Whatchoo gonna do
When they come for you?
Into The Woods posted a wonderful diary today (Sat., 10/29) called Thoughts on November 8 – What Are You Prepared to Do?. In it, (s)he asked:
If control of our government is usurped by those that have no true belief in constitutional democracy, what are you prepared to do?
Will you be ready, willing and able to join a general strike by Monday, November 13?
This got me to thinking.
There is a general feeling of dread in the blogleft air as we await the seemingly inevitable attempt at inventing yet another new reality that will be made by BushCo before November 7th.
Will it be an Iranian surprise?
A terror surprise?
A vote theft surprise?
Some terrible cocktail of all three simultaneously this time?
Will they pull the dead rabbit out of the hat one more time, as they have so MANY times just as we thought that we had them dead to rights?
I am sure that they will try, and if they DO succeed and then look at us in that wonderful bully-faced way they have and say “Whatchoo gonna DO about it, motherfucker?”
What ARE we going to do?
THIS time.
Take it lying down? As usual?
Hit the streets and get mopped up like the children we are in the face of unthinking cops and brutally efficient armor? (This ain’t Fallujah, y’know. It’s Peoria. Kalamazoo. And points north south east and west. The REAL demilitarized zone. Even the good ol’ boys ain’t got the firepower to deal with Swat Central. In fact, most of the good ol’ boys are either so old they can’t see to use their weapons or they are a PART of Swat Central. The ghetto boys? Homeboy Security? Not yet, baby. Not yet. Too stoned, too greedy and no ideology worth risking death to uphold.)
Continue with our obsessive complaining on the blogs while we work inside the very Borg machine to which our impotence has sentenced us? Until a stronger force from outside quite literally blows America off of the map? (It’s coming, kiddies. The storm’s a’forming as we speak in ALL areas of the Third World. Bet on it. They have met the enemy, and it is US.)
No viable alternatives?
I disagree.
DROP THE FUCK OUT!!!
Our most effective tactic, given the circumstances.
Bet on it.
Slow but sure.
STARVE the motherfuckers out.
Read on for more.
“What are you ptrepared to do?”
I am prepared.
Peepared to do exactly the same thing that I have been doing in a progressively stronger and stronger manner ever since the assassinations of JFK, MLK, RFK and Malcolm X.
This has been a mean 50 years. The forces of…and let’s not pull punches here, OK?…the literal forces of evil have taken over this country.
And I have said in every way available to me short of total self-destruction, “Get thee behind me.”
We CANNOT beat this system in the streets, although there will most certainly be some sort of armed resistance arise should a real, identifiable coup occur.
But we CAN beat it by denying it the very sustenance upon which it feeds.
Our work, our money and our attention.
If the Ratpubs succeed in remaining in power…DENY THEM YOUR COOPERATION ON ANY BUT THE MOST BASIC, NEED-TO-SURVIVE LEVELS.
If the DemRats do manage to take over and (inevitably, in my own view) try to continue the same sleight of mind game under different cover…DENY THEM YOUR COOPERATION ON ANY BUT THE MOST BASIC, NEED-TO-SURVIVE LEVELS.
General strike?
Ain’t gonna happen.
Not hard enough, for SURE.
No left-wing party structure to organize it.
No left-wing media structure to encourage it.
This ain’t Italy or France, y’know.
It’s Mediamerica.
CORPORATE Mediamerica.
It is the Corps against which a general strike would be called.
That would be bad for business. REALLY bad, so you would not hear much positive about it on ANY network.
Including MSNBC.
Bet on it.
General strikes are unamerican and all, don’tcha know.
But if the brains of this country…and that’s who is populating these blogs, for better or for worse, the brains of this country…if the brains of this country stepped away from the corporate vehicle in every way that they possibly could, the country itself would literally fail within 5 years.
Reject the media. Turn the shit off, off, OFF!!!
Reject the money machine. The usury machine. The corporate machine. The educational machine. The hype machine. The healthcare machine. The insurance machine. In every way possible.
If we (WHOEVER the hell “we” are…the ones who have realized just what is going down here, for starters, who have spent relatively long periods of time trying to figure out just what the fuck to do about it, have generally failed, have generally shrugged our shoulders and said “Well, I guess that’s just the way the world is.”)…if WE managed to deny the Great Corp Machine 10% or 15% or 20% or 80% of the fruits of our labors, it would fold like the house of cards it really is.
