Starting this topic now with a combo of future predictions about people going more local and rural, visions of Americans turning to gardening and perhaps farming, and Coyote's post about diverse small communities.
Note that we have an old thread called The Future Of Farming that has some useful articles. https://www.jeannemayell.com/community/positive-predictions/the-future-of-farming/#post-8314
Hello everyone. I'm stopping by to share some insights from Spirit that are urgently pressing against my conscience.
Governments in the US and abroad are increasingly talking about easing pandemic restrictions and opening their economies. However, all of this chatter of returning things to normal says a lot more about globalized culture's addiction to economic growth than it does about our understanding of the novel coronavirus.
As a global society, we're in the grips of wetiko. I've written before about how wetiko is an Iroquoian term for the mind virus of separation; plunder; and cannibalism that has its roots in the ancient empires of Eurasia but has gone global in the past 5 centuries and has only grown stronger the more it is acquiesced to. The neo-religion of endless economic growth (impossible on a finite planet), which has been imbibed by every modern nation state and infects political thinking on both the left and the right, is the most powerful meme right now for propagating wetiko. So make no mistake: whether it's coming from #45, Andrew Cuomo, Emmanuel Macron, Christine Lagarde, Narendra Modi, or Angela Merkel, any high octane rhetoric about "opening up the economy" is the symptom of a collective disease. It is ironic yet unsurprising that global society's conceited belief in its mastery over a biological virus is actually entrenching a spiritual virus that is leading humanity and other large chunks of Gaia to extinction.
Last Thursday, the New York Times ran an article on its front page titled "Scant Testing Remains a Barrier for Reopening," which was about how mass rapid testing for the virus needed to be deployed if the US was to safely revive its economy. At the end of the article, the author quotes a laboratory chairman who is ramping up testing capacity as saying, "It's a huge factor, we believe, in terms of people regaining confidence and jump-starting the economy. To me, it's an absolute moral imperative."
Bullshit. No one should kowtow to an imperative to jump-start an economic engine that is predicated on destroying life. People were rightly appalled when Boris Johnson touted unmitigated herd immunity as a way of responding to the virus in the UK, or when US Republicans suggested that Grandma and Grandpa should take a bullet for the greater economic good. But suggestions that we need to get back to work because we must keep up productivity also treat human life as expendable. We all know on some level that the current structures of society are killing us. We are packed off to school so that Mom and Dad can leave home and give themselves over to the collective steam engine. At school we are taught how to endure boredom and told in a million ways that things can never be different. Most of us, our spirits thus crushed, then haul ourselves off to jobs we despise in one way or another so that we can gain some semblance of social safety in the form of paychecks and health insurance (And the grass isn't greener over the border. Don't even get me started on the illusion of the Nordic-style welfare state, which in reality has been rusting away since the 1990s and is built upon historical colonialism plus the present-day energy enslavement of the Global South). We spend our days wishing for it to be a different day (Saturday, or a holiday), all the while denying ourselves the proper nutrition, physical activity, contact with nature, and intangible community succor we as humans crave. In the absence of those evolutionary requisites for health - physical and spiritual - we are killing ourselves by a thousand cuts.
No one wants it to be this way. As much as we vilify billionaire CEOs or like to ascribe conspiratorial evil intentions to the global elite (go to hell David Icke, Alex Jones, Dylan Avery, et al.) even the supposed winners of the life destroying machine are losers. They too are suffering from a lack of human connection, from divorce from nature, from thwarted childhood dreams. They just aren't as consciously aware of these wounds as you and me; another hallmark symptom of wetiko is the inability of people to recognize that they are sick. We are all lambs being led to slaughter within the nightmare kingdom of the Age of Separation.
