Countering Complicity With Good Fellowship...
"...while revealing the false face... "
...developing ideas raised by the book, The Blogs, and The Road.
[True, we haven't done it, we're just talking it. But to not come along...for that argument...that...convenience...alone is a cop-out...a false-self-servingness unworthy of one walking the walk to freedom.]
Determination 34: *** ...planning our future is a school... in which we "claim the commons" as we reclaim our consciousness...
...Have you seen Avatar? I ask because the duplicity runs so deep it's hard to feel the alternative... This film may help some feel it...
...feel the truth in your body that... ** we have to be made whole before the earth can... (Determination 25)
I hope Avatar will be pondered – all its layered thought – and deeply felt / taken to heart ...after which...may the grieving grow beyond the phony walls separating us from ourselves and our earth – and build the unequivocal demand for our future freedom without bosses.
–"...for some of us, beginning to claim our wholeness will be about returning, writing and grieving: returning to home base, noticing what you didn't get, and grieving." (From Waking Up, The Plan, Pt. 2)
Determination 1:
Wednesday, 10.21.09:
It's important to keep in mind that those embedded in "the job" are embedded in relations and circumstances that are utterly false...and that ‘falseness’ takes a toll on spirit…on energy…
We are hungry for the real.
...A little nurturance now...will go a long way. *
* But to form the intention to feed 'the real' – when every day sees the steady erosion of our civil liberties – means "seeing reality"...
Determination 2:
Thursday, 10.22.09:
So…the challenge for we-who-are-awake is to “nurture ‘the real’” – put flesh on the face of ‘Fellowship.’ [See: Seeing The Communal Alternative]
It matters what we find, we-not-yet-awake, when forced to face the Abyss that opens when we see our dreams sucked on...a garnish at staff meetings...
... a savory diversion...
...or blood for a leech...
…We need to know…where is there to go?
Determination 3:
Friday, 10.23.09:
It’s important to keep in mind that the complex being that is ‘us’ responds to all pitches and notes – even unbeknownst…and that when we take our complexity to “the job,” we expose it to confusing mixed-messages…that sap our strength, as our souls strive to sort them out. (See: Becoming The Function (How The Job Is The Booster Shot)
But imagine if our souls were given one clear tone that we knew to be true, that we knew we could trust…and linger in a while...while our strength grew?
Determination 4:
Wednesday, 10.28.09:
It's important to keep in mind that we're already doing these things – communal things – we're just expanding the repertoire.
The next step is...to unify them within a single frame...
See: Seeing The Communal Alternative
Determination 5:
Thursday, 11.05.09:
...Somehow we have to break the logjam of conventional thinking...
Determination 6:
Thursday, 11.12.09:
We're conscientious objectors in this war on humans being waged called wage work.
But it is one thing to like defiance, and another thing to like its consequences. (George Eliot)
Determination 7:
Friday, 11.13.09:
"Things will grow and ripen as if it were a comet year," said Will. "The public temper will soon get to a cometary heat, now the question of Reform has set in. There is likely to be another election before long, and by that time Middlemarch will have got more ideas into its head. What we have to work at now is the Pioneer and political meetings."
...Discussions...
...long overdue...
...it's time –
...there're these writings to use...
...or your own...
– the important thing is to have them...face to face...
"He hath made of one blood all nations."
...there's simply no other way to solder that Abyss.
You Got City Hands Mr. Hooper
Determination 8:
Friday, 11.13.00:
We can't sit and wait on the children this time. This go-round they may be more confused than we – 'crusty' we may be....
...but do they know the power of 'the hand'?
...the laborious work of oratory for strangers-not-ensconced in club seats?
...the ritual pounding of pavements for love only and no obvious reward?
...the banging of pans?
...the slow, symbiotic way of simmering seeds?
Do we know...these things...anymore?
Who will bang the first pan that starts the song that sets the great bell humming?
Who will boost the tentative tones, uncertain and unknown, that tests the set logjam?
Age may be irrelevant. Patience may know no age. Courage certainly favors the young. But knowing? ...
