Good stirring of the topics, Max... and the interrelated-ness of 'out there' and 'in here'. To riff the well-known phrase: Think nonlocal, act local; what quantum physicists call “nonlocal “ energy—the ability of any being to instantaneously know about or communicate with another being no matter the distance or time difference. Or according to Black Elk, Oglala Lakota, in the book The Sacred Pipe: “The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us.”
I distinctly remember the moment I realized that our culture was omnicidal and I was unwittingly contributing to the destruction of our biosphere. I had just watched Chris Martenson's Crash Course. It was devastating at a visceral level. And crippling because I had NO idea what to do about it. Then, I read the book Deep Green Resistance and it was the first time everything started to make sense on a political and social level. I understood why everything was falling apart and what we CAN do about it. That was in 2011.
Then, in 2012, my younger sister and I were both first diagnosed with breast cancer - then again in 2015 - which started a series of major setbacks that I'm only now recovering from after 9 years.
Throughout those years I tried many things despite my life being a mess and realized just how much human beings rationalize our destructive behaviour, and specifically our lack of adequate response to out existential threat. Cultural trauma is what we're up against and it's getting so much worse. Human beings aren't lazy or weak. We've just had the fight beaten out of us.
This is now my mission: to restore the resilience and fighting spirit of people in my community. I can't fight alone but I can help inspire others to see and face the coming collapse with fire in their hearts and love for our children.
We've all been dehumanized over the past 4 years. It's time to reclaim our humanity. Thank you for inspiring me and so many other people, Max. Know that you are making an impact. 💓🫂🙏
Thank you for sharing your story with me, and with all the other readers. I completely agree that we've had the fight beaten out of us (and propagandized out of us, etc).
I really appreciate this analysis. Changing entire systems is an inherently, deeply, conflictual process. I hope - I believe many of us hope - that the conflict can be as nonviolent as possible, but there is no avoiding sustained, strategic conflict to create that better, freer world. My thinking on this has been shaped by reading anarchists, and reading and listening to people in other countries, right now, especially in Gaza. I'm pretty old, and I've seen a lot of "demonstration projects" come and go. We need to scale up, not fear losing our "purity" (which was never that pure, anyway).
Thanks for your passion and the historical survey of the European genocide of the Americas, but you lost me at the condemnation of what I believe the single most important action we can take today to make any progress in saving life on the planet: individual action and CONTRACEPTION. All of the horrendous travesties you catalog are the direct result of massive European, African, and Asian overpopulation and emigration into already fully occupied "New (?) World". Malthus was thinking about the rapid population growth in America when he wrote his "Essay..." in 1798, as was Franklin observing the DOUBLING of the American population every 25 yrs. for two generations.
I am a survivor of the "Days of Rage" in Chicago in 1969, when I was attempting to set-up the National Headquarters of the Student Health Organization and publish a nationwide journal, "Encounter", of which only the first issue was printed, with Che Guevara's photo on the cover. 31 well meaning (?) SDSers proceeded to break windows in expensive retail stores and where shot when they engaged the Chicago PD.
That was the end of any appeal to violence that I had entertained to that point and I recommend that anyone, especially passionate youth like yourself, forgo violence in their/your quest to right the many wrongs of this dying world. I, too, am a student of Native American and all indigenous cultures. The US DOS made the mistake of sending me at the end of my medical/psychiatric training to Bangkok to fill the vacancy of Medial Director of the Youth Treatment Center, a facility set-up by the DOS to "treat" American teenage heroin addicts. Long story short, I was introduced to Buddhism and the concept of compassionate regard for all things and people, which I continue to practice and which was a core element of my 42 yr. psychiatric/addition medicine/stress management practice.
I'm 79 now, retired, and the author of the FREE online e-book PDF, "Stress R Us", which I recommend to anyone reading your passionate post here. It covers much of what you are saying about Hunter-Gatherers and indigenous cultures. We are 3,000 times more populous today than were our H-G ancestors, who were the last of us to live in an ecologically balanced and sustainable lifeway. Massive human overpopulation and overconsumption is our dear Mother Earth's main problem, and we AS INDIVIDUALS can solve it by not bringing another innocent life into this dying world. More at Greeley's Newsletter here on SubStack. Thanks, again, for your courageous effort.
