Re-Wilding the Self, First.

In the most recent issue of "The Backwoodsman", a magazine I indulge in whenever I happen across a new issue, there is a request for articles pertaining to Re-Wilding your land and the plants to begin the process. The magazine content usually revolves around skills and stories of bushcraft, not delving so much into the concepts of anti-civ or post civ thought, so the request for articles surrounding wildness is exciting, even if it is a short-end view of the possibilities. The land we live on certainly could use our assistance in ridding it of the confines of agriculture and domestication, but the real threat to the land is not limited to the crab grass the neighborhood association planted. The real threat is the neighborhood association itself. If anything can be learned from civilization, it is that no matter how "wild"the land is, if encroached upon by those with a directive of ownership and control, the appanages of destruction are readily present. 

 The term "re-wilding" is heard with more frequency as of late, and I attribute this to multiple reasons, but the overarching cause, I believe, is the growing interest in pre-civilized life or the ever growing DIS-interest in civilization, whichever way you choose to view it. Either way you go, it piques my affections along with a few innocent suspicions. It is not that I could ever see "re-wilding" as a bad thing, a deed done to the misfortune of domestication is a good deed, indeed. No, the suspicions I have is of the depth of the roots. If we are concerned only with making superficial changes, i.e. to land, to government, to diet, etc., and do not begin to re-establish our connections, we are doomed to suffer the cycles of HIStory.

A quick side-rant: I participate as often as I can in re-learning "primitive" technologies. This, of course, includes knapping stone tools. There is a small but very dedicated group of people, outside of the hunter/gatherer peoples of today,  who have taken in this obsession and thus there are enumerable articles written by both academics and crafters alike surrounding archeological finds of knapped stone. There are flakes and cores found dating back around 2.5 million years and hunter/gatherer populations still using possibly exact skills today to obtain hunting tools. This shows that for well over 2 million years humans have used this technology, with no obsolescence.  In many of the articles concerning the how-to aspect of knapping, it is followed by a request to mark and date your blades, arrowheads, etc. in order to "protect the archeological record." I understand that our culture is so far removed from our roots that we actually see ourselves as separate from our ancestors. I get that. But I have to ask why. What separates, or impregnates the value of a stone tool that was made 1 million years ago from that of one that fed a tribe yesterday? To continue to place these levels of segregation of ourselves to our ancestors, is to propagate the lie of civilization itself. That you are not wild. Bah, I say, and BAH! again. Protecting the archeological record would be better achieved by closing the gap of our existence today and our birthplace. The thought that we have gone too far, usually worded "come too far", to return to our ancestral way of life is one I hear touted quite often by techno-apologists, and I must point only to their own "science" to see that this is a fallacy.

Studies of feral populations of animals, that is: animals who broke out of the confines of domestication to strike out and become sufficient without the controls of humans, show that it is of no significance the amount of time spent domesticated to become feral. Goats are one of the longest domesticated animals aside from humans, and will go feral readily. In fact, a side effect of feral goats encountering domesticated goats is the creation of more feral goats! I am not sure who wrote the article on wikipedia for "feral", but after reading this line: "Accidental crossbreeding by feral animals may result in harm to breeding programs of pedigreed animals; their presence may also excite domestic animals and push them to escape." I'd like to make them dinner! How exciting, really. Damn the archeological record, up the connections!

Okay, back to the topic. I was tempted to write an article for the Backwoodsman outlining some of these ideas, but I am not sure how helpful I could possibly be. I mean, how can you have a how-to on discovering who you are? I am not fully aware of who I am most times, or to what extent I have completely swallowed the pills of civilization. It is much easier to go into the lawn and pull out ivy than it is to unlearn a lifetime of gender binary and control imperative, of this I am sure. But I suppose there is a starting place. I suppose, much like a suburban lawn, we can be dug up and have seeds planted. What are ideas if not seeds of tomorrow's action? Of course, I can not go into a book and necessarily find what values my ancestral tribes held that gave them fluid commune with one another and land, but I can seek out which ideas are helpful to me and which are not. It is easier spoken at times than done, but often, that is where it starts. Speaking to one another. Opening our communication, verbally, physically, and spiritually is as beneficial or more than all the books on native species we can find. Of course, we have to get wrong answers to find the right questions, but there can be no how-to guide on how we do that. Many of our failures come from following procedures over allowing for processes. The magic of control begins superficially, doing little more than redefining what we already know, so as to masque it's true nature and by proxy, our own nature. We are not meant to control, which is showcased not only by ideals but by the outcomes of control. Anxiety is so much sewn to the fabric of society that many social scientists now put forth that certain levels of anxiety are necessary  for our health, postulating that it is anxiety and fear that have led to our evolution as a species. Such garbage! A base study of biology shows us that defensive instincts help us to escape or evade dangerous interactions but also stifle our ability to grow. The periods when we grow are in rest and relaxation, when we can stretch our proverbial wings and take in the day. An animal in constant fear is an animal that is most easily controlled, this is also true. Fear and love are two base emotions from which most other emotions stem. Both are measurable in the frequencies they emit and can therefore be studied by modern magic to find what ancient magic already knew. That beings who emit love are more centered and relaxed, and over time found to be generally happier (duh) and healthier (tada!). Beings who emit more fear are more likely to lash out in violent fits and suffer from heart problems (remember, the heart is truly our center and life force, giving our body the electromagnetic waves that create and sustain life). Fear also does some other interesting things, such as not allow your body to fire on all points. This means that you have a more honed sense of physical strength but a weakened sense of empathetic capabilities. Now, take all this in and consider the larger picture of mass society and what it's goals are. Of the two base emotions that create and sustain life, love and fear, which emotions create an easier environment for control? You cannot force someone to love you, but you certainly can force fear. Fear is the emotion that can be used against your better will, to maintain and control your responses. Fear is the hallmark of domestication and the battery of civilization. To "re-wild", is to abandon fear. Do not fear the wildness that you are from, but embrace it.

In biblical terms, which I am not prone to citing, but find it to be just as good a source as any other fucking book, the mono-theistic god of the Israelite people warned them of fear. In Exodus we see a period of great significance to the battle of wildness and civilization. The people of Israel are led away from captivity in Egypt (foundation of civilization as we know it) and out in to the the wilderness where they knew freedom existed. There they feared for having no food, as they were no longer in civilized life and their god showed them the benefits of hunting and gathering. Quail to hunt the night and "manna" in the mornings. This "manna" could have very well been acorns, as they were in the great forests of the fertile crescent that are now barren deserts thanks to civilized life and bread was made from what they gathered on the ground. This hunter gatherer life sustained them and helped them to create a culture of their own, with music, dance, and stories that were uniquely theirs. The moment they re-entered settled, civilized life, the "manna" was no more. This is a great tale of a re-wilding of a people, only to return to civilization and lose all that wildness had brought them.  The bible does not go into much detail of the quality of life of the people of Israel in this time, but we can see how "progress" and kingship, chiefdom and civilized life affected them in later chapters. We see the wars without end, the class divisions, the patriarchy and the /master/slave mentality sprouting up without pause. It is a shame that most Christians do not take these stories with much meaning. Our friends who work on In The Land Of the Living certainly delve into this and many other interesting aspects of spirituality as resistance to civilization, and their work deserves much consideration.

The point of most of this is to ask the question of limits. What limits do we place on ourselves? What limits are placed on us by civilized thought? And finally, how far are we willing to go to understand our true nature? I, for one, am on a constant search for the roots of our being, and in that search have learned much about who I am, and who I want to become. Who do you want to become?