...that comes from seeing the circle of 'Power' always come back again, and wanting...more than anything...for our children to break out.
If youth is the season of hope, it is often so only in the sense that our elders are hopeful about us; for no age is so apt as youth to think its emotions, partings, and resolves are the last of their kind. Each crisis seems final, simply because it is new. We are told that the oldest inhabitants in Peru do not cease to be agitated by the earthquakes, but they probably see beyond each shock, and reflect that there are plenty more to come.
...until we are free of class society...
...which comes to be...
...when we are begin to see...
...our own projects.
Determination 9:
Wednesday, 11.25.09:
...because as we develop our own projects...we dispel the fog of Passive Obedience...blow it out of our bodies...and therefore minds...and grow a very different world...
See:Wading Into The Muck Of State
Determination 10:
Wednesday, 11.25.09:
The necessary and critical side effect of our small acts of refusal that grow to be larger ones will be the steady withering of Passive Obedience.
(See: Becoming The Function (How The Job Is The Booster Shot) – which asks: "which way out of the maze.")
Determination 11:
Sunday, 12.20.09:
...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)
Determination 12:
01.14.10:
It's important to keep in mind that most are "measuring their work from a false line," and to not despair at that fact but rather to work for our future all the harder, "and help each other the more."
Determination 13:
01.15.10:
There is an awareness solidifying, even among the progressive punditry, that organized 'Power' can only be checked by organizing a mass movement to check it. This is good news as it means that unity on the left is building around that point...
...but around the key question of "how?"...
...we do not yet have a solidifying awareness...
[continued at: The Responsibility Of The Intellectual (Part 2)]
Determination 14:
01.16.10:
If we refuse to teach our children "ranking," "hierarchy," "hoop-jumping"...
...and model reverence instead...
If we smile on them because we're happy...(or just want that much for them to be)...and not as an inducement to urge them to labor...i.e., make their bodies behave according to external dictates...
If we see them without asking for payment in blood in return...
...we might free them to build the movement to end compelled labor...force...coercion...wage work...
...we might free ourselves to do the same...
Determination 15:
01.24.10:
It is the nature of this system, and those indoctrinated by it, to only accept as a possible good that which comes in a previously approved wrapper....
...but there will be enough...imperfectly indoctrinated...to carry our freedom forward....
...That is 'nature's' way.
Determination 16:
Thursday, 01.28.10:
There's a dearth of real fun in our lives...our bodies want to address it...we almost know how...sometimes we almost feel it...and then we hold back...we're unsure of ourselves because we're unsure of our gifts...or how they'll be received...we want to share ourselves...but we're not allowed...
The society we accept must honor our creativity for us to develop this confidence.
Can we begin making our own small "societies of loving support"?...a kind of 'Stone Soup' for the soul?...
"I make a great veg chili...and I can make magic with dough..."
"I know how to orchestrate any harmonies you create..."
"And I can weave drama with clothes..."
"I know how to choreograph..."
"I can make the children laugh..."
"Well, all right then, let the fellowship roll..."
Determination 17:
...day, 00.00.00:
We are children of a large family, and must learn, as such children do, not to expect that our hurts will be made much of – to be content with little nurture and caressing, and help each other the more. (George Eliot)
Yes, well...true, true, all true...but...
Determination 18:
Tuesday, 02.02.10:
From Becoming The Function, and see:"OTheRLog 82":
Any will to manifest that which will be, our future that's free...
...must be accompanied not just by seeing reality but by
...breaking ranks with ranking...
...fusing tenderness with visioning...
– moving past mere critique...
...that activist mystique...
...towards modeling the trust that encourages others...
...to vision with us.
Determination 19:
Wednesday, 02.17.10:
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. (Samuel Butler, The Way Of All Flesh)
[A "claque" is a group of people hired to applaud...or sometimes attack...certainly to 'clack'...sycophants.]
Determination 20:
Thursday, 02.18.10:
Inventing our own stories starts with noticing...listening....
Listening – it does all come down to that doesn't it? Why is it I listen even better with George in hand?