Hi Greeley, thanks for the comment, and for your lifelong commitment and work. I'm inspired to hear about your work on addiction issues. On that note, did you read this piece I wrote recently? I'd be curious on your professional perspective: https://maxwilbert.substack.com/p/first-responder-trauma-a-new-framework
It truly means a lot to me to have elders of the movement participating in the discussions here. A few thoughts.
First, I completely agree that overshoot and overpopulation are fundamental issues. I wrote about population recently here, which you may appreciate: https://x.com/MaxWilbert/status/1755282691677925588 . It's a critical issue that's often overlooked, buried, made taboo, and the conversation is shut down.
Also, to be clear, I don't think individual action is unimportant. I think it's vital, hence the title of this piece: "beautiful and important." But I do stand by my assertion that it's not enough. I think we need organized political action in concert with individual action. And I don't think that action needs to, or should be, violent. Strikes, boycotts, mass non-violent action, etc. can all be incredibly effective (however, I think they should be tightly organized, which I believe is still a "militant" in the dictionary sense of being aggressive and confrontational. However, I don't reject violence completely; for example, the violence of the anti-apartheid movement, of indigenous communities against settler-colonialists, and the tactical defensive use of force by the Deacons for Defense are all, in my view, completely morally justified. Violence is a very dangerous thing, and can become a drug. But I'm not an absolutist on that topic. Rather, I think we need to look at the context.
Thanks for your reply, Max. I wrote a reply to your "first responder..." essay you may wish to read. I will have nothing to do with anything the South African white supremacist Elon Musk produces, including the absurd "X". Very best wishes to you and yours, Gregg (an "elder")
Dear Greeley, a warm hello and thanks from Australia. Just an aside point: I am laughing because my only regular contact with biocentric people outside this household is via much-maligned (and rightly so) Twitter, which is also an excellent connection database for all its flaws. It thankfully has a block button I have literally employed thousands of times in under three years with the good effect of cleaning up the experience remarkably so that I can now enjoy it.
Did you ever have a sociopathic teacher? I did. It was great fun passing surreptitious written notes to each other in such a classroom. Since the Elongated Husk has bought Twitter for his billionaire plaything our little social online circle has had even more fun subverting the platform to connect, support each other practically and emotionally, share DIY/anti-consumer tips etc - all the very things the platform is designed to prevent. And we freely discuss what we think of people like him, and I have never yet been censored for it.
Our group consists of geographically and socially isolated people from all over the globe who wish we lived in a village together or at least had a TARDIS to allow regular face to face time. But it's a wonderful thing to have these people at all and has been good for mental/emotional health and motivation. In the absence of the physical village we would all like, it is good to have a supportive virtual village and the chance of maybe connecting enough people IRL so some physical villages may eventually happen...
The people are more important than the dysfunctional structures designed to contain them.😉
Thanks for your wonderfully written reply and I wish you and your virtual community all the best. Keep building your network, about which you are obviously skilled and a great example for others. However, I still ain't touchin' anythin' the Musky man has touched. ( :)) Have a blessed day!
Thank you again.🖤 I loved your posts BTW and was hoping you'd not feel nitpicked by my little anecdote. I am sure if the Elongated Musk had owned Twitter back in 2022 it would have kept me away as I too am highly allergic to such entities. But as I was already on it when he bought it, it was like when the Death Eaters took over the Ministry of Magic - we stayed and fought. He's lost megabucks with his little ego/influencing project and earnt the scorn of many in this village square, but most importantly our little community can as yet still connect and interact largely unharassed - thanks largely to the block button Apple et al haven't let him remove despite his expressed wishes.😉
I fear the reaction of, first and foremost, US Empire, whose 'leaders' seem hell-bent on taking all life to the grave, rather than give up their power, which they are already losing across the globe. As a totally naive 19-year-old, I thought it would only be a matter of months before I was holding a rifle behind a barricade. As I near 75 and look around me, the only people who seem willing and able to meet fire with fire, to resist the repression that is already intensifying and could well reach unseen heights in the years to come are wearing red hats and directing their righteous anger at all the wrong targets. Please tell me I'm missing something!
You're right, John. The right is far more organized and aggressive, and has done far better at building a base. One of my goals for this publication and community is to work to build a community and base that is biocentric, radical, organized, and ready to take action.
