Greetings From the Gravity Well
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“Old Marley was as dead as a door nail… This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate.”Charles Dickins, A Christmas Carol |
I did something the other day that I haven’t done for a long time. Something I used to do often. Something unexpected: I went to a mall. It was a small mall. An old mall. A sad little mall that has not kept up with the times. But it was a mall nonetheless. And I went into it. I was not shopping for Christmas presents. (Being neither Christian nor Consumerist, nor, for that matter, Humanist, I don’t really do Christmas.) Nor was I sneaking a Cinnabon (TM). (This mall doesn’t have a single purveyor of Extreme Carbohydrates…)
What I was doing was looking for a bathroom.
You may, at this point, be expecting some sort of a rant. Based solely on a statistical analysis of my past behavior, that expectation would be reasonable. I have, in deed and in fact, done my share of ranting. So for me to start raving at this point about consumerism, or the holidays, or the global industrial death-machine responsible for everything I saw around me, for me to start fuming about how the destruction of the life of this planet was reflected in every sparkling ornament on the twenty foot Xmas tree at the mall’s center, would be the most normal and natural thing for me to do. I have now become, after all, a very minor public figure on the eco-ranting scene. It’s my job, right? It’s what I do.
But as I walked around the mall, I noticed a most curious thing: I did not feel angry. I was not filled with righteous indignation and steely resolve. I felt neither assaulted nor insulted. My inner conversation was not laced with snide comments and scathing judgments. My blood was not boiling. I was neither irate, mad, annoyed, cross, vexed, irritated, indignant, irked, furious, enraged, infuriated, in a temper, incensed, raging, fuming, seething, beside oneself, choleric, outraged, livid, apoplectic, hot under the collar, up in arms, in high dudgeon, foaming at the mouth, doing a slow burn, steamed up, in a lather, fit to be tied, seeing red, sore, bent out of shape, ticked off, teed off, nor PO’d. I was, in fact, feeling pretty much the last thing one would expect of me in this situation: I was feeling both humbled and… drum roll please… a bit of hope.
Go figure. That’s what happens when I really gotta pee. I go a bit crazy.
Humbled? Whatever for? Aren’t these the people, and the beliefs and behaviors, and the corporations, which are happily engaged in consuming the planet? Well… yeah. But as I looked around at those desperate shops, their tinsel-splattered storefronts smiling maniacally with invitation, as I watched my fellow mallers bumping around in search of, as I listened to the holiday music struggling frantically to convince me - on a day in mid-December that topped out at 78 degrees Frighteninglyhigh, in a drought-stricken corner of the world so dry now that FEMA is starting to erect mobile home cities for the fish, at a time when it looks like the only gift we’re going to get from our Uncle Sam in Bali is a train load of coal in our stockings – as I listened still to that holiday music trying frantically to convince me that it IS beginning to look a lot like Christmas, goddamnit, what became crystal clear was that, not that many years ago, I was one of those people, shopping those shops and singing those songs. Not that many years ago, I, me, Tim Bennett, was just the sort of person I might now harshly judge as clueless or befuddled, or even willfully ignorant. Not that many years ago I was cruising the malls, buying gifts for my kids, living the American Dream, a Chick-Fil-A (TM) in one hand and an Orange Julius (TM) in the other, shopping til dropping before donning my nightcap and settling my brain for a long winter’s denial.
I’m cringing. Can you feel me cringing?
Not at who I was. Not at who those mallers still are. I’m cringing at the realization of how easy it has been and still is for me to judge people for being where I was not that long ago. When it comes to myself, I’ve got lots of compassion. I was born into an insane culture. I was shaped and pressured and forced and guided and wounded and altered and thwarted and numbed and hoodwinked and lied to and ripped off. When it comes to everybody else… well, it’s guilty until proven innocent, with me as both judge and jury. With the legendary intensity of a reformed smoker, I’ve stomped through the world, handing out condemnations and sentences like so many business cards: Tim Bennett… Reformed Civilized Person… Call me for all your Anger and Judgment needs! I mean… it’s the end of the world as we know it, people! Wake the fuck up!
“Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, ‘My dear Scrooge how are you? When will you come to see me?’ No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o’clock, no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a place, of Scrooge. Even the blindmen’s dogs appeared to know him; and when they saw him coming on would tug their owners into doorways and up courts; and then would wag their tails as though they said, ‘No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!’”
“But what did Scrooge care! It was the very thing he liked. To edge his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance, was what the knowing ones call ‘nuts’ to Scrooge.”
I remember, back in college, saying to my now-ex as we sat in the student lounge, “On the whole, I don’t much like human beings.” Those words have stuck with me since. Not just a sentence, but also a sentence, with little chance of parole. While now and again I might find an individual who passes muster, the “bewildered herd” I met along “the crowded paths of life” was a disappointing and disgusting lot, and I saw little to do but keep my distance. Call me a walk-in, a changeling, or just an arrogant asshole, I was not one of them. I was not from around here. “‘I wish to be left alone,’ said Scrooge. ‘Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer.’”
And there I stood in the mall… and I saw… I saw!… I was one of them, and always had been. Forty nine years previous, on a drunk or a dare, I’d tripped and fallen - or jumped - into the gravity well called Earth and was now stumbling about, stunned and disoriented, a spark of life and energy encased in a bipedal meat-bag, surrounded by hundreds- thousands- millions- billions of fellow sparks-in-meat-bags, all wondering what the hell is going on and who’s in charge and hey has anybody seen the instruction manual?
I’m from around here after all.
Bah! Humbled!
Which brings me to hope.
People who know me well know that I have a bit of a speech impediment: whenever I try to say the word “hope” it comes out sounding slightly off, like a Brit doing an American accent, but not doing it very well. It’s not that I have anything against hope, at least as a noun. I’m as much a fan of possibility as the next guy, and my sense of the universe is that there is always possibility, even in the darkest days. But I’m highly attuned to the dangers and downsides of hope, and so often defend against hope when I see it being abused or misused, and avoid the word when I can, attempting to steer clear of that misuse.
Yes, there is always possibility. But there are also laws of physics and chemistry and biology, and there are limits to science and technology. And there is also cultural inertia and psychosocial wounding. And there are also huge forces at work in the world, with plans and intentions of their own. And so we must balance possibility with inevitability, vision with current reality, and surrender to the unknown, and come to see that many of our hopes are false, and that some of those possibilities we - our sparks, not our meat-bags - do not even want.
And as for hoping as a verb…. well, let’s just say that I am learning to keep my own power for myself, and that that feels really, really good. Read Derrick Jensen’s essay Beyond Hope and you’ll understand what I mean. The language of hoping can rob us of our power.
In the mall, what I saw was a possibility. Think of it. Not that many years ago I was a maller and now I’m working full-time for the planet and jonesing for “the end of Empire” and the collapse of the system that is killing everything. And I’m not alone. My friend Carla has leapt from the decks of the Titanic and into that same Ark of Fools in about the same time frame. I have other friends who’ve made similar leaps. And on our screening tours, we met folks who, by their own report, made the journey from confusion and bewilderment to clarity, acceptance, and action in a couple of years! Old Marley howled and clanked, their clocks struck midnight, and the spirits did it all in one night! Think of it.
Think of it.
How many such folk walk amongst us unseen? How many are primed and ready, just waiting for Marley’s Ghost to rattle their chains and set them on a quick path from cluelessness to awareness? And what becomes possible, if more of these Scrooge’s get whacked upside the head with reality? I said a while back that there is great power in not knowing. If I’m going to say such things out loud, then I’m going to have to take them seriously myself, and do such work as is necessary to allow me to hold “not knowing” in my being. And so the answer to these questions is simple: I do not know. Read Peter Russell’s wonderful pieced called A Singularity in Time. We do not know.
Nothing takes the judgment out of me quite so quickly as a good dose of humility.
I have been angry. I have been judgmental and cruel and dismissive. And that has not always served me. While anger can work to focus my energy on that which is outside of me, on that which needs to be faced and confronted and contained or stopped, it’s a tool so easily misused, and so sharp-edged and fierce, that I do well to leave it in the toolbox until I’m sure I can use it without hurting some innocent bystander. Or myself.
