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Tuesday, June 22nd 2010

7:02 AM

Anger Is Good



It took me a long time to realise that what I thought was my own free will was actually a mercilessly manipulated and largely predetermined way of living my life: “free will” was whatever this civilization told me was the “right” way to live. It took me even longer to accept that I didn’t have to live this way – that there was a multitude of other paths that my life could take, if only I could shake off the devil that seemed to cling to my back, always urging me to follow the “right” way; the way of the machine, the way of economic growth and the way of the cosy disconnected existence.
 
Then I got angry.
 
A few years ago, anger wasn’t something I considered to be helpful. My five years as a Greenpeace activist contributed to perhaps one slight change: a number of timber merchants would no longer stock illegally harvested tropical hardwood. More significantly I learnt about Non Violent Direct Action, or NVDA, a concept first introduced by the religious Quaker group, and adopted by a number of protest organisations around the world during the 20th century. The essence of NVDA is to ensure that whatever you are doing does not result in violence of any sort. Of course definitions of violence vary widely, with many environmentalists and environmental groups claiming that violence can be committed against not only people and other animals, but also inanimate objects. This is the view that most Western governments also hold. On the other hand, destroying a piece of machinery in order to prevent the discharge of a toxic substance – is that violence? Agreement won’t be coming along any time soon; but my experience in carrying out NVDA was that neither violence (against both animate and inanimate targets) nor anger would be tolerated: the two seemed to be tied up together to such an extent that on numerous occasions, activists were implored to “calm down” by others carrying out the same action, lest they do something they might regret later. This mantra of non-violence and non-anger burrowed into my head and stuck there; it took something startling to shift it.

A Corporation is a company that has the same rights as a human being – more so, in fact. In most Western legal systems, corporations are given preferential legal treatment compared to individual members of the public, especially when it comes to the enforcement of environmental and human rights legislation. The key to this is something called “limited liability”, which all corporations are now subject to: it means that the shareholders of a corporation are only liable for the proportion of the corporation that they own; in effect, the responsibility for the actions of the corporation as a whole is split amongst, potentially, millions of individuals. On the other hand a corporation, as a whole, can act as an individual. Noam Chomsky explains that up to the 19th century:

Corporations, which previously had been considered artificial entities with no rights, were accorded all the rights of persons, and far more, since they are “immortal persons” and “persons” of extraordinary wealth and power. Furthermore, they were no longer bound to the specific purposes designated by State charter, but could act as they chose, with few constraints.

(Noam Chomsky, “Market Democracy in a Neoliberal Order: Doctrines and Reality”)
 
The upshot of this is clear to anyone who follows the activities of corporations around the world: environmental negligence, corruption, labour abuses and scant regard for the rights of individuals. It was while watching The Corporation, an astonishingly thought-provoking documentary that I came across some of the very worst examples of corporate excess: those activities that take absolutely no account of the rights of individuals. I was particularly struck by the way that the people of the city of Cochabamba in Bolivia had fought back against both the corrupt actions of the city authorities and the profit-hungry motives of the services multinational Bechtel. In 1999 the World Bank provided a loan to the Bolivian government in return for which the government had to privatise all municipal water supplies – the contract for Cochabamba went to a Bechtel-owned consortium called Aguas de Tunari, which immediately put into effect strict control measures. When a private company is granted such control over one of the most basic human needs that it becomes illegal even to store the water which collects on the roof of your house, and you have to spend 20-30 percent of your income just on water bills, something is bound to give. What did give was the patience of the residents who – by enacting two general strikes and complete stoppages of the transportation network, as well as countless minor acts of sabotage and refusal to cooperate with the authorities – reclaimed their rightful authority over the city’s water supply. In answer, “The government responded with police, tear gas, and bullets as well as the repeated detention of civil society leaders.”
 
Despite the predictable and heavy-handed response of the authorities, the people won out, and Bechtel were banished, leaving a city authority very much with its tail between its legs. The reason the people of Cochabamba were so successful in their concerted efforts, both in scale and execution, was because they got angry – something snapped inside a great many people and that anger was realised through the power of their actions. Had the people not got angry then Bechtel would still control the water supply, and the outcome in terms of public health could have been horrendous.
 
This pattern is repeated throughout the world, throughout history: the participants of the 1381 English Peasants Revolt were angry; the working class French revolutionaries of 1789 were angry; the Tree Huggers of Northern India were angry. Success is not guaranteed, but unless the people themselves realise the problem, and understand that they can fix it, then the problem will never go away. Conversely, if the people understand the problem, know there is a fix, and have enough of their own drive and spirit to counter the cynical and barbaric Tools of Disconnection applied on behalf of Industrial Civilization, then they can fix the problem.
 

What Is Anger?

Strip away any of the connotations freely and often ludicrously associated with anger, and what it left is something surprisingly sober: anger is a protective instinct.

When answering perhaps the most important question of all: “What matters to us?” there are few responses that could be considered truly universal. Our most fundamental biological urges lead us to value family, and particularly our immediate descendents above all else; and despite the Industrial Machine insisting that divisive material gain is a virtue, we still deeply value friends, and those other people we depend upon, and who depend upon us. We also value ourselves: a fist to the face is guaranteed to be parried by the object of that assault, and a lethal attack will be met with a similarly lethal response – all other things being equal. And we value our natural ecosystem: the beautifully complex set of interactions between its multifarious elements that keep us alive. Yes, we really do – even though we often act as though we don’t.

What makes us angry is when the things we value are threatened. This is human nature: it is survival, and without this response we are little more than machines.

*   *   *

There are two types of anger, Constructive and Destructive. By Constructive Anger, I don’t mean the kind that makes you build a sandcastle with a billowing flag on it saying, “Save Our Crumbling World!” On the other hand, by Destructive Anger I don’t mean going around with steam coming out of your ears breaking and hitting everything that gets in your way – although it could mean that; it depends on the context.
 
Destructive Anger doesn’t achieve anything useful, and can sometimes make things worse than they already are. Interestingly, this means that the vast majority of protest marches, rallies and other symbolic events, if fuelled by anger, are destructive. Constructive Anger, on the other hand, does achieve something useful – even if it may not be exactly what was originally intended. For instance, if all the evidence you have to hand suggests that removing a sea wall or a dam will have a net beneficial effect on the natural environment then, however you go about it – explosives, technical sabotage or manual destruction – the removal would be a constructive action. If this action was fuelled by anger then your use of explosives involved Constructive Anger.
 
Much is written about anger being a negative emotion. I was moved to publish this essay by the appearance of a short piece equating reactionary rage and destructive violence with the deep-seated emotional anger response:

If you didn't realize it after Nopenhagen and the tea party protests, and the incessant rage on AM radio, we're definitely in the anger phase folks, and it's only going to get worse. The battle lines of ideology have been drawn. Even people we used to think were on "our" side may turn out to have irreconcilable differences once they realize the only choices they have are to double-down on BAU or to powerdown.

And I'm sorry to say that the environmentalists are going to be in trouble if they just lower themselves to this sorry level of vitriol.

I'm afraid that this sort of crisis of confidence may indeed lead to violence. If the country practically tore itself to pieces over something as simple as healthcare, how can we stay unified and bring all hands on deck in the face of peak oil and ecological collapse?

Such confusion over what anger really is has been spattered over the pages of self-help books for many years, the “anger is bad” mantra more recently becoming a mainstay of the environmental blogosphere. When quotes like Senaca’s “The best cure for anger is delay” and Ben Franklin’s “Whatever is done in anger ends in shame” are seen as a way of reasoning against one of our most powerful instinctive urges, then we clearly have lost sense of what it means to be human.

These negative connotations of anger, in particular their relationship with violence, are predominantly cultural. At the beginning of the 20th century, many American psychologists decided that all human emotions – rather than being a complex mix of internal and external, subjective and objective, conscious and unconscious – were only relevant if they could be observed objectively. Although Behaviourism, as it was called, came under increasing attack in the late 20th century for neglecting not just consciousness, but feelings, it shaped much subsequent psychology, and thus shaped the way society observes and understands itself. The simplification of emotion suited the development of “advanced” Western society perfectly: intense emotions, rather than being a poorly understood, often very personal manifestation of the human condition, could now be palmed off as “reptilian” or “primitive”. Rather than treating uncontrollable emotions in a holistic way, they were “treated” using barbaric, physical techniques including enforced isolation, lobotomy and electro convulsive therapy. This fear of the primitive and the need to defeat it is reflected in the views of earlier Enlightenment thinkers, such as Francis Bacon and René Descartes, who held the kind of ideas that Industrial Civilization embraced and increasingly used against nature:
 
The Enlightenment period saw nature as a dead and mechanical world, a view that permits people to think of ecosystems and their inhabitants as mere resources for human use. The ultimate purpose of this mode of thinking is absolute control over both living beings and material nature.
 
Francis Bacon, for example, hoped to conquer and subdue nature and “to shake her to her foundations.” For Descartes, animals were “soulless automata” and their screams in death the mere clatter of gears and mechanisms. Indeed, in this view, nature is nothing but a machine.

(Franz J. Broswimmer, “Ecocide”)

These views would seem astonishing if they were not intrinsic components of our cultural way of thinking. The understanding that emotions, such as anger, are not simply rabid, “primitive” urges, but are in fact complex things that require a deeper sense of awareness to fully appreciate, brings us full circle. The notions of Descartes and other Enlightenment thinkers, such as Isaac Newton, are indeed enlightening, but not in the intended sense: they reveal a deep distrust and fear of being part of nature, as though somehow being connected to it was a real temptation that they were scared of succumbing to. Industrial Civilization, as promoted by the views of the Enlightenment thinkers and enforced by countless players all becoming gradually addicted to the trappings of a certain way of life, demands that we remain separated and terminally disconnected from the very thing which we need to survive. Anger is a burning fuse that can either be extinguished or allowed to trigger something bigger.


Sublimating Change


 
When I watch a protest march on the news, and the organisers talk up the success of the protest, the word that immediately comes to mind is “sublimation”.

One will find hundreds, sometimes thousands, assembled in an orderly fashion, listening to selected speakers calling for an end to this or that aspect of lethal state activity, carrying signs “demanding” the same thing…and – typically – the whole thing is  quietly disbanded with exhortations to the assembled to “keep working” on the matter and to please sign a petition.
 
Throughout the whole charade it will be noticed that the state is represented by a uniformed police presence keeping a discreet distance and not interfering with the activities. And why should they? The organizers will have gone through “proper channels” to obtain permits. Surrounding the larger mass of demonstrators can be seen others…their function is to ensure the demonstrators remain “responsible,” not deviating from the state-sanctioned plan of protest.

(Ward Churchill, “Pacifism as Pathology”)

Ward Churchill’s brilliant portrayal of legal protest - particular the gaseous dissipation of the protestors at the end - demonstrates how symbolic actions (as opposed to those which achieve something) are merely a way of making people feel better; helping them bypass any useful emotions and instead, harmlessly drifting away. When you take part in a protest that does not directly threaten the thing you are protesting against, you are simply sublimating any anger you might have into whatever symbolic acts you have been led to believe will lead to change.

This process of sublimation is repeated in all facets of Industrial Civilization, from the Government Consultation and the Parliamentary Process through to apparently useful tools as Judicial Review and industrial Whistleblowing; all chances of real change are prevented by an array of gaping holes, channelling our anger into “constructive” activities. Because we followed the recommended course of action – the peaceful alternative - we feel sated and content that right has been done, even when nothing has been achieved.

*   *   *

The First World War, or Great War, was terrible in more ways than it is possible for a sane person to imagine. Emotional expression was a necessary outlet, and many poets emerged from this futile and politically motivated war; among them Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. Both were talented and, significantly, both experienced the horrors of war on the front line, profoundly affecting them. Of the two, it was Wilfred Owen, the less financially privileged, though eventually a great friend of Sassoon, who made the greatest impression on the public. Undoubtedly charged with anger, his poems are an attempt to expose war for what it is and allow others to understand it. Generally recognised as his finest poem, Dulce Et Decorum Est reflected his “shift in tone from personal questioning to righteous anger”; an inflammatory “How dare you subject others to this!” that changed peoples’ perception of war forever:
 
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

The words, “Dulce et Decorum est pro patria mori” mean “it is sweet and right to die for your country.” Owen realised that no war was worth the kind of suffering that his colleagues had to endure. In the three short verses that comprise that poem, Wilfred Owen used his anger to change the future: no longer would people willingly and blindly accept bloody battle – war would no longer be the easy option.
 
There are hints that suggest the power of anger as a motivation for positive action, throughout the visual arts, films, theatre and literature – artistic outpourings that often short-circuit the cultural limitations in which we live the majority of our lives. You find them everywhere. Contained in John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath” - a monumental story of lost ideals and corporate power – is the following passage:
 
Some of the owner men were kind because they hated what they had to do, and some of them were angry because they hated to be cruel, and some of them were cold because they had long ago found that one could not be an owner unless one were cold. And all of them were caught in something larger than themselves.
 