No purportedly prefigurative lifeway has any chance of making a difference. Whether ignored, dismissed, tolerated, subsumed, ridiculed, satirized, or swept away as needed — none of it matters: the megamachine proceeds apace. Any such “choice” we make about how to live is purely aesthetic; yet another rehearsal of our “individual freedom;” deployed as proof of the flexibility and benevolence of “liberal democracy” and the “free market;” diversionary; a retreat; a soporific compromise.
Thinking strategically about how to stop a meme, a social agreement, a lifeway that *is us* — is nigh on to impossible. Hell, it’s hard enough to even name and describe it, much less fight it. The few who hear us find us curious at best. Mostly we’re hardly worth the trouble of working up even some passing derision.
Okay, I’m ready to hear how the above is hyperbolic, much too dark, just dead wrong. I’m also ready to be patted on the head. And to be ignored.
Thanks for writing, Henry. Personally, I do think alternatives have a role to play. For one, I think living in alternative ways can free up activists and revolutionaries to have more time and energy to dedicate to revolutionary struggle. And second, I think that when the collapse truly begins to hit certain areas, the alternatives suddenly become far more than a curiosity — they become the most essential blueprint.
No worries! Mother Earth is on the case. She will, one way (collapse of industrial civilization) or another (climate totally uninhabitable), reassert her Laws of Nature, which humans have been doing everything in their power to ignore, distort or break. Perhaps a few of us will rediscover the evolutionary instincts that allowed us to succeed until the deadly 'Dawn of Civilization' shoved us down the Road to Perdition on which we are presently travelling.
And a letter I wrote for people like yourself. I was perhaps in a bit in a honeymoon period when I wrote it and have since learnt that doomers are people with huge flaws too, but this is still a letter I wrote for those of us dealing with the terrible realities and wanting to fight for nature and each other regardless.
Someone recently commented on a post of mine, saying that most effort to block/sabotage imperialism result in the good guys getting killed/imprisoned (or sued!). What would your response be to that? Is there evidence that these activities have achieved lasting victories? (Hoping for a "yes"!)
I'm laughing as I read this, Andrea! I wish I had a simple answer.
I'm reminded of a few things. One is another quote from Chris Hedges, who once said, "We don't fight fascists because we're going to win. We fight fascists because they're fascists."
Another quote is from a 2023 talk from Norman Finkelstein, where he talked about how revolutionaries and radicals in his era understood that being a revolutionary means sacrificing, ending up in jail, and possibly ending up dead. That's the reality of doing this work at a very serious and high level. I don't think we should fight or bury this reality. Instead, we should accept it and honor those who do the work regardless.
This is one reason why I am committed to both fighting like hell, and to living the hell out of my life — having fun, falling in love, finding as much beauty as possible.
When we fight, we can win. But if we surrender, we will certainly lose. There are millions of people who have made the world a better place through action and sacrifice. Just a few who come to mind: Mandela, Rachel Carson, Dr. King, Malcolm X, Subcomandante Marcos, Andrea Dworkin — and victories: Cherry Point, SNWA water grab, Wilderness act, Jordan Cove LNG, thousands and thousands more. Yes, things are getting worse, but they'd be far, far worse if not for the incredible efforts of many, many people.
You just told me what's missing from my book. What little i had about resistance, my literary agent encouraged me to remove, in the interest of being focused. Well, I'll have to see what I can do about it.
Well written, thank you. This addresses a misgiving that’s been nagging at me for a while. The us-and-them approach still feels a little off to me; I think it’s important to stop the assaults but not to demonize people, or we’ll end up perpetuating suffering. Every individual has something unique to offer.
Thanks for the comment. In general, I agree. There's far too much of this across the political spectrum, and it's profoundly dangerous. I do think a class-based approach is essential in political organizing. We shouldn't dehumanize or demonize our opponents, but we have to understand their motivations, drives, political orientations, and moral positioning. We can oppose, organize against, and even fight against others without demonizing or dehumanizing them — and in fact, I think this is essential to ensure that ant conflict that is done is approached as wisely and ethically as possible.
"If you think there's good in everybody, then you haven't met everybody."
As I got older I lost the rose-tinted glasses on how love could save everyone and everything. It will not save those without a heart and I am no longer interested in working out how to fix heartless adults. Whatever the reasons for their affliction, it is too destructive for everyone and everything else for me to give it energy anymore and I have instead redirected this portion of my energy to protecting the beings they victimise (with much better results and also giving me better mental/emotional health).