There are situations, manipulations, rationalizations, obfuscations and corporations that may all deserve and require that form of focused energy, so it would serve the Earth, for me to master my anger. But it does little good if I spend my anger on those who do not deserve it. At some point I have to learn to make the necessary distinctions between the many degrees of perpetration and victimization. I have to train my eye to see the fine gradations of willfulness, the many grays of blame and complicity that lie on the continuum between the blinding white fire of evil and the cool and soothing black of innocence.
As I do this it becomes very clear: this is delicate work. In the face of such distinctions, where the gradations are so fine, and the shades so subtle, the only way to mastery is to step into bold humility and decisive unknowing. There is simply too much that my meat-bag will never get to know. That’s how it works here at the bottom of the gravity well.
Given that, I may do well most days to hold my judgments and anger with compassionate firmness until clarity comes, if it ever does. While there may be obvious evils that both deserve and need my anger, while there are, in fact, people who need to be stopped and world leaders who need to be run out on a rail and corporations which need to be contained and deconstructed, while there is, as far as I can see, an entire planet-spanning culture that needs to be dismantled and recycled into something life-affirming and sane, most of the other meat-bags around me are just as confused and disoriented as I am. My anger toward them has been the easy way out, little more than “horizontal hostility” toward my fellow stumblers, because it’s so damned scary to contemplate expressing my anger directly to those who may actually deserve it, those with the power to express right back at me.
Are there those who deserve my judgment and anger? Is the CEO of a destructive corporation a bad guy, or just another confused meat-bag trapped in the same culture that trapped me? Or both? Or neither? Do I love the sinner and hate the sin? I don’t know. I’ve been trying to feel my way through that for some time and have yet to find an answer that fully suits me. And I can’t quite decide whether it matters or not. On the one hand, my animal body is clear: whether they are evil or confused, I get, to the best of my abilities, to protect my self and my loved ones from the forces of destruction that threaten us all. The mother bear protects her cubs. That speaks to me with an eloquence and simplicity that feels grounded in the deep rightness of the living world. But then I stop and remember: I’m trying to move beyond the paradigm of domination and control. It may matter, how I regard those forces, even while protecting myself from them. It may matter. I don’t know. For now, I will trust my body. And the mother bear. Protection is not domination and control. My body knows that. My head is too easy to fool.
What’s clear right now is that my anger, at the level of my real life, has served more to stand in my way than to help, and that mastery in the realm of anger is one of my growing edges. My fellow sparks-in-meat-bags need simply for me to hear them and understand them and treat them with compassion as they knock their heads up against the walls of the gravity well, as they meet their own Marleys and are forced to confront the delusions and consequences of their own lives, as they stand on those titanic decks and contemplate the jump before them. As a friend of his emailed Daniel Pinchbeck, which he reports in his wonderful book 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl:
“’I greatly admire your willingness to bear witness to your experiences and beliefs in such a radical and generous way. I will also say that I think the role of truth-bearer requires the purest of intentions. ‘Do it with love,’ is good advice.’”
Do it with love. Love as a verb, as Juan Santos says. Love as an action in the real world. I can do that. And so I will tell you the hope I saw in that mall. The possibility.
It’s possible for a human being to make huge shifts in his or her worldview in a short amount of time. It’s possible that there are more people on the verge of making such shifts than we can now see or imagine. It’s possible that enough human beings will awaken to the world situation, and to their true nature, that they will be able to bring consciousness and intention to the work of this time, to that process which is already underway, which is to bring an end to a culture, a worldview, a paradigm, now expressing itself as the global industrial machine, which has never been and can never be sustainable on this planet, to bring an end to this culture, to dismantle it and contain it and hold it gently while it breathes its last. It’s possible that this can be done before the mass extinction we are living in plays out to its bitter end. It’s possible that some of us will be able to survive through this process, and thrive our way into a new life on a very different, but still living, planet. It’s possible that we will learn what we have long needed to learn, those of us raised in captivity in this system of disconnection and domination. It’s possible that we will find healing. It’s possible that we will remember ourselves. And it’s possible that we will once again take our places as worthy members of the community of life, and that we will find new ways of being that, echoing Juan Santos, align with our original instructions from the Creator.