Occupy Your Bookshelf

So, it appears an article from this blog was published in a new book Edited by Aragorn! and published by Little Black Cart. Occupy Everything is a compendium of anarchist writings, spanning a few years, relating to the idea of occupying space. It is relevant right now considering the hype surrounding the current Occupy movement that took to the mainstream last year, and provides readers with a varied response from anarchist perspectives. I encourage the free use of anything written, recorded, created, blah blah blah, and am glad Aragorn! found something of use in my writing for this project. I did not submit to this book, and think that I probably would not have considering my aversion to most things in the public light of anarchism these days, thanks to my experiences with the social anarchists of Portland and beyond, but I am glad that this book is out and that I am peripherally involved. Thanks to Aragorn! for all the hard work that he does, and fuck off to all the shit hackers on AnarchistNews that are on his shit for getting it done.


I was a little shocked to find that amidst the leftist dribble that is sure to surround such discussions, this book actually puts forth some decent critiques and offers some solid ideas as well. It is too bad the book wasn't released after Chris Hedges and Derrick Jensen collaborated on an epic piece of shit writing called The Cancer In Occupy that stirred up enough turds to make a plumber blush! I suppose we will see more books of this kind in the near future, and I applaud Aragorn! and LBC for getting it out in time to beat out the standard liberal faux-radical shit that is sure to follow from other publishers.

The Art of Group Reliance.

Primitive skills are not merely niche hobbyist and macho survivalist concerns, rather are the birthright of every human today, much as knowing how to navigate thousands of miles each season is the birthright of the Monarch Butterfly. It is precisely these skills that kept our asses alive for the millions of years of human existence, but they did much more than just allow us to survive. These most basic of skills created and sustained communities of people, built ties, strengthened relationships and allowed us to be more fluid without the constraints of an anxiety racked, alienated work force of producers and mind-numbed consumers.  Today, these skills are written off by many in the left as the toils of reactionary, right-wing militia types, hell-bent on individualist living.  How short is the memory of those dependent upon forgetting?

The basics of our survival: food, water, shelter, containers and cordage, are now available in finished, plastic wrapped, mass produced form to any first world person with the money to buy them. The concept of need is tormented in it's false projections and the joys of wants are as manufactured as the cheap filth products that abound to fulfill them. This process requires the enslavement of a production society, the enslavement of a service society and the enslavement of a consumer society, married to the absolute destruction of the land bases of us all through industrial extraction, waste, and the civilization borne illness of a disposable society. We have ourselves a recipe for insanity. The division of labor is not only a division of who does what work, but a division of self to the land in which we were born to thrive in. The passing of primitive skills helps to break the barrier of the frightened co-dependence of civilized life, and welcome in a wildness that is not only all around us, but inside of us. 

The battle we are in constant struggle with is the innate hierarchies in civilized living. There is much argument to when these began. Some say with the advent of agriculture and some with the concept of marriage, others with gender roles and religiosity. No matter where it began, we cannot argue that hierarchy is a cornerstone of civilization. Without it we cannot domesticate, subjagate, persecute, or enslave. One of the greatest benefits to primitive technologies is their decentralizing force. Who controls your ability to survive, controls you totally. If the elements of survival are shared with all, or at least grasped by all, then there is an automatic liberation in it's beginning. If we take even a cursory glance at the functions of our societies today, one will see an intentional hording of information. Whether this is for profit or control, or both, varies by situation. Power dynamics are  prevalent in most civilized relationships, necessitating the constant struggle towards liberation.

  Children are kept segregated from society, in small boxes where they are taught anything BUT the methods of survival. Advertising uber alles ensures that an entire nation will be under the firm choke-hold of consumerism. We are taught to want, and what to want, but not how to create. Elders, many of whom do not even have the skills to survive themselves, are also pushed away into packing houses of the sick and dying.  We are taught to navigate THEIR systems of life, to ignore the natural systems from which we are being ever torn. By the age of 5 we are all too familiar with the Logos of fast food poisons, while simultaneously taught that the forest is the place where the big bad wolf lives. This elemental disconnect begins our journey away from the community of life, and into the assylum of alienation. Food comes from those lighted signs and danger comes from the dark places. Most people I know that are between the ages of 17 and 28 do not know how to prepare their own food, let alone how to grow, forage, or hunt for it. This is a primitive skill that has been taken away, refined and left to the experts, this case being the corporate giants, to handle. We were once these children too, and we were taken away from this world at birth. We are taught to see our history in the rear view, always receeding, and not allowed to understand that the story of our lives is alive, albeit in much danger of extinction. Everyone from the age of 18 to 65 is stuck in the middle ground of not knowing where to put their ass or their face, and end up covered in shit.

As our family has taken steps to break from societal confines over the years, none of our choices have been so beneficial as seeking out primitive skills.  You cannot begin to know what it feels like to sit with a group of your family and friends and rediscover hand to mouth skills from the land that surrounds us until you do it. Political discussions are a great form of intellectual masturbation, but little brings more joy to resistance than holding life in your hands and feeling at home. In the vast sea of Green Anarchist critique, most of which I very much enjoy and take part in discussing often, I have seen a disconnect from the skill aspect of primitive living. Without this element we are flinging shit in the wind of academia, hoping to not get hit on it's return. There is no philosophizing needed when my 7 year old daughter teaches me how she knapped a flint scraper with elk antler. Maybe for some of you, there is too much philosophizing to grasp it. As for me, I am content with it being what it is. A child who is not only grasping an ancient skill, but having a hell of a good time doing it. It is a few hours she is not being slammed with billboards and adverts. An hour she is not being made to feel less than another because her clothes are dirty, or she is not quite as strong as another kid. It is a time that negates time, and begets confidence, skill, tools, and re-creates memories that are older than us all.

One myth of primitive skills is that  the classes are costly, and the instructors are all macho hetero males. While there is a lot of truth to part of this, being that organized classes with specific "tracker" groups are quite overpriced, and many of the "leaders" of these classes are capitalist macho pricks, this, of course, does not need to be the case. Many of the skills I learn are from books or friends, for free. Being that I don't have any macho prick friends, I skirt the latter and since most of my friends have no money, and are quite content, I dodge the prior. It is not that I am opposed to paying for certain classes, or gatherings, as I understand that the filthy lucre of the king has taken over most of our daily exchanges, it's just that we don't have any money, so it is not an issue. If you do have the money to take a course or a few courses from a good tracker school, by all means do! Take every thing you learned and share share share! Your friends will love it and if you are savvy enough to make a zine, youtube videos or a blog, you can guarantee I will be reading it at some point. In the meantime, there is no end to the amount of free information that exists on these subjects. My dear friend Rowan Walkingwolf, Phd. has made more than a few zines and is in the works on many more. You can find them all at their blog, for free, here: Yggdrasil Distro

Another myth of primitive skills is that they are for reclusive, "back-to-the-land" hippies who live in the woods and make sweet love to trees. While I may have just described the dream life of myself and most of my friends, it is simply not the case. We were ALL born into civilization, and most of us still do occupy cities and towns, with grocery stores, hospitals and cute little cafes like the one I am writing this blog in. As much as we might hate this reality, we are not equipped to change that, unless we learn these most vital of skills. When Tre Arrow fled from the feds, he attributes his, rather limited, knowledge of outdoor skills to his being able to successfully evade for the length of time that he did, nearly two years. The hero of Hayduke Lives!, George Washington Hayduke, lives for years in a cave in Utah, using the skills he had gained in primitive living to evade and enact the fantastical schemes against the earth rapists in Ed Abbey's novels. Sure, Hayduke is a fictional character, but if you think all that Abbey sourced was fiction, you need to reread his works. The point is, these skills are the skills that will not only help to build communities, keep us alive, and help us thrive, they will help the take-down of the civilized as well. No matter where you live, if that is not your goal, why the fuck are you reading this blog?

