Was the first part of your response something that you wrote? I love it, although love seems too exuberant a response to such awe-ful words. Here’s to keeping a beat.
Changing the world? Cat, please, these humans don't even live in the real world.
The West in general and its elites in particular, in and out of MSM, government and the military, live in a world increasingly consumed by symbol, spectacle and abstraction. Not only that, but they confuse wish-fulfillment with reality. Decide that you're going to identify as a different gender, race, ethnicity, hell, decide that you're a member of a different species and woe betide anyone who doesn't go along with the charade. They might even get themselves "cancelled".
Hell, even the consequences of their (symbolic) actions are themselves largely symbolic. Melvin didn't get to put on a TED talk because someone dug up an old Tweet of his and now he's "literal Hitler" for a while.
For that matter, the truly Great and Good rarely even face those kinds of consequences. They can cause institutions to fail everywhere they go - but as long as they parrot today's approved platitudes, they glide from internship to government sinecure to think tank to academia to to financial services to corporate board to to consulting gig to MSM Talking Head, sometimes more than one simultaneously. Most probably never having had a 9-5 job, much less done farm or factory work, in their lives. These days, they may never even physically show up to work, ever, but their bank accounts rarely seem to reflect this.
They can even engage in outright fraud, but a big enough fish will only pay a fine, a portion of his ill-gotten gains. Meanwhile, he remains as free as a bird, and probably doesn't even face social ostracism. Last I checked, Jon Corzine is not on the naughty list of the people who matter.
Since results don't matter and there are few consequences for losing, even for catastrophe, everything becomes a matter of spin. All problems can be solved with better P.R., and there is no greater triumph than when some newscaster recites that glib talking point you just coined or when your FB post went viral, your instagram noticed by the right kind of influencer. In other words, winning is a matter of successful symbol manipulation. Speaking of spin, virtue signaling is an obsession, even unto rank hypocrisy, and the Davos Set think nothing of flying a private jet to a conference where they can congratulate themselves on their commitment to stopping climate change. Again, if there are to be any consequences, then those are for the little people to deal with.
Even in their dwindling contact with the physical world, the elites live in a world of wish-fulfillment. Push a button and whatever food or whatever else you want is brought to your door by some peon, paid for seamlessly by some electrons exchanged between banks that may not even have a physical location within a thousand miles of your location, if they have locations at all. You can even get laid via internet, just swipe right on the lucky profile. Everything is taken care of in the background, your credit card billed and airline miles accumulated automatically and the food or the girl just show up. Somehow. By Uber, I guess. Mundane questions like "How do I feed the human kittens this week and pay for school supplies and still make the rent?" never come into the equation.
These are people who confuse their fantasies with reality to the point where they actually believe their own press releases. They give an order and it happens. They proclaim their puppets in Kabul to be wise and stable technocrats, their well-trained military striding from triumph to triumph and So Let It Be Done, So Let It Be Written. "So let it be written" - that's the word, that's all that need be done and the little people just somehow make it happen. For sheer lack of any kind of contact or reference with reality, these people make Louis XVI look like a medieval gong farmer or a pygmy tribesman by comparison.
Contrast the Taliban. Symbol, spectacle and abstraction mean very little to them. Doordash doesn't operate in their area and if a Talib wants a vegan option, he'll have to provide for it himself. It has probably never occurred to a Talib that he could cancel his enemies simply by digging up their old tweets that were innocuous at the time but are now politically incorrect, sent under a long discarded Twitter ID, and he doesn't have time for that, anyway. He lives in the world of concrete and material things, he thinks nothing of killing and in his world, there are bullets waiting to kill him quite literally dead and transport him to a very earthly and very earthy sort of paradise.
You can't wish those things away, your credit cards are no good and probably rifa, anyway, and the bullet flying towards him isn't concerned with word games, his upcoming struggle session to root out unconscious racism and cannot be reasoned with or convinced to bother someone less important.
The world of American elites collided with the world of the Taliban and got its ass kicked. Biden and his crew cannot deal with this, because that kind of reality does not select for success in symbol manipulation, any more than skill at football selects for an ability to do math problems.
The clownish Western response to the COVID is similar. The virus can't be negotiated with, can't be bought off, can't be distracted, and is unimpressed with you and how highly you may think of yourself.
As you may know, I've seen quite a lot of both worlds, I've lived in barns and crouched under the table in the room where the decisions were made, so I think I understand both mindsets pretty well. I prefer freedom to regular meals.
Speaking of, I got some mice to catch, or otherwise, I will surely be going hungry.
But, Paul’s initial question: “…what to do about it?”
We all get the deceit, hiding and decrepitude that is modernity, but, so what?
I suggest acceptance … As Paul said, this is inevitable. Trying to change or reverse it seems tantamount to feeding vitamins and antibiotics to death row inmates. Not only do we prolong their lives, we make them stronger. It seems to me that surrender to their demise and collapse, while simultaneously learning, respecting and loving the “old ways” might be an appropriate personal response. The faster it collapses, the sooner we can get to living.
I re-read that essay every month or two and it still rings true. It has given me a context to see what’s going on around me, and he even gives some useful rules of thumb on how to live at the end.
Thanks for the article post. One of the lines that most resonated with me was “The amount of our human existence that now requires rather constant technological intervention is staggering.”
I also liked the “How Should We Live?” suggestions, including “You are not in charge of the world. Love what is local, at hand, personal, intimate, unique, and natural.” I think if many of us could do simply that, consistently and daily, we might snap a few bones in the globalist Machine’s skeleton.
That is a very nice essay, and thank you for putting it here.
It was also a chance to see a painting by Bosch that I much admire. The only people in that painting who are not caricatures, or stereotypes of themselves in a state of exorbitant passion are Jesus, in the middle, and Veronica at the side. Maybe there is the thief who Jesus told would be with him in paradise before the end of the day ? They have their eyes closed, and an expression of suffering on their faces. They don't want to see the crazed faces of so many...people indulging their bestial passions around them.
It would be wonderful if you could create a Discord channel, or something similar, so fans of your work had a way of connecting with each other. I'm currently hoping to find, or set up, a community that can prepare for the coming collapse, preferably by buying and settling some land in a Northern European locale, and it would be great to find others who are aligned on these values and ideas to help.
I second that request. It’s so hard to find people with similar values and ideas in the real world, and here we are reading the same blog. It would be nice to know you all more. As for preparing for the coming collapse, I fear that it might not be escapable, but I’m certainly thinking along the lines of settling in more rural areas hopefully in the vicinity of like-minded people. At least while waiting for the Apocalypse I can do it in better company!
One response could be to build lives that transmit values interpersonally, rather than digitally. It'd most likely be in family and local friendship settings, and it'd certainly be at only a small scale in service of rooted, natural-facing community. I'm a Christian, I can't see how it wouldn't rely on a fervent religious belief system, but what do y'all think?
And the second need is the concentrated narrowing of our aims — to give up "changing the world" to instead preserve what little good we have experienced and learned. I'm thinking of the medieval Irish monasteries whose monks copied out texts, hermetic and wholly dedicated, that later generations received long after the medieval age had passed away.
Fair — I realize now that my comment was more aspirational than concrete. To make it reality, we'd need to intentionally raise families with an eye towards the best values that they can inculcate, and we'd need to live more in common with our immediate neighbors. Anything you'd add? This is only a broad-stroke start.
Go back to basics. Give up all the advanced technology. Live with what is around you and which grows naturally. Most would be appalled at this idea. But I can't see how the top heavy technological world can be sustained without all th evils that necessarily go with it. Mainly raping the natural world.
With my partner I farm 70 acres in East Tennessee. For the past 22 years we have produced 100% of our meat and averaged 75% of our vegetables for our own consumption. We also supply a significant amount of meat to approximately 20 families each year. This is not a boast. And it certainly isn’t a claim that others can or should do it. Or, even that it has been the best way to respond to these times.
The reasons are varied for why we moved in 1999 to this place and built this farm. But I’d have to say at this juncture, with all our mistakes, that focusing on stewarding this plot of earth, working with it to be productive, repairing our mistakes, has changed me for the positive. So, my answer to being a better man, more fully human, is to be a good steward of the land and of the animals I husband, and to cultivate my relationships with both kith and kin. This is the path that is working for me.
Hmmm, that really depends on a lot of factors. I do think most people underestimate the physicality of farm work. For our model to have worked we did all the sweat equity. I was 37 when I started and it damned near did me in on many days. Now at 59 with most of the infrastructure built it is manageable. So, it depends on where you settle and how much needs to be done. Feel free to email any questions you might have: bmiller@wingedelmfarm.com. Cheers, Brian
I wonder if it is possible to start very small. A kind of hybrid project at first, i.e. not seeking self-dependence, but just getting the ball rolling, whatever that may mean. Try to build something beautiful and multi-generational. It is worth starting, I think, even if one never sees it come to full fruition.
It's very hard. Thirteen years in and only now accomplishing what I thought I would accomplish in the first few years. It never ends. What was fine then needs upgrades now. You never fully understand the costs in time or money.
