Can we have an honest (authentic) conversation about 'democracy'?
This is discussed at: Beginning To Rebuild Our Freedom …and… To Rebuild Our Freedom (Pt. 2).
Nascence to End Work
What Is Our Responsibility To Others?
* "...I see 'planning our future' as a school..."
* "Nobody in a job can do anything but their job...that's the whole point."
[This discussion is continued from: "OTHeR Log 76 (01.06.10)", The Responsibility Of The Intellectual, Wading Into The Muck Of State, and also: Becoming The Function.]
Brothers and sisters: is there a word or phrase you'd like to taze? *
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First Artery:
Tuesday, 12.29.09:
What is our responsibility to others? I think it starts with tenderness ...and being open to the ancestors...
...and ends with representin'...
...speaking up for all those who cannot take this on right now.
[Gustav Landauer] defined as the task of the socialists and their movement: "to loosen the hardening of hearts so that what lies buried may rise to the surface: so that what truly lives yet now seems dead may emerge and grow light." (Erich Fromm, The Sane Society)
The physical environment we live in shapes us absolutely. We cannot break this system down behind doors. Communalism may blossom in our hearts but it will die there if we don't take it outdoors.
The transformation of an atomistic into a communitarian society depends on creating again the opportunity for people to sing together, walk together, dance together, admire together – together, and not...as a member of a "lonely crowd." (Erich Fromm, The Sane Society)
To know that we are experiencing a spirit-deficit means that...those who have the means to manifest 'spirit' must...by all means...begin...
...to put it out there and know that it will grow is a luxury not (yet) unfortunately for the many, so the privileged few who can do such things...communal things...
...little outposts of good fellowship...open to all:
...land with which to make the demand (of whatever level of 'state' you can level your eyes with) for Earthship projects not just viable...but blooming.
...earth for neighbors to grow with...unplanned street parties...signs on fence-posts that say "coffee and biscuits here"...
– those who have the means...by all means...begin.
As with all other socialists, Marx's basic concern is man. "To be radical," he once wrote, "means to go to the root, and the root -- is man himself."...Man has been the object of circumstances, he must become the subject....for Marx...The free man is the rich man, but not the man rich in an economic sense, but rich in the human sense. The wealthy man, for Marx, is the man who is much, and not the one who has much. (Erich Fromm, The Sane Society)
The problem is...primarily...sharing work, sharing experience....We must decentralize work and state so as to give it human proportions..." (Erich Fromm, The Sane Society)
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Second:
Wednesday, 12.30.09:
And what is our (first) responsibility to the youth?
...Sacred Space...a sacred silence...
-- so she and he may develop her / his independent voice.
School cannot provide it...rather, obviates it.
Family in Western society hasn't allowed it...au contraire, restricts its vocabulary...
...Work annihilates it...
...So –
(...as stated in number Thirteen below... * )
...as "grown-ups" who want freedom...
...for the ones 'coming up'...
– our chief responsibility...
...is to just stop lying...
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Third:
Wednesday, 12.30.09:
What is clear from Waking Up and the writings here is that we have arrived at the conclusion that the issue of homelessness is key -- as a kernel, a constituency, and a concern. Because we need demonstration projects for how we can structure our lives apart -- apart from a "make-waste" society and mindset...
...i.e. one of "use it-abuse it-throw it away."
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Fourth:
Wednesday, 12.30.09:
I set out to walk 'til I dropped.
My own little screwed-up 'walkabout'...
A dot-dot-dot's way better than a full stop...
I recommend it...
It quiets the mind and lets the body speak...
Because while the mind may lead you astray, the body brings you home...
Your mind says "no food no drink"....
But there comes a time when Grandmother offers you an orange too sweet to say "no" to...
...
...so your journey goes on...
...because of that orange...
...and the rain comes...
...and beats you like a rug...
...and your mind's too tired to say "bear it all"...
...so the body says "hell, naw. I want to feel warm and dry at least one more time. Why not? I deserve it after all this trip's put me through."
And before you know it...
...you're not trying to end...
...you're ready to begin...
...again...
That's nature's way....