Fire
"I am convinced that fires lit this way (primitively) burn hotter than those lit by matches...because these fires burn inside of us." Ray Mears

Fire making is possibly the first uniquely human animal characterisitic. It has allowed a hairless animal to survive harsh winters, a hungry animal to eat food that otherwise would be impossible and to create an array of tools. John and Geri McPherson, of Naked Into The Wilderness lore, teach that while all skills of living wild are closely related, the first we should learn to create is fire. From this element we receive more bounty than nearly all others. Nothing rings our primordial bells like fire. There is a reason people congregate into your kitchen, and it certainly is not to do the dishes. (Though, that is a skill most anarchists could really benefit from acquiring.) The kitchen is the fire of the home. The hearth and heart. The fire has been used to cook our food, to warm us and possibly most human, to tell our stories. From strictly a survival aspect, it is a no brainer, but from a communal aspect, it is well worth inspection. Learning to make fire is learning to be human, together.

Cordage

Cordage, or rope, string, lashing, etc. is another basic tool that we use for literally thousands of things a day, but rarely have we learned the simple yet magical ways it is made. This was one of the first "primtive" skills I obtained, and was able to share with-in a week to others. Depending on where you live, there are hundreds of plants that have the ability to make good cordage. I have made it from New Zealand Flax, Yucca, Stinging Nettle, Red Cedar Bark and leather lace, but a simple search on a few choice sites such as Primtive Ways will bring forth links to many other. This site: Cordage Discovery lists a few with good explanation of the plants used.

These are two skills that are a good start to grasp, but hell, start wherever you want! If you want to update me on some skills you know or are working on, you can leave them in a comment or email me at primalwarmonger [@] gmail (dot) com.

May the Forest Bewitch you!

Outsourcing Violence

People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.
George Orwell

The modern American psyche craves violence because it is an act that expresses our inner rage. History vindicates the criminal. Folk heroes are nearly all bandits, thieves, criminals and miscreants. The true villains of history, and the present, are the law abiding citizens, the lawmakers and those that seek to uphold the laws in the form of policing, judging, imprisoning and punishing the outlaws. If we want to win hearts and minds, we must break the law, the standards and the norms. Violence does not alienate people, laws do.

We live in a profoundly violent society, both in America and in the world at large. To live within the standard American lifestyle is to bare witness to this violence, most times unwittingly, in every aspect of our social lives. We can not take part in market exchange without extreme violence having been part of the means of acquisition, production or movement of goods. It should not go without saying, as it must be repeated until it is truly understood, that our very way of life, including the land we occupy, is founded on a form of violence that is so complete that it is called a genocide. The efficiency to which we are violent only leads us to believe that the violence does not really exist, not as violence so much as progress. If headlines read of a workplace homicide, we shudder in cerebral fear, but of mass extinctions, oil spills, toxic poisoning of water, food and air, genocides and slavery, we react with political anger at best, never really able to comprehend the massively violent action that just took place. We may not digest, because the steady diet of it has numbed our senses, or because we have been alienated enough from the violence, that we can comfortably move on. Many of us have workplaces, and coworkers, who at any moment could let loose the final thread that binds them to placid existence, but we do not always live beside the killing fields of natural gas drilling, or oil fields so large they can be seen from space. Distance makes pacifists of murderers. 

The daily atrocities of civilized living have set the tone for complacency and dogmatic control. When things are at the tipping point, at the moment we begin to break, we can be reminded that we do not have it "as bad" as the other, without ever acknowledging that this way of life is holding the sword to "the others" throat. We are silenced, ignored, placated, marginalized and compartmentalized to the ends that we stroll along, allowing the abusers to work in "peace", away from the rage they have worked so hard to dumb down within us. Make no mistake that this protects us from getting our hands dirty. This flow of violence will not stop, but build like puss under the scab and let loose upon any of us if we fail to recognize it's source. The greatest trick of politics is to make you believe you are included, and your value then comes from the degree to which you participate. You will be used to meet the ends of the meme. The fervent nationalist does not just come with flags, but also with a dogma of superior non-violence. This could be called the outsourcing of violence, as the violent way of life has never been disrupted, only outsourced.

If we allow the norms set by society to funnel our violence, we will, without fail, attack the vulnerable, the weak, the oppressed, the downtrodden. We will continue to attack women, the indigenous, black people, brown people, animals, the land, and children. And we do, daily. If we take ownership of our violence, we can harness it to attack the oppressors, the abusers, the powerful, the controlling, the dominant, and those on top who have perpetrated the greatest violence against us in history. This explains the massive push by those in privileged positions to vilify the violent dissenter. If the attack on the oppressed were to be reversed, the oppressor is not the only one to feel it's force, but also those that benefit from the violent stranglehold the oppressor has had on the world will be forced to come into account. Take a few moments to listen to the song "Suggestion" by a band called Fugazi. 

 "We are all guilty."

So long as we continue to fall prey to the soothing hand of privilege, and do nothing to halt the death march of progress, we remain culpable for the violence it forces on the world. It is the norms of a society that maintain it. If you are willing to act within the confines of what is acceptable to that society, you will never bring it to it's knees, but seek to further it's existence, and strengthen it's hold. Nothing is more indictable than the act of maintaining oppression under the guise of protesting it.

Zoo Life In Modernity: the Rage of Declawed Cats.

"A pig, in a cage, on antibiotics."

What more to speak of progress than wildness behind bars, crumpling into it's own confusion, and losing instinct in place of chow lines? We have, for long enough, seen the crippling effect of society, no matter the scale, in the loss of freedom so necessary for our  experience of living that what would be screaming at us, is now only a whisper. Drug dependence is a norm, and for every qualm our bodies have with the comfort of social existence, there is a Procrustean prescription shoved into our throats, beginning with children before their first year.  Half of Amerikkkans are now on a daily dose of prescribed drugs, mimicking with great tenacity A Brave New World-like society; where a gram a day keeps the blues away. We have perfected the prison bars, and all that we know now resides within them. Debord's spectacle has unmasked from the margins, showing it's wicked teeth, as we stand in front of this great beast, snapping pictures on our smart phones.At what point do we stop watching? At what point is there an awakening of instinct that never dies, but struggles behind the walls of morality and conditioning? The ingrowth of our imprisonment bulges at the seems of anxiety, anger, confusion and has boiled into the rage of violent life, dependent upon the subjugation of others and self for it's own survival. But when? How? Who will bring this reckoning about? What answer, of the millions we see offered in the political scree that decorates the landscape of the spectacle, will be the one? None. There will be no "one" answer, and there cannot. The singularity mindset of the civilized rests on the notion of the saving grace. Technology points to this for it's own means as well.  The social contract of mass society requires our total submission to the whims of machine. Changes within the mass society have no intent of breaking this contract.

The turning point is not one that is orchestrated, or even welcomed, but one that is spontaneous and requires, possibly for the first time for many, the use of our animal instincts. The fight or flight is not a binary, but a flowing river, and for too long our domesticated mind has hidden from us that we are fleeing. So, as the social constructs which reinforce the controlled mind dissipate, the control itself slips. The flight ebbs towards fight, with a fierceness that is at once alien and more natural than anything we have felt. It is within these moments that we come alive. It is upon making a stand that we begin the breaking down of the borders of what is wild, and what is domesticate. We are not what we have made, but what we will destroy. It is a series of choices that we participate in daily, and nightly, to submit or refuse that creates for us a space of confinement, where-in perceived comfort and false security is the soup du jour, or wildness, where we see ourselves cast off the yokes of society and break towards freedom. The kettling of the herd of cats is weakened with every scratch at it's fake plastic net, likewise, it is strengthened by heeding the warnings of consequence. Will the jails we built hold us all? This jail could be our cemetery, if we wait for the walls to crumble. This brings out the question of collapse.