WE have been the glue holding it together. In fact, we have been THE CARDS THEMSELVES.
Deal yourselves out.
Play you own damned cards.
Make revolution on a personal scale.
Don’t be afraid.
You be bettah off.
Come and join me outside.
It’s NICE out here.
Come play, and let all the drudges worry themselves into failure.
Bye now.
Gotta go work outside the system. (Wages are steady if you know what you are doing…but short. Steady but short. Sufficient however, if you are not greedy.)
40+ years and counting.
STEP AWAY FROM THE SYSTEM, WITH YOUR BRAINS IN THE AIR!!!
Yup.
Like that.
Now, don’t you feel…better?
Later…
AG
I’ll be traveling and incommunicado (unless I hit some WiFi hotspots in airports) until sometime late Sunday.
Talk among yourselves, etc…
AG
You are absolutely right, Arthur, that the storm is coming for America. And in more ways than one. In my view its a race to see whether climate change or the world’s poor and disenfranchised get to America first…
gets a big “F”. We are not doing sustainable communities. We are not working on sustainable energy systems. Our health system, touted as being the best in the world, is now least likely to succeed in the industrialized world. We are not doing productive work in any meaningful sense because if we were we wouldn’t be having such huge deficit spending gaps between us and China and other parts of the world. And that spending is certainly unsustainable.
I was reading “Ecovillage Living” and wishing i had connections with people to begin a community of our own. Check it out if you can.
“Step Away From The System…”
When I can hold myself in check long enough to step back and look at things from arms length, it is utterly fascinating to me to see how this discussion (here and in Into The Woods’ diary) is playing out, because we’re retracing the steps of the late ’60’s and 1970’s all over again.
I was a bit too young to have participated in the protests of the time, graduating high school in 1977, but I was the right age to have a front row seat for their aftermath, when the gains turned out to be so modest compared to the dreams, when “the system” seemed in so many essential ways to keep right on rolling along, when Vietnam seemed a hopeless bloody waste that somehow metastasized into Cambodia and Laos as well, when a corrupt president was replaced by two ineffective ones (as sterling as Carter’s character and vision looks in hindsight, that was not how he was perceived at the time).
A few left the country. More dropped out, convinced social collapse was inevitable. The magazine “Mother Earth News” and the “Whole Earth Handbooks” came out to educate folks who wanted to know how to survive off the land when the system inevitably failed – for how could it survive? Energy prices were going through the roof, crime was rampant, the federal deficit was ballooning, inflation was rising simultaneously with unemployment (“stagflation”), despair in the inner cities led to a massive drug problem and not only had we lost in Southeast Asia, we were being pushed around by Iranian revolutionaries, and the USSR seemed to be winning the propaganda war for “hearts and minds” around the world.
I took a class in college on “Concepts of Utopia,” fully expecting to be living in a commune in the countryside when things reached their fruition. But, in case it didn’t happen, I got a chemistry degree (being a science nerd) and went to grad school to work on solar energy research. Which Reagan later pulled the rug out from under (but that’s a later chapter). My college reading schizophrenically ranged between the quantum mechanics of catalytic splitting of water by sunlight to generate hydrogen fuel, and how to build a composter, a windmill, drip irrigation, and control bugs on your crops organically.
Which won out? For me, I got a MS in chemistry, but read “Walden” and decided the last thing the country needed was more chemists, so I dropped out of the Ph.D. program. I wanted to go live in the Ozarks and open a greenhouse, but Mrs. K.P. knew a thing or two about the farming life in Missouri, and convinced me to get a job “putting my degree to good use for the people,” so I ended up working at the Kansas City MO Water and Pollution Control Department (but that’s also the start of another chapter). I suspect my story is not atypical of the reaction of my peers to the forces at work in the world around us.
A lot of people gave up on politics and turned inwards to spiritual growth, seeking solace from the disaster that was America in the 1970’s, and “The Age of Aquarius” morphed into what today we call “New Age” thought.
In short, the wheels fell off the Revolution (not to minimize what was accomplished, just to say it fell far short of our goals), and “the man” won, as “the man” typically does. A revolution is a lot harder to pull off than most can even imagine in their wildest thoughts. AG is dead-on right, folks – it ain’t gonna happen at our keyboards. We have no infrastructure to make it happen – no mass media, no central organizations, hell, even the unions, the NAACP, NOW, and the environmental groups are a shadow of their former selves, should we go looking for allies.