Another useful saying while we're on those: "You can eat any mushroom. Some only once."
I agree about not trying to fix people and about having good boundaries. Where I hesitate is with how we determine who’s bad or not—and who “we” is. Everyone has done things that could be considered bad by some people’s definition, from which point all kinds of harm are justified. It’s something to be very careful about.
This is excellent. And I am wondering if there is anywhere biocentric people in Australia can communicate about communal living. We are stewarding 50ha of remnant sclerophyll woodlands and heathlands using >30,000yo Indigenous techniques that are essential for maintaining its existing biodiversity and completely ignored by mainstream culture. Also we are planting wildlife corridors back into cleared pasture and doing permaculture food growing, but there are only two of us and one has to work in an office to pay the mortgage we needed to be able to get the land title (for what it's worth, this is unceded Noongar land but we wanted to protect it from "development") so things are super stressful trying to get everything done and of course, so much more could be done here.
You'd think it was easy to find people to want to join us as we have existing accommodation for 4 more people already in our ex eco-farmstay wing, but we need serious people with a biocentric ethic and those are not easy to locate with standard channels. If anyone knows of a grapevine we could use or of people who would like to try us out then please let us know...
Sorry Max to ask this here but I don't know many people with this ethic and many I personally know are overseas and have the same problem: One or two people got a land title to try to protect land and are now on their own when they would like to be a small village - and the ones interested are unable to join in as living in another country. It would help tremendously if people like us were effectively connected to like-minded people who are looking to live communally. Especially we are aware that young people now mostly don't get a look in besides renting suburban boxes and we would so welcome such people.🖤
Good stirring of the topics, Max... and the interrelated-ness of 'out there' and 'in here'. To riff the well-known phrase: Think nonlocal, act local; what quantum physicists call “nonlocal “ energy—the ability of any being to instantaneously know about or communicate with another being no matter the distance or time difference. Or according to Black Elk, Oglala Lakota, in the book The Sacred Pipe: “The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us.”
What a beautiful and powerful quote. Thanks for sharing, Mankh!
Glad you appreciate, Max.
Always love your writing Max.
I distinctly remember the moment I realized that our culture was omnicidal and I was unwittingly contributing to the destruction of our biosphere. I had just watched Chris Martenson's Crash Course. It was devastating at a visceral level. And crippling because I had NO idea what to do about it. Then, I read the book Deep Green Resistance and it was the first time everything started to make sense on a political and social level. I understood why everything was falling apart and what we CAN do about it. That was in 2011.
Then, in 2012, my younger sister and I were both first diagnosed with breast cancer - then again in 2015 - which started a series of major setbacks that I'm only now recovering from after 9 years.
Throughout those years I tried many things despite my life being a mess and realized just how much human beings rationalize our destructive behaviour, and specifically our lack of adequate response to out existential threat. Cultural trauma is what we're up against and it's getting so much worse. Human beings aren't lazy or weak. We've just had the fight beaten out of us.
This is now my mission: to restore the resilience and fighting spirit of people in my community. I can't fight alone but I can help inspire others to see and face the coming collapse with fire in their hearts and love for our children.
We've all been dehumanized over the past 4 years. It's time to reclaim our humanity. Thank you for inspiring me and so many other people, Max. Know that you are making an impact. 💓🫂🙏
Thank you for sharing your story with me, and with all the other readers. I completely agree that we've had the fight beaten out of us (and propagandized out of us, etc).
Great comment. Sending best wishes and much love.🖤
I really appreciate this analysis. Changing entire systems is an inherently, deeply, conflictual process. I hope - I believe many of us hope - that the conflict can be as nonviolent as possible, but there is no avoiding sustained, strategic conflict to create that better, freer world. My thinking on this has been shaped by reading anarchists, and reading and listening to people in other countries, right now, especially in Gaza. I'm pretty old, and I've seen a lot of "demonstration projects" come and go. We need to scale up, not fear losing our "purity" (which was never that pure, anyway).
Very well said, Janet. I completely agree.