Soil and water are the most important factors. Everything else is on top of that.
Beautiful comes with time. Time is a gentleman, and God gives beauty for ashes. "Adequately working" is more immediate. Working alone makes it much harder.
Mid-60's now and wouldn't change anything, except for all the 13 years of mistakes I made, which I'm only now figuring out. I watch my neighbors who leave theirs to the next generation and it suddenly becomes a subdivision. I don't worry about what my daughters will do with it. I learned long ago from an old Army mentor, you can't control it from the grave.
You begin with dreams of Monticello, some days it feels like Little House on the Prarie, but in reality, it becomes a beautiful portrait of real life, and you fall hopelessly in love with it, and want to be in it all the time.
We live in a fallen world. Unless you give yourself over to chemicals, the weed and decay pressure can beat you into submission. The most beautiful thing you've done can, in just a few short months, becomes a tangled, ugly mess, unless you tend it constantly. By the sweat of your brow...
This is so beautifully expressed. It seems worth all the struggle just to have the peaceful insights that you have clearly gained from your life's work. I heard Vandana Shiva speaking on youtube and she encouraged people to simply "occupy the land" as a way to resist the machine. Each one who stays and resists the subdivision is a tiny victory.
Hi Dana, I just read your piece On Desert Places. since there was not a way to comment and I just had to I am doing so here. Although that is probably not appropriate. I completely agree about CCM.
This little bit from George MacDonald is the part I wanted to share:
"That man is perfect in faith who can come to God in the utter dearth of his feelings and desires, without a glow or an aspiration, with the weight of low thoughts, failures, neglects, and wandering forgetfulness, and say to Him, 'Thou art my refuge.'" (Unspoken Sermons)
@simclardy, thanks. Not to 'jack someone else's stack. But in this case, it might be fair. This post (well, actually the comments on it) were what has helped me out of my latest desert place. This is absolutely one of my 2 favorite subscriptions--I really enjoy both the author and the community.
George MacDonald is a favorite read, also, probably because I understand him the least of all the authors I read. Like your quote, While I understand it, I still don't. I have to mine it. It takes me awhile.
Thank you for introducing me to the spiritual writings of George MacDonald. I only know about him from his other literary works, which I love. This particular quote seems to speak to me personally, as I was just talking about ‘refuge’ with my Jungian therapist yesterday - how the real meaning of ‘taking refuge’, which is the Buddhist equivalent of baptism, can almost sum up my whole spiritual path, in that with each humble acceptance of my foibles, hubris, errors and even just simple forgetfulness, my understanding of refuge becomes deeper and more genuine, and I come closer to being able to say from the bottom of my heart, ‘Thou art my refuge’.
One of the great success stories I know of a 'later in life' turn to agrarianism is the 20th century intellectual Scott Nearing. He and his wife moved to a farm in Vermont (and later to another in Maine) when he was in his 50s, and he actively homesteaded until age 100. He was a sort of secular ascetic-philosopher, and one of his favorite activities was building stone walls and buildings by hand. One lesson I have from him is that physical capacity has to do with much more than just age....
Brian, it's great to hear about your life and stewardship of the land!
My wife and I bought our property when I was 40 - it's the remnant of an old farm that was last farmed and lived on year-round in 1953. Lots of construction and heavy labor at the outset, like you say. There are days/weeks at 45 now where I'm definitely at the edge of my physical limits - and there's no denying that it would have been easier to start earlier.... And yet it's about as life giving a path as I can imagine moving forward to keep investing time, love and care into this patch of land, and the people of this neighborhood....
Funny you mention the Nearings. I actually read quite a bit on them recently. Some say they exaggerated the possibilities of going back to the land and set many up for failure. I just visited Will Bonsall in Maine who knew Helen. He was laughing about their claim that you need only work 4 hours per day (the 4-4-4- concept). They also traveled every winter all over the world, so only had to split and store about 1 cord of firewood. They had trust fund money from family and bought all their staple foods. So they talk about growing their food but actually that referred only to vegetables and some fruit. They did many wonderful things but it is unfortunate that some of their claims have been misleading. There is a book called, Meanwhile, Next Door to the Good Life that I haven't read about some of these inconsistencies.
After reading about Helen and Scott (how development of a ski resort drove them from Vermont to Maine) I picked up this beautiful book that I've had for a long time called Maine Farm. It turns out that the farmhouse is actually Helen and Scott's former home on their land in Maine that the author bought from her. The owners of the farm are obviously wealthy and not subsisting. At the end of that book the author tells how the whole area around his land was being subdivided and turned into McMansions. That almost made me cry. I have seen this happen to my home town and dream of running from it... but to think of buying land and investing your life only to have the McMansions and the chainsaws and the strip malls follow you eventually to your new location... it's too much! I guess this is where that brokenness and grief you posted about comes in for me.
Anyhow, I appreciate all the honest descriptions of farm work from the posts on here.
Interesting to hear that about the Nearings - I didn't know about their buying in staple foods. Thanks for sharing. I did read the Good Life many years ago, and have known a few (now deceased) homesteading couples who used their model with some success. I haven't revisited their writings in a good long while....
On a practical note, the thing that seemed the most untenable to me in their model (at least while living in Vermont or Maine) was their vegetarianism and not keeping animals. It's much more tenable in my experience to feed oneself while keeping animals alongside the plants, especially in an area like this with long winters.
I'm curious about this. Have you ever read Will Bonsall's book? He promotes veganic agriculture in Maine. He tells how he initially got goats and set about growing the feed they would need. Quickly he realized that it would be much easier and more efficient to grow a vegan diet for himself rather than growing enough for animals too. So he is critical of those who say they are producing meat or dairy if they don't account for the grain they buy in to feed the animals. Not that buying grain is inherently wrong but it isn't self sufficient and it probably is a fossil fuel intensive product.
On the other hand, in some climates animals can be on pasture for most of the year (not Maine) and livestock can act as mowers and compost creators etc. He definitely suffers most on his farm from inability to get everything done.... but he is 72 and alone so that is impressive in itself.
Scott and his wife were quite the pair. I admired and have implemented a variation of his 4/4/4.
So, when I stress the age and the physical work requirements involved, I'm thinking most often of the average person. Most people, simply put, are not physically fit, that includes most 18–25-year-olds who volunteer on our farm. This is perhaps yet another modern disease. I have a young woman, 19, volunteering through WWOOF on our farm. She doesn’t have the physical strength to cut wire fence with a pair of pliers. She is nice, smart, thought she was in good shape, but isn’t.
I also find that most people are not mentally conditioned to do hard work. They often think that because they go to the gym, work out, run, diet, that they can do hard sustained physical work. Too often they are wrong. This is, of course, a generalization. And thankfully there are plenty of exceptions. Only the individual knows if they are being "honest" with themselves about their capabilities. I am just leery of the many 65-year-olds who tell me, “when I retire, I’m going to do what you do.”
Yes to this - we just finished a heavy 'work week' with volunteers doing a big project with lots of hand carrying of heavy materials. My 70-year old, retired farmer father-in-law worked circles around the twenty-and-thirty year olds helpers who have non-physical jobs.
I've heard the US military has been lowering or considering lowering their physical fitness requirements for entry, because they are having trouble filling the ranks with many recruits not able to meet the old requirements - I suspect you're right about this aspect of the 'modern disease'.... and yes, plenty of exceptions are out there too....
When we first moved to the farm, Mark, I helped a 78 year-old dairy farmer rebuild a shared mutual fence. One day, when I was about to drop, he looked at me and said he was going home for a bite and rest. "I'm not as young as you Brian", he said. He got on his tractor and drove over the hill. Then I collapsed, once he was out of sight.
Another option is urban homesteading. Even if you have a little land around your home, you can (depending on zoning bylaws) do useful things with it. We’ve gotten a few hens, and a coop out back. It’s a very small project, yet it seems to me having these non-pet animals to tend to, to clean up after, to feed, to care for, does produce an increased connection with the wild and the natural. It’s too early to know what my long-term feeling about this will be, but as one who lives mostly through words and abstractions, I find it very rooting to have to work with and manage these physical creatures and their physical environment.
Good advice. I have been doing that on our 1 acre lot for about 8 years. I love this place and have poured myself into it. What bothers me is that I still have to go to the supermarket and we still make the needed money via this earth-killing economy. I do have a beautiful and very healthy life with many connections to the Real and am grateful for that. I may just be greedy for more :)
Good for you. My wife and I have 5 acres. Mostly in woods. But I'm growing veges, planning to build a greenhouse this summer, and I'm hoping. . .hoping, we can get more and more self-reliant when it comes to produce. For meat, I'm thinking about raising rabbits. My brother did it when we were kids.
I am mulling couple of things this week, wondering if they are clues for how God wants me to live...one is a 40-year-old book by a Japanese theologian Kosuke Koyama called "Three Mile an Hour God". I've not read it through, but the premise is simple, God's love moves at a very slow pace, about the same pace as Jesus walked through the world, So often, he healed/helped/oved while is was going from one place to the next. No grand plans or programs to change the world.
