Friday, November 25, 2016

On Healing the Earth and People



As an American citizen, I find that neither the Democratic or Republican parties say much of anything that resonates with me. Most of what they talk about are social issues they intend to do nothing about, as a means to divide us to more easily rule over us; otherwise most of what I hear is just Orwellian for whatever corporations, banks and big donors want, but don't want you to know or understand.

Politically, I'm an Anarchist. If you share the view of Anarchy of the Democratic and Republican parties, then you probably suppose I want chaos in the streets, mayhem, everyone against everyone else, death and destruction. But that is just projection, because that is what you are increasingly getting from the strict command and control leadership of Dems, Repubs, Corp, Bank and super rich people.

Anarchy is the Way of Nature. Anarchy is the way nature organizes, evolves effortlessly. Nature is resilient, irreducibly complex and sustainable. Humans at least are material, of nature, of the earth. It follows then there is the capacity within humanity for self-rule, spontaneous organization. I think you see that whenever there is a crisis, many people simply begin to organize a functioning society to meet simple necessities spontaneously.

Those who rule over us tend to believe however, either we are not of this earth (of God), so the rules of nature don't apply; or the opposite extreme, we are of nature and nothing else, it is all about competition, I can do pretty much whatever I want in the interest of my evolution (basest instincts). And so they feed us these ideologies that we might be separate from our true nature and each other.

If humanity were able to organize more as nature does, life would be more peaceful. An anarchic people would be self-organizing, core-strong, practicing self-rule. An anarchic people would value cooperation above competition. A truly anarchic people would take care of the earth and each other.

Organizing ourselves contrary to nature, we build immense, complex but inflexible societies one after another, every one of them collapsing under the weight of that complexity and inherent contradiction.

We now risk even human extinction, or worse, reducing the health of the biosphere such that we wipe out the majority of species and leave a severely degraded existence for a few wretched survivors.

Those who rule over us seek to divide us, by preying upon our prejudices, by exacerbating ancient hatreds, by encouraging us to percieve in absolute Good vs Evil, by highlighting petty grievances - while ignoring the overwhelming similarities between us, denying the systemic corruption that oppresses us all.

There are several tangible things we could do, that transcend race, ethnicity and political divisions, that would allow us to unlock the potential of individuals, strengthen communities, and make of America a true shining light and leader in the world.

1. Debt Relief
2. Redefine Currency
3. Land Policy
4. Rebuild Community
5. Shift in Consciousness

A simple list (the fifth one is a kind of summation of the four). Politically unimaginable in America, but the great thing about a Democratic party in a state of collapse, and a Republican party that doesn't know it is dead yet, it's a very creative time to imagine a different America.

1. Debt Relief

Don't you think that because money is so central to this society, that a study of economics would be central to a grade school education? Many American kids might be earning money by the time they are 15, yet the vast majority of American adults have no idea what the Dollar is, how it is created, or who owns it.

Why is that? Because an uninformed people are more easily made debt serfs.

Banks create money out of nothing, It is a slight of hand magic trick. They "loan" it into existence, as when they issue a mortgage, or they "buy" junk assets from distressed financial institutions and investors, usually for the full value, creating money and a corresponding and then-some amount of debt, or a claim on future production, ie interest. The money doesn't exist anywhere in reality: like some genie, say "poof", a cloud of smoke appears and suddenly it says right there on that piece of paper or computer, X amount of $'s exist - and everyone believes it.

Making money this way makes for a lot of debt. In fact, the debt can't do anything but increase exponentially over time. Thus, the Dollar is the greatest ponzi scheme ever created. Since 1980 debt has climbed relative to wages, and since 1970, considerably faster than GDP. Do you imagine these trends are sustainable indefinitely? Over time, more and more production, instead of re-invested into society, is consumed in the form of debt payments, until society breaks under the obligation.

There is a reckoning coming for the Dollar. Those who control the dollar imagine the whole world and all it's people indebted to it. But even total global domination doesn't prevent debt from growing out of control, eventually. Total global domination is not likely to happen, so the reckoning is likely coming sooner rather than later.

What would benefit regular people most, and the economy generally, would be debt relief. Growth in debt is inflation official bean counters ignore. Debt is eating away at purchasing power.

Debt Jubilee is a very old concept, mentioned in the Old Testament. A wiping away of debts, a kind of starting over, starting fresh. The ancients recognized runaway debt has a pernicious effect, causing great discord, and eventually, uprising against the creditors.

Those who own the majority of that debt are the richest among us. The most powerful among us. But it is also owned by pension accounts, IRA, 401K, retirement accounts of all kinds. There are a lot of people invested in that debt, maybe half the society, who are the "rentiers", people "letting their money work for them", which is also living off the production of the lesser half, or rather, most of the rest of the world.

The economy is swamped by debt, something has to be done or there will be ever greater discord.

