Political action is not the road to effective change. The way to really change society is to start with yourself, your own groups, your own businesses and work your way out. The further away from your self you get, the less of a chance you have of changing anything.

Recorded on 2012-10-17

A recurring thought, in my stream of consciousness as of late, centers on the all encompassing desire, virtually every human being has; to engage in various forms of escapism. I’ve noticed this at various times in my life and kind of swept it under the rug; but this idea is becoming apparent once again.

Realizing this has got me somewhat depressed and I just have to get this written down; in writing this, I hope to figure out more about this phenomena and my relationship to it. I’d really like to know what we are trying to get away from, what we are hoping to find and if there are any lessons we can learn from these observations.

Maybe it’s a good thing that we are trying to escape, maybe not, maybe I’m totally off base and we, as humans, can’t do anything but escape. I’m not saying that I know anything for sure; I just want to explore something that is, in my mind at least, begging to be explored.

The sad thing about these kinds of thoughts, is the fact that it is very difficult to discuss these thoughts with anyone else. Most people don’t really give a damn what I have to say about anything like this; they either change the subject, ignore me or try to act like having a seemingly “negative” observation about something means that I’m not focusing on what I need to.

That may well be; but it doesn’t change the fact that I am extremely curious about this. I want to know why so little is said about it and why so many engage in this vacuous practice that basically consumes most of people’s lives.

Absurdities in Everyday Life

Why is it that people would rather spend the better part of their free time, frittering away, and/or watching a fictional, or highly controlled, reality via a television screen; when there is a huge glut of unaddressed dilemmas which threaten our long-term survival as individuals and quite possibly as a species.

Why is it, that in many social situations, individuals choose to smoke and drink, often (but not always) in order to escape their daily lives; even if it means that they may not remember the experience, or worse, may even harm their bodies in the process.

Why is it that, when we become activists, who want to see “change” in the world, we often focus our efforts on issues, which we stand little to no chance of having any effect on; while there are other issues which we can have a major impact on, right under our noses, that we simply ignore as if they don’t exist.

Prime examples of this, are the attention given to relatively small scale man made ecological disasters. These disasters get most of the press and activist attention, while most of the damage wrought by man takes place routinely and meticulously planned, in broad daylight, with the massive system of government subsidized, corporatized, monoculture agriculture.

All of this large scale farming is happening, while hundreds of millions of individuals are living atop perfectly productive land on their 1/4 – 1/3 acre lots; usually growing nothing but worthless grass on it.

Since we aren’t using the land that we are on, and we still must eat, we visit the restaurants and supermarkets and spend most of our monies on highly processed, additive laced, genetically modified, franken-food.

What Are We Running Away From

It is starting to become clear to me, that we tend to shy away from self examination and especially the examination of our own personal contribution to our personal survival. Society has given us so many tools to escape this responsibility, namely money; that in just a few decades, we have largely lost the skills which helped build great nations of free self sufficient individuals.

Not only has society given us tools to escape our responsibilities; but it has also given us plenty of red herrings; so that we are less likely to discover a method of curing the underlying cause. We become polarized into phony political, religious and economic paradigms; which only serve to divide us and pit us against each other.

Instead of cooperating amongst ourselves, forming real communities, creating genuine, robust, bottom up, solution-oriented, changes; we expect someone else to take on what is ultimately our own responsibility. We have a solemn responsibility, as individuals, to take decisive action in our daily lives.

What Can We Do?

The most important thing we can do, is to first identify what we really need, to survive and flourish as integrated individuals; while doing so, we need to also determine what we don’t need.

Once this is sorted out as best we can, we need to determine what we can do to get what we need, what impediments if any are stopping us from meeting those needs. Then we need to organize a plan, for how we are going to meet our needs on a continuous basis.

We have to regularly re-evaluate our lives, so that we are eliminating unneeded processes and focusing more energy on those which are necessary; else we will live lives which are not as meaningful as they could be.

Let’s Get Started

As most of us realize, deep down inside; we are facing some serious problems, on so many levels. Many of the problems are already effecting us, while there are many which will only affect us years down the road.

We can’t keep delaying the solutions until tomorrow. If something is not going to be done today; it is probably not going to happen tomorrow either. The desire to escape is addictive and infective. The more we engage in escapism, the more we are likely to do so in the future.

Conversely, the more we engage in decisive individual actions, the more we are likely to do so in the future; especially as we begin to see the effects of our efforts. Each day is like a sliding scale; we either make some progress towards our goals, or we move away from those goals.

