History unfolds before our eyes. Our world is evolving so rapidly that we can literally watch the show as if in live time. We are not just spectators either. We are actors on this great stage of uncertainty, playing our roles as we will, whatever they may be. That we can write our own characters and script our own lives is the great secret that many are awakening to. The truth is that we make the world around us with with our thoughts. Or maybe we are making someone else's thoughts into reality, but our thoughts about their vision, our movements, our participation, is required for the society we have to exist. When we begin to see how others have crafted stories and rituals to direct our creative energy towards their agendas, we also see how we can redirect our awareness towards goals of our own choosing.
This is the great work. Reclaiming our liberty is more than just a notion; it is a change in our lifestyle. It is up to us to examine ourselves and seek out ways that our thoughts and actions are contributing to the problem, and to redirect ourselves strategically towards solutions. There is no set procedure for making our world better. We each must find a way to contribute what we can. It all begins with our thoughts.
So what are we thinking about? We have no shortage of sensational stories going around, and it seems to me that lots of folks have their hackles up over something. After a pretty long time of being an avid consumer of alternative media, I've spent way less time keeping up with everything in recent months. But even in my relative isolation, I can't help but get wind of certain stories making the rounds.
One that I had a good laugh about was Roseanne, who, apparently had a new show on the air. (Who knew?) Had a show, I say, because I guess she got cancelled for saying something that was construed as racist. My search for the exact quote was not fruitful, but I gathered that it primarily had to do with a suggesting this politician looked like she was from Planet of the Apes. Either way, it was some derogatory remark that passed through Roseanne's head, and, thanks to Twitter, the whole world got to know about it.
And spend a lot of time talking about it. Seems a bit silly, really. We've got some serious problems we should be addressing, and we have this incredible technology that allows us to talk to each other, anyone to anyone, all around the world. We should be making some serious headway here in our quest to solve major societal problems. Are we using our time, technology, and ability to converse wisely? We have this enormous power, to topple people's reputations and careers for breaking some kind of social contract. We have a collective voice and that voice has power. And who are we going after with it? In many generations to come, how meaningful will the things we invested our time and effort into seem?
Not to say anything about the issues involved in Roseanne's case (freedom of speech, racism, censorship, television politics)... though I could say plenty. Just the fact that it's costing so many Americans so much of their time is unfortunate, when it feels like we have much bigger problems than celebrities saying mean things.
On another topic, I've been seeing lots of coverage of lava flows in Hawaii, where the mountain has been spewing out some liquid hot rock in earnest. It's neat to watch videos of it, though I know it's also an inconvenience and even a danger at times to people who live there. Mostly Hawaiians respect Pele and stand aside while she flows. The Earth does mighty things, and we are but small boats on an enormous ocean, where even our land masses float on an ocean of lava. I often wonder about what is at the center of all that lava. They say it's just more, much hotter lava, but it's to figure that as anything but a theory, given as no one's been in there to confirm.
Some people push the hollow earth theory, which I find interesting, though not extremely compelling. I'd say the most interesting piece of that puzzle is Jules Vern, who either designed (or had access to some one else's designs) of submarine and rocket technology in the 1800s. The man seemed to know some stuff that ordinary people do not, so we have to wonder what kind of research led him to write Journey to the Center of the Earth...
What else? Whole Foods backed out of their promised requirement to label GMO foods. This story has been around for a while, but recent developments have brought it back to our attention. I found several articles predicting that this would happen as soon as they heard that Amazon was buying Whole Foods. Rumors, they claimed, were already circulating that Whole Foods would reverse the decision to require labeling, as far back as year ago. Does this change in policy have anything to do with Whole Foods being purchased by Amazon? Probably. Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post, which frequently puts out GMO apologist propaganda.
Bezos was even reported to have stated that that they don't need to label GMO's because "they're safe," but I can't find the original source for that quote, so who knows if it's true. This claim seems to have first appeared on Your News Wire, which is known to disseminate unsubstantiated info. (It's hard for me to know with some of these sites, as so many of them have been caught putting out news that's inaccurate, misleading, or downright made up, but then again, they often report on real things that are worth knowing about but that are being ignored by big media outlets. Thus it's not so simple as assuming that because it's on Your News Wire or Natural News that it is definitely false, but one certainly can't assume that everything they post is true, either. Discretion is the name of the game in this era of internet news.)
Back to Whole Foods - I can't say I'm surprised. Whole Foods is generally unimpressive, when it comes to high quality, organic food. They have some good brands that you won't find at the usual food stores, but compared to local food coops, or even another chain like Natural Grocer, Whole Foods is corporate af, and they sell all sorts of green-washed crap being peddled by big food distributors who want to cash in on the craze without having to actually source quality and abide by ethical health standards. If Whole Foods went out of business because people started going to coops or signing up for more CSAs, I wouldn't shed a single tear. Shop local folks.
Next. I've been seeing lots of stories about immigrant children being separated from their families and held in concentration camps. I can't say I'm the least bit surprised, of course. America's descent into overt fascism has been unfolding throughout my adult lifetime, and every time a new benchmark is reached, I just shake my head and sigh. I even heard a tale about a detention center in a former Walmart, which conspiracy folks have been warning us about for years.