2. Redefine Currency

The Dollar is the world's greatest ponzi scheme. It is an ever greater claim on future labor/production, which stagnates the economy, eventually collapsing the currency.

But it is not enough to wipe out the debt, if you just start over the same process of debt creation. The very nature of currency has to be judged. The dollar is like a mechanical hamster wheel that spins ever faster. Over time, regular people are expected to work more for less return. The product available to them becomes ever more shoddy, yet the price increases. The demands of the dollar and debt encourages wasteful, predatory and even parasistic and cannabalistic use of resources. Growth then amounts to more pollution, ever more garbage and a ruination of ecosystems. All talk about the sustainable is just that, as long as the core currency demands the unsustainable.

Imagine, instead of a debt- and waste-based currency, what about a regenerative one? Instead of propping up a leisure class, a currency that is generated by the very act of production, and ecological healing, empowering all?

For instance, I have been hiking around the Twin Cities this fall, marvelling at the abundance of Eurasian buckthorn. A non-native, berry producing shrub that grows to about 20 ft, it is a diuretic to mammals so deer and rabbit won't browse the saplings (while they do eat native berry producers.) Birds particularly robins, scatter the seed across the landscape, the seeds are efficient germinators, it grows in dense patches crowding and shading everything else out. It is most noticable in the late fall because the leaves remain green after most of the forest is barren because of the cold.

Now imagine Joe Schmo spends his day ripping out buckthorn saplings, and by the very act of that labor, he generates currency? Money appears in his account relative to his labor. No one pays him, the money is simply generated.

Joe and Jill Smith start an organic farm on former GMO industrial corn mining land. Simiarly, they generate money simply by the act of growing vegetables, by producing food. They can also sell product for cash to people like Joe Schmo, but otherwise their labor literally creates money.

Tyrese Jackson generates money by picking up and delivering produce from local organic farms to urban areas. Maria Gonzalez generates currency by feeding and taking care of those who can't take care of themselves.

Thereon, throughout all the menial, "chop wood, carry water" tasks of developed, civil society. Taking money creation away from centralized powers, and from those ambitious, ruthless types who strive to rule over us, giving money creation back to "we the people."

Central to this notion of a regenerative currency, would be about healing. Healing people and the earth. The act of healing and restoring ecosystems would generate currency. Healing, restoration and sustainability would be incentivized.

3. Land Policy:

Land policy, such as it is in America, favors monopoly control, by large corporations and banks, agribusiness on ever larger land holdings, and the treatment of most of the land including public and private, inherenty extractive and exploitative.

Nor are these monopolies held accountable for the pollution they release into the biosphere. This is an "externalized" cost acting as another kind of debt, to be paid by society, by sucker consumers.

A new currency as described would encourage and incentivize the expansion of wild lands, while facilitating the healthy production of food and necessary materials, while eliminating pollution. If monopolies were forced to pay for their pollution, none would exist.

The script would be flipped. Favoring individuals and small groups, preventing monopoly, destructive, extractive, predatory behavior.

The economics of the local would be paramount. Local, responsible, ethical, sustainable, restorative, generative; a people with a close connection, care and concern for the land will protect it.

4. Rebuild Community:

Favoring small producers, citizens and small business over monopoly would help restore community. By empowering individuals economically, in relation to the needs of local community, local community is made more resilient and sustainable, healthy. Whatever your skills are, there is a need, and if filling that need generates income automatically, it is empowering people to fulfill their destiny.

As it is, globalization has hollowed out rural American communities. It has removed income potential, chaining most to low wage service employment and social welfare programs, such that many have turned to meth, heroin and alcohol to "escape." Many escape to the cities, where the forces of predatory capitalism congregate. Agricultural land prices around small communities have been preverted by a combination of monetary policy, the revolving door between corp/bank/gov, and globalist trade rules, putting local land out of reach economically, leading to a sence of helplessness, disconection, depression and dispair.

There are many who would be restored spiritually, given the opportunity to thrive economically, restoring a sence of community and healing the land and waters around community.

Some communities can't be saved, others will rebuild, some might spring up where there was none.

The point is, if trends continue, the whole of the earth will be a rich mans play ground, a mostly destroyed, degraded, polluted, ecologically barren tennant farm and mining camp, if the vast majority are huddled into the cities to live a "virtual" existence. Strong communities are made of strong people with strong ties built with love, care and concern. Such a people are not so easily reduced to consumer, junkie debt serfs.

5. A Shift in Consciousness

We are now more than 7 billion people on planet earth. That is by definition, humanity "separated from nature." In a way too, it is humanity succumbing to the most brutal of all ecological rules, overpopulation in the precence of over-abundance; it happens with rabbits, reindeer and rats etc too. But it is also humanity assuming there will always be a technical sollution, or that God will save us, or aliens will...

