A Simian Story

Picture this: A monkey gleefully swinging through the forest, feasting on sweet fruits, dancing with the sunshine, and singing with the raindrops. This monkey passes a pool of water every day, and often stops to quench a thirst or chase a crab. One day something very peculiar occurred as the monkey was resting at the water's edge. As his eyes were following the dance of an insect across the surface, he noticed another monkey in the water looking right back at him. Now he had heard stories about water monkeys from his friends but somehow he knew this was different. As he lifted his hands to his face and the other monkey did the same he had a realization: this monkey represents himself and they are one in the same. Identity came into being. He ran off to tell all the other monkeys of his discovery. At first they told him they had seen these strange water monkeys before, tried to kill them, and it's really no big deal. But at the demands of this monkey they all came to the realization that they were sitting next to a pool of water looking at themselves!

This changed everything. The monkeys became fascinated with their newfound identity and soon they were asking deep questions about existence and thinking big thoughts (mostly about how to control other monkeys in order to attain more bananas). These monkeys spent so much time with their own thoughts they forgot about the simple joys of watching the clouds or climbing a tree. All the other animals, plants, and spirits around them lost importance; an inanimate landscape outside of their treasured inner domain. So they worked hard to alter, develop, and improve this lifeless world into one that suited their refined habits. They called the new world "civilization" and the old world "nature". These monkeys spent such an unhealthy amount of time immersed in their own creations and ideas that they became frenzied, disturbed, ... sad.

As the Earth shook, the surface of the pool began to ripple. A distressed monkey was sitting at water's edge, head in hands, lost in her worries and fears. Her reflection became jumbled by the splashing and she could no longer discern the outline of her face. As she lowered her hands to the surface she looked past her reflection and saw the eye of a fish staring back at her. Now she had learned about fish in school and bought them at the supermarket but somehow she knew this was different. As she took a deep breath and the fish opened and closed its mouth she had a realization: this fish represents herself and they are one and the same. She then spotted an underwater plant rooted in the murky bottom, swaying with the ripples, and she had the same epiphany: they are living the same life in the same glorious moment. Her eyes lit up and her frowning face transformed into a smile of amazement. She plunged into the water, suddenly fully alive and blissful. She ran off to tell all the other monkeys of her discovery. At first they told her they had seen these plants animals & rocks, made use of them, and that it's really no big deal. But at the demands of this monkey they all came to the realization that they were all cut from the same cloth.

What's crazier? Believing that everything is alive and interwoven or believing that we are entities separate from the air we breathe and the soil we walk upon. Or perhaps the question should be which is the better adaptation, or which is more fun?

Shifting focus... to all beings winged, scaled, rooted, and furred. Softening our eyes to perceive everything within our realm of experience, the sky soil rocks and rain, as alive as our own beating hearts. Indeed every grain of sand and ray of light is alive in its own unique form and has the potential to engage our senses just as much as a charging horse or a human's smile.

There is a secret to happiness that is only a secret because the dominant culture has robbed us of our innate understanding of this concept. Everything is alive. Absolutely everything that exists is intertwining in the magnificent dance of life. Everything perceived interacts with the senses in a truly magical way that cries out "we are alive!" We are born with the intuitive understanding that everything is animate and resultantly we live life to its fullest basking in the glory that is every waking and sleeping moment. Happiness. But people have overthought the whole business by saying "there are differences between all these things we can perceive and we can make words for them to differentiate". This is all fine and good but the tragedy came when people actually began to believe their abstract constructions of words and rankings took precedence over the living breathing Earth.

We have been fooled by our frontal lobes into thinking this blanket of existence is separated into discrete exclusive categories that deserve inordinate attention and recognition. We're convinced that only certain portions of what we perceive should be considered alive and beautiful and that everything else is just the background and inanimate setting for these "more important" things. The full fruition of this frontal lobe deception is of course the oppression of human beings that belong to a different "category" than the dominator whether it be gender, skin color, or creedence.

Religion has stolen the magic out of every breath of air, drop of rain, and flying bird by convincing people that the world we perceive is devoid of magic and that holiness is found not on Earth, but in heaven. This is a privatization of bliss. The magic of everyday ordinary existence has been stolen from our senses and placed in the exclusive domain of that which is outside our sensual contact and only available to us chimps that can close our eyes to the world and conjure up the words "god" and "heaven". People close their eyes when they prey. Miserable existence results from spirituality that has partitioned life into that which is holy (outside our immediate perception) and all this junk on Earth which should be "put to use".