The second is something Russell Brand referred in one of his recent YouTube spots. He seemed to have a name for it (that I now forgot) - but the idea is to practice and develop a habit of simple disobedience. I work for a nonprofit and I thought about this today as I was updating our GuideStar page, GuideStar being a large platform where nonprofits can share info on their work and receive an Olympics-type rating (Platinum or Gold or Silver or Bronze) based on how "transparent" you share yourself. Today, I found out in order for us to keep our "platinum" status, I would need to provide race/sex/gender data on our two staff and all 18 of our Board members, plus reveal our plan for equity. Eh, I figured to hell with it, gold is not too bad.
Sounds like someone wants to remake the world in line with their own prejudices. That's the Machine's work Well done for denying it power over you. Creative disobedience is my term for it. Martin Luther King famously called for transformed nonconformists.
James C Scott, in Two Cheers for Anarchism, says you have to practice breaking the law everyday in little ways as a matter of building muscle, for the day will come when it’s going to require going big.
This question has been on my mind, and I'm looking forward to reading how people respond. I know many who have accepted the stark reality of our times, but fewer who have found a way to live in them.
Whatever path we choose, I think smallness will be key. I've been making my way through 1 Corinthians, and I am struck by St. Paul's assurance that the wise and powerful will not be able to save the world. Rather, he points to the folly of the cross—a God-man whose greatest victory was in his greatest moment of suffering. "God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong." I believe that.
I have wasted a lot of time trying to figure out ways to combat the machine on its own terms—power with power, wisdom with wisdom. But I think that the narrow path is much more counter-intuitive, like Tolkien's hobbits walking a narrow road to Mordor, beneath the notice of warring kingdoms.
I'm not always sure what that looks like in day-to-day life, but I am experimenting in small ways. I've been trying to pay attention to people who have been brought low by the machine, and to learn to walk with them in love. I've been withdrawing from debates that are too lofty for me, so that I have the energy to fight for good within my own community. And I've been worshiping Jesus every morning. These are humble starts, but I think they matter.
I think "meekness" is exactly the word I'm looking for. Isn't it interesting that the meek are promised the earth as their inheritance? I have been trying to practice that hobbit-like meekness and simplicity, often by not involving myself in the affairs of bigger men. Also, by drinking good beer?
A few years back, I was surprised and fascinated to learn that (at least according to some scholars) the term for 'meekness' in that Beatitude refers to having significant power and then restraining oneself from using it - like the image of a strong warrior who keeps his sword in its sheath. That image of 'meekness' - not a lack of access to destructive power but a refusal to use it - seems like a key part of how to live sanely in this time.
Joshua, I love your phrase of 'trying to pay attention to people who have been brought low by the machine, and to learn to walk with them in love' - a beautiful and Christlike stance, I think.
I'd absolutely take their drinking and dancing, their sense of "simple" pleasures that happen in a communal setting. Ditto for their living spaces that don't require clearing land but instead leave fields and hills intact.
I do wonder about the backbone required for maintaining such a community though. Those are "affairs of bigger men," I'd guess, because they have to confront what is happening elsewhere. Hobbits seem peace-loving in an unhelpful way, unlike peaceably capable as the elves tend to be.
I agree that there is imperfection in the Shire for all its idyll. A bit too comfortable in need of a bit of shaking-up ('some dragons would do them good'). We then see the society sleepwalk into an industrial totalitarianism which needs folk who have been to Mordor and back to fix it.
Your comment reminds me of this passage from 1 Thessalonians….
Now about your love for one another we do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other. And in fact, you do love all of God’s family throughout Macedonia. Yet we urge you, brothers and sisters, to do so more and more, and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.
1 Thessalonians 4:9-12
Quiet life, work with your hands, love the people of God. Not world changing but certainly life changing….one life at a time.
I love: “I’ve been withdrawing from debates that are too lofty for me.” Similarly, I’ve been practicing not having opinions on most matters lately. It’s such a simple gesture: and yet, here I am 42 years old just discovering that despite the pull to opine on everything, that kind of flies in the face of the most important virtue, humility.
I often wonder what Jesus meant when he talked about the "narrow way" that leads to life. Throughout my life, it usually had to do something with "have the right beliefs about Jesus" or "do the right, ethical things."
Lately I've been wondering if maybe it has something to do with walking as if on a tight-rope: what could be more narrow than that? Your goal is to not fall off into extremes, whether to the left or to the right. There's nothing more easy than to fall into the comfort of an extreme ideology: all your thinking is done for you, all the answers are given, you have a community of stringently like-minded people there to sympathize with you, you have a clearly-marked enemy to battle. When you're trying to stay balanced on the tightrope, you're constantly thinking about your next step, you're careful, you're cautious, all your strength and will is focused on one goal: making it to the end. In order to stay balanced, you have to think through everything yourself, pray through everything yourself, make difficult judgments, search for truth (even if you suspect it's the truth you don't want to be true) and strive to be faithful to God, even if the extremes, both right and left, would prefer you weren't. There's nothing harder than trying to stay on this tightrope in a world that is increasingly polarized and extreme--both on the left and on the right--but I actually think it's really important for the health of one's soul and one's ability to hear the voice of the Spirit in a very loud, loud world.
I'm not saying this is what Jesus meant. BUT, maybe there's a way in which this reading is useful. It's been useful to me recently.
Another way to think about the narrow path is learning the violin. If a person really wants, they can pluck the strings however they wish and call it “music”; they can bang the thing on the ground and call it “music”. That is the wide path of the world. The real music requires a narrow path; faith and a focus of mind and heart, discipline and practice, failure and patience…and the reward is beauty.
This immediately make me think of a song by Imagine Dragons called Walking the Wire. When I listen to the song or read the lyrics, I see Jesus leading us along the tightrope, offering us His hand, telling us, as the song says, “don’t look down.” It can be scary and stressful, or exciting. Our choice.
I do think this is an important stance - to not get sucked into identifying with the polarities of one's time. I think that is probably an important part of Jesus' teaching - that if we identify with the humanity of one group to the exclusion of those on the 'other side', then we lose the ability to offer unconditional love. 'Falling off the tightrope' to one side or the other can feel good to the ego ('I've found my people!') but I suppose it then restricts our ability to be present to all in love, even if we may disagree with any given person's ideas....
Hi Ruth! I think the tightrope is a really interesting way to view Jesus' description of his "way."
I think Jesus also clarifies the image for us a little bit:
[Mat 7:13-14 ESV] "Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few."
So it seems that the path that is easy to find and easy to follow is contrasted with the path that is the way of Jesus, which is difficult to find and hard to travel.
As you said, a tightrope requires caution and care on every step and would qualify as a difficult and hard to find path! I don't think Jesus is particularly making the point about avoiding extremes here...but there are certainly other passages that call us to pursue peace with everyone such as Romans 12:18 (which I think implies avoiding extremes).
I agree that today there is a comfort and an ease to joining some group with extreme internally-focused views - and that doesn't seem to fit the way of Jesus!
"The egocentricity experiment with human Design has run its course – its climax is our confluence of crises. Virtually all system solutions and ascension paths proposed by even the most enlightened among us fail to breach egocentricity’s stronghold. The forecast for our imminent extinction is well founded and arguably certain unless we BECOME something new. Metamorphosis is appropriate terminology here. At this Moment in history, ages of humanity can be metaphorically distilled into a litter of newborn kittens, blind from birth, whose eyes are now poised to open onto their world for the very first time….are we ready?
Relieving humanity of egocentricity’s bondage by consensus is impossible. Political proposals are hopelessly impotent. It is now imperative that we develop metamorphic catalysts immediately – means and methods to efficiently transmute egocentricity and profoundly evoke our innate senses of interdependence and compassion This is our evolution."
For myself, I'm just waiting. I'm waiting but for what I'm not quiet sure. Every morning I get up, bathe, dress, drink my coffee and check the weather, drive to work and then read. I read and read and read and then sometimes I run out of things to read so I go talk to coworkers. I then drive home to my kids and wife, help with chores, find out how their day went and we wax elegantly about what we should eat for dinner. We make dinner, eat, the kids watch a few cartoons and I watch the evening news and then we go to bed sure to follow the same pattern the next day.
I'm middle aged now and have positioned my finances such that they need not be changed. I've reached what seems to be a peak in my career. The finances manage themselves and work is hardly ever a challenge. Family life is sometimes chaotic but that's part of the fun. As I type on the keyboard the 2 year old runs into the room and yells "Sharks!!!! Sharks!!! Sharks!!!" She laughs at me and I say, "Sharks!!!! Where?" She runs out and grabs a play stethoscope and checks my heart. I make the sound, "bump bump, bump bump, bump" and she laughs then wants me to check her heart. The world outside goes by and the world inside is filled with the little pitter patter of children laughing and playing. I realize now that I'm not waiting for anything. I'm just enjoying life as it were.