So, should this moment fail, through deceit and treachery, what do I think will happen? A few will go abroad, more will turn to spirituality, or drop out of the system – with a better generation of solar cells and windmills, better well water purification, etc. It could be the rebirth of those towns in rural America that are now withering up. The Ozarks and southern Appalachians benefitted last time around (ever been to Asheville, NC – the San Francisco of the Smokies?), this time it might be western Kansas or north-central PA. Wherever land is cheap and folks can fly below the radar in a dark age, as folks did in the Reagan years.
Only this time our strength is less than in 1980, our nation is divided, our allies shun what we’ve become (For how many elections can we expect them to be “understanding?”), we’re again in debt with a broken army, and even more dependent on foreign oil and foreign financing to keep us afloat than a generation ago… BushCo might be followed by a term or two of a weak president, and, if we’re still here as a nation, then by another Reagan. Or another FDR. Because we’re gonna be in a world of hurt, and people will be looking for someone larger than life to lead us. Which is when the infamous man on the white horse usually rides into the picture.
Believe me, it’s not yet as ugly as it got last time around the wheel (which may be hard for some under 40 to believe); if we are denied an opportunity this time to set things right it’s gonna get really ugly, so fasten your seat belts.
I may disagree with AG on whether to call it “evil” or “stupidity,” but whatever it is, it’s bad juju, and if it’s not held in check soon, well, we all can dream up our own horror scenarios.
The ancient Chinese were very wise people when they dreamed up the infamous curse that has come down to us as:
“May you live in interesting times.”
Here, here,”cheers” to everything you said above with special note of this part:
Believe me, it’s not yet as ugly as it got last time around the wheel (which may be hard for some under 40 to believe); if we are denied an opportunity this time to set things right it’s gonna get really ugly, so fasten your seat belts.
I think you have said it all very well and another cheer goes to Mother Earth News! I was a back to the lander that never got back to it, but I sure tried as well as prepared for it as many did at the time and managed to bring the ‘land’ into the city and mostly live off our little garden and chicken eggs for quite a few years.
A couple of months ago, before the possibilities for the election started looking so rosy, I was at my local used book store going through the science and nature section when I spotted several books on organic gardening, home canning, and all those back-to-the-land things we were doing 25 years ago. I might have passed them by many times on previous visits, but this time they called to me and I bought them. Not sure why, it just seemed the thing to do, just in case. I refrained from going out and buying a bunch of canning jars, though. After all the “fun” Mrs. K.P. and I had with canning, pickling, and making jellies last time around, I suspect things might have to get a bit worse before she’d welcome jelly jars into the house again, LOL.
Still, knowing how to do some of that stuff makes me a little less apprehensive about “the collapse of America” (probably by some combination of an oil boycott against us combined with the Chinese and others calling in debts, if we continue on the path of pariah statehood) if that happens.
This discussion reminds me of a book I read a couple of years ago, and have been thinking alot about recently. Its “Into the Forest” by Jean Hegland. Here’s the synopsis:
In the tradition of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook, Jean Hegland’s fiction debut is a tale of two young women coping in the aftermath of the apocalypse. As anarchy and disease ravage the country, Eva and Nell, orphaned sisters living in the remote redwood forests of northern California, must learn to survive in an age of fear, superstition, and hunger, and to lay the foundations for the rebirth of civilization.
There may be other books that take on this scenario, but I think this one is profound. Hegland leaves it to our imagination to fill in what happened to cause the collapse of our civilization, and concentrates on the story of these two teenage girl’s lives.
Thanks for the rec, NL. Sounds well worth a look-see.
For a video post-apocalyptic fantasy, try The Postman. I’m hoping none of this will come to pass, but its certainly no sin to be a little prepared, IMHO. Besides, there are a lot of alternative lifestyle ideas out there that would let us all walk a little more gently on the earth. Not a bad thing to do either.
Absolutely, AG. Examine the situation closely, as you’ve done & it seems clear that this is the only way(at least apparent for now).
On an individual basis, however: once the why becomes apparent (& I do believe it’ll take a whole world of hurt before a significant number of us reach that initial point), the questions will be where and how, in that order — since the latter necessarily follows the former.
‘Tis a path through a particularly dark wood, this one — but given the right light & true community, an attempt to follow it can definitely be made. Once the first definitive steps have been taken on that path, however, it’s nearly impossible to imagine going back.
