Even when movements aren't infiltrated by Deepstate, they inevitably decay after losing their purpose. This is Parkinson's most important law. Businesses and movements and agencies usually start with a mission. After they grow large enough, they stop worrying about the mission and only want pure growth for its own sake. Their ONLY goal is increasing their budget and membership. Accomplishing the original mission would mean losing their ability to appeal for more members or funding, so they always "mysteriously" fail to accomplish the mission. Not there yet, need more money!!!
Every not for profit is against its stated goal, including churches. I'm afraid the whole thing is a scam top to bottom. The billionaire wives are the board of directors of the major not for profits. They don't raise money for anything but their own salaries. If they have money left over after payroll and fundraising advertisements, they donate it to another not-for-profit. It's just a plain scam. Charity in America is poor people giving their money to rich people. The Red Cross is poor people bleeding for rich people. The Red Cross is an ancient symbol of usury. Wherever you see a red cross it means Templars. Scottish flag, Swiss Flag. England. When you donate blood to the red cross Al Gore is probably going to drink it, or spill it on the tarmac. I wonder what business Al Gore's family traditionally was in. It makes me wonder how many Gores there are and how extensive the marketplace is for gore. How much is your gore worth? Why should poor people donate the most valuable thing that their bodies produce to rich people? We are their blood cows.
Berry is so of the earth, but so not an earthling in brain. His constant reminder: what humanity lacks most is humility. We should not have to be arguing over whether climate change is human induced or not (living truly sustainably - respecting God's kingdom if you need that pinch - would make that moot) , we should not be arguing whether the Ukraine should be getting military funding or not, we should not have to even imagine someone with as little statesmanship as Donald Trump would be running for office. Our needs and impacts on the earth should be reduced about 70%, we should be a world beyond war (the billions going to peace and social and economic development instead). We shouldn't have to even think about clean water, air, and healthy food. We shouldn't have to worry that 90% of the products in a supermarket aren't fit to be consumed. We shouldn't have to worry that half of our federal budget goes to military. If true capitalism was "allowed" to reign, where all the cost of doing business (i.e., social, environmental, etc. externalities were included) there would be only be family and community businesses and mom pop stores. If we could only see what was truly important in life - 90% of our hobbies, material things, health issues, etc. would be gone....
The so-called "anti-vaccine movement" is clearly an accusation intended to group a number of issues under a banner so that the banner, and anyone judged to be under it, can be attacked without addressing any issues.
Those accused of being "in the anti-vaxxer movement" are simply part of a community who has important questions and answers about vaccines, vaccinations, and vaccinated.
In a similar vein, it makes sense to belong to the health freedom community without any need to reference a "movement." We can all be leaders of our local community and look up to other leaders, whike 'moving' in many directions at once."
We should all be part of the "nameless community for better ways of doing things." A community is capable of moving in many directions at once, even backwards if necessary.
Drawing on the varying perspectives shared by Sasha, Neal, Tessa, Janet, Neo above, and then yours Tracy, I suspect yours (if I am interpreting ok) somehow represents the ideal if a personable (not over-large), rather self-sustaining autonomous community of people living cheek by jowl (so can better align with and practise the dynamic Tessa offers). Plus keep in touch physically with immediate world through visits to other communities, incl. for trading goods and services.... and to be present in the wider world remotely
Otherwise, at this point whereby societal structures linger on, I think the way of Sasha is just fine. For myself, increasingly having the experience of being in this world, observing, but not of it... I am more akin to Sasha orientation for now, keeping myself to myself, freelance. If imagining a tipping point of SHTF, will it not entail a requirement to rally myself, re-adjust... to find/co-create a community, and freshly build the oh-so-important closer human contact for helping enable each other in new forms of living?
I also thought about Wendell Berry when commenting on your previous post. It wasn't what he said directly about movements, which you've quoted here, but something else he said. This was back when I was doing environmental work, and he was a hero of mine. He said that if we all loved and cared for the place where we live, there wouldn't be environmental problems because every area's health and needs would be seen to by the people who lived there. I thought of it in connection with movements because to me the same dynamic applies to anything that is unjust or harmful that we want to change in the world: if we all looked after those concerns right around us, in our own neighborhoods, towns, cities, there would be no need for mass movements.