The curtains may not be completely torn down, rings and all. Life may prevail. It’s possible. And so I will hold it as such. A possibility. A hope. Held not despite my fellow human beings, but BECAUSE I AM ONE.
Our chances feel slim to none, but it remains possible nonetheless. As Joanna Macy imagines our descendents saying, looking back on this time, “Our ancestors back then, bless them, they had no way of knowing if the Great Turning could succeed. No way of telling if a life-sustaining culture could emerge from the death throes of the industrial growth society. It probably looked hopeless at times. Their efforts must have often seemed isolated, paltry, and darkened by confusion. Yet they went ahead, they kept on doing what they could–and, because they persisted, the Great Turning happened.”
I’ve lived my whole life feeling like I’m not from here. Perhaps you have as well. And there may be some truth to that, at some level of reality. But I find that it just doesn’t matter any more. Whether I’m from here or not, I’m here now. Here is where my work is to be done: here in the gravity well we call Earth, with these other poor, crazy souls stumbling about around me. I have lost too much time to my judgments, trying vainly to protect myself, “warning all human sympathy to keep its distance,” even reveling in that. Perhaps it’s time to give that up?
“Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed; and that was quite enough for him.”
And so, says a not-so-tiny Tim, to my fellow bipedal-meat-bags, to our brothers in four legs and six legs and more, to our sisters in wing and fin and leaf and mycelium, to our compatriots in stone and wind and water and fire, to our allies and teachers, our ancestors and descendants, our guides and our shadows, our drop-ins our changelings and our arrogant assholes, to all of you I say this, as poor and crippled as I am:
“God bless us, every one.”
*****
Tim Bennett is a writer, filmmaker and meat bag currently looking for the instruction manual in the Southeast US. You can read his blog and get in touch with him, maybe, at his website www.whatawaytogomovie.com.
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December 17th, 2007 at 8:31 pm
Thanks, Tim. Another great work.
I think there is equal hope, unfortunately, that people will be just as easily swayed to join Hitler as to join Gandhi.
This is where you and I come in. We sometimes have to get angry to influence people. If you don’t swear, they don’t know you are serious. Watch the TV for a while, and you will see what I mean. The problem is that these days, my second language (Profanity) is washed out by everyone else’s amateur attempts at shockudrama. I was born 3 years after you, and after 7 brothers and sisters. My training in shock factor is quite high in the melodrama department, but it doesn’t phase people at all these days. I’m supposed to act like my gray hairs: always present the ‘wise’ and ‘knowing’, but don’t tell people how stupid they are. They’ll usually find out once they open their minds up and look inside, though.
Embrace your misanthropy. There’s a reason to dislike most of humanity: because most of it doesn’t act human. Most of humanity is too busy acting like pigs or flies to realize they are being led by a chick Fil-a sandwich straight to Hell.
When Bush tells us the economy is doing fine, you know we are in for some serious bullshit to come.
December 17th, 2007 at 9:14 pm
Right-on message - superb delivery…..
Thanks again for all you do
December 17th, 2007 at 10:24 pm
Beautiful Tim, thank you.
“Can we rely on it that a ‘turning around’ will be accomplished by enough people quickly enough to save the modern world? This question is often asked, but whatever answer is given to it will mislead. The answer “yes” would lead to complacency; the answer “no” to despair. It is desirable to leave these perplexities behind us and get down to work.” E.F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful
Oh, and here’s another quote. I was in a meeting last week with people seeking to form a peak oil task force in our community. Without knowing that I was the organizer for the showing of WAWTG in Bellingham, the city’s Environmental Resources manager said, “What a way to go: Life at the End of Empire is making it’s way through the community as a living room showing and discussion group phenomenon.”
Your work in our community is still percolating, and helping many of us to think more deeply about these issues.
December 19th, 2007 at 7:51 pm
Tim,
You are a fine filmmaker, an excellent wordsmith, and a thinker of great clarity in spite of your existential confusion. Please continue. I personally prefer your writing to speak directly to us as opposed to conversations with Todd. Your work gives me hope, false or not, that the world may someday wakeup from the drug induced dream of pointless consumption.
