As regular readers know by now, I’m a lifelong educator. In fact, the most common insult hurled my way by anonymous online commentators is “lifelong academic.”

Ouch. That hurts.

In the hallowed halls, ego is everything. Indeed, it’s difficult for me to imagine a profession that selects, to a greater extent than academia, for a huge ego. Shepherding a single refereed journal article through the process of publication builds more callus tissue than swinging a pick and shovel for two years. Multiply by dozens of articles, hundreds of public presentations, and a handful of books, and you can begin to understand why the average academic has an ego slightly larger than hell and half of Asia.

Thirty months into a new life devoid of regular interaction with inmates and honors students, I’m having the sort of identity crisis described by Dmitry Orlov in his excellent book, Reinventing Collapse. According to Orlov, middle-aged men — specifically those aged 45 to 55, nicely bracketing the age I departed the ivory tower (49) and my current age (51) — experienced the highest rate of mortality as the Soviet Union collapsed. The two most common causes: suicide and suicide by alcohol. I doubt I’ll go either route, but it’s easy to understand why Family Providers would experience suicidal depression when their ability to provide for their families slips away like a cat-burglar in the dead of night.

The issue of identity (i.e., ego) is far worse in the United States than the situation described by Orlov in the Soviet Union. As becomes apparent this time of year, when casual conversation is on the menu during every seasonal festivity, our identities are completely bundled with how we earn money. What do you think people mean when they ask, “What do you do?” In every case with which I’m familiar, they are inquiring how I earn money.

Knowing where the entire enterprise of generating cash is headed, I tell people I’m a sharecropper and organic gardener. Oh, and by the way, that right hand of mine, the one you just shook, milked two goats this morning. Then I ask people what they love.

I can suck the air out of room — any room, regardless of size or number of people present — in a matter of seconds.

I’m a sharecropper, organic gardener, and milker of goats, as well as a democrat, a republican, a liberal, a conservative, a radical, an idealist, a pragmatist, a teacher, a mentor, a scientist, a writer, a skeptic, a scholar, a cheese-maker, a son, a brother, a husband, a lover, and a human animal. I’m comfortable with my beliefs and personal philosophy. I’ve thought deeply about my tiny place in this enormous universe, and I’ve come to value humility over hubris. And still I’m having an identity crisis. A crisis of confidence. An ego-crushing moment. The longer the industrial economy lasts, the more my identify is pummeled, along with my hope for the living planet. Every day under the rule of Athena drives me further into despair. It’s as if my ego were a proxy for the planetary rate of extinction.

Considering the effort I’ve put into defining myself and my place in the universe, I can only imagine the difficulty ahead for the typical American drone. He values his imperial role and fails to recognize the empire for what it is. He gets his news from the television and affiliated media outlets and fails to recognize that form of propaganda for what it is. His sense of entitlement is exceeded only by his ignorance of the role nature plays in his survival. And yet, he’s ahead of me.

After all, unlike the American drone, I’m clueless about what to do. I’ve invested heavily in a reasonably sane set of living arrangements, only to have nature call me further down her path. I’m attempting to serve as a witness, and occasionally a warrior, as the living planet tries to survive the insults of industry. I’m trying to show another — hence, contrarian — way, for a world gone mad. And in return, I’m unappreciated as never before in memory (including even my final decade at the university as viewed through the lens of my dean and department head).

I recognize the necessity of total revolution, but I don’t yet see it. The wisdom of activist spiritual teacher Vimala Thakar surfaces in my mind: “In a time when the survival of the human race is in question, to continue with the status quo is to cooperate with insanity, to contribute to chaos. When darkness engulfs the spirit of the people, it is urgent for concerned people to awaken, to rise to revolution.”

Obviously, Thakar was an optimist. I love her inclusive approach. And although darkness has engulfed the spirit of the people, I fail to see the awakening at a scale relevant to the task at hand. Impatience grows within me.

With the exception of plunging into the wild or continuing to serve as an unappreciated model immersed in agrarian anarchy, my options are limited. I’m too old to die young, and it’s very late to start anew. Returning to the civilized life of an educator has limited appeal and prospects that are even more limited, considering the general perspective on my sanity (or lack thereof). And then there’s the moral imperative I feel, well expressed by social reformer and statesman Frederick Douglass: “I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.”

Where does this lead? In my case, to utter confusion. As was recently pointed out to me by somebody a little older than me, and a lot a wiser, “in the end it doesn’t matter who you’re with if you can’t unlock the contents of your own skull.”

Which takes us right back to me and my self-indulgence. What to do, in the limited time left at my disposal? The temporal limitations come in two forms: (1) I’m too old to die young (and also too poor to start anew) and (2) the industrial era is nearing its end. Without fuel at the filling stations and water coming out the taps, paid positions at small, selective, liberal-arts colleges will be hard to come by (and meaningless). The day is coming far sooner than most people think. With luck, the forthcoming Lehman-on-steroids moment will make the decision on my behalf, and soon. If this latter statement reveals my cowardice, then it also indicates the extreme nature of my indecision.

