Truth Against the World

Saturday, May 12, 2012

Culture of Denial





Afterward 

3/12/13

The Post Petroleum Human Tribe is continuing to evolve.  We are unplugged and wired in without wires.  We drop down the memory hole and immerse our minds in remembrance.  So that we don't forget where we came from.  

The American Hologram is a real program being projected within the Matrix.  There are other programs, but this one is dominant in the industrialized senseless suburban consumer consumption  wasteland artifact of 20th century chemical monkey man.  

We're coalescing for the future of the Post Petroleum Nation at a little place called the Foxstead.  We'll be hiding in plain site.  When you look at us we'll be directly ahead, in the woods, visible in your blind spot.  Don't bother looking to hard because we have vanished in our 21st century anonymity. We are legion and you can't even see us.  Hiding in plain site.  Waiting for you to blink to make our next move.  And you thought you would always remain in control of the masses.  

Also, let me just say, in this afterward that's happening in the forward spot, that I made my way back to "Where the Wasteland Ends" and it expanded my mindscape greatly.  

The last bout of books that I have acquired and began perusing have come to me through two sources, Morris Berman and John Michael Greer. The book I'm currently reading is titled "Where the Wasteland Ends"and is authored by Theodore Roszak. It was first published in 1972. I'm 30 pages in and I'm already beginning to lose interest and for different reasons than one might expect. In fact, I've never even experienced a lose of interest such as this and it's what I can only term as a type of exhaustion. It's an intellectual and emotional exhaustion that protrudes from a dawning realization that the world is suffering from a legendary case of denial. As I read these books that were published years before I was born (in this case 8 years before I was born), and as I look around at the world today to see the furtherance of our march into the wasteland, I can only throw my arms up in despair and then drop my hands into the soil. I put them into animal shit and dead and dying biomass. I mix it all together with the steam rising behind me from the hot compost pile. I mix this all into red dirt in an effort to make cultivated plant seeds a nurturing place to grow. This brings me peace and hope, and the need for these necessary books is fading. I know what needs to be done and why things are the way they are. There is simply no reason for me to read about it any longer, it's just depressing.

The fact that over 40 years ago books were already being written about the "Wasteland" or the Matrix or the American Hologram is proof enough that nothing is going to change or save our empire from this downward spiral. It's a pretty hopeless realization. Yet it's true none-the-less. The easy way out is through denial, and I've noticed that this is indeed an innate reaction, a knee jerk reaction. Intelligent people simply know on some unconscious level that there is very little meaningful action they can take to change any of this truth. They are wrong to think that unconsciously, but that doesn't stop them. And so the realization just never happens for hundreds of millions of people because it's just too depressing. The 100th monkey is not going to wake up from this chemical induced coma of denial until the death march of our empire is over. 40 years ago maybe, but now...it's simply too late. 
 
I didn't sit down with the intention of writing a depressing blog, but even amidst my liberation I have been fighting this underlying current of depression lately. It's taken me some time to figure out why I feel this way. I am taking all the actions I can to learn as much about growing food as possible. I have changed my entire life around to meet these mandates, and I have taken my family with me. As a result I am able to tend to plant life on 1.65 acres as my job. My job is now to learn as much as I can about growing food and that is simply amazing. I have had the good fortune to learn the truth behind the saying that the best fertilizer is the gardener's feet. I'm present and unmedicated for my wife and son. Yet still there is this dreaded sadness that erupts through the fissures in the psychic ground that is supposed to protect me. The sadness is coming from a place that is much larger than I, and it has the capability of strong arming all of my defenses and there is nothing I can do about it. Ahhhh denial, it's one hell of a drug.

I have come face to face with the source of this sadness. It's become more tactile to me because I have had time to tease out it's form and it origination. We've always had the answers about the antidote to the machine, to the wasteland. We put all of our cards into building the Wasteland and now we're going to take them to bed for a self induced nightmare. How is anyone to deal with such horrible truth if not with denial? The only way through it is to feel it and that means a heavy blanket of sadness. I understand that what I am doing is the best I can do. It's not only the best I can do, it's the only meaningful course of action for me. I'm following my bliss. I know that food production is the most important element of this mess. It's the one thing that I know with certainty is necessary now and in the future. It's the one thing that allows me to be a whole person. Everything inside and outside is aligned though me with the simple act of growing soil. I am not in denial, and yet that comes with an immense cost because just about everybody I know is in denial about this. My friends, that is a recipe for loneliness, and no doubt one that I'm sure most of you are intimate with.

I suppose this means I have grown to big for this round of skin. I no longer feel the need to read books about how fucked up it all is. The truth is that it's always been fucked up cause our species is, and worse than that even because we don't have to be. Our species chooses to remain agents of destruction because of cowardice. Nobody wants to deal with the mess we have made, and so they hide in their convenient suburbanland and are at peace with trading their humanity for consumerism. Our species has made a Faustian deal...their humanity and honor for the numbness of complete denial. Not only do they lose their dignity, but they lose their future progeny's as well.