December 19th, 2007 at 7:51 pm
Hey Tim, Joseph again.
You mention both Peter Russell and Daniel Pinchbeck. These two are examples of the kind of ideas I was refering to in my post to you a week ago, when I said that I was coming from - and approaching The Situation We Are All In - from a POV based in transpersonal psychology and esoteric spirituality.
The 1960’s were what we might call a Planetary Renaissance Wave. It was an Orphic Revival, in the parlance of today we might call it a Gaian Resurgence.
This wave consisted of many streams: ecological awareness, rediscovery of esoteric-directly-experiential spirituality and the whole mystical-right-brain reality, social-political-economic justice and civil rights, anti-imperialism the rise of the feminine archetype, etc..
But the central aspect of all of this is best described as a resurgence of the right-brain that had been exiled by the left-brain dominance-spell humanity had fallen into (Why?! How?! Those ever-vexing questions!!). The exile of the psyche, or Psyche, which the Romantic poets characterized as the exile of the Eternal Feminine….we thought it was finally over…that humanity was going to emerge from spiritual darkness and that a Planetary Renaissance was at hand. But…….
The dominator culture - Empire, The Tryranny, nay the fanatical Tyranny, of Left-Brain Man(who can also be female btw) crushed this wave out and stomped it into the ground. Money, Power, Empire won in the sense of blocking changes that we desperately needed to make 25, 30 years ago as a small minority of Gaian mutants saw - back then.
Personally Tim, I have been depressed since the Reagan Era ;~) - which was billed as The Death Of the 60’s by all who hated - in their spiritual psychosis - the Return of Gaia. To mutants, “She’s A Rainbow” as the Rolling Stones sang, but to left-brain dominators, She was a threat that needed to be destroyed, She was a threat to Empire. A threat to the left-brain-dominator-ego.
And deep down Tim, I knew then, in the Reagan era - as I watched the Big Sell-Out - that if people living charmed lives under incredibly affluent conditions couldnt respond to the dead-end-destructive-insane life we were living, Wake Up and do something, and instead, chose to remain spoiled adolescent brats, then truly we were f**ked, totally f**ked. And yet…..
……….I kept reading the Peter Russells (and Barbara Marx Hubbards and Duane Elgins and….every damn mutant guide-book-instruction-manual-on-how-to-mutate-yourself-and-then-help-mutate-the collective-consciousness-of-humanity - ya know The Consciousness Revolution - and….here we are, and here I am, posting this at your website. A long strange trip indeed. Warm regards, Joseph
December 20th, 2007 at 2:45 am
Thanks Tim,
December 20th, 2007 at 9:59 am
Hey Auntigrav… perhaps, in a sea of shockudrama, what stands out is its opposite, and the key becomes distinction rather than competition. When I was student teaching, in order to be heard over a room full of noisy students, I simply stood there and spoke very softly. Soon enough, they quieted down to hear what I was saying!
Thank you, Raging Granny! Glad to see you here. Thanks for all your work on the climate change issue!
David, thanks for your kind words. “A discussion group phenomenon”, eh? I like that. Sounds like a good reason to NOT take the mainstream machine up on its offers to distribute. It works much better hand to hand and arm in arm.
Hi Stephen. Thanks. Glad to hear my words help. Todd’s a bit miffed but he’ll get over it!
Joseph, your comment reminds me of the explanation my friend Iain gave me for the punk music scene and what it was about: a reaction to how the 60s revival was stomped down under the boot of Empire. Thanks for the “She’s a Rainbow” reference. It’s been playing in my head since. She comes in colors everywhere…
Peace, all.
Tim
December 20th, 2007 at 2:22 pm
Oh, I forgot. Thank you too, Luke. Glad to see you here!
December 20th, 2007 at 8:01 pm
Well Tim, your reply gives me the chance to ask you - or whoever here might have an answer ( I do realize we all have little spare time for these things these days) - about something I often wonder about and have mentioned many times to friends - we will move to it starting from your coment above.