Oh, I don't know how to answer that. As you point out, Paul, don't we have our hands full dealing with our own pathologies? Isn't there already too many voices out there telling us what to do, what to wear, what to eat (or not eat or not eat too much of), or what to drive, how to feel, what to watch or read (or not watch and read), what to think . . .
I mean, sometimes I just think fuck it all.
But then I come back to the struggle.
Yeah, I must keep working on my miserable self. That's a given and will continue until I die, and maybe beyond. And then I ask myself, what can I do to be a good husband? How can I be the kind of mate and partner that is the best for my wife? And, of course, my kids and grandkids. I can't forget them. How can I be the best papa I can be for them? When is it best to keep my mouth shut and just listen to them and not give any advice? Just love them. Let them know I'm here. I see them. How can I avoid the mistakes my own father made? Sometimes, I feel haunted by him. How can I be a good example to my family and friends in the best way possible: by how I live and where I devote my time, energy, and money.
I can't change "the" world, but I like to think I can influence "my" world for the good. And maybe if enough of us do just that, we can make a difference in the big stuff.
This is where I find myself. After years (decades) of grappling with this subject, I have realized that I—and probably many other people—are so thoroughly a product of our modern age that even the question “What do we do next?” is part of our diseased way of thinking. I don’t know how to relate to the world in a non-materialistic way, nor to other people, nor even to God. And how do you fix that?
Yes, you can grow your own food (a project I engage in), and it offers many tangible benefits to the soul. But it is at heart a practical answer to a practical question. How do we engage in loving people, and the world, as God loves us, if we have only ever experienced love that is based in a material worldview rather than a transcendental one? If that is the question and the project, my little world and how I engage it is the only possible place I can make any change at all. —Marleigh
No idea! I just live from day to day and accept what comes my way, appreciating that I am having an experience, that the “I”of my existence appeared at a certain time and place of which I had no control over. Also, everything changes, all the time, nothing is ever set in stone and the future is not ours to know (as my grandmother used to say). Not sure that answers the question. James Tunney has some intriguing commentary (YouTube) on our digital dystopian times.
"but a good question to ask of any culture, and of any person, is: what god do you worship?"
I guess cultures/people who do not believe in creator deities or have a need to worship are beyond the pale, and left out of the conversation. In fact, the craving to worship is what gives rise to the Machine/Cathedral (notice how the religious term is repurposed).
"Changing the world. It’s such an astonishing concept: that we have, or could ever have, the agency, ability or knowledge to change the nature of a vast, complex planet we barely understand"
Sentient beings change the world all the time as the Buddha demonstrated (though most often they are unaware of what they are doing).
"With God gone, after all, what else is left to us?"
The Dharma.
"The question then becomes: what now?"
The answer that the Buddha gave us 2,600 years ago: take refuge in the Dharma. Nothing beats the truth.
"If/when I fully accept the reality of this time, how am I called to live a faithful, fully human life, here and now?"
Follow the Noble Eightfold Path every moment, and make your awareness of leaving the path, your call to return to it--like those devices they have in cars that alert a driver to when they have drifted out of their lane.
Lao Tzu speaks of improving the world, which is, of course, impossible.
What Paul posted about was changing the world, which sentient beings do all the time. The question is whether or not the change results from acting in harmony with the Dharma, or from trying to satisfy their desires.
The world cannot be re-sacralized, which seems to be a goal for a cohort of people nowadays. It is already sacred. People should live in harmony with the sacred, and if they are successful, they will change the world (since all is impermanence how could they not), but they will neither improve nor--more importantly--degrade it.
I suppose I took "changing the world" as it is typically used and as another way of saying "improving the world" i.e., changing the world for the "better". The "world" often a stand-in for the "world of human concerns" or how the ego wants things to go. Or, in its more rabid form, I have heard people say, with little or no detectable irony, that they desired to "save the world".
This is the common usage. Or what Paul is calling the Myth of Progress.
For the person who has learned to let go and let be, nothing can ever get in the way again--Meister Eckhart
The Way is ever without action, yet nothing is left undone. -Tao Te Ching
As for change, the world changes whether we want it to or not. We along with it.
Here’s a question: If someone could build one of “those devices they have in cars that alert a driver to when they have drifted out of their lane”, except instead of using it on a car, you could connect it to your mind, so that it would alert you when you drifted off your meditation, would a Buddhist wear it?
I do not think such a device can be built or worn. I do know that it can be discovered and cultivated--something human beings are equipped with, but do not possess.
Actually, they can be built and they can be worn. Here’s a quote from one of my own articles (Can we stream God through an app?) about a device in development at the SEMA lab of the University of Arizona, which:
“uses transcranial ultrasound to “sonicate” the brain. The purpose isn’t to spark spiritual experiences—not yet anyway—but to improve people’s ability to meditate. According to the lab’s website, ‘We are aiming the ultrasound to a part of the brain that we think should help enhance the acquisition of meditation skills (like equanimity, concentration, and sensory clarity).’”
Thank you; now I understand. I did not read it that way, as I do not see those experiences as nirvana-like. They struck me more along the lines of being part of Western ideology's catalogue of blissed-out experiences used to signify Buddhism/Taoism/generic Dharmic states, in the spirit of "Tune in; turn on; drop out."
That is a great place to be for you and others who find themselves there. Problems arise when such folk insist/demand other people join them, and play by the rules they now live by.
Well, of course. Nothing should be forced onto anybody. Many religions, certainly including Christianity - and Buddhism - have made the mistake of trying to force people into truth. It's demonic behaviour and it has consequences.
If I were to become a regenerative farmer or a hermit in a cave, I would still be doing it for the machine. Every act seems tainted and doused in a seemingly inescapable egotism. Even in my cave I feel I would somehow be bathing in my righteousness waiting for some film maker to come and make a film about my hipster rejection of society. Maybe the way to live is small, almost invisible? I honestly don’t know - I’m as lost as the next man.
For whom are you performing? You seem very concerned about how you're seen, and that implies an audience. So who's there doing the looking, to make you worry so?
Yes good question and yes perhaps I am too concerned. For whom? Everyone and no one? This wretched individualism, where we must at all costs fulfil our potential and self actualise has me.
I do find the concept of self-forgetfulness to be much more useful than the concept of self-actualization. I find, in myself at least, that the 'self' that wants to 'actualize' is actually the one that needs to be forgotten. I do think smallness and hiddenness is a wise place to abide....
Sometimes the Machine's trap is to cause us to question our motives so deeply that we do not take the course we should. Dance (as the cliche puts it) as if no-one is watching.
Was the first part of your response something that you wrote? I love it, although love seems too exuberant a response to such awe-ful words. Here’s to keeping a beat.
Changing the world? Cat, please, these humans don't even live in the real world.
The West in general and its elites in particular, in and out of MSM, government and the military, live in a world increasingly consumed by symbol, spectacle and abstraction. Not only that, but they confuse wish-fulfillment with reality. Decide that you're going to identify as a different gender, race, ethnicity, hell, decide that you're a member of a different species and woe betide anyone who doesn't go along with the charade. They might even get themselves "cancelled".
Hell, even the consequences of their (symbolic) actions are themselves largely symbolic. Melvin didn't get to put on a TED talk because someone dug up an old Tweet of his and now he's "literal Hitler" for a while.
For that matter, the truly Great and Good rarely even face those kinds of consequences. They can cause institutions to fail everywhere they go - but as long as they parrot today's approved platitudes, they glide from internship to government sinecure to think tank to academia to to financial services to corporate board to to consulting gig to MSM Talking Head, sometimes more than one simultaneously. Most probably never having had a 9-5 job, much less done farm or factory work, in their lives. These days, they may never even physically show up to work, ever, but their bank accounts rarely seem to reflect this.
They can even engage in outright fraud, but a big enough fish will only pay a fine, a portion of his ill-gotten gains. Meanwhile, he remains as free as a bird, and probably doesn't even face social ostracism. Last I checked, Jon Corzine is not on the naughty list of the people who matter.
Since results don't matter and there are few consequences for losing, even for catastrophe, everything becomes a matter of spin. All problems can be solved with better P.R., and there is no greater triumph than when some newscaster recites that glib talking point you just coined or when your FB post went viral, your instagram noticed by the right kind of influencer. In other words, winning is a matter of successful symbol manipulation. Speaking of spin, virtue signaling is an obsession, even unto rank hypocrisy, and the Davos Set think nothing of flying a private jet to a conference where they can congratulate themselves on their commitment to stopping climate change. Again, if there are to be any consequences, then those are for the little people to deal with.
Even in their dwindling contact with the physical world, the elites live in a world of wish-fulfillment. Push a button and whatever food or whatever else you want is brought to your door by some peon, paid for seamlessly by some electrons exchanged between banks that may not even have a physical location within a thousand miles of your location, if they have locations at all. You can even get laid via internet, just swipe right on the lucky profile. Everything is taken care of in the background, your credit card billed and airline miles accumulated automatically and the food or the girl just show up. Somehow. By Uber, I guess. Mundane questions like "How do I feed the human kittens this week and pay for school supplies and still make the rent?" never come into the equation.