Many circles today are in bright discussion on the collapse of this civilization. We have a notion that the worsening of life equates to the fall of the empire, that these pains are the death throes of the body of civilized life, and the awakening of the masses is imminent, sure to rise up when discomfort overtakes their lives, and the pain will be the breaking point towards all out war against the masters. We have, for so long, lived in such great pain that it is only rivaled in scope by the amount of distraction we use to numb it away. This pain has great outpouring in the daily insanities we encounter in ourselves and in others. Workplace homicide is so frequent that most corporations have insurance policies sheltering them from lawsuits in the aftermath. Workplace homicide is the number one threat to US businessmen two years running. (Sorry anarchists, we'd be lucky to be in the top twenty threats at this rate) Some point to these incidents as aberrations from civilization, where-as others show these elements as the failure of the experiment. The idea is that it does not work, has not worked, and will not ever work. Perhaps the definition must follow the question: For whom? Whom does it work for? What we know of class analysis is that capitalism does work, socialism does work, communism does work, all economy works for the benefit of those on top, at the massive cost of the lives of the rest of the planet. But it works. Most of the world will feel great pain and loss, but that does not bring about the collapse of economies. That is economics. A series of strategic losses for the gain of those in control. Civilization is the birthing place of massive scale economics, and will surely not flounder at the mere discomfort of it's servants. Collapse is not evident in the pains of the many, but civilization is. Civilization requires the subjugation of wildness to propel itself into total domination. This is a painful process, on any scale, but imagine the pain of loss you experience, on a global scale, and you will not see the collapse of civilization, but the process of it's growth. There are, of course, stages of loss and levels of oppression suffered. Some will never know the promise of civilized comfort, and can not, for this promise is only kept through the diminishing of external beings, beings outside of the construct of the civilized experience. It must have a feeding source from which to pool it's massive amount of reserves. This is not going away with the technological information explosion, as was promised, but a revived form of vulgar voyeurism replaces the spectacle of fiction, just in time for the news feeds to buzz with controlled outrage. This is not collapse happening. This pain is domestication deepening it's grasp.

Waiting through what we see as collapse may not prove to be the best strategy, as I am certain that the fall of empire has been prophesied since the beginning of empire, and the world has not seen break from it yet. Whether the wrath of a vengeful god, or the collapse of economy, the end has been near since the beginning. Doomsday is not what comes to slit the throat of the leviathan, doomsday is everyday in the grasp of it. Some part may collapse, some cog come loose, but the machine, left to it's own, will devour with haste, and will not crumble in it's own time. This is not to say that the machine is all powerful. No. It is very open to dismantling. The only thing that has slowed society in it's conquest has been resistance to it. If not for resistance, be it federations of tribes of Celts or tribes of Indigenous of the Americas, fire bombings by the E.L.F. or sabots thrown to the gears, resistance has been the force against civilization. Simply waiting for collapse is a symptom of our domestication, but also a point of reference for the wildness within that rages below the surface. Our bodies know they are in great pain, our minds are confused and bombarded with distraction, and our spirit is stifled, but not dead. We must take cue from our bodies, who rage mercilessly against the diseases which are wrought upon them, many times losing, but never passively allowing for the disease to take over. Resistance is biological though not merely material. Our spirit is in constant revulsion of the chains of enslavement as well. You must temper and tame it to create domicile creatures, hence the term "breaking" of a beast. You break a wild horse, take away it will to fight back, replace it's instinct with comforts, but lying under the surface, the wild animal exists. It may have grown too faint to hear, or too weak to fight, but the spirit is there. You can see the devastation in the eyes. We are not so far off. Consider two million years, and look at our timeline of control, and you will see that wildness is not out of reach, but may be lying in repose, waiting for it's opportunity to spring forth and destroy the chains.  Collapse will not happen to us or around us, but within us and because of us.

Occupation, the Other Word For Work.

The latest aggregate upheavals only seek to admire this system, using what is already available and safe as a means of displaying it's unrest. What is not, is no matter, but what is, is of great importance. We have lost sight of anything beyond the prison grounds, and now look to redecorate our cells with pictures of a pretty future.  This is the doldrum of engagement within the confines of acceptability. To view this as progress may be exactly correct, but to what end?

The current list of demands includes this statement. "Opinions do not help our cause.
The numbers in the polling will naturally resolve your feelings democratically.  If you strongly agree or disagree with proposed Demands,  lobby your cause and get the votes up to represent your opinion.  This is what democracy looks like."
All "demands" are kept with a 2/3 majority vote. Those voicing opposition to any demand must "lobby" to have them removed, and must do so within time allotted. One vote per IP address. Okay, where to begin?

We ARE NOT political bodies. We are human beings, animals, individuals and livers of our lives. We have taken it as given that we must represent ourselves as a cog in the machine of progress through benign measures of voting and lobbying, while those that destroy the worlds are watching from above, sipping Brandy and smoking cigars, taking pictures on their smart phones for their facebook updates. The "occupations" are spreading though, and in Portland, the rhetoric on the page is a bit more than disturbing. "As with most protests, this will be non-violent. Certain members of the group will cover what and what not to do. Where to be, how to behave, as well as where to go." So, who are these "certain members" and how the fuck did they obtain this power? Are they voted in as well? Well, it seems we are disregarding the hook for the worm. The reason this is so popular could be that it is no different than what we have. We are not looking for change anymore than we can vote for it. Sound familiar?

As a recovering leftist,  there is a large part of me that thrills at ideas of occupying city streets with a thousand of my closest friends and taking on the systems of controls. Having had my time as a reluctant submissive to leftist controls, a time which shall never repeat, it is painfully obvious that allowing for control, in the battle for our lives, is little more than shitting with our pants on. We are left with the vile stench of our own making, and revel in the shared notion of it. Meanwhile, while the masses scream of 99%, the indigenous of every land are displaced, murdered and the way of life that sustains them, the world, and us, is snuffed out for the prospect of more jobs and "shared wealth" for all. I was recently berated by one calling themselves an anarchist for believing more in Salmon than in humans. What trite bit of racist sense of entitlement we see here. The slanders came at the assumptions: one, that I am a follower of Derrick Jensen, a writer with a few works I have a certain amount of respect for, but whose person is inconsequential to my existence, and two, that Salmon are simply Salmon, and are lone casualties of dam structures and river destruction. This person claims that human lives are far more important, without ever once looking at the hundreds of thousands of indigenous peoples whose lives and life-ways are stripped for the benefit of the dam to commerce. The argument set forth is that there is inherent value in certain lives, and certain luxuries (if you call poisoned water, slave labor, animal exploitation, marketing and commercials luxuries, which many do), that does not exist in other lives. We, as "workers" have every right to enjoy the wealth of our labor, and not be content with old shoes and box T.V.s, but to have what the rich also have. They have stolen our money! All the while, the struggle of colonization and OCCUPATION of this land is once again put on the back burner of leftist thought, if not ignored completely. The river is a life, and it gives life to forests, to uncountable water species; fish-eating animals, bug-eating birds, shit-eating bugs, and, ready for it, HUMAN beings. The humanist argument of shared wealth of labor ignores even the human cost of labor, let alone the massive ecological destruction that is also hazardous to all life, because it IS all life. Leftists asking for democracy and work. People of the earth, stolen from and ignored.

It does not end there, by any means. The simple act of demanding reform is akin to providing condoms to rapists. Reform is the means by which power re-forms itself, the saving grace of control. As people take to the streets to "occupy", there are more and more harsh restrictions placed upon their behavior, but not by whom you may be thinking (oink oink) but by the protestors themselves! As the trend spreads, and gains a foothold in the media outlets all seeking capitalize on the spectacle, the list of rules grows. "Wear polo and khakis please, so as to better represent our image." OUR image? So we are all now kinko's slaves? We are all upper middle class yacht club attendees? The blanching homogenization rings of crusades. Why are you wearing black? Are ye witch, or anarchist? Burn em! All the while, wearing fossil fuel plastic masks trademarked by Time-Warner. The pitchforks are on back-order from Amazon.com till they get more Amazonian trees for handles.

