The People Tire of Capitalism

The people tire of capitalism. It no longer dazzles. It appears now as a sad and brutal beast lumbering across landscapes, destroying everything -- other creatures, the beautiful, people's souls and their will. The people tire of capitalism.

An Unending Election or a Culture Ending?

Why does it feel as if the election is not over? The deluge of information about political creatures - foremost among these, the great charlatan Donnie Tynahands, but including the cipher beings Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton - continues. It is sordid, baffling, contradictory, always courting incredulity and always straddling the line between coherency and incoherency.

Perhaps what we are experiencing is not properly the sense of an election that is not over – but rather the sense of an empire and, indeed, a culture that is buckling and finally collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions. The three ludicrous and terrifying founding fictions of the nation - that humans are somehow distinct from and superior to the rest of nature / that there are separate "races" of human beings / and that the purpose of existence is to pursue one's own personal greed to its always vanishing endpoint - were never a recipe for success. Are we now witness to the endgame of these wretched beliefs? One thing is for sure: the show, the spectacle is utterly mad.

The Sacred, The Profane

The objective of consumerism is to commodify Everything. To desacralize Everything, to remove the sacred nature from All. The objective of consumerism is to make Everything profane. A head of lettuce ceases to be a wonder and a miracle birthed through eons of mystery to merge with your body. No: it is just a another dead product to be consumed. Now is the time to wrench this sinister power away from the wicked. We affirm: The world is alive and is charged with wonders beyond all of our imaginings. Sacred wonders.

Orioles of Baltimore

The orioles of Baltimore fly off of the caps and jerseys where they have been caged and declare, “We are not mascots! We are soaring, swooping creatures now rarely seen in the city which gave us our name! We leave the purgatory of stadium stalls and return to the skies!”

A Green Anarchist Caper

Our frayed psychology & our dizzying array of addictions; the endless wars & the incomprehensible, unrelenting pursuit of ecocide -- they all suggest an inescapable conclusion: Humanity has been hijacked. It’s a whodunit! By whom? For what purpose? Most importantly – and here we depart from the traditional whodunit narrative – what has been stolen from within us? 

When we answer this, we may regain it and thus regain ourselves & our place in the world.

the secret library

there is a secret library

in the backlot

behind the school

go there and read its pages -

wildflowers tilting to & fro

weeds that can be eaten -

mugwort & lambsquarters

& black mustard

go to the secret library

and eat its pages

you will be overtaken

by the first forces

to collide here 
to form this sun-
orbit sphere

now they’re inside you

and they will be

long after the school

collapses into dust

and the concrete

erodes back

into calcium and clay

The "Oh Shit" Moment That Never Came?

Just below the Arctic Circle in Siberia, temperatures hit 92°F the other day. The permafrost of the region is melting, resulting in rampant and out of control wildfires and a 1000-mile long burning curtain of smoke and, most disturbingly, increased methane release. Does this qualify as an "oh shit" moment? Perhaps not. It seems likely nothing will. Not the flooding of Manhattan subways. Not increased wildfires and droughts. Not the disappearance of bees or monarch butterflies. And not the disappearance of Arctic sea ice. Not "the warmest year on record" followed by "the warmest year on record." Not the violent disruption of the jetstream. And not Siberian heat waves.

It may be that, somehow, nothing can qualify as an "oh shit" moment. Could it really be that we will just trundle off into the long night of extinction indifferently? Unknowingly?

Unknowingly. Perhaps there is something to pursue in that word “know.” In certain Romance languages, the verb “to know” is the same as the verb “to taste” - in Spanish, “saber” and in French, “savoir.” This means that in order to know something you must taste it. It reminds me of a story a feisty old sociology professor told us in college. It seems there was a group of tourists visiting Texas and, seeking an authentic culinary experience, they went out for some barbecue at a ranch. The roast meats were good, if slightly "different" tasting, but the guests enjoyed the food.  After dinner, they inquired to their hosts as to what manner of preparation was used on the barbecue chicken. The guests were informed them that they had eaten barbecued rattlesnake for dinner. The cosmopolitan travelers proceeded to vomit up the delicacy.

And so it is with our baking planet. The cataclysms are unfolding, the mercury is rising and people are witnessing these events. However, we are unable to name the events for what they are. Ideology interferes. Culture interferes. The events are put in the "unthinkable” mental bin. Na na na na na! This isn’t happening! This isn’t roast rattlesnake! This is delicious roast chicken! 

The events occurring in the material world are unthinkable because they are the result of a belief system which defines the lives of so many: Progress is good. Progress took us from hunting and gathering to agriculture to industrialism to the information age. We did this with the fossil fuels and grit and innovation. Ergo, fossil fuels and grit and innovation are good. Ergo, they cannot result in planetary devastation.

Perhaps all that can be said to people contorted into such a mental knot is this: It's time to wake up and taste the rattlesnake.

Note: The elegaically poetic phrase “the long night of extinction” is from Derrick Jensen’s 2012 book, Dreams.

The Perfect Dictatorship or The Perfect Dystopia?

Gabriel Garcia Marquez famously referred to the 70-year rule of Mexico by the PRI as "the perfect dictatorship." There was the façade of a democracy, there were elections but - somehow - the PRI always won, throughout the country. It is obvious to anyone paying attention and anyone who is not in denial that "the perfect dictatorship" now resides in the United States. There is the façade of democracy, there are elections but - somehow - the same policies are continued, election cycle after election cycle with the same results: a devastated climate system, increased inequality, a gulag archipelago of prisons, and a perpetual (and unironically titled) War on Terror. This is unsurprising: the two parties serve the same masters. And we are expected to wave the flag every Fourth of July and pay our taxes with a smile and vote for the candidate who is, we hope, "less evil." It appears that the United States of America is also the perfect dystopia - one in which the omnicidal agenda of the elites is voted on by its victims and always wins.