Waking up from the Matrix becomes a sad ordeal rather quickly. I knew I was alone in the Matrix, but I had no idea about what it was like outside of it. I do have a small kernel of hope however. I don't want to leave ya'll with nothing but depressing truth. I have hope that I will find others like me because I already have. The problem is that I have met them 70 miles from where I'm at in Asheville NC. I'm referring to the group of souls I met at the Permaculture In Action event that I have been attending. For the first time in my life I have met a large group of people whom all view the world through the same type of eyes. We are all different. We come from different places, backgrounds, and times. This group spans from 18 to 60 something years old. The easiest way to describe it would be to say that we are a tribe, but in the 21st century a tribe can exist only with it's members spread out in a vast region....a pack of mostly lone wolfs. I'm on the outskirts of our region with only one couple a few more miles further out than I. Our people are spread out in a 100 mile long diameter around Asheville NC. It only took one day for us to all bond into this tribe. The one guiding principal has been permaculture. We have all met each other because we share that one interest, but that one interest spans the breadth of a people whom have been freed from that cultural denial that I have been speaking of. We are united in our decision to do something about this culture of denial. I have plans to write about this Permaculture In Action Tribe that I have found, so I won't continue much about it now.

I think we are the beginning of humanities long muddling trudge into a new environment. Our empire is just beginning to approach the back side of Hubbert's curve. We have been on the bumpy plateau since 2006 or so. To my mind Hurricane Katrina was the harbinger for this new reality. We've probably got another five years left before we begin our descent in earnest. Those of us who are aware are already at the bottom of the back side of Hubbert's curve. That's where you find yourself upon waking up from the Matrix. We're looking at a culture, an empire, of denial and trying to figure out just what the hell we're going to do about it. The fact is that we're going to have to just let the empire plummet to the flat ground after Hubbert. The best we can do is have things ready for when they arrive. I think I'm going to continue asking this question here at Epiphany Now. If you are reading this, and you haven't acted on the information you know to be true, the information that hails from your soul, then what are you waiting for? We of the Post Petroleum Human Tribe need all of the help we can get. 
















4 comments:

William Hunter Duncan said...

Good to see you're back.

Grief is one of the gateways that must be passed through, to rediscover the joy of being truly alive - and there is an immense amount of grief on the backside of peak awareness, the lifting of the veil of progress and the end of growth as a defining paradigm. Not one of us is going to be able to avoid it, except by dying. So take solace in knowing, that facing it now and letting that grief flow (imagine it as an interior reservoir that must be made a flowing river again), means you will be in a place of healing and even joy (in fierce love with life), as the collapse of industrial civilization becomes more apparent.

www.offthegridmpls.blogspot.com
www.williamhunterduncan.wordpress.com

chela said...

"My friends, that is a recipe for loneliness, and no doubt one that I'm sure most of you are intimate with."

Extremely intimate with it which is why when I discovered your blog (thru a comment on ADR) it was like a "ping" of recognition. You are most definitely not alone. The more you stay with what is healing your soul and your bliss the bigger your tribe will become. The world is desperate for healing

"So take solace in knowing, that facing it now and letting that grief flow (imagine it as an interior reservoir that must be made a flowing river again), means you will be in a place of healing and even joy (in fierce love with life), as the collapse of industrial civilization becomes more apparent."

I agree wholeheartedly with Mr Duncan's words.

Being able to name grief and claim despair is the very real, very frightening aspect of every hero's journey. But in the process you are showing your son (the future!) how to be present and conscious in and of the material world, how to witness, bear and heal deep deep pain, and how to be fully joyously engaged with life on earth to the same degree. You will make a difference.

Excited to hear about the permaculture group!

Luciddreams said...

Thanks to the both of you for the comments.

Permaculture has become my main source of hope for humankind. It's very contagious as well. People are just interested in what the hell you are doing because it looks so different from the typical "garden spot."

I've already implemented permaculture design into my garden. I've only assisted in creating one permaculture design from the one weekend of training I have received. I'm working on the next photojournal of my progress. There are six beds that I have been connecting via swales and burms all leading to a pond. I'm using my old plastic truck liner as the pond liner and will be getting ducks at some point this season.

I'm off to Asheville this weekend for the next session with the tribe. Very exciting stuff.

Justin said...

Luccidreams,

Can you recommend 2-3 permaculture implementation books? I am starting gardening and such and have a great mentor, I also have an understanding of permaculture as a design concept (much of it relates to software design), but have a gap in ideas for implementation.

I am in upstate NY and a short distance from a low lying river bed that meanders all over the place. The ground is rocky, but very good.

This garden gnome is as far as I've gotten through intuition, it feels... misguided.

btw, I figure we got about 5-10 years. I'm taking a shot at acquiring a lot of physical assets through a post industrial business I am starting with my brother. I figure at some point soon after China (most likely) kicks out the last rickety leg of American Empire and the flow of unrepayable debt in return for manufactured goods dries up, money isn't going to be worth a whole lot compared to things that are useful here. I am interested in how your approach works, I hope you can manage to stay online.