After a lifetime of being an activist involved in movements (since the 1960s), I have come to see, as Berry says, that they don't do what we mean them to do--they always get sidetracked, or destroyed by in-fighting, or are simply fields where we meet day after day and become exhausted by expending so much energy and not seeing anything happen. And because they are by their nature aimed at reform, they don't get to the root of the problem.
What's really needed is transformed people who are caring for each other and the earth where we live, and I think the only way to that is for each of us to live our values every day where we are, modeling them and perhaps emanating the energy of love and care instead of anger and demand, spreading that to our surroundings. That's how I am approaching it. I know that you and others believe in the necessity for movements. We can differ on that. I wish you great success in those endeavors!
Wendell Berry is already living in the Millennium Kingdom it would seem; truly impressive. I've always loved his essays and ponder my inadequacy for days after reading how he's achieved an agrarian equanimity that seems almost impossible nowadays.
That's why I don't join any movements or any organizations. When you do, you necessarily lose self-determination for the sake of the "movement", it's a constant negotiation between your integrity and the perceived narrative the movement subscribes to. This is also true of churches and religions (which is different from your own faith and seeking truth and God). Everything made by people, including movements, no matter how well intentioned, is corruptible. It is ok to help others, assist a movement if you feel they are trying to do something good, participate in an event, contribute something, but IMO it is a double edged sword to "join a movement" and give up your self-determination on the matter.
I hear you. Formal movements usually get corrupted in about 5 minutes. I am more interested in people relating to each other and working together to do something good, and it works only if everyone genuinely wants to do what right, constantly checks own behavior how it compares to what the cause is about, and leaves the judgements to the Creator. To my senses, it is not possible to fight for "justice" and allow oneself to be unjust, or fight for "human rights" but only for "people like me," etc. I have found that empathy goes a lot farther than rigidity, if the goal is to help heal the world as much as possible, which is the goal I believe to be the most important in everything we do. When the sight of that goal is lost, one doesn't need to be CO to do the bidding of the tyrants.
I may be reading too literally, but isn't the weaving of community interaction/organization in its myriad of forms food for the soul, humanity and the planet? Embracing the extended family, the neighborhood, the village, town, city through organizations. Isn't part of the trick to make an organism out of that which exists. I just got back from doing a "habitat enhancement" (as they called them in Portland, Oregon) joining with other folks to clean up and restore (I know, the arrogance) local ecologies - so amazingly connecting in so many ways!
Sounds like American mentality to dismiss communal organization, "it's all about me and what difference could I make and it won't make a difference anyway".... Most of the US huddles inside there houses on TV and internet (used to be evening thing, now day and night), in a so often struggling nuclear family units with no purpose other than get by with little to no connection to each other, community, nature and their impact on the Earth. Coach potatoeing, zombifying, like there aren't a million needs in the community and the world AND so many like them also ultimately desperate for connection and believing in and hoping for a better world. Crazy uncle Joe and drunk aunt Edna and ailing grandma all cannot find care, love and purpose among the extended family and community and are sent off or drift to unfortunate situations.... There is so much value to unique, multiple, sometimes overlapping organizations but yes, if their approach is through the same American mentality, there will be folly.
Wendell Berry is so wise, sooo articulate. I became a fan of his writings when I was caught up in the environmental movement. A movement I was in fact so deeply caught up in, I didn't always see the forest for the trees. As it were. Indeed we often picked at symptoms while ignoring the cause(s). I sigh at myself now for all those utterly fraudulent nuclear hearings I worked so hard on, for example. They were always just pure theatre. Never achieved a thing. Never mind. We weren't stupid - just very naive. Environmental activists, I feel, are mostly very caring individuals. Hard-working. A little too naive. Not worth demonizing, as seems to be happening these daze. But then, demonizing is such a big part of the picture now! Anyway. Delighted you dove into Wendell Berry. An amazing, brilliant man.