Who are the majority? They are the cold people; those that have accepted the way it has to be and got on with their lives, doing what the culture tells them to do. The kind people understand that there is a better way to act, and they treat others with respect; but they are not angry – they will not change anything. The kind people are like those who march, and petition, and hope that things will get better. The angry people understand that there is a better way to live. The angry people are different: they have the potential to change things because they do not meekly accept the circumstances that civilization has forced upon them.
 
The predefinition of anger I am proposing – returning the word to its rightful meaning – is as marked as the negative idea of civilization that many people reading this have already adopted, and which runs counter to the way we are taught to think from birth. Maybe we do need to find other words that can legitimately describe anger-type behaviour that is not constructive; but outside the realm of psychosis I believe there are situations where even the most profound forms of rage have a constructive application. We must not be afraid of anger: use it wisely by all means, but use it nonetheless.


A different version of this essay was originally published in the online book “A Matter of Scale”, http://www.amatterofscale.com
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Tuesday, May 11th 2010

8:32 AM

In Truth As In Beauty



I fear I cannot do this river justice. You can’t taste words or hear what they try to convey; yet as I sit on a bank of the Tweed, a few metres to the north of, and below the house we have just moved into, I feel I have a story to tell. Pity the poet without a muse – maybe you can also pity the writer without the means to express this enveloping beauty.

The river speaks a thousand words,
In a thousand tongues so old
And wise. The ages move downstream
In dialogue; clear, precise and cold.

Last month we said farewell to a house that had taken two children through their formative years – the first eleven and twelve years of their lives; had seen the joy and drudgery of family life pass through its doors; had welcomed friends and family, some of whom would pass from this world too early, some of whom would best be forgotten – such are the quirks of fate.

I often dreamed of living close to a river; in all honesty, though, I think the river chose us in the end...

(I had to leave the bank for a while to rescue a loaf of bread from the oven, and met my daughters coming the other way down the steep, twisting path. They had made red-brown paint from the iron rich sandstone scattered across the bed of a burn that feeds the main watercourse. Already the surroundings have invoked a creative surge.)

...that sounds odd, I know, but it’s worth putting it in the context of one of the core values of civilised society: the need to always push forwards in some way, the implication being that it is a fundamentally good thing to drive society towards some unreachable goal. I touched upon this idea of “progress” in my last article; here it takes on a different form, in the shape of my simple self, sitting on the bank of the river wondering what course of events could have led to this outcome. Sheer bloody-mindedness at certain points along the way, certainly, but I believe the outcome was far more to do with “letting go” and seeing how things turned out.

In November of last year we visited my parents at their new house for the first time; they having moved to Scotland a couple of months before. Whatever it was about the village (it’s really a small town) they live in and its people, we felt drawn to the area and upon our return home started looking for places to live. It turned out we couldn’t afford to live very near to them, not with the size of garden we were looking for, in order to grow food. But it seemed that the Borders of Scotland were a possibility. Then, over the Christmas period, we took the chance to view a house – a very cold one with lots of work needed, in a tiny hamlet with no shops – and were captivated by this area. Despite being stuck in a blizzard (or maybe because of it) we couldn’t stop smiling.

With that property not looking viable, we chanced upon a cafe in the nearest large town, and got to talking with a local resident, who gave us her opinion of the places worth looking at, and those best avoided! The journey back was treacherous, but we still couldn’t stop smiling. We returned to Essex and a few weeks later, having lost numerous nights to wondering what the effect of a move might be on the children (and us) began searching in earnest for places to live. In late January we put our house on the market, sold it within a week (to a chance viewer who happened to be passing the “For Sale” board), by which time we had selected four houses that we would view in a couple of weeks. The place we now live in was not on that list.

A few days before we left for the viewings, an unusual property appeared on the solicitors offices’ website. My sister came across it after I had at first decided it was too quirky, and urged us to view it. It became the new fourth house on the list. Then, on a very cold day in February this year we embarked on “The Great Viewing” during which my younger daughter managed to vomit in a pub close to the first two houses we looked at (both underwhelming), and didn’t feel too great in the third house. But we nevertheless accepted that the third house, in a village that was looking a bit run-down, might be the best option. Then we made our way to the final place – stopping at another pub en route (in which, thankfully, my virus-full daughter managed to keep her sandwich down) – which turned out to be so beautiful that we made a verbal offer on the spot.

Over the next few weeks, stress got the better of me somewhat – the inevitable result of dealing with two different legal systems – but somehow we completed our sale in time to make a proper offer on the house. We accepted that we wouldn’t win, and started to imagine life in the third house; not so bad, really. Then our offer was accepted.

(We will be joining our younger daughter at the Village Lunch in about an hour – it’s a sort of coffee morning, with soup and biscuits, which anyone can go to, and they do; from young families with babies, to the majority of the older children at the local primary school – including our newly settled-in daughter – right up to the oldest, most established pillars of the community. It’s only our second time; but we already feel part of village life.)

After less than a month in our new house, in our new village, in our new country, we are starting to realise we are not on some idyllic holiday out in the countryside, but part of a thriving, friendly community. All the boxes are unpacked – one psychological bind already cast off – and I have been planting seeds to at least give us some extra food come the autumn. At night, when we manage to gather enough wood, there is a fire burning in the front room taking a small burden off the local gas supply; and if we look out of the windows just as dusk takes hold, bats can be seen flitting across the sky, taking tiny insects from the air in their hundreds.

Time has passed since I started this essay – a few days in fact, because there are so many jobs to do at the moment – so now I tap away in the kitchen while my wife looks over paperwork and my younger daughter reads in her bedroom, having returned from the local junior school a few minutes ago. An interesting array of sounds disturbs the peace; not in some cacophonous rage, but like a gentle swatch of contrasting colours: the quiet hum of the fan on the laptop; the movement of feet and softly clanking door catches as people move around the house; birds, always birds, full of sounds constantly defying simile; and my own breath.

This is my beauty – not some civilised artefact conjured up as a commodity to appease whatever is currently in favour, but a personal beauty that defies description. Like the insects pursued by bats in the dusk light, real beauty only stays for a moment before moving on, changing, pulling at the emotions for a heartbeat then diving away to be found again some other day.

I am struggling to work out what it is that makes this beauty so much more real than anything we purposefully seek; what it is that so harmoniously matches our desire for the apparently unknowable. I can only conclude that it is that very transient nature – the ever-changing, never static fluidity of the world we inhabit – that, for a split-second presents us with a truth that shouts: “I am the now!”

Does that make sense? To put it another way: what feels best of all? Think of the moments where everything comes together just right, so that a sense of purpose, contentment and security combine with a breathless freefall...and then it is gone and you are left with a feeling that you have experienced something that must be the truth.

Hush! There is a whisper in the air;
A fluttering light, a touch so soft,
A pungent scent, a time so rare.
It fills your head and heart with truth,
With beauty, with life. Then blink!
The whisper is gone...for now.

Someone bring me that poet.

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Thursday, March 18th 2010

5:56 AM

Taking Back Our Words



Recently, I received a message from a group called Trees Have Rights Too. They want to create a Meme, a replicating cultural entity, from the word “ecocide”:
We want to get this word out into the public consciousness so that we can call for the restoration of ecocide territories and protection of those territories at risk of ecocide. Help us transmit this word as a meme and start using ecocide, posting it out there on blogs, writing about it, calling on those who can help stop the ecocide of the planet...let us know where it is turning up around the world and we will post it up.

The word ecocide isn’t new by any stretch of the imagination, and it forms the title of an incredible book by Franz Broswimmer that I urge every one of you to read if you can still get hold of it; but the use of a single word as a meme is an interesting concept and potentially powerful, even if the application of the meme seems flawed in this case. Why is it flawed? Because the plan doesn’t recognise a fundamental property of words: their malleability. In short, language is one of the most dynamic elements of human culture: any one word can change meaning rapidly from one generation to the next, even within a single generation; it can have several meanings at once depending on context, and – as we will see – it can be manipulated to mean whatever the dominant influence in a culture wants it to mean.

The meme is not the word: the meme is the meaning of the word.

That is not to say that individual words cannot be used to great effect; the group correctly identifies “genocide” as a seminal word of huge cultural significance, such that the Sudanese government took great pains to prevent the massacre of innocents by the Janjaweed in Darfur being pronounced as a genocide by the United Nations, and the Turkish government are still threatening political intransigence in the event that the state-ordered slaughter of Armenians in 1915 is ever referred to as genocide by the USA.

A very limited number of words have such power on their own, and it is highly likely that the cultural significance of a word, rather than its definition per se is the key to change through language. Few people are shocked to see the word “fuck” in print today, even though such occurrences caused extremely strong reactions in the 1960s. Yet, 50 years ago, Americans would routinely use the word “nigger” to describe people of African origin – something considered intolerable to the vast majority of people now. I agree that new words may be a useful tool where none exist to adequately express the gravity of the current ecological and humanitarian situation: we will indeed need to be able to express ourselves, rather like a whole new level of swearing!


Stolen Language

But a lack of words is not really the cause of our cultural lethargy in the face of impending ecocide; it is that words have been stolen and co-opted to reflect the desires of the rulers of the systems we are subject to. Some of our most powerful tools have been taken from us – the pen is losing the battle against the sword. What we observe is that there is a whole tranche of words that no longer mean what they once did. One of them - “green” - has slipped away so rapidly, it seems easier simply to hand over the reins to the word’s new Masters:
This time we need something the marketers will never want to appropriate – and that’s why Brown may be the new Green. It’s the color of the Earth, of dirt – it reminds us that things smell as they compost, it reassures us that we do not necessarily need to put on a clean white shirt to go to work. But Madison Avenue does not like stains. Try saying “Brown Huggies.” It will never take off.

Or will it? I suspect that the moment ecologists start to use the word “brown” as something good then the marketing executives will be straight on the bandwagon, hosing down all vestiges of dirt to present to the consumer the New Brown in Town. Giving in is what we have become used to; but there is no Earthly reason for us to accept this corporate mauling of our language, as I wrote in a response to that article:
I don’t believe for a moment that the corporate world will let go of the word “green” without a fight, and I certainly have some sympathy with Nick [Rosen] in turning to our old friend “brown” – good old earthy brown, compost brown, manure brown, bark brown – but while brown is a colour you are far more likely to find in a woodland than in a shopping mall, it is not the only colour of life.

In fact life has a host of different colours: the vivid reds that signify the fruits of autumn and the segment of sun as it disappears over the horizon; the warm oranges of so many flowers, pebbles and leaves; the wide blue of the sky and its reflected light in the oceans; the white of the brightest cloud and the firmest mushroom; but most of all the green of leaves, of algae, of plankton – the green that means photosynthesis, that means oxygen, that means life.

Green is the reason we are here.

No corporation is ever going to take that away from us – it can try, but I’m claiming it back from the bastards who haven’t just stolen “green” for their own nefarious purposes, but are stealing the entire language from our lungs.

Words are enormously powerful; in many ways they are a defining feature of our culture, not only because of the number of ways that they can be used – in the form of poetry, debate, story-telling, song and innumerable others – but also because we have become conditioned to accept certain words as having significance beyond their physical incarnation. These words are more than just symbols – they are tools that can be, and are, used to manipulate the way we think and act.

“They behaved like animals!”

The use of the word “animal” in that context is not accidental; it derives from the Enlightenment view that humans were above the common animal whose screams were “the mere clatter of gears and mechanisms”. Despite us clearly being animals, the adopted viewpoint is that to behave like an animal is to be less than human. Is this your viewpoint, or were you taught to think like that?

It is some small relief that the German philosopher, Wittgenstein took the view that our internal experiences were isolated from what we would normally understand as language. He explained this in the context of pain, in that a person could reasonably question (through our use of language) whether we were in pain or not; but we could never doubt whether we are in pain or not – the experience is not subject to communicating that experience. This suggests that our internal self is isolated from the outside world by the lack of a useful interface, thus providing us with some protection from cultural interference.

Nevertheless, as we strive to communicate our experiences through words (among other things) such that others may understand them, we open up a door to these experiences, and in doing so allow a dialogue to exist. The interface between our internal experience and the external manifestation of these experiences is not a one way street. Words affect our emotions, they can hurt, they can heal, they can change who we are.

“I hate you!”

“I love you.”

Why do politicians make speeches? One could make the argument that they simply like the sound of their own voices, but in that case why not just talk to an empty room? The point is that politicians understand the nature of this interface between the external and the internal only too well. Rhetoric can sway opinion; true oratory can create lifelong beliefs: once more unto the breach brothers and sisters, fight them on the beaches and be the change you want to see.