I didn't do a lot of thinking on this trip, but I did do a lot of noticing.
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Fifth:
Thursday, 12.31.09:
So the demand we have...is the demand for land...
There's simply no other way...
...to solder that Abyss.
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Sixth:
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...[see Complicity's False Sweetness (Determination 12).]
...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.
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Seventh:
Tuesday, 01.05.10:
"...the stimulus of sympathy..."
Erich Fromm has observed (speaking generally) that everyone wants to be loved...
...but no one wants to be loving...
I argue that our unmet need "to be seen" obviates the capacity "to see."
So the "choice" of 'the window' or 'the mirror' cannot be a true "choice" really...(speaking generally)...
...until...
...until we have a 'world' that supports the speaking of broad fellow feeling....
...So the ones who shoulder the heavy lifting of our new world of met needs...
...hoisted up ...high enough to be seen...
...distinct...from this current world of unmet need...
...have a lot of listening...followed by doing... ahead of us...
"...All passion becomes strength when it has an outlet from the narrow limits of our personal lot in the labour of our right arm, the cunning of our right hand, or the still, creative activity of our thought...."
...and how illimitable that outward-turning strength once turned by all three...
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Eighth:
Thursday, 01.07.10:
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)
..."freedom before comfort..."
[This discussion is continued from: "OTHeR Log 76 (Wednesday, 01.06.10)."
...and there's something very comforting about commanding others to labor, isn't there? ...something that says "you're special"...
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Ninth:
Sunday, 01.10.10:
As soon as people are ranked...
...the vast Many are cast in shadow...
...while the Puffed-Up Few shine falsely...
...the meaning of which makes for ugly duplicity in human relations...
...with our fellows and with our earth...
...making the invisible and the falsely bright both...
...chafe at the manufactured constraints...
...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.
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Tenth:
Wednesday, 03.03.10:
"...The most important Manhattan Projects of the future will be vast government-sponsored enquiries into what the politicians and the participating scientists will call 'the problem of happiness' – in other words, the problem of making people love their servitude..."
But...I think they've decided that...
...the "happiness project" may be dispensed with,
...and that they can manage manufactured unhappiness,
...if 'chaos' and 'crises' pummel our consciousness...
...such that survivors are pounded into 'Passive Obedience'...
...and the rest of us deleted from "what exists."
– So how can we begin to make ourselves rather than cooperating with the plans of others to make us? (...continued at Becoming The Function)
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Eleven:
Thursday, 03.04.10:
And it is undoubtedly our responsibility to our brothers and sisters to 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: ...souls are made of poetry....]
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Twelve:
* A word or phrase you'd like to taze?
Wednesday, 03.10.10:
Brothers and sisters: I think it's also our responsibility, as we give ourselves that sacred silence, that divine distance from the diversionary drivel, and as we commune with the earth (both within and without) and relearn how to reason and think authentically...that we stop repeating (unconsciously) words or phrases that are quite obviously lies...and that promote still more lies.... If you share the ones that offend you the most I'll pass them along here:
Is there a word or phrase you'd like to taze?
...or set ablaze...in innumerable ways...
...because of the walls they raise and the ways they degrade...? For example...:
"We need jobs."
"The experts say..."
"sin"
Reference to a nation-state as "we."
words like "wannabe" "loser" and "poser."
"savage" or "primitive" (as nouns)
Any word that denotes a violation of wholeness – i.e., promotes rank and division.
"develop" – when used in an economic sense.
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Thirteen:
Sunday, 03.28.10:
We on the Left have a really hard time...keeping our eyes firmly locked on the real prize...
...while we devote our days fighting for our "rights"......
...the earth is snatched from our sights overnight...
If we were to look long...
...I think we'd see......
...that all the hard work we do for a salary...
...is ultimately checked...
...by the financial industry...
...which bides its time...
...finding it fun to be patient...
...waiting to see its long-term "vision"...
...come to fruition.
If you recognize the Abyss...between our success and theirs...
...how do you imagine it can be repaired...
...with air?...
...with fragmented efforts unfolding haphazardly...