"What I am saying is that if we apply our minds directly and competently to the needs of the earth, then we will have begun to make fundamental and necessary changes in our minds. We will begin to understand and to mistrust and to change our wasteful economy, which markets not just the produce of the earth, but also the earth’s ability to produce. We will see that beauty and utility are alike dependent upon the health of the world. But we will also see through the fads and the fashions of protest. We will see that war and oppression and pollution are not separate issues, but are aspects of the same issue. Amid the outcries for the liberation of this group or that, we will know that no person is free except in the freedom of other persons, and that man’s only real freedom is to know and faithfully occupy his place – a much humbler place than we have been taught to think – in the order of creation.
But the change of mind I am talking about involves not just a change of knowledge, but also a change of attitude toward our essential ignorance, a change in our bearing in the face of mystery. The principle of ecology, if we will take it to heart, should keep us aware that our lives depend upon other lives and upon processes and energies in an interlocking system that, though we can destroy it, we can neither fully understand nor fully control. And our great dangerousness is that, locked in our selfish and myopic economics, we have been willing to change or destroy far beyond our power to understand. We are not humble enough or reverent enough."
I believe the "Truther Movement" is perhaps falling victim to this man's truth. And this by no means I do not value what many have done and brought to me personally over the years. I am just saddened a bit and intuitively see many of them losing something in their messages and abilities. I see them becoming more interested in fame and fortune derived from going to conferences and being invited to meet up in other countries by fans and "followers," and other "Truthers." They put on makeup and get dressed up for zoom meetings and pod casts, and let a host lead them around after showering them with compliments and asking them to tell their stories of glory. I wonder if this is making them susceptible to the manipulations that the Deep State is so good at, leading to a huge "fall" from a high pedestal. I hope not but the information from many is not holding its own as it once did.
Even when movements aren't infiltrated by Deepstate, they inevitably decay after losing their purpose. This is Parkinson's most important law. Businesses and movements and agencies usually start with a mission. After they grow large enough, they stop worrying about the mission and only want pure growth for its own sake. Their ONLY goal is increasing their budget and membership. Accomplishing the original mission would mean losing their ability to appeal for more members or funding, so they always "mysteriously" fail to accomplish the mission. Not there yet, need more money!!!
Every not for profit is against its stated goal, including churches. I'm afraid the whole thing is a scam top to bottom. The billionaire wives are the board of directors of the major not for profits. They don't raise money for anything but their own salaries. If they have money left over after payroll and fundraising advertisements, they donate it to another not-for-profit. It's just a plain scam. Charity in America is poor people giving their money to rich people. The Red Cross is poor people bleeding for rich people. The Red Cross is an ancient symbol of usury. Wherever you see a red cross it means Templars. Scottish flag, Swiss Flag. England. When you donate blood to the red cross Al Gore is probably going to drink it, or spill it on the tarmac. I wonder what business Al Gore's family traditionally was in. It makes me wonder how many Gores there are and how extensive the marketplace is for gore. How much is your gore worth? Why should poor people donate the most valuable thing that their bodies produce to rich people? We are their blood cows.
And Wendell Berry is awesome. Makes me think of Donald Hall.
Wendell Berry is my hero!
He's great.
Berry is so of the earth, but so not an earthling in brain. His constant reminder: what humanity lacks most is humility. We should not have to be arguing over whether climate change is human induced or not (living truly sustainably - respecting God's kingdom if you need that pinch - would make that moot) , we should not be arguing whether the Ukraine should be getting military funding or not, we should not have to even imagine someone with as little statesmanship as Donald Trump would be running for office. Our needs and impacts on the earth should be reduced about 70%, we should be a world beyond war (the billions going to peace and social and economic development instead). We shouldn't have to even think about clean water, air, and healthy food. We shouldn't have to worry that 90% of the products in a supermarket aren't fit to be consumed. We shouldn't have to worry that half of our federal budget goes to military. If true capitalism was "allowed" to reign, where all the cost of doing business (i.e., social, environmental, etc. externalities were included) there would be only be family and community businesses and mom pop stores. If we could only see what was truly important in life - 90% of our hobbies, material things, health issues, etc. would be gone....
THIS!!!👆👆👆👆👆
The so-called "anti-vaccine movement" is clearly an accusation intended to group a number of issues under a banner so that the banner, and anyone judged to be under it, can be attacked without addressing any issues.