Just words, surely?

No, not just words – ideas enshrined in policy and broadcast through the mouths of the common man, the paid-up celebrity and the pages of your children’s schoolbooks. Orwellian speak seems quaint and almost harmless compared to the ideas we are being asked to swallow – from the joys of wage slavery to the wonders of the infinite growth economy, via the imposition of “freedom” through the barrel of a gun. If you can dress it up in the right words then people will accept almost anything.


Reclaiming Words

It goes without saying that if we had to use words properly, i.e. not change their meaning to suit our own ends; then our ability to manipulate lives would be severely curtailed. To put it another way, if words had to be used in their unfettered form then we, as free-thinking human beings, would be subject to far less cultural manipulation.

That would be disastrous for the industrial machine.

I am absolutely determined to do what I can to help free words, and thus people, from the shackles of industrial civilization. That is an immense task, and not something I can achieve alone: however, if I can at least identify the most important words to reclaim – to “predefine” if you like – then that will be a start. After that we can work out how to reclaim the words.

I’d like to start by quoting from Time’s Up! to give a flavour of what I mean:
Some words, which we unwittingly use in neutral terms, are deeply grounded in civilization; as though that is the only way of being. ‘Consumer’ has become a general term for a person going about their daily life, when it actually means someone who is taking part in a consuming activity, like shopping or tourism. ‘Advanced’ and ‘Developed’ are terms used to describe cultures that are at the peak of human endeavour, when they are actually very specific terms to describe a high level of technological or economic activity; likewise, ‘Backward’ and ‘Undeveloped’ are used to put non-industrial, low-resource-use societies in a poor light, as opposed to ‘good’ civilization. ‘Developing’ is purely aspirational: it implies that a society or country that is not ‘developed’ is aspiring to become so. ‘Civilized’ and ‘Uncivilized’ are similarly used to imply positive and negative aspects of a culture or society when these words actually describe to what level it is based around living in cities. Words like ‘Savage’, ‘Wild’ and ‘Animal’ have been framed in almost completely negative terms, when they simply imply that something is natural.

Already we have a list of words that have either been manipulated to be positive when they are not, or negative when they are neutral or positive. The terms “negative”, “neutral” and “positive” are from the point of view of Natural Law - that which determines what is right for all life. With that in mind, here are the words that I think need reclaiming as soon as possible.

The civilized meaning is stated first, followed by the predefinition – a meaning that is simply descriptive and unbiased. The predefinition is what we should aim to use, as opposed to the civilized meaning, for which alternative words will be needed. Where a word has no predefinition, i.e. the word has no meaning outside of civilization, then it should not be used at all.

The list is not exhaustive, and I am happy to consider suggestions.

Advanced

Civilized meaning
Achieving a high level of adoption of one or more facets of civilization. These will include technology, finance, trade, industry, mass transportation, retail and construction. For instance, a Technologically Advanced society is one that is characterised by the intensive use of technology; a Financially Advanced society is one that has fully adopted capitalist principles.

Predefinition
Achieving a high degree of adoption of any positive aspect of society. This is not culture specific, so can mean, for instance, achieving a successful balance of food production and soil fertility.

Animal / Wild

Civilized meaning
Out of control; not observing any of the acceptable behavioural norms of civil society. Both words are used in the negative, and interchangeably, when referring to human behaviour, regardless of the context.

Predefinition
“Animal” means pertaining to the kingdom Animalia. “Wild” means undomesticated; not under the direct control of human beings.

Civilization (alt. Civilisation)

Civilized meaning
The physical manifestation of civilization is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as "a developed or advanced state of human society." In general terms, civilization describes a form of society that is more advanced (civilized meaning) than other types of society.

Predefinition
A form of society characterised by all of the following: settlements of 5,000 people or more; full time labour specialisation; concentration of surplus; class structure; state-level political organisation. The overriding symbol of civilization is the city, into which resources (see later) are imported, and from which waste is exported.

Civilized (alt. Civilised)

Civilized meaning
A wide-ranging term of approval, which can refer to the behavioural, functional or physical characteristics of something. It generally refers to that which is acceptable within human society.

Predefinition
Behaviour, function or appearance that is associated with civilization.

Consumer

Civilized meaning
A generic term for a human that lives within society. In common use, particularly in a political sense, the word is used interchangeably with “person”.

Predefinition
A person that lives exclusively within a market economy, where “consumption” implies the use of goods and services provided by that economy.

Developed

Civilized meaning
Almost always with reference to nation states, this describes a high level of economic achievement across a range of different indicators, the widespread adoption of free-market systems and behaviour indicative of mass-consumerism.

Predefinition
A state of finality in any endeavour.

Note: In cyclical societies (those that embrace natural cycles) “developed”, along with “developing” and “development”, are not especially relevant terms – “mature” is a more appropriate word.

Developing

Civilized meaning
This describes the movement towards a developed (civilized meaning) state. It is used as an aspirational word, suggesting a desire to be developed.

Predefinition
Moving towards a state of finality in any endeavour.

Education

Civilized meaning
The acquisition of various skills and knowledge required to take an active part in the labour force or power structures of a civilized society, attained via a system of schooling and vocational training.

Predefinition
The acquisition of various skills and knowledge required in order to survive and, where relevant, act as a valuable part of a society.

Job

Civilized meaning
A discrete role within society required in order to earn money such that the job-holder can buy goods and services. Having a job is viewed as a positive thing (cf. jobless / unemployed). The aim of education (civilized meaning) is to get a job.

Predefinition
A form of work for payment in cash, goods or kind. Job is a discrete subset of work, and in most cultures has no meaning.

Progress

Civilized meaning
Approximately synonymous with development, but can refer to a wider range of topics, including technology (technological progress) and science (scientific progress), and for which there is no clearly defined endpoint. The aim of starting any endeavour within civilization is to achieve progress.

Predefinition
To move towards achieving something. Although generic, this term is alien to most non-civilized cultures, as “progress” implies linear rather than cyclical behaviour.

Resource

Civilized meaning
Anything that is of use to civilization, usually for the purpose of enabling progress (civilized meaning). The term implies ownership of whatever is being taken and/or used: something is not strictly a “resource” unless it is either available to be used, or has been reserved for use by a nation / company / individual.

Predefinition
In non-industrial societies, all things are borrowed or lent; therefore “resource” has no meaning.

Savage

Civilized meaning
Usually akin to “wild” or “animal” (as a behavioural descriptor), but tends to describe the behaviour or appearance of entire cultures. Savage is always used in negative terms.

Predefinition
This word has no equivalent meaning outside of civilized society, but could be used in neutral terms in the same way as “wild”.

Sustainable

Civilized meaning
Although there is a recognised definition – leaving something in the same state as it is found – the term is much more widely used to mean something that is less damaging than the equivalent “unsustainable” process. The term is also used to describe goods and services in the same manner.

Predefinition
An activity / process that causes no net degradation of the natural environment in which it is performed.

Undeveloped / Backward

Civilized meaning
Any group of people, or any political system that has not attained a high level of economic achievement across a range of different indicators, the widespread adoption of free-market systems and behaviour indicative of mass-consumerism. Both of these words have negative connotations, and are used interchangeably, although the former - being the more politically correct term – is used more widely.

Predefinition
“Undeveloped” means not having achieved a state of finality in any endeavour. “Backward” has no meaning in non-civilized societies.

Work

Civilized meaning
This is almost always synonymous with “job”, meaning an activity the purpose of which is to earn money. There are various origins of the words for “work” in various languages — “work”, “labor / labour”, “travail”, “toil” in English, “arbeit” in German (cf. the related “earfothe” or “hardship”, in Old English), “ergon” in Greek, and so on. The ancient meaning usually includes the concept of grief, suffering and trouble1. This, along with historical connotations (for instance, “Arbeit macht frei”) explains why “job” is used in favour of “work” by politicians and corporations.

Predefinition
Any activity required to achieve an outcome. In physics, work is simply the amount of energy expended, with “useful” work being the amount of energy over time that is effectively used in the execution of a task. The converse is “non-useful” work, or wasted energy over time.


Use your words wisely.

This essay forms part of a larger campaign to take the power of words away from the dominant culture; some of the work will be featured on The Unsuitablog.



1 - Thanks to Peter Goodchild (via www.culturechange.org) for this information.
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Saturday, February 20th 2010

11:01 PM

Radio Ecoshock Interview: Alex Smith with Keith Farnish



I had the great pleasure of being interviewed by Alex Smith of Radio Ecoshock, on 4th February 2010. Alex puts heart and soul into keeping this bastion of radical environmental broadcasting operating, and is a throughly nice guy too. In the show, which can be heard by clicking on the link below, Alex was first joined by Tim Garrett, a physicist from the University of Utah, who has couched a concept I introduced in The Earth Blog last year in scientific terms - in short, the generation of money always leads to the generation of greenhouse gases! My bit starts about 28 minutes in:

http://www.ecoshock.net/eshock10/ES_100205_Show_LoFi.mp3


AS: What if civilization is a disease, fatal to life on Earth as we know it? That’s the view of Britain’s Keith Farnish, author of the book, “Time’s Up! An Uncivilized Solution to a Global Crisis.” You might not like what he has to say – or maybe you will. I’m Alex Smith, fearless host of Radio Ecoshock, Keith welcome to the program.

KF: Hi Alex, how are you doing?

AS: Well, good, and I gather you tried Greenpeace for about 5 years, but got frustrated with that carousel of protests and then no real change.

KF: Yes, there was only one action that I ever did that was satisfying, and it was the only action that actually involved something really changing. The problem with most of the – and I’m not going to target Greenpeace in particular, only because I’ve got direct experience with them – but, most of the mainstream environmental groups seem to think that you achieve change by going along with the status quo; by kow-towing to whatever system is in place. And of course you’re going to achieve change relative to what’s going on at the moment, but it’s not significant and if you – and as we go on I’m sure you’ll realise that the kind of change that’s required is certainly not the kind of change that groups like Greenpeace are looking forward to.

AS: Well, you describe our current society as a Culture of Maximum Harm; can you elaborate on that?

KF: Yeah, I must admit those aren’t my personal words – I took them from the peerless Derrick Jensen who some of your listeners will be aware of, and Derrick has written long time on the problems of civilization, particularly Industrial Civilization. The Culture of Maximum Harm really is a way of describing how the system that we have tries to achieve its aims. Imagine that you’re trying to get from one place to another; most people would go from one place to another, they wouldn’t really think about what they’re damaging or the way that they’re doing it in one particular way or another. The Culture of Maximum Harm tries to achieve its journey by taking as much as it possibly can, and by doing as much damage as it possibly can. And the reason it does this is because it has one primary goal, which is achieve continuous growth – and that’s economic growth, in terms of the word “growth” – and economic growth cannot be sustainable. So, this culture, which I believe is unique in human history, is doing something that is uniquely destructive. In other words, it is the Culture of Maximum Harm – it is the most harmful way that humans can exist.

AS: One of your maxims is that corporations cannot be green, why not?

KF: A corporation – and this certainly does follow on from what I just said – a corporation exists in order to achieve economic growth, it exists in order to achieve profit. Worse than just an individual trying to make a bit of money, a corporation wants to make sure that it maximises the amount of return for its shareholders, and in order to do that it has to cause damage in some way, and it does that through a variety of methods. Either it keeps cutting corners, and those can be corners in environmental terms, so it could be ignoring environmental legislation, or it could be paying people as little as it possibly can, or it could be trying to do things as cheaply as possible, in the dirtiest way possible; or it will try and make this profit by taking something that wasn’t there in the first place. So, to take an oil company as an example: you can’t make something from nothing, but if you have a source of energy underground then effectively you’re taking something from nothing...you’re taking that oil, you’re going to burn it up; the act of burning it up makes you money, and that is essentially how a corporation runs and makes its profit – by taking something that it didn’t have to put back in. Corporations are never going to be sustainable by their nature, because of the way business operates.

AS: You also dismiss governments as any part of the solution; why do you think politics has become so irrelevant?

KF: Well, it’s a very sad tale; I think it goes back to the history of empire, and the British Empire is a very good example of this. Empire has been always intrinsically tied up with trade. The British Empire was a trading body; it was so large because it reached out to as many places in the world as had things that it could take. So, Britain essentially owned India, South Africa, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and many other territories – I think that’s a very good example of how governments are tied up with industry. If you listen to any politician give a speech of any length you will always hear the word “growth”, you will always hear the word “economy”, and that is because the primary role of a government within Industrial Civilization is to keep the economy growing. It’s essentially no different to a corporation, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be that way, but I don’t believe that any government of any size exists in this society that isn’t just like a corporation now.

