Prisons of the mind

For anyone still following, this is an extension of Notes From the Field, I being the one in the field, am bringing you something a little more philosophical today. I will start by posing the question of how ones environment affects, and then subsequently effects them? Today I am writing from a large straw bail house, about 80 percent complete, with hand carved woodwork across all the rafters and trellises. We use a composting toilet, enjoy hot water- heated from a natural gas well that's on site, and drink water that has been stored in large holding tanks atop the hill on the west side of the property. It’s really quite a lovely homestead; the only utilities that are hooked up is the power. So where might you ask is this home located, on the north end of Humboldt County. The reason I have described to you my situation is simple, I have been here a month now and what started as a quaint homestead has turned into a stagnant plot of land which I have poured both my sweat and thoughts into. The reason we came was simple, money. So of course your wondering what a small, mostly off the grid homestead in northern California has to offer in the way of employment, well ill let you connect the dots from there. Anyway my time here has given me ample opportunities to reflect upon some small questions, some large questions, and everything in between. What I have realized is that in our toiling, we as a race, and in the year 2010 have an aptitude for denial, and it runs deep. This denial encompasses everything from patriarchy, to colonialism, to reality itself. There is a current trend emerging in pop culture. It started long ago in the realm of science fiction and has most notably produced such movies as the matrix and more recently inception, voted the best science fiction movie to date, and grossing millions. What all of this speaks to me is simple. People are looking for an escape. We work and work and work, then drive home, through crowded streets with other folks equally discouraged by the routine of wage slavery, eventually sit down, eat our microwave dinners, because we have no energy left to feed ourselves healthy food; turn on the TV, receive today’s dose of advertisements and insecurities; and finally fall sleep, only to repeat the insanity tomorrow. So for the people who get as far as recognizing this cycle, they are also looking for an option of how to change it. Rightly so, there is much work that must be done, and ill get to that later. But many people cannot even recognize this cycle, at least consciously, yet on some level I believe they recognize the problems we face, perhaps somewhere deep down in that poor psyche held hostage by the American dream. What is coming to the surface is simple, we would rather buy up this idea that the world as it stands today and our lives in that world are a dream, or that it is a mirage of true reality, or controlled by a computer, by reptilians, by the NWO, by fucking Santa Claus, what’s the difference. I have heard more theories about how the world works, how its going to end, what reality really is, etc, that I'm convinced much of the population is insane. Now when I say this I also believe that they are not beyond liberation, but seriously people we need to face the facts, turn off the TV, stop absorbing the virtual reality, try learning from something living, instead of a block of glass and liquid crystals. We have one earth, there is no niburu, and nothing is going to magically happen tomorrow. What we need is for people to actually start caring about the earth and themselves, now and in the present. This is reality, the one that we have been given, so remove it from your privileged minds that any of these pot-brained ideas, influenced primarily by the media are going to actually happen. There are more problems with the reality of today than I care to go into, pick one and start working on it. I know it’s easier to simply write off these issues by proclaiming that climate change doesn’t matter if we all live in a computer and this is just in the programming; or that its all part of the plan, and that's what the chemtrails are there for, glen beck told me so...

In the plainest sense what this means is that when an individual starts to believe in something as fantastical as this, they stop caring about that which truly matters. Some of which is as follows: clean air, clean water, healthy land to grow food on, shelter, clothing, and community. Moreover, as long as there exists millions if not billions of starving humans around the globe, as long as ecosystems are being destroyed at a ghastly rate, as long as entire species are driven extinct, as long as such injustice as 1 in 4 women being sexually assaulted in their lives exists; I don’t want to hear another word about an individuals theory on why none of the above matters. If this is not a clear, cut and dry case of denial I don’t know what is. We face some trying times, but rather than rising to those times, we have hit an epidemic of denial. I could end this by exclaiming that people need wake up, but to be honest that is up to them. I want only to unite those whose eyes are aching from being open so wide.


Love and rage