These are people who confuse their fantasies with reality to the point where they actually believe their own press releases. They give an order and it happens. They proclaim their puppets in Kabul to be wise and stable technocrats, their well-trained military striding from triumph to triumph and So Let It Be Done, So Let It Be Written. "So let it be written" - that's the word, that's all that need be done and the little people just somehow make it happen. For sheer lack of any kind of contact or reference with reality, these people make Louis XVI look like a medieval gong farmer or a pygmy tribesman by comparison.
Contrast the Taliban. Symbol, spectacle and abstraction mean very little to them. Doordash doesn't operate in their area and if a Talib wants a vegan option, he'll have to provide for it himself. It has probably never occurred to a Talib that he could cancel his enemies simply by digging up their old tweets that were innocuous at the time but are now politically incorrect, sent under a long discarded Twitter ID, and he doesn't have time for that, anyway. He lives in the world of concrete and material things, he thinks nothing of killing and in his world, there are bullets waiting to kill him quite literally dead and transport him to a very earthly and very earthy sort of paradise.
You can't wish those things away, your credit cards are no good and probably rifa, anyway, and the bullet flying towards him isn't concerned with word games, his upcoming struggle session to root out unconscious racism and cannot be reasoned with or convinced to bother someone less important.
The world of American elites collided with the world of the Taliban and got its ass kicked. Biden and his crew cannot deal with this, because that kind of reality does not select for success in symbol manipulation, any more than skill at football selects for an ability to do math problems.
The clownish Western response to the COVID is similar. The virus can't be negotiated with, can't be bought off, can't be distracted, and is unimpressed with you and how highly you may think of yourself.
As you may know, I've seen quite a lot of both worlds, I've lived in barns and crouched under the table in the room where the decisions were made, so I think I understand both mindsets pretty well. I prefer freedom to regular meals.
Speaking of, I got some mice to catch, or otherwise, I will surely be going hungry.
Brilliant.
The Finster aims to please.
But, Paul’s initial question: “…what to do about it?”
We all get the deceit, hiding and decrepitude that is modernity, but, so what?
I suggest acceptance … As Paul said, this is inevitable. Trying to change or reverse it seems tantamount to feeding vitamins and antibiotics to death row inmates. Not only do we prolong their lives, we make them stronger. It seems to me that surrender to their demise and collapse, while simultaneously learning, respecting and loving the “old ways” might be an appropriate personal response. The faster it collapses, the sooner we can get to living.
But, I could be way off…
🤷🏻♂️😢
That is a good question, and the only answers I have involve a lot of suffering.
Being a feral cat ain't easy, otherwise we'd all do it.
One of the most impactful (to me) essays of the past few years on this subject was written by Fr Freeman (an Orthodox priest from Tennessee): https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/glory2godforallthings/2020/06/01/the-violence-of-modernity/
I re-read that essay every month or two and it still rings true. It has given me a context to see what’s going on around me, and he even gives some useful rules of thumb on how to live at the end.
From the essay:
“ Modernity is not about how to live rightly in the world, but about how to make the world itself live rightly.”
Thanks for this essay! I appreciate Fr. Freeman quite a bit.
Thank you for the link Kennon. Interesting essay and some good advice!
Thanks for the article post. One of the lines that most resonated with me was “The amount of our human existence that now requires rather constant technological intervention is staggering.”
I also liked the “How Should We Live?” suggestions, including “You are not in charge of the world. Love what is local, at hand, personal, intimate, unique, and natural.” I think if many of us could do simply that, consistently and daily, we might snap a few bones in the globalist Machine’s skeleton.
Fr Stephen is, to my mind, one of the wisest and most perceptive Orthodox voices around. Thanks for this.
Thank you so much for sharing that. That's getting pinned up on the wall to remind me everyday how I need to be.
Thank you. I have bookmarked this for future reference.
Thanks for the recommendation - excellent, and very clear sighted
That is a very nice essay, and thank you for putting it here.
It was also a chance to see a painting by Bosch that I much admire. The only people in that painting who are not caricatures, or stereotypes of themselves in a state of exorbitant passion are Jesus, in the middle, and Veronica at the side. Maybe there is the thief who Jesus told would be with him in paradise before the end of the day ? They have their eyes closed, and an expression of suffering on their faces. They don't want to see the crazed faces of so many...people indulging their bestial passions around them.
That's pretty understandable...
It would be wonderful if you could create a Discord channel, or something similar, so fans of your work had a way of connecting with each other. I'm currently hoping to find, or set up, a community that can prepare for the coming collapse, preferably by buying and settling some land in a Northern European locale, and it would be great to find others who are aligned on these values and ideas to help.
My view entirely. Learn to live simply, with others.
I second that request. It’s so hard to find people with similar values and ideas in the real world, and here we are reading the same blog. It would be nice to know you all more. As for preparing for the coming collapse, I fear that it might not be escapable, but I’m certainly thinking along the lines of settling in more rural areas hopefully in the vicinity of like-minded people. At least while waiting for the Apocalypse I can do it in better company!
Me too! I like the idea of being proactive about dealing with the Apocalypse!
https://discord.gg/W3rqCQnS
https://discord.gg/W3rqCQnS
Hey, how does discord work? I signed up. Thanks, Clara
One response could be to build lives that transmit values interpersonally, rather than digitally. It'd most likely be in family and local friendship settings, and it'd certainly be at only a small scale in service of rooted, natural-facing community. I'm a Christian, I can't see how it wouldn't rely on a fervent religious belief system, but what do y'all think?
And the second need is the concentrated narrowing of our aims — to give up "changing the world" to instead preserve what little good we have experienced and learned. I'm thinking of the medieval Irish monasteries whose monks copied out texts, hermetic and wholly dedicated, that later generations received long after the medieval age had passed away.
There are probably more than a few of us thinking along these lines. How to make it reality? That is what stumps me...
Fair — I realize now that my comment was more aspirational than concrete. To make it reality, we'd need to intentionally raise families with an eye towards the best values that they can inculcate, and we'd need to live more in common with our immediate neighbors. Anything you'd add? This is only a broad-stroke start.
Go back to basics. Give up all the advanced technology. Live with what is around you and which grows naturally. Most would be appalled at this idea. But I can't see how the top heavy technological world can be sustained without all th evils that necessarily go with it. Mainly raping the natural world.
With my partner I farm 70 acres in East Tennessee. For the past 22 years we have produced 100% of our meat and averaged 75% of our vegetables for our own consumption. We also supply a significant amount of meat to approximately 20 families each year. This is not a boast. And it certainly isn’t a claim that others can or should do it. Or, even that it has been the best way to respond to these times.
The reasons are varied for why we moved in 1999 to this place and built this farm. But I’d have to say at this juncture, with all our mistakes, that focusing on stewarding this plot of earth, working with it to be productive, repairing our mistakes, has changed me for the positive. So, my answer to being a better man, more fully human, is to be a good steward of the land and of the animals I husband, and to cultivate my relationships with both kith and kin. This is the path that is working for me.
How old is too old to embark on this kind of thing? Just pondering...
Hmmm, that really depends on a lot of factors. I do think most people underestimate the physicality of farm work. For our model to have worked we did all the sweat equity. I was 37 when I started and it damned near did me in on many days. Now at 59 with most of the infrastructure built it is manageable. So, it depends on where you settle and how much needs to be done. Feel free to email any questions you might have: bmiller@wingedelmfarm.com. Cheers, Brian
I wonder if it is possible to start very small. A kind of hybrid project at first, i.e. not seeking self-dependence, but just getting the ball rolling, whatever that may mean. Try to build something beautiful and multi-generational. It is worth starting, I think, even if one never sees it come to full fruition.
yes, I keep thinking that it could be only a start and next generation would have the possibility of carrying things further.
It's very hard. Thirteen years in and only now accomplishing what I thought I would accomplish in the first few years. It never ends. What was fine then needs upgrades now. You never fully understand the costs in time or money.
Soil and water are the most important factors. Everything else is on top of that.
Beautiful comes with time. Time is a gentleman, and God gives beauty for ashes. "Adequately working" is more immediate. Working alone makes it much harder.
Mid-60's now and wouldn't change anything, except for all the 13 years of mistakes I made, which I'm only now figuring out. I watch my neighbors who leave theirs to the next generation and it suddenly becomes a subdivision. I don't worry about what my daughters will do with it. I learned long ago from an old Army mentor, you can't control it from the grave.
You begin with dreams of Monticello, some days it feels like Little House on the Prarie, but in reality, it becomes a beautiful portrait of real life, and you fall hopelessly in love with it, and want to be in it all the time.
We live in a fallen world. Unless you give yourself over to chemicals, the weed and decay pressure can beat you into submission. The most beautiful thing you've done can, in just a few short months, becomes a tangled, ugly mess, unless you tend it constantly. By the sweat of your brow...