For millions of years long before our frontal lobes made this distinction we lived and breathed our spirituality. It's easy to do, simply quiet the chattering mind and open up the senses. Allowing the frontal lobe to play its fair part without dominating will actually lead to the rational and logical conclusion that everything is alive. Example: Lying in the forest watching the rustling of the leaves and a passing cloud. An ant on my toe and the wind against my every pore. Hearing human laughter, bird and insect song; the scent of citrus and springtime. All of these agents are participating with my combined senses, therefore they are all animate and alive. Why would I make myself miserable and overthink things by saying well that cloud shouldn't count as alive because it doesn't have a brain and that ant really shouldn't either because it can't speak my language. Simply opening up the senses reveals the knowledge that everything speaks the same language on Earth: Bird Tree Ocean Monkey Cloud. Some humans have just closed their eyes, plugged their ears, and are murmuring amongst themselves.

Some of the things the monkeys are murmuring about these days are great global crises and changing the world. They wonder what just one simian can do. They can open themselves up to the living world around them, reclaim their senses, and rediscover the magic of everday life.

Reclaiming the holiness of every breath of air.
-Chimp in the wind

Visions

I am not an idealist. If you take a step back from the human frame of reference and objectively analyze the Earth this is what you find: one tail-less primate species concentrating 40% of the global ecosystem's primary productivity primarily by the domination of 3 grasses (wheat, rice, and corn). This immense translocation of global energy has resulted in the 6th great mass extinction in the Earth's 4.6 billion year history and the first to be of biotic rather than abiotic origin.

This is not stable for obvious reasons. Equilibrium is reached when energy is randomly distributed evenly throughout a system. The essence of civilization is to consolidate resources to the top of a hierarchy. To demonstrate the stability of hierarchy vs. anarchy imagine 20 building blocks stacked one on top of each other forming a tall column vs. the same blocks scattered randomly on the ground. Expose these two systems to wind and you can envision which one is permanent and which is ephemeral in your own mind.


"Anarchy is not a romantic fable but the hardheaded realization, based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, and county commissioners."-Edward Abbey

Most people today are delusional and in a state of denial. Some believe that their way of life can continue indefinitely even when the signs are everywhere that things have gone way too far in this high-tech empire. Here we are experiencing the highest level of societal complexity ever achieved and people are more miserable than ever relying on pills to experience the joy that is our natural stable emotional state. More evidence of delusion: liberals actually believing they are working towards a peaceful society. I have news: peace is impossible within a community larger than one in which you can't know everyone personally. We all have very different personal truths and ways of perceiving the world. Nations that boast of being "united" are propagating a tremendous lie: that the people in power have the same interests as the people in the streets and the fields. And the greatest example of flagrant delusion in the face of unsurmountable evidence: the belief that intelligence/consciousness (which haven't existed for more than a few million years) designed/planned all of existence, or that "meaning" is anything more than a word we've created in our minds.

Humans will either achieve some degree of stability or go extinct. A massive change in consciousness would be necessary to find balance. Life in civilization is so frantic that people have polarized mentalities, a good example being the prevalence of both obesity and anorexia. Balance is the key to maintaining happiness and health yet civilization is characterized by exuberant erratic growth. On the insane track of civilized "progress" only two things are possible: more growth or destruction (and growth is finite). Within the eternal ebb and flow of the Earth absolutely anything is possible. Choose your own adventure.

Connections

Do you own a cell-phone? How about a Playstation, laptop, digital camera, or DVD player? High-tech electronics have become so entrenched in our culture that people often express shock over the fact that I don’t own a cell-phone, computer, television, or iPod. There is much current media coverage about the “video-game console war” between Xbox 360, the Nintendo Wii, and Playstation 3. However, completely lacking from most news media is the real-life war raging in the Congo over the mining rights to a metal that goes into each and every one of these consoles.

Coltan is a mineral essential to storing the electrical charge of digital devices and 80% of the world’s coltan reserves are found in the Democratic Republic of Congo in central Africa. The Congo is the site of some of the world’s most appalling social and environmental atrocities. The nation was once a Belgian colony exploited for rubber produced by slave labor. Belgian King Leopold II is known to have ordered the severing of slaves’ hands, noses, or ears if production was not up to par. When the nation, formerly known as Zaire, became independent in the 1960’s the fascist dictator Mobutu rose to power by publicly executing dissidents and (with the support of the United States C.I.A. of the McCarthy era) assassinated the former radical leftist leader Patrice Lamumba.

Mobutu’s reign came to an end in 1997 with a rebellion led by Jospeh Kabila. The region has been teeming with civil war and anguish ever since. Nearly four million people have died from the violence, making it the most deadly conflict since World War II, and 1,000 people continue to be killed every day. Much of this blood is spilled over the millions of dollars to be had from mining coltan, diamonds, cobalt, copper, and tin in the eastern mountains.