In that case, once again, the question ‘why’ arises.
Couple of observations.
First, if we can’t put together a general strike, how are you going to pry people away from their big screen tvs and internet and modern “conveniences” to ‘drop out’?
Do you think this idea would will be so organically attractive that it will require none of the organizational structure or personal commitment necessary to pull off a general strike?
As one aspect of a coordinated long term Nonviolent Action Strategy, it would indeed have its place. And withdrawing our economic support from the ‘bad guys’ and directing it towards the ‘good guys’ is something we should be moving towards anyway.
But while you are off-line and off-grid, what about all the folks who are stuck back there in the world that is rapidly becoming worse?
Second, lets assume that the ‘rightness’ of this idea is so self-evident that masses of people start aggressively moving in this direction. What is being built in the meantime as an alternative to the governing system that has created this mess? Again, are you supposing that once your ethical boycott succeeds in bringing down the pillars of this system that a new better one will leap out of its dying head to lead us to paradise? If not, where does the new system come from? Unless someone is working to create either an alternative or working to reform the system from within, how does it happen?
It is certainly less painful and less disappointing to leave the table, walk out of the hall, passively withdraw from as much of this interdependent system as you can and wait for the pendulum to swing; but unless the movement to drop out is large and swift enough for it to be noticed, it offers only personal and short-term relief and builds nothing to take the place of the current system.
I believe that the tools to change the system, including every significant portion of it, are lying at our feet gathering dust. We have been convinced they do not work, do not matter, maybe do not even exist anymore.
But who has convinced us of these things? Isn’t it the very people and entities that would lose the most if we realized the current system’s (our)potential.
Why would we believe them on this, the most important part of the story, when we know enough to disbelieve all the rest of their lies?
Stepping away. Just saying “No More”.
For many, it would be just running away and to what?
Just more questions.. different kind.
Thank you for adding your thoughts here, ITW, since I haven’t visited your diary which, I’m guessing, approaches the same subject matter.
Personally, I don’t see any advocacy for isolation in a discussion of the potential positive societal impact of lifestyle simplification.
What I do see, wrt simplification (basically meaning reduced consumerism) is a means toward ‘self-clarification’, if you will (read ‘self-determination’). Attention to one’s own personal integrity (see ‘integral’) & clarity of vision is necessary because any fight against darkness/evil/(insert your favorite term here) must begin on the most basic & vital personal level, purely as a matter of fortitude in struggle.
There’s no saying, however, that what engenders basic personal health must be undertaken to the detriment of a wider, communally active politics. It’s not either/or — only varied means of securing one’s well-being in the ultimate service of the whole. Delineations between what benefits one personally & what ultimately benefits ‘the world’ are false. There’s no withdrawal possible, no turning or going away.
is that I grew up in the communities and among the people that advocated, did, and lived the method you write about.
It results in massive divisions and resentments between those who leave and those who stay.
It divorces and dissects any semblance of coherent cross-class organizing.
It effectively divides “The Left” or any components that could be incorportated into “A Left” along class, race, and educational lines.
It is extremely difficult to survive, which results in a “shelf life” of about 5-10 years for most who try, and those people then go “back in” except they either harbor resentment and anger about their lost times (e.g. yuppies), or guilt at their failure (e.g. new agers), or psychotic overcompensation (e.g. born agains and David Horowitz).
And the result is that any momentum or progress that may potentially arise out a time of overturn is quickly and effectively stripped of a key component of any oppositional movement. The rise of Reaganite politics in the 80s was a direct result of the tune in, turn on, drop out, back to the land, remove ourselves from the system, and other “movements” of the late 60’s and early 70’s.
It’s not very effective in the long run.
In all due respect for your personal experience, RedDan, your broad dismissal of AG’s concept doesn’t allow for those who went ‘back to the land’ a few decades ago & thrived there (generally entrepreneurs), through the development of strong connection to the wider (generally rural) community — a crucial connection that many neglected to make, a matter of very basic arrogance. Of course they were lost & found it exceptionally rough going, forcing abandonment.
I’m guessing that a similar arrogance engendered the intra-movement divisions you cite. Many of these folks didn’t know squat about true community — a matter of codependence for survival, not isolation — coming as they did from the sub/urban landscape & the institutionalized myth of all-powerful American Individual.