Those accused of being "in the anti-vaxxer movement" are simply part of a community who has important questions and answers about vaccines, vaccinations, and vaccinated.
In a similar vein, it makes sense to belong to the health freedom community without any need to reference a "movement." We can all be leaders of our local community and look up to other leaders, whike 'moving' in many directions at once."
We should all be part of the "nameless community for better ways of doing things." A community is capable of moving in many directions at once, even backwards if necessary.
To your health, travy
Drawing on the varying perspectives shared by Sasha, Neal, Tessa, Janet, Neo above, and then yours Tracy, I suspect yours (if I am interpreting ok) somehow represents the ideal if a personable (not over-large), rather self-sustaining autonomous community of people living cheek by jowl (so can better align with and practise the dynamic Tessa offers). Plus keep in touch physically with immediate world through visits to other communities, incl. for trading goods and services.... and to be present in the wider world remotely
Otherwise, at this point whereby societal structures linger on, I think the way of Sasha is just fine. For myself, increasingly having the experience of being in this world, observing, but not of it... I am more akin to Sasha orientation for now, keeping myself to myself, freelance. If imagining a tipping point of SHTF, will it not entail a requirement to rally myself, re-adjust... to find/co-create a community, and freshly build the oh-so-important closer human contact for helping enable each other in new forms of living?
Anyway thanks all...it got me musing!
I also thought about Wendell Berry when commenting on your previous post. It wasn't what he said directly about movements, which you've quoted here, but something else he said. This was back when I was doing environmental work, and he was a hero of mine. He said that if we all loved and cared for the place where we live, there wouldn't be environmental problems because every area's health and needs would be seen to by the people who lived there. I thought of it in connection with movements because to me the same dynamic applies to anything that is unjust or harmful that we want to change in the world: if we all looked after those concerns right around us, in our own neighborhoods, towns, cities, there would be no need for mass movements.
After a lifetime of being an activist involved in movements (since the 1960s), I have come to see, as Berry says, that they don't do what we mean them to do--they always get sidetracked, or destroyed by in-fighting, or are simply fields where we meet day after day and become exhausted by expending so much energy and not seeing anything happen. And because they are by their nature aimed at reform, they don't get to the root of the problem.
What's really needed is transformed people who are caring for each other and the earth where we live, and I think the only way to that is for each of us to live our values every day where we are, modeling them and perhaps emanating the energy of love and care instead of anger and demand, spreading that to our surroundings. That's how I am approaching it. I know that you and others believe in the necessity for movements. We can differ on that. I wish you great success in those endeavors!
Wendell Berry is already living in the Millennium Kingdom it would seem; truly impressive. I've always loved his essays and ponder my inadequacy for days after reading how he's achieved an agrarian equanimity that seems almost impossible nowadays.
Related to this topic, y'all might be into: https://hac.bard.edu/amor-mundi/the-power-of-the-powerless-vaclav-havel-2011-12-23
Thank you for the link
That's why I don't join any movements or any organizations. When you do, you necessarily lose self-determination for the sake of the "movement", it's a constant negotiation between your integrity and the perceived narrative the movement subscribes to. This is also true of churches and religions (which is different from your own faith and seeking truth and God). Everything made by people, including movements, no matter how well intentioned, is corruptible. It is ok to help others, assist a movement if you feel they are trying to do something good, participate in an event, contribute something, but IMO it is a double edged sword to "join a movement" and give up your self-determination on the matter.
I hear you. Formal movements usually get corrupted in about 5 minutes. I am more interested in people relating to each other and working together to do something good, and it works only if everyone genuinely wants to do what right, constantly checks own behavior how it compares to what the cause is about, and leaves the judgements to the Creator. To my senses, it is not possible to fight for "justice" and allow oneself to be unjust, or fight for "human rights" but only for "people like me," etc. I have found that empathy goes a lot farther than rigidity, if the goal is to help heal the world as much as possible, which is the goal I believe to be the most important in everything we do. When the sight of that goal is lost, one doesn't need to be CO to do the bidding of the tyrants.