Thanks for your passion and the historical survey of the European genocide of the Americas, but you lost me at the condemnation of what I believe the single most important action we can take today to make any progress in saving life on the planet: individual action and CONTRACEPTION. All of the horrendous travesties you catalog are the direct result of massive European, African, and Asian overpopulation and emigration into already fully occupied "New (?) World". Malthus was thinking about the rapid population growth in America when he wrote his "Essay..." in 1798, as was Franklin observing the DOUBLING of the American population every 25 yrs. for two generations.
I am a survivor of the "Days of Rage" in Chicago in 1969, when I was attempting to set-up the National Headquarters of the Student Health Organization and publish a nationwide journal, "Encounter", of which only the first issue was printed, with Che Guevara's photo on the cover. 31 well meaning (?) SDSers proceeded to break windows in expensive retail stores and where shot when they engaged the Chicago PD.
That was the end of any appeal to violence that I had entertained to that point and I recommend that anyone, especially passionate youth like yourself, forgo violence in their/your quest to right the many wrongs of this dying world. I, too, am a student of Native American and all indigenous cultures. The US DOS made the mistake of sending me at the end of my medical/psychiatric training to Bangkok to fill the vacancy of Medial Director of the Youth Treatment Center, a facility set-up by the DOS to "treat" American teenage heroin addicts. Long story short, I was introduced to Buddhism and the concept of compassionate regard for all things and people, which I continue to practice and which was a core element of my 42 yr. psychiatric/addition medicine/stress management practice.
I'm 79 now, retired, and the author of the FREE online e-book PDF, "Stress R Us", which I recommend to anyone reading your passionate post here. It covers much of what you are saying about Hunter-Gatherers and indigenous cultures. We are 3,000 times more populous today than were our H-G ancestors, who were the last of us to live in an ecologically balanced and sustainable lifeway. Massive human overpopulation and overconsumption is our dear Mother Earth's main problem, and we AS INDIVIDUALS can solve it by not bringing another innocent life into this dying world. More at Greeley's Newsletter here on SubStack. Thanks, again, for your courageous effort.
Hi Greeley, thanks for the comment, and for your lifelong commitment and work. I'm inspired to hear about your work on addiction issues. On that note, did you read this piece I wrote recently? I'd be curious on your professional perspective: https://maxwilbert.substack.com/p/first-responder-trauma-a-new-framework
It truly means a lot to me to have elders of the movement participating in the discussions here. A few thoughts.
First, I completely agree that overshoot and overpopulation are fundamental issues. I wrote about population recently here, which you may appreciate: https://x.com/MaxWilbert/status/1755282691677925588 . It's a critical issue that's often overlooked, buried, made taboo, and the conversation is shut down.
Also, to be clear, I don't think individual action is unimportant. I think it's vital, hence the title of this piece: "beautiful and important." But I do stand by my assertion that it's not enough. I think we need organized political action in concert with individual action. And I don't think that action needs to, or should be, violent. Strikes, boycotts, mass non-violent action, etc. can all be incredibly effective (however, I think they should be tightly organized, which I believe is still a "militant" in the dictionary sense of being aggressive and confrontational. However, I don't reject violence completely; for example, the violence of the anti-apartheid movement, of indigenous communities against settler-colonialists, and the tactical defensive use of force by the Deacons for Defense are all, in my view, completely morally justified. Violence is a very dangerous thing, and can become a drug. But I'm not an absolutist on that topic. Rather, I think we need to look at the context.
Thanks for your reply, Max. I wrote a reply to your "first responder..." essay you may wish to read. I will have nothing to do with anything the South African white supremacist Elon Musk produces, including the absurd "X". Very best wishes to you and yours, Gregg (an "elder")
Dear Greeley, a warm hello and thanks from Australia. Just an aside point: I am laughing because my only regular contact with biocentric people outside this household is via much-maligned (and rightly so) Twitter, which is also an excellent connection database for all its flaws. It thankfully has a block button I have literally employed thousands of times in under three years with the good effect of cleaning up the experience remarkably so that I can now enjoy it.
Did you ever have a sociopathic teacher? I did. It was great fun passing surreptitious written notes to each other in such a classroom. Since the Elongated Husk has bought Twitter for his billionaire plaything our little social online circle has had even more fun subverting the platform to connect, support each other practically and emotionally, share DIY/anti-consumer tips etc - all the very things the platform is designed to prevent. And we freely discuss what we think of people like him, and I have never yet been censored for it.