_______________

This essay is permalinked at Island Breath and, stunningly, Energy Bulletin.

Fast-forward a few years, and I fall again. I’m older, perhaps more mature, maybe even wiser. But I fall just as hard. She’s seductive, and I’m seduced. This time, it sticks for a long while. This time, she’s alluring, attractive, dream-like, sexy, desired by every man I know. She plays hard to get, but I catch her and the dream she represents. For decades, I switch to cruise control, taking for granted the dream I’ve corralled. For decades, she’s always there for me, and me for her. Thinking we’re working hard, we entertain often, buy the expected baubles, and travel when we want.

It’s coming apart now. She’s familiar with the thoughts of Marcus Aurelius, which makes her afraid of the future: “Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future, too.” I’m excited about the future, and I can no longer live in the past. I’ve done the entire Kübler-Ross cycle of grief, slipping back-and-forth as frequently as I once dined with her.

My denial was profound. How could it be over? We’re perfect for each other. We’ve never really known another, not like this. Please, tell me it’s just a phase.

My anger was brief and deep. Sometimes I look back on those days through my Buddhism-inspired lens, aghast I could have been so ridiculous. It was nobody’s fault, really. We grow. Sometimes we grow together. Sometimes we grow apart.

I still bargain, if only in my mind. What about shorter showers or, better yet, longer showers together? Surely we can merely cut back a little on our excesses, and we’ll be fine. I’m willing to compromise. But of course I know better. There’s no putting the air back in these shredded tires.

Depression visits, too. Trading in the comforts of familiarity for a new and different set of experiences is difficult at my advanced age. Dark nights alone at the mud hut drive me to tears. Tears come on sunny days, too, as I lean against the stem of a big cottonwood tree or lie on the ground near the river, reduced to a trickle by the insults of industry.

Acceptance came late, and skips away too often. But I’m building a new relationship now, one based on trust and mutual respect. It’s not about the sex, though she’s sexy. It’s about love, and she’s lovely. She’s kind, playful, and passionate. She doesn’t judge me, though my inadequacies are legion. She’s courageous and strong, in sharp contrast to my ever-present fear and fragility. I’m a tree-hugging dirt worshiper, and she likes to play in the dirt; when I’m feeling particularly flirtatious, I refer to her as my dirty girl. She accommodates my whimsy, and I love hers. I can scarcely believe she’s the same one I knew, and left, so many years ago. This time, I’ll not let go. I want to spend my remaining days with her.

After constantly taking from others and occasionally giving to me, Athena is dead to me. I miss her now and then, but I’m back with Nature now. Although I was slow to the realization, Nature provides all I need, and all I’ve ever needed. Color me smitten, yet again.

__________________

Same-day update: I’m one of a few interviewed for the C-REALM broadcast released today and titled, “The rhetoric of doom.”

Also, as I’ve indicated many times, there are a couple general approaches one can pursue along the path of climate change and simultaneous collapses of the industrial economy and the living planet. You can hit the road, or you can mitigate in place. Either way, you’ll need to secure clean water and healthy food, maintain body temperature, and create and maintain a decent human community.

I recommend a life of travel for most people, although I’ve taken a different route for personal reasons. Either way, an adventure-filled life awaits. On the road, you’ll need quick wits, good interpersonal skills, and astonishing amounts of creativity, compassion, and courage. Ditto for mitigating in place. In this post, I’ll address the primary concerns associated with mitigating in place, with a particular focus on me and the mud hut (my favorite subject and my favorite location, respectively).

If you’re staying put, I suggest you pay attention to the 3 Rs of the future. No, not the educational ones from years gone by. And it’s far too late for the three Rs targeting reduced consumption in a nation build on consumption, two of which we have ignored because there is no financial profit in reducing and reusing. Recycling — the only one of these three relevant actions fascist Amerika promotes — is like an apology after a punch in the face (credit Mike Sliwa). We punch the planet in the face with every cultural act, and then we apologize by sorting plastic and aluminum into separate bins.

The three Rs of interest in this post are relocalization, resilience, and redundancy. We’re headed for a severely constrained future with respect to transport of materials and humans. The days of the 12,000-mile supply chain are nearly behind us. Forget about cheap plastic crap from China, expensive watches from Switzerland, and decent hand tools from the Sears Roebuck catalog: We’re going to have to make do with what we’ve got in the very local area. Before the supply chain breaks, we should work toward building a resilient set of living arrangements steeped in redundancy. After the supply chain breaks, it’ll be a little late to start digging a well and learning how to grow food.

