Eustace Conway

You've likely never heard of Eustace Conway or his Turtle Island Preserve before. Mr. Conway is a very unique individual whom has much to teach those of us concerned with how to thrive in a post-petroleum future. Mr. Conway never really joined society, preferring to remain embraced by nature. At 17 he moved into a Native American style teepee and lived in it for 17 years. At 18 he walked across the U.S. on the Appalachian Trail and shortly after that canoed from the North to the South. He also rode a horse across the United States from the east coast to the west coast twice. There are not many people like Eustace Conway that have been born to a first world country. Around 20 years ago he bought 1000 acres in Appalachia. He then turned that land into the "Turtle Island Preserve" with the explicit purpose of teaching others how to live on the bounty of nature. For the last 20 years he's been doing just that. Recently the Matrix has decided to zero in on his strength to make a very important statement about what will and will not be tolerated in today's America.

Recently the NC county bureaucracy, in which Turtle Island is located, has decided that after 20 years of operation Mr. Conway is to be shut down due to building codes. Mr. Conway has been working with the county inspectors for 20 years with no problems. He's had to make sacrifices to keep his preserve and vision alive. He's had to abide ridiculous things like not allowing the children of the preserve to drink raw milk, and not allowing them to eat the chickens he's raised and slaughtered. Apparently it's acceptable to the county for him to teach the kids how to slaughter and butcher the chickens, but not to eat them. I'm sure there's a gaggle of more such nonsense that he's had to put up with over the years.

One day, not to long ago, several county departments showed up on his land, unannounced, and unwelcome with a search warrant. The zoning code enforcement assholes, the tax collector, the health department, and every other waste of tax payer money department showed up to find cause to shut him down. This on account of an anonymous "somebody" who supposedly anonymously called the building code office to complain about how Mr. Conway was minding his own damn business on his own damn land. At that point they had to get every county department together to go violate the illusion of Mr. Conway's civil and constitutional rights. They shut him down because he was "open to the public" even though he wasn't. The entrance to his secluded 1000 acre track of Appalachia has a gated entrance with a large sign that says "no trespassing." Their idiotic reasoning for him being "open to the public" is because Mr. Conway has apprentices that live on his property, and apparently this makes them the public. In order for the "public" to arrive at the preserve they have to fill out an application and be accepted by Mr. Conway. It goes without saying that these people want to be there. The fact of the matter is that Mr. Conway's preserve is not open to the public any more than my asshole is. But the counties Orwellian double think standards of governance assert that private land is open to the public, and they are using this cockamamie gobbledegook as ammo to put an end to Mr. Conways primitive living school. Watauga county has opened it's pie hole and allowed odious stupid to ooze out all over this gentle and responsible man's freedom.

It's clear to me that this is not about endangering the consenting non-public adults and their children whom arrive at the preserve by choice to learn primitive living skills. This is about setting a new precedence for what is and is not going to be accepted by the New American Gestapo. The truth is that freedom and liberty are not acceptable to the gears of Big Brother bureaucracy. The Matrix will not abide individuals who do not need the Matrix. The problem is not that Mr. Conway has remained unplugged from the Matrix for his entire life. The problem is that he is teaching other's how to unplug and to stay unplugged. He teaches people how to live in harmony with the unmitigated wealth of nature. He's being persecuted for the same reason the 19th century American government rounded up all of the Native Americans and put them into camps. Tribal people cannot be controlled by Big Brother because they need nothing from him. They don't need EBT, Snap, unemployment, debit cards, jobs, health insurance, or a mortgage. They don't need anything from the government. And what would happen if a lot of people caught on and decided to learn to live this way?

According to Watauga county, Mr. Conway's dog house is a building, and therefore it requires electricity and plumbing. A dog house! Does your dog have electricity and plumbing in his plastic igloo? His buildings are built according to old world standards. They are built on foundations of rock and held up with whole trees rather than flimsy pine sticks used in standard construction. His buildings are made to survive through generations of use with quality as their guiding principal of construction. If the point of building codes are to ensure quality buildings that are worth caring about, esthetically pleasing, durable, strong, and made to last, than the bureaucratic goons can learn a lot from Mr. Conway's buildings. On the other hand, if the point of those codes is nothing more than governmental control of the people, than they are succeeding admirably. The fact is, this is not about building codes, it's about freedom and liberty and ensuring that there is none left in these failed states of America.

The Matrix has zeroed in on Mr. Conway because he is one of the strongest links in the self reliant chain of America. Freedom will not be tolerated in today's America. It will be squashed beneath the wheel of "democracy." The same democracy we've been spreading via the faceless drone strikes that mangle and kill innocent women and children over there. The same democracy that demands that you get in line and appreciate the poison that's killing all life on Earth. The poisonous food and the poisonous medicine. The state sponsored plague that's acidifying our oceans, polluting our fresh water, and filling our mother's wombs with hundreds of man made chemicals. The digibits that suck the wealth out of every corner of the world on account of spreading misery and suffering to every sentient being on planet Earth. Mr. Conway's way of being in the world is the antidote to all of the destruction that the governments of the world are ensuring we continue inheriting.

If we all sat down and listened to this beautiful and gentle man's message than we would begin to heal all of the rot that has hollowed out the soul of America and the human spirit. Mr. Conway teaches how to live in harmony with the natural world. He teaches how to make fire with sticks, medicine out of plants, buildings out of stone and tree, and strong humans out of nothing more than dirt, sun, and rain water. He teaches how to live independent from the Matrix and it's controlling hologram. It is clear that our government does not want this type of person spreading this type of message. It does not fit into the destructive paradigm brought to you by mindless bureaucratic goonery. Goonery that we complacently accept as it's shoved up our asses without abandon, and as it splooges it's vile incompetence in the face of planetary health.

Nothing is going to change the course our civilization is on if you don't. The world is running out of the fossil fuel energy that is responsible for the 7 billion of us in existence now. We need to be embracing and learning from the Eustace Conway's of the world rather than allowing them to be silenced. Why should we allow this to go on? If Mr. Conway's preserve is to be shut down, than we might as well all get on with our Soma shots and get in line for the two minutes hate. We might as well embrace the Newspeak Dictionary and accept that freedom is slavery, love is hate, and medicine is poison. We might as well go to the Ministry of Health to get our chemotherapy ahead of the cancer that we've become. Mr. Conway, and those like him, are the cure to the hologram. Yet we get together and yell at the gargantuan telescreen that dictates what is and is not acceptable about reality. The least you can do is click here and sign the petition to call the dog's off of Eustace Conway. More importantly you should care before they show up to your house to tell you how your liberty will not be tolerated. If we allow this to go on than there truly is no hope for our species.

Sign the petition to help Eustace Conway continue teaching humanity how to live in harmony with nature. 

The Foxstead

Before the Foxstead existed in my mind, it existed in William Hunter Duncans mind (granted it wasn't called a foxstead in his mind, and it was just a pipe dream). Then along came another member of the Doomstead Diner, Roamer. One day Roamer decided to start a thread titled the "Community Owned Doomstead," and the foxstead rapidly emerged as a viable response to the world that the trifecta of Peak Oil, economic carnage, and our changing climate are assuring that we will inherit. I experienced the bubbling up of this idea that has become the foxstead as synchronicity in my own life. It came at the one year anniversary of my resignation from the Matrix. Up untill shortly before this thread, I had been trying to establish myself as a permaculturalist in the Palookaville sector of Whoville (not that I'm anywhere close to qualified for that title, but permaculture ain't exactly a household idea in Whoville). I saw the foxstead as destiny, and I still do. I saw my bliss delivering me the help that I needed to address our civilizations predicament. It was giving me other people to help and share the vision. That was the missing link for me. I was a lone ranger with no help, and out of nowhere help appeared to be arriving.

Initially Roamer was looking to locate the foxstead somewhere in the upper mid-west. No sooner than I showed interest in the idea, Roamer coughs up a connection for a location for the foxstead 47 miles away from my house. 150 acres in the hills outside of Appalachia complete with a spring fed pond (which some call a lake...to me it was a large pond). Within a week GM (Gypsy Mama, my wife and member of the Diner) and I were on our way to check the land out on the ground. The land owners were a couple who had been married for 30 something years. Jason was 71 years old, and his wife (later to be dubbed "Cat Food Carol") was 61. They were looking to leave the land to a trust made up of people who would ensure that it would never be developed. That it would remain a sanctuary for flora and fauna. GM, my son's Zen, in-utero Tribann and I walked the land. It was nothing short of perfect for the foxstead location. After we walked the land we all sat in their off grid reclaimed barn turned home and talked about the prospect for a foxstead on their land.

Zen and Dad

The only issue that emerged during that first meeting was the fact that Cat Food Carol wanted the land to be a vegetarian utopia. A place where her cats get to eat as much highly processed Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation floor sweepings turned cat food as they could stuff in their fat cat bellies, while the foxstead crew all chewed on pine needles for sustenance during the starving times. However, during this first meeting I had a chance to corner Cat Food Carol in a trap of her own hypocricy. "I see that you feed your cats meat! So it's alright for cats to eat meat but not humans? Is that what you are saying?" She had told me that her concern with slaughtering on the land was the karma she would acquire by allowing it to happen. "I mean, if karma is your concern it seems sort of strange that you are buying meat to feed your cats. Doesn't that incur at least an equal amount of karma related to death and the killing of animals by humans for food?" She hemmed and hawed for a minute and then miraculously her phone rang "saved by the phone" is what she said as she scurried off to her get out of hypocrisy free moment with a large shit eatin' grin. There was much to talk about, and so Jason and I continued the conversation in a different direction. You see, Jason wasn't concerned about the vegetarian utopia, just that the land be stewarded responsibly. When Carol came back to the conversation it was already on the question of how many people they would be cool with living on their land. I told them that 10 able bodied men along with their families would be a good estimation for our group. That would be around 40 people. Neither one of them so much as blinked at the idea. They had no problem with it. After that first day, I mistakenly figured, given that Carol was at least open minded enough to allow a conversation in which her hypocrisy was challenged, that we could come to an arrangement on the vegetarian issue that would work. She wasn't trying to make the foxsteaders vegetarian, she just didn't want any "slaughter on the land." That's exactly how she put it. She didn't care if we bought meet at the store and ate it on their land...she just didn't want any slaughter.

Jason and I walking the land on the first visit

The foxstead crew talked about it and we figured we could just sell the excess bulls off when we needed to cull. We thought there was a way to work around this one issue since it was the only issue. Outside of Cat Food Carols delusion about how life works, what with requiring death for life and all, it was beyond perfect. I should have seen through her shit, but I didn't. I called Roamer and told him to come on down to check it out in person. I told him that I didn't think the vegetarian issue was an unworkable impasse. It turns out my judgment of Carol's character was dead wrong. I thought her heart was in the right place, and that she was reasonable and logical enough to see that she was being unreasonable. This one decision was a mistake. GM knew it to. She tried to tell me on the drive home that her intuition didn't feel good about Cat Food Carrol. I assured her that we could make the foxstead work here. We had to make it work. My desire to meet the challenges of the trifecta were overriding my sound judgment. I couldn't see that at the time. There was simply too much synchronicity occurring for this to not be the location of the foxstead.

The next week Roamer flew down to have a look at the land in person. Roamer, his girlfriend, and my family met near the land at a coffee house so that we could meet in person before going to the property (as far as I know this is the first time that two Diners have met in person...which if nothing else at least made the Diner a bit more real in reality. Roamer has since been to my house for beer, brauts, and conversation around my fire pit). Our group chemistry was amazing. Zen even sat at a table and played with chess pieces and a deck of cards by himself while we talked (he's two and a half). After a couple of hours visiting at the coffee shop, we drove on to the property. When we arrived the previous stewards were there (a couple with a 3 year old daughter whom I will call the Stewards). They had left the land, along with leaving their tiny house, for a farm down the road that was paying them 10 dollars an hour. GM was picking up overwhelming distress signals from Mrs. Steward that were directed at us and pertaining to Cat Food Carol. I was too interested in Carols complete 180 in attitude to notice her signals.

For about ten minutes everybody introduced themselves and several conversations got going. The vegetarian issue came up again, only this time Cat Food Carol had a different tone. It was now an unmovable and ideologically rigid position. Now, any goats or sheep that we may need to cull would have to be done in an impossible way. Now she was saying that the only way she would allow us to keep livestock on the land, you know to build soil to assist in growing food for human consumption, would be if we placed all of the piss scented billy goats in a home where they would be "pets". Meanwhile, my son Zen, grabbed that beautiful little girl's hand (the 3 year old daughter of the Stewards) and they walked off into the forest together. All present melted with the beauty of that moment. It seemed an amazing omen. Filled with hope from watching my son and his first girlfriend loving each other, I sat Cat Food Carol down to get to the bottom of the issue, since it was the only issue with the potential to stop the foxstead.

This is how I addressed the issue. "I understand where you are coming from Carol. I was a vegetarian once for a year due to spiritual reasons. I know what that's about. And I promise you that we will respect your wishes." I was giving her my best seriously pious look while looking into her eyes...I meant what I said and I wanted to ensure that she knew that. "However, I just need to know that in the event our group is starving you will allow us to start low on the food chain if need be. For instance, we could start by just fishing the pond (a pond that they had stocked years before), eating frogs, or perhaps squirrel. Maybe even just one of our chickens." By this point others in the group had heard the conversation, grown interested, and had come over to be a part of it. I want to be clear that we would only do this if we were starving. "Would you be okay with us harvesting from the land if we were starving?" To which she replied, "no, I don't think I would be. I believe that our species is going to have to evolve to a point where we no longer need to eat our brothers and sisters." What could I say to that? I said nothing. Ironically, just after this conversation she wanted to show Roamer and I her studio (she's a painter), and while she was showing us around she opened up a container of dead animal and fed her cats...right in front of us. She looked me in the eyes as the ground up, god knows what organs, hit the paper plate. She had no shame. Behind her I noticed a pile of about 500 of these cat food containers that were empty.

Shortly after this incident, while walking the land, Jason took Roamer and I off to the side to tell us something important. "I know my wife is unreasonable with her vegetarian requirements, and I want you guys to know that I'll do everything I can to help mitigate her. If it were up to me I'd let you guys do this however you wanted to." Just after telling us that he told me that he had "memory problems." I investigated further and was able to determine that he had been diagnosed with Dementia. It was at that point that I realized this would never work. There is a lot more I could say about what happened that day, like the ruins that we saw on the property, but the point is to just illustrate what happened and why the foxstead did not come to exist. GM and I had to leave before Roamer and his girlfriend because I had homework as well as two exams to study for the next day.

During the time the Diner thought it was going to have a home for it's foxstead, a lot of plans were made. There was a lot of hope and a lot of dreaming going on. But what were we hopeful for and what were we dreaming about? We were hopeful that there could be a way forward that doesn't depend on BAU in a dead paradigm. Apparently thinking that growing food without petroleum inputs is possible, is a delusion. Well, that is if you don't have money to buy land. That's what it has come down to. The foxstead has been stopped dead in it's tracks just now because of money. The one thing that is fit to explode into pointlessness over mismanaging the resources of an entire planet. The one thing that is collapsing as I type. The one thing that doesn't matter at all where nature and it's processes are concerned. The one thing that there is an overabundance of just now that could easily buy the foxstead location. That's the one thing that's stopping the vision that is the foxstead from happening.

So what is the foxstead? There are many projects and ideas composing the foxstead. Just for something to grasp and invision, I'll paint a picture of what it could be given the foxsteaders are helped rather than hindered. Imagine a greenhouse that is dug out into the earth. Inside this "greenhouse" is many methods of generating heat. Rocket mass stove, large containers of rainwater to collect the sun's energy passively (as well as strategically placed thermal mass like stone), and compost, and all of this emitting heat. The heat will rise and travel through a series of turbines that will generate electricity. Around this structure, this earth work power plant, will be dwellings built inexpensively with materials that are resilient. The homes will get heat, electricity, and hot water all from the power plant. Outside the homes will be many gardens kept by the inhabitants of these homes. These gardens will not require petroleum inputs. Further out from these gardens will be pasture for raising livestock via intensive grazing. Still further out will be agroforestry producing food for the foxsteaders in the forest surrounding the foxstead. There will also be hydroponics and aquaponics using surface water on the land, as well as many other types of renewable power generation such as small scale wind and microhydroelectric. All of this exists in the minds of the foxsteaders. All of this needs to exist but it's birth is being stunted by money and a dead paradigm. All of this could easily be a reality given the right amount of money (and not much either...probably in the neighborhood of $100,000 would buy the land and leave us with enough money to build the power plant and get a hydroponic operation off the ground).

The foxstead is a chance for hope to arise in the now. All that we want to do is to address the energy constrained reality that we're already in. Rather than just resign ourselves to the dominant reality of fukitol and the rat race. Rather than waiting to be stuffed back into the Matrix and it's hologram, we are daring to dream that something else is not just possible but desirable and likely. A way forward that has a future and who's reality doesn't hinge on expensive fossil fuel energy. There is no reason the foxstead can't exist in reality. The only thing stopping it is money and the fact that even the would be foxsteaders are rapidly loosing hope. The foxstead is the right thing to do for the sake of the Earth and humanity. Somebody has to rise up to the challenge to lead those of us paying attention into a workable solution to our predicament. The goal of the Diner is to "save as many you can." If you know that there is a reason to be saved, than why are you not helping the solution to our predicament to descend down from our collective mentalscape and into reality.

If we do not address the fact that BAU is dead, and then address the solutions to that knowledge, than we are just so many zombies just like the rest of them. We might as well crame fukitol down our throats, let the Diner die, and get on with the death that is assured for our children by a destructive BAU. I hopeless landscape ruled by chemical poison, a dead ocean, no trees left in the Amazon, and no air left to breath. These are the stakes that the miniscule thought of the foxstead are up against. For my part, I'm refusing to give up on the foxstead. I've seen no better solution, and I've got children. My children need something to believe in. They need something worth caring about and hope for our species. What about your children? Don't they need the same thing? I'm still waiting for the help we need to make the Foxstead a reality. If you don't agree with this solution than please offer something up. I'm all ears.

The fact is that we can't afford to ignore what are collective apathy continues to allow as reality. We have to do something while we still have the fuel to do it, and so what are we waiting for? Another Cat Food Carol and her delusional delusions of a world where life can exist without death? Or rather a world where life no longer exists on Earth because death has become complete. Where it was made possible because we were to scared to live. To afraid to take responsibility for what it means to be awakened to our predicaments. What does that make us? Knowing what will happen if we don't do something and yet continuing to do nothing. Talk is cheap. We need to redouble our efforts and yet we are giving up. Where are all of those helping hands that are supposed to arrive when you follow your bliss Joseph Campell? You're dead now...can't you put a good word in for us?

You can find out more about the Foxstead Project at the Doomstead Diner.

The above link will take you to the "Community Owned Doomstead" thread in the Doomstead Diner's forum.  Where the idea was born. 

The End of BAU

For the last six years I've made it my business to understand the plethora of fibers that compose our modern day reality. We live in a society that requires the rest of the world to function. Our modern industrial civilization has engulfed the entire globe. Our oceans are acidifying as we busy ourselves with destroying the last bastion of oxygen production, the great lungs of Gaia, the Amazon. Our species is very sick, but just like a patient with pancreatitis, hepatitis C, and cirrhosis we can't put the bottle down. No matter how much pain it will cause us, we can't bring ourselves to stop drinking. The fun has long since past, and now we just do it out of desperation; we do it because we don't want to feel the immense pain that we have and are creating. We also continue drinking because we are scared of the future. The bottle we are drinking from does not contain liquor. It contains a fermented liquid that the Earth concocted using lots of algae, high pressure, and millions of years. Like liquor, this liquid had the ability to produce a great delusion for the human race. It's this delusion that is responsible for our reckless destruction. It's this same delusion that has us destroying the only home we know of in this infinite expanse of space. We are hopelessly addicted to this magical substance that might as well be the Earth's blood. Like vampires we stick our fangs in the Earth and suck it's blood to quench our addiction. We don't care who pays the price so long as we can get another fix.

Our children are the ones who will pay the price. They are suffering from our debt in this toxic environment that their physical brains must mature in. Trying to figure out why this has happened is about like trying to figure out why a drunk continues to drink. His addiction has him homeless, laid out in the freezing cold street in his urine soaked stitchless rags, and yet he doesn't care because that's what his dark substance provides him. He's in unfathomable pain, and yet he can't feel any of it. Not until there is no liquor left will he finally be forced to face the reality. He wakes up in the cold street, piss soaked pants, peels himself off of the sidewalk, and begins begging for more. Death would be much better for him. This is our species. Drunk on oil. Until that oil is gone the delusion will remain. Business as usual. We don't even care that our children will pay the price for our recklessness.

Maybe the irreversible damage is done and there is no point trying to repair our diseased organs. In which case, I suppose we might as well just stay drunk until we're dead. Maybe it's just going to be too painful to bear the sober burden waiting for us. Could it be that this pain has grown so monstrously large that changing is impossible? Is there a Rubicon that our collective pain has crossed? If this is true than we might as well get on with it and put ourselves out of this misery. Save our children from the misery that we are ensuring for them with every action of every miserable day. If we are to just continue this madness than I would prefer we put an end to it. Problem is, I'm a father, so I don't have that luxury. I've got to find a way to conjure up some hope for my sons to believe in. Yet every place I turn to find just a miniscule fiber of hope I'm met by the blindness that is a pervasive aspect of the holograms programming. It's hard wired into the falsity that the hologram projects. How our species got to this point can only make sense metaphysically. It can only make sense in the quadrants of existence that the Matrix cannot detect. We have collectively lost touch with spirit. In our quest to conquer knowledge and nature we have lost our connection to the natural processes that are created by that spirit in the first place. We need nature to exist, but nature does not need us.

Those who control the work at the power plant that burns the Earth's blood to perpetuate the Matrix's hologram programing are not to be trusted, nor is their message. They are the catalysts that keep this drunken delusion disseminated to each and every human mind. Their intoxicating message must be ignored. Unfortunately everything about BAU is designed to continue perpetuating BAU as an endless positive feedback loop. Communication technology has become the great controlling opus of BAU. Cell phones, the internet, and television are how this great evil ensures it's continual existence within the human psyche. These things ensure that the message is being projected and received. If there is to be any hope, it will be found in learning to use these things to reverse this destructive process. The solution to our problems is staggeringly easy to understand. However it won't be easy to employ. I'm positive that it's going to be painful. We just have to accept that fact and move forward regardless.

The solution to all of our problems is to begin ignoring BAU, but in order to successfully do that, we must extract ourselves from its clutches. Ultimately, BAU is kept going by the electricity that is created by burning hydrocarbons. The electrical infrastructure is the Matrix's Achilles tendon. Electricity is magic, and by itself is neither good nor bad, but the system uses it to keep us all enslaved. This magical force used to be the product of nature alone by way of what might as well be called lightning, and our species seems to be proving that it should have stayed that way. We proved incapable of wielding that one...fire on the other hand. It's starting to look like the Amish were at least correct about the nature of electricity. I want to make it clear here that I'm NOT saying electricity should not be used, or that it's even evil by its own nature. What I am saying is that it should not be used if it's coming from the Matrix's infrastructure. This one step would ensure our extraction. Simply put, in order to fight the Matrix, we must remove ourselves from its physical clutches. Our species flourished long before the grid, and it will flourish after it. But if we do not begin taking the necessary steps towards extraction than our species will lose the chance to flourish.

Our spiritual amnesia must also be addressed. Unplugging from the grid would allow each one of us to once again remember sacred and natural divinity. The white noise emitted from the hologram blocks our spiritual receptors. The incessant drivel that is audible beyond the white noise is about nothing of consequence and is projected to every mind plugged into the grid. The last time I heard about that drivel, I was enjoying traditional Mexican cuisine, and it was intrusively going on and on about some poo poo cruise that the entire world was watching...and for some reason it was considered normal that those poor souls had to continue eating onion sandwiches and shitting on the deck. Some vacation...at least they got to shit in the great outdoors...albeit on the deck of a cruise ship. I bet those processed loaf bread and onion sandwichs were some god awful smelling turds . Come on people, my chickens have more dignity and sense than that and they shit all over the damn place 24/7.  

I was talking about spirit. That noise from the machine...it's function is to ensure we don't get the chance to contemplate spirit. Our minds and bodies are being filled with corporate programing when they need to be filled with sacredness. Yet they are so full with the former that there is no room left for the later. The cup has runneth over with the hologram. It's far beyond the mental realm. We are controlled on a physical level as well. Man made chemicals are ubiquitous in the very cells that compose our bodies. You need electron microscopes to even study that level of control. Some of these chemicals are prescribed to us by the Ministry of Health, others we willingly ingest, but the majority we have absolutely no control over. Our bodies absorb those toxins autonomically. Between the Matrix's mental control, and the physical chemicals pervading our biosphere, we are left almost hopeless. This is why we must begin extracting ourselves from these horrible mechanisms of control and destruction.

I understand that advocating for the avoidance of hydrocarbon fueled electricity seems excessive. That's because it is. It's excessive, purist, anal, unrealistic, idealistic, and probably impossible, and yet it's our only hope. Unless the amount of petroleum we are capable of getting at is less than what will be needed to bring the Earth's biosphere to it's catastrophic environmental threshold of chaos. We can pray that this will be the case, but just hoping is not good enough. We must begin turning our backs on the way we have done things for the last 200 years. The only successful strategy we can have towards righting our wrongs is to begin ignoring the Matrix and it's delusional hologram. Protesting does not produce results. The machine simply does not care what we think. Its got it's own momentum now, and it views itself as unstoppable.

Fact, our way of life is going to destroy the biosphere to the point where it will no longer sustain human life. If we continue BAU that will be the outcome. That being the case, I don't think there is anything that is too extreme if it can reverse that outcome. If the solution is unrealistic should that matter? Should it stop those of us who have identified the problem from trying to correct it? I don't think the solution being unrealistic should matter to us. Maybe it is too late. Maybe there really is nothing that can be done at this point. Yet without hope there can be no point to existence. If we are just doomed to failure as a species than we might as well destroy ourselves and get it over with. I don't think that is the case. I want to believe that we can fix our biosphere so that it will once again become healthy for our children. 

There is a great spirit that has all of the answers. In Druidry we call it AWEN (pronounced Ahhh Ohhh Ennnn). Funny how that word sounds like AMEN isn't it? I wonder if that's just a coincidence?  We have lost touch with that source. Unless we learn to once again sensitize ourselves to the stone, we will destroy all current life on Earth. This is the message that needs to be heard right now. This is what we need to wake up to. Our job is to awaken that spirit in as many people as possible. The only way to accomplish that goal is going to be to use the Matrix and it's hologram against itself. Somehow we are going to have to find a way to channel all of that Energy that is being created by burning the Earth's blood into consciously destroying the Matrix. I don't know how to do that, but that's what needs to be done. The solution may reside in enough people realizing that a different way is not just necessary and possible, but that it is most importantly desirable.  I happen to believe that the 100th monkey is about to wake.  But he won't if you don't.  That's the point...isn't it.  It's easy...wake up...

Some Piedmont Hope from the land of the Fox.

 

The Faustian Shanghi

 

The time has come for the collective consciousness of our planet to take responsibility for our predicament. Pointing the finger and exclaiming who's fault this mess is has lost it's point. Yet what exactly does it mean to take responsibility for our global mess? How does one take responsibility for the colossal clusterfuck we find ourselves in? Is it possible to change business as usual? Anything is possible if you have money, because everything on our globe has a price and at any rate the IRS requires it of us. Unfortunately money has an affinity towards not going anywhere once it's created. The money changers create it and then give it away to themselves while the rest of us blindly service the hologram that tells our brains that our highest purpose is consumption and acquisition of useless throw away uselessness. The money that we do manage to get our hands on is already spoken for by the same ass holes who created it in the first place. When we aren't working at acquiring money to keep the hologram active, we're anesthetized by all manner of mesmerization by way of fukitol franken pharma chemicals and the idiot panel. Anything to distract us from how stupid and pointless our existence inside the hologram has become.

Is this our fault? If not, than who's fault is it? There is nothing new here. The only difference between now, and when we first started with agriculture, is that the ass holes creating the money have had over 10,000 years to figure out how better to control us. They figured out, probably around the first year, that whoever controls the food can control everything and everybody. Since that day there has been slaves and masters. Now our masters are invisible entities hidden behind corporate non-persons and government bureaucracies. They all have one thing in common. They are concerned with our bank accounts and want every worthless penny to return to them. They were just loaned fiat pennies after all. It's their money. This is the real meaning of the 1% versus the 99%. Of course only in the empire do we have the time to sit around and contemplate how badly we have it. Everywhere else they're concerned with scavenging some useable refuse to construct a roof to keep their dirt floor from turning to mud, finding some calories to stop their child's grumbling bellies, and looking for a way to get plugged into the hologram where they too can get fat on petroleum sugar. That's why it's not their responsibility to care about destroying the hologram. We, those who have enough leisure time to read this must begin taking responsibility for the clusterfuck.

Ideally it's the responsibility of that lucky class of people whom have money beyond a month to month basis. If you don't know whether or not you'll have money to pay the next round of bills, and you have no health insurance, and you have kids to think about, than you can hardly be held accountable towards changing anything... right? But if you have money than that money convinces you that there is nothing wrong and in fact there is no hologram. There's just your comfortable life of leisure and plenty of excuses for you to use to explain away any problems facing the world. The money you have is yours and you can do whatever you want with it. You earned it! Since there is a price for everything, you can keep yourself supplied in it regardless of availability. If gasoline, food, and healthcare cost twice and three times as much as it did before than you can simply throw more money at it. You are an ass hole no better than the ass holes belonging to the ass holes you busy yourself with sticking your nose in. It's time to wake up because there are a lot of us who no longer have any money.

The energy is running out and you've painted us into a corner. You've made it necessary to have that energy to feed us. Some of us are dealing with the reality, but you aren't. A lot of us want to deal with this reality but can't because we have no money. All we can do is watch and wait to be discarded into the same dump we cart our pointless consumer trash to once we're done with it. The only meaningful action available to us is to continue fighting amongst our peers for a better position next to the table where your food scraps fall from. Or maybe that's just what you want us to believe?

Maybe you don't matter anymore. The time has come for all of us proles to stop giving a shit about you and what your incompetence is capable of. You've proven that all you are capable of is destruction for powers sake. Money doesn't really matter to you, just power and how much of it you can get. In your psychotic egomaniacal state your willing to consume and destroy everything just so that you can one up your peers. It's fun to you isn't it? You'll destroy everything in the name of vanity.

I told you a little over a year ago that I would find a way out of your game. How long do you think you can last once we all stand up at the same time because we've realized we've been Shanghied. Nobody signed up for this. There is an emergent consciousness that is growing exponentially now. It's growing right along side the population of 8 billion. That consciousness is aware of the appetite that will have no bottom once your GMO's self destruct and reign terror down on the human race. Once your radiant energy and mutant chemicals morph into an extinction like event that trickles down into the 1% of Gaia's fresh water supply. You'll choke along with the zombie hordes, and it will be on the flesh of your own progeny. Nothing will save you once the Cartesian 1's and 0's stop mattering. They will stop mattering.

The apocalyptic date has past already. Nobody noticed. They watched the movies and were entertained by it's passing, but they once again forgot once the black out ended and the American Hologram was restored. The black outs will become more frequent, and each one will bring with it the demise that's waiting for you. You won't be able to print your way out of the final black out. You already don't matter and yet you have no clue. There are those amongst the hordes that your information gathering machine doesn't recognize. They are anonymous. They are invisible like the fox because they have stopped caring about your 1's and 0's. They are beginning to remember what they lost when they got on your Faustian ship and entered into your Shanghi arrangement. They are small now and they reveal in their invisibility, but they will live to repopulate once you are gone. They are learning that the Earth and the Sun provide for them if they only believe with enough Faith. What does a tree care about medical insurance and mortgage payments? It still produces meat that falls to the earth as concentrated energy waiting to be absorbed in the human gut.

What will you do when enough people figure that out? What will you do when the goats eat your poison and shit it out? When the fungus transforms your gut rot carbon and neutralizes it. We are legion and we will inherit the Earth once your Matrix goes down and the Hologram dissipates into the same nowhere it came from. We are waiting for that day. We are silently preparing for your obsolescence. We have become anonymous economic non-persons whom you have long since forgotten. We are migrating to the margins of your machine and into terrain it cannot go. We are protected by our own anonymity. Watch as our signals disappear exponentially. The 100th monkey is about to wake.

Irradiated Zombies

One might wonder why somebody whom has resigned from the Matrix, and then subsequently removed himself from it, would want to waste any time fooling with the “interweb” (as my wife calls it). It would seem rather contradictory to quit the Matrix only to return to it. This blog is nothing if it's not a signal that I am broadcasting into it. “Hey agents, look over here,” is essentially what keeping a blog such as this one is doing. I can say a few things about that last point. The truth is that ever since I resigned from the navy, where I was employed (if you want to call it that) as a nuclear engineer, by way of missing ships movement and smoking all manner of herbs while UA (unauthorized absence), I've been on the radar, or list, or computer logarithm that concerns itself with all things command and control. Simply put, they've had their eyes on me ever since I was severed from the navy. As a side note, shortly before they severed me from the USN they sent my ass into solitary confinement for three days of bread and water in a class Charlie federal penitentiary in Bangor Washington. I'm not saying I've done hard time, or that I'm a convict, like is depicted for the newfangled myth of our time by the likes of Michael Schofield from Prison Break (he's the new MacGuiver, ), I just find it a particularly qualifying bit of personal past history.

My point is that they've been watching me since 2002 when I exited the navy. I had a classified clearance, which doesn't really mean shit seeing as how nuclear power ain't exactly a big secret these days. So while keeping this blog doesn't exactly help the cause for my broadcast blackout, I find it severely important as a service to humanity to help as many people as possible in learning the skills that are necessary for successful exit from the Matrix. Once you exit, your new life in the real world begins. That is where the hard work, although good work, comes in. Because it's not exactly as though we have many sane elders left any longer. That is a grave problem with severe consequences that are all tangled up with the iron bar to the collective head of modern society.

You know those pesky laws of thermodynamics that I spent so much time acquainting myself with while studying to be a nuke?  Which, as another detour from my point, I got shanghied into...I joined to be a deep sea diver and was flamboozled into standing ten feet next to a reactor looking through a periscope at the reactor once an hour during my five hour watch. All while launching jets off of the flight deck around the clock in response to the conspiracy that was 911...the great pretext to pounce on all of the oil in the middle east. Peak Oil anyone? Like the Government is clueless about PO. People who believe that shit are quit literally, as in very real, Zombies. Watch as you drive around...they can be seen walking, if you can believe that, on the side of roads and interstates these days. These ain't the hippies of yore either...they're vets recently returned from the desert where they busied themselves shooting women and babies in the face at point blank range. They're heavily medicated and unemployable waste generated by the military industrial complex that we were warned about. Do you actually believe that people can come back from that kind of shit and be anything resembling sane? If you believe that then stop reading now cause I'm not talking to you.

So back to the task at hand. Why am I keeping this blog active? In the risk analysis one must do, where exposure to the Matrix is concerned, the first check is “no longer broadcasting a signal into the Matrix via internet.” Well, I've already demonstrated why it doesn't change much for me. They know where I'm at, have known since the summer of 2002, and they know what I'm doing. I am exposing myself like this because I promised I wouldn't give up hope in my fellow man. That being the case, I need to help if and when I can.

I've been a writer my entire life. When I was in the first and second grade (I think...might have been 3^rd and fourth) I had to go to a reading and writing therapist...I think that's what he was called. I was behind in reading and writing for my age. I've been writing ever since and I was around 8 years old at the time. How's that for irony. Add to the fact that I recently found out that my half brother has Asperger's Syndrome which is carried by the father and he's my father's son. I took an online test and scored 70% in the affirmative. John Michael Greer, who's work I study, and whose organization I'm a member of (Ancient Order of Druids in America), and whom pretty much informs my current view of all things Druid, has it himself. If you connect enough dots it gets rather obvious what I'm getting at. Now, it must be said, that within that Syndrome, which is a very high functioning autism, I'm on the high functioning end of that. I believe I am particularly cut out for the job of liberating minds from this dying paradigm, this illusion, this hologram, this particular American Dream in this paricular Anti-Culture that is in the beginning stages of the compost heap. It's starting to heat up ain't it.

All of that to say this...I'm a leader. I've always been a leader, but all good leaders must also follow. I do that as well. I'm surfing this wave that will crash onto an island of hope and prosperity for nature and man. The work that needs to be done right now is the work of getting nature and man back on an even keel with one another. The consequences of Man's actions for the last couple hundred of years is beginning to mature into unavoidablity. We have to begin doing the work of crafting hope in the world. I believe Permaculture takes the Lion's share of that work for me, but an actual living spirituality is just as important. My particular path is Druidry. I consider myself a Druid because the truth is that I initiated myself last Alban Arthuan. I'm waving this flag because John Michael Greer is something like my Merlin.

I'm my own individual, just as my wife is, and just as you are. I'm broadcasting this signal into the Matrix because I've been called to do it by fate, destiny, and now will. It's an unavoidable part of where I'm going by necessity. Quit honestly, it's going to take magic to successfully deal with the future we are already in whether you want to believe it or not. I have faith that I will successfully navigate my way into the future. I don't know when I will blog again, and probably never on a schedule. I'm doing a lot of studying these days, but also a lot of doing in the World (specifically permaculture), and there's the matter of my son Ayden Zen that I must tend to on a daily basis. I will occasionally shout into the Matrix via this blog. 

 So here it goes...I am, and will continue defying the Matrix. I am doing it successfully. I'm typing this now to confirm that it does work. You can resign from the matrix, and if you follow your bliss, you will succeed. However, you must be ready to be attacked on a regular basis by agents. They will be your friends and your family. They can be anybody and everywhere. You have to be ready to constantly fend off their misery and remain authentic. It's very taxing work at times, to stay unplugged as a lifestyle, but it's necessary for the future of man on this living Earth. If enough of us do not head the call, the Earth will eventually shake us off like fleas...or perhaps we'll just irradiate ourselves into Zombies.

Nutritious Imperial Garbage

thanks to Billonions

Nutritious Imperial Garbage

By Aaron McCarty

(special to Collapsenet)

I recently sent my resignation into the Matrix and subsequently I'm in the middle of moving to a new town. My wife and I are downsizing our life so as to reduce the dependance we have on the Matrix. That requires that we do a few things that at first glance seem irresponsible, degrading, and dirty. To be clear, it only appears that way when viewed through the consciousness that the matrix and American Hologram provide to you. I'm beginning to realize that the Matrix operates under an Orwellian dialectic.

Orwell made this process clear in 1984 with the crafting of double speak as defined by the New Speak Dictionary. The process of double speak is pernicious because we use language to communicate what we mean and believe in reality, and more importantly we use it to decide on what is real and what is fake. Dictionaries are an important anchor where understanding one another is concerned...especially where electronic communication such as this is concerned. In fact, the protagonist, Winston Smith, works for the "Ministry of Truth" where he spends his day re-writing published newspaper articles so as to stay congruent with the Party propaganda of the day. Double Speak makes the "Ministry of Truth" make sense to the inner party members. The Ministry of Truth is actually the Ministry of Lies. In our time, the "Ministry of Truth" is Main Stream Media (MSM). It has gotten to the point where nothing that is seen on television should be believed as true. What you see on the television should be taken as propaganda as a matter of course. The internet is hardly better and in many cases worse. With the consumer grade software that is available for image and video manipulation there is nothing digital that should be believed. I believe what I read on Collapsenet because I have vetted Michael Ruppert by reading Crossing the Rubicon and Collapse. MCR has proven his trustworthiness as a news source to me by his work.