It seems to me that another part of the punk reality was a hatred for 60’s idealism itself. It was like they were saying, “Yeah, yeah yeah, a bunch of hippies got rich playing rock star singing about love and peace and blah blah blah but the poor and the working-class continue to get screwed, nothings changed, and nothing is going to change so take your “All You Need Is Love” and shove it up your…”, etc.
To some extent they were right; however, punk then merely descended into existential nihilism, like much of what is called postmodernism, a philosophical position I can understand - and arent we all struggling with elements of that right now? - but not one I choose to live in personally: my spiritual path is not dependent upon how The Collapse turns out one way or another.
In fact, I can take refuge in the lines of a song written by one of the premier *Love-poets* of the 60’s, Justin Hayward of the Moody Blues, who sang, in 1972,
“Listen to the tide slowly turning, wash all our heartache away, we’re part of the fire that is burning, from the ashes we can build another day.
“But I’m frightened for your children, and the life that we are living is in vain, and the sunshine we’ve been waiting for could turn to rain.
“When the final line is over, and it’s certain that the curtain’s going to fall, I can hide inside your sweet, sweet love, forevermore”
And those who knew very well what George Harrison was singing about in “Within You, Without You” knew very well “the sweet, sweet love Hayward was refering to. But for the punks, that Love, that Light didnt exist - period.
But the question still remains, and it is especially relevant today, and it is: Why dont all of these rich, so-called progressive artists today - musicians, actors, etc. - put their money, their “lives, fortunes and sacred honor” - on The Line in the service of really opposing Empire and using their global platforms to Tell It All Like It Is?
I mean what are they waiting for? - this is Crunch Time, this is It, The Final Exam.
If people like Cloony and Bono and all the rest got together, networked and pooled their resources, they could send a Message through the global media that could tell The Whole Story in a devastating exposition that would illustrate all the dimensions of the The Problem - the ecological and social-political-economic (imagine a synthesis of What A Way To Go and Farenheit 911 times 100) - and all the elements of the most positive responses we could make, ecologically, politically and spiritually (and when I say spiritually, I mean a la the Peter Russells).
But this never happens! The wealthy *progressives* - or the Peter Russells and Deepak Chopras for that matter! - almost never put it all on the line with a full-spectrum presentation of what is happening on this planet. Why?
It blows my mind. In discussions I have participated in, people have speculated that such an open revolt from a network of people who because of their wealth command real power in the world, would be met by threats to assassinate them or their families and that this stops them - and anyone - from stepping too far over the line.
And meanwhile, the Imperial propaganda delivery-and-control system - the MSM - continues to cover-up the truth and block alternative worldviews from being widely disseminated, and continues to mainline Their reality directly into our brains. With no end in sight.
So maybe the punks and the existential nihilists were right all along. As Shakespeare said, “Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” And destined - human life that is - from the time the first pyramid was built in Egypt - for the Grand Finale of global civilizational Collapse. Warm regards to you and Sally, Joseph
December 23rd, 2007 at 3:41 pm
I am fast becoming a big fan of your writing. I am also a huge fan of “A Christmas Carol” and have used it often myself for many years. I think this latest piece by you explains exactly the shift that needs to occur in people’s minds. I had already made that shift unconsciously long ago even before my dad died two weeks ago, though his passing made it more explicit and intentional but also far broader than it had been before. I think the expressions of sympathy shown me has helped me get over my own anger at life not lived well (my own as well as the culture we live in).
In Confucian philosophy, particularly the works of Mencius, commiseration is the beginning of humanity. It is our humanity, our feelings of benevolence and compassion, that is the true mark of a human being. Indulging one’s anger at the other noodles in the soup is totally counter-productive as it strips one of one’s own humanity in the process of stripping another of theirs.
I had determined ages ago that we needed a single, world-wide ethic and that ethic is the Golden Rule: treat others with the same dignity and respect that we wish for ourselves. It is the only way to preserve our humanity and enlarge that humanity in others.