Here at the mud hut, we pay serious attention to multiple sources of water (two solar pumps, hand pump, rainwater harvesting from two rooftops, and the nearby river), food (wildcrafting, orchard, gardens, goats for milk and cheese, eggs from ducks and chickens, and in the future, hunting relatively large-bodied animals), body temperature (well-insulated, passive-solar house, multiple awnings, proper clothing, and abundant water and firewood), and human community (abundance in this category exceeds my patience to explain again, but search the archives for a few hints). I’ve no doubt we’re missing some things that will ease our lives in our post-carbon future. Some of these items will remain unknown, even to us, until it’s too late. I’m already missing a few things, even before the impending big crash leads to “lights out.” (As Dmitry Orlov uncharacteristically suggests, the day draws near. As “Tyler Durden” characteristically suggests, the day is near enough to be seen by a blind man.) And as I’ve mentioned a few hundred times, skyrocketing greenhouse gas emissions, along with wholesale destruction of the living planet, will seal our fate as a species unless we crash this luxury ship, and soon.

I know you’ve read this one before, but I’d love to have a solar ice-maker to cool our drinks and our bodies. But if the industrial economy reaches its overdue end within a few weeks, I won’t. And I suspect we’ll muddle through, until we don’t. I’d love to have more time to convince my human community to climb aboard the collapse train. But if the industrial economy reaches its overdue end within a few weeks, I won’t. And I suspect we’ll muddle through, until we don’t. I’d love to make a few more trips to discuss the dire nature of our predicaments with people who are aware and interested. But if the industrial economy reaches its overdue end within a few weeks, I won’t. And I suspect I’ll muddle through, although I’ll miss trips tentatively scheduled to Australia, New Zealand, Scotland, New England, and various places nearer the mud hut.

Closer to home, and closer to my heart, I’d love to have time for my parents — and the thousands of other winter immigrants descending on this area — to make the return trip to their northern homes. But if the industrial economy reaches its overdue end within a few weeks, or even within a few months, they won’t. And I have no idea how we’ll muddle through.

All things being equal, I’d rather have the solar ice-maker in a community fully on-board with collapse. All things being equal, I’d rather make a multitude of excursions to exotic places. All things being equal, I’d rather my parents experience collapse in their own home. But all things are not equal and, more than all these things, I’d rather have a planet marked by much more abundance and far fewer extinctions than we’re currently witnessing.

_________________

I’m scheduled to speak at several events during the coming week or so; (1) On Wednesday, 9 November at 7:00 p.m., I’ll address the Atlanta Beyond Oil Monthly Meetup, 657 Rosalia Street SE, Atlanta, Georgia; on (2) Saturday, 12 November and Sunday, 13 November I’ll deliver two, 18-minute presentations at the International Conference on Sustainability, Transition & Culture Change in Bellaire, Michigan, and (3) on Tuesday, 15 November at 6:30 p.m. at 5885 M 115 Frankfort Hwy, I’ll speak about developing a durable set of living arrangements in Benzonia, Michigan (sponsored by Grow Benzie). I hope to meet you at one (or more) of these events.
_________________

This post is permalinked at the Refreshment Center and Island Breath.

I’ve embedded one of the thirteen presentations I delivered over a span of eight days. It’s my final presentation, excluding Q&A (which might come later), which partially explains my on-and-off incoherence (the remainder is inexplicable, as usual).

The presentation includes a half-hearted pitch of my final book. The book is available, a couple months earlier than anticipated, and can be found at this link as well as the usual online outlets. If all goes according to plan, I’ll receive a few copies later today. The book has already been reviewed by Sandy Krolick, the kulturCritic and Cameron Conaway, the poet. Krolick’s review was picked up by Transition Voice, and Conaway’s review was run by Examiner.

I’m trying to produce video from my presentation at a Harvest Gathering Festival with a barn as venue. I may post it at a later date, if all goes according to plan. It includes no slides, and the material differs considerably from the one above.

Reaction was mixed, as usual. Some people, such as this college student, found my messages unbelievable. Others quibbled with the timing of the sources I presented (I carefully avoided pushing my own predictions). Standing ovations were rare — even though I begged for them — but in the end several people understood the importance of collapse if we are to extend our run as a species.

____________________

Huge thanks to Shelley Youngman, who facilitated, organized, chauffeured, and hosted. A kindred spirit, Shelley was kind enough to make many of the arrangements and also to spend large blocks of time with me. Voluntarily, no less.

Thanks, too, to my many new friends and hosts (in the order I met them): Mike Draney and Vicki Medland (University of Wisconsin-Green Bay), Steve DeGoosh and Brooke Isham (Northern Michigan University), Sarah Redmond and Dan Redmond (Alger Community Transition), Shelley Youngman and Frank Youngman (Transition Cadillac), and Kimberly Sager and Aaron Wissner (Local Future).

