Waking up: freeing ourselves from work

Whatever action is born from force, though it be infinitesimal, the cosmic balance is upset and universal motion results. (Nikola Tesla)

"Give me a man that is not passion's slave and I will wear him in my heart's core." (Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Act III: Scene 2)

From the first day to this, sheer greed was the driving spirit of civilization.” (Frederick Engels)

The crime itself, the manner of the crime – that was the immediately intriguing thing. It was bizarre, undoubtedly…That angle did not bother the inspector. His years on the local force had taught him never to be intimidated by eccentricity. What made him uneasy was the feeling of being confronted by uniquely resourceful and organized cleverness…His seeing through the arrangement of apparent accident…had pleased him at first. But he now realized he had merely chopped down a tree to disclose a forest. (The redoubtable Inspector Purbright in Colin Watson’s Coffin, Scarcely Used)

‘Force,’ from day one, has been ‘civilization’s’ mantra, the worm at its core.

Its’ apologists dutifully taught us that violence served “History” by driving it all forward, that those mowed under were the collateral damage of an essentially worthy project.

No one asked those of us who did the manual labor that fueled this effort what we thought of the deal.

There has never been a discussion, just as there has never been a discussion about the meaning of America’s roots in racism.

We are never asked our opinion. We remain those mowed under, to this day.

The speed with which the agenda of the podrunks gets shoved down our throats is itself a form of violence, and one of their central strategies.

Speed, insecurity (desperation), and overwork (exhaustion) have prevented us from seeing that there is an agenda, that we are confronted with an extremely organized effort. They know, quite clearly, that they can only maintain the illusion of rule by staying well ahead of our ability to process who and what they are.

Speed, insecurity, and overwork are their essential weapons, for if we could stop long enough to look at our lives, we’d be devastated.

‘Force’ is the underlying value that structures every institution in our world. That it has been the dominant organizational model doesn’t mean that it had to be, or that it was the essential basis for invention to exist – far from it. Within the paradigm of ‘force,’ invention blooms despite.

So what is ‘Progress’? Who decides how to gauge its existence?

Just as we have to redefine ‘wealth’, this word ‘progress’ can’t be accepted on face value either. It’s time we put the question to ourselves, we on whose energy it’s all been fueled.

So, to you who do the work, what kind of ‘progress’ matters to you?

Have we made progress in loving our babies?
In being a fun-loving and happy species?
In mutual trust and security across cultures?
In preserving the biodiversity and health of the planet?

The history of ‘Progress’ is a history of violence, complicity, and confusion.

Let’s stop calling this mess ‘Progress’ and call it what it is: ‘Disaster.’

There is “movement” – true.

The disaster-traders are very busy, very ‘hard-working,’ very ‘successful’ in widening the gaping hole, the wound – extending the disaster ever forward, and marshalling the energy of our collective suffering.

And there’s “progress,” true, in Tesla’s sense of the word:

“…progress, or – more correctly – development, or evolution, if not a movement, infinitely complex and often unscrutinizable…”

– a movement toward unity, peace, and cooperation as a global community – embedded in the disaster of the last five hundred years.

But that Disaster which the West calls “Progress” is not “progress.”

The progress that has occurred, included in which is the labor of invention freely given to lighten the load for the “yet unborn these,” has occurred despite the “Progress” the podrunks celebrate, which is Progress in killing, in destroying, in raping, in exploiting, in division, in atomization – in annihilating, or suppressing, all that opposes obedience with freedom.

It’s time for a serious visit to this question of what we want.

What’s different today is that a global consciousness is emerging that is putting the earth / life first – and that it’s our turn now to answer this question.

“Now is the seed time of [global] union, faith, and honor” … of the people, by the people, and for the people.

The rhythm of the earth is
pulsing, pulsing,
In each and every one of us.
Be it.
Holy Holy.
Take it in.
Keep it round.

When we look at the ‘cost’ in human and earth terms, in the erosion of healthy earth systems – whether this loss was ‘worth it’ depends on whether it was you being slaughtered, you, conscious of your mutilated soul.

Was it ‘worth’ it?

What must no longer be equivocated about is that for those who were happy before, obviously, no, it was not worth it.

We paid too high a price.

And instead of denying that, it must be acknowledged – our ancestors’ suffering must be given its full weight.

Instead, all the stuff is thrown in our faces, and we’re told we should be grateful that we were “compelled to come in.”

But now that we can recognize the enormous sacrifice of our ancestors who still love the earth, it is completely unacceptable to not restore their brilliance to the story.

This entire monolith that the podrunks call ‘civilization’ feeds on – has always fed on – our energy.

This imbalance is not supportable physically or psychically. Randall Robinson is right. There is a debt. Of course not one with dimensions that can be defined in terms podrunks can grasp. Unhappiness descended on happiness and set about annihilating it – what’s the price tag on that?

The enormous debt must be acknowledged as we go forward to what comes next.

When you take – and don’t acknowledge what you take, or even that you take – that is a crime beyond measure.

Parents do this to children, when we pretend that we give them ‘everything’ while we feed on their creativity, joy and spontaneity.

The white-skinned West, the ‘Core,’ the Pretenders to Mastery, do this to the darker-skinned South, the ‘Periphery,’ the placeholders for wholeness, when they pretend they give to the South ‘everything’ – the keys to the future, the ideas and innovation, the machines and other magic – while they feed on the labor power, creativity, joy and spontaneity, of the darker-skinned peoples.

As soon as we say, “but look what Progress has brought us!” we’re back into betraying our ancestors, back into complicity, again.

As long as we keep saying, “but look…look what we have…we have this and this and that…” then we are back into complicity, back into the arms of Nesucom, and its tentacles tighten around us – and we are lost.

It’s time to redeem the suffering, the sacrifice, of our ancestors.

It’s time to say that we can’t betray them anymore.

The restless hunger of the Europeans, their scouring the world for all the ‘stuff’ they could grab, was the form their ‘longing’ took – disaster though it was for the rest of us. That they did not, and for the most part do not, honor or consciously value all that they have received from us is a problem for our collective healing.

Nesucom is a monster that eats you whole, sucks you dry.

It is what we do now – with consciousness – that is our lasting legacy.

The one clear ‘progress’ I can see is that we are becoming, as Tesla saw, a global people / being.

It’s wrong, and dishonors our ancestors’ suffering, their sacrifice, to pretend this disaster is anything but disaster – yet here we are, and if pressed to find some meaning in this mess I’d give it this: disaster has forced us to unify – that’s the most we can say.

But, no doubt, earth-connected peoples were happier before accumulation – absolutely.

It may be that a larger disaster awaits us that the ancestors know of, for which our accumulated energy will serve.

But it’s a moot point for our current universe, which presents us with more than enough challenges to occupy our longing.

Our work is in the present: it’s time to throw off our yokes, throw a mighty spur in Disaster’s spokes. The only thing we can say definitively is that it is our collective legacy.

We are one world now.

What comes from One
Is now Two
But must be One again.

Continue to "Culture" - Part 1

Nascence to End Work

Waking up: freeing ourselves from work

Chapter III: Progress (Part 7)

Waking Up: Freeing Ourselves From Work