AS: Apparently NASA’s James Hansen agrees with you – in his review of your book on Amazon, he writes, and I quote this for listeners: “Keith Farnish has it right, time has practically run out and the system is the problem. Governments are under the thumb of fossil fuel special interests; they will not look after our and the planet’s well being until we force them to do so, and that is going to require enormous effort. Professor James Hansen of NASA.” Keith, James Hansen is now taking a lot of flak from climate deniers and their ilk for saying that.

KF: I’m not sure it’s necessarily worrying him too much; he has been taking flak for at least the last 20 years from everywhere that possibly could give him flak – the coal industry hate him, the oil industry hate him, an awful lot of Senators hate him, and when he stood up in front of the Senate in 1988 to essentially explain to the American government the potential horrors we were going to face from climate change, he was public enemy number one as far as the US government was concerned. So, this is a little bit of a flash in the pan, but it ...the words that are being used in relation to James Hansen, and myself, are certainly strong: I’ve been described as a “terrorist” and, by connection, so has James Hansen, words like “genocide”, “eugenics” they’ve all been used in relation to my book, and therefore in relation to James Hansen. Absurd, yes, because at no point have I ever said I want to kill anything off or destroy anything, it’s...I genuinely do feel for Hansen because he has put probably more than anyone else, of himself into trying to achieve something which is completely dispassionate, it’s altruistic – he’s not doing it for himself! If he was doing it for himself then he would be a businessman, and James Hansen doesn’t make much money; he’s an adjunct professor, he’s a research scientist. He doesn’t really have anything to gain from this, and he’s lost an awful lot in terms of what...he could have gone on and become a highly successful scientist working for a corporation; he chose the other alternative, he chose to stick to pure science, objective science, and he gets hit a lot for this. Certainly this isn’t the first time, and certainly won’t be the last time he’s going to get hit for this. I’m proud to call him someone that thinks in a similar way to the way I do.

AS: Getting back to your book, I think we all fear that our economic system is on life-support. You’ve called for an end to industrialised civilization, saying it will fall apart anyway; why should we help it go down – wouldn’t we be sabotaging our own way of living?

KF: well, we would be sabotaging the way of living that is highly destructive – it depends how dependent you are upon it. I believe that there are certain dependencies that we can do without. I’m not talking about immediately walking away, going off grid, throwing away your job or anything like that; we’ve all got to live, we’ve all got to feed our families, we’ve all got to keep warm, got to have a roof over our heads and there are many situations in which people are tied to this system, so I would be reckless to say that you must abandon this immediately. However, economic growth is not something that can ever be sustainable, so essentially by not having economic growth what you’ve taking away is something that always takes, something that always destroys – and that’s got to be a good thing. And I don’t believe that not having economic growth will be destructive to anything but the systems of power that dominate the way we live.

I think that undermining, or sabotaging the economic growth machine is a fundamentally good thing; some people have said and written that that is effectively terrorism – well, yes, in a way because the...there is something, and I don’t know what the term that is used in the USA but in Britain it’s called Critical National Infrastructure, and the large financial organisations within the UK are protected under various laws, various security laws, and no doubt they are protected under the various Patriot Acts and other laws in the USA because they are considered to be fundamental – they make money for the economy. It is a complete misnomer to place them in the same context as the kinds of things that actively save peoples’ lives like medical services. Yet, they are considered – these financial organisations – are considered by governments to be just as important as medical services, as the water supply, as the food supply, and there’s got to be something wrong there.

AS: This is Radio Ecoshock with Alex Smith. We’re talking about kicking it all over with author Keith Farnish. One key idea in your book “Time’s Up!” is that of Connection – can you describe that for us?

KF: It’s very difficult to describe more than one’s personal idea of connection but I can give you an idea of the background. If you look at the way humanity has existed for hundreds of thousands of years, it has required a fundamental connection to the cycles and the processes that take place around the various groups and communities. These groups and communities wouldn’t be able to survive if they didn’t understand the cycles of nature; if they didn’t understand the different ways that animal and plant life, and other forms of biological entities co-exist. So, in effect, these people, as have existed for far longer than civilization has, are part of nature – they are deeply connected to the natural ecosystem. Civilization tries to pull us away from that – it gives us this alternative way of living which requires us to be disconnected and, what I’ve written about extensively in the book is that we have to become reconnected, otherwise I don’t think that we can really understand how disconnected we have become.

There is a myriad of different ways of connecting; it’s unique to the individual: writer Carolyn Baker talks about this in far more strident terms than I do, and she considers the idea of Connection to be a deeply spiritual thing and, in a way, it is because it brings things out of you that most people – certainly people within civilization – haven’t realised have been within themselves. So, when you sit on a beach, or when you sit in the woods, or when you walk around and listen...you really listen, and really smell and taste and touch what’s around you, then it does bring something out in yourself that is spiritual, in a way. But that’s the Connection coming out, this is something that is fundamental to who we are as human beings and unless we understand that deep connection between humanity and the rest of nature then I don’t believe we’re in a position to really understand what we’re doing to the world and how we can get back.

AS: The next step, you say, is to focus on the Tools of Disconnection. What are some of the ways we become separated from real being and the natural reality?

KF: I put down ten Tools, but there may be even more of these; it was really a way of making people understand the different ways that we live have, all of them, disconnected parts within them, so for instance some of the Tools I’ve suggested are, for instance, the way that we’re advertised to – this idea that we can have a wonderful way of living, but as long as it’s in terms that the corporations sell to us. There are other Tools like authority and if you look at the work of Stanley Milgram, for instance, in the 1950s he demonstrated unequivocally that you could make people do whatever you want them to do providing you have this chain of command – this form of authority; and authority is fundamental to the way that civilization works. You have a hierarchy, you look up to people, some people look down upon others, but essentially we play our parts because there is this authority.

But all of this is different; this is not connected to the real world. There’s other Tools of Disconnection which are much more obvious, like abuse – physical abuse – you have military forces which are, all around the world, abusing people, are killing people; and you look at, for instance, what goes on in China constantly then whenever anyone steps out of line and goes against the status quo in China then they are “disappeared”. They are taken out of the system because there is the potential that they may make other people realise that this isn’t quite the way to live – it isn’t quite the way that we should be going along with things.

One of the Tools of Disconnection which is particularly powerful which, unfortunately, a lot of environmentalists are guilty of is the idea of Hope. And I think it’s very, very telling that Obama used hope as his most powerful tool for looking towards the future. This message was coming from someone who is, to all intents and purposes, at the head of the system. He has some good intentions; however, the idea of giving someone hope takes away your ability to act: rather than going out and actually doing something, if you can just be given enough hope – if you can be given the idea that if you just hope enough then things are going to get better then it disables you. It stops you doing things. So I consider Hope to be one of these Tools of Disconnection as well.

AS: Paul Simon famously sang that there are a Hundred Ways to Leave Your Lover and, Keith Farnish, you’ve found over a hundred ways to undermine the system. Can you give us just a couple of examples?

KF: There’s an article I have written on The Earth Blog which is...it’s not complete yet, because I keep discovering all these little things. I mean I want to be very clear that the idea of Undermining the System is not about...this is not about the things that have been written about in the blogs recently about destroying cities and blowing up dams and things like this; the Undermining is about undermining these Tools of Disconnection. It’s about giving people their freedom back, it’s about giving people their minds back so they can reconnect – so they can live in a way that humanity was meant to live.

But there’s lots of these ways, and one very easy example is simply turning televisions off; so if you can turn a television off in a public place people actually realise – and I’ve experimented doing this in public places – people suddenly come back to their senses! They were blindly watching this screen churning out adverts, and the TV went off - and I’ve got a remote control device that actually does this – and suddenly they’re looking around going “Oh!” and then they go back to their normal lives. But there’s lots more of these things: you could subvertise advertising billboards, so writing things on billboards that actually go counter to the messages the advertisers want you to do. You could send out fake press releases as a company representative, actually giving the truth about what the company are doing. So, “PRESS RELEASE: So-and-so company admits to environmental mismanagement.” Well, of course, the company wouldn’t do that but if you manage to do it and you make it look convincing enough then you’ve undermined that company. But there are dozens and dozens of these things, and I think they’re only limited by the imagination.

AS: If I understand you correctly, a few people can start a trend that radiates into much bigger things. You speak of the power of Pioneers and Early Adopters; tell us about that.

KF: The idea of stratifying society, for want of a better term...it’s really something that you see all the time: the concept is called Diffusion of Innovations and it’s just one of the ideas that I touch upon, but it’s...you’re always going to have these Pioneers, you’re going to have people that take up an idea and they don’t just agree with the idea, they actually act on it. So there are an awful lot of people out there – a surprising number of people – who are really taking the bit between their teeth and starting to live in ways that are far closer to the way that humanity was meant to live. And there are other people who are a bit further up, they are a bit further on the timescale and it’s a larger chunk of people – these Early Adopters – and they may be influenced by these Pioneers because they might be in the same peer group or the same social group, and so they’re more likely to change than had these Pioneers not been there. And then you have the much larger chunks of people which are the bulk of society, the Early and the Late Majority and this is what you would probably call in America the Middle Classes, in Britain we call it Middle England: the people who the governments are always trying to appeal to. This is going to come much later, these kinds of changes, but it can’t happen unless these earlier groups start changing, I believe.

It’s a little bit more complicated than that because you also need these Connectors and Mavens and Salespeople, which people have read about in The Tipping Point; these things all fit together as does the Undermining. But you don’t actually need millions of people to be actively changing to create change. As long as the momentum gets started up and it’s done in the right way, then quite fundamental change can happen with just a few people.

AS: Suppose we hurry the process of crashing civilization; what do you picture happening next?

KF: It’s not a nice thing to think about, this idea of crashing civilization. There are various writers like James Kunstler, and Carolyn Baker who I mentioned, who are very much of the mindset that it’s going to happen anyway, and it’s going to happen soon; and, in fact, is happening as we speak. Certainly with the economy we’ve seen a few of these effects, of what happens when a mismanaged economy collapses – and the people at the top continue to cream off what they want, but the people at the very bottom suffer the most. This is a symptom of the kinds of things that are happening at the moment: this is crash. Oil crises are going to happen – I believe we’ve reached the oil peak; you’re going to have other kinds of peaks as well, you’re going to have peak gas, you’re going to have peak nuclear. As the energy supplies run out then you’re going to get a strange situation which probably mimics what’s happened with the economy, whereby the people at the top get what they want, and the people right at the bottom suffer the most. And it’s the people who are economically at the bottom who, and particularly urban people, who do tend to suffer most when anything like this does happen.

I don’t think you can be too explicit about this: if you are in a situation when you’re going to suffer anyway, because of any of these crashes – and they are going to happen – then you’re the people who really need to gear yourselves up for this situation. Read authors like Sharon Astyk, who writes wonderfully about gearing yourself up for hard times, and try and get out of being so dependent on Industrial Civilization. It’s not easy but there’s certain things you can do to simplify your life that can protect yourself against it. I don’t want to cause a destructive crash; I want to somehow get the situation where we’re in control of this slow downfall of civilization. And I think that’s a much kinder way of going through the motions of a collapsing civilization than just having this shock, after shock, after shock which is going to happen as the economy, the energy, water and all these other things start crashing.

AS: Where can people find your blog if they want to follow up on this?

KF: Right, well I’ve got a website that’s got the whole book on, which is the unprinted version – that’s www.amatterofscale.com. I run something called The Earth Blog, which is www.theearthblog.org, and on this I publish various essays which, many of them have been extensions of what I’ve written. And there’s also a site called The Unsuitablog - that’s just www.unsuitablog.com - and that’s starting to contain these ideas, these Undermining Tasks; it’s been about greenwashing up to now, but I think we’ve got to start getting a bit active, and start thinking about how to get round this system that tries to take everything away from us. The Unsuitablog’s going to get a bit edgy in the future, and that’s probably the one to keep an eye on.

AS: This is Radio Ecoshock with Alex Smith. We’ve been delving into deep green thought with one of Britain’s more controversial thinkers, Keith Farnish. He’s the author of the book, “Time’s Up! An Uncivilized Solution to a Global Crisis”, published by Green Books. Thank you so much, Keith.
 
KF: Thank you, Alex.
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Friday, January 22nd 2010

7:25 AM

A Last Toast To The Old World (Fiction, Perhaps)

We wanted to take the train, but the train wasn’t there. “Cancelled Forever”, someone had scrawled across the board that had once announced engineering works.

Walk? An epic journey south if we had no other choice; but the guy in the taxi was alive after all, just snoozing between rides. He admitted the sleeps had been getting longer, but could be persuaded to drive to Brighton for a bottle of sloe gin and some aged chocolate.