____________________

This post is permalinked at Plan B Economics and Survival Acres.

My monthly essay for Transition Voice, barely modified from an earlier essay in this space, was posted here today.

Everybody thinks about his or her purpose in life. I figure going into their twenties most people think that purpose is pretty significant. However, getting out of their twenties — and I’ll be there soon — I think most people are at least beginning to accept that their purpose might have to be slightly more modest than they had hoped. With only a hint of despair, we all have to accept that we aren’t superheroes. That smirk we once wore, knowing any second would be the moment we would spring in to action and show the world how powerful we really are, is starting to fade. Everybody knows that feeling. It’s why we have anti-depressants, and religion, and booze, and the swimsuit edition, and suicides. It is why we have health-food stores and designer clothes and flat-screen televisions and all that bullshit. It is why we have self-help books.

I hate self-help books. When I was 21 I was dating a woman, although I was convinced she was a goddess. She was super hot and she seemed to have this whole Life thing figured out and it blew me away. She moved through the world with ease and I guess I figured if I latched on to her maybe I could figure out how to do the same. Predictably, because of how attached I got to her, she dumped me. When she did it, she gave me a copy of Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist. Everybody is always trying to convert everybody else to their own way of thinking. She was no exception. For a couple years I was pretty hooked on his writing. Thank god I got over that phase. The Alchemist is 150 or so pages of self-empowerment and spirituality for the masses. It is also a huge stinking load of bullshit. Along with all Coehlo’s other books, which have inspired millions, it is essentially a guide on the use of magical thinking to enrich our lives and wash away that deep-seated feeling of disappointment we all felt when we realized that the world really is this shitty and next year’s iPod is not going to fix that.

Chicks especially dig Coelho’s books. Paulo undoubtedly pulls an astonishing amount of ass for a guy is age, so I’m not going to say he wasn’t well-justified in writing it, but the message is still totally off the mark. The truth is that magical thinking is why we all hate ourselves in the first place.

The magical idea that something can come from nothing is central to our culture. It is how we got here and why we are probably all going to be gone soon. It is completely unnecessary and it has us all completely disoriented. The instructions on how to be good at being human are already programmed into our DNA, but we never learned how to read them because we didn’t have to. We’re like fat stupid babies that grow old and die, never having been weaned. We are just domesticated cattle, we know it, and deep down (or not) we hate it.

To keep people from catching on, we have to be fed a continuous stream of lies forever, and Paulo Coelho came up with a really popular one. But, like all lies, it’s still a lie. I bought his lie for a while, until I came across a different author who preferred to tell the truth. His name was Edward Abbey.

Hallelujah! I cannot describe the burden lifted from my shoulders. The reason I was no good at that whole spirituality thing was because it was really just bullshit all along! The woman who amazed me all those years ago was in fact not enlightened, just overloaded with privilege. The anger I was trying so hard to get rid of, via my mountain of books on various schools of spiritual thought, was not bad karma or proof of my soul being too immature to let God’s love flow into my heart. It was a sign that I was still sane. My DNA was fighting back. Some part of me was still an honest to goodness Homo sapiens. A living breathing eating shitting fucking animal trapped in a cage and not happy about it.

Good news: Getting out won’t be too hard. The bars on our cages look like televisions and soft blankets, so all I have to do is give them to somebody who wants to stay trapped. Then I’m just going to slip away into the night and let the fun begin. Destination unknown, I’ll experience the wilds of the world in the Jeep I put together from spare parts. When we run out of gas, I’ll get along some other way.

I thought long and hard about saving the living world, but I decided otherwise. I just can’t. For starters, nobody wants to let go of the lie. It is easier for them to think they’re not at fault because a car has a hybrid engine and because a house only has high-efficiency light bulbs. It would be a lot more work for them to accept that fixing the world is not the same thing as damaging it a little bit less. I don’t think I can change somebody’s mind when they think recycling their beer cans is going to save us and the living planet.

Instead of trying to change people, I am just going to fuck with their minds. Because I can. Because I am good at it. Because I only have one life to live and it sounds like fun. I’m not taking the moral high ground here. I am not an extremist or a radical or even remotely interested in explaining my view of the world to anybody, unless the circumstances are such that it might get me laid. I am just done with the lies. Done with the cage. Done being cattle on this big rotten industrial farm. I am going to break shit and run away laughing into the night. I wish I thought I could do enough damage to kick the civilized humans out of my desert but I don’t think I have enough hands. I do think I can do enough damage to really piss them off though, which I guess is all I can ask for. We’re all going to die sometime. I am going to do it with a big shit-eating grin on my face.

I’m driving away from empire, and having fun along the way. That’s plenty of purpose for one life.