Then, to speak of the utter lack of courage of the imagination. The list of demands, decided by 2 of every 3 people with the ability to speak out, is ever shifting. I would normally consider it a good thing to have a flux of demands, as whimsical as the smoke from burning cop cars, but this is not the case. The idea is to whittle it all down to "One Big Demand!" What a slap in the face of desire! There should be more demands than people, more demands than cars, more demands than cell phones! There should be no demands, only good riddance! Good riddance to the system that stole us from ourselves, and sold us back on credit. Welcome to the days spent calmly walking hand in hand with lovers, or running chaotically alone! Good riddance to the time of time itself, and hello to a life lived without regret, without history, without schedule. The death of the imagination is the coffin nail on freedom. How can you say you fight for a better life, when you can hardly imagine one? In the meantime, you wile away the hours catching soundbites of Michael Moore shouting down capitalism so loudly that only your subconscious picks up the ad for his soon-to-be-released best seller about eating the third world...for his lunch. This is madness, madness all around! Yet still, there is a the creeping Hope. Hope: that dreaded abusive lover that always leaves you feeling worse than the time before. There is Hope for the spark in the powder keg of ambivalence to erupt into a Bacchanalian riot/orgy of star crossed warriors, flinging off their clothes and bringing down the tent poles to feel the rain. Why, hope, you filthy bastard, do you curse me so? So I watch, and I listen.

I watch videos of more people swaying to the left and right in a shadow dance of Mezmer motion, being beaten into submission by the other half of the "99%", those paid in thirty pieces of silver to keep you in line, not just today, but every day. Every last day on the job, the cameras are telling you that you are not alone, and you have become so lonely that you wish it so. Every day in the school, as you prop your head to stay awake through the single story of domination. Every night in the bar, as you drop your senses for a rush of numbing lubricant to ease this alienation. You sit, and you wait, because inside, the wildness screams. It does not beg, but defies you for life. And there you are, watching, listening, participating in the roles, while I sit here, and writhe in myself for not knowing how to ask. For never knowing how to say clearly, and calmly, so you will understand and not be threatened. But I'll try...

Hello. I am dying, inside and out, and I need wildness. I need freedom. I need resolve to this life long battle for acceptance of myself. I need to know the feeling of an unlit night. I need to adventure. I need to return to the place where I was born. To be attached to life at every moment. To be wild and free. I need to come alive! I cannot do it without you. So, put down your sign and raze the buildings to the earth with me...the whole world is waiting.

Create relationship.

Seldom do we have a chance, in this ever widening gap of relationship and communion, to form bonds of trust and love with one another, based not on political ideals, but something much older. I have rarely found it anywhere the way I have with direct action, and the temporary but unmediated experience of taking part, becoming part of. There is a chance, not only in Cascadia, but all over the world to take part in a direct action that calls for no compromise. Take your life, and resist.

Cascadia Forest Defenders

A Tactic for Urban Awareness and Coalition

A Tale of No Cities

The Dominance Paradigm and It's Productive Works.

 With production at the helm of the trajectory of life, we have been steered towards the austerity of alienation, so far so as to lead us to see ourselves as separated from this thing we call "nature". With the binary process of "is or is not", "do or do not", "left or right", it should be no shock that the gender binary is so prevalent that it virtually disappears. The last trick of any take-over is to convince you that it has always been. The dominance of production is the leading force, and most silent at times, in the control over women. The premise for this thought may never be spelled out, and never elucidated, but is no less there. We have become automatic in our thought, to the end that we have lost the ability even to think. Thought is now reduced to comparison against a preset of ideals, so deeply placed, that we often do not recognize them as thoughts at all.

If asked what a woman is, most people, male, female, or otherwise, would not tell you "women are what we use to make babies", however, that does not take away the underlying fact that societies have controlled women, and their ability or want to reproduce since the beginnings of civilization in the agrarian Neolithic Revolution. There is little reason to think that, prior to this "revolution", half the entire population would have, or could have, been relegated to a sub-level of social hierarchy, because it would have been impossible and non-beneficial without the formation of society as we now know it. Despite the technological expansion, little has changed within the social construct since this time. This separation is touted now as logical, with reason showcasing a "might makes right" theory" that women are somehow weaker than men, and therefore shaped to fit the role of domesticate homemaker, leaving men to do the physical toil of field labor. What is not recognized is that there is little to show this as being the case, evidenced in the outcome of labor being held in large numbers by women today. What is possible, and aught be examined, is the mindset following, not preceding, agrarian society, that production trumps all means. Where once, it is conceivable that egalitarian principles were beneficial, if only on a base level of survival, hierarchy and dominance would be the tone for a settled society based on production. The theory of socialism highlights this tendency as well, with it's forced labor imperative, where the ruling tendency is not always direct authority of another person, rather the authority of the meme itself. If then, we can see that a ruling force of slave-ship mentality is not merely brute force, but a force of thought, it becomes easier to understand the patriarchal rise.

In a mindset of production, that which produces results wins. As we have viewed the land, so we shall view ourselves. The land is fertile, and can produce food, but the amount of food, and food for whom, is dependent greatly upon the control measures placed upon it. An area of jungle that is untouched by agriculture is a bounty of food, but not all edible by humans, and the food that is, is not always able to be stored away in vast reserves necessary for survival in sedentary societies through harsh seasonal changes. It must then, in the goal of production, be razed and re-birthed, impregnated by the seed of labor to produce what is desired. When we view the land as a resource, and see only what we can produce, we take away the life of the land, and it's importance of existence for it's own sake. This we also do to women, because women can produce children, another product necessary to the growth of workers and society. The growth imperative is the control, the whip holder. Women then, have been subjugated as a factory for life, and treated much as we treat all other domestic crops and animals. Of course, even the most ambivalent meat eater would cringe at the telling of the torture of factory farmed animals, if confronted directly with it, but indirectly consents to the process not by only consuming the product, but by believing the story. Whether or not the eater of said meat stops consuming the factory farmed animal's flesh, the concept of production does not escape that of any domesticated food, and continues so long as the only source of life is under controls. When women have come forth with the recognition of this state of inequality, they are met with some sympathy but mostly disregarded and  placated with pay raises and new laws, but never the changing of the story. Women have the right to abortion, jobs and education in this country, but to what ends will any of this serve, if the woman is still raped, exploited and taught the re-installment of patriarchal dominance by our schools? Even a change in curriculum would not change the very base element of the school itself, it's purpose: to produce workers! There is plenty of "evidence" to support the notion that educated women have less children, but do we even ask why the question of how many children a woman births is relevant? It is relevant because it is how we define and control women as a whole. A maker of children, or not a maker of children, but rarely an equal, and if even, only in economic terms, but still a woman. The hatred of women extends to the hatred of children and the hatred of life itself. This will never be remedied with any societal shifts, but only with the destruction of the societal foundations. To make women equal workers is only to enhance the progress of progress, but never to validate the existence of any life based purely on it's existence.

