Culture Change e-Letter #65

As surely as the red sun rises
Rebelling against extinction

by Jan Lundberg  

Some of us are not under the mass trance, but awareness only gets us so far.

The dominator machines are in our face without our having a say.  Elections are generally a sham.  Armed force and more subtle manipulation of human beings are on the rise.  Mother Nature is on the run.

What is a man to do about this?  I feel I can do more if I allow myself to go to a higher level of resistance.  It should be done without looking back, although one might have to give up something cherished.  But what do I have to lose?  I'm already poor.  I'm already liberated, but am still hemmed in by phantom expectations of my own, of family and of society.  

I will survive on my terms or not at all: that is my greatest freedom (although it could shorten my life).  That is my promise to the brilliant red sun rising though my jet window.  I reluctantly sit in a plane as it hurtles though the wounded atmosphere.

The penalty of action can be prison, torture, and death.  Most common for the activist is a degree of material deprivation.  I point to these penalties because the middle way seems harder and harder to maintain with effectiveness.  Realizing this may be forcing some of us into imminent action.  We will not go quietly, nor stand aside while life is destroyed — not all of us anyway.  

The rewards will include eventual vindication, perhaps as in Nelson Mandela's experience.  However, there may not ever be a recognizable political victory for sustainability.  That is why one's warrior path may be of an entirely new variety.  It must ring true to people tired of violence and top-down rule.  Whether it is hazardous for one's self-preservation is not knowable before it is undertaken and developed.

We are far along the road of self destruction, but the delusion of the dominators is that they are doing well.  They may or may not admit that their material well-being and "security" are at the expense of the masses of people.  In this time of despair and conflict, the thinking person wonders about the wisdom of playing along too much with the material survival game.  "Getting by" is NOT about changing society or eliminating domination.  Dare we cut short our consuming and oppression called "living"?  What is the great unknown beyond conformity and acquiescence?

In these times of vicious tenacity of the unthinking, unfeeling machine — represented by the ephemeral U.S. — the thinking man and woman wish to jump out of the boiling pot into safety and sanity.  Not being able to do so, as the world is one small, closed system, we are cornered.  With each breath, bite of food and sip of water we are poisoned.  Despite the rising cancer rate, countless millions are in that river in Egypt (denial).  What has become mainstream increasingly smells like toxic excrement.

We have options to consider, and it is up to each of us whether to take matters into our own hands.  In increasing order of difficulty and complexity, our response can be as a cell of one, an affinity group, a neighborhood, or a mass movement.  

The justification to take serious defensive action has been with us since the dominator system took hold and commenced its violent conquest roughly 10,000 years ago.  The difference is that the world was, for most of those 10,000 years, still intact and diverse.  But this is rapidly ending.  Those involved in ending ecological integrity and human freedom in so many ways are everyone's enemies including their own.  There is a war on to kill you, me and the entire biosphere.

Some believe there is no all-out war or such an extreme threat, but they do not know about the workings of positive feedback loops that throw the climate out of control possibly forever.  They don't know about the depleted uranium already let loose.  Let them believe what they like, although they should be shown the evidence and invited to join the rebellion against extinction.  One can dance in the rebellion and our future society, as well.

The inescapable conclusion is that each thinking person must reject the false comfort of the collapsing materialist culture.  When we acknowledge that the collapse has begun, we can give up our chains and fears.

*****

 June 5, 2004

Global Warming Crisis Council and the Pledge for Climate Protection

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