Archive for February, 2009

Anarcho-Primitivism

Friday, February 27th, 2009

I guess you could call anarcho-primitivism the lifestyle of going back to the land without a need for central authority.  I feel that if we go back to the land, we will actually care for it again.  We will not look it as something to pave or to raise cheap beef on.  It shuns the need for a control mechanism because every other species in the known world does not have one.  We embrace freedom and not tighter and tighter control.  We’re starting to get on the right track.  But we’re still operating within the system.  The domination and exploitation system.  But once we can break out of the system entirely and start building the natural lives us humans were meant to live, then we can finally be happy and fulfilled.

People in today’s society are never satisfied with anything.  They always strive for better, newer, cooler.  Whoever dies with the most toys wins.  Not only that, but the newest toys.  You’re not going to win that game with thousands of ball-in-a-cups.  But sometimes the simple playthings bring the most joy.  Maybe the ball-in-a-cup is better than an iPod Nano 60GB.  It’s much simpler to make and hardly has any ecological footprint.  Why are we the only species who keeps having to get better and better items and tools?  Why do we feel it’s necessary to have nuclear bombs that can blow up an entire region of the world?  When will the pathology stop?  When will we reach our equilibrium where we can just stay there for the rest of our time on this planet?

Will it ever be enough?  Or will we consume our way through the entire universe?   We need to go back to not just a sustainable way of living, but a way of living that is self-enhancing.  We live off the land in simple shelters with simple tools.  We may or may not grow our own food, but if we do it’s not to the extent of these monoculture farms we see and think about whenever we hear the words corn or soy.  We make survival our number one task and we spend the rest of our time playing and slacking off.  That’s what all other biological life does.  Even the dolphins and elephants do it.  We view animals as stupid for not building great empires like we did.  Maybe they had more foresight than we did.  Maybe they already know it is all going to collapse anyway, so why put generation after generation through the simulation called civilization?  They see that the world is a beautiful place and it is their home and only a species that is suffering from some sort of psychiatric condition would want to destroy it.  We can learn a lot from those we regard as “below us.”

We don’t have to go back in our thinking.  We just have to go back in our reality to a simpler world.  A world that doesn’t need central control and can survive in harmony by itself.  A world where depletion and extraction are looked down upon and enhancing and revitalizing is the moral way.  This, and only this, justifies the human existence.  We aren’t here to destroy the planet.  We’re not some cancer.  But we’re acting like one right now.  The Human as Cancer theory.   Think of how cancer attacks other cells and kills them by extracting their livelihood.  What do you think those skyscrapers are?  They’re big, jagged tumors on the face of the Earth.  The pavement is some kind of psoriasis.  Dry skin.  Dead skin.

We just go back to living like our ancestors and see how it goes.  We keep trying things that are beneficial to both us and the whole, not just us.  We stop the pathological path of destruction and start constructing.  We become like every other species on the planet.  We accept our roles as stewards of the Earth, not exploiters.  We protect our home instead of destroy it.  We live our own ways, but only in constructive ways.  We make as little impact as possible.  We drop the whole ego notion and just become part of the fabric of consciousness.  We live for the moment and strive to make the next moment better.  It’s a simple life, but a great one.  And it’s possible, but who knows when.

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Humans and Conquest

Tuesday, February 24th, 2009

Humans are all about conquest and taking from others.  We spread across the world, like a cancer depleting the lands as we progress over the entire planet.  The only reason we need to keep expanding our base is because we destroy our current land.  When we were in history class, we were taught to view the great conquerors and something to admire, rather than something to resist.  That humans are the center of the world and we are entitled to the entire world to be our own.  And if there’s another group of people a few miles a way and you want that land, you go over there and kill them or find a way to get them to submit to your way of life.  And it just spread like wildfire.  The good thing about it is that the wildfire did burn out every now and then when one of the civilizations crashed due to its massive size, making it almost impossible to completely defend.