...The fulness of contemplative thought – the mind not searching, but beholding, and the glance seeming to be filled with what is behind it. (George Eliot, Middlemarch, p. 496)
(From: ...who 'sees'?)
Determination 21:
Saturday, 02.20.10:
'Poetry' is simply representing for the inherent unity of all things...that otherwise would be completely suppressed as it threatens 'power.'
And there are infinite ways to express this...and there are no rules...no judgment....
To set oneself up as judge is to do the Division work podrunks depend on us to do...to reforge the links of the chains that contain us...perpetuate the cons...pass onward the distress...the dis-ease...the contempt...the hopelessness....
The reality of ranking is so diffuse this fact may serve as unconscious excuse for being unwilling to refuse the Division Work they'll pay us to do.
But the unifying frame of our poetry...of the truth of our inherent freedom...is the consciousness in which it occurs....
This is critical. Otherwise our communion gets turned to the very contempt it seeks to rectify. (The Mr. Smith Virus.)
(From: ...consider the possibility...)
Determination 22:
Friday, 02.26.10:
...perhaps in order to see 'commodification' we have to see what's alive...
...and that if we can remember what it means to be a human being...what it means to be truly free...truly alive...
...and see it...see how living in interdependency is not just the only way we can be freed from being a commodity – which is death of authenticity – but the only way we can be truly alive – i.e. fulfill our human destiny.
This is a pregnant moment...requiring a few heroic souls.
(From: "...commodification is taking something alive and making it dead..." )
Determination 23:
Wednesday, 03.03.10:
Etienne came to a sudden decision. Perhaps he imagined he could see Catherine's eyes up there, at the entrance to the village; more likely it was the wind of rebellion sweeping from Le Voreux. He wasn't sure, but he wanted to go back into the mine to suffer and to fight. He thought wrathfully about those "somebodies" Bonnemort had spoken of, and about this unknown, glutted, and crouching god to whom ten thousand starving people fed their flesh. (Emile Zola, Germinal)
(From: The Fuck-It Factor)
Determination 24:
Thursday, 03.04.10:
Brothers and sisters...can we please stop saying, "we need jobs"...? Every time we do we're aligning our interests (unconsciously) with the pitiful-power-drunk-few. We don't need 'jobs'...we need full, vibrant, interesting, fun and reverent lives free of the yoke.
It's time to houseclean our heads, sweep out the conditioning, change the messages, make our own 'stories,' re-name our 'selves.' I've looked "human being" up in the dictionary and there's nothing there about being a slave.
Each person I see is damaged by a system that tells him he's a worker-bee. Imagine what we'll be when we're finally free of that conditioning! [From: "The 4 Ruses – 3"]
** We have to be made whole before the earth can...
Determination 25:
Tuesday, 03.16.10:
We have to be made commodities before anything else can, and we have to be made whole again before the earth can. (From: "The Communal Alternative")
Determination 26:
Wednesday, 03.17.10:
We have to embrace what podrunks negate...heart, feeling, earth, art, poetry...tenderness....
...and give 'figuring out' these questions our chief attention: What moves 'Resignation' to refuse?...and how to make giving in to 'nature's' gravity (the only genuine authority) the primary responsibility of thinking humanity?
Determination 27:
Sunday, 03.21.10:
In 'saviour' and 'trust' the relevant words are "our" and "us." (See: The Last Civil Rights Movement (Part 2)
There are no 'saviours' out there who will bring us our freedom. That responsibility rests with us.
Determination 28:
Saturday, 03.27.10:
On a random touch-down along the-public-radio-airwaves-dial I found that there's a high rate of death among teens in Palo Alto.
If we love our children dearly, we'll have to take seriously...
...No one wants to leave...
...but in the absence of good fellowship...
...life has no meaning.
(All of us must start to think deeply: ...if we want our children's minds to have patience for complexity...)
Determination 29:
Wednesday, 03.31.10:
Not long ago I passed by folks parading with pickets – calling attention to podrunk thievery....
By the time I'd reversed track and was on my way back the police had been called...to harass them....