Yet we are also emperors - lions, if you prefer faunal metaphors - and Covid-19 is a crack in the kingdom's foundation that has the potential to activate our latent agency and ingenuity. This is our true provenance as humans. With the systemic shock of global shutdowns and quarantines, the incoherent stories we've been telling ourselves have been exposed and caught in the act. So rather than looking at the Covid-19 pandemic as a battle between good and evil, as some weapon that can vanquish the enemies and finally secure utilitarian human ideals trumpeted by a select righteous few (universal healthcare, guaranteed basic income, less CO2 emissions, whatever), look toward the margins. What fallacies in our narratives are now being illuminated? What popular memes in the media that you used to buy into are now striking you as bullshit? Institutional inertia will continue to churn out the same tired tropes for quite some time, so you have to be willing to call out the emperor's nakedness while everyone else applauds. And how will YOU, rather than the next savior politician, change things? This narrative reframing is solitary at first. We have to figure out as individuals how to transform our values, behaviors, thoughts, and our relationships with the ancestors and unborn in order for the Great Turning towards a life-affirming age to flower into being. Eventually we will come together as communities of people who have performed the same soul work, thus creating nuclei for a new world. Out of these communities will come revolution and the enduring, concrete transformations we are desperate for.
This isn't all armchair philosophizing on my end. In four months my service assignment with AmeriCorps comes to an end and I don't know what I'll be doing for work, while tens of millions of other Americans will be in the same boat. Next year I become too old to rely on my parents health insurance. There's lots of uncertainty for me. Yet I also feel calm. Paradoxically, admitting that I don't have control over everything gives me a sense that I'm standing on firm footing. Because when I throw my arms up, I'm learning to rely on the palimpsest of living things that compose the universe. Mother Earth and Father Sky tell me all is well in the end. The true nature of the universe is for things to work in cooperation, to constantly give back so that everything is nourished. We nourish the universe by our very existence, and the world just wants us to stop making things so complicated so that it can return the favor. In my opinion, the foremost lesson of Covid-19 is that we're never in complete control.
And how will YOU, rather than the next savior politician, change things? This narrative reframing is solitary at first. We have to figure out as individuals how to rectify our values and behaviors (including our thoughts) for the Great Turning into a life-affirming age. Eventually we will come together into increasingly large communities of people who have performed the same soul work, thus creating nuclei for a new world. Out of these communities will come revolution and the enduring, concrete transformations we are desperate for.
Thank you @coyote, for your great insights. Today, when I was mulling over the powerful image of the two medical workers in Colorado stopping a car of rabid protestors, I felt momentary despair. How are we ever going to come out of this, when we are so deeply divided, when the right-wing doesn’t hesitate to fuel, with money or otherwise, these unthinking protestors? And what about the brave medical workers who risk their lives to save ours and who will needlessly be exposed to greater risk just because of flagrant flouting of safety rules? And to what end? For precisely what you said; the world has mindlessly subscribed to - the Great Economic Machine.
Then I recalled what you previously wrote about our demonizing “the other” and I shook myself out of the despair with the realization that I can only work on myself, not anyone else. So what emotions are surfacing - anger, helplessness and why? As you stated, the reframing is a lonely path at first. I have to trust that as I go within, the ripples created by my inner work will find resonance with others.
And it may have already started. A number of you have mentioned feeling buzzy energies. I too am feeling waves of energy at oddest hours. Initially I ascribed them to stepping up my yoga practice but these are such warm, intense waves. I have only read about the effects of kundalini rising & in a particular case, it opened up the woman’s ability to communicate with nature spirits. I am wondering if I am rewiring myself to speak to animals because they are nearer to the earth’s heart and they have so much wisdom to give.
Enough musings for today.
@coyote, I just read your incredible post. You've hit squarely on what this whole pandemic is about and where we are headed. Your post belongs in the Post Hall of Fame. Your message fits what has fundamentally motivated me to even have this website. Thank you from my heart.
Speaking of your idea that we can't just re-open the economy if it means same ol, same ol rape of the earth and it's inhabitants. I notice that I find myself not much interested in when we can open the economy again, (although I posted a response to the repeated questions people kept asking). From a safety point of view, not until we have a working vaccine and a new system. From a species survival point of view, I hope we never open it again in the same way.
The pandemic is a dress rehearsal for climate change. The question is are we going to respond to the pandemic in a life-supporting way or not?
For years I have heard Native American spirit guides beating a drum. That drum beat has been speeding up along with images of how we will need to live. I see the early hunter gatherers and later the peaceful Native agricultural settlements of hundreds of years back. It's local and small and rural and life is slow, hard work, balanced. Progress is not a word that will be used. Sustainable is the word. To live sustainably.