We know for certain that if we choose to ignore our responsibilities, they will not simply go away. We can’t just pretend that they aren’t there and they go away; because they are real concrete problems; they will remain with us until we each address them as individuals.

Once enough of us address these problems as individuals, we will undoubtedly see more synergy in our communities. Once successfully kindled, this synergy will have a momentum all its own; which will help to continue the process.

All of this is up to us. If we aren’t willing to do it, then who will.

Here’s a 20 minute tour of what we are doing to be more self-sufficient and eat better as the spring approaches. In the video I explain why I feel it is important to start your own seeds, what we’ve done to get our seeds starting, what to do when the seedlings have sprouted their leaves; as well as how to grow some of your greens in sprouting jars.

For the last several decades, our civilization has steadily approached the point of no return.  This is the point which, when passed, we can no-longer salvage our lifestyle as we know it.  This means that we cannot simply steer ourselves out, as a society; but we must first endure a painful collapse in which millions will be ruined financially and lose everything they have.  Indeed many people will be absolutely shocked and dumbfounded when the very fabric of the society they are completely reliant on, comes apart suddenly, in a devastating wave of hyper-inflation.

There is no doubt in my mind that hyper-inflation is headed our way very soon.  The unprecedented level of money creation will not be wiped by deflation.  In point of fact, the circumstances we are now in are virtually identical to other situations throughout history, which have all resulted in hyper-inflation.

Basically the economy is in a deep slump, while governments are rapidly increasing the money supply with Quantitative Easing (a fancy academic term for creation of large amounts of money).  This formula has a long history of causing currency failure.

Indeed, the system has been abused to such an extent that they have little choice at this point; the only way to wipe out the massive public and private debt obligations is to shrink the size of the debt by debasing the currency.

In the process of dropping the value of the dollar, they are also wiping out the savings of many people and governments around the world.  Indeed most of the dollars in circulation are actually held overseas.  So this debasement of the currency is going to rob the savings of a great many people who trusted in the integrity of the US government.  I doubt this mistake will be made again; at least for a few generations.

This is precisely why the wealthiest and most successful families in the history of our civilization, will only hold their money in hard assets or quality companies which produce hard assets.  They learned through experience, that hard assets are the only way to preserve their family’s wealth, generation after generation, in situations where the currency has no convertability.

I find it truly interesting to observe the behavior of different types of people, as we head into this period in our history:

• There is a significant segment of our population that doesn’t want to know anything; they prefer to think that their lifestyle is untouchable.  They have everything they own in some mutual funds or money markets in their 401(k) or IRA.  Anything in regards to money is “better left to the professionals” despite the fact that these “professionals” are the ones who created the terminal situation which has robbed so many people of their life’s savings.
• Another portion of our population wishes to be blindly optimistic.  They celebrate the fact that the new President is an well-spoken intellectual who says and does much of what they always wanted their leader to say and do.  There seems to be little to no concern, amongst these pseudo-intellectuals, that nothing is being done to address the fundamental problems which plague our society.  Instead new bandages are being applied to mask the problems and “keep up appearances.”
• Finally, there is another portion of the population who have become thoroughly disgusted with the dis-ingenuous left-right paradigm.  They realize that both political parties are leading us down the primrose path, not into the land of milk and honey; but into the desert to die.  It is this segment of the population, which has chosen to rely on their own abilities; to adapt in whatever ways they are able.  To this group of individuals, the solutions to our problems are not top-down, as we are accustomed to; instead the solutions are implemented by each of us in our own lives.  The basic idea is to reduce and eliminate the dependency on this failed society; instead relying on their selves and the local community.  They don’t wish to wait and hope for someone or something outside of themselves to produce “change ™”; instead they fundamentally change the way they live their lives.

I prefer to identify with the third group, because I feel strongly that the first two groups are simply accomplishing nothing of substance. I believe in our power as individuals to produce what we need to live on this planet. Its not like we’re having to live on Mars or something inhospitable like that. This is a very fertile planet which is positively bursting with life and genetic diversity.

I often hear naysayers say that you must have 40 acres and significant financial resources to change your lifestyle; but I have seen examples of urban homesteaders who have been able to produce the majority of their food on small lots (less than 1/4 acre). Sure, they aren’t totally “off the grid” but producing one’s own food is a significant step in cutting costs and achieving sustainability.

We may as well start where we are at. If we are going to strive for something, we must strive for goals that we know we can achieve in a reasonable amount of time. If a significant segment of our population learned to decrease their dependency on this failed system, the benefits would be innumerable.