*  *  *

We drove into what could have once been any day in Anytown, except for the uncanny silence. Back in the Civilised Time the long hill between the railway station and the esplanade had shuddered with traffic: now, as we made our delicate way down the cracking asphalt it felt for the first time as though nature was winning through. Clumps of daisies poked up between paving slabs; buddleia loomed down from window sills, prising apart the cement, and turning the light-etched walls into a pretty purple picture. Clouds of insects were preyed upon by the birds that criss-crossed the chasm between the moss-dressed buildings.

We both stopped at the unlit traffic lights, more out of habit than anything else; there was still a part of me that urged a crowd of strangers to appear from out of some side street or emerge, laden with bags, from the now dusty and subdued shopping centre off to the right.

Of course we had to do the walk: the driver had given us an odd look when we asked him to drop us off at the station, but by that time the car had been running on air. He knew some “people” over in Kemptown who would be able to top him up again; we only knew that we had to retrace our steps for the last time.
Beyond that lay uniqueness.

*  *  *

You can do anything if you set your mind to it – cider in this case. Trees keep growing and apples keep falling: squeeze enough of them, let them sit for a while and . . . people used to drink cheap, refrigerated lager, and keep drinking it until they fought or fell down. There was a lot to get angry about, but eventually The Machine did most of the work itself; we just cut a few of the strings.

There’s still plenty of plastic around, though – behind a door round the back of the Wetherspoons was an unopened pack of disposable tumblers. We took three, just in case, then crossed the road to the seafront and tumbled onto the beach.

*  *  *

We sit on the shingle as it breathes in the sea. Incoming: each wave is absorbed by the honeycombed voids between the grains . . . a second’s embrace before the water seeps back into the sea.

Whoosh . . . shhhh . . . whoosh . . . shhhh . . .

Incessant but random. Sometimes a larger wave strikes the shore, rushing upwards, bestriding the hollows and touching the tips of our toes.

Tiny bubbles sparkle like glass beads rising up the sandy-yellow liquid in our cups. As they burst, minute puffs of moisture expand and settle down onto the surface of the cider, echoing the sea-froth at our feet.

We look at each other and push our cups together, gently buckling, and toast everything we left behind that was good. Through her tears I can’t help but notice a glint, and then her face opens into a daylight smile.

“It’s finished, isn’t it? All the bad stuff.”

“Probably,” I reply.

*  *  *

Did we deserve another chance? Perhaps not.

As we crunch our way towards Shoreham she points at the smokestack on the old coal-fired power station: idle. Dormant? Extinct?

The wind pushes some pebbles across our path, and in the sky the starlings shake their ephemeral blanket over the setting sun.

“Let’s chase it,” she says.

So we run.


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Sunday, December 20th 2009

8:02 AM

Reflections On Civilization, with Carolyn Baker

A few months ago, I struck up an online friendship with the acclaimed author and academic Carolyn Baker. It was clear that we were both writing about similar things, but I didn’t realise quite how similar until I had the fortunate opportunity to review her latest book, Sacred Demise: Walking the Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization's Collapse. This fine text, and her generous appreciation of my work, was the catalyst for the ongoing dialogue that this article presents.


December 9, 2009

Keith Farnish:  Carolyn, thank you very much for agreeing to this "back and forth" interview. With your book Sacred Demise very much still in my mind, I would like to ask what led you to take such a pragmatic approach to the collapse of Industrial Civilization; in other words, what makes you so sure it will happen soon?

Carolyn Baker:  You ask why I take such a pragmatic approach to the collapse of civilization and what makes me so sure it will happen. In order to answer that question, I must give you some background. First, I was an adjunct professor of history for over a decade, and I authored a book called U.S. History Uncensored: What Your High School Textbook Didn't Tell You. Some people have called it "Howard Zinn on steroids". In the year 2000 I was introduced to Mike Ruppert's From The Wilderness website and a couple of years later through his site to Peak Oil. At about the same time, he began writing about a coming economic collapse, somewhat but not entirely, related to 9/11. He featured articles analyzing the likelihood of an impending housing bubble and a global economic meltdown. The site also explored climate change and its relation to Peak Oil and economic meltdown. In fact, as a writer for From The Wilderness mid-decade, I began using the term "toxic triangle" to explain the relationship between Peak Oil, climate change, and economic meltdown. For almost a decade, I have been researching how we got to the current state of affairs. In 2007 the most powerful documentary I have yet seen on these issues, specifically the reality and certainty of collapse, What A Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire was released. Superbly researched (all sources may be found at the movie's website at whatawaytogomovie.com), this documentary removes all "yes-but's" about collapse.

In Sacred Demise, I cited What a Way to Go numerous times, but I avoided going into the research validating the inevitability of collapse because the intention of the book was not to "defend" collapse but to assist the reader in preparing emotionally and spiritually for it. At the end of the book I presented a list of reading and viewing resources for any reader desiring additional resources on the topic of collapse.

That said, the real issue is that collapse is not a future event; it's happening as we speak. At least 80% of what was forecasted by From The Wilderness in the past decade is now occurring. As Mike Ruppert states in his current magnificent Collapse movie, it's a waste of time and energy to debate the reality of Peak Oil and climate change because they are happening as certainly as is global economic meltdown. So in summary, I'm certain that collapse is happening and that it will only exacerbate in the coming months and years.


December 11, 2009

Carolyn Baker:  In Time's Up! you have wisely distinguished between hope that is useful and harmless, and hope that abdicates responsibility. I'd like to hear more about this distinction and in terms of the ten Tools of Disconnection. As you know, the current president of the United States sealed his electoral fate by running on a platform of "hope" and "change". Almost two years later, we are now seeing the pathetic results of those two shibboleths in terms of what's happening on the ground rather than in the vacuous minds of Obama enthusiasts. Please elaborate.

Keith Farnish:  "Vacuous minds", I like that! As you know, in modern civilized cultures we hang on to the idea of Hope as though it has some kind of innate power; I described it in my book as "Secular prayer". Its use in the Obama camp up to the election and now in the wake of the Copenhagen summit has been in this very form, taken to its apotheosis by writers like Bill McKibben who seem to feel that simply by hoping hard enough for a positive outcome, along with a series of time-wasting symbolic actions, the corner will be turned. As your previous answer spells out succinctly, a corner has indeed been turned, and we are headed down Collapse Street. In the face of a series of ever-worsening news items, the latest being evidence of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet melting, it is actually not that surprising people feel powerless. As I see it, this powerlessness is being exploited by both the political system and the environmental mainstream to ensure we continue to support the "business as usual" agenda - and yes, I am saying that Bill McKibben and the 350.org team are supporting business as usual; why else would they ask us to appeal to "our leaders".

The Tools of Disconnection were something I laid out to simplify the methods that Industrial Civilization uses to keep us disconnected from the real world (in essence, the natural world of which we are part) in favour of a synthetic creation that exists to create wealth, and give power to the latest people who crawl their way to the top of the global hierarchy. Among these tools are things we are very familiar with, such as advertising ("Sell Us A Dream"), authority ("Exploit Our Trust") and violence ("Abuse Us"). Hope is the tenth, and possibly the most powerful of these Tools, because it is a practice carried out by so many different groups of people, some of whom we consider to be on our side.

I have no problem saying to someone "I hope you have a nice day", but I will never say to someone "I hope we have the energy and commitment to make things better". That's worse than naive, it is dangerous. As Derrick Jensen wrote, so clearly as he always does: "When hope dies, action begins."


December 18, 2009

Keith Farnish:  As collapse starts to take hold, what will you be doing?

Carolyn Baker:  What I will be doing as collapse takes hold is what I've been doing for many years. The first activity and the one that started my awakening was and is to become and remain informed about what is actually happening as opposed to what the media of civilization is telling us is happening. I have done many things logistically to prepare--things like food storage, creating a community of allies around me, and of course, relocating to a more sustainable and conscious part of the United States. My most significant relationships are with people who are collapse-aware and with whom I am able to talk about the inevitable--people who are also preparing. Above all, I see the world these days through the lens of collapse which causes me to appreciate all of the modest comforts I have, the supportive people in my life, the food I eat, the clean water I drink, and the health I'm privileged to enjoy. I am consciously preparing myself emotionally and spiritually for the unraveling. I know that some have a difficult time with the word "spiritual", but actually, what I mean by that is beautifully echoed in one sentence in your chapter in Time's Up! on "Being Ourselves" when you say that "If you are prepared for it, then the journey and the eventual destination can show you what it is really like to be human." For me, that is the essence of "spiritual." Civilization has robbed us of our intimate connection with our own humanity--something that I sometimes call our "indigenous self", and like indigenous people revolting against colonization, collapse is offering us the opportunity to uncolonize and reclaim the indigenous self within us.

Another part of preparation - and it is of course fundamental to the reconnection of which you speak - is my connection with nature. That connection, if deeply felt and viscerally experienced, will inform our priorities, our relationships, our parenting, how we eat, travel, spend our time--virtually every aspect of our lives. A fellow blogger, Guy McPherson names his blog, Nature Bats Last. I endeavor to live my life listening to nature and allowing it to have the last word in my life as much as possible. Of course, that doesn't mean that if I'm in the forest and see a bear, I'm going to run toward it and embrace it, but it may mean that after removing myself from its territory, I reflect on the encounter and what nature might be trying to communicate to me. And while I admit that imagining myself in a post-collapse, post-petroleum world is difficult, I know that my current logistical, emotional, and spiritual preparations will serve me well and far better I hope, than the person who refuses to look at what is actually happening to this planet and its inhabitants.


December 20, 2009

Carolyn Baker:  I'd like to hear your thoughts on the recent Copenhagen circus and how that relates to what you've written in Time's Up! Even mainstream media is using that phrase (time's up) in relation to the farce that Copenhagen has proven to be. Please elaborate.

Keith Farnish:  There was a part of me that, at least for a while, thought the insertion of the phrase "Be aware that authority figures within the system, such as political leaders and corporations, will attempt to provide you with 'green' advice: this advice is designed to ensure that civilization continues, and should be ignored," in the Eco-Meme was a little long-winded and even too obvious to include. It has sadly turned out to be right on the button. Given that the watching public had their expectations wound up to a screaming frenzy with phrases like, "Copenhagen is our last hope", it is clear that - in the wake of its utter failure to deliver anything substantial - the world has once again been duped. This blame lies not only with the Corporations (who lobbied like fury to ensure there was disagreement and doubt) and the Politicians (who simply did what they were told by the system they a part of), but also to a great extent the absurd behaviour of the environmental NGOs, filling us with a false and dangerous hope - precisely what I alluded to in my previous answer.

Jim Hansen, eminent climate scientist at GISS, said of the Copenhagen Summit: "any agreement emerging from the summit is likely to be deeply flawed; suggesting that the best way to tackle global warming may be to let future generations start from scratch." This was, of course, decried by the civilized world as flying in the face of reasonable opinion, whatever that is; clearly there is nothing reasonable about condemning the Earth to a mass ecological die-off, but in order to prevent such a scenario, we have to "condemn" the world to economic failure. What came out of Copenhagen was a big thumbs-up to economic growth, and a big “F*** you!” to ecological survival. No wonder a growing number of people are realising the folly of trusting our future to politics.

In as far as the actions towards the end of my book go; the Copenhagen farce simply reinforces the need to undermine the system, because clearly we don't have a future if we allow it to remain.


December 24, 2009

Keith Farnish: In your book, 'Sacred Demise' you are keen to stress that there is a better world after collapse if you are prepared to embrace it. I wholeheartedly agree, and wonder if you see encouraging the collapse process to be a corollary of this view.

Carolyn Baker: I absolutely believe that encouraging the collapse of industrial civilization is desirable and necessary. Some would disagree and argue that that would lead to more suffering and loss of live. I'm not sure that the suffering and loss of life resulting from civilization "running its course" would not be as bad or worse and quite simply be a wash. Derrick Jensen has given us voluminous evidence that civilization is like the perpetrator of abuse in a family system. The entire system is set up to protect the abuser, and everyone in the family has bought into the belief that the consequences of busting the abuser are much worse than remaining silent and allowing the perpetrator to continue abusing. Occasionally, a member of the system "buys out" of it and blows the whistle by screaming the secrets within and/or outside the family. This is profoundly liberating for the person breaking silence and ultimately, whether they realize it or not, helps liberate the family. In such cases, even if abuse continues and some of the family members defend and enable the perpetrator, the system can never be the same and will slowly or quickly implode.

I have to say that even now, I see signs of this same dynamic occurring in civilization. Millions of people are buying out of it, even as millions more are waiting for a "return to normal." Recently, I attended a meeting of the New Unemployment  here in Boulder, Colorado in which people are networking and dialoging about the "gift" of being laid off or being unable to find a job because they now finally see through the capitalist system and realize that it is taking them and the earth nowhere except to death and destruction. These folks are using their unemployed time to first of all, discover what it is that they really want to do with their lives, and also using the time to create things they have wanted to create all their lives. This doesn't mean that they don't have bills to pay; it doesn't mean they aren't scared and anxious about how they will pay them, but it does mean that they will now move forward to structure a livelihood that departs from the values of industrial civilization in ways that will bring meaning and purpose to their lives.