Perhaps most sad, is the inability of leftists to understand this origin. With work as a driving force, they pile through the world uniting forces to take over the means of production, without ever recognizing what production has produced. Otherwise fighting for social equality, but still holding the recipe for inequality so dear is the rapacious nature of domestication. The gender binary itself could have originated in this mode of thought. Definition is the key-guard of control. Science requires categorization of all things, and in a technocratic world, nothing refutes science. The shift from agrarian living to technocracy is not a shift at all in some ways. In many ways, it is a continuance of the same social order, hellbent on dominance. We cannot eat steel, but need it to protect the food. We cannot eat bombs, but need them to secure the land. We cannot eat computers, but need them to track the shipments of crops. We cannot eat cameras, but need them to monitor the stores. In the same sense, we cannot eat women, but use them as incubators for our armies. This is the underlying force of control that exists. All other societal imbalances are secondary, and if we intend to maintain mass society, and industrial life, even with the egalitarian work forces controlling the means of production, we would have to accept rape culture, because that is the inevitability of a production based society. In Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, the women of the not-too-distant dystopian society are controlled and valued only for the reproductive abilities. This story can be viewed in the present tense as the paradigm of civilization itself. The focus of some environmental groups today seems to be on over population, but rarely seek the origin of the population expansion. While agriculture may have given rise in the ability to feed more children, and sedentary life required the use of more workers, the doctrine of control lies in the production mindset itself. Daniel Quinn has espoused the ideas of food abundance being the origin of population growth, but this lacks a few elements of understanding, or rather frames certain elements into understanding without looking at others. The idea that food abundance creates population does not account for the wealth of food the unfettered world contains. Pre-Agrarian society was not afflicted with massive famine and starvation, because the world before agriculture was much more bountiful than the monocropped world of today.

The world of gathering and hunting was not a world that did not allow for population growth based on it's lack of food, shelter or water rather based in it's lack of social structure of hierarchy and mindset of production that is inherent to agricultural life. It is also not as if the switch occurred in one lifetime, or even five generations but over a long period of time, ranging possibly in the high thousands of years. The social structure of agriculture did not, then, precede agricultural life, but followed it, and could be said to be a product of it just as population growth is a product of it as well. It is then easier to say that population growth is a product not of the food, but of the social structure that the life-way demands. The food has been there for hundreds of thousands of years, but the control over the food has mandated the control over all life, and maintains itself through the subjugation of half the population, relegated to duty of baby production first, sexual commodity second, and possibly human being third. The very roots of gender role lies in production oriented living, be it agrarian, industrial or technocratic. So long as the concept of progress and production are in play, we will see such gross inequities that allow for all inequity.

The historical lens we use is short sighted and seeks only to benefit the story it promotes. If we look back in our written history, we see that women of all religions, of all regions, are banished to a second class of living. This is not at all to say that this is the case for all cultures within the time period of our written history, because it clearly is not, rather to show that our written histories are merely one sided, and tell the one-world story in the first person narrative.  It must be so to maintain that what we have is progress. If what we have differs from the trajectory of human life, as it does, then what we have is not progress of human life, but progress of the meme. The story tells us that history and science on are on the side of progress, doing everything in it's power to defend and perpetuate dominance imperative. The history of this culture however is not long, and the wildness that permeates everything is and is still alive today, and can be, must be mustered if we ever hope to see our selves break from the prison of production.

Domestication and Work: The Elements of Control

Here is another video I made, same as first, actually made the same day. No script, so the talk may stray a bit, but again, for this format, I feel that fluidity is important. The lack of critique, or even understanding, of what domestication is, creates a gap in understanding of our predicament. We must be willing to dismantle all constructs of control, to, at the very least, understand their effects on us. Domestication is not merely the control of plant life called "crops", or animal life, called stock. It reaches into the way we, as animals, control one another and ourselves, to be fitted into a tightly confined box of thought and imagination. The work of great thinkers such as Waziyatawin shows us that the effects of Colonization kill not only the spirit and the people, but the imagination. What world have created where even the anarchists cannot imagine a different history? I will be addressing this topic further as well, when I start to elucidate my studies into ancient origins and the stories that drive us. Daniel Quinn has touched on this in some ways, but I see something lacking in his critique as well. Of course, many will laugh off my premise as "anarcho-purism" or "Utopic". I see nothing Utopic about primitive life-ways, rather an opportunity for experience that has been stripped from us in this global one-world culture that civilization is creating. At any rate, here is the video:

Every Step You Take: Closed Circuit Civilization

The critique of technology is, of course, imperative to a critique of civilization, for without it's ever broadening scope and tightly clenching fists, modern life would be not only unthinkable, but also unachievable. The mere numbers of people and the consumptive habits of civilized life are not only made possible by technology, but created by technology itself. It is arguable that pop culture today is the product not of the culture itself, but the product of the products of culture. Where would our daily conversations be without television programs and dead pop stars. One needs only to glance at a facebook "feed" (peculiar name, wouldn't you say? are we being fed? we certainly are suckling the teat of technology! not an accident) to see what the dominant forces in play are today. It is clear that we are slowly becoming the creations of the technology itself.

For nearly every critique of modern technocratic life, there is an apologist chomping at the byte to defend and uphold the positive uses of technology. Be it the presumption of communication becoming more readily available, while at the same time rising instances of violence being attributed to lack of communication. Text messaging has become one of the most used forms of communication in the U.S. today, showcased in a 2008 study from top wireless cellular providers that showed a daily average of 2.5 billion texts, a 450% increase from the previous year. This far dwarfs the average number of phone calls documented by the same providers. This means that the beacon of modern communication, the hope for transmission of information, is being used for the sending and receiving of shortened, voiceless, impersonal communications. That argument is not good enough though, as it touches on the personal and begs the question of who is to say what is good communication. Apparently the phone corporations are. So, how about this one. You are being monitored at every turn.

The NSA is the U.S.' largest, most costly, most invasive group you will never hear about. Sure, we all know the soundbite we get on the news about Jihadists and the vital role of security played out thanks to the Patriot Act, god bless em, but what do you really know about the surveillance state? I can give you some numbers. As of right now, the NSA takes no less than 48 petabytes a year of information to be stored away forever in supercomputers. This is the paper equivalent of one billion four door filing cabinets full of documents, all alphabetized and categorized according to the information YOU give them. Twenty four trillion pages of text are generated each year in the surveillance world of the NSA, and all without the expressed consent of a single person. Now, you may say this is indicative of the state and not a solid critique of civilization, and somehow, we could use this technology for good, if only it were in the hands of those of us with the enlightened intellectual grace and college education to understand power dynamic and economic blah blah blah, you know the rest. Soon, by the way, while we have this fruitless argument over the blatant destruction of our person, the NSA is moving to measuring information by the exabyte, which is the equivalent of 1,000 petabytes. 200 petabytes is the amount of storage needed to store roughly every piece of printed material currently on the planet. This could account for nearly every word spoken within 5 years. The amount of money and energy placed into the development of technology to serve the surveillance culture will surely send advancements far beyond. This is all from ONE agency.

This shows nothing of the vast amount of surveillance taken in daily by corporations, which may end up surpassing that of national security. With the advent of social networking, 700 posts a second on facebook clue corporate armies into our wants, desires and breaking points.  Compound that with 34,000 Googles searches per second and you got yourself the most widely monitored society in history. But how did this happen? Is is state terror, or corporate greed, or could it be the outcrop of surveillance technology itself?

Street cameras are so pervasive  that they have become a part of our natural landscape, escaping scrutiny not because they are hidden away, or even necessary, but because we have become used to seeing them. Television viewers (an historically rabid bunch, known to stand up from their couch to urinate or get more chips, at times) are now privy to the ways of the world and it's human parasites thanks to the advent of reality TV. No need for direct contact anymore, we can watch Cops beat black men from the comfort of our "living" room, and if that is not your idea of fun, then see what two rich white debutantes are fumbling over this week. Not good enough? Don't worry, CBS has it all worked out. Interactive billboards are now taking pictures of the public and broadcasting the picture for the world in a stunt to advertise a new show where the guy who played Jesus will be busting criminals BEFORE they commit crimes at the bequest of a billionaire in New York. Hmmm. Why not head out shopping and be part of the game today? The point is, surveillance is entertainment and entertainment uber alles.  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904265504576564763467046264.html

   The cable execs have even managed to extend the voting season to garner higher ratings by use of political candidates. More people watched the elections than voted, because clearly voting doesn't matter and the entertainment factor is far more relevant to their lives. The more we watch, the more we feel we have participated and the less we have ever done. The more they watch us, the more they get away with. See how that bit of Mede can enchant? The question though is begged where this drive towards self immolation is derived? Did we create the technology so we can watch ourselves all day? Or did the technology create a world where we must be watched? We know that a major loss in technocratic society is the hand to mouth experience of living by instinct. We no longer each have the ability to gather food, build shelter, find water and raise children without the assistance of technocratic rule. Food. Water. Shelter. These are basic aspects of every species of life, yet, we have evolved ourselves into a place where we, as a society, no longer have the knowledge of where these things come from! I can find a youtube video on my phone in traffic but cannot decipher an edible wild berry from one that will give me the shits for a week. Where did we go wrong? If you listen to the voice of reason, it says clearly that it is in our nature to progress this way....WTF?

