Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley): It’s so hard to live as an authentic human being in a civilization whose every molecule is wrapped around something as vapid and soulless as corporate profit. It’s what most of us pour most of our life force into. Most people work all day generating corporate profits to pay bills that go toward corporate profits and pay off loans from giant banks for their corporate profits or rent from real estate giants for their corporate profits. Then they come home, eat some products from giant megacorporations that they purchased at a supermarket chain, and unwind by watching entertainment created by corporations to draw as many eyeballs as possible or scrolling through social media platforms designed by corporations to be as addictive as possible. We do this while being surrounded all day by advertising designed to pull us into generating more corporate profits.
Yes, I agree that humans are actually a staggeringly beautiful and thrilling animal when you can see them with fresh eyes.
Every so often I go on what I call a news and social media diet and stay strictly offline for a few weeks or even a month (yes, even off your newsletter too).
This also cuts off a large part of the tsunami of advertising and corporate/ wealthy-worship that infects our society. I read books, listen to music, and go for walks instead of watching tv and surfing the web and when I get back online, I find that I've missed nothing. After my last blackout I learned that the big news "story" in the US, inexplicably, was some wealthy guys who took a sub down to the bottom of the ocean to see the Titanic.
After a week or two of a blackout, I've often found that my mood lifts and I'm less angry and despairing.
Come to think of it, I'm probably about due for another diet! :)
We and everything else are nature, and we need to develop fulfilling relationships with all of it.
I consider money a tool, so use it as ethically and frugally as possible. And it's fun! Thrifting is like a continual treasure hunt, especially when there's nothing I desperately need, so I settle only for the treasures. My bills are paid on the day they're due, so I give them as little energy as possible.
Yesterday I tabled at a community event for our regional climate hub. It was so nice to see what other groups are doing, meet people in the community and catch up with movement friends. Today I'll be singing in our community choir.
Little things, but they make life wonderful. Luckily there is still caring and community that wants better than the dehumanizing corporate world.
" In the 1930’s when Western corporate investors funded Hitler’s war machine, it was a bonanza of profiteering for them. Hitler’s Third Reich was a dress rehearsal for what we are living now as corporations dominate Western governments leading them and us into world war— their world war for corporate profiteering and further savagery directed at Earth’s ecosystems and their sustainability."--- from blog draft in progress. That they did so is testimony to how sociopath corporations are and the existential threat they represent.
We are also suffering a pandemic of Stockholm Syndrome where we have become passive accomplices to our hostage takers, whether it is one person, like Patty Hearst, or civilizational.
I have to disagree this time out, Caitlin. Civilization is NOT "nature." Human civilization has been inflicted upon nature. If it disappeared tomorrow, I don't think the rest of nature would miss it. In fact, I think the plants and animals would breathe a sigh of relief.
I personally have no interest in acclimating to the norms of a civilization which appears to be headed in the direction of attempting to turn this living Earth we live on into some kind of dead Ecumenopolis ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecumenopolis ).
"a busy office full of chattering humans is not experientially much different from a busy forest full of chattering birds and insects — it’s just two different expressions of nature." This is true in the same sense that 'a busy organ full of chattering cancer cells is not experientially much different from a busy organ full of chattering neurons and red blood cells — it’s just two different expressions of nature.'. A busy office full of chattering humans in a modern day city, is a structure that represents a chain of events that constitute the violent rape, pillaging and then suffocation of the land it is built on. The city it is a part of represents a larger fractal expression of that same chain of raping, pillaging and suffocating of the land.
The continuing choices made by the humans within it which are as you say "pour(ing) more of (their) energy into generating corporate profits throughout our lives than the most pious monk pours into worshipping any deity." are what enables the continuing pillaging, raping and suffocation of the living earth, the transformation of that which is living and diverse, into that which is dead, uniform and able to generate fiat currency.
Rather than acclimatizing to the normalized raping, pillaging and suffocating of the living Earth by redefining that behavior (and the structures and ways of living it enables to continue) I choose to sever my dependence on those centralized systems, one step at a time. I intend on undermining the foundations of the corporation and bankster dominated governments by withdrawing my support from their centralized systems (and helping others do the same) until they collapse under their own top heavy weight. I aim to starve the beast and plant the seeds for something more aligned with integrity, equality, compassion and abundance to grow in its place.