However, I also agree that anger is a good tool when used properly and in the right circumstances ala Gandhi directing his at injustice. His way to overcome injustice was not to explode at others but rather to re-awaken the humanity of the people which was denied under the thumb of British rule. Our own humanity is being denied us in our current culture. The true counter-culture we need today is exactly your realization that we are indeed in this together, for if we do not cooperate and hang together, we shall surely hang separately. Living has always been a cooperative endeavor. It’s time we pierced the bubble of our isolation and invite others by the warm fire of our shared humanity despite how quirky we all are.
December 23rd, 2007 at 4:37 pm
Thanks, Tim. Trying not to spend much time in front of the screen these days, but your writing always touches me back, briefly, providing fuel for the walks and the talks.
I’ve been living deep within grief and gratitude these days. Every day, ‘born in captivity’, buried in grief, resurrected in gratitude and freed through poetry and music and philosoophy and walks in the blessed rain … and Love.
Hope? That’s the work we do. Its the voices we hear calling us to The Work — our progeny, other species, the soil and water and air, each other. Hope is the Home towards which we send the Gift of our reply, wrapped in the Care and Tenderness with which we do our Work.
On this Winter Solstice weekend, my good friend Adam summed it up beautifully at meeting this morning, “The period of darkness is diminishing. We’ll be spending more time in The Light. We can count on it. We’re in agreement over it.”
I’m grateful for the ‘darkness’ and the anguish and the Truth that you and Sally have poured into your work, and for the Light that has shown in our community since your visit, that continues to shine as more people are seeing your film, weeping, talking, accepting and changing.
Hope? Yes.
Saving Western Civilization as we know it? Not a chance. Something beautiful rising from the ashes? Hope-Work.
Hugs, Nory
December 25th, 2007 at 8:32 am
Hi Tim and Sally,
You continue to inspire me with your truth-telling honesty. More than any other ‘crashwatch blog,’ yours give me the gift of courage to speak the truth of feelings. Tim, I loved this piece, as I have many others. It’s going into my new website, coming soon. I’ll let you know.
Lots of love,
Suzanne
December 26th, 2007 at 10:00 am
Hey Joseph,
My understanding was that the punks weren’t disgusted with the 60s idealists themselves, but with the system that would stomp them down and grind them into the dirt. But I’ve done very little reading or analysis of the movement. Is that something you know lots about? Got any recommended reading?
It looks to me like you pretty well answer your own question! Here’s some of my thoughts to the matter of “why don’t they?”…a bit disjointed and raw, I fear…
1) They are trapped and coerced, as you say. And certainly there are mechanisms of control and violence involved. The Powers That Be learned a great deal from the Nazis in Germany, from the Cold War and the Communist Scare, from the Vietnam War and Watergate, etc., about how to maintain power and control through domination and violence without it being noticed by the masses for what it is, such that fascism looks like freedom and the most destructive Empire in the world can pretend to be its savior. As David Edwards, author of an incredible analysis of this called Burning All Illusions, says: ” There is no greater obstacle to freedom than the assumption that it has already been attained.” In a wonderful interview he did with Derrick Jensen he goes on to explain: “What prison could be more secure than one we’re convinced is “the world,” where the boundaries of action and thought are assumed to be, not the limits of the permissible, but the limits of the possible? Democratic society, as we know it, is the ultimate prison, because who’s going to try to escape from a situation of apparent freedom? It follows, then, that we must be happy, because we can do whatever we want.”
So they, these “power progressives” you wonder about, live, as do we all, in a system that is grounded in violence and control, but which pretends to be kinder and gentler. Such that William Colby, former director of the CIA, can say (on his deathbed?), “”The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media,” and be understood, and believed, and IT MAKES NO DIFFERENCE. The control mechanisms are more powerful today than they’ve ever been, largely because they are not even seen as control mechanisms by most of the population.
But, of course, the violence is felt in our bodies. We are sensate animals, after all. The punks could feel it, and see it to some good extent. The “power progressives” can feel it, even if they don’t know what it is. I can feel it, and am getting better at seeing it all the time.