And so it goes.  Over and over, civilizations rise and fall since at least 10,000 years ago.  But what is the point of all this rising and falling?  What purpose is it serving, other than the short-term gratification the elites of each empire feel when the acquire a new piece of land?  The land gets more and more depleted as each civilization takes over it.  It’s very cyclical, except for the fact that the control gets tighter and tighter with each pass.  We become more depedent on the state each time around.  Just think how easy it would be to send people into a mass panic.  Suppose all the electrical grids went down.  No more running water.  No more lights.  No more refrigeration.  This one aspect of our lives failing could cause a mass panic and probably kill more than half the population if sustained long enough.  And yet this electricity has only been around at most a few centuries.

We are only serving the government because we don’t think we can live without it.  We’ve been told so many times what the world would be like without central control.  “It would be chaos.”  Was it chaos before we started civilization?  No.  The proof is in that we’re still here today.  We learned how to survive off the land, rather than just using it to the brink of exhaustion and then moving other places to do the same.  Agriculture ruined the world.  We didn’t know it at the time what the ramifications would be of this new “invention,” but we certainly do now.  Well, some of us do.  Our population is way out of control.  Because grain feeds opiate receptors in the brain and is easy to grow, we have populations so large and growing so large that in 50 years there will be 10 billion humans if something drastic doesn’t happen.

The root of conquest was agriculture.  The agricultural way of life is what created the nations and control structures we live in today.  If we hadn’t concentrated populations so much due to the way we grew our foods, we wouldn’t need all this control and conquest.  If we kept the tribes small instead of exponentially larger, we may have been able to not only sustain our life on Earth, but have the Earth be better off for having us here.  It’s a shame we let the drug of agriculture lead to the drug of civilization.  I call it a drug because it is fundamentally destructive and exploitative, and yet we cannot live without it.

The only thing I see that even resembles the way we used to live is something I call permaculture, but there is still a domination aspect to this.  We control the animals and the crops on the farms.  But we use what we have there and make it better without increasing what we have.  It’s the closest thing we have to natural, but there’s still the idea of conquest because of the use of land we supposedly own (stole).  But how many people actually do this sort of permaculture?  Not many.  Most of our food is grown using oil fertilizers and pesticides because our topsoil is so depleted.  And let’s not forget Monsanto’s new genetically-modified crops that are Round Up Ready, meaning that they are the only plants that can survive that toxic chemical being sprayed on it by whoever is tending the crops.  Even organic crops are not natural.  They’ve been hybridized and bred for higher sugar contents and to be more palatable to humans, while at the same time losing most the nutrition it used to have.

We used to have populations of humans that were at a level where we would never have to worry about the things we do now.  I would say the most we could sustain at this point would be 1 billion, but preferably much less.  And we would all have to be part of non-coercive tribes or villages where we all worked together to sustain our communities and refuse to go back to the drug of civilization.  But it’s so tempting…  We would have to not only remember what this world was like, but know enough never to go back to it.  We would have to evolve in such a way that we would never break out of the cycle of nature again.  We would have to love the space we’re in enough to not only sustain it, but enhance it.  Then we would have no reason to conquer other lands, because we don’t have exploding populations and know enough not to ever go down that dark road again.  We would have to possess a consciousness that expands way out into the future and the past where we know where we’ve been and know where we’ll be headed if we make certain moves.

I’m not calling for a mass extinction of humans anymore than anyone else.  It is simply necessary for us to thrive and become what we were meant to be.  It’s going to happen either way.  It will happen when our population gets so big that disease spreads like wildfire, or it can start now with people starting to downshift their lives and having less children.  But we must get out of this conquest mentality for this to happen.  A nation is not going to lower its population if it thinks it will be conquered by another nation who does not lower theirs.   I might as well be shouting into the wind because I know the scenario will be overpopulation leading to massive disease.  People are too selfish to start now.  Especially in the developed world.  There are very few people in our world that will give it up for the good of the whole.  They’re too attached to their way of life, much like the addict is attached to the needle.  I’m not hopeless, but I expect a crash.  It’s only natural.  It’s been happening for thousands of years.  But when it crashes, will we go back for more?  Or will be start living smarter?  That’s the question.