Returning to business as usual, whether too early or much later, means we are simply going to continue stampeding like a herd of sheep towards a cliff. My 1985 vision: People running towards a cliff but it's not a cliff they will fall down from. It is a cliff that goes upwards and it will take time to learn to scale it. My prayer is that Covid will get us to learn how to climb that cliff, i.e., how to evolve.
The only truly life saving response to Covid is to stop. And when it is time to "open up the economy again," we will need to proceed slowly and embrace a new way of living--to find a way forward that supports a life worth living for ourselves and our children. Jumping back into the collective corporate rat race is simply delaying our species' demise. I'd like to get rid of Trump. But if that means we return to Obama era economics that supported the big banks, the military, the big oil, and th rat race, then I'm not so enthusiastic.
Coyote, I'm not sure you spelled out what the world needs to look like to thrive in the future. I would like to hear your own vision. I hear bits of it in my mind and have been seeing and hearing it for thirty years. It will be slower, financially much poorer, but spiritually it will be rich. It will be humanitarian, with a lot less money and a lot more quality of living. I have a nephew who is now homesteading in Texas somewhere outside of Austin. Others are farming. Most of the desk jobs that our colleges have prepared people for will not be necessary.
posted by @coyote
The true nature of the universe is for things to work in cooperation, to constantly give back so that everything is nourished. We nourish the universe by our very existence, and the world just wants us to stop making things so complicated so that it can return the favor.
I just love this, Coyote.
Coyote, I'm not sure you spelled out what the world needs to look like to thrive in the future. I would like to hear your own vision.
Ah yes. This deserves its own post. I'm seeing a lot of what you've seen, with the addition that social configurations will be smaller and much more decentralized. Smallness and decentralization creates diversity within human societies. Ecological science tells us that biodiversity makes ecosystems more resilient. Well, the same principal can be applied to the emergent human system. Diversity of language, architecture, cuisine, religion, fashion, artwork, crops - it all matters. Don't let anyone try to tell you that speaking the same language and following the same customs is the key to human ascendance; homogeneity blinds us to our own oversights and the countless treasures of the universe to the point where our projects start collapsing on themselves. This is the lesson of the biblical Tower of Babel. God's destruction of the tower and the scattering of the Babelians was a gift, not a punishment.
Eventually, the concept of land ownership - whether it be private ownership or collective ownership - has to be abandoned. So to does the construct of discrete political states (nation states, city states, whatever) that are bounded by arbitrary land borders. Political borders denote the collective conceit that Gaia herself can be owned. I'm seeing a future where humans are organized into villages and towns. Each settlement relates to the next settlement through unique strands of reciprocity and shared culture. In ecology, a desert grades into a semi-arid shrubland which then grades into humid woodland, without any discrete borders between the biomes. In the ecological age that follows the Great Turning, human organization will mirror these ecological continuums. Actually, this "ecological model" is what indigenous cultures looked like prior to colonization. And like the Iroquois Indians with their Haudenosaunee League and the Dawnland Indians with their Wabanaki Confederacy, nothing will stop us from forming confederacies of mutual cooperation. These future cultural partnerships can encompass the entire globe so that all humans are unified while respecting the strength that's inherent to diversity.
We don't have to wait for permission from the powers-that-be to create this world. Going forward, there will be lots more people like your nephew who will start walking away from the centralized structures and will instead establish eco-villages and intentional communities with like minded souls (I think I'm going to be one of those people). The centralized governing institutions won't be able to stop the exodus because they are already collapsing on themselves; the cheap fossil fuel energy that powered the age of empire is drying up fast, and the global coronavirus shock has already tipped the world into an age of inexorable "de-growth" (I posted about this in the "My 2014 Visions of an Economic Crash" thread, and I urge you to take a look at the links I provided.)
This online community you've created, Jeanne, is a digital sangha that's already a "nucleus of revolution" of which I originally wrote. Some of you may be thinking, "I'm too old to light out the countryside, build a community, and contribute to the Great Turning." Don't get so hung up on your age or where you physically live. Just by being here all together, we're creating waves of change. We are the turning.
