I am writing another book. For a while it seemed as though ideas would get the better of me and the sack of pages that might hold those words never be filled. Writing gave way to doing, and Underminers sat on my hard drive and sheafs of paper halfway written - a block of wasted life in literary form.
The writing started back in November 2010 and the aim was to have the definitive guide to the theory and act of undermining the industrial system completed by the next Spring. Spring sprung and I was busy in the garden, busy in the community, busy with my family, even busy playing cricket - that most civilized of games, but something that also has so many primal instincts embedded in its execution that my lack of ability cannot detract from the joy of playing. By mid-Summer the writing had dried up, not only with the book but with the Unsuitablog and The Earth Blog.
I was still quietly undermining in the background, but with too many ideas flitting around my head and no suitable net to capture, or means to express them, the book looked as though it would never reach the end. I wrote to a friend; a small act of catharsis, but while easing the guilt, it couldn't make the blockage go away.
Undermining is potentially the answer to the problem of civilization and the means of rescuing the human race, and much of life on Earth, from end times. As I write, so-called "activists" and making hay from a pathetic display of Civil Disobedience on the steps of the Capitol building in Washington DC. All the better to stop a tar sands oil pipeline, they say. All the better to entertain the corporate elites as they plot their next energy artery. This is not undermining - it is quite the opposite, for it leads people into a sense that actions that in no way threaten the power of the industrial machine are worth spending time and energy on. Direct action is rarely undermining; it may help the process, but it may also make it more difficult - creating more locked doors and extra-vigilant security to deter those that would exploit the cracks in the system for its undoing.
A couple of weeks ago I made the decision to put what I had written online. Not in one go, but in chapters. A blog I had been adding to, to document the process of writing, thinking, failing to get published and other related things, became the platform upon which the book would be hosted. The Introduction, that I had already blogged about, was posted, and with the promise of the first chapter online in a week and another chapter to be posted every 2 weeks, I at last had a deadline I had to stick to. With five chapters already written I had 10 weeks to finish Chapter 6, which was already looking like some crazy, mammoth word-fest.
Yesterday I finished Chapter 6, which is no longer a crazy word-fest, although it is most definitely mammoth. The book, Underminers, will be completed in 20 weeks, or less. I have no choice now - people are watching, and reading.
You can read it too, by going to: www.underminers.org/the-book
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