Now it's real, and when Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley tried to gain entrance to such a facility, he had the cops called on him. Other reports include descriptions of all manner of abuses, including threats of sexual abuse and children being kept in kennels. One photo of detained children sleeping in a kennel recently made the rounds, and even though it is four years old, it shows what kind of a situation we are dealing with. (It also shows that this kind of thing has been going on for a long time... Just imagine if we had pictures from Indian Residential Schools or the Japanese concentration camps from WWII...)
Immigration is a very divisive issue. Even in the liberty movement, which is decidedly anti-government, we have major disagreements about borders and immigration. I was surprised by how many anarchists are in favor of protecting borders. At Anarchapulco this year, Larken Rose debated Lauren Southern about the matter, and I expected the crowd to be universally in support of Larken's position (no borders, no walls), but I was wrong. A whole lot of people were of the opinion that we have to do something to protect the first world from the flood of desperate people clamoring to get access to our infrastructure. It's kind of like the lifeboats after the Titanic sank. Even though there were still people alive in the ocean, screaming, the lifeboats couldn't go over to help them, even if they had room, because they would simply be swamped with people trying to climb in and then everyone would drown.
After the debate, I found that most of the people in favor of controlling immigration were European, and from one friend in particular I learned that there is a good reason for this. Occasionally I see stories go by about rapes and other crimes going on in Europe, but from him I learned that the situation is far worse than major news media outlets let on. I haven't looked really deeply into it, but from what he described, nice communities all over Europe are having terror unleashed on them from immigrant communities, in the form of violence, theft, and rape.
What appears to be going on (at the 3d chess game level) is that Europe is being destabilized, in part by this flood of immigration. Dumping a bunch of people whose lives have been destroyed by imperialism and war, right in the heart of the empire that overswept them, is a formula for trouble. Just the kind of trouble that the conspirators who run our society want. Get the citizens to be scared of crime and desperate for more police, more laws, more checkpoints.
To me, it doesn't matter how you slice it. Taking kids away from their parents (except of course in cases of severe abuse) is not okay. Locking children in cages? Also not okay. But if you believe in government, if you believe that some should have the right to wield this kind of power over us or others, then you have asked for this. Horrible abuses can quickly become normalized within military/police/border guard culture, and unless the people resist this, it will become normal to us too. We are witnessing it. Common folks duck their heads and keep walking while the police choke or taze someone to death, or haul them off for some minor infraction. Or for no infraction at all. We're already there, folks. Are we going to continue down this path, just to see how far it can go?
The final story I'd like to discuss today really made the rounds yesterday, on the anniversary of the event itself, which took place fourteen years ago. I'm talking, of course, about Killdozer.
Marvin Heemeyer owned a muffler shop in Granby Colorado, but a construction project next to him blocked his access. He bought the dozer so that he could carve his own road, after the one he was using for his shop was blocked by the construction. The city denied his permit, and when the construction project cut off his sewer line somehow, the city then decided to fine him for code violation. Rather than just give up and believe the old saying that you can't fight city hall, he decided to encase his bulldozer in armor and destroy city hall.
It took him a year and half of preparation (the man really held a grudge), but once he was finished, he drove it right on down to city hall and smashed up the building. He then went on to destroy twelve other buildings, all of them strategically. He targeted people he believed had wronged him during the course of the dispute, including the former mayor's house and the office of a newspaper that had written an editorial against him. The police tried all they could to stop him, but his dozer was bullet proof, and it knocked away even heavy construction equipment that was brought in to block his path. In spite of all the destruction, no one was hurt or killed during the rampage, except Heemeyer himself. Once the dozer got stuck, Marvin shot himself, which was probably his plan all along.
I share this story with mixed feelings. I don't condone the use of violence or revenge, and while Heemeyer may have been wronged, he wasn't physically attacked by anyone. His property and his livelihood had been attacked, so perhaps we could say that he was only acting in kind, fighting back against stronger, better connected opponents who were sweeping him aside as if he didn't matter. I don't know all the details, so I'm reluctant to call the man a hero, but what he did took courage and conviction. Something about the idea of the underdog standing up and fighting, even if he knows he can't win, is compelling. When someone is being pushed around by bullies who think that their victim is powerless to fight back, but suddenly that victim steps in wallops them good, there's something satisfying about that. The degree to which that retaliation is justified depends on a lot, and is often relative to who you ask.
I once saw a (real) video where this girl was just laying into her boyfriend outside of a club. Punching him over and over again, even when he tried to get away from her. Punching him hard, too. Eventually he just socked her, laying her out cold. I am not an advocate of violence, especially by men against women. Still, the fact is, if you use violence against someone else, you're inviting it back to yourself, regardless of your gender. Did that girl deserve it? I don't know, but I think she got a little taste of how the world works that night. Do people deserve to get stung for bumping into a wasp nest? Maybe not, but you better expect that those wasps are going to sting. Did Granby City Hall deserve to be crushed because of the council's decisions regarding Heemeyer? Again, I don't know, but we see what happens when people are pushed too far.
So that's all for my thoughts on the world as it flies by. We are charging full speed ahead towards whatever future we end up collectively creating. It's easy for that future to appear dire, with all that's going wrong with the world, but one thing's for sure - it won't be boring. See you along the way there!
(I took none of the photos in this article. Thanks internet!)