@coyote Please keep writing about your vision. I want to hear more. For years, I have been seeing small farms. Visions of selling the suburban house, moving to the country and buying a little farm. Having a cow, some goats, and laying hens, and doing a ton of planting. Have greenhouses and slowly build a community around it. Being near other farms so we can operate cooperatively. These are just musings, visions, but they feel like a calling from the future.
@coyote Please keep writing about your vision. I want to hear more, much more! For years, I have been seeing small farms. Visions of selling the suburban house, moving to the country and buying a little farm. Having a cow, some goats, and laying hens, and doing a ton of planting. Have greenhouses and slowly build a community around it. Being near other farms so we can operate cooperatively. These are just musings, visions, but they feel like a calling from the future.
This sounds wonderful
That vision is already coming true in many parts of the country. What you are describing is a way of life that I have grown up with. I have lived all my life on a 20 acre farm. Ten acres of that is forest full of wildlife. I have seen deer, wild turkeys, rabbits, possums, raccoons, snakes, etc. We don't hunt them because there is no need to. But the forest also has plants that are beneficial, if you know what to look for. We have blackberries, persimmon trees, elderberries, walnuts, pecans, and other edible treasures that we have cultivated over the years by simply letting them grow and harvesting them (responsibly, of course) when the time is right. Even weeds such as daffodils can be harvested for food and/or medicinal uses
DISCLAIMER-You have to be very, very careful what you harvest. Many plants that are poisonous look a lot like plants that are edible, and even beneficial plants can have parts that can harm you. Unless you know a plant with 100% certainty, don't touch it!!!! If possible, get an expert to teach you about edible and/or beneficial plants in your area. DO NOT RELY ON THE INTERNET!!!! Pictures on Google are not enough to identify a plant. As it is, my knowledge is limited, so I stick with the plants I know.)
We also have our own farm with a vegetable garden (tomatoes, onions, potatoes, celery, pumpkins, celery, etc.) as well as a fruit orchard (peaches, pears, apples, and grapes.) Is gardening hard? Yes, but not as hard as you would think. It is really learning about the soil and making the best use of the land. We have no need for a large tractor or a wide scale operation like you see in large farms. And it is wonderful to be able to go outside every morning to pick blueberries to put in your cereal in the morning or tomatoes that you plan to use on the salad for lunch. It is just enough to feed my family, and that is all we need. Further, it saves us from having to spend so much at the grocery store, so we can save our money for fruits and vegetables we can't grow naturally.
But I digress. What I mean is that the old ways are returning in certain parts of the world. There are some people like me who actually take the time to explore nature and make use of its treasures in a responsible manner. And there are others who cultivate their land to provide food for their families and occasionally sell them at the nearest market or roadside. But over the years, I have noticed that others are starting to become more desirous for crops and foods that they grow on their own. People who don't have the land for growing crops are relying on the local community gardens. These gardens were unheard of in my area ten years ago, and yet now they are in almost all the small towns. More and more people are learning to live off the land and take pride in small-scale farming. My neighbors recently bought some chickens so they can enjoy their own eggs!
But the idea of community farming-it is not in the future, Jeanne! It's already here! Many of my neighbors are small farmers, and we stick together. A few years ago, my area was devastated by a tornado that destroyed many barns in the area. One of our neighbors suffered a lot of damage to his farm, and much of his fencing was destroyed, so he had nowhere to put his cows. Luckily, the tornado didn't damage our home too bad, and all our fences were still in place, so we allowed our neighbor to let his cows graze on our property (we did not have any cows at the time, so it was no trouble). Since then, we have made an arrangement that is beneficial to everyone. We allow his cows to graze on our pasture (five acres worth), and our neighbor uses his tractor a few times a year to mow the field so it doesn't become overgrown. This ensures that the wild grasses don't get too tall and become a fire hazard (which can become a problem in the summer), and the grass also becomes hay to feed the cows in the winter. Everyone wins, because we save on the labor it takes to mow the grass down, the grass gets recycled for a good use, and our neighbor gets free grazing land for his cows. So everyone wins!
