I don’t like to claim any particular ideology, and I especially prefer to avoid getting involved with US political nonsense since all it really is is smoke and mirrors to keep us all worked up and side-tracked from what is really going on. I do believe we can take care of ourselves through cooperation and don’t need a whole lot of people and institutions and whatnot to keep everything in place and tell us what to do. I also think that we have not really understood how to use our new tools (internet, open-source, yes even twitter etc) to help with creating a new way of interacting with each other and our world.

I am not a violent person–I can’t even hurt a rapist–and I don’t think we will all need guns to protect our property (because we are rethinking the idea of personal property). After seeing the slaughter of the barefoot monks in Burma a few years ago, I do agree with Derrick Jensen that we can’t just expect greedy corporations and individuals to willingly let go of what they think of as theirs. We will have to take them down with force.

On the other hand I am also looking forward to getting back to the artesian way of life, as E. F. Schumacher describes in Buddhist Economics, but we may come up with something even better. Diversity is what nature loves and I believe we will find many quite varied ways that will all work equally well to solve our problems. In the meantime, I quite like where the writer of this article is going. One thing is for sure, we need to stop mining ASAP.

An Anarchist Solution to Global Warming

If the Green Capitalist response to climate change will only add more fuel to the fire, and if government at a global scale is incapable of solving the problem, as I argue in previous articles, how would anarchists suggest we reorganize society in order to decrease the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and to survive an already changed world?

There is no single anarchist position, and many anarchists refuse to offer any proposal at all, arguing that if society liberates itself from State and capitalism, it will change organically, not on the lines of any blueprint. Besides, the attitude of policy, seeing the world from above and imposing changes, is inextricable from the culture that is responsible for destroying the planet and oppressing its inhabitants.

Nonetheless, I want to outline one possible way we could organize our lives, not to make a concrete proposal, but because visions make us stronger, and we all need the courage to break once and for all with the existing institutions and the false solutions they offer.

I base the description of this future possible world both on what is physically necessary and what is ethically desirable, in accordance with the following premises.

• Fossil fuel extraction and consumption need to come to a full stop.
• Industrial food production must be replaced with the sustainable growing of food at the local level.
• Centralizing power structures are inherently exploitative of the environment and oppressive towards people.
• The mentality of quantitative value, accumulation, production, and consumption—that is to say, the mentality of the market—is inherently exploitative of the environment and oppressive towards people.
• Medical science is infused with a hatred of the body, and though it has perfected effective response to symptoms, it is damaging to our health as currently practiced.

Decentralization, voluntary association, self-organization, mutual aid, and non-coercion are fully practical and have worked, both within and outside of Western Civilization, time and time again.

Read the full vision of this anarchist here.

In the meantime, various art movements are springing up which are dedicated to taking back our rituals, making and controlling our own media and building global group-mind pools working towards letting people make their own choices again. One of my favorite of these–ITS–has sprung from the Independence movement of the people of West Papua who are being slaughtered, tortured and exploited because the world’s largest gold mine, is on their land. The ITS cultural task force proclaims:

• ITS shapes & creates culture.
• ITS controls the symbols of the elite and cannot be controlled by them.
• ITS fights for all peoples & cultures, no race, creed or religion may be excluded.
• ITS opposes all forms of environmental destruction and desecration.
• ITS shares intellectual property and does not recognize unfair copyright laws.
• ITS places land ownership in the hands of indigenous peoples, not foreign business interests.
• ITS is an independent propaganda machinery for the protection of basic human rights and freedom.

Read the full ITS Manifesto here.

All of this brings me to think of a description I heard of the prophecy of the Eagle and the Condor in which some Peruvian elders said that during this period, technology will become a tool for indigenous peoples, instead of for greedy dictators and corporations, with this mindset we will work together to heal the earth and each other. I have been trying to find that video clip, but can’t seem to do so. The following also describes this ancient prophecy quite clearly:

As John Perkins says, this prophecy is not set, it is up to us to make this happen, to shift our way of thinking, to understand that everything is related to us and nothing is separate. We are on our way to creating a new world, but as we all know, evolution and change never come easy, we have to work and suffer to really deepen our understanding of each other and our earth. Floyd Red Crow Westerman describes this process:

Personally I already see this happening in many many ways, although I do realize that many many people are suffering incredibly from wars, exploitation and environmental catastrophes. I think we have hope and that we can come together and create solutions, but the sooner we do so, the less suffering there will be. We need to help each other to look at plants, animals and each other from a different angle, the angle of the heart and intuition, so lets get to it.

Happy Harvest moon Equinox everyone!