One man in blue was talking to a woman clearly he was attracted to...
...I heard him gripe he didn't like being a tool for those who rule...
...so they smiled at me good-naturedly when I found myself bursting...
...into the song: "Which Side Are You On?"
Though it's guaranteed the power-drunk...
...are busy organizing as many complicity-seeking folks (caught in system-stoked invisibility) as they can...
...(police especially)...
...though this is a given...we can't allow good fellowship to be riven...
...by false divisions.
The majority of police are aware of the devastating cost to everyday folks...
...of the demonic schemes of the financial industry...
...but there are those, we know, being paid to sow...
...racial tensions between us...
...and as the stakes have stepped up...
...we'd best step our game up...
...and not hesitate to pitch our good news to the folks in blue...
...(and if you want Waking Up for this use, I'll send it to you)...
...police are forced to be "slaves" too....
...We can't make assumptions...
...based on salary-given functions....
...the fist called "the job" has us by the short-hairs too.
[See "Thank You Sandy"]
Determination 30:
Thursday, 04.08.10:
So a critical question we have to face is...
...how do we relate to "the state"...both in 'calm' and in 'crisis'...?
In Waking Up I wrote that "there are two levels to our activism, two 'faces'" of our "Activism Aikido"...there's the face we must wear for the state, and the face we wear with our brothers and sisters...("Claiming The Commons")...(assuming of course those willing to take this on have done the 'healing work' of confronting their own personal internal "state".)
I think the two facets of this tactic are...land and people...
...gathering people to pitch for land...and gathering land to pull more people.
...Plots right in the city, not 'public' but "for the people"...land designated "For the communal uses of Earthships [my bias], food, gardens, orchards, and forests" – in perpetuity – with those who build it seeding "good fellowship" for all...
A little oasis, free from taxation...
...so the NEW future can grow in the womb of the old....
...and those who live there make an agreement to share...
...because they believe in...
...the principles of communal living...
...and beyond this to plan...
...how the numbers of plots will expand...
...as before more can believe they have to see...
...the communal alternative.
...Our "job" right now is to win over all our brothers and sisters...including our brothers and sisters who work for "the state"...
...so while we work delicately with those stuck in complicity – who also long to be whole...to be seen...to be listened to...–
...we keep our eyes on the prize of freedom-designed-lives.
(From The Muck Of State.)
Determination 31:
Sunday, 04.25.10:
Marcuse, along with Zola, fantasized that earth-connected peoples are too "oppressed" to demand liberation for our own bodies and the earth as a whole.
But these two were using the very dead world-view...
...they were hoping to move beyond....
And there are some who don't understand...
...the power of the hand...
– unified with mind...
...instead of despised...and...
...soul-infused...
...rather than ridiculed...
(In progress at: You Got City Hands (Part 2)
Determination 32:
Wednesday, 04.28.10:
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)
...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. (From: OtheRLog 91)
(And in progress at: The 4 Ruses – 2 (Part 2) a delving into the patron saint of the heart of liberation...the Unconscious....)
Determination 33:
Wednesday, 05.12.10:
They throw us all into this big pot to stew...
...but instead of boiling over like they wish us to do...
...much rather we coalesce into...
...something new...
– the old soul infused...
...with a broader fellowship...
...laced through...
...with a broader consciousness....
Determination 34:
*** ...planning our future is a school...
Saturday, 05.15.10:
...He looked at me with a strange look and said, "make?"...I am serious. And at the right moment this memory can be such a sad realization of the state of things that it nearly brings tears to my eyes. He literally believed that noodles grew....
Is that his fault? I don't think wholly. The government caused him to be lazy – caused the society to become lazy and dependent upon commercial agriculture and commodities. (D. Michael Salerno)
[From "Our Responsibility" (Eighteen). Discussion of this issue is continued at: "Power-Down Plan" (...our planning is a school...)]
...I see "planning our future" as a school...
...the ideas that emerge from it as tools...
– planting seeds...
...feeding...fertilizing...germinating...care-taking....
Determination :
00.00.00:
* Footnote 1:
** Footnote 2: