What a Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire

[jaqeboy]

jaqeboy, you have inspired me to heavily re-think my vocabulary.  I never connected "capitalism" with the definition you've proposed, in which it appears at first glance a sibling of fascism, but really isn't.   There are few things that annoy me so much as throwing around terms with great confidence then finding out I just ASSUMED some agreed-upon libtionary entry existed... and it doesn't.   HOW EMBARRASSING!

(Thank you!!) 

...  and karmaUP to you. 

Gotta go away and think now.          

Aw, shucks, you're welcome. Thanks for reading - trying to bring some clarity to the muddle of definitions.

I was told that Richard Cobden (one of our English liberal heros) was the first to use the term "capitalist" in the early 1800's, so I started reading him online to find his usages. Unfortunately, he was prolific and I had a short attention span  - someday I'll read all he wrote. My beef with the movement is that a lot of folks are sticking to insider vocabulary that does not mean the same thing to outsiders - causes a lot of clashes where there shouldn't be and isolates our movement from the societal context we live in and makes movement activists ineffective.

[Insurgent]

There's a thread discussing the film on another forum which I frequent, "Life After the Oil Crash" http://www.peakoilstore.com/forum/index.php/topic,6220.0/topicseen.html

There's a really accurate and insightful review of the film on there which describes the film very well:



"This film needs to be seen by everyone on the planet, at least twice.

It is that important.

While there are many documentaries out there that focus on single topics (Peak Oil, Global Warming, etc), What a Way to Go, Life at the End of Empire, a brilliant and incredibly insightful documentary by Tim Bennett and Sally Erickson, accomplishes the impossible by taking a macrocosmic snapshot of our current condition, its germination in the dim recesses of history...and our likely destination, and distilling it down into a 2-hour tone poem-esque presentation that speaks of the probable horrors of our future in words that are lyrical, poetic, and completely and utterly reasonable.

This is possibly the most comprehensive description of the times we are living in that I have ever seen, and it delivers its ominous observations with the even and mournful tone of Tim Bennett's voice, the voice of a vanishing breed in this county (perhaps the world): the voice of the Thinking Everyman. Tim Bennett has a vocal presence that is poignant by its very nature. If you were to take Roger & Me era Michael Moore, and remove every last shred of Moore's sarcasm, smugness, self-satisfaction, and self-righteous hubris, leaving just the mild voice of the earnest middle class, middle-aged, Middle American trying to make sense of a world gone mad, you would have something of an approximation. It is a calm midwestern voice, and a voice that tugs at your heart in its earnestness...perhaps because it is the voice that so many of us wish we could speak with in a world where only harsh voices gain notice.

There are other voices here, too.

There are the voices of Daniel Quinn, Derrick Jensen, Richard Heinberg, and a whole host of other underground cultural luminaries and regular people, artists, writers and academics...and the interviews can be just as moving and insightful as the narrative.

The DVD is divided into four sections: Waking on the Train, The Train and the Tracks, The Locomotive Power, and Walkabout. I'll summarize the parts briefly, as you should probably stop reading my blathering and just buy the thing.

Part 1 (Waking on the Train) details the dawning awareness that so many (but yet so few) of us have that the world is somehow not as it should be, that life was not meant to be a non-stop orgy of mindless consumption, self-indulgence and waste. For that unhappy few of us born without that part of the brain that accounts for the massive amount of denial everyone else seems to possess in abundance, there is a sense of anxiety we feel in the world...and one that we may have felt as far back as early childhood. (I know I did.) Reaching a point in one's development where one starts to take active notice of what is actually going on in the world can tend to bring the realization that there is just and ample cause to feel such anxiety...you wake up on the train to find that it is barreling ahead at full speed...now just where is that train going?

Part 2 (The Train and the Tracks), tackles the Big Four issues that are at the head of a vast host of dilemmas facing humanity: Peak Oil, Climate Change, Mass Extinction, and the Population Overshoot of our lovely species (at the expense of practically every other species besides rats and cockroaches). It does so deftly and convincingly. Those already familiar with these issues will find this a strong and concise summary, while those who are not will have their eyes opened. Wide.

Part 3 (The Locomotive Power), goes where so few other documentaries of such topics do...into the realms of Anthropology and History. It is here where the questions of "how did we get here" are dealt with. This, in a great many ways, is where the true genius of the film lies: it takes us back 10,000 or so years to the advent of agricultural wealth division, where the roots of our current sickness grew deep into the fertile soil of a planet that seemed boundless. And coming back into the present, the psychology of our current mass mind, the mind of abuse and addiction, escapism and denial, is laid bare.

Part 4 (Walkabout), avoids the easy answer of the techno-fix or the "if we only just do this, that, or the other thing" type of tripe that usually caps off similar works, and instead urges us to get off that speeding train in our own ways, individually and collectively...knowing full well that that train is going to crash and there is really little that can be done to change that inevitability. In it's own way though, there is hope presented here...just not the hope that we can continue to live in any of the ways we have grown accustomed to. But for the few who are brave enough to step off of the train and find their own way through the coming darkness to a far simpler world on the other side, that is the best kind of hope there is.

All good art presents us with a reflection of ourselves on some level, whether by direct commentary or by indirect abstraction. What a Way to Go offers both a reflective indictment of our collective folly for the uninitiated, and gives that small attentive minority who are looking at the same facts and evidence and reaching the same conclusions the reassurance that we are not crazy. It's the "masses" that are actually crazy...believing in nonsensical and unsustainable "stories" that are as addictive as they are ultimately unfulfilling and soul-killing. Bennett comes across as an eminently sane individual, both on film and in person, definitely not a wild-eyed loon preaching the gospel of the End Times. This gives his calm and reasonable voice the authority needed to convey the urgency of our situation without descending into shrill alarmism.

So you should listen to him. And you should get a hold of this DVD and share it with the people you love and make whatever plans you can.

Time is running out."

[Insurgent]

Could this movie be shown at a public library? Some libraries will allow presentations of any kind of material as long as the presentations are open to the public and money is not collected.

Yes, and no. Each public library has their own rules. Nashua, for example, requires a written release from the producers for a film to be shown. Concord library has a theater but the latest that it's open is 8:30pm, and they have no a/v equipment. No library will allow you to collect donations or sell merchandise, either. In any case, a resident of the town has to be the one to make the reservation. Perhaps a Manchester resident could check out their library?

I inquired at the new theatre in Concord; their prices are pretty high and they're not booking evening and weekend events until November, so I will check back with them then. I'll also check with the other theatre mentioned before, and with the Chinese restaurant down the street from me; they have a function room.

[CNHT]

Money can't buy happiness but ---- I can tell you from firsthand experience that it sure as hell helps when you get old and become sick!

Oh and it sure helps to be self-sufficient and not leeching of the rest of society...

[alphaniner]

I wanted to comment about one particular criticism of the film, that of it being primarily an 'appeal to the emotions' rather than an 'appeal to the intellect.'  Generally I agree that the 'emotional content' of the film far outweighs the 'intellectual content.'  I disagree, however, that that is necessarily a firm grounds for constructive criticism.

Consider by way of comparison Aaron Russo's film Freedom to Fascism.  I think it is safe to say that FtF was well received in 'liberty-loving circles,' to use a general phrase.  So was the film's appeal primarily emotional or intellectual?  I say it was emotional.  Don't get me wrong, I certainly learned quite a bit from watching the film.  Ultimately, though, the film didn't really contain very much factual, intellectual 'ammunition' for use against the income tax.  So what then was the 'point' of the film?  I attest that it was to get people motivated about the issue so they would get informed.  And appealing primarily to the emotions, while just whetting the intellectual appetite, is a good way to go about this.

[Insurgent]

I wanted to comment about one particular criticism of the film, that of it being primarily an 'appeal to the emotions' rather than an 'appeal to the intellect.'  Generally I agree that the 'emotional content' of the film far outweighs the 'intellectual content.'  I disagree, however, that that is necessarily a firm grounds for constructive criticism.

Consider by way of comparison Aaron Russo's film Freedom to Fascism.  I think it is safe to say that FtF was well received in 'liberty-loving circles,' to use a general phrase.  So was the film's appeal primarily emotional or intellectual?  I say it was emotional.  Don't get me wrong, I certainly learned quite a bit from watching the film.  Ultimately, though, the film didn't really contain very much factual, intellectual 'ammunition' for use against the income tax.  So what then was the 'point' of the film?  I attest that it was to get people motivated about the issue so they would get informed.  And appealing primarily to the emotions, while just whetting the intellectual appetite, is a good way to go about this.

Good point, and well-put. I made the case some time ago that What a Way To Go is not a documentary; it is a story. Freedom to Fascism is also a story and not a documentary. Just as we have seen in the discussion on this thread about capitalism -vs- free markets, understanding the correct definition of terminology is important.

[jaqeboy]

...Don't get me started....

I think we'd all do well to get you started more often.

Thanks, LoA

[Insurgent]

Yesterday I came across a very inspired and well-written original essay by Dr Carolyn Baker. In it she describes meeting the film makers on the final leg of their tour in the Southwest, and goes on to elaborate on some of the points addressed in the film--particularly the oft-asked question of "what can I do?"




The essay begins:


"This past week I attended another screening of "What A Way To Go: Life At The End Of Empire"[1]. My intention was not to see the documentary yet again-perhaps for the fifteenth time, but to support the film makers, my friends Sally Erickson and Tim Bennett, who were completing the last leg of their West Coast screening tour in my state. However, I did watch most of the film again, and this time, my experience was different. No doubt that had something to do with the walk Tim and I took during part of the film, bouncing around the narrow, vintage streets of Silver City, New Mexico and filling our lungs with the chilly night air. Maybe it was Tim's comment that when people ask "What can I do?" they don't really want the truth but rather ten easy steps that will require no sacrifice, no pain, and certainly no change of lifestyle.


Tim's comment resonated with my experience in teaching history to college students who incessantly ask, "But what can we do?" when I systematically lay out the reality of the corporatocracy the United States has become, energy depletion, climate change, and of course, the police state in which we now reside. When I answer the students with my perception of options rather than solutions, they tend to sink in their chairs and tell me that they feel overwhelmed not only with the daunting reality of the planetary situation but even worse, that they wanted me to offer them "hope", and are disappointed that I instead offer them responsibility. I tell them that since I don't have any "hope" it would be disingenuous of me to attempt to offer it to anyone else..."

and continues here http://carolynbaker.net/site/content/view/203

[Insurgent]

Yesterday I came across a very inspired and well-written original essay by Dr Carolyn Baker.

Good one! The more I read from Dr. Baker the more I like her. The only thing that's missing from the article is a suggestion for readers to pick up a copy of "The Handbook for the New Paradigm".

Agreed, law. I've personally benefited greatly from Dr Baker's work, discovering her original works as a subscriber to From The Wilderness, back in the day. It was actually because of her review of this film that I discovered it!

She is very much awake and in tune; in addition to her personally-penned works, she puts out a daily email newsletter which culls together a slew of important and enlightening articles. Sign up for free here http://www.carolynbaker.net/mailList/lists/

[Insurgent]

The film makers have wrapped up their second tour, this time of the West and Midwest, and have written this lengthy and insightful blog entry about their experiences. Well worth taking to heart, albeit a very painful read:

http://www.whatawaytogomovie.com/2007/11/13/build-an-ark-build-it-now

[jaqeboy]

Yesterday I came across a very inspired and well-written original essay by Dr Carolyn Baker.

Good one! The more I read from Dr. Baker the more I like her. The only thing that's missing from the article is a suggestion for readers to pick up a copy of "The Handbook for the New Paradigm".

Law, I think I've seen that before, but do you have a link to an online copy?

[Insurgent]

http://carolynbaker.net

THE DEER FACTOR OR BAMBI VS. THE COLLAPSE OF CIVILIZATION, By Tim Bennett


CAROLYN'S COMMENT: This is not an exclusive article, but it is so incisive, so down-to-the-bone transparent, exuding truth from every syllable, that I chose to send it as an exclusive. In it, Tim is telling you to stop listening to the "I refuse to live in fear" mantra, and distinguish between the manipulation of fear by the powers that be and the things we really ought to feel fearful about--and why--and how. He's also telling you to do what you already do which is to read the Daily News Stories at this site regularly.

The people I see engaged in effective response have all faced into, sat with, chewed on, and stared down their fear. This does not mean they are no longer afraid. It means that they have confronted their fears and found themselves more than a match for them. It means they have found their power to respond even when afraid, which is the definition of courage. They are still standing in the headlights, for there is no real place to hide, but they are not frozen. They are readying themselves for the blow, however and whenever it comes, responding, moment by moment, intuitively, rationally, non-rationally, and with heightened awareness

Tim Bennett gives us a truly sane and gut-felt response to the heroic "I refuse to live in fear" mantra--CB

        Don't be afraid to be afraid...
        nnnnnnnn Yoko Ono, Beautiful Boys

I have heard many astounding things in the four years since I began to make What a Way to Go. The most astounding is this, which I have heard more than once, from real, living, seemingly intelligent and thoughtful people: "I refuse to be scared."

Imagine... refusing to feel one's feelings. As if such a thing is ever really possible. As if such a thing is even a good idea. As if such a disconnection from one's own body and one's essential humanity, as if this core-directed attempt at control and domination, isn't just more of the same. It's a bit like "I refuse to feel pain" or "I refuse to feel hunger." I mean, right on... pain and hanger can be a real downer, dude, so like, yeah, cool, groovy, far out, but like.... um... shouldn't you take your emaciated hand out of that fire? It's starting to smoke.

Many great thinkers have wondered, Kurt Vonnegut amongst them, whether the hypertrophied human cerebral cortex will ultimately prove to have been a bad idea, and whether it will be soon selected against in the grand Walkabout that is evolution. My guess is that, if that should be the case, if we do go the way of the Yangtze River Dolphin or the Miss Waldron's Red Colobus Monkey (two species which have recently gone belly-up in the shallow and quickly-warming end of the gene pool), it will be because this great, gray, wrinkled jelly-mold of an organ confers upon us the dubious ability to convince ourselves that we do not feel what we feel, and that we do not think what we think. To my mind, that's about as good a working definition of insanity as we're ever going to get.

"I refuse to feel scared." Could we ask for a more marvelous statement of willful denial than that?

It's understandable, of course. We live in a culture, and a system of governance and economy and production, that uses fear to control us. Just as it uses violence. Just as it uses power. And so, in the realms of power and violence and fear, we are left to stumble about at our most crazed and confused. Chafing under the dominating jackboot of the mortgage payment, the television commercial, the IRS form and our next employee review (what, did you think all dominating jackboots came hob-nailed?), we seek to distance ourselves from any and all participation in such basic human animal responses as fear in the face of danger, or protection and defense in the face of attack: "Those bastards use fear and power to control us, goddamnit! No way am I going to let them make me be afraid!" In an attempt to "not become the enemy", we wrap ourselves in cloaks of noble courage and righteous pacifism and hope that these thin fabrics will protect us.

And why not? They HAVE protected us. If we're rich, that is, or at least middle class. If we're white. If we're male. If we're educated. If we're first world. If we're well-employed. Here in the Insulated States of America, much of our violence and power and fear, at least of the hob-nailed sort, has been outsourced, offshored and externalized so as not to upset us while we eat (bad for the digestion, you know). We on the top have been spared the most brutal and overt consequences of our actions for so long now that we have forgotten that there are any. We close our eyes and click our heals and zip up our No Fear hoodies and we're good to go, confident that all that wishin' and hopin' will work today just like it worked yesterday.

Which is, of course, why Peak Oil whacks us so devastatingly upside the head. Because when we begin to look closely at the situation, it becomes very clear, very quickly, that wishin' and hopin' are about to go the way of the Yangtze River Dolphin and the Miss Waldron's Red Colobus Monkey in terms of effective life strategies.

It burns, doesn't it? It galls and vexes and maddens. I mean, isn't this what we spent ten thousand years trying to control? Haven't we worked long hours for low pay killing off everything we could that might chase us or bite us or poison us or eat us or claw us or irritate us or scare us or make us feel all creepy and oogly inside? Didn't we arrange things so that we could know where our next meal is coming from, and where our warm bed will be at the end of the day? Aren't we, by virtue of our millennia of effort, and by virtue of our exalted position at the very tip-top of the Great Chain of Being, actually and in no uncertain terms ENTITLED to not feel fear?

Well, sorry, no, we're not. We can't have that. First, because that Great Chain is a load of horseshit (my apologies to horseshit, which, composted, can be really great for your garden), and second because our delusional attempts to control something as huge and complex and chaotic and self-directing and autonomous and sacred as THE WHOLE WORLD have succeeded only in pissing her off, and, as that great mallrat-t-shirt says, "When Momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy". Knock knock. Who's there? Climate change. Oh fuck.

Some people, cognizant of how silly it sounds to actually deny their own feelings, will tweak things a bit, saying, instead of "I refuse to be scared", something like "I refuse to live in fear," meaning, I think, pretty much the same thing (though now avowed as an actual policy), but sounding much better. That this is said with high nobility of purpose and the best of intentions does not surprise me, for we are nothing if not well-intentioned. That it's said with a straight face astounds me. Like... um... wouldn't the only reason to actually "live in fear" be if there were something in our lives that was ongoingly frightening and threatening? And... I'm embarrassed to have to write this... if there's something ongoingly frightening and threatening in our lives, don't we actually want to know about it, and maybe, the gods forbid, respond? Isn't that what fear is for?

Maybe that's not totally fair. Maybe it is. At some point, we have to do the work of teasing apart a healthy and useful feeling of fear from an unhealthy and useless feeling of worry, of fear mired in molasses and J-B Weld, which can be both debilitating and paralyzing. Perhaps it's the difference between a creative response and a reaction. Fear has an in-the-moment quality to it, as a response to an immediate stimulus, and the possibility of openness and creativity exists therein. Worry has a long-term gnawing quality to it, as if fear has taken up a dwelling-place in our hearts, with plans to stay and eat all our potato chips, and there's nothing we can do to get rid of it.

We point to that ol' deer-in-the-headlights as an example of the paralyzing effect of fear. Well, let's think about deer for a second. I've met up with many of these "venisons of the deep" in my day, walking through the woods. When they hear me coming, they respond by running away. I've yet to have one stand there and let me walk up and pet it. Given the traditional choices afforded us animals, and knowing that fighting is probably riskier and may take more energy, and seeing an obvious escape route, the deer flees. Of course. Easy as pie. Deer ain't dumb.

But when I approach a deer encased in two tons of metal and glass and fine Corinthian leather, sometimes the deer takes the third option, the option that remains when fighting won't work and there isn't time to flee, or a place to flee to: it freezes. Not a bad strategy as a last resort, given the physiology of vision and the instincts of predators, but fairly useless against a Ford F-350 Super Duty diesel, or even a Toyota Prius. What works in the evolved world of lions and tigers and deers fails in the invented world of traffic and tramways and trucks. An oncoming pickup falls so far outside the traditional purview of a white-tailed deer that her first and most effective fear responses break down. Fight and flight appear to be out of the question and, unfortunately in this case, freeze doesn't stand much of a chance. Traffic and tramways and trucks. Oh my.

This, I think, is what some people are pointing to when they say they "refuse to live in fear." They look at oil and climate and environmental meltdown and mass extinction and overshoot and economic and political insanity and they sense that, if things are really this dire, there's no real way to effectively fight it (as in solving it... as in keeping this system going... as in SOL, dude... ), no clear place to which they might flee for safety (where could we go where they don't hate us?...hmmm....), and they rightly surmise that freezing, in the face of something this huge, will probably not work either. What to do, what to do? There IS an ongoingly frightening and threatening presence in our lives. The coming storms lie so far outside of our purview that our traditional fear responses break down. We already know what usually happens to the deer. And being frozen in fear, apart from not working, really, really sucks. What to do?

I know! Let's refuse the situation. Let's just say no to our own reality! In fact, let's re-write reality. Let's do like Captain Kirk did with the Kobayashi Maru training exercise and reprogram the simulator. After all, he didn't believe in the no-win situation, so why should we? I mean, c'mon, people! We're Americans, aren't we? Damn straight! Lock and load! Let's roll!

Ahem... where were we?

When we douse out the fear, when we tamp down the embers of worry, we unwittingly, and unfortunately, choose ingrained reaction over creative response. We fail to let the fear and worry do their work, the work of alerting us, not only to the fact that we are in danger, but also that this danger is huge and new and so dire that our normal responses will not serve us.

Our culture in general (and those in power and control in particular) has used and abused fear and power and violence in order to manage our behavior and our beliefs, to sell us shit we don't need, and to siphon off the material wealth of an entire planet. In reaction to that, rather than in creative response, we end up forced through tighter checkpoints and down narrower chutes, further and further into the pen. Reacting rather than responding IS a life lived in fear. Reaction is always constrained. It is always less free. The irony, for those who say, "I refuse to live in fear", is that they already do, and that they probably always have. Refusing fear is a fear reaction to fear itself. (You came close, FDR, but no cigarette holder.)

There's a way in which the fundamental heart and spirit of What a Way to Go can be encapsulated in one short piece of voice over: "If what we want is to stop the destruction of the life of this planet, then what we have been doing has not been working. We will have to do something else." Something else, as in something really else, as in "now for something completely different" else. Not the same old tricks in a new shade of muddy green.

So what might that be, fellow deers? We've tried the Happy Chapter (TM), but that hasn't seemed to "work" (I'm defining "work" as "somehow avoiding our headlong plunge into global mass extinction"). We've done the studies and written the books and convened the conferences and made the movies and, standing there in the glare of headlights, we've looked up at that big ol' scary truck a'comin', yes we have, yes we have. But then, because it's so darned scary, and because everybody knows you can't leave people afraid and upset, and because everybody knows that you've got to give people hope, man, you've just got to!, we've tacked on conclusions and chapters and benedictions and epilogues and dénouements that say, "Hey, things aren't so bad. All we have to do is this-and-this-and-this and everything will be fine." And the effect on us has been to put us back to sleep. I mean, if somebody has figured out the this-and-this-and-this, then surely they're on it, right? So, I can get back to my shows, right? Cool. The truck? Oh, that. Yeah, don't worry. There's some guys in Colorado who have found the brake pedal.

(If only we had stopped to wonder why it is this culture never actually DOES this-and-this-and-this. Here lies Humanity: They could have saved themselves, but they really sucked at follow-up!)

We keep inching up to the edge of terror and hopelessness and despair, only to pull back and find solace in the arms of denial and false hope and slightly-less-unsustainable "green living." Doing so hasn't actually "worked." So... now what? What comes next?

Remember, the truck is still coming...

I am reminded of an old children's game we used to play in the one-room schoolhouse I attended in rural Michigan. One of us would lead and the rest would follow and we'd sit together and smack our hands on our knees and mimic the various motions and sounds as we went along. It was a hoot. Here, I'll lead:

Coming to some fear. Coming to some fear.
Can't go over it. Can't go over it.
Can't run away from it. Can't run away from it.
Can't go around it. Can't go around it.
Gotta go through it. Gotta go through it.
Alright. Alright.
OK. OK.
Let's go. Let's go.

Smack your hands on your knees, folks. Shout out and shake these bones. We've got some feeling to go through! (WARNING: DO NOT TRY THIS ALONE!)

Here's the thing: I think we all KNOW that we have to do this. We know it's the fact that Brother Al's movie was so damned scary that put Climate Change near the top of our national Honey-Do list (whether what the national Honeys are doing will actually "work" is another essay). We know that it's the feeling that has made the difference. And we know that it's the feeling that makes us come alive, which is why we spend $9 (plus $7.50 for popcorn and a drink) to go to a movie that will wrench our hearts and drain our tears and rouse our righteous indignation and scare the bejesus out of us.

What we don't know is how to do this whole "feel the terror" thing without it totally undoing us, without it leaving us debilitated and paralyzed. I mean, shit, pretty much every last thing the analysts and scientists I've been reading for the past four years have been saying is now coming true, with this exception: IT'S UNFOLDING WAY FASTER THAN EXPECTED. Foreign investors are fleeing, petrodollars are petrified and petrodenial is running dry, bubbles are bursting and dollars are dropping and the price for a barrel of light sweet is getting downright crude. The delusional belief system (aka "the economy", aka "the market") is staring on in dis-belief. Oh, and climate change? Well, let's just say that you might want to buy those new waders you've been looking at in the Cabelas catalog. Today.

You know things are moving quickly when you get to be a prophet and an historian all in one lifetime...

Atomized and ruggedly individualized, riven from our tribal roots, deprived of our healing arts, numbed, dumbed and bummed by an insane culture, alone and without community, how for fuck's sake are we supposed to go through our terror? And why should we? If we can't fight, and we can't flee, what are we to do? If our terror is keeping us frozen, how do we know that feeling it and moving through it and unfreezing it (rather than denying it) will actually give us the power to jump before the truck turns us into road-pizza?

Well, here we are at the heart of it, folks, where the rubber meets the doe, so to speak. There IS no jumping out of the way. The truck is too big. And too close. And moving too quickly for us to even have time to get a good crouch in. So... perhaps it's time to remember that sometimes... sometimes... when deer and truck meet... the truck gets totaled. And sometimes... sometimes... the deer survives.

We're going to have to question some deeper assumptions here. Who says we can't take the blow? And who says deer can't protect themselves from attack? Who says we can't find effective responses that will give us a better chance of surviving the impact? And who says we can't align with the forces already in motion to help the death machine die with more dignity, and less destruction, than it otherwise will? Who says?

Ah, we poor Average Americans (TM). We've been bought off just like the Canarsies were before us (supposedly). But instead of the legendary "$24 worth of beads and trinkets", we got iPhones and plasma TVs and hot and cold running water and The Sopranos and Denny's Grand Slam Breakfast. We're so much smarter than those silly Indians, aren't we? Look what we got! And all it cost us was... well... our very souls, not to mention the health of an entire planet, which is, technically speaking, bigger than Manhattan.

We seem to have so much to lose (as long as we can continue to externalize those darn costs) that talk of taking the blow, of acting to protect ourselves and the life of this planet, scares the rest of the bejesus (that residual bejesus which has not been frightened away by horror movies) right out of us. Take the blow? I can't take the blow; I just got these new blue jeans! Fight back? Why, they'll put me in jail! I can't get a signal in there! Preparing for collapse looks, to those at the top, like hard physical labor and learning to cook possum and really greasy hair and no more trips to Caribou's. Fighting back looks like embarrassing headlines and a date with Bubba in the showers. With possum stew and jail food on the menu, the Extinction Basket with pommes frites and a Coke (TM) begins to look like an attractive option.

Pampered and purchased, it's pretty much agreed all around that the last thing Americans are going to do is rise up and take their lives back into their own hands. On the whole, that's probably true, at least until we've already lost our toys. But while masses do not seem to change minds on any sort of a time scale that will help us at this point, individual minds can and do change. People can step out of denial and get into real and effective response. You can. Yeah, I mean you. That's why I'm sitting on my ass right now writing. Because there are people out there who are ready to look where I'm pointing. Maybe you're one of those people.

We can take the blow. (We don't really have much choice.) Perhaps we can even survive it. We can begin by finding our place and our people. We can start an edible forest garden and clean out some old barrels for water catchments and walk down the road and meet all of our neighbors and get together for a potluck and a meeting and talk about what's coming. We can find a facilitator and do the feeling work we need to do, moving through the grief and the hopelessness, the fear, the anger, moving through them and beyond them, moving together, arm in arm, hand to hand, heart to heart, discovering that we are strong enough to bear such things, that we are still whole enough to not be undone by them, finding that together, we can stand and face the headlights, we can stand and hold each other as the truck hits, and finding, maybe, just maybe, that some of us are still alive after it has passed. Some of us need to do this work, because most will not. Refusing to feel their fear now, they will be forced to feel it upon impact, when the trauma is greatest, the losses so hard to bear. They will need our help.

And we can act to protect ourselves (the larger "ourselves", which includes everybody else). We have no real idea what small groups of us can do to that truck if we stand up to it when it hits, but we can acknowledge the possibility that the truck will end up overturned in the ditch, damaged beyond repair, never to "let's roll" again, while we manage to limp away and lick our wounds. It could happen. And since it's possible that finding some way to deflect the truck into a ditch will "work" (and remember I'm defining "work" as "somehow avoiding our headlong plunge into global mass extinction"), then it's worth the responding, the trying, the being, the doing. Things are going to get a bit crazy. The rules are all going to change. Stay awake. Stay aware. Stay poised. All will become clear.

The people I see engaged in effective response have all faced into, sat with, chewed on, and stared down their fear. This does not mean they are no longer afraid. It means that they have confronted their fears and found themselves more than a match for them. It means they have found their power to respond even when afraid, which is the definition of courage. They are still standing in the headlights, for there is no real place to hide, but they are not frozen. They are readying themselves for the blow, however and whenever it comes, responding, moment by moment, intuitively, rationally, non-rationally, and with heightened awareness. And they are getting prepared to play their parts in tossing that damned truck into the ditch.

It seems fair, in a way, that someone takes the blow. Not necessarily at the individual level, of course. There are many, many victims in this story. We were all born into this situation. I will not argue that any one of us in particular has a debt to pay. That's for each of our own hearts to know.

But at the collective level, at the level of our nation, and our culture, there is a fairness here that feels deep and clear. This particular troop of clever monkeys has acted abominably. As dysfunctional (if not self-acknowledged) members of the Community of Life, as supposedly informed and qualified delegates to the great Council of All Beings, we have amends to make. Perhaps feeling the fear we've engendered, the pain we've caused, the grief we've created, the anger we've provoked, the guilt we've earned and the clear and soaring joy we can step into at any moment, perhaps feeling deeply is one way to begin making those amends. Feeling. Then moving into defensive and protective responses that might actually "work". It's sort of a cosmic you-break-it-you-buy-it situation we find ourselves in. We created this, we "civilized" ones. We broke the Laws of Life. The results belong to us. So how much do we have in our wallets? Who are we going to be?

I know my path: I'm going to finish growing up. I'm going to do whatever it takes to rejoin the community of living souls as a fully initiated adult human being. Refusing to feel one's fear is just a dressed-up form of adolescent indestructibility, just another facet of Civilization's millennia-long PCP frenzy. Fuck that. It's time to grow up. I'm ready.

I'll fear my fair share of fear and grief and anger and shame and joy, and savor the sweet delight of being alive in this amazing time. I'll find those few people who see the truck coming, and sit with them in circle and share my heart, and my tears, and we'll stand together and watch the truck as it nears. I'll read the headlines, at the very least, in Carolyn Baker's Daily News Stories, and let the fear and anger wash over me and through me, and I'll use that fear to keep me aligned, and in response mode, with reality.

I'll use the fear, rather than refuse it. I'll use it to keep me awake and alive and in action. I'll use it as an antidote to the culture that seeks always to lull me back to sleep. I'll use it to help bring an end to that culture.

Damn, that feels good.

Bring on the truck.
Last Updated ( Tuesday, 27 November 2007 )