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My Tape

Monday, February 23rd, 2009

I have my tape in my possession and I can’t seem to get the video to appear here on my blog, so here’s the link:

 Andrew Brunelle at Comix in NY

I really wish the code would work so I could have the Youtube video on here on the blog, but it just won’t work for me.  That’s okay because I can always link to it through Youtube.  I also have it on my Myspace page.  Go by and check that out if you wish.  This was part of a documentary I was filming for a Canadian TV show.  I hope you all can have a look at it and let me know what you think.  It’s a very short set, so I really couldn’t get into that much, but I thought it was pretty concise.

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Comedy and the Act of Lightening Up

Sunday, February 22nd, 2009

It’s a cruel, cruel world out there and it helps to  lighten up every once in awhile.  No matter how bad things get, you still have the free gift of laughter.  No matter how bad your problems are, it doesn’t mean you can’t chuckle.  Nothing should stop you from being happy.  It’s a choice.  You can choose to enjoy your life or to be miserable.  The choice is up to you.  It’s a great way to relieve tension.  This is why comedy is such a powerful force in the world today.  It gives people the chance to have a good time, regardless of circumstances.  Unless, of course, you’re still choosing to be miserable at a comedy club.

I don’t care how bad your past was.  You can make a better present by lightening up.   And you can create a more enjoyable future by embracing the gift of laughter.  You have the power.  The only person who can take this power away from you is yourself.  People even attest today that laughter is therapeutic.  It can be used to cure people.  Read Anatomy of an Illness by Norman Cousins.  Check out Amazon or wherever you buy your books from.  I’m not affiliated with any book vendors, so just check out books on the power of laughter.  Lighten up because you can.  It will make you feel good.  And it’s not addictive, like the hard drugs some people do to make themselves feel good.  But it is contagious.  It’s a virus that can spread throughout a room.  At least it’s better than all the other viruses out there.

You don’t even need a reason to laugh.  You can just start laughing.  Sometimes I find myself laughing for no reason and it’s perfectly okay.  It’s a positive activity.  You can even laugh at yourself.  Laugh at what terrible fate has befallen upon you.  It will relax you.  It will empower you because it will raise your emotional state.  Whatever you fancy, go ahead and take a good hard laugh about it.  It’s a language we can all speak.  You can even laugh at the mass extinction of all humans by an alien race that comes here to annhilate us.  You can get a good laugh about the oncoming collapse of society or the impermanence of the universe.  You can pretty much laugh at anything.  So what’s stopping you from enjoying yourself?

I remember comedian Louis C.K. doing a joke about how poor he was.  He said something like, “Have you ever been so broke it just becomes funny to you?  You look at your bills and say, ‘I’m not paying this!’  The electric company calls and says they’re turning off the electricity.  ‘Fuck it!  Turn it off.  I don’t give a shit.’”  Here’s the link: Louis CK #2

He also does this great bit there where he talks about how the bank is calling him because he had insufficient funds, only $20.  And the bank charges him $15 dollars because he only has $20 in the bank.   It’s basically a whole routine about being broke.  He’s one of my favorite comedians because he is so brutally honest and doesn’ t hold back.  I suggest you pick up his DVD Shameless.  It’s so funny, it’s unbelievable.  He is a bit on the swearing side.  He uses foul language.  But it doesn’t seem offensive when he does it.  Just watch that clip and see if it makes you feel better than you do right now.   I want you to see firsthand the amazing power of laughter.

Edit:  He also does this amazing bit towards the end where his toilet is too close to the tub.  Funny as hell.  I really think you’ll enjoy him.  

On a related note, I believe my video from NY is at the Post Office and I’m picking it up Monday.  I’ll be able to put it on this site or at least link to it on Youtube.  I’ll find out tomorrow what’s waiting at the PO for me, but I’m almost 100% sure it’s my tape.  Look for it in the near future.

And just to give you something else from Louis, here’s Louis CK on Gay Marriage.