The future is much, much closer than you think. In some places, it is already a way of life. It just needs to be embraced and adjusted to reflect the lifestyles of individuals around the country (as you said, community greenhouses where people grow food together and share the harvest from it). So take comfort in knowing that the movement has already gained a foothold and will likely spread as more and more people look towards their local communities and homes.
Jeanne ... I can really see you doing this and fulfilling your wish to have that more connected and simple earthy lifestyle ... maybe further North (have been feeling Canada?)... within the next couple of years perhaps. I see you looking very healthy with a big smile on your face carrying a basket full of produce in the sunshine ....
That is so wonderful Allyn, sustaining your family, and your immediate community.... and wild crafting as well ... herbs, mushrooms ...
Though there is nothing more delicious than fruits and veggies that you have nurtured with your own hands.... (now I am dreaming of a juicy sunripe tomato n basil sandwich)... torture, lols ?
I love your vision, and agree with the need for diversity and so much of what you said. But I'm also left to wonder, having grown up in a highly toxic rural area, how these villages will avoid becoming rigid and lacking diversity within themselves? What keeps them from "othering" different groups--maintaining an "us vs. them" mindset? Perhaps there is a shift that will help evolve human consciousness that would make this scenario different than in the past, but I am thinking it is maintaining their sense of individual identity against the pressures of mainstream culture is exactly what rallies the evangelicals, as one example. They see science as colonialism, although they wouldn't use that term. Within their "villages" they don't value diversity of thought, of race, and certainly not of gender and sexual identity. So when, for instance, a state passes a law that outlaws conversion therapy, I applaud that. I regret the dismantling of the civil rights era voting protection. But people within the communities who hold those toxic beliefs see that as mainstream culture trying to force them to "homogenize." I think of cultures like the Taliban, and how women could be beaten just for going outside without a suitable male escort, even fully hidden (there's a powerful film called The Breadwinner that shows this). I suppose I fear that many of these villages wouldn't be flourishing hippy communes or like how we imagine the peaceful indigenous tribes (which not all were), but that isolation might allow for the kind of toxicity I describe to thrive with impunity. Will far more people evolve past an authoritarian consciousness? How will we dismantle white supremacy and patriarchy if we don't work together?
It may be hard to see this future precisely because we're so immersed in patriarchy, white supremacy, heteronormativity, and capitalism. And I approach my work as an educator from a "liberatory pedagogy" perspective, aiming to encourage my students to question the dominant culture, even to consider science as one epistemology (rather than the ONLY way to know something). But in the university, a big part of that education process comes not in the classroom, but from students interacting with people from different backgrounds, with different ways of looking at the world.
I'm also writing here as someone who has lived in the tension of wanting to flee the mainstream world, to homeschool my child--live that hippie sort of dream. I'd love to live in an eco-community, and they exist in my area but you need $$$$ to get in! But I've also worked with students who were in deep poverty, people who don't have the same privilege to make a choice like that. I see many liberals in my city purport to care about racism and poverty, and yet they would never put their child in a public school because it is not good enough for them. Paying taxes and donating to charity just isn't enough--we need to become a community together. Liberation needs to be collective.
Not saying it is either/or here, and I love to hear thoughts about how we go back to villages and work to dismantle oppressive structures that disempower so many. How do we do this without leaving people behind?
It is so much easier planting when you have the space and time to do it (and I got some time on my hands right now). So, weather permitting, we should have a good harvest this year. Nevertheless, like many around the world, we are all too aware of how global warming is affecting our world, and thus have adapted.
I have the good fortune of living on land with many underground streams (we live near a cave system). The original builder of the house we live in built it in 1920, so he built a basement/cellar under the house that is positioned between two of the biggest underground streams. This means that our basement keeps a comfortable temperature all year long, so that we can store canned food, wine, and other items down there. If there is a huge rain or flood, we can actually hear the underground streams through the walls (it sounds like rapids or waterfalls, so I love it!). While we can never make the basement an entertainment center or anything like that, it is perfect for storing things, so we love it.