Liberal teaching means putting everything I know, and everything I am, at risk in the classroom. And not just in general, but specifically as well. That is, I put it all on the line during every meeting of every class. I’ve been wrong often enough to know it could happen again, and I’m willing to admit my errors in the pursuit of truth.

How courageous is this approach? Remember how it turned out for Socrates.

Pursuing a liberal approach to teaching is dangerous. It requires courage, a thick skin, and recognition that the personal costs of pursuing liberalism in the classroom are far exceeded by the opportunity costs of failing to do so. Indeed, I would argue that the pursuit of a liberal approach to any of life’s important activities is dangerous.

I am often criticized for continuing my educational efforts here at Barefoot College. During the last couple years, I have hosted more than 200 people, showing how we might muddle through an ambiguous future if we work together. In return, many people question whether I should be demonstrating this doomstead to potential future marauders. Most of these people are anthropocentric, short-sighted, narcissistic cowards commenting anonymously on fora focused on economic collapse.

Image courtesy of Lesley Ash

When I point out I’m anti-civ, these and other people take issue with the language: “It’s better to be for something than against something, so your message should be pro, not anti.” I point out anti-civ means pro-life, but the latter label has been co-opted by a group with which I fundamentally disagree.

And so it goes, spiraling down into the uncomfortable abyss of talking past one another. We are so adept at finding an other with whom to part ways.

And I am not surprised many people fail to understand that we’re all in this together. Our culture has driven us apart, valuing competition over cooperation. I am not surprised many people fail to understand that, as the expression goes, divided we fall. And so we are. Our culture has promoted faux individualism instead of real collaboration. It’s all about me and my stuff, me and my success, me and my ego in this hyper-indulgent morass of American exceptionalism. It’s small wonder, then, that many people fail to understand the importance, to me, of educating others. It’s everything to me, more important than life itself.

I am profoundly committed to a life of service. For me, a life lived otherwise is not worth living.

As any real radical reformer knows, some things are worth dying for. Service to community and lifelong learning certainly fill the bill.

Mind you, I’m not acting heroically. I’ve built a lifeboat, after all, that might allow my survival for a few years beyond completion of the ongoing economic collapse. I’m not dependent on western medicine to maintain my life. In addition, absence of free will precludes an alternative route.

If you’re looking for heroes, look no further than Derrick Jensen. His level of commitment extends beyond his own life. He depends in the short term on the industrial economy, a system that is killing him in the long term. Yet he is willing to sacrifice the ability to extend his life to give the living planet a chance. Somebody who comments now and then in this space, demonstrating he is halfway along the path toward becoming an idiot savant, used Jensen’s example in a botched attempt to argue the contrary point. Jensen’s writing and speaking are heroic because he argues for termination of the industrial economy, knowing it will lead quickly to his own death.

I recognize that it’s too late to save society, and industrialized society is irredeemable, regardless. Capitalism is assumed to be the best, most efficient economic system, but I think it’s better described as a pathology than an economic system. So I’ll keep moving seemingly immovable individuals beyond their comfort points. I’ll inject empathy, therefore resistance, into a sociopathic culture largely devoid of people willing to stand in opposition to the mainstream. I’ll move individuals beyond dark thoughts and into the light of a new world. I’ll move them beyond inaction. I’ll move them beyond the oppression of civilization and into the brave new world of a life that gives as well as taking.

Or die trying.

____________

This essay is permalinked at Counter Currents.

I was shooting video of this presentation, but my camera failed 15 minutes in. So we’re stuck with multiple audio files and the slides in the usual awkward format. And whereas the audio files are adequate during the presentation, the only microphone in the room was near me, so the question part of the Q & A is poor.

You get the original slides this time, along with the audio file. Plagiarize to your heart’s content. Share widely. Spread the news. But please keep your complaints about the quality of these materials to yourself, unless you have suggestions for improvement.

I was speaking in the capital of the state built, economically at least, by oil. As I was speaking, I could see the Capitol, which convened the following day to deal with the state’s $27 billion deficit. Gee, I’d have never seen that coming.

My presentation was greeted with the usual mix of profound denial and fatalistic acceptance. The very few anarchists in attendance could hardly compete with the majority, who could see absolutely nothing amiss with the industrial economy, western civilization, or American Empire.

Powerpoint

Introduction from Gayle Borst, Design~Build~Live

Presentation part 1

Presentation part 2

Presentation part 3

Presentation part 4

Presentation part 5

Presentation part 6

Presentation part 7

Q & A part 1

Q & A part 2

Q & A part 3

__________________

Special thanks to Ken McKenzie-Grant from Shades of Green Radio for the considerable effort behind the audio files and to Gayle Borst for hosting (and all the associated work).

I remember the presidential election between Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale. My Pop hated Mondale. That was 1984, and I was seven. I’ll come back to that after a brief digression.