Our group consists of geographically and socially isolated people from all over the globe who wish we lived in a village together or at least had a TARDIS to allow regular face to face time. But it's a wonderful thing to have these people at all and has been good for mental/emotional health and motivation. In the absence of the physical village we would all like, it is good to have a supportive virtual village and the chance of maybe connecting enough people IRL so some physical villages may eventually happen...
The people are more important than the dysfunctional structures designed to contain them.😉
Thanks for your wonderfully written reply and I wish you and your virtual community all the best. Keep building your network, about which you are obviously skilled and a great example for others. However, I still ain't touchin' anythin' the Musky man has touched. ( :)) Have a blessed day!
Thank you again.🖤 I loved your posts BTW and was hoping you'd not feel nitpicked by my little anecdote. I am sure if the Elongated Musk had owned Twitter back in 2022 it would have kept me away as I too am highly allergic to such entities. But as I was already on it when he bought it, it was like when the Death Eaters took over the Ministry of Magic - we stayed and fought. He's lost megabucks with his little ego/influencing project and earnt the scorn of many in this village square, but most importantly our little community can as yet still connect and interact largely unharassed - thanks largely to the block button Apple et al haven't let him remove despite his expressed wishes.😉
Wishing you a wonderful day and sending love.🖤
I fear the reaction of, first and foremost, US Empire, whose 'leaders' seem hell-bent on taking all life to the grave, rather than give up their power, which they are already losing across the globe. As a totally naive 19-year-old, I thought it would only be a matter of months before I was holding a rifle behind a barricade. As I near 75 and look around me, the only people who seem willing and able to meet fire with fire, to resist the repression that is already intensifying and could well reach unseen heights in the years to come are wearing red hats and directing their righteous anger at all the wrong targets. Please tell me I'm missing something!
You're right, John. The right is far more organized and aggressive, and has done far better at building a base. One of my goals for this publication and community is to work to build a community and base that is biocentric, radical, organized, and ready to take action.
I would hope to make some kind of contribution to such efforts, while admitting and accepting my limitations.
No purportedly prefigurative lifeway has any chance of making a difference. Whether ignored, dismissed, tolerated, subsumed, ridiculed, satirized, or swept away as needed — none of it matters: the megamachine proceeds apace. Any such “choice” we make about how to live is purely aesthetic; yet another rehearsal of our “individual freedom;” deployed as proof of the flexibility and benevolence of “liberal democracy” and the “free market;” diversionary; a retreat; a soporific compromise.
Thinking strategically about how to stop a meme, a social agreement, a lifeway that *is us* — is nigh on to impossible. Hell, it’s hard enough to even name and describe it, much less fight it. The few who hear us find us curious at best. Mostly we’re hardly worth the trouble of working up even some passing derision.
Okay, I’m ready to hear how the above is hyperbolic, much too dark, just dead wrong. I’m also ready to be patted on the head. And to be ignored.
Thanks for writing, Henry. Personally, I do think alternatives have a role to play. For one, I think living in alternative ways can free up activists and revolutionaries to have more time and energy to dedicate to revolutionary struggle. And second, I think that when the collapse truly begins to hit certain areas, the alternatives suddenly become far more than a curiosity — they become the most essential blueprint.
They become the only 'choice,' and that, in a weird way, is a good thing.
No worries! Mother Earth is on the case. She will, one way (collapse of industrial civilization) or another (climate totally uninhabitable), reassert her Laws of Nature, which humans have been doing everything in their power to ignore, distort or break. Perhaps a few of us will rediscover the evolutionary instincts that allowed us to succeed until the deadly 'Dawn of Civilization' shoved us down the Road to Perdition on which we are presently travelling.
Definitely, John. I hope, for the sake of all life on Earth (including us), that it's the former.
Dear Henry, sending love.🖤
And a letter I wrote for people like yourself. I was perhaps in a bit in a honeymoon period when I wrote it and have since learnt that doomers are people with huge flaws too, but this is still a letter I wrote for those of us dealing with the terrible realities and wanting to fight for nature and each other regardless.
https://sue.coulstock.id.au/love-letter-to-the-doomers/
Someone recently commented on a post of mine, saying that most effort to block/sabotage imperialism result in the good guys getting killed/imprisoned (or sued!). What would your response be to that? Is there evidence that these activities have achieved lasting victories? (Hoping for a "yes"!)