The 'solution" probably looks more like unintended mass starvation and war, if humanity stumbles into resource constraints and point-of-no-return biosphere damage. Most signs seem to point to a very dumb human totality going berserk.

It doesn't have to be that way. If humans are in fact an intelligent species, a radical shift in consciousness is possible.

America is supposed to be a place where a diverse people come together to structure a society that would benefit all. It was not meant to be the consumer driven seat of global warmongering and economic control, global empire, for the benefit of a new internationale aristocracy. It was not supposed to be utopia for grifters, nihilists and sociopaths.

It was supposed to be a culture free from the rule of tyranny; a society protecting the right of all, to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

America could be the seat of a new kind of consiousness. I still believe, where America goes, the world will follow. This new consiousness would be focused on healing people and the earth, particulary the waters. Aware that a healthy earth will be reflected in healthy people and likewise, that we are All relations, that the way of Life is cooperation.

We are all of the earth. How we treat the earth is reflected in body and mind. The biosphere is suffering, as are people. Heal the earth and people will be healed.    




14 comments:

Luciddreams said...

I envy your optimism William. I wish I could believe that the change you are advocating could be possible, but I suppose I've become too jaded by reality. I've been facing down this overwhelming epiphany that one must first be able to afford to be the change. It's baked into a capitalistic society. Those who control the dial that allows digibits into existence control everything. Those same people are psychopaths (or sociopaths which is a euphemism for psychopath). They've got it fixed so that we all have to have money to get the things that we need in our society. Which is a lie. Technically we could sustain our needs without money. There was a time, think Native American nomads, when humanity provided for it's every need without money or large centralized government. Those times are now shrouded by the mist of passing time, and they are myth now.

Standing Rock is testament to the place we are now. The latest headline is that the army corp of engineers is going to shut the camp down on the 5th of December. The Black Snake will cross the Missouri. I want to believe that it can be stopped. I want to be at Standing Rock standing with those warriors. I don't have the money to make that possible. I have a wife and two children. We need every dollar that we can acquire.

I often think that we could just disappear into the wilderness. Could we survive? Maybe. But I can't do that with my family. Ecovilliage? You need money. I couldn't just move my family to The Farm or Earthhaven without paying tens of thousands of dollars. Ecovillages are the way forward, but they don't exist in a vacuum. They require money to come into existence. The same people that own the digibit lever own the land that you pay taxes to. I own 4 acres that I can do nothing with. The only thing we can do with that land is to build one house of stick built or modular construction. Anything that we grow from the land we are not allowed to sell.

Stay positive William. God knows we need people who can abide in hope. I want to believe that the future can be better than the present, but I don't see it. What I see is the rich will continue getting richer, and the rest of us will continue getting poorer until we become migrant refugees desperate enough to attempt crossing the Mediterranean on a dingy and dying by the thousands in the process. They will continue cutting the trees down and removing the mountain tops and drilling the ground for energy, and we will continue buying the toilet paper and driving the cars. Only collapse will stop this now.

That is the Native prophecy. If they fail at Standing Rock the prophecy is fulfilled and the snake crosses. It's the end of the world. I think the Mayan 2012 prophecy was true. It just didn't happen with a big bang. Trump's election is testament to the doom, as would have been Hillary's. Testament to the doom is that it matters not who the POTUS is. The Corporatocracy does as it wills, and it wills psychopathic profit and power above health.

I imagine that this will end with another great world war. In fact, that war has been raging for some time now. Here in the states we are sheltered by MSM and iphones with the inconsequential facebook echo chamber. It's coming here. Standing Rock is the Canary in the coal mine with that eventuality. Police state America is about to be unleashed. At this point nothing will stop it.

Honestly, I want to be wrong. I hope that I'm wrong and that you are right. Thank you for believing that positive change is possible. I just can't see it.

William Hunter Duncan said...

LD, no change is possible until enough believe it, and enough can't believe it until a few articulate it clearly enough to understand. Anyway, I'm going to continue to attempt to articulate it, no matter what.

Luciddreams said...

Thank you for your continual articulation. I say that in all sincerity. My hope lies in the power of bamboo. I want to be wrong about where I see the future headed. I want to believe that tomorrow can be better than yesterday. I just can't see it. I do believe that the Water Protectors, and the situation with DAPL is a harbinger for a turning point. Possibly. We either get full on Corporatocracy hell complete with a Corporate King Trump and a fubar biome, or we may just get the beginning of healing. Either way I'll be moving towards and advocating for a bamboo future.

William Hunter Duncan said...

The DAPL issue is indeed a harbringer. If the Corp of Engineers think they are going to clear that camp by Dec 5, they are going to need the Army or Marines. They can't use the fake news excuse to keep that in the shadows. If they use a force ten times the size so far, and America yawns, or cowers, then yes, it is only going to get worse for us all. That is still a creative time. Stay true to your core.