Lovely.
This is so beautifully expressed. It seems worth all the struggle just to have the peaceful insights that you have clearly gained from your life's work. I heard Vandana Shiva speaking on youtube and she encouraged people to simply "occupy the land" as a way to resist the machine. Each one who stays and resists the subdivision is a tiny victory.
Hi Dana, I just read your piece On Desert Places. since there was not a way to comment and I just had to I am doing so here. Although that is probably not appropriate. I completely agree about CCM.
This little bit from George MacDonald is the part I wanted to share:
"That man is perfect in faith who can come to God in the utter dearth of his feelings and desires, without a glow or an aspiration, with the weight of low thoughts, failures, neglects, and wandering forgetfulness, and say to Him, 'Thou art my refuge.'" (Unspoken Sermons)
@simclardy, thanks. Not to 'jack someone else's stack. But in this case, it might be fair. This post (well, actually the comments on it) were what has helped me out of my latest desert place. This is absolutely one of my 2 favorite subscriptions--I really enjoy both the author and the community.
George MacDonald is a favorite read, also, probably because I understand him the least of all the authors I read. Like your quote, While I understand it, I still don't. I have to mine it. It takes me awhile.
Thank you for introducing me to the spiritual writings of George MacDonald. I only know about him from his other literary works, which I love. This particular quote seems to speak to me personally, as I was just talking about ‘refuge’ with my Jungian therapist yesterday - how the real meaning of ‘taking refuge’, which is the Buddhist equivalent of baptism, can almost sum up my whole spiritual path, in that with each humble acceptance of my foibles, hubris, errors and even just simple forgetfulness, my understanding of refuge becomes deeper and more genuine, and I come closer to being able to say from the bottom of my heart, ‘Thou art my refuge’.
One of the great success stories I know of a 'later in life' turn to agrarianism is the 20th century intellectual Scott Nearing. He and his wife moved to a farm in Vermont (and later to another in Maine) when he was in his 50s, and he actively homesteaded until age 100. He was a sort of secular ascetic-philosopher, and one of his favorite activities was building stone walls and buildings by hand. One lesson I have from him is that physical capacity has to do with much more than just age....
Brian, it's great to hear about your life and stewardship of the land!
My wife and I bought our property when I was 40 - it's the remnant of an old farm that was last farmed and lived on year-round in 1953. Lots of construction and heavy labor at the outset, like you say. There are days/weeks at 45 now where I'm definitely at the edge of my physical limits - and there's no denying that it would have been easier to start earlier.... And yet it's about as life giving a path as I can imagine moving forward to keep investing time, love and care into this patch of land, and the people of this neighborhood....
Funny you mention the Nearings. I actually read quite a bit on them recently. Some say they exaggerated the possibilities of going back to the land and set many up for failure. I just visited Will Bonsall in Maine who knew Helen. He was laughing about their claim that you need only work 4 hours per day (the 4-4-4- concept). They also traveled every winter all over the world, so only had to split and store about 1 cord of firewood. They had trust fund money from family and bought all their staple foods. So they talk about growing their food but actually that referred only to vegetables and some fruit. They did many wonderful things but it is unfortunate that some of their claims have been misleading. There is a book called, Meanwhile, Next Door to the Good Life that I haven't read about some of these inconsistencies.
After reading about Helen and Scott (how development of a ski resort drove them from Vermont to Maine) I picked up this beautiful book that I've had for a long time called Maine Farm. It turns out that the farmhouse is actually Helen and Scott's former home on their land in Maine that the author bought from her. The owners of the farm are obviously wealthy and not subsisting. At the end of that book the author tells how the whole area around his land was being subdivided and turned into McMansions. That almost made me cry. I have seen this happen to my home town and dream of running from it... but to think of buying land and investing your life only to have the McMansions and the chainsaws and the strip malls follow you eventually to your new location... it's too much! I guess this is where that brokenness and grief you posted about comes in for me.
Anyhow, I appreciate all the honest descriptions of farm work from the posts on here.
Interesting to hear that about the Nearings - I didn't know about their buying in staple foods. Thanks for sharing. I did read the Good Life many years ago, and have known a few (now deceased) homesteading couples who used their model with some success. I haven't revisited their writings in a good long while....
On a practical note, the thing that seemed the most untenable to me in their model (at least while living in Vermont or Maine) was their vegetarianism and not keeping animals. It's much more tenable in my experience to feed oneself while keeping animals alongside the plants, especially in an area like this with long winters.
I'm curious about this. Have you ever read Will Bonsall's book? He promotes veganic agriculture in Maine. He tells how he initially got goats and set about growing the feed they would need. Quickly he realized that it would be much easier and more efficient to grow a vegan diet for himself rather than growing enough for animals too. So he is critical of those who say they are producing meat or dairy if they don't account for the grain they buy in to feed the animals. Not that buying grain is inherently wrong but it isn't self sufficient and it probably is a fossil fuel intensive product.
On the other hand, in some climates animals can be on pasture for most of the year (not Maine) and livestock can act as mowers and compost creators etc. He definitely suffers most on his farm from inability to get everything done.... but he is 72 and alone so that is impressive in itself.
Scott and his wife were quite the pair. I admired and have implemented a variation of his 4/4/4.
So, when I stress the age and the physical work requirements involved, I'm thinking most often of the average person. Most people, simply put, are not physically fit, that includes most 18–25-year-olds who volunteer on our farm. This is perhaps yet another modern disease. I have a young woman, 19, volunteering through WWOOF on our farm. She doesn’t have the physical strength to cut wire fence with a pair of pliers. She is nice, smart, thought she was in good shape, but isn’t.
I also find that most people are not mentally conditioned to do hard work. They often think that because they go to the gym, work out, run, diet, that they can do hard sustained physical work. Too often they are wrong. This is, of course, a generalization. And thankfully there are plenty of exceptions. Only the individual knows if they are being "honest" with themselves about their capabilities. I am just leery of the many 65-year-olds who tell me, “when I retire, I’m going to do what you do.”
Yes to this - we just finished a heavy 'work week' with volunteers doing a big project with lots of hand carrying of heavy materials. My 70-year old, retired farmer father-in-law worked circles around the twenty-and-thirty year olds helpers who have non-physical jobs.
I've heard the US military has been lowering or considering lowering their physical fitness requirements for entry, because they are having trouble filling the ranks with many recruits not able to meet the old requirements - I suspect you're right about this aspect of the 'modern disease'.... and yes, plenty of exceptions are out there too....
When we first moved to the farm, Mark, I helped a 78 year-old dairy farmer rebuild a shared mutual fence. One day, when I was about to drop, he looked at me and said he was going home for a bite and rest. "I'm not as young as you Brian", he said. He got on his tractor and drove over the hill. Then I collapsed, once he was out of sight.
Do it!
:)
Another option is urban homesteading. Even if you have a little land around your home, you can (depending on zoning bylaws) do useful things with it. We’ve gotten a few hens, and a coop out back. It’s a very small project, yet it seems to me having these non-pet animals to tend to, to clean up after, to feed, to care for, does produce an increased connection with the wild and the natural. It’s too early to know what my long-term feeling about this will be, but as one who lives mostly through words and abstractions, I find it very rooting to have to work with and manage these physical creatures and their physical environment.
Good advice. I have been doing that on our 1 acre lot for about 8 years. I love this place and have poured myself into it. What bothers me is that I still have to go to the supermarket and we still make the needed money via this earth-killing economy. I do have a beautiful and very healthy life with many connections to the Real and am grateful for that. I may just be greedy for more :)
That’s a good greed, if one could say that.
Good for you. My wife and I have 5 acres. Mostly in woods. But I'm growing veges, planning to build a greenhouse this summer, and I'm hoping. . .hoping, we can get more and more self-reliant when it comes to produce. For meat, I'm thinking about raising rabbits. My brother did it when we were kids.
For those interested in what this life can entail, here is a piece that summarizes some of the work we put into our farm: http://www.wingedelmfarm.com/blog/2021/05/16/twenty-one-years-by-the-numbers/
Well done you. Your path is the right path. Close to the earth.
I am mulling couple of things this week, wondering if they are clues for how God wants me to live...one is a 40-year-old book by a Japanese theologian Kosuke Koyama called "Three Mile an Hour God". I've not read it through, but the premise is simple, God's love moves at a very slow pace, about the same pace as Jesus walked through the world, So often, he healed/helped/oved while is was going from one place to the next. No grand plans or programs to change the world.
The second is something Russell Brand referred in one of his recent YouTube spots. He seemed to have a name for it (that I now forgot) - but the idea is to practice and develop a habit of simple disobedience. I work for a nonprofit and I thought about this today as I was updating our GuideStar page, GuideStar being a large platform where nonprofits can share info on their work and receive an Olympics-type rating (Platinum or Gold or Silver or Bronze) based on how "transparent" you share yourself. Today, I found out in order for us to keep our "platinum" status, I would need to provide race/sex/gender data on our two staff and all 18 of our Board members, plus reveal our plan for equity. Eh, I figured to hell with it, gold is not too bad.