I grew up in rural Indiana. Shortly before I was born, my father, my mother, my aunt and my uncle, went in together on 120 acres of land, mostly woods, on a little jelly-bean shaped lake called Fish Lake. It had all the small mouth bass, bluegill and catfish you could eat, if you knew where they were biting. We gardened for sustenance and from August to November we canned, canned and canned some more. My father was and is a conservative, a Viet Nam veteran, a gun collector and somewhat of a survivalist type. We always had a freezer full of venison, we ate fresh rabbit, and raised chickens and had our yearly hog (a snorting compost pile all spring and summer) that we butchered in the early winter. You get the idea. Once we even raised a few calves for beef.

My mother raised me in a liberal Brethren/Mennonite tradition, that is, pacifism, community involvement and simplicity, but my father never went to church. He stayed home, cut and ranked wood for the woodstove.

And so it was 1984. When I asked my father why he was so rabidly anti-Mondale (in seven year-old terms), he replied, “Well, boy… . the Democrats want to take our guns away.” I nodded, and went off into the woods or to the barn to play. As I recalled and obsessed on my father’s words that day (they were and still are very important to me, despite the fact that I can see his worldview being manipulated now by a presumptive media and a neo-conservative narrative), I almost went into a panic… . take our rifles? I had had no introduction to gun violence at all. Firearms were tools with which we hunted and acquired food, and on rare occasion, used to convince people who hunted on our land without permission that this was not where they wanted to be. So there I was, in the woods, whittling a stick or something, in a panic that if Mondale got elected, we would be confronted by police that requested my father give them his guns. Knowing my father well, and his response to this hypothetical(all too real in seven-year-old terms) was also what threw me into this panic. So I went back to him for a bit of clarification.

“Pop? What if Mondale gets elected, and guns are outlawed and some people come to take them?”

My dad tensed his lips, then decided to grin, looking up at me with a sparkle in his eye, the little creases around his eyes telling me he loved my question. In a response I wonder if I would give a seven-year-old, he said:

“Open fire, boy.”

Okay, so this response makes tears come to my eyes. Not then, but now.

Open fire.

If I thought I, at seven, was nervous before, this made me downright upset. I knew my dad was right, and I still know he was right, even though now we disagree quite a bit on exactly which institutions are most oppressive and their intentions. I have spoken to him at length on institutions like the IMF, the World Bank, the Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission and so on. I have had discussions with him at length concerning the Federal Reserve, and how money is expanded and contracted and the game of economic musical chairs we are forced to play, and who is usually left standing in poverty with no place to sit. I have discussed with him his own views, and what that would mean if he were not in rural Indiana raising berries, grapes and goats now, but in the occupied territories of Palestine, even though he sees only “radical Islam” in that resistance instead of a proud tradition of anti-colonialism and self-determination.

My father taught me self-reliance, and the importance of personal sovereignty. He taught me how to grow things and my mother taught me how to preserve them. I was taught how to raise animals well and consciously, and with respect for their natures and gifts. But he also taught me fear. “They” hate our way of life. America has “enemies”.” Liberals” want to take your firearms. You know, the typical tea party shit. To be fair, I find him to be much more conscious and critical thinking than that movement, but he still buys into a neo-conservative narrative with earnest at times (he believes Fox News is liberal, which to me, shows the mastery of propaganda behind NewsCorp!). But he taught me how to fear very well. Outsiders were not to be trusted. They can gain your trust, sure … but make sure they think like you … er, like us.

Our family was insular. My dad and uncle married my mother and her sister. All of our cousins on the 120 acres had only two sets of grandparents, who lived a quarter mile in either direction and farmed, too. My grandpa was a WW2 veteran, despite being a Mennonite. He was a farmer and factory worker. My other grandpa drove a school bus and farmed. My grandmothers were craftspeople. One, an extraordinary chef and gardener. She taught me that arrowroot, instead of cornstarch, is the only way to bake a pie. The other grandmother was a florist. She raised and arranged flowers, and eventually bought a store that my mother now owns, since Grandma died.

As should be clear, I have always been raised in a radical tradition, of sorts. My father raised me with the fear I mentioned, but also left me to play in the woods, to tend to the chickens, and to fish the lake and observe its patterns. My mother taught me community involvement, pacifism and forgiveness at all costs. My grandparents taught me that the Great Depression was only the beginning, and that the way “town people” lived was going to make it very hard on those of us who wanted to use land sustainably (not their words). But it was all within a conservative — and later, neo-conservative — framework.

I was taught this framework and lived it, much like the lines you learn for a play your parents come to see, and you perform it to the best of your abilities and you make your parents, who undoubtedly love you, proud. You make them understand why they love you. Don’t be an outsider, Daniel. Outsiders are not to be trusted.