Everything is Owned

Friday, February 20th, 2009

It’s no secret today that every piece of land in the inhabitable world is owned.  Owned by some guy or some nation.  Owned by people that think it’s perfectly okay to own a piece of the Earth.  You know that now there’s this guy that actually claimed the moon and sells spaces on it to celebrities?  Apparently, this trend has even stretched into space.  When can I get an apartment on Jupiter?  Somewhere near that Great Red Spot.  $500 a month?  Okay.  But I can’t live there.  I’ll just use it for storage.  All my knicknacks and extra crap will go to Jupiter.  Just because someone says they own something and have a piece of paper that says they own it, does that mean they actually own it?  Property is theft.  Any way you look at it, it’s theft.  Ownership of anything is theft.  Everything in front of you was stolen.  Every home and piece of land you see was stolen.

I would have to say the contrary when it comes to ownership.  Instead of people owning the land, I say the land owns the people.  Before humans, animals didn’t have any concept of property that was owned and kept embarassingly sterile because the housing development you live in wants every house to look the same.  The land was free for the living.  Not for the taking because no other animal sees themselves as owning land.  Sure, they may think they mark their territory, but there are no laws in place that stop another animal from taking over that land and living there.  Everything was wide open.  Even the Native Americans could not conceive that someone could own a piece of land.

I think the reason people want to own land is because it makes them feel powerful.  Or at least more powerful than before.  “Yes, that’s MY piece of land right there.  It belongs to ME.”  It belongs to the Earth and the Earth belongs to the universe.  The idea of property is to keep people in the broken system we have now.  If people could just go anywhere and build a shelter, they wouldn’t have to pay rent or mortgage every month.  If people could just take land and grow their own food, they wouldn’t have to spend money at the supermarket.  By having the entire world owned, they keep an entire generation captive in unfulfilling jobs because they have no other choice but to starve and freeze on the streets.  Most of these jobs are damaging to the planet and humanity as a whole.  Extraction of resources, depletion of topsoil, pollution of rivers and oceans.  Most of the corporations in the world contribute to these atrocities.  It’s either destroy the Earth or die on the streets.  Of course, this isn’t true for everyone, but the majority of people have no choice.

Even a writer  or an attorney contributes to the clear-cutting of forests when they use paper products.  Deplete the Earth to survive.  That should be our mantra.  We have no choice because we’re not allowed to occupy any physical space unless we help in this cause.  This is how most people are forced to be.  A system that depends on destroying its environment is doomed to failure, and yet people can’t just stop because they would lose their “property.”  We have the ability to create heaven on Earth if we could just get past some of these ridiculous laws that keep us in this system.  Even the Founding Fathers were this way.  Rich, white, property-owning men who believed their class was the only one who should be able to vote.  How enlightened…

At this point, I feel that resistance is futile because not enough people are willing to put an end to this system we live in.  We know in our bones that it’s wrong and yet we keep going on, day after day, with an almost zombie-like apathy, waiting for our time to die and finally get out of this hell world.  Our leaders are satanic for the most part and do whatever they want with no regard for the law, while the people below them are put under harsh punishments for the same crimes.  Power does what it wants and gets away with it.  And they have this power because they own things.  They own land.  They own oil.  They own whatever it is that other people need or want to get their hands on.  And they use propaganda and other manipulation tactics to keep things that way.

How can people be woken up from this stupor and start moving towards a better world, a world we can all feel good about?  We could show them what really goes on in the world through independent media, but they won’t believe you because it’s too fringe.  If it’s not on television or in a newspaper, it isn’t true.  All the things that don’t get out are usually the most important things.  If you haven’t heard, the USA, Canada, and Mexico signed the NAU agreement, making these three countries into one.  You didn’t hear this on CNN or Fox News.  The reason the most powerful people in the world want a one-world government is because they would OWN EVERYTHING.  Every piece of land in the entire world would belong to them.  They could control every action in the entire world.

I have an alternative here.  How about a no world government?  How about a world where we don’t need laws and we just get along and work together?  We use community and cooperation to get things done that actually matter.  We’ll have no need for accountants and bankers because we will be in so much abundance that we’ll never know scarcity.  The Earth was once an abundant place full of life.  These owners are the ones that have destroyed much of that aliveness.  I would say that to own is to destroy, but it’s not absolutely true.  But it’s close enough.  Let’s drop the facade of ownership and start living like we are supposed to.  Like we used to.  The way our bodies and biology intended.  Once we get the hang of it, it won’t be so hard, it will be natural.

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