I believe that we can assist the collapse process by both buying out of civilization and by actively undermining it as you explain so articulately in your book. In my recent Winter Solstice article, I talked about indigenous cultures in which the elders or wisdom leaders of the tribe or clan, have two very important roles. One is to speak the truth about whatever they see that is wrong or right with the community. They are not concerned with being liked, but only with speaking the truth so that the community continues to adhere to its values so that it can sustain itself. The other job of the elder is to help create things of beauty. In that way, he or she is both a prophet and an artist. I believe that this is what we must be in our efforts to undermine civilization. Moreover, I believe that we must be discerning and stealthy in our efforts to undermine, and you refer to this as well in "Time's Up." It is very important that we speak the truth when that is appropriate, be discreet, and create as much beauty in our lives and communities as possible.


December 31, 2009

Carolyn Baker: My next question for you has to do with the second suggestion you make on Page 221 of "Time's Up" in which you admonish us to live in ways that do not contribute to the global economy. Would you elaborate and give specific examples of what that would look like for most people.

Keith Farnish: This is a very timely question indeed, for two reasons: it coincides with a variety of reports that the global economy is starting to pick up again in the aftermath of the global recession; it also comes shortly after a comment was made on the Orion Magazine web site, in response to another great article by Derrick Jensen. The comment was made with regards to the possible ways we can help undermine Industrial Civilization:

"Do nothing. The industrial complex thrives on activity. It churns activity like corn in a mill. If you do nothing (not buying stuff, not watching tv, not doing overtime) you remove the paste from the millstone and the wheels destroy themselves in a great roar of economic hunger - no help needed."

I don't claim anything I write is other than common sense, so for me to say this comment was inspired by anything I have written would be boastful, although these words are reflected in what I say in my book, which makes it particularly heartening to see someone else writing almost exactly the same - I guess it means I must be onto something:

"Your place in the system is as a component in a massive food web. Like all food webs, it is driven by energy; physical energy sources like oil, gas, coal and radioactive materials drive the machines that ensure money keeps floating to the top of the vat where the Elites skim it off to add to their wealth. If you are resourceful or in a role that holds some status, you can have some of this wealth too, and the material trappings that come with it. Without the energy that drives the web, though, there is no money, and there is no web. It is not just the oil, gas, coal and various sources of radiation that keep the web operating though – people are equally vital, more so, in fact. Unless people run the machines, staff the shops, build the products, drive the lorries, create the advertisements, read the news and enforce the law, the web will collapse upon itself, bringing the entire hierarchy down with it."

In that respect, the answer to your question revolves around the idea of, initially, a clear recognition that much of what you do is actively contributing to the larger process of global ecological destruction, simply by virtue of your being a part of the system; and then progressively withdrawing from the system so that you (a) don't play your part in this destructive process and (b) weaken the system that requires your input to thrive. The "recognition" stage is the trigger, and is very difficult for most civilized people to attain due to the "Tools of Disconnection" keeping us active contributors; but once this stage is attained, the "withdrawal" process can proceed with aplomb.

I would probably recommend, if I was forced to be prescriptive, the following first stages of withdrawal:

1) Reduce your consumption of new, non-perishable items to an absolute minimum, which will require a certain level of willpower and tenacity, particularly if you have children and live in an urban or suburban location. Combine the reduction in "newsumption" with the purchase of pre-owned items and the repair of existing items, and this becomes a lot easier.

2) Localise your activity, including where your food originally comes from (if you grow it yourself or communally, then you cut out all sorts of economic ties); how far you travel to obtain goods and services - including how far people providing these to you have to travel; how far you travel to "work" (see later); and where your energy comes from, so if you can generate it yourself, so much the better.

3) Taking the first stage into account, if you can reduce your expenses to a bare minimum, then you will almost certainly need to do less paid work, and can potentially work for yourself rather than for the Man. Not only will you have a lot more time to spend with your family, friends and your own efforts to make your life uncivilized; you will also be out of the industrialised "work-play-work" loop, which determines to a great extent how people live.

Of course there are many other things you can do, but that's already quite a lot to be going on with for the average civilized, commerce-soaked individual. Anyone reading this will no doubt be able to work out many other withdrawal activities they can carry out and, just as importantly, help and encourage others to also take part in.


January 4, 2010

Keith Farnish: In your latest article on Speaking Truth To Power - a brilliant analysis of the relevance of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder to the industrial world - you touch on the way that many activists throw themselves into work in order to avoid facing up to the reality of the situation. This is, effectively, the first and most potently destructive stage of the Kübler-Ross Grief model, i.e. Denial. Speaking as a psychotherapist, how important to you feel a pragmatic attitude to bereavement is, in the face of the world we are now facing?

Carolyn Baker: In the face of the world we are facing, I believe that authentic grieving is more important than it has ever been. Psychological research repeatedly confirms that "good grief", that is grief that is fully felt and allowed, is healing, cleansing, and empowering whereas blocked grief is terribly toxic and leads to depression, anxiety, and suicide.

Grief is another one of those realities in industrial civilization that has repeatedly been swept under the rug as not worthy of our valuable time which should be spent colonizing someone and making a profit off of something. In fact, on one blog (which shall remain nameless) where I posted my article on Transition Trauma, I received, (exclusively from men I might add) comments like, "Rubbish! We need to grow up, grow a pair, and pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps and not rely on 'support' from other people." I was appalled because I thought this was 2010 and that John Wayne was dead. But this is the legacy of civilization. In fact, I would not hesitate to declare that blocked grief is one reason (besides cheap and abundant oil) that industrial civilization has been so wildly "successful" until recent years in which many humans and certainly all other species recognize what a nightmare it really is.

Now more than ever, we need to grieve, and if we think there is much to grieve now, we ain't seen nuthin' yet. Paradoxically, grief, while it might appear to "weaken" us, if fully experienced, empowers us to rise up and say, "No more!" One classic example I can think of is Cindy Sheehan here in the U.S. When she allowed herself to go to the depths of her grief regarding the loss of her son Casey in the Iraq War, she rose up in wizened rage to stop the war machine and the politicians waxing fat and happy from it. Hell hath no fury, you might say, like human beings who feel the depths of evil and injustice in the fibers of of their guts. So rather than grief paralyzing us so that we can't act, it has the capacity to take us to passion and fervor that we never knew we had. In this sense, grief is now more "pragmatic" than it has ever been. Through allowing ourselves to experience it, we reclaim the humanity stolen from us by civilization, and accessing that treasure, I believe, gives us the compassion, spine, and deep conviction to resist and stop civilization's madness on behalf of ourselves and the entire community of life.

So I say, bring on the grieving--now more than ever.


January 8, 2010

Carolyn Baker: As I look at the world in the first days of 2010, I see anything but a pretty picture - more real or bogus threats of terror attacks, a widening war in the Middle East - I won't bore you with the list because I know you see it too. Yet what I see among most members of industrial society is mind numbing, insipid apathy and mediocrity and the delusion that things will somehow return to normal in 2010 - or at least by 2011. This is frightening to me, and I am inclined to believe, given the state of the world, that a dramatic event of gargantuan proportions will be necessary to alter this apathy. In fact, I believe that if we don't receive some kind of wake up call in 2010, we can pretty well kiss our butts goodbye. I hope this question isn't too open-ended or broad, but I'm wondering what you see in that regard.

Keith Farnish: This is a fascinating question for all sorts of reasons, but particularly for me because it is something I have had at the back of my mind since October 2007; this was when a friend of mine sent me a report about a drought in Atlanta, Georgia, to which she appended this comment:
  
"The ominous lesson: if most people can't understand something as immediate and simple as seeing their own reservoir for drinking water going bone dry, they won't change for any less obvious threat.  They have to experience seeing their grass and trees die while they drink bottled water and go unwashed. Anything mechanical needing water won't have any, such as turbines in power plants.  (And the southeast relies heavily on coal for electrical power plants.) Like you say, they are totally disconnected from the natural world and how it sustains them."
  
It resonated like a gong in my head, yet I hadn't been able to find an appropriate place to reflect on this until now. My initial response was harsh, but I expect quite a few people will have sympathy with it:
  
"Wow! What a thought! You may not have said it directly, but what we need is real sufferance that is the direct result of human activity - sufferance  that doesn't take the rest of the ecosystem with it but acts as a big pointy stick to the people causing the problem. Localised droughts are certainly that - wouldn't you love to see Las Vegas run out of water or have a huge blackout?"
  
What would be the reaction to Las Vegas running out of water? It's a difficult one to call, but have no doubt politicians and corporations will clamour to gain advantage from the situation; blame will be apportioned, authorities will be sued, profligate businesses may even be held to account so long as the concept of "Las Vegas" can somehow be maintained. New pipelines will be constructed with the Bechtels of this world getting the contracts; wells will be dug deeper and rivers will be sucked dry...the machine must keep turning, the people mustn't know it is fallible! There will be water riots, most likely, and some people might just realise that things are not how they should be.
  
I never made it to the end of Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine" -- it was simply too bleak, and the point had been awfully well made within a couple of chapters. Klein's analysis suggests that a disaster of any type that presents an opportunity for further social suppression and free-market economics will be seized upon by those best placed to do so. If this sounds bleak then it shouldn't do, because - as was seen so vividly in post-Katrina New Orleans and as is being seen as I write across the Northern Hemisphere in this period of uncharacteristically heavy snow - in periods of crisis people become remarkable resourceful; they return to basic human instincts of co-operation and survival. I believe that even though such events are exploited by the system for the benefit of its elite members, they can also be times where the best in humanity is revealed.
  
If those among us that want to rid the world of the hyper-exploitative industrial consumer culture are ready to act in times of hardship, then the fuse for genuine change may be lit at times like this. It would be morally wrong to hope for truly distressing events - we should not hope for anything - but when they do come, we must be ready to hold peoples' hands and tell them that there is another way to live.


Carolyn Baker is a historian, psychologist and practising psychotherapist. She runs the website Speaking Truth To Power (www.carolynbaker.net). Her latest book is "Sacred Demise: Walking The Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization's Collapse"
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Tuesday, November 24th 2009

1:56 AM

100 Ways To Undermine The Industrial Machine : The List



In the previous post, "100 Ways To Undermine The Industrial Machine : Introduction", the basic premise behind the need for Undermining was given, along with a set of vital Rules that potential Underminers should adhere to. The remainder of the article was a list of Undermining Actions - initially about 30. Between that article being posted, and this one, the list has increased as I have researched the subject further, and various people have contributed ideas, some of them very good indeed. Therefore, in order to maintain momentum, this post will include the new list, with a view to keeping it updated in perpetuity. If you have any ideas, please write to me at keith@theearthblog.org or make a comment below.

The list below does not imply unqualified approval of your carrying out the action: that is why there is a disclaimer. When going through the list, I would also encourage you to think about what each action means in your local context, and how it might need to be adapted to be relevant, or even possible. In all cases, you must read the Introduction before embarking on any Undermining activity, even if it is in the list: you might be out of your depth without realising it, and you might also be wasting your time, effort and even liberty. Nothing is without risk, but some things are really worth it.

Disclaimer: Publication of the following list does not imply any responsibility on the author’s part – the person carrying out the listed actions takes full responsibility for the outcome of these actions. The author only condones activities that are permitted under local jurisdiction; all other activities are the personal choice of the actor.


· Change the press releases of the company you work for to tell the truth about the product or service they are offering. If releases are sent out by post, it is a lot easier to be anonymous.

· Similarly, alter promotional and advertising materials to show the environmental and social impact of the company sending them out. If you work in a printing or distribution role, this will be far safer.

· Insert contrary materials, such as flyers exposing a company or organisation’s activities, into the pages of reports, magazines and brochures.

· If you are party to confidential information that, if released, could damage the reputation of a company or public body, send it anonymously by post to one or more newspaper editors.

· Remove commercial advertising (billboards, posters, displays) from your local area or, if that’s not possible, alter it to give it a more accurate meaning.

· Switch off televisions or monitors in shops that are running adverts.

· Switch off televisions in public areas, pubs / bars and shop windows. Remote control devices are available for this.

· Subvertise commercial and government messages (adverts, promotions, campaigns) and distribute your work across the internet. Aim to make your version highly memorable.

· Undermine the reputation of politicians and corporate executives by posting mash-ups of their speeches on YouTube. The funnier they are, the more people will want to see them.

· Make up stickers, saying things like “Product of Industrial Agriculture”, “Energy Waster” or “Made in Sweatshops” and stick them on relevant items in supermarkets and large shops.

· Use radio and television blocking devices to disrupt broadcasts during advertising breaks, public “service” announcements and multi-part TV series (to discourage further watching).

· In a similar vein, set up local transmitting devices to broadcast pre-recorded anti-civilization messages on public frequencies.

· Remove commercial promotional and sponsored materials from schools.

· Refuse to vote. Encourage others not to vote either. If voting is compulsory, spoil your paper.

· Don’t do any unpaid work at all for any commercial organisation. Discourage others from doing so too.

· If you work for a school board or educational body, insert anti-civilization messages into materials, curricula and advisory notes. Remove references to things that encourage children to take part in civilized society / commercial activities.

· If you work for a company that sends out commercial materials to schools, accidentally “lose” the materials or alter them to give a contrary message.

· If you are calling a radio station about something, rather than tell them you want to give an anti-system message, start talking about something conventional, then change without warning to saying what you really want to say. Don’t swear, you will be cut off.

· Post articles or make comments on web sites suggesting that “Company X” is in financial trouble. There are all sorts of variations on this to create a lack of public / investor confidence.

· Remove adverts from public transport.

· Pretend you work for a company, and call up radio and TV stations to speak on their behalf. Expose the truth behind the company.

· Call up politicians posing as company representatives, offering them funding in exchange for political favours. Record the conversations and if they suggest impropriety, send them anonymously to media outlets.

· Buy the domain name of a fictional PR company, and send out “fake” press releases (giving real, damaging information) on behalf of companies, politicians etc. from a mail server with that domain name.

· Even easier, send out fake press releases from a webmail account (gmail, yahoo etc) with the account name of your fake PR company. Lots of people will still be taken in.

· Only use words like “consumer”, “civilized”, “progress” and “development” in negative terms, with the appropriate inflection. Make a habit of reminding others how bad these things are.

· If shopping mall, supermarket etc. car parks are locked up overnight, add your own padlocks and chains. Do the same for shopfronts / roller blinds if they are already locked.

· If you are a member of an activist group, discourage members from taking part in symbolic “actions” like marches, petitions, letter-writing and rallies. Keep asking them, “What will this achieve.”

· Stand in elections as an “Anti Civilization” candidate. Talk to potential voters about how meaningless elections are.

· If someone calls you “sir” or “madam”, or any other word of subservience, ask them not to. Talk to them using first names.

· If you are in a hierarchical organisation, encourage everyone to question the authority of the levels “above” them. Explain that it is always the people lower down the chain that suffer most from authority.

· Give produce and other home made foods away that you have a surplus of, rather than throw it away, even to people you barely know.

· Set up a food sharing scheme in your local area to help undermine the large scale distribution networks. Have meetings and discuss self-sufficiency in general.

· Set up or help promote a Freecycle network, or other household item giveaway scheme.

· Get together with other parents and set up a community home school: educate the children in the things they need for the future, not the things the Machine thinks they should know.

· Offer to run nature talks and foraging workshops for schools; tell the children about the real world vs. the commercial world, while you are doing them.

· Seedbomb places, even if they are not derelict or run down - seeds get to all sorts of places.

· It only takes a few seconds to sabotage water sprinkler systems in public areas and especially golf courses. Try doing this at the same time as seeding drought-tolerant indigenous "weeds".

· Relabel museum exhibits to reflect the true history of Empire, Colonialism and Explotation. Also, add "Still to Come" labels to natural history exhibits, with the names of threatened species.

· Use hazard warning tape (available from lots of suppliers) to mark off car parks, entrances and any other commercial or government access route. It's amazing how accepting people are of simple "security" measures

· When friends and family start talking about what they have recently bought, especially non-essential goods, talk about what you didn't buy, thereby reversing the normal civilised assumption that it is a good thing to buy consumer goods.

· If you ever find yourself near to where an outside broadcast is taking place - especially those involving greasy politicians, corporate executives or broadcasters who like to put a negative spin on "bad" protests that break the law - "accidentally" trip over their cables or into their equipment, thus disrupting the broadcast. You can claim it was a trip hazard.

· Similarly, in similar circumstances, just make a nuisance of yourself, jumping up and down, holding bits of paper up with contrary messages, walking in front of the interviewee: in a public place there is nothing a broadcaster can do to stop you.

· Set up a press briefing, posing as your target of choice (such as an oil company executive, lobby group representative or economic adviser, anyone fairly nondescript), and then brief the press in a way that entirely undermines your alter-ego's normal stance. Alternatively, make statements that even more unethical than those of your alter-ego, but still credible.

· If you don't feel comfortable giving live press briefings, why not send letters using fake headed paper from the same alter-egos, using similarly undermining or crass messages.

· Create a dodgy corporate video that was only intended for internal use, and post it on YouTube (and Wikileaks) as a "leak". Include information that is close enough to the truth to be credible, but edgy enough to cause a stir. Steal the introduction and ending from an existing corporate video using video capture software.

· Start referring to zoos as "animal prisons" and discourage children from attending anywhere that uses animals for profit. Take children on walks and show them real wildlife instead.

· Host a wild food dinner. Forage for food and ask guests to bring something wild of their own, or homegrown if that's not possible - it will really make them think and if you can cook well then also maybe change their diets.

· Disrupt "legitimate" commercial activities by acting as a Rogue Trader, for instance by bidding on resources or land set aside for exploitation when you have no intention of buying (make sure there is a "cooling off" period). Use the resulting furore to publicise your reasons.

· Refuse to sign up to, or pledge alliegance to systems of authority, even when compulsory. Encourage others to do the same and make the most of your refusal in public, thus helping undermine the accepted top-down power relationship in civilized society.

· If you are web browsing, use Firefox along with Adblock Plus; an add-on that removes advertising from web sites. This effectively breaks the advertisers' business model and ability to brainwash, so is one good piece of software to recommend to others.

· Don't take out loans; discourage (and certainly never encourage) people from taking out loans. Discuss why loans exist as a way of keeping the economy growing, at the individual's expense, and why it is far better to share, lend, barter or borrow.

· Use the terms "wage slavery" in place of paid work, and "debt slavery" in place of loans or mortgages. Subvertise advertising with these phrases where appropriate, and when talking to friends, and especially in any public forum (radio, debates, hustings etc) where others might pick up these terms.

· In the lead up to school assessments (such as SATs), if you or your child goes to school, refuse to take part in coaching lessons or test practices - they are nothing to do with education. Tell parents and students what you are doing: start a rebellion!


(Last Updated: 10 March 2010)


Thanks to the following for tips: Earth First!, Martin Sprouse (ed. "Sabotage in the American Workplace"), AdBusters, Aquila ka Hecate (http://aquilakahecate.blogspot.com), Richard Reynolds (http://www.guerrillagardening.org), The Yes Men (http://www.theyesmen.org), Dave Pollard (http://www.howtosavetheworld.ca), Guy McPherson (http://www.guymcpherson.com) and all my other great correspondants.
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Saturday, October 24th 2009

10:07 AM

100 Ways To Undermine The Industrial Machine : Introduction



It takes guts to do something that could change things forever. I’m not the obvious candidate to be a hero, that’s a fact; I have children and a wife, and an extended family that mean the world to me. Heroes, for the most part, are seen as those people who, at great risk to themselves, carry out noteworthy acts – but why does heroism have to go hand-in-hand with great risk?

There is no greater thing that can be done than securing the future of humanity, and in this truly momentous task I believe that everyone has the potential to be a hero. There are many actions available to people of all different abilities, social positions, locations and ages that, together can help free humanity from the terrible yoke of hierarchical, industrial, consumerist living; many actions that entail a wide range of risk and effectiveness, but all of which are important.

At this point it’s necessary for me to lose the majority of my readers, for the things I am about to share with you are likely to contribute to the downfall of Industrial Civilization – the “machine” of the title. If this idea scares you then you will not be alone, for the thought of losing something you feel is integral to what you are (in effect, being a citizen) is not something that most of us have ever seriously considered. But lose it we must: read this article to find out why.

To get the full picture you’ll really need to go to my book, “A Matter of Scale” (also published as “Time’s Up! An Uncivilized Solution To A Global Crisis”), and read Chapter 13. If you need further convincing, have a look at Derrick Jensen’s “Endgame” books or, for a more concise read, try “A Short History of Progress” by Ronald Wright. Come back when you are happy to help with the removal of the Machine. For those who are still reading: welcome, let’s do some Undermining.


What Is Undermining?

Undermining is the term for any form of Sabotage that damages the foundations of a system, structure or process. The target, as we know, is Industrial Civilization – the most destructive human system ever created.

Specifically, the act of Undermining Industrial Civilization seeks to provide ordinary people with the ability to think and act in an unconstrained environment, free of the Tools of Disconnection that civilization has put in place to keep us physically and psychologically dependent upon it. By Undermining Industrial Civilization, you are not aiming to directly damage its physical structure – although that may be a side-effect – instead you are impairing its ability to control people. People who are no longer controlled can decide for themselves how they want to live.

The aim is not so much destroying as dismantling the Machine, starving it of energy and making it unable to keep us living the destructive way of life we have come to think is the only way to live.

Undermining has rules attached to it; rules that help ensure that the perpetrator is kept relatively safe, and their (your) actions are as effective as possible. It is vital that you follow these rules for your safety, and that of other people:

1. Make the Tools of Disconnection (see Chapter 13, as above) your priority; anything else is a waste of time and effort.

2. Carefully weigh up all the pros and cons, and then ask yourself, “Do the benefits far outweigh the costs?” Only act if the answer is “Yes”.

3. Plan ahead, and plan well, accounting for every possible eventuality.

4. Even if you value the worth of your actions, don’t get caught.

There is a primer to the types of actions this entails in my article “Sabotage Is Not An Option, It Is A Necessity” which you might like to read before going onto the list below.

Due to the dynamic nature of the list, I have moved it to a location of its own. Observant readers will notice that (at the time of writing) there are not one hundred items listed – this is an ongoing project, and I will add to it as I think of new ones, or I receive suggestions for possible Undermining actions. If you have any ideas, please write to me at keith@theearthblog.org or make a comment below.

The location of the list is here:

100 Ways To Undermine The Industrial Machine : The List



This article was written as a response to the many people who, after reading A Matter Of Scale or Time’s Up! have asked me, “What should I do now?” At the time of writing the book it was not clear to me precisely what activities could make up the Undermining (or Sabotage, in AMOS) Toolkit. A year later, it is now far clearer.

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Monday, September 28th 2009

1:58 PM

I Was Wrong (But I'm Learning)



There is a marvellous moment in a speech by Derrick Jensen1, in which he refers to a chapter in his book “A Language Older Than Words” in remarkably scathing terms:

“Anybody here have my book A Language Older Than Words?”

“Ok, those of you who have my book, do you also have a razor blade?”

“Ok, if you do, take the chapter called ‘Violence Revisited’, cut out the pages, crumple them up, throw them away, because I say something in that chapter that is so embarrassing.”


Pride can be a terrible thing sometimes, and I find it very hard to look at something I have written and not at least feel some pride – after all, in almost all cases quite a lot of work went into it; as though I have incorporated a part of myself into the words. Now it’s time to swallow my pride, just like Derrick did in that speech.

I have written some real garbage on The Earth Blog.

There, it’s done. There is a proviso to this statement; for it is made retrospectively – at the time, just like when Derrick was writing the chapter ‘Violence Revisited’, I didn’t think it was garbage at all. There’s no way I would have knowingly submitted something I thought was bad to this website; but things change, and regular readers of this blog will understand that the nature of the articles and the feelings behind them have, and I can’t put this any other way, radicalised.

When I started, I really thought that things would get better within the confines of the system of corporations and government; that is was possible to create great and meaningful change simply by adjusting policies, implementing new ways of doing the same things, and that everyone was in a position to be a part of that change. I even thought that the mainstream environmental movement – the WWFs, Sierra Clubs and Greenpeaces of this world – would be instrumental in creating this change.

How deluded is that?

On reflection, not only was I deluded, it would also be morally wrong of me to leave anything that I now profoundly disagree with on The Earth Blog. It’s going, and you’re going to be witness to it. We are going to walk through every single article I wrote in the period before I realised Industrial Civilization was a hopeless case, take a look at it, and if it doesn’t make the grade I’m going to take the metaphorical razor blade and slice the article out of existence.

Hmm, I see a little problem: by the time you read this, if the article is not there then you can’t see how deluded I was. What I will do, therefore, is still delete the article, but provide a link to the Google cache if it exists, so you can see what the article looked like, but it won’t really be there.

Let’s do it!



The Consuming Monster - Wednesday, March 1st 2006

Just a few words on consumption, nothing wrong with that, it can stay.