There’s clearly an awful lot wrong with the financial system of today.  The talking heads and bureaucrats will tell you that they need more money powers to sort the situation out.  They say that they must create trillions of dollars and have the ability to take over large companies; all of this is to bail out the financial institutions.

When you are thinking about this situation, you have to realize that the original purpose of the Federal Reserve banking system was to give the large Wall Street bankers the peace of mind of knowing that they would always be bailed out, so they would never lose any of their own money.  With a system of this sort in place, financial institutions take risks that they would not have otherwise taken.

Lately, the investment banks such as Lehman and Merrill Lynch have gotten into the habit of “investing” 30 dollars for every dollar in capitol that they have.  It doesn’t take a genius to realize that this is incredibly irresponsible. Read the rest of this entry »

The universe has a purpose, though its not what you may have been sold. It simply gives us what we ask for, while the rest has been left, for each of us to decide. If we should choose to fear, then that is what we will be given, until we achieve the destruction that we so woefully fear. But if we should choose to love, then that is what we will be given, until we achieve the creation that we so ardently love.

Whatever we decide to make our focus, will manifest itself in the myriad things around us, so long as we choose to maintain such a focus. We are much more than simple passengers, along for a boring ride into a certain fate. No, we are powerful too, co-creators, gods in our own right; as powerful as any being who ever lived.

The only thing that can be our un-doing, is that which is of our own choosing. Not some wrathful God who judges its creation from afar, like an angry father with his charged rod of iron, with a mighty white beard, he throws an spiteful bolt, at whatever he fears, to prevent it from becoming something on its own that he cannot control, like robotic mindless servants.

Just look at any “organized” form of religion and you will plainly see, that they are selling the same damn thing. Could it be any more awfully obscene? To see these learned men peddling infantile fears, preaching annihilation towards all who refuse to submit themselves blindly.

It doesn’t matter what they call it, what rituals they pursue, or how many followers they have saved, from the evil scourge self-hood. Evil to these men is deviation, from the organizations on which the followers depend.

Surely, they say, this trend towards individuation, will someday be our annihilation. So we must rid our selves of the spark to create; and fear anything that we haven’t been shown by the bearers of the stamp of approval.

Simply reduce it to its components, and it will be evident that their tactics are quite simple, when you look beyond the facade of virtue and righteousness. Virtually every manner of group-think is based upon the fear of annihilation and self-punishing guilt. Without these two techniques, these awful organizations will have no base of followers, no-one would seek their shelter.

They lure you in, with a false sense of security, then they transform you into precisely that which you fear. Because without this paradigm, they have created, you will be certain to experience the annihilation that you so fear.

So it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Since their control paradigm is weak and riddled with holes, it will one day collapse, leaving you exposed. Since you chose to believe, that without fear as your only master, that you shall truly perish, vanishing into the void, then that is what you shall have whenever the fateful day arrives. This focus on annihilation will manifest itself as you so desire.

In a dream last night, during the early hours of April 30 of the year 2008, I was given an extra-ordinary sequence of visions. The information that came to me in these dreams was unlike anything I have encountered before in the dream world, or in the waking world.

At the beginning of this unusual sequence, I walked into a seemingly ordinary store, then passed by a table where someone was tending to some pastries. I thought to myself how foolish it is to eat pastries, and had a little laugh inside at seeing it there.

After having these thoughts, I passed through a door, which brought me into a hospital. This is peculiar, because I have often thought of hospitals as foolish and even dangerous places, where people are often taken advantage of and treated with techniques based on lies and academic deception. Read the rest of this entry »

Dennis Weaver, the US retired actor, builds himself a mansion made almost entirely from recycled tires and dirt. This is eco-modernization, proving once and for all that eco-friendly design and construction/building does not have to smell or look funny.

In fact, it is cheaper, quicker, easier and safer to construct such an ‘earthship’ than any conventional construction technique! This is eco-rationality in action. Prepare to be amazed.

Many of us, when we think of who and what we are, fail to realize that the Earth is an extension of our body and mind or, better yet, we are an extension of the Earth’s body and mind. When one of us wastes the fruit of the Earth, in one of the countless (unsustainable) ways that we, as a civilization, have devised to do so, they are wasting the very fruit of our collective body and mind; a condition which leads to the weakness of and the eventual death of the Gaian (Earth) mind/body/spirit complex. Read the rest of this entry »