2) They don’t know, as you also point out. Having been born and raised in captivity, having been educated in prison schools, and having received most of their information from prison newspapers, most people, including almost all of the “power progressives”, have a very poor understanding of what’s going on in the world - at the deepest levels of culture and psychology, and in a big picture way, looking at ecology and economy and politics and religion and production and resources and culture all at once. (Remembering point #1 above, it’s more correct to say that it APPEARS that they don’t know. My guess, based on my own experience of people in this culture, is that most of them really don’t, but I can’t say for sure, as I haven’t spoken with them.) I spent a good deal of time last month reading an issue of Rolling Stone with 40 mini-interviews with some of our culture’s top “power progressives.” It was maddening, and very, very sad. If their self-report is to be believed, they really don’t know.
Our atomized media and our atomized lives and our atomized sciences and our atomized education leave people to see the world situation in atomized ways. People focus on a single issue, which is almost always merely a symptom of the underlying “real problem”. Isn’t that the standard? Power progressive takes on and becomes famous for speaking out against and working toward a solution for a very visible, easy-to-understand, big-ticket issue, and all the better if there are innocent victims with cute faces and big, soulful eyes. Nothing wrong with that, save for the fact that the underlying system hardly gets noticed, let alone reckoned with. All of which is the basic reason why we made the doc as we did… to reckon with the totality and look underneath the single issues.
There are, as always, a million more things we could talk about, but it takes so long in this medium, and I am having such a hard time working and focusing and being online these days. So I’m going to stop here. Thanks for giving me a chance to chew on this and work through some things in my head.
Take care,
Tim
December 26th, 2007 at 11:22 am
NeoLotus… beautifully said! Thanks. “Commiseration is the beginning of humanity.” I love that. And the noodles in the soup… that’ll stick with me.
Nory… good to hear from you. Good to hear your poetry, to feel your heart from so far away, through the medium of little black markings on a white screen. A bit o’ magic. Here’s to both the darkness and the light, and to walks in the blessed rain…
Hey Suzanne… go to hear from you too! I was wondering how you were doing just the other day. Glad to hear your website will be up and running soon and look forward to your notification.
Thanks, all,
TIm
December 28th, 2007 at 7:47 pm
Yeah, I understand we all dont really have a lot of spare time these days for online communications. So, when I post here, I dont necessarily expect a reply let alone a reply in depth.
The punk thing is obvious from the music. It is very hard, angry dissonant music. Think about this: racist skinhead music grew out of/along with punk; it is impossible to imagine it growing out of, say, JS Bach or the Moody Blues or any spiritually uplifting music.
Punk, like postmodernism, has its place but it ends in nihilism as far as I can see - all deconstruction - angry deconstruction - and the trashing of all values without offering anything spiritually uplifting in their place.
Regarding your link to Derrick Jensen above, what I am saying is, it blows my mind that a lot more people havent *gotten it* - understood such ideas - a long, long time ago.
Ditto for all the points you made above - there is no excuse for these power progressives to have not realized such obvious truths a long time ago.
Imagine Tim if you had had virtually unlimited resources and unlimited staff to do your documentary. Imagine, for example, if you had the resources to travel and do interviews like in the CNN piece, “Planet In Peril”.
Remember in the doc where you briefly scroll a list of all the other aspects of the situation you could have focused on? Imagine if you had the resources to do so.
Well, these ultra-wealthy progressive artists DO have the resources to do so. They could literally blow the planetary mind. Some of these people, like Sting or Bono are worth 100 million dollars and up. Pooling their resources, they could afford to give it away free.
Notice on your copy of Pinchbeck’s book a cover blurb by Sting praising the book? When I saw that, I wondered if Sting thought we could achieve all of that with him and others still getting to enjoy their ultra-affluent lives.
As I think about it now, it would be a good idea if someone could get a copy of What a Way To Go in Stings hands. Or Al Gore’s hands. Or Kucinich. Maybe someone could arrange to show it as a side event during the Democratic convention coming up.
Or, maybe some of these power progressives could come out and buy - say - 600 copies of your doc and distribute them to every congressperson and senator in office. Hell, why stop there? they could buy thousands of copies and distribute them to every high official of every government on the planet!
In other words, let’s give these power progressives the chance to put their money where their mouths are. Just food for thought. Warm regards, Joseph