I may be reading too literally, but isn't the weaving of community interaction/organization in its myriad of forms food for the soul, humanity and the planet? Embracing the extended family, the neighborhood, the village, town, city through organizations. Isn't part of the trick to make an organism out of that which exists. I just got back from doing a "habitat enhancement" (as they called them in Portland, Oregon) joining with other folks to clean up and restore (I know, the arrogance) local ecologies - so amazingly connecting in so many ways!
Sounds like American mentality to dismiss communal organization, "it's all about me and what difference could I make and it won't make a difference anyway".... Most of the US huddles inside there houses on TV and internet (used to be evening thing, now day and night), in a so often struggling nuclear family units with no purpose other than get by with little to no connection to each other, community, nature and their impact on the Earth. Coach potatoeing, zombifying, like there aren't a million needs in the community and the world AND so many like them also ultimately desperate for connection and believing in and hoping for a better world. Crazy uncle Joe and drunk aunt Edna and ailing grandma all cannot find care, love and purpose among the extended family and community and are sent off or drift to unfortunate situations.... There is so much value to unique, multiple, sometimes overlapping organizations but yes, if their approach is through the same American mentality, there will be folly.
Wendell Berry is so wise, sooo articulate. I became a fan of his writings when I was caught up in the environmental movement. A movement I was in fact so deeply caught up in, I didn't always see the forest for the trees. As it were. Indeed we often picked at symptoms while ignoring the cause(s). I sigh at myself now for all those utterly fraudulent nuclear hearings I worked so hard on, for example. They were always just pure theatre. Never achieved a thing. Never mind. We weren't stupid - just very naive. Environmental activists, I feel, are mostly very caring individuals. Hard-working. A little too naive. Not worth demonizing, as seems to be happening these daze. But then, demonizing is such a big part of the picture now! Anyway. Delighted you dove into Wendell Berry. An amazing, brilliant man.
Yep!
The revolution will not be televised!
https://youtu.be/vwSRqaZGsPw
www.LightOnConspiracies.com—(Mr. Ole Dammegard).
It's really satisfying to pursue Berry's work - it is clarifying and therapeutic and unpretentious.
From "Think Little" (written in 1969)
https://berrycenter.org/2017/03/26/think-little-wendell-berry/
"What I am saying is that if we apply our minds directly and competently to the needs of the earth, then we will have begun to make fundamental and necessary changes in our minds. We will begin to understand and to mistrust and to change our wasteful economy, which markets not just the produce of the earth, but also the earth’s ability to produce. We will see that beauty and utility are alike dependent upon the health of the world. But we will also see through the fads and the fashions of protest. We will see that war and oppression and pollution are not separate issues, but are aspects of the same issue. Amid the outcries for the liberation of this group or that, we will know that no person is free except in the freedom of other persons, and that man’s only real freedom is to know and faithfully occupy his place – a much humbler place than we have been taught to think – in the order of creation.
But the change of mind I am talking about involves not just a change of knowledge, but also a change of attitude toward our essential ignorance, a change in our bearing in the face of mystery. The principle of ecology, if we will take it to heart, should keep us aware that our lives depend upon other lives and upon processes and energies in an interlocking system that, though we can destroy it, we can neither fully understand nor fully control. And our great dangerousness is that, locked in our selfish and myopic economics, we have been willing to change or destroy far beyond our power to understand. We are not humble enough or reverent enough."
I believe the "Truther Movement" is perhaps falling victim to this man's truth. And this by no means I do not value what many have done and brought to me personally over the years. I am just saddened a bit and intuitively see many of them losing something in their messages and abilities. I see them becoming more interested in fame and fortune derived from going to conferences and being invited to meet up in other countries by fans and "followers," and other "Truthers." They put on makeup and get dressed up for zoom meetings and pod casts, and let a host lead them around after showering them with compliments and asking them to tell their stories of glory. I wonder if this is making them susceptible to the manipulations that the Deep State is so good at, leading to a huge "fall" from a high pedestal. I hope not but the information from many is not holding its own as it once did.
Wendell Berry, top geezer..xj
www.WallStreetOnParade.com.
www.TrendsJournal.com.
I really enjoy your mind Tessa!
Thank you, LM!
Brilliant. Thanks for sharing, Tessa.
Thank you, TnDoc!!