Why The Public Won't Change - Saturday, March 11th 2006

Actually, that’s quite ahead of it’s time (for me) and reflects the later article with a very similar name. Keep.


For Those Who Still Deny It's Happening - Read This Please - Tuesday, March 21st 2006

This is a straight to the point look at global warming and its causes, but is pretty naïve, and doesn’t reflect many of the (albeit spurious) arguments deniers make. I can do a lot better. DELETED.

Oh, I can’t find a Google cache for this, c’est la vie.


Carbon Storage : An Easy Solution...For Idiots - Saturday, April 1st 2006 [Google cache]

This is just all wrong! It talks of possibly using CCS as a stop-gap while renewable energy takes over, but it smacks of technology being a way forwards, and also alludes to global agreements over emissions being achievable. It must go. DELETED.


Make (Energy) Poverty History - Thursday, April 6th 2006 [Google cache]

Yuk, this is really horrible! My ideas of “poverty” are really screwed, and completely ignore the existence of non-civilised societies. And with the phrase, “Technology is certainly one way around it, and a solution in itself,” the article seals its own fate. DELETED.


Not On My Planet - Sunday, April 16th 2006

Wow! I was writing an article a week, that must have been when I had no other blogs or books to write (or bread to bake). Anyway, this was written in response to a public meeting I spoke at which was full of NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yard-ers). It’s well meaning, but far too mainstream to keep. DELETED.

Again, no Google cache for some reason.


A Special Offer To All Consumers - Monday, April 24th 2006

Quite funny, but also a bit trite – I’ll keep the phrase “For an extra fee, users can enjoy the extra benefits of our Carbon Filters, which will expertly screen out any information related to climate change, sea level rise and global warming.” Because my mate Tony thought that idea up. No cache again, but nevertheless DELETED.


Something, Something and Recycle - Wednesday, May 3rd 2006 [Google cache]

I have some affection for this article, and often mention the title to people, but unfortunately it contains the phrase “In our version of a civilised, free society, people will almost always take the least cost, least effort option.” At the time I had no concept of what “civilised” actually meant, and assumed it was possible to have a free, civilised society. It’s got to go. DELETED.

That’s the first of the articles that I still linked to on the main page gone. Ouch!


Why David Blaine Matters - Wednesday, May 10th 2006

Sounds like a trivial article, but it’s the first appearance of the phrase “what really matters” which is significant here. A bit muddled, but worth keeping as it seems to suggest a change in direction.


Let The Children Talk - Friday, May 19th 2006

My 7 year old daughter write this; there’s no way I’m deleting it.


4 Essential Ways To Save The Earth - Wednesday, July 5th 2006

This took me weeks to write, was spread over five separate articles and at the time I considered it to be my magnum opus. How proud I was. Tricky decision: if one part is bad then I have to delete the whole lot.

Part 1 [Google cache]: Ok, up to the description of the four “legs” of a solution, it’s not bad, and we do need research to find out what is going on, but what’s this? Political Action? “Ultimately we need global agreements to ensure...” Oh dear, it’s gone all Kyoto and Copenhagen already. Let’s see what Part 2 is like.

Part 2 – Research [Google cache]: Just the one phrase required to consign this to the razor blade treatment: “Research seems to have become poor cousin of the great actions that we can take as a civilisation”. Uurgh, great actions as a civilisation, I feel all dirty reading that.

Well, that’s it, it all has to go. DELETED-1-2-3-4-5. Sorry about all the lost comments, people.

For completion, here are the caches of the other parts: Part 3 – Political Action [Google cache], Part 4 – Legal Action [Google cache] and Part 5 – Individual and Community Action [Google cache]. Please don’t read the last one, it’s really horrible!


In This Climate Of Fear The Energy Giants Must Not Win - Thursday, July 13th 2006

Again, this is something I have referred to in the past – let’s see if it stands up...

Well, that was ok. Quite a few logical traps, and surprisingly radical thinking considering I hadn’t yet become uncivilised.


What If...We All Became Vegan? - Tuesday, July 25th 2006

This is still my most referenced article by far, and from what I can make out, still the only dietary article around that focuses on the gross area of land use. In the light of Lierre Keith’s justified attacks on industrial activity but, I think, unjustified attacks on vegan ethics this needs to remain.


A Call For Action : Please Read This - Thursday, July 27th 2006

This is a tricky one. There are lots of comments, and it’s not a bad little vignette, but near the end it suggests that governments and businesses could be part of the solution, which is clearly not the case given that they have no intention of taking us out of Industrial Civilization. So a compromise, I won’t delete it, but I’ll take it off the links list.


What If...The Population Stopped Growing? - Monday, August 7th 2006

Given the current surge in writing about the “population problem”, and the attempt by various parties, especially in the USA to take the emphasis off lifestyle and place it on absolute population, it’s good to have an article like this to use. I hadn’t read this for ages, and am rather pleased that it seems to stand up well.


The Problem With...Tourism - Thursday, August 24th 2006

It was around this time that I started increasing the time between articles to, frankly, make them better; and also started to focus on many more specific topics rather than making general comment, using a new thread called “The Problem With...” This first one is nicely focussed, and I can’t see anything wrong with it.


What Is The Point Of Investing In The Future If There Is No Future To Invest In? - Thursday, September 7th 2006 [Google cache]

I sense this might be a problem: “Making The Market Economy Stable”! And then realised the article actually showed it to be impossible. But there are problems: first, I talk about coveting as a natural desire, whereas it is almost absent from stable tribal societies; second, I fall into the trap of proposing a model of sustainability without any suggestion of how to get there – that’s not a good way to work. Despite the obvious effort put into it, it has to go. DELETED.


The Problem With...Plastic - Friday, September 22nd 2006

Nothing wrong with this one: quite hard-hitting as it goes, and a nice little conundrum that doesn’t resolve (obviously, if you think about it) until the end.


Never Trust A Celebrity Philanthropist - Tuesday, October 10th 2006

Can’t really delete this one even if it was rubbish (which, fortunately it just avoids being) because it was quoted in The New Yorker, and also led to a lot of other things beside. In a way this article, topical as it was, made The Earth Blog just a little bit famous.


What If...There Were No Countries? - Friday, October 27th 2006 [Google cache]

I’m not sure how I came to believe that a single world government would save the human race; possibly because I had recently lost faith with national governments and was just looking for an alternative. Nevertheless, despite a hell of a lot of work going into it, it is hopelessly naïve and also just plain wrong to suggest we should encourage political homogenisation (see the article later on). I feel a bit nauseous reading it. DELETED.

I might use the phrase, “Pride in your country be damned! What about pride in your planet?” somewhere else, though.


The Problem With...Christmas - Thursday, December 7th 2006

It’s the end of September, and the shops are already filling up with tinsel and holly tinged goods: no effort will be spared to try and prop up the faltering global economy with a monumental pile of seasonal tat! For that, and also because it still takes me back, this one can stay.


In January 2007, I started work on A Matter Of Scale, and everything began to slip into place, but out of the 25 articles I wrote in 2006, only 12 remain. A massacre perhaps, but a necessary one. Now it’s time to move on.

1. "Now This War Has Two Sides", http://www.akpress.org/2008/items/nowthiswarhastwosides
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Monday, August 31st 2009

2:11 PM

Finding My Identity



I have found an identity.

Is that really such a big deal? The thing is, I didn’t realise I was missing one. There are so many things I could call myself: a human, male, a father, a husband, a writer, a thinker, a gardener, a campaigner...so many things that I feel pretty comfortable with, yet until a couple of weeks ago I didn’t realise there was something missing; something that yawned inside me, empty and lacking substance.

As consumers we feel so fulfilled; everything is within arms reach, or just a short drive down the road in the shopping mall, or on the internet by next day delivery. Everything we could possibly need. Consumers are the lifeblood of the industrial economy: it is the confidence of the mass of consumers that characterises the health of the economy, for without an optimistic buying public there is recession, slump, depression and, finally, collapse. A perfect symbiotic relationship: the consumer has everything she wants, and the economy rises on the continued satisfaction of the consumer.

It’s not quite that simple, though, because without one critical hook, the consumer will quickly start to question the nature of the relationship – maybe it’s not so fulfilling after all, given that all that hard-earned money has to keep being pumped into the rumbling belly of the infinite beast. Unless there is something more, then the consumer might understand the absurdity of this endlessly cyclical, destructive, mind-hollowing culture: we all feel that emptiness and sense of pointlessness from time to time, don’t we? It doesn’t last long, though, because to question the consumer culture is to question ourselves: more than anything, the consumer identifies with the culture; the consumer is part of that culture.

Consumer is more than just a word – it is an identity.


The Consumer Identity

When I hear humans being referred to as Consumers, I get angry. Not only is it because of the obviously abhorrent nature of consumerism that I get angry, but because the word “Consumer” is such a blatantly imposed label – it stinks of domination, of the entrapment of human beings into a single archetype; state-sponsored and corporate approved. The template for the modern human.

What kind of bloody identity is “Consumer”?

We are raised, as civilians within the industrial world, to believe there is a single mode of fulfilment that will hold us in good stead from birth to death. We must never question it; we must never challenge it; we must only identify with it. Carolyn Baker describes this crisis of identity in her book Sacred Demise, in the following way:

Civilization’s toxicity has fostered the illusion that one is, for example, a professional person with money in the bank, a secure mortgage, a good credit rating, a healthy body and mind, raising healthy children who will grow up to become successful like oneself, and that when one retires one will be well taken care of. If that has become our identity, and if we don’t look deeper, we won’t discover who we really are.1

If we identify ourselves as “Consumers” then that leaves little space for anything else because, as Baker makes clear, the illusion that the civilized world creates is a lifelong one, and if we are to remain in its grip we must reject anything else that might conflict with that illusion.

There is no room for connection with the real world, the world in which we are part of the cycles of nature and the webs of life – connection to the telephone network or the internet is the consumer way; there is no room for the breathtaking joy that comes from watching the sun rise across a beach, accompanied only by the cries of the gulls and the wash of the sea – you have to buy the experience from a travel agency; there is no room for the exquisite tastes and smells of your own grown or gathered food made into healthy meals for everyone to share – you can share a large bag of nachos with dip, while watching a movie on your plasma screen.

I gave up being a consumer long ago: before, I had no idea that’s what I was; none of us have any idea how much of us is composed of this forcibly imposed identity...until we decide to stop being what the system makes us.

But the void is large, and the consumer identity keeps threatening to fill it with each advertisement, news broadcast, political entreaty and subconscious signal: we have to resist; we have to find something else to take its place.


Who Am I?

Not only must we find something so we are able to resist the often delicious attraction of the consumer culture, but we need something else because without identity we are less human. The evidence for this is compelling: identity from the dawn of humanity is written across the ground, the walls and the artefacts of everyone who has ever been part of a tribe or close community. The tongues of countless people have spoken, and still try to speak in myriad different languages, dialects and accents. The way we have dressed; the way we have expressed ourselves; the way we have made our lives different in so many subtle and deliberate ways shouts of the need for an identity, a commonality in our local culture that ensures the survival and enhances the success of each group that shares that identity.

I willingly retain the labels “human”, “male”, “father”, “husband”, “writer”, “thinker”, “gardener”, “campaigner”: they say what I do and, in part, what is important to me. They also help me to start constructing a new identity for myself, for in the absence of a tribe, or even a close community that I can become part of – being a non-consumer in the middle of a consumer world – finding true identity will always be a struggle. The pieces are coming together, though. I have discovered my Englishness, possibly the nearest I can currently get to a physical, tribal identity. I have the writer Paul Kingsnorth to thank for that:

Many of the people I met during my travels exhibited a solid, quiet Englishness that had nothing to do with pained intellectual definitions and everything to do with belonging to the historical landscape they were part of. This, it seems to me, is crucial. Landscape and belonging are tied inextricably together. Englishness, as an identity comes not from institutions or vague ideas about ‘values’ but from place.2

I was born in England and I have lived here all my life. I love this country as a place, and I am content to root myself in the soil from which its life emerges. I have, very recently, also realised that a large part of what I write and speak about is rooted in Anarchy; the simple and natural concept that there is no place for arbitrary authority nor a self-selected hierarchy – the kind that the political and corporate milieu utilise to ensure we remain good Consumers. In that sense, Anarchist is the antithesis of Consumer, and I know which identity I am more comfortable with.

There are many other pieces for me to find; some of them may shuffle around and some may come and go over time, but at least I am now able to choose my identity for myself. That is a wonderful thing, one that we owe it to ourselves to fight for.



References:

1. Carolyn Baker, "Sacred Demise: Walking The Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization's Collapse", iUniverse, 2009.

2. Paul Kingsnorth, "Real England: The Battle Against The Bland", Portobello Books, 2008.

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