IMHO, what AG proposes is most basically a spiritual program (whether he’d refer to it that way or not)– a matter of the complete readjustment of the sense of self in relation to the greater whole, which engenders the suppleness necessary for any successful learning process. Lack of humility, hubris, or militant rigidity — read ‘righteous ego’ — will get us nowhere.
As a start, anyway, we might abandon the idea that any abandonment of lifestyle must be conducted as it’s been conducted before by literal ‘babes in the woods’.
In any case, also, on an individual basis we’re in for it if we don’t make some motion toward very basic change, considering that ‘the way of least resistence’ is driving us into the grave. What we refuse to accept in terms of societal adjustment will be forced onto us anyway, even if by minute degrees. We can meet these necessary adjustments kicking & screaming, or attempt to make our way forward in willing spirit.
Yeah, I’ve made my connections with current-day ‘intentional communities’ as well & the reasons for their dysfunction generally have to do with individual ego, coupled with a lack of experience regarding the nature of functional communities.
It’s not as if we have to reinvent the wheel, either, regarding land-based living.
At risk of stating the obvious, there ain’t no way you can learn how to do this by reading books, no matter how many books you read. This is why the wider community is crucial: we require others’ help & the benefits of their experience. In turn we offer what we can.
I am not exclusively talking about “land-based living” OR the utopian dreams of a bunch of potheads…if which number I counted myself for quite a few years.
I am talking about doing it ANY WAY THAT WORKS.
5%, 10%, 20%, 100%,whatever works.
Hell, people…I LIVE IN THE BRONX!!!
AIN’T no “land-based living” in the Bronx. Except of course for the truly homeless, and that’s no way to go.
I was quite clear about this in my post. Or so I thought, anyway.
I wrote:
If the DemRats do manage to take over and (inevitably, in my own view) try to continue the same sleight of mind game under different cover…DENY THEM YOUR COOPERATION ON ANY BUT THE MOST BASIC, NEED-TO-SURVIVE LEVELS.
And
Reject the media. Turn the shit off, off, OFF!!!
Reject the money machine. The usury machine. The corporate machine. The educational machine. The hype machine. The healthcare machine. The insurance machine. In every way possible.
If we (WHOEVER the hell “we” are…the ones who have realized just what is going down here, for starters, who have spent relatively long periods of time trying to figure out just what the fuck to do about it, have generally failed, have generally shrugged our shoulders and said “Well, I guess that’s just the way the world is.”)…if WE managed to deny the Great Corp Machine 10% or 15% or 20% or 80% of the fruits of our labors, it would fold like the house of cards it really is.
Guess I wasn’t clear enough.
Suggestions. (Whatever is POSSIBLE without seriously harming yourself and your loved ones.)
Work for the man?
For the Corps?
See if you can start something of your own. You’ve got talent, or they wouldn’t hire you.
Got a big mortgage in a “respectable” neighborhood?
Move the fuck out. There are MANY neighborhoods in every area of the country…probably only a few miles away from you…that are mixed-race, working class areas. Not only are they cheaper than the usual almost-all-white suburb, they’re BETTER, too. Better class of people, if y’know what I mean. Plus you are not supporting the Usury Machine.
Don’t shop in chain stores if you can possibly buy similar (or often…better) stuff from smaller operators. Even if it’s a little more expensive. It’ll pay back in time.
Work for and pay in cash whenever possible. Need I say more about THAT tactic?
Do NOT be stampeded by Dr. Big Brother. He is 90% full of shit, and he is a thief.
BIG time.
Nor by his partner, the Insurance Corpse. Ditto for THAT motherfucker as well.
Do not buy new cars or any OTHER planned obsolescence products. Buy used in good shape if you can (And if you can’t, LEARN how. I did, and I’m no fix-it guy by nature. Bet on it.) and KEEP THE DAMNED THINGS RUNNING.
I am in the process of rebuilding a GREAT car while simultaneously using it as my daily driver. I got 200,000 miles out of it…a ’94 Ford Taurus SHO with a manual transmission. Fast, fun, lots of room and relatively economical to operate. (Gotta have SOME fun.) I took GREAT care of it for 11 years, and when it began to get too troublesome I decided to essentially rebuild it. Found a fine mechanic who works on these cars exclusively, and about $3,500 later (Over almost a year) I am 2/3rds to 3/4s of the way there. New (rebuilt) engine and all. Now it’s just cosmetics and air conditioning. No debt, no usury tax. Gave my money to another outlaw and he did his job. I’m gettin’ ANOTHER 200,000 out of it, by God!!!
