand...

...the "body's truth" is the art...

...most needed today...

...on the other...

...communing with the ancestors...

– delving into the work of 'figuring out'...

...from those who've gone before –

– most-def is a power-source...

...does build confidence and the ability to push back...

(...and earth-knows it's imperative we push back hard right now....)

So what's "the truth"'?...

...The truth is...

...the effect of horror stories on the well-fed...

...is short-lived....

...The truth is...

...we don't need more "information"...

...to know that we're not free...

("...Marx appealed to our reasoning, but it's our hearts that are broken....")

...The truth is...

...that in a system that substitutes an Abyss for a soul...

...an appeal to "get informed"...

...too often becomes a project all its own...

...as we tell ourselves that our 'imperfect' 'Mind'...

...must be filled with all the elevated "stuff" we can find...

...before we know it we're back where we started...

...used...abused...and...still...broken-hearted....

[Discussion of this issue is continued at: "Power-Down Plan" (...our planning is a school...)]

To The Top *

Nascence to End Work

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