Years later, after one of our heated conversations that begin with a passing comment about the West Bank, or Bill Clinton or some such, it became obvious to my father that I wasn’t — and couldn’t — think through the narrow window of dualism. Politics were growing increasingly irrelevant, economically speaking, the American Dream was not panning out, and it confounded him that while I spat at the neo-conservative ideas that the Republicans were spewing, I could not align myself with Democrats, either. I began using the term Corporatist in place of both, thinking it more accurate. My speaking about the evils of our sugar-coated imperialism (globalization) didn’t fit in with what he had learned. Using American, conservative, and self-determinate ideas to apply to the situation in the West Bank and Gaza really gummed up his gears. He knew, after all, if he were a Palestinian, he would be a leader of Hamas. If he were a Colombian farmer, or a Basque separatist, or a factory worker in Sarajevo, he would act only in solidarity against Western influence. Were he Afghan, he would be growing poppies with an AK-47 over his shoulder to protect his crop and selling his opium resins for the highest price to feed his family, not be welcoming occupiers as bringing freedom and globally-produced goods, and he wouldn’t smile up at the predator drones. But to any of these things he couldn’t and still cannot bring himself to admittance.

One time, exasperated and angry with me after one of these conversation, he asked, “Who taught you this shit? Why do you think the way you do?”

I remember I felt really sad, depressed, for a moment. My father was not proud of me. He did not approve what I stood for or what I would continue to stand for and it felt like an ultimatum that could never be satisfied. Like a heart-wrenching breakup you see coming right at you, but can do nothing to stop. It felt like our last conversation. I was in silent tears at this point and almost sobbed aloud, into the phone. But I didn’t. I didn’t because I remembered that I had the answer to his question. I could answer him when he asked “who taught you this shit?” I took a deep breath and said, “Pop, you did. You made sure we had acres of untouched forest to hunt in and creeks to splash in, a lake to fish out of, an apple orchard and a plot of garden to love and watch grow. You taught me seasons, and appropriate ways to prepare for them. You gave me a chance to connect with the dirt and the sky and the water. And you also impressed upon me the need to defend those things.”

I held my breath and waited for his response. He was sure to be angered, as you never used my Patriarch’s own words against him. Totally taboo. I braced.

“Boy, I sure don’t know where you learned this stuff, but I love you. Boy, I love you.” I could see the creases at the corners of his eyes and his twinkle through the phone, on his voice.

Open fire, boy. Open fire.

_____________

Danny Showalter is a writer/student/activist living in Portland, Oregon. He is currently working to bring ideas of true sustainability to academia, where they are not yet wanted, and to the streets of Portland, where they are not yet heard. He can be found on his days off muttering Blake and Milton passages to himself in his garden and greenhouse. This essay first appeared at the Danny’s blog.

On to that card: It was filled with proud stories of the kids in the U.S. Army, and it closed with, “We pray for peace.” I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Never mind that the writer almost certainly is fooling herself. If her prayers are answered, that’ll put the battle-ready kids out of their jobs. And, since war comprises the foundation for our entire industrial economy, the empire almost surely would sink to the bottom of the already stinking swamp within weeks of an outbreak of peace. Praying for peace makes as much sense as supporting the troops, and both cases of wishful thinking are clothed in lies.

I can only imagine how many people I’ll offend with this essay. And yet, I can’t seem to stop myself. Any decent social critic points out the lunacy of societal taboos. I’m not suggesting I’m a decent social critic. But I can no longer ignore this most annoying of taboos.

Support the troops. It’s the rallying cry of an entire nation. It’s the slogan pasted on half the bumpers in the country.

Supporting the troops is pledging your support for the empire. Supporting the troops supports the occupation of sovereign nations because might makes right. Supporting the troops supports wanton murder of women and children throughout the world. And men, too. Supporting the troops supports obedience at home and oppression abroad. Supporting the troops throws away every ideal on which this country allegedly is founded. Supporting the troops supports the ongoing destruction of the living planet in the name of economic growth. Supporting the troops therefore hastens our extinction in exchange for a few dollars. Supporting the troops means caving in to Woodrow Wilson’s neo-liberal agenda, albeit cloaked as contemporary neo-conservatism (cf. hope and change). Supporting the troops trumpets power as freedom and fascism as democracy.

Image: en.wikipedia.org

Perhaps most importantly, supporting the troops means giving up on resistance. Resistance is all we have, and all we’ve ever had. We say we’re mad as hell and we claim we’re not going to take it any more. But, sadly, we gave up on resistance of any kind years ago. After all, we might get in trouble. We might be incarcerated for protesting without a permit.

When jets from the nearby military base scream over the university campus, conversation stops, indoors or out. We pause awkwardly, stopped in mid-conversation. After the jets pass, in formation, an excuse often is articulated by the person with whom I’m visiting: “It’s the sound of freedom.”