There is more to this story. The mountain forests that are being destroyed as a result of mining pressures are among the most biologically diverse and unique ecosystems on the continent. These forests are home to the last remaining eastern mountain gorillas, just one of the millions of species endangered by the current mass extinction caused by human civilization.

Think about the tremendous increase in cell-phone use that has occurred in the last decade. Think about the implications of this enormous demand for coltan. Think about the dollar signs in the eyes of those who rape and murder to smite their enemies. There is no way to know for sure whether or not the circuit board in your electronic gadget has its origin in the Congo. Just like the spinach e-coli outbreak, there is no way to track the complex network of exchange that occurs from economic source to sink.

Your connection to the Congo is an excellent example of how everything is interrelated. These fancy electronics do not appear out of thin air, they are made possible by the exploitation of human beings and the Earth. Complex technology is the material wealth of those at the top of a system of gross inequality. This is the global system of hierarchy, the translocation and concentration of resources from the oppressed to those in power. Peace will never be possible within the framework of the existing power structure.

Fragment

...it was a warm overcast day in spring when she emerged at the end of the road where the pasture met the woods. She had been eating garlic mustard, violets, spring beauty bulbs, and fiddleheads. The rags she wore were colored with the blood of the Earth. There was a wild look in her eyes as if every moment was more unbearably beautiful and daft than the last. At that point I wondered what it all meant as she rambled up the old gray gravel road, but I realized it didn't really matter when the unstoppable radiation of life burst forth from the clouds in the form of our sun's rays. We may have both taken a deep breath at the very moment a trout lily opened, a chickadee sang, and a maple bud broke open to unleash another seasonal whirl of vitality...

Consanguine

Let’s say you have a field. This field has a lot of grasses in it. Every blade of grass is slightly different in texture, color, shape, size, smell, and taste. There are also a lot of herbs in this field. Some are flowering, some are dead, some are low, and some are high. There are sparrows, blackbirds, wrens, and a hawk here. Shrews, woodchucks, mice, and rabbits dig up soil that is inhabited by millions of ants, beetles, mites, spiders, nematodes, earthworms, centipedes, and microscopic single-celled creatures. A big furry beast with sharp teeth was seen feasting on what once had antlers and hooves. This is a mind-boggling assortment of cells, proteins, molecules, atoms, electrons. This is a field.

Language is the abstraction of reality into discrete “things” represented by words. As humans we have abstracted our existence to oblivion. Only in rare moments do we perceive the world without our language filter lens. It is these times of great clarity or emotion that our mind chatter turns off and we purely experience our surroundings without abstract interpretation.

Existence is messy. Everything is connected to everything else. We use fertilization to draw the line between living organisms but do your sex cells belong to you or your offspring? We all begin as a single cell with the information necessary to multiply into these complex trillion-celled structures. If you trace your lineage back there is no clear dividing line between Homo sapiens and Homo erectus, no line between our common ancestor with chimpanzees or our common ancestor with plants because every living being has come from another living being since the first organic molecules began to replicate and organize nearly 4 billion years ago. Species, populations, and individuals are artifacts of our arbitrary decisions of where the lines are drawn. The lines bleed. There are no divisions, no walls.

Ataraxia

We don't understand ourselves yet... and we never truly will.
Egotism has led us astray. Accept the other: the nonself, the nonhuman.
With humility comes tranquility; new ways of being and seeing are revealed. Let go...

Fuel

“Progress” is prominently manifested in the concept of economic growth. This "growth" has completely altered the face of the Earth, transforming wild lands into croplands and cities. This has resulted in a mass extinction and significant alterations in the climate, water, and soils of the planet. It has brought about technological advancements in human food production, transportation, and medicine that are available exclusively to the first world minority. The global economic system depends on growth for its existence and maintenance. This growth is subject to diminishing returns, leading to inevitable collapse.

This explosive growth of one species has been made possible by the energy harvested from fossil fuels. Petroleum, comprised of the accumulation of marine organisms over millions of years, and coal, remnants of the carboniferous fern forests, are the big ones. The homogenous agricultural food factories of wheat, corn, and rice now account for 40% of the Earth's primary productivity. These crops are able to produce temporarily enormous yields through the application of petroleum-based fertilizer, before the intensive system depletes the land's topsoil. We are effectively eating oil, consuming the energy of millions of years' worth of biological energy in a few short decades. When cheap oil peaks, global civilization will accelerate towards the collapse it has laid out for itself.