I recently stopped giving out info on my race, ethnicity, income, marital status, religion, etc. when asked. It feels so invasive all of the sudden.
I'm all in on gold :-)
Sounds like someone wants to remake the world in line with their own prejudices. That's the Machine's work Well done for denying it power over you. Creative disobedience is my term for it. Martin Luther King famously called for transformed nonconformists.
God moves at walking pace.... love that
Brand called it something like "Anarchy Calisthenics".
James C Scott, in Two Cheers for Anarchism, says you have to practice breaking the law everyday in little ways as a matter of building muscle, for the day will come when it’s going to require going big.
This question has been on my mind, and I'm looking forward to reading how people respond. I know many who have accepted the stark reality of our times, but fewer who have found a way to live in them.
Whatever path we choose, I think smallness will be key. I've been making my way through 1 Corinthians, and I am struck by St. Paul's assurance that the wise and powerful will not be able to save the world. Rather, he points to the folly of the cross—a God-man whose greatest victory was in his greatest moment of suffering. "God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong." I believe that.
I have wasted a lot of time trying to figure out ways to combat the machine on its own terms—power with power, wisdom with wisdom. But I think that the narrow path is much more counter-intuitive, like Tolkien's hobbits walking a narrow road to Mordor, beneath the notice of warring kingdoms.
I'm not always sure what that looks like in day-to-day life, but I am experimenting in small ways. I've been trying to pay attention to people who have been brought low by the machine, and to learn to walk with them in love. I've been withdrawing from debates that are too lofty for me, so that I have the energy to fight for good within my own community. And I've been worshiping Jesus every morning. These are humble starts, but I think they matter.
Hobbits are certainly a great example of humility and biblical meekness, I'd say. Would you take anything from their lifestyle in the Shire?
I think "meekness" is exactly the word I'm looking for. Isn't it interesting that the meek are promised the earth as their inheritance? I have been trying to practice that hobbit-like meekness and simplicity, often by not involving myself in the affairs of bigger men. Also, by drinking good beer?
A few years back, I was surprised and fascinated to learn that (at least according to some scholars) the term for 'meekness' in that Beatitude refers to having significant power and then restraining oneself from using it - like the image of a strong warrior who keeps his sword in its sheath. That image of 'meekness' - not a lack of access to destructive power but a refusal to use it - seems like a key part of how to live sanely in this time.
Joshua, I love your phrase of 'trying to pay attention to people who have been brought low by the machine, and to learn to walk with them in love' - a beautiful and Christlike stance, I think.
Thanks, Mark. That's a heartening way to think about meekness.
How about you?
I'd absolutely take their drinking and dancing, their sense of "simple" pleasures that happen in a communal setting. Ditto for their living spaces that don't require clearing land but instead leave fields and hills intact.
I do wonder about the backbone required for maintaining such a community though. Those are "affairs of bigger men," I'd guess, because they have to confront what is happening elsewhere. Hobbits seem peace-loving in an unhelpful way, unlike peaceably capable as the elves tend to be.
I agree that there is imperfection in the Shire for all its idyll. A bit too comfortable in need of a bit of shaking-up ('some dragons would do them good'). We then see the society sleepwalk into an industrial totalitarianism which needs folk who have been to Mordor and back to fix it.
One of my takeaways is to never, ever, shave your feet. I also like the idea of 2nd breakfast.
...and elevensies. They're my favorite.
The farming. And the beer songs.
Insightful reply, and we're on the same wavelength, as I literally just posted something about "the narrow path" too! I like the idea of "smallness."
Your comment reminds me of this passage from 1 Thessalonians….
Now about your love for one another we do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other. And in fact, you do love all of God’s family throughout Macedonia. Yet we urge you, brothers and sisters, to do so more and more, and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.
1 Thessalonians 4:9-12
Quiet life, work with your hands, love the people of God. Not world changing but certainly life changing….one life at a time.
This is a deeper thought than the replies indicate. Thanks for it--I think I need it.
I love: “I’ve been withdrawing from debates that are too lofty for me.” Similarly, I’ve been practicing not having opinions on most matters lately. It’s such a simple gesture: and yet, here I am 42 years old just discovering that despite the pull to opine on everything, that kind of flies in the face of the most important virtue, humility.
I often wonder what Jesus meant when he talked about the "narrow way" that leads to life. Throughout my life, it usually had to do something with "have the right beliefs about Jesus" or "do the right, ethical things."
Lately I've been wondering if maybe it has something to do with walking as if on a tight-rope: what could be more narrow than that? Your goal is to not fall off into extremes, whether to the left or to the right. There's nothing more easy than to fall into the comfort of an extreme ideology: all your thinking is done for you, all the answers are given, you have a community of stringently like-minded people there to sympathize with you, you have a clearly-marked enemy to battle. When you're trying to stay balanced on the tightrope, you're constantly thinking about your next step, you're careful, you're cautious, all your strength and will is focused on one goal: making it to the end. In order to stay balanced, you have to think through everything yourself, pray through everything yourself, make difficult judgments, search for truth (even if you suspect it's the truth you don't want to be true) and strive to be faithful to God, even if the extremes, both right and left, would prefer you weren't. There's nothing harder than trying to stay on this tightrope in a world that is increasingly polarized and extreme--both on the left and on the right--but I actually think it's really important for the health of one's soul and one's ability to hear the voice of the Spirit in a very loud, loud world.
I'm not saying this is what Jesus meant. BUT, maybe there's a way in which this reading is useful. It's been useful to me recently.
Another way to think about the narrow path is learning the violin. If a person really wants, they can pluck the strings however they wish and call it “music”; they can bang the thing on the ground and call it “music”. That is the wide path of the world. The real music requires a narrow path; faith and a focus of mind and heart, discipline and practice, failure and patience…and the reward is beauty.
This immediately make me think of a song by Imagine Dragons called Walking the Wire. When I listen to the song or read the lyrics, I see Jesus leading us along the tightrope, offering us His hand, telling us, as the song says, “don’t look down.” It can be scary and stressful, or exciting. Our choice.
Thanks for this Ruth!
I do think this is an important stance - to not get sucked into identifying with the polarities of one's time. I think that is probably an important part of Jesus' teaching - that if we identify with the humanity of one group to the exclusion of those on the 'other side', then we lose the ability to offer unconditional love. 'Falling off the tightrope' to one side or the other can feel good to the ego ('I've found my people!') but I suppose it then restricts our ability to be present to all in love, even if we may disagree with any given person's ideas....
Hi Ruth! I think the tightrope is a really interesting way to view Jesus' description of his "way."
I think Jesus also clarifies the image for us a little bit:
[Mat 7:13-14 ESV] "Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few."
So it seems that the path that is easy to find and easy to follow is contrasted with the path that is the way of Jesus, which is difficult to find and hard to travel.
As you said, a tightrope requires caution and care on every step and would qualify as a difficult and hard to find path! I don't think Jesus is particularly making the point about avoiding extremes here...but there are certainly other passages that call us to pursue peace with everyone such as Romans 12:18 (which I think implies avoiding extremes).
I agree that today there is a comfort and an ease to joining some group with extreme internally-focused views - and that doesn't seem to fit the way of Jesus!
Forgive my continuous reach for Wendell Berry...
Standing Ground
However just and anxious I have been,
I will stop and step back
from the crowd of those who may agree
with what I say, and be apart.
There is no earthly promise of life or peace
but where the roots branch and weave
their patient silent passages in the dark;
uprooted, I have been furious without an aim.
I am not bound for any public space,
but for ground of my own
where I have planted vines and orchard trees,
and in the heat of the day climbed up
into the healing shadow of the woods.
Better than any argument is to rise at dawn
and pick dew-wet red berries in a cup.
Rather than forgive, I thank you.
Always a good thing to bring WB into the discussion.
Amen.
Wendell Berry is an excellent default setting; this is one of my favorites. My other favorite is this one; now we share the guilty habit.
The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Wendell is a constant companion in these essays. Thanks for sharing.
* Care To Evolve?
"The egocentricity experiment with human Design has run its course – its climax is our confluence of crises. Virtually all system solutions and ascension paths proposed by even the most enlightened among us fail to breach egocentricity’s stronghold. The forecast for our imminent extinction is well founded and arguably certain unless we BECOME something new. Metamorphosis is appropriate terminology here. At this Moment in history, ages of humanity can be metaphorically distilled into a litter of newborn kittens, blind from birth, whose eyes are now poised to open onto their world for the very first time….are we ready?
Relieving humanity of egocentricity’s bondage by consensus is impossible. Political proposals are hopelessly impotent. It is now imperative that we develop metamorphic catalysts immediately – means and methods to efficiently transmute egocentricity and profoundly evoke our innate senses of interdependence and compassion This is our evolution."
https://bohobeau.net/2016/07/24/care-to-evolve/
For myself, I'm just waiting. I'm waiting but for what I'm not quiet sure. Every morning I get up, bathe, dress, drink my coffee and check the weather, drive to work and then read. I read and read and read and then sometimes I run out of things to read so I go talk to coworkers. I then drive home to my kids and wife, help with chores, find out how their day went and we wax elegantly about what we should eat for dinner. We make dinner, eat, the kids watch a few cartoons and I watch the evening news and then we go to bed sure to follow the same pattern the next day.