...in which the left hand never knows what the right...
...has in it...?
When will we want with as much ferocity...
...as we feel for our paychecks...
– and the chance they advance to "get seen" –
...the earth that feeds us...?
...the only thing that can free us......
...fill the cavity caused....
...by our addiction to "jobs"...?
...And the "fellowship" you think you feel...? –
...at that happy conjunction with your 'function'...?
...when "the system" says "you're done"...
...the boot in the ass will reveal...
...it ain't real....
* "Nobody in a job can do anything but their job...that's the whole point."
Nobody in a job can do anything but their job...that's the whole point. "A future freedom without bosses" is in no one's job description. If we want it, we have to work for it....And the only way we can be free is if we embrace across the categories (individual freedom is premised on general freedom...and vice versa.)
(From: Countering The False Sweetness, and You Know How I Know You're A Slave? (Addendum))
...What is our responsibility to each other? and especially to our children?...
...to stop lying...
...start thinking with our bodies....
...and not do anything that makes you feel small....
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Fourteen:
Thursday, 04.07.10:
This next, last step to wholeness – human evolution and liberation – that unifies humanity, that frees human energy from the constraint of maintaining 'Division' – the great artificial barriers between us – necessarily means we will be living in balance / harmony / Oneness at last on the earth.
"Human evolution and liberation"...the next, last step...may more accurately be thought of as completing a circuit...
...a spiral dance of renewal...dissolving divisions
....(it's hard to maintain 'em...in momentum...)
...renewing us...when it almost seemed that podrunk schemes had been the end of us...
...but we woke up....
...and saw the games they were playing....
...dangling carrots to some...
...calling others 'dumb'...
...pummeling us with "crises" to numb us....
To refuse stunted lives...
...and choose instead to organize....
...is to realize...
...'freedom's' always in reach...
...as we are everything....
...If for one day we filled the streets...
...held hands...
...sang...
...beat our drums and proclaimed...
..."slavery days done!"...
...Just one...
...just one day...
...and this nightmare would begin...
...its inevitable end...
And as "the state" withers...
...so do "citizens"...
...our need for "rights"...
...falls by the wayside...
...scattered bits of litter...
...swept in...
...the "burn-it-bin"...
...so we can be "human" again.
As John Trudell says, it's time to evolve....
We don't want to end up staring at the same old pain in new suits...
...we want a freedom we can recognize...
...every morning when we open our eyes...
...a freedom we feel in our bodies...
...that says "sleep!" when we need it...
...and "dance!" when we feel it...
...and...
And though this moment will be fresh...
...it will also be the fulfillment of a deeply felt wish...
...to have again a very old freedom...
...which is also a reverence for our plant and animal friends.
(The 'lion' that lays down with the lamb...is human.)
Now some may not come to that degree...
...but it's our individual responsibility...
...to listen to what all Life needs...
...in proportion to the sensitivity of our hearing...
...which grows exponentially once we're free.
(From: The Last Civil Rights Movement.)
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Fifteen:
* Our power suppressed is a force quite frightening..."
Monday, 04.12.10:
Our power suppressed is a force quite frightening...
...turned on children...
...whereupon...
...their natural, intuitive self-determinativeness...
...is summarily dismissed...
...denied...
...trivialized.
But just as soldiers traumatized by war...
...diagnosed with PTSD...and more...
...are told by their bosses...before they break...
..."suck it up!"..."just take it!"...
...take the bomb blasts...
...take the death...
...take the silence when you bear witness...
...take the images you can never forget,...
– too often out of our own distress...
...we make of our children a similar target...
...when we're unwilling to see...
...that what "the system" calls "ordinary..."
"...life in class society..."
...to those of sensitive sight and hearing...
...is the grossest insanity....
And so too often they choose to leave...
...when they are the ones we most desperately need....
(The fantasy of "being free"...
...is so haunting...
..."freedom's" become but a taunt...
..."reality" sneers at us when we strive...
– our life-long –
...to pull it near.)
And as John Trudell says, it's time to evolve....
(From: ...Refusing To Package...and instead going back...to our original wholeness....)