I could go on, but YOU get the picture. Long story short? Shop at CostCo and work for the Man when you must…but don’t take it seriously. And deal with bullshit as little as you can while still surviving.
Is this a risky way to live?
You betcha.
Fun, too.
From whom did I learn this?
Mostly from the black and hispanic survivors who created the music I play. People from the generation previous to mine, people who were adults when segregation was not just tolerated but legal.
And they are still on their feet and fighting. At 80+, many of them. They knew bullshit because they caught it full in the face when they were young. No media in the WORLD can hypnotize away the effects of being called a nigger at 10 and pushed off a sidewalk in Arkansas or South Carolina.
We…and I say “we” advisedly, because I am only guessing at who “we” really are…we were tricked by the Land of Plenty crap that came pouring out of the TV starting in the ’50s.
It takes some TIME to wake up from a dream that was forced upon you before you were even conscious of being an individual.
But…”When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” (1 Corinthians 13:11 )
Yup.
VAYA!!!
It’s really simple.
Refrain from helping the enemy in any way you can.
VAYA!!!
NEWSTRIKE!!!
MEDIASTRIKE!!!
CORPSTRIKE!!!
USURYSTRIKE!!!
VAYA!!!
And…
Have fun. That’s the worst strike of ALL to these murderers.
Because…
You just KNOW they’re not.
Later…
AG
Love that closer, AG. Indeed, if your idea of ‘fun’ is shooting birds in a bag ..
IMO, your point re ‘any way that works’ was completely clear. My response was to RedDan, who wiped your concept with a particular type of broad brush, discounting the whole picture.
Aside: following this particular Way led me to homelessness this summer, as flooding sent incredible destruction throughout the rural mountain community where I’d chosen to stake my claim. (The deeply damaged roads also took out my ’89 Olds, unfortunately!)
The fears of many who look askance at abandoning ‘Our Way Of Life’ became my daily reality. I lived in a tent, bathed/did laundry in fresh running water & made my lavatory in the brush. I created spring-boxes for food storage & remained diligent against animal curiosity. All my clothing fit into one satchel.
I accepted hospitality with grace, offered what I could in return for the blessings I received & stepped along as lightly as possible.
Do I consider my work toward sane living a failure? Am I ready to give up the Big Project & relax into some manner of comfy consumerism, with attendant subjugation of will & mind, as per convention?
No, I will not. The lessons simply continue & I pray I’ll be given the opportunity to do it properly, assuring myself only the essentials — which, I know now, are riches indeed.
This isn’t, by any means, a recommendation to strip your comfort level down so close to the bone that you’re apt to find yourself heating your canned soup over a bug-candle — though it can, in fact, be done.
🙂
My point is that we can go forward with very basic changes to our lives, enacted intelligently, without fear of ‘the worst’ — because the worst, as pertains to our own comfort levels, will never be as bad as our fears might illustrate. Survival has an endless multitude of ways to it.
to what you are pointing out, W.W., there were very few who went “back to the land” and stayed there. My dad was one, and there are about 10% of the folks that I grew up with and around who stayed on and are doing well.
And in terms of the generational thing, with kids doing what their parents did? Not much.
Those who did stay on and did well did so by exactly the means you lay out – brutally hard work and close ties with the locals.
But the main problem is that a lot of those communities are small, closed, and shrinking. Most of the big farms are simply gone, most of the kids have moved out of town, and most of the economy is based on the “bedroom community” effect.
And basing a community’s survival on service industry labor is not exactly my idea of “starving them out” sorry to say.
Absolutely agreed on your final point, RedDan. Thank you for your reply.
What I’m assuming here, as a matter of reasonably educated projection (& in an optimistic manner), is that the ‘bedroom community’ will eventually prove impossible to sustain, necessitating ‘re-placement’ of the means of sustenance/employment & an attendant expansion of opportunity.
What drew our people into the cities in the last century, IOW, will draw them out in this one.
There’s quite a bit of room for fundamental change in there.
This one of yours I particularly like
as it relates to my experience here in ND, (I never really left the land for any great length of time in the first place, other than a few years in Denver, N CA, and Manitoba.)