I will work to help others who are interested in doing the same through focusing on initiatives like this:
The Road by Cormac McCarthy is a great book, but one totally overlooked is Kingdom Come by JG Ballard. This is what is happening to us, Capitalism is destroying our souls. Great article.
I think the hardest part of breaking free from the narrative, for most people, is admitting they have a problem, sort of like treating any other addiction. It's that first step that is the most difficult for them, IMO.
Americans have been told as adults never to knock the system. The MSM daily feeds them about freedom and democracy even as those precious rights are pulled from under their noses. The modern surveillance state (in cahoots with the corporate world) does not need jackboots on the pavement. It puts the squeeze surreptitiously until one day you wake up in a full-blown Fascist state.
Great article Caitlin, it resonates. This financialization and corporatization of America is why my family, and many others, are seeking to opt-out and unplug into an off-grid lifestyle. We are trying to rebuild local community. Create affordable homes (barndominiums / tiny homes / yurts), use much less, raise regenerative livestock, grow permaculture gardens, use some solar, biomass, permaculture methods... Opting out is the most powerful vote away from a corporate world, and then helping somebody else opt out and join you. I just wrote about our view on this issue about the fading American dream: https://articles.acornlandlabs.com/p/farewell-american-dream
The Reckoning
America
I am redeeming all my tickets you hold
in your Pawnshop of my soul.
The ticket of all the Indians and Japs and Nazis I killed
in the backyards of my boyhood.
The ticket of the church service on the day
JFK had his head blown open and
was sainted on the spot.
The ticket of Kent State
and
the ticket of Jonestown
and
the ticket of nine eleven.
The ticket of the National Debt
that you tell
I owe personally.
The ticket of the innocence you said I lost
that you never had any claim to
in the first place.
America
I am redeeming all my tickets you hold
in your Pawnshop of my soul.
The ticket of the Holy Materialism,
the tickets of Big Greed.
The tickets of addiction . . .
o yeah,
you hooked me alright America.
Those tickets I gave you
in return for putting all hope and dreams
behind your counter.
America
I am redeeming all my tickets you hold
in your Pawnshop of my soul.
America, you lied.
And I was too dumb and too young
to know you didn’t own my soul.
I accepted your tickets in trust of your promise
that of course I could redeem them
Someday.
America, you lied
and you still lie,
Only bigger, more arrogant.
America
I have redeemed all my tickets you held
in your Pawnshop of my soul.
Your glass cases stand open and barren.
Your locks are broken.
Your shelves are empty.
Your counters are bare.
Your wage-slaves are quitting.
The weeds are shattering your blacktop.
Even the Crows avoid your bones.
© Salskov Iversen 2012
Yes, I agree that humans are actually a staggeringly beautiful and thrilling animal when you can see them with fresh eyes.
Every so often I go on what I call a news and social media diet and stay strictly offline for a few weeks or even a month (yes, even off your newsletter too).
This also cuts off a large part of the tsunami of advertising and corporate/ wealthy-worship that infects our society. I read books, listen to music, and go for walks instead of watching tv and surfing the web and when I get back online, I find that I've missed nothing. After my last blackout I learned that the big news "story" in the US, inexplicably, was some wealthy guys who took a sub down to the bottom of the ocean to see the Titanic.
After a week or two of a blackout, I've often found that my mood lifts and I'm less angry and despairing.
Come to think of it, I'm probably about due for another diet! :)
We and everything else are nature, and we need to develop fulfilling relationships with all of it.
I consider money a tool, so use it as ethically and frugally as possible. And it's fun! Thrifting is like a continual treasure hunt, especially when there's nothing I desperately need, so I settle only for the treasures. My bills are paid on the day they're due, so I give them as little energy as possible.
Yesterday I tabled at a community event for our regional climate hub. It was so nice to see what other groups are doing, meet people in the community and catch up with movement friends. Today I'll be singing in our community choir.
Little things, but they make life wonderful. Luckily there is still caring and community that wants better than the dehumanizing corporate world.