I'm middle aged now and have positioned my finances such that they need not be changed. I've reached what seems to be a peak in my career. The finances manage themselves and work is hardly ever a challenge. Family life is sometimes chaotic but that's part of the fun. As I type on the keyboard the 2 year old runs into the room and yells "Sharks!!!! Sharks!!! Sharks!!!" She laughs at me and I say, "Sharks!!!! Where?" She runs out and grabs a play stethoscope and checks my heart. I make the sound, "bump bump, bump bump, bump" and she laughs then wants me to check her heart. The world outside goes by and the world inside is filled with the little pitter patter of children laughing and playing. I realize now that I'm not waiting for anything. I'm just enjoying life as it were.
Seems like you are where you most need to be.
Oh, I don't know how to answer that. As you point out, Paul, don't we have our hands full dealing with our own pathologies? Isn't there already too many voices out there telling us what to do, what to wear, what to eat (or not eat or not eat too much of), or what to drive, how to feel, what to watch or read (or not watch and read), what to think . . .
I mean, sometimes I just think fuck it all.
But then I come back to the struggle.
Yeah, I must keep working on my miserable self. That's a given and will continue until I die, and maybe beyond. And then I ask myself, what can I do to be a good husband? How can I be the kind of mate and partner that is the best for my wife? And, of course, my kids and grandkids. I can't forget them. How can I be the best papa I can be for them? When is it best to keep my mouth shut and just listen to them and not give any advice? Just love them. Let them know I'm here. I see them. How can I avoid the mistakes my own father made? Sometimes, I feel haunted by him. How can I be a good example to my family and friends in the best way possible: by how I live and where I devote my time, energy, and money.
I can't change "the" world, but I like to think I can influence "my" world for the good. And maybe if enough of us do just that, we can make a difference in the big stuff.
This is where I find myself. After years (decades) of grappling with this subject, I have realized that I—and probably many other people—are so thoroughly a product of our modern age that even the question “What do we do next?” is part of our diseased way of thinking. I don’t know how to relate to the world in a non-materialistic way, nor to other people, nor even to God. And how do you fix that?
Yes, you can grow your own food (a project I engage in), and it offers many tangible benefits to the soul. But it is at heart a practical answer to a practical question. How do we engage in loving people, and the world, as God loves us, if we have only ever experienced love that is based in a material worldview rather than a transcendental one? If that is the question and the project, my little world and how I engage it is the only possible place I can make any change at all. —Marleigh
No idea! I just live from day to day and accept what comes my way, appreciating that I am having an experience, that the “I”of my existence appeared at a certain time and place of which I had no control over. Also, everything changes, all the time, nothing is ever set in stone and the future is not ours to know (as my grandmother used to say). Not sure that answers the question. James Tunney has some intriguing commentary (YouTube) on our digital dystopian times.
"but a good question to ask of any culture, and of any person, is: what god do you worship?"
I guess cultures/people who do not believe in creator deities or have a need to worship are beyond the pale, and left out of the conversation. In fact, the craving to worship is what gives rise to the Machine/Cathedral (notice how the religious term is repurposed).
"Changing the world. It’s such an astonishing concept: that we have, or could ever have, the agency, ability or knowledge to change the nature of a vast, complex planet we barely understand"
Sentient beings change the world all the time as the Buddha demonstrated (though most often they are unaware of what they are doing).
"With God gone, after all, what else is left to us?"
The Dharma.
"The question then becomes: what now?"
The answer that the Buddha gave us 2,600 years ago: take refuge in the Dharma. Nothing beats the truth.
"If/when I fully accept the reality of this time, how am I called to live a faithful, fully human life, here and now?"
Follow the Noble Eightfold Path every moment, and make your awareness of leaving the path, your call to return to it--like those devices they have in cars that alert a driver to when they have drifted out of their lane.
“Do you want to improve the world?
I don't think it can be done.
The world is sacred.
It can't be improved.
If you tamper with it, you'll ruin it.
If you treat it like an object, you'll lose it.
There is a time for being ahead,
a time for being behind;
a time for being in motion,
a time for being at rest;
a time for being vigorous,
a time for being exhausted;
a time for being safe,
a time for being in danger.
The Master sees things as they are,
without trying to control them.
He lets them go their own way,
and resides at the center of the circle.”
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
Lao Tzu speaks of improving the world, which is, of course, impossible.
What Paul posted about was changing the world, which sentient beings do all the time. The question is whether or not the change results from acting in harmony with the Dharma, or from trying to satisfy their desires.
The world cannot be re-sacralized, which seems to be a goal for a cohort of people nowadays. It is already sacred. People should live in harmony with the sacred, and if they are successful, they will change the world (since all is impermanence how could they not), but they will neither improve nor--more importantly--degrade it.
I suppose I took "changing the world" as it is typically used and as another way of saying "improving the world" i.e., changing the world for the "better". The "world" often a stand-in for the "world of human concerns" or how the ego wants things to go. Or, in its more rabid form, I have heard people say, with little or no detectable irony, that they desired to "save the world".
This is the common usage. Or what Paul is calling the Myth of Progress.
For the person who has learned to let go and let be, nothing can ever get in the way again--Meister Eckhart
The Way is ever without action, yet nothing is left undone. -Tao Te Ching
As for change, the world changes whether we want it to or not. We along with it.
FYA, if you want to read a good book that is not in fact The Bible, I recommend Christ The Eternal Tao by Hieromonk Damascene.
Here’s a question: If someone could build one of “those devices they have in cars that alert a driver to when they have drifted out of their lane”, except instead of using it on a car, you could connect it to your mind, so that it would alert you when you drifted off your meditation, would a Buddhist wear it?
I do not think such a device can be built or worn. I do know that it can be discovered and cultivated--something human beings are equipped with, but do not possess.
Actually, they can be built and they can be worn. Here’s a quote from one of my own articles (Can we stream God through an app?) about a device in development at the SEMA lab of the University of Arizona, which:
“uses transcranial ultrasound to “sonicate” the brain. The purpose isn’t to spark spiritual experiences—not yet anyway—but to improve people’s ability to meditate. According to the lab’s website, ‘We are aiming the ultrasound to a part of the brain that we think should help enhance the acquisition of meditation skills (like equanimity, concentration, and sensory clarity).’”
But I am not talking about the acquisition of meditation skills or streaming God. Sounds interesting though. Thank you.
To be clear, the article wasn’t really about “streaming God”, but about technologies and mechanisms that trigger nirvana-type experiences.
Thank you; now I understand. I did not read it that way, as I do not see those experiences as nirvana-like. They struck me more along the lines of being part of Western ideology's catalogue of blissed-out experiences used to signify Buddhism/Taoism/generic Dharmic states, in the spirit of "Tune in; turn on; drop out."
no
Probably not a true Buddhist. But I wouldn’t be surprised if the average spiritual seeker might.
All of which makes sense unless:
1. there is a being to worship;
2. the Dharma is some of the truth, but not all of it;
... which is where, to my astonishment, I found myself some time back.
That is a great place to be for you and others who find themselves there. Problems arise when such folk insist/demand other people join them, and play by the rules they now live by.
Well, of course. Nothing should be forced onto anybody. Many religions, certainly including Christianity - and Buddhism - have made the mistake of trying to force people into truth. It's demonic behaviour and it has consequences.
Exactly. So many people feel the need to impose their operating systems on others. It is a puzzlement.
This Christian preacher thinks you are spot on, and following Christ, with this statement.
If I were to become a regenerative farmer or a hermit in a cave, I would still be doing it for the machine. Every act seems tainted and doused in a seemingly inescapable egotism. Even in my cave I feel I would somehow be bathing in my righteousness waiting for some film maker to come and make a film about my hipster rejection of society. Maybe the way to live is small, almost invisible? I honestly don’t know - I’m as lost as the next man.
For whom are you performing? You seem very concerned about how you're seen, and that implies an audience. So who's there doing the looking, to make you worry so?
Yes good question and yes perhaps I am too concerned. For whom? Everyone and no one? This wretched individualism, where we must at all costs fulfil our potential and self actualise has me.
I do find the concept of self-forgetfulness to be much more useful than the concept of self-actualization. I find, in myself at least, that the 'self' that wants to 'actualize' is actually the one that needs to be forgotten. I do think smallness and hiddenness is a wise place to abide....
'The only wisdom we can hop to acquire
Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.' (T.S. Eliot, 'East Coker'
Sometimes the Machine's trap is to cause us to question our motives so deeply that we do not take the course we should. Dance (as the cliche puts it) as if no-one is watching.
Yes - there is something in this - Thankyou