So, first, IMO, I doubt there will be any huge back-to-the-land movement this time around, for many reasons. The most likely one is that there may not be enough time to move.
What we will all definitely be needing at some point is people with expertise on essentials; the people who keep things running, in areas such as, food, water, electricity, transportation, communication, etc.
There are new definitions for community these days that did not exist in 1969, the BT community for one, and the broader blog community for another. To name a couple.
When our national situation goes “Katrina”, regardless of cause, we will need to depend on community members for expertise.
I’d suggest you all start now to develop contacts that would help maintain personal necessities, regardless of where you live, the more local the better.
I was born and raised in rural farm country of ND. I don’t know it all by any means, but I know a bunch of people here who know a whole hell of a lot on how to run and fix all kinds of things.
If the question is within my groups realm of experience, I’m willing to assist in whatever way I can. So feel free to use my email below.
If you are able to make a living over the internet, I know of towns in ND with highspeed fiberoptic connections with housing purchase costs at about what you’d pay for a downpayment in most cities.
And in some places we’ve got houses sitting empty because folk have had to move to the cities to make a living. So you don’t have to establish any new communties here, it’d be more like filling up the holes in Albert Hall.
Nearly everone I know is seriously concerned with this totalitarian drift. It’s already gone way to far in that direction! And we’ve waited way too long to do something about it. I say give’m hell!
Y’know RedDan, I had the dubious privilege of dealing with your act on dKos, and brother…
If you grew up communities and among people that advocated, did, and lived the method I write about, you wouldn’t be such an off the wall, insulting opponent.
The “massive divisions and resentments” that I saw were all in your own head.
I will have no more to do with you.
AG
to have as little to do with me as you like, I could give a shit.
But what this tells me:
Is that you really do not know what you are talking about.
As regards your story about fixing your car, well that’s a great story, but let me ask you this:
Do you really think that you’re “starving them out” by doing that? Where did the parts for that Ford come from? And who made those parts? Where did the electricity to power the jacks and tools come from? Where did the lubricants come from? What about the plastics?
Seems to me that, like your conceptual model of the Hippy years, your ideal of “starving them out” is painfully naive and basically selfish and self-serving.
One of the things that I learned while growing up on the knife edge of subsistence living …
(we grew 95% of our own food, made our own cheese, butter, yogurt, made pickles, jams, jellies, raised cows, chickens, and pigs, and butchered/smoked/preserved our own meats, cut our own firewood, and so on and so forth…)…
One of the things I learned while living that life was that fast talking bullshit artists with big-round-eyed dreams and a pat answer with cool jive talk for every question were not just annoying, they were dangerous…because, AG, bullshit doesn’t get the work done, the crop in, the tomoatoes canned, or the cow killed and butchered.
So, as a result, I do not suffer bullshit particularly gently or silently.
So, you can refuse to have anything further to do with me as much as you want.
Enjoy your trip.
I Sing of Olaf, Glad and Big.
decided and continue to do whatever I possibly can as much as I can, as many times as I can to prevent such a disaster.
If that means swallowing my bile for a while, and participating in the election of some folks that I find less than idealistically/politically compatible, if that means putting shoulders to the wheel for some candidates whose personal and political outlooks I find less than appealing (to put it mildly), then that is what I will do.
Does that mean I will abandon my ideals? Does that mean that I will not continue to fight their agenda? Does that mean that once the election finishes, I go home satisfied?
Not even close.
Until I was 53, I hd wroked hard and long and made fairly decent money as an RN. That doesn’t go far with raising two kids alone, so it was a constant strain financially. How to afford house repairs, car repairs,other unexpected catasprophes, etc etc.I saw no choice BUT full time work ahead till I dropped over dead. No matter how stressful a job, or how much unpaid overtime it demanded of me, I had to take it. How else could I afford the things I saw the as absolute necessities: a nice home, new car,(and payments,)lawn mower,snowblower, roto tiller, good insurance lots of quality clothes for all of us, the latest trendy stuff for the girls etc etc. And like most Anericans, I lived in serious dread of illness, adccidents or disability, anytyhing that would render me “poor”, and take my sense of self as a “sucessful and productive person. So guess what: thats exactly what happened: a permanent back injury at age 43. My worst fears all came horrifyingly true.
It takes very little time for someone in my wage bracket to zoom downward into povery at the speed of light, when the paychecks stop but the bills do not and there’s no more insurance. Tough times indeed.