Double Think works by degrees. In the beginning of 1984 there is a scene where a character is bragging about how short the next Newspeak Dictionary is going to be. There is no place for nuance in Newspeak. Each word removed from our language decreases the amount of nuance available for expression. If we cannot express nuance than we become much more obtuse intellectually. The process of shortening a language is designed to dumb us down. Without nuance we can't tell why we feel like shit, because we cannot express why, even to ourselves. We just know that something is off, but nobody else can explain it, so it must just be something wrong with us. This process ends with an exponential growth in bureaucratic bull shit and a nation taking nearly 2/3rd of the anti-depressant's consumed in the world. Let me repeat that, we are a nation that takes nearly 2/3rd of the anti-depressants consumed in the world. We are a nation that prescribes neuron altering frankenchemicals to children who are barely old enough to talk. Why is this considered acceptable?

I recently witnessed something so horrifying that it made my soul wretch and cough. I found myself in a local organic food store in order to acquire some very well made boxes for free (apple boxes are great if you are moving..very high quality). The manager of the store told me last week that he would save me some boxes and to come back on Wednesday, and so that's what I did. On my way out of the store with my two free apple boxes I happened across a scene that struck me as off. There was a produce employee pitching avocados into a cart as fast as he could pitch them. He had to, because my best guestimation would be that he had about 280 left to go. He looked like he was ready to kill himself (due to his status in the Matrix I'm sure). Next to the cart was another cart with four boxes full of avocados.

"Are you throwing those avocados away?" I asked incredulously.

"Yeah, their too mushy. See.." as he handed me one to test for myself.

"This avocado is perfectly ripe right now...doesn't get any better than this."

"Yeah, I know, but we can't sell them like this, they want them to be like this one." He hands me an avocado from one of the boxes he's making room for. It's hard as a rock.

"This avocado won't be worth eating for at least a week!"

"I know."

"So you're just going to throw them away huh?"

"Yep, it's what they want us to do."

"Well can I have some of them then?"

"I can let you take them home but you have to promise to use them today if I let you take them"

"No problem man, I'll just go home and make a huge batch of guacamole and my family well be crappin' green for a few days." He didn't think my joke was funny.

So I opened one of my apple boxes and made to start pitching 20 or 30 avocados into it when he quickly said, "I can't let you have them for free!"

"You can't? But you are going to throw them in a dumpster?"

"I know, it's terrible, but it's what they want us to do." Alright, this is a corporate store, I get it. I'm a reasonable man. Avocados are ridiculously expensive in South Carolina this time of year (I wonder why?) and so I figure I can score some Avocados for dirt cheap. The store can at least get their money back...it's win win.

"So can you sell them to me at a discount?"

"I'm not authorized to do that, you'll have to talk to the manager."

"Alright, thanks brother." I should have talked to the manager, but I didn't. I had my hands full with the two large apple boxes, and I had a house located in the Matrix that I had to pack up. I left the store without rescuing the Avocados, and with my head marinating in the rich metaphorical symbolism. I had just witnessed one of the most nutritious fruits on the planet being made into waste. Nothing explains this better than doublethink. How is this not doublethink? What else explains it?

This is a perfect example of the disease that America has been sickened with. Over the last week I have found myself behind shopping malls opening dumpsters in search of boxes. Go to any moving company's website and see how much money you can urinate away buying moving boxes. I've scored all of 300 dollars worth of boxes and all I needed was a packing tape dispenser and 10 dollars worth of packing tape. I opened up a dumpster behind a grocery store the other day and almost started crying. Inside the dumpster was probably 50 pounds of saran wrapped cow steaks, a clear trash bag full of broccoli, and another one full of leaf lettuce. Behind a Dollar General, I found three small balls made of petroleum with characters from the "Cars" film printed on them. They were still in the plastic wrapped and hermetically sealed petroleum container that they were displayed in. What was wrong with this 10 dollar item you ask? One of the balls needed some air. I rescued the package and my wife sold it online for 7 buck after my 20 month old toddler, Ayden Zen, had his fun with them.

We are a nation that is drowning in our own depravity. We bomb nations full of innocent people for petroleum so that we can ship avocados, raise cattle, and make our kids toys just so that we can send it all to the nations dumpster. It doesn't end there, because once all of this perfectly good food (and all other manner of petroleum) gets to the dump, it ends up contributing to the green house gases in our atmosphere. I could have grilled 50 pounds of steak, served a nice salad, and had some perfect guacamole for free. I could have fed a neighborhood with our "waste." I didn't, but next time, I will. In fact, my resignation from the Matrix has allowed me to see more clearly. I'm not afraid to be looked down upon by those still in the Matrix, as they surely will do upon seeing me peruse through a dumpster.

How much money do you think those stores would have sold nearly 300 organic avocados, 50 pounds of steak, 30 pounds of broccoli, and 10 pounds of leaf lettuce for? It would have retailed at nearly 1000 dollars. But this is not the most egregious aspect of this anecdote of mine. There are millions, probably nearly a billion, of starving people on this Earth. America is so sick that it would rather contribute to the greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere than feed the starving. If nothing else, this all could have at least been composted and used to add nutrition, health, to edible plants, and therefore people. You would have never caught me in a dumpster before I told the Matrix to dig a hole and get in it. I had too much pride. Now I see the "Zombies," as we call them here on collapsenet, as zombie robots enchanted by imperial doublethink propaganda. So what do I care if they see my ass hangin' out of a dumpster in pursuit of perfectly edible petroleum that they would have bought 12 hours before for nearly 1000 dollars. If you still have not liberated yourself from the Matrix. I promise you that you can get by without it. After all, there is an obscenely disgusting amount of wealth in our imperial dumpsters...and a lot of people have died to put it there.