I'm laughing as I read this, Andrea! I wish I had a simple answer.
I'm reminded of a few things. One is another quote from Chris Hedges, who once said, "We don't fight fascists because we're going to win. We fight fascists because they're fascists."
Another quote is from a 2023 talk from Norman Finkelstein, where he talked about how revolutionaries and radicals in his era understood that being a revolutionary means sacrificing, ending up in jail, and possibly ending up dead. That's the reality of doing this work at a very serious and high level. I don't think we should fight or bury this reality. Instead, we should accept it and honor those who do the work regardless.
This is one reason why I am committed to both fighting like hell, and to living the hell out of my life — having fun, falling in love, finding as much beauty as possible.
When we fight, we can win. But if we surrender, we will certainly lose. There are millions of people who have made the world a better place through action and sacrifice. Just a few who come to mind: Mandela, Rachel Carson, Dr. King, Malcolm X, Subcomandante Marcos, Andrea Dworkin — and victories: Cherry Point, SNWA water grab, Wilderness act, Jordan Cove LNG, thousands and thousands more. Yes, things are getting worse, but they'd be far, far worse if not for the incredible efforts of many, many people.
You just told me what's missing from my book. What little i had about resistance, my literary agent encouraged me to remove, in the interest of being focused. Well, I'll have to see what I can do about it.
Go Shodo, go!
Once again I appreciate your clarity on these topics
Thank you, my friend!
Well written, thank you. This addresses a misgiving that’s been nagging at me for a while. The us-and-them approach still feels a little off to me; I think it’s important to stop the assaults but not to demonize people, or we’ll end up perpetuating suffering. Every individual has something unique to offer.
Thanks for the comment. In general, I agree. There's far too much of this across the political spectrum, and it's profoundly dangerous. I do think a class-based approach is essential in political organizing. We shouldn't dehumanize or demonize our opponents, but we have to understand their motivations, drives, political orientations, and moral positioning. We can oppose, organize against, and even fight against others without demonizing or dehumanizing them — and in fact, I think this is essential to ensure that ant conflict that is done is approached as wisely and ethically as possible.
Just a little useful saying you might like:
"If you think there's good in everybody, then you haven't met everybody."
As I got older I lost the rose-tinted glasses on how love could save everyone and everything. It will not save those without a heart and I am no longer interested in working out how to fix heartless adults. Whatever the reasons for their affliction, it is too destructive for everyone and everything else for me to give it energy anymore and I have instead redirected this portion of my energy to protecting the beings they victimise (with much better results and also giving me better mental/emotional health).
Another useful saying while we're on those: "You can eat any mushroom. Some only once."
I agree about not trying to fix people and about having good boundaries. Where I hesitate is with how we determine who’s bad or not—and who “we” is. Everyone has done things that could be considered bad by some people’s definition, from which point all kinds of harm are justified. It’s something to be very careful about.
And I agree we should be careful about it, but not so careful that we effect nothing.
This is excellent. And I am wondering if there is anywhere biocentric people in Australia can communicate about communal living. We are stewarding 50ha of remnant sclerophyll woodlands and heathlands using >30,000yo Indigenous techniques that are essential for maintaining its existing biodiversity and completely ignored by mainstream culture. Also we are planting wildlife corridors back into cleared pasture and doing permaculture food growing, but there are only two of us and one has to work in an office to pay the mortgage we needed to be able to get the land title (for what it's worth, this is unceded Noongar land but we wanted to protect it from "development") so things are super stressful trying to get everything done and of course, so much more could be done here.
You'd think it was easy to find people to want to join us as we have existing accommodation for 4 more people already in our ex eco-farmstay wing, but we need serious people with a biocentric ethic and those are not easy to locate with standard channels. If anyone knows of a grapevine we could use or of people who would like to try us out then please let us know...
Sorry Max to ask this here but I don't know many people with this ethic and many I personally know are overseas and have the same problem: One or two people got a land title to try to protect land and are now on their own when they would like to be a small village - and the ones interested are unable to join in as living in another country. It would help tremendously if people like us were effectively connected to like-minded people who are looking to live communally. Especially we are aware that young people now mostly don't get a look in besides renting suburban boxes and we would so welcome such people.🖤
Best wishes from Sue & Brett