There is little more unnatural than a bulk of a species propagating without even the most base knowledge of how to eat. We are truly insane. Of course, this is not the way of life for many in this world. Those who have not been subjected to the progress of society still have hand to mouth skills, and use them daily, as this is the way of life for the world without computers. Of course, they are now in jobs training courses so they can learn english and be forced to uproot their jungles to  bring us bananas for our vegan protein drinks. That program is coming next fall on NBC.

What purpose does the watchful eye of no one serve? The false sense of connectivity not only pales in comparison to true experience of connection, but actually stifles the ability to do so. The means by which we currently have to "connect" with friends and family, or mostly strangers, is the internet, and we all know how insecure that medium is. We have been driven to speak in code, or not at all, about our deepest desires, in fear of being placed on some federal schmucks' Google document the next morning. We are unable to slow down, but are begging for a stop. Perhaps it would be easier to roll the dice and jump from the train, tuck and roll, and rise up to bend the tracks out of commission.

Towards An Anarchist Spirituality...

“They therefore invented an idea of "primitive man" as a being whose total intelligence was supposed to consist in some rudimentary fumblings towards the kind of wisdom monopolized by Western civilization. Hardly dreaming that there are other and highly developed types of intelligence and wisdom, as well as different life/goals, than those contemplated by Western man, these anthropologists found only what their prejudices enabled them to see. Their premise was that their own culture as the "latest" in time represented the height of evolution. Earlier cultures must therefore be elementary forms of "modern” culture, and their degree of civilization and intelligence had to be estimated by the degree to which their values approximated to modern values.” – Alan Watts Myth and Ritual in Christianity

     To begin with, this quote by philosopher Alan Watts is in reference, immediately, to Christianity and it’s origins, it’s colonialist imperative but also applies more broadly to modern culture as a whole. I would find it hard to not relate critique of modern culture to Christianity, being that it has been, if not the most dominate religion of the past 500 years,could be called the most dominating with it’s imperative of conquest and control. We have seen in our lifetimes alone, a massive amount of repression, genocide, ecological devastation and oppression under the flag of divine right. From the conquest of the west to the colonization of the east (read Phillipines, South Korea, Australia, etc.) at the hands of not only the Church as an institution, but the force of will of “good” Christian missionaries, paving the way for development and providing reformist cleanup after genocide wrenches it’s deadly claim.

     This can be attributed, at surface level, to the defects of religion, but I fear this may be too easy. Without religion, would we not still have “progress” as a driving entity, in and of itself? This has long been written off as human nature, and in fact, is in the premise of the word progress itself to assume that this is a natural path.  Of course, there are deep seeded tones of colonialism in this thought process, not to mention the short view of the world and it’s existence, but the question we must put forth then, if not god, who takes the blame? If it is not in our “nature” to consume and destroy, then it must be in our nurture, and what better fall guy than the divine?  Anarchists have long been held to the account of atheism, and for good reason. The institution of god is no different than the institution of the state, if not worse. The development of the institution of mass religion follows closely with the development of civilization. When people began collectively living in sedentary spaces, developing large scale agriculture and relying upon the elements for bounty as opposed to their ability to maneuver towards more fertile hunting and gathering land, we see the rise of ritual. Ritual is the performing of duties not for sake of anything other than the duty itself, in hopes that repetition will bring forth the same results as in times of good harvest. To pay penance to the gods was a way of attempting to ensure that famine would not fall on you or your family, and at times, even attempting to force it upon your enemies. Warfare being a hallmark of confined living, what better ally than the gods to wreak certain havoc upon your foes?  Thus we find the beginnings of religion. The enforcement of communal ritual was a given, being that any sway may not be pleasing to the gods, therefore those unwilling to participate, or those defiant of the new lifeways, had to be silenced and alienated, or killed, so as to create a unity and confluence amongst the people. In order for this to take hold, there had to be specialists in determining who was and who was not sincere in their faith, and those rulers were appointed, not by consensus, but by divine right. God chose them. In this time, there was also the formation of the state, from the Latin word status meaning standing or position, words inherent to hierarchy that will be imperative to modern society. We see, from the beginning a tie in of governments and churches. From the murder of indigenous peoples and their land, to the assassination of spiritual prophets for the benefit of the state, the church and the state have remained, and will certainly always be linked.  This is not revelatory in any sense, and has been a part of the dogma of anarchy since it’s inception as a political force. This also, in many ways, holds to the same form of colonialism and imperative that our definitions of life-ways are the standard from which we compare all others. Where then is our spiritual concern? That which drives us to connect with life until there is no separation? Are anarchists to believe that all matters of the spirit belong to the church? And if this is the case, were they taken by the church or invented?

     I hold that spirituality is much older than elements of mass control, and must be explored to attain a wholeness of self that is necessary for reconnection with the world as a whole. The basic proposition of anarchy holds true only one thing: freedom. Freedom from oppressive controls and hierarchy, and freedom to adventure into one's life unfettered by the constraints of societal dominance. Tailgating freedom, within the context of mass society, brings forth additional baggage that is as fluid as the condition of the individual. Some may see non-violence as a strict doctrine of anarchy, because they have had an experience of violence from oppressive forces. Others may hold that violence nor non-violence are inherently anarchistic, but the tying bond between the two sets is freedom as an imperative. In modern western culture, it is remarked often that true freedom cannot ever really exist. Therefor, anarchy is merely an ideal that may be striven toward, but never actualized. 

 This concept of perpetual bondage is indicative of the omniscient nature of civilization itself. The gods of this culture reflect the same parameters of understanding. Where-as the gods of a polytheistic culture may retain certain powers over various realms, the god of a monotheistic culture is all knowing and cannot be escaped or hidden from. Freedom is not an option.  There is no escape from his all seeing eye. This, without elaborating, shows the patriarchal nature of the culture as well as the control imperative. What exactly does this god provide, outside of an archetype of the controlling beast of civilization itself? Is the god the root of the improprieties, or the outcrop? Being that the notions of gods have well preceded industrial civilization,  it is possible to conclude that the god follows the rod. 

  Upon the onset of colonization, being the widening of a particular culture for the purpose of conquest and resource control at the necessary elimination of the cultures of coveted regions, we have seen the encountering of "others", some with a set of gods all their own. It is no secret that the genocide of indigenous people's of the Americas was rife with stories of divine intervention and rite. The various tribal people's of this region had a set of gods that were revered for their different sources of power or kinship, but was the basic standing of these gods the same construct as the European Christian god? Most likely not, however there is substantial reasoning that points to shamanism as an elite form of religious rite as well. This is not indicative only of the indigenous of this region though, as we can go back to see pre-Christian peoples of Europe also held firmly their concepts of gods that had to be snuffed out for the propulsion of the Christian paradigm. What little we know of these gods in a mainstream aesthetic tells us that these societies functioned rather similar to that of the monotheists, but little evidence actually points to this. With the murder of a people also comes the murder of their knowledge, and we have very little knowledge of what the Celtic peoples, or the Picts may have had of their spiritual selves. Just as we have very little mainstream knowledge, beyond the blindly accepted and indoctrinated stereotypical of "pagan" cultures, we treat the indigenous of the Americas with same colonial swath. Narrowing down their culture's belief and spirituality to an easily digested mockery of the truth. Our priests are dominating and controlling, so it would play well that their shamans served the same purpose. We have no real understanding of the spiritual practice of these peoples, but apply to them the reasoning learned by our own oppressive system, despite the teachings from still living indigenous peoples who point otherwise. Of course, it does a colony no good to exchange with it's directive, only to steal and redefine. He who defines, in a large way controls. This is well known in the scientific world, and comes directly from the experience of the religious world. Science is, in fact, the new religion.  