That was 23 years ago, but if that hadn’t happened, I would have missed out of some of the most amazing and astounding discoveries of my lifetime. I’ve found what genuine freedom from human bondage to any exploitive employer feels like. I was able to claim full sovereighty over what I do with my days, my talents, my creativity and my own precious life energies. I’ve done some incredibly creative things that I would have know I could even do, that even had benefit to others beside me.
And, once used to a very simple lifestyle how light and unemcumbered I feel without the burden of taking care of all those expensise possessions. No way did any of them EVER give me the kind of joy my freedom has given me, not EVEN close.
Mostimportantly, with that freedom, at long last, came quality time and energy to spend on the only thing that is truly of lasting and permanent value, that NO amount of money can ever buy: and no one and nothing can ever take away: the ever deepening love and close relationships and finally, even with the self I really didn’t hardly know, as I had lost total touch with her somewhere along the way.
I wish I could claim this happened via my courageous choice to “walk away”. Honestly, I will never know if I would have had the courage to make that voluntary decision. I doubt it. I was too afraid, and too damned “programmed” to equate my worth as a human being to what I could produce and get paid for and how much nice stuff I could accumulate to prove it to everyone else so I could be “accepted” my mainstream America.
I miss NONE of the material goods I honestly thought I had to have. I don’t miss the “status” of any important position I’ve held: the cost it exacted was well on it’s way to taking me outa here with a stress related heart condition. In other words, I think my disability literally saved my life, and led me, in time, to the best, most fulfilling years of my life. On 900 bucks a month SS, I feel far, far richer now that I have ever been. I guess that once your worse fears come true, and you not only survive, but thrive, what else is there to fear?
It just wasn’t true. All I what I was taught and believed about what I HAD to do and HAVE , in order to be safe and to avoid “POVERTY,” that fate we all see as worse than death, was just.. not.. true.
I stand with Arthur on this one, all the way. If you can, step away, and discover what you really truly value in your deepest, most authentic self. Then choose it. Live it. As soon as you can and as best as you can.
This will free you AND starve the monster. That IS the only way it will ever die.
Precisely.
AND…you can do it at 20, too.
AG
Beautifully stated, scribe. Thank you.
As a path to self-enlightenment and more fulfilled living, stepping away may indeed be a wonderful path, one open to and more health to many of us.
As a way to affect societal change, it alone, with no other measures joined with it, is too much like the flea having his way with an elephant.
He is triumphant. She is oblivious.
Has an elephant ever died of fleas?
Betcha.
You just need a lot of fleas.
And they have to keep on biting.
AG
There’s bound to be considerable differences of opinion on how to go about all this. But we have many knowledgeable and creative folk on our side.
I’m betting some “Achilles Heels” will turn up once we’ve focused our energy in that direction. At least the issue is now under serious discussion.
Ghandi was a flea.
And the British Empire was an elephant.
The Afghani fighters were fleas.
And the U. S. S. R was an elephant.
Ho Chi Minh was a a flea.
So was Fidel Castro.
LOTS of others
As I learned when I went to a showing of “Jaws” years after it was released, on 42nd St. in NYC (The OLD 42nd St. The dangerous one, not the DisneyLand East that it has become.) one 3 AM hot summer night…there are LOTS of people rooting for the fleas.
For the sharks that confront the Man.
“BITE THAT MOTHERFUCKER!!!” was the response of THAT audience.
“BITE THAT MOTHERFUCKER RIGHT ON THE ASS!!!”
Yup.
Fleas have their place too.
SOME fleas even grow up to become sharks.
(Cue the Jaws theme song” Boom bum boom bum boom bum boom bum boom bum…)
Later…
AG
A few questions AG.
What would the success of your plan look like?
Is it a viable plan? As you say general strikes are considered “Unamerican” and a sufficient number of people are unlikely to participate. Do you believe people who won’t take a day or a week off for a strike will be willing to give up their stuff? What could be more “American” than stuff and entertainment in the hearts of most of our fellow citizens? Well, maybe Christianity is in the eyes of some, but even most of them won’t give up their stuff.
Are you willing to concede that their might be more than one way to tackle the problems with our system?
Am I willing to concede that their might be more than one way to tackle the problems with our system?
Ain’t seen one yet, and I’ve been looking since they shot JFK.
Sorry…wish it were otherwise.
Later…
AG