Because of the foresight of the original builder, we were able to trace these two streams as they go through our property. As the temperatures during summer have gone up in the last decade, we have shifted our garden to where our vegetable garden stands between the two underground streams. That way, we don't suffer the same issues of drought that others do. We still have to water them, of course, but in times when there are no rain, the underground streams still provide enough moisture to save them. Also, we take advantage of several shade trees where we plant the crops that may suffer the worst during a drought, so that they don't suffer as much when the sun beats down on them. It has taken a lot of trail and error (mostly error), but we are doing good.
With the underground streams irrigating our field, we can't use pesticides, of course. But who needs them?! We have natural means of keeping them out, such as planting marigolds around the crops (marigolds will keep many pests away, and are beautiful anyway). It has gotten to the point that I have to plant marigolds around my roses, as Japanese beetles have descended like the plague, and marigolds keep them away.
The reason I am telling all of this is to demonstrate that, if everyone keeps an open mind, we can all live better and simply. In the future, I see people with community gardens on skyscrapers or even little planters in their kitchen windows (yes, we have some too. They grow basil and parsley). But it can be done. My family just had a head start, so I am hopeful that if I share my experiences growing up, maybe it will inspire others. And I am a girly type of girl too, if you know what I mean. I dress up in my suites, paint my nails, go to court and the office, and work in the towns and cities like anyone else. But when I get home, I put on my jeans, put on my gloves, get my trowel, and work like a farmer outside. But people can have the best of both worlds, if they are willing to give it a try. Even if they start small, it is fine. And if you don't have a green thumb, you can still help in the community garden centers. Who knows? You may get help from other people who keep crops there and learn from them. At the very least, you can help them with their plants and get some in return. I know several friends who actually have done this. They all share a plot and take turns with it. While two are true growers, the other three...not so much. But these three help by pulling weeds or watering. Last year, they had plenty of cucumbers and tomatoes that they could all share.
Maybe it is because I live in a rural area that I see that the visions you guys have about a simpler life will come to pass, because it is already a way of life where I am.
Thank you so much for sharing this! What an inspiration your home is, and even though you make it sound so easy to maintain, I know that it takes an intelligent and thoughtfully connected Earther to have achieved what you and your family have done ....
The 'simple' life is quite alot of planned dedication, yes? And a real challenge to adjust to the changing seasons and to attune to the requirements of your stewardship to the land, all of the wild Flora and Fauna as well I expect.
But what abundant rewards and contentment you must reap, and especially in health and well being.....
I love the way you described your underground waters, and the basement between two streams...this reminds me of France where there are many underground rivers, streams and caves that are famed in the wine country for natural rock cellars. I've heard this rushing of the waters in the walls in a documentary on this... so cool!
Do you ever plant to attract certain butterflies, or most important right now, our endangered pollenators the mighty bees?? ???
Like you, these visions I've been having are more like musings, but I'm not imagining them out of nothing. They seem like distant echos in spacetime from the future. I definitely will be coming back here to write more, but for now I'm taking a break from posting on the forum. It took a lot of energy to transmit some of my latest posts. I need to return to attending to the spirits that are making themselves heard in this really potent juncture in time.
You raise a lot of valid concerns that I knew many people would share when I posted about my agrarian visions/musings. I want to address your reservations, because there's lots of potential color and creativity (as long as we make the right choices) that I didn't get a chance to mention initially. But as I just told Jeanne, I'm taking a break from posting. I have to replenish my energy.
There are ways to grow gardens in cities... http://www.naturalbuildingblog.com/rooftop-gardens-healthy-food-cities/ many ways...from hydroponics to containers to small pieces of land with vertical planting and planting towers.
There are resources around that be sustainable... community gardens and such. I see more people coming together to create a sustainable way to grow and share crops. There are definitely changes coming in the way we do things.
Even as I worry about current circumstances, knowing that this too shall pass, I am enjoying the clarity of the air and light that I see, the kindness and sharing and caring I see, the courage and love I see.Time feels very fluid to me now... and I am staying in the now more also.
Creativity is incubating all around as we shelter in place and space for ideas to be born/created is being given to us. We are learning not to clutch so tightly in our hands but to hold gently and lovingly and share the wonder as we take baby steps in this time seeking a way forward.