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Sixteen:
Sunday, 04.18.10:
The discouraged believer in "good fellowship," Souvarine, in Emile Zola's Germinal, speaks bitterly about the vitiation of the value "fraternity"..."the hope of...a new society based on work in common."
"Yes, that's what you all want, you French workers – you want to find a buried treasure somewhere and then retire to some corner and live on it in selfish idleness." (Emile Zola, Germinal)
Our options (selves) have been systematically narrowed to what "the system" needs...
...over the course of centuries....
...How do we learn there's more to us than...
...following orders?...
...How do we mourn the loss...
...of that kept hidden?
...i.e. our place in the web of life?...
...We have to begin to see...
..."the system"...
...objectively...:
...a colossal energy-sink...
...a voracious mouth...
...a destroyer of dreams...
...a deceiver....
[From: The Last Civil Rights Movement (Part 2) (in progress).]
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Seventeen:
(Begun on) Thursday, 04.22.10 – :
(This one will take some time I know...will most likely overflow...into other rooms and spaces...to unfold...more 'flirtatiously'...so please...bear with me....)
What follows are...
...thoughts on getting stuck...
...or just caught up...
...in some unexpected muck...
(...after finishing Germinal...)
...in an "Afterword" by Irving Howe.
I think I'm finally beginning to see...
...that "the pundits" are afraid of you and me...
...why this should surprise me I don't know...
...but here we go...
If our writing's a craft...
...carved from the vast...
...coast of our souls...
...sent out to test...
...its sea-worthiness...
...and explore for a time...
...the life of the brine...
– to float on its own...
...or sink...
...into the inky deep...
– Samuel Butler thinks...
(...more honest than most...)
...what the craft sees best...
...is the coast....
As earth has been degraded...
– penance for its betrayal –
("Nature," says Zola...
...is associated...
...with our griefs....")
...those who never knew...
...this grief...
– of the abandoned child –
...this need...
...to never...
...ever...
...ever again...
...sink...
...emaciated...
...bones-jutting-shrunk...
...into the...
...curse of...
...abandonment...
......
A 'psychological' study of greed...
...would reveal 'neath the fancy screed...
– all the "O-look-at-me" academic stuff –
...the wizened face of abandonment...
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Eighteen:
* "...I see 'planning our future' as a school..."
Saturday, 05.15.10:
This morning I found myself thinking yet again...
..."it's not her fault, it's the system"...
...and then I thought, "Samuel Butler said this, in Flesh,...
'...it was the system rather than the people that was at fault...'"
...and then I thought, "how many times over how many years...
...have we said exactly this?"
...Aren't you sick of it? Aren't you sick of this system?
...It's time for something else. I can see it...our future freedom.
...But getting from here to there is like preparing the earth...
...for the bounty you hope it will bring forth...
...feeding...fertilizing...germinating...care-taking....
...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)
...I see "planning our future" as a school...
...the ideas that emerge from it as tools...
– planting seeds...
...feeding...fertilizing...germinating...care-taking....
[Discussion of this issue is continued at: "Power-Down Plan" (...our planning is a school...)]
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An emailed query on:
July 12, 2009:
After reading Waking Up, this writer got in touch (on July 12, 2009) to pose this question. He was not the only one to raise it, but he stated it most concisely:
"Do you think escaping wage slavery requires one to also fight against it elsewhere? I'm wrestling with this question. I have a plan to be totally "free" by the time I'm 40 (I'm 27 now). I plan to save up, acquire the skills I'll need to survive post-job (or post peak oil crash) - including but not limited to: gardening, sewing, cooking, maintaining a bicycle, etc. - and slowly "un-plug" myself from the system. Once/if I find some level of autonomy and freedom on the land, I wonder what I'll be able to do to free others (including animals)...What do you think is the obligation of those who have somehow managed to free themselves from wage slavery?" (07.12.09)
...so...what do you think? Contact us and I'll put it up.
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Other feedback on the issues raised by the book: Well, all right now, make us know it...
...Might "Unplugging" be our true work? ...is it possible to interrupt the plans of 'Power'?
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