" In the 1930’s when Western corporate investors funded Hitler’s war machine, it was a bonanza of profiteering for them. Hitler’s Third Reich was a dress rehearsal for what we are living now as corporations dominate Western governments leading them and us into world war— their world war for corporate profiteering and further savagery directed at Earth’s ecosystems and their sustainability."--- from blog draft in progress. That they did so is testimony to how sociopath corporations are and the existential threat they represent.
We are also suffering a pandemic of Stockholm Syndrome where we have become passive accomplices to our hostage takers, whether it is one person, like Patty Hearst, or civilizational.
I have to disagree this time out, Caitlin. Civilization is NOT "nature." Human civilization has been inflicted upon nature. If it disappeared tomorrow, I don't think the rest of nature would miss it. In fact, I think the plants and animals would breathe a sigh of relief.
So much better to be a cat.
Fulfillment is easier to find if one is wealthy.
I personally have no interest in acclimating to the norms of a civilization which appears to be headed in the direction of attempting to turn this living Earth we live on into some kind of dead Ecumenopolis ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecumenopolis ).
"a busy office full of chattering humans is not experientially much different from a busy forest full of chattering birds and insects — it’s just two different expressions of nature." This is true in the same sense that 'a busy organ full of chattering cancer cells is not experientially much different from a busy organ full of chattering neurons and red blood cells — it’s just two different expressions of nature.'. A busy office full of chattering humans in a modern day city, is a structure that represents a chain of events that constitute the violent rape, pillaging and then suffocation of the land it is built on. The city it is a part of represents a larger fractal expression of that same chain of raping, pillaging and suffocating of the land.
The continuing choices made by the humans within it which are as you say "pour(ing) more of (their) energy into generating corporate profits throughout our lives than the most pious monk pours into worshipping any deity." are what enables the continuing pillaging, raping and suffocation of the living earth, the transformation of that which is living and diverse, into that which is dead, uniform and able to generate fiat currency.
Rather than acclimatizing to the normalized raping, pillaging and suffocating of the living Earth by redefining that behavior (and the structures and ways of living it enables to continue) I choose to sever my dependence on those centralized systems, one step at a time. I intend on undermining the foundations of the corporation and bankster dominated governments by withdrawing my support from their centralized systems (and helping others do the same) until they collapse under their own top heavy weight. I aim to starve the beast and plant the seeds for something more aligned with integrity, equality, compassion and abundance to grow in its place.
I will work to help others who are interested in doing the same through focusing on initiatives like this:
https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/23-reasons-to-start-a-garden-in-2023
More on that mission and one pathway of how to begin to accomplish it here: https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/in-pursuit-of-an-antidote-for-parasites
The Road by Cormac McCarthy is a great book, but one totally overlooked is Kingdom Come by JG Ballard. This is what is happening to us, Capitalism is destroying our souls. Great article.
I think the hardest part of breaking free from the narrative, for most people, is admitting they have a problem, sort of like treating any other addiction. It's that first step that is the most difficult for them, IMO.
Thank you Caitlin🙏
Here's 1½ minutes of quality viewing to help. You'll soon be alright. https://youtu.be/Bf5TgVRGND4
Americans have been told as adults never to knock the system. The MSM daily feeds them about freedom and democracy even as those precious rights are pulled from under their noses. The modern surveillance state (in cahoots with the corporate world) does not need jackboots on the pavement. It puts the squeeze surreptitiously until one day you wake up in a full-blown Fascist state.
Great article Caitlin, it resonates. This financialization and corporatization of America is why my family, and many others, are seeking to opt-out and unplug into an off-grid lifestyle. We are trying to rebuild local community. Create affordable homes (barndominiums / tiny homes / yurts), use much less, raise regenerative livestock, grow permaculture gardens, use some solar, biomass, permaculture methods... Opting out is the most powerful vote away from a corporate world, and then helping somebody else opt out and join you. I just wrote about our view on this issue about the fading American dream: https://articles.acornlandlabs.com/p/farewell-american-dream
One must step outside of the established order of things. Back out of the "system".
That old idea of "conquering" nature -- as if it's our nemesis.
We are quickly discovering that it's much more interconnected with us than we think.