My response never varies: “Sounds like oppression to me.”

The ensuing silence is more awkward than the scream of the jet engines.

It’s as if America’s cultural revolution never happened. It’s as if we never questioned the dominant paradigm in an empire run amok, as if we never experienced Woodstock and the Summer of Love, bra-burning hippies and war-torn teenagers, Rosa Parks and the Cuyahoga River. We’re right back in the 1950s, swimming in culture’s main stream instead of questioning, resisting, and protesting.

In a Tucson coffee shop last week I saw a woman, apparently in her early twenties, dressed in a short skirt, an apron, and high heels. Had she been behind the counter, she would have been the perfect symbol of the 1950s, a refugee from two generations gone by. We’ve moved from the unquestioning automatons of Aldous Huxley and George Orwell to the firebrands of a radical counter-cultural worldview and back again. A generational sea change swept us from post-war “liberators” drunk on early 1950s propaganda to revolutionaries willing to take risks in defense of late 1960s ideals. The revolution gained steam through the 1970s, but lost its way when the U.S. industrial economy hit the speed bump of domestic peak oil. The Carter Doctrine — the world’s oil belongs to us — coupled with Ronald Reagan’s soothing pack of lies, was the perfect match to our middle-aged comfort, so we abandoned the noble ideals of earlier days for another dose of palliative propaganda. Three decades later, we’ve swallowed so much Soma we wouldn’t couldn’t find a hint of revolution in Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto.

In short, the pillars of social justice and environmental protection rose from the cesspool of ignorance to become shining lights for an entire generation. And then we let them fall back into the swamp. The very notion that others matter — much less that those others are worth fighting for — has been relegated to the dustbin of history.

The problem with being a martyr: You have to die for the cause. And along the way, you’ll probably be jailed and tortured. But there’s a fate far worse than being a martyr, in the minds of America’s youth. There’s the thought you’ll be viewed as an anti-American freak, out of touch with Lady Gaga and Dancing With The Stars. A fate worse than death: Your Facebook page will be removed, thus “disappearing” you.

A line from Eugene Debs, five-time candidate of the Socialist party for U.S. president, comes to mind: “While there is a lower class I am in it, while there is a criminal element I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.” He was serious. So am I. That I am not taken seriously in these most serious of days pulverizes my ego. That Debs is not taken seriously these days shatters my heart.

When I visit with college-age people these days, they have no idea what I mean, and they believe Debs and I are misguided jokers. Completely immersed in a culture of make believe, mind-fucked from birth by the corporations running the media, the thought of resistance is, quite simply, beyond the pale. Resistance? Against what? And why? Isn’t resistance a form of terrorism?

Every revolution has failed. And if that’s not sufficient reason to launch a revolution, I don’t know what is. The revolution is dead: Viva la revolution!

If any one of those troops we claim to support attempts to bring transparency and reform to this country, we instantly turn on him and support his torture by — you guessed it — the troops. And who’s the commander in chief of these troops? That’s right, the man who promised transparency and reform, but who now seeks to crush the very people trying to bring it to us.

If obliterating transparency means criminalizing journalism, we can live with that. Those journalists are probably terrorists anyway. Or worse, liberals. The First Amendment was shredded by Obama’s predecessor, and how it’s being turned to ash. The U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights are bobbing along the same waves as social justice and environmental protection, sold down the river by a nation addicted to growth for the sake of growth (the ideology of a cancer cell).

It seems very little matters to the typical American beyond economic growth. And for that, most importantly, we need an uninterrupted supply of crude oil. All wars are resource wars, and even our involvement in the last “Good War” was about oil, notwithstanding revisionist history about our compassion regarding Hitler’s final solution. Crude oil’s near-term annual decline rate of 10% means many troops will be needed to secure the lifeblood of the industrial economy. After all, world demand hasn’t peaked yet, although world supply has. If we’re to continue running ruining the world, we’ll need plenty of troops. And they’ll need your support.

You keep supporting the troops, and trying to convince yourself you’re fighting terrorism in the process. If doubt creeps in, turn on the television. Listen to the news anchors and the politicians, the characters and the commercials. Immerse yourself in the ultimate hallucination. Keep lapping up the self-censored “news,” confident the future will bring even more self-indulgent hedonism than the recent past.

And if somebody tries to tell you the hegemony of the U.S. dollar is threatened, thereby causing the price of oil to skyrocket, you just ignore the uncomfortable news, just as the mainstream media have ignored it. That kind of thing can’t happen here. It’s never happened, so it can’t happen (Francis Bacon’s Idol of the Den). If some misinformed fool attempts to point out the consequences of consumerism, shrug him off as a terrorist. And if somebody tries to confuse your happy holidays by telling you the good news about economic collapse, you tell him you’ll be praying for peace. That’ll make it all okay.