William Hunter Duncan said...

Btw LD, my Google stats reflect a 6xs increase in bots, from about 35 hits a day to 200+, after my post about the end of my battle with the city about my greenhouse, after a year of not blogging much. I must be getting at something ;)

Luciddreams said...

I wonder what it is that you are getting at that warrants that increase in bots? what do you attribute it to?

On the Standing Rock issue and clearing the camp...it won't surprise me if they bring in the full fury and might of the military. It won't surprise me in the least. What would the people do about it? There would be outrage to be sure, just like there has been about King Trumps appointment as POTUS. However, there would have been outrage either way. People are outraged by what we have gotten. A faux representative democracy. The only thing it represents is the 1% owners of the Corporatocracy.

I suppose they do what? Arrest everybody and take them to another FEMA like camp? To a prison perhaps? To jail? Then they release them all having broken up the camp and therefore the resistance. Maybe they arrest all of the leaders and leave them in solitary until the pipeline is built? Again, what would the people do about it that would amount to anything more than protesting in the streets? Maybe some rioting in the city centers followed by more police crack downs and mass arrests. And how would a resistance be any different than the OWS movement was? We saw what all that accomplished. Namely...not a damn thing as the DAPL police state no doubt confirms.

There is no way to win here. Non-violence results in arrests. Violence results in arrests. The Corporate police are geared up for terrorism. Anything beyond turning the other check will result in being labeled a terrorist.

It would take a mass violent uprising to change the trajectory of the Corporatocracy and it's quests for complete control. Maybe that's not too far fetched at this point. If it got violent then they would most certainly squash it with the military, and the MSM would report it, and people would be afraid of all of the domestic terrorist. It has to stay non-violent to have a chance at changing anything. The Water Protectors know that...thank God for that.

Maybe we can win. I wish I could be there contributing as a Water Protector. Why aren't you there William? It's in your back yard after all. What could be more important than the No DAPL fight presently?

Reverse Engineer said...

It's going to be quite difficult to clear that camp on Dec 5th. This isn't a small Occupy site, and it's going to get a lot bigger by D-Day. The First Nations people are chartering buses and just about any who are still alive are going to be there. It's bigger than Wounded Knee.

On Da Goobermint side, the Goobernator has already spent $10M policing this, and he has pitched the ball at Obama. He'll have to call up the National Guard,and will he do that right before he is set to leave office? It would kill his bullshit legacy as defender of the underclass.

I think the pipeline will end up going through, but I doubt it will carry oil in it for very long. The economics will be much more effective in killing it, although it certainly doesn't hurt to make it more expensive to complete with the protests.

RE

William Hunter Duncan said...

Good to hear from you RE. I will check in with you soon. And yes, economics are likely to make DAPL a short lived pipeline, if activism doesn't. And yeah, a fine fitting end to the Obama years, a nice domestic show of force to show the people who controls whom and what.

LD, I've been thinking about driving out there this weekend. I have bags full of old work clothes, most of which are not so good for trift sale, but good for warmth. See for myself what is what. Report back. If they are going to clear that camp however, there's no where to run out there on that prairie, no where to hide. Fish in a barrel so to speak. This is not the Aeon of Pisces anymore, if you catch my meaning waterbearer. I am not a fish. Turning the other cheek will get you labeled a terrorist guaranteed in this Christian/Capitalist hydra.

Reverse Engineer said...

I published this one on the Diner. :) Lemme know if you get any kind of bump in readership.

RE

Reverse Engineer said...

If you do go, make SURE to get pics and vids!!!!!

RE

Luciddreams said...

I'd love to drive up there and get myself arrested. I'd sleep better at night and like myself more as a person. I don't have the money to pull it off, and my wife and children need me at home and not in a jail cell with a terrorist record. I'm pretty sure I would not be able to remain peaceful. I'm not put together that way. I fight back when attacked.

SaintPauliGirl said...

Enjoyed the blog and comments. We have been talking about this stuff extensively and I thought this article that I just read could be important to consider if you are serious about going to standing rock, which I have every hope of doing. It was a different view than most I have read and aimed specifically at non-native family. WHD, thank you for your articulation and positivity, as well as promotion of non-violence.

http://planetjuniper.tumblr.com/post/153580919367/random-pic-of-dude-at-burning-man-the-unbearable

Ien in the Kootenays said...

Beautiful post. Thanks for articulating! I have been giving a lot of thought to the best ways to resist the global corporatocracy. So much needs to be done, it is overwhelming. The way in which people can be most constructive also depends on their personal life. The harm done to an abandoned family would outweigh the good done by a protest. Your greenhouse and urban food gardens, if visible from the street, may well be one of the most revolutionary contributions you can make.

troutbirder said...

Most interesting blog I stumbled on here. I'm intrigued. Thanks for sharing...:)