  This taken into account, how can we presume then the spiritual practices of our ancestors were the same as the religious practices of our oppressors? What we know of the cultures of past are that they were not all oppressive, conquest oriented, gender based societies of dominance and control. Some, such as many Celtic clans, held no gender bias and had no concept of gender roles, division of labor (as labor, in modern terms, did not exist) and had no structure of punishment or imprisonment, yet they had many "gods". We do not know how the practice of ritual would have been carried out, if even at all, yet it is clear that there were archetypes within these cultures to represent various aspects of life and connectivity. It would put forth then, that the shamans of the Americas, whose tribal peoples also had "gods" of various ilk, held no power over others as well. Being seen a spiritual guide may have been as commonplace as being seen as a good hunter, or a good thatch builder. Could we then surmise that spiritual life held an equal importance to food and shelter? Yes, it could. What then of the concept of god, not as we know it, but as our ancestors may have it?

  Joseph Campbell has done much work in the field of mythology, the study of the myths of a culture, and came to many conclusions that the "god" archetype may have little to do with control, if the society was not interested in control.  "Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths. " Joseph Campbell
This could be said that the society manufactures the gods, but does not manufacture the desire of the spirit. The largest threat to the Catholic church was not war from outside, but disbelief from inside. Disbelief would not have brought down the church walls, but would have made them impossible to be built in the first place. The cultures we now know as "pagan" were diverse and many, and had to be converted or eliminated for the life-way of roman civilization to  prosper, just as the tribal indigenous of the Americas had to be converted or killed off for the foothold of western civilization to take hold and grow. Why then did people not just convert? Because the spirit is a real and important part of life, equally as important as food and shelter. This, of course, is not saying that conversion would have "saved" the lives of every person killed by the genocidal armies of progress, as the racism and divine right of white males was already ingrained into Europeans by that time, giving that their own colonization was completed many generations previous, but we can see that the adoption of Christianity did "allow" for many peoples to survive albeit stripped entirely of a basic element of life, spirit, which, again is as important as food and shelter.  Genocide, as Ward Churchill reminds us, is not merely the act of killing an entire people, but killing their way of life. Therefore, you do not have to be dead, to be a direct casualty of genocide. The UN defines genocide as such: any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such:a. killing members of the group;b. causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;c. deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;d. imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;e. forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.With the understanding of the importance of spirituality to non-civilized peoples, it is easy to deduce that an addition to this definition is in order:f. control or destroy the spiritual connection to life of a person or persons. 
 It is clear that religion has for some time been used as an element of control, with it's dominant gods and forced behaviors, but spirit has been it's greatest enemy. With the control or destruction of the spirit, the greatest genocide has already, is currently, occurring. We place our bodies in the pews and our faith in the machines, be they computers or the textual gods of literacy, we are under control. To abandon the spirit is no different from murdering it, and modern living requires just that, an abandonment of adventure and experience with a reliance on ritual and technology.

 The secular notion of life put forth by modernity is for the purpose of technocratic rule and objectification imperative. If one can be defined, it can be controlled, therefor if one cannot be defined, it is out of control and must be eliminated or recuperated else the rule of normality ceases to exist. Politics is the normalization of control, and must be abandoned, while spirituality without religion is beyond the confines of normalization and must be embraced. Towards an anarchist spirituality, without confines, without constriction.

If our own processes be any gauge...

The mere use of the term "search engine" to define the process by which we obtain most information in the technocratic world today, holds the underlying premise that we are being mechanized. "Booting up" is another great folly of language, when one considers the fascist tendency to rule by the boot, and computers seem to delegate our days for us, be it in the food we eat down to the reliance upon them as to where to obtain the food, it is ever pervasive and, I would say invasive into our daily interactions. The reliance on mechanization and generation of information from an external source has further led to the alienation within us. As the external is clogged and space is consumed with blinking lights, signage and information, the internal space is emptied. 

"A preliminary study released earlier in the year looked at 150 20- to 35-year-olds in Japan and found that more than one in 10 were suffering from severe memory problems. Researchers from Hokkaido University's in Japan said the memory dysfunction was enough to further study the possible connection between reliance on computer gadgets, organizers and automatic car navigation systems." - Rose Palazzolo, Aug 14th ABC News

It is as if we have "outsourced" the functions that have dictated our survival for the existence of our species, in just a few short years when speaking of information, and of course, around ten thousand  years when speaking of energy slaves in tools and manufacturing, agriculture and religion.  Ten thousand is, of course, an estimate of this culture, and not taking into account ancient civilizations that have come and gone since time immemorial. Our instincts of survival as well as our means of communication (arguably a trait of survival) are on the decline whilst our reliance on technology is on the steep upgrade. It is visible in our advertising alone. 

One car ad for Subaru reads, "Built to Withstand Mother Nature and Human Nature", as if the car itself is the valued object of affection worth saving from the horrific chaos of "nature", while another, for Ford's Fiesta, reads, "Most People Would Prefer A Hot Climate", in a crass spit in the face of our, obvious, man made climate change, and the will to overcome reason for perceived comfort of auto-cratic lifestyle. These are not merely small signifiers of culture, as some might say, if one were to stop and consider the role that advertising plays in a consumer society. It is dually the carrot and the stick of our forced existence. Archeologists thousands of years from now, supposing of course that this lifeway will be of any relevance to a future society, will be decoding billboards, not codex's of Chomsky and Freud to analyze our steep downgrade. The academy serves itself, the advertisers serve the rest. 

I do not need to, at any length, continue to lambast car culture, as it is self evident as a means to a destructive end, but the process of the mechanization does need to be examined, skewered and served on a disposable plate. Where-in lies the difference in car culture and computer culture? Both are equally destructive forces to the ecology of our current planet. Both have created insurmountable amounts of damage in the death both have doled out (car accidents, drone bombings, ecocide, facebook). The difference of course lies in our ability to ration out certain amounts of pain for perceived benefit, and even then, we accept the physical damage of cars, for now, while still remaining skeptical at best, apathetic at worst, to the psychological damage of computer rule. Even this is being placed onto a computer for the rapid consumption and posterity that digital Jesus provides. We, as "thinking" animals, have forsaken that which provides our namesake, thought. Homo Sapien means, crudely, man who thinks. We are moving into the next subcategory of specie, Homo Pixelus. Man who appears on screen. 

Skipping out of the furtherance of this subject for now, I leave you with it's impetus. I came home from a class I am auditing where I made the suggestion of bringing to class articles with significance to the topics we are discussing, as a way of creating a sense of urgency of the topic. The topics are the origins of civilization, culture and it's effect on how we connect, or do not connect, with the land. Being that I am somewhat accustomed to these ideas being thrashed about, I came home and searched for what I see as the hallmark of our culture, in a google search "engine to generate articles in the news today. Once we begin to make certain connections, others just fall in line. This is the benefit of getting to the root, all else springs out, and you can follow it to it's ends, our ends. To discover how patriarchy and food relate, may seem like a large leap at first, but once the connection of agrarian life creating boundaries, property, war and soldiers, division of labor and creation of gender roles, well, the connections just get shorter and shorter. 

 The topic I chose was: disaster.

This was my result: About 35,500 results (0.07 seconds) 

In a search for "kindness"...

This was my result: About 5,080 results (0.07 seconds)