My writing sucks, so why should you keep reading?
I know – My writing sucks
Especially my long form blog posts. 95% of the general public could tell you so. The prose is impenetrable, and so abstract that it’s impossible to grasp. Even people who love me dearly can’t stomach it. My dad can’t understand what I’m trying to say because it’s too hard to read. He has frankly asked me, “How much of this is mental self-indulgence?” (He used a more graphic metaphor).
For better or for worse, none of it is. But it does come off that way. And that sucks.
Why should you keep reading?
But that’s just the way it bubbles out of my head. I try to edit these posts, but just getting the ideas down takes time. I have to keep writing to put them down while I have that luxury. It has a shelf life.
I plan to edit all the worthwhile posts into coherent essays and post them on a separate page. Until then I hope some of you will be patient with me and remember that these are just blog posts. And please don’t forget that this is a Preachy Variety Act! (i.e. if you can’t stand the essays, you just might like something else!)
I’ve said elsewhere that I’m not trying to generate maximum traffic/clicks/followers. So why should I care if I’m turning off 95% of readers?
Because I do see myself as a messenger, and I want to communicate effectively to everyone who cares. I am trying to present a very simple message. It’s a universal invitation to consider the idea that virtually anyone who reads this has access to the most ancient, precious, and sacred dream common to all of our kind. And that it only takes a very slight mental shift to realize this.
What Else Contributes to the Problem?
I am fully aware that all this sounds like the ravings of a lunatic. Or worse, a con artist or wannabe cult leader. That’s how I perceive anyone insisting that I have a problem I wasn’t aware of while claiming to provide a solution offering greater personal fulfillment. So I struggle to just spit it out. Instead I try (unsuccessfully) to figure out ways to show, rather than tell, how I came to these conclusions.
But beneath the surface, there’s absolutely nothing disturbing or creepy to my proposal itself. In fact, I’m sure that anyone who reflects on it will see that it’s the mainstream lifestyle that is deeply disturbing and creepy. The problem with my proposal is, well, almost no one is really interested in altering their lifestyle. Society has a way of hijacking our basic human reflexes and weaknesses, and using them to extract the greatest gain for a precious few, at the expense of all the rest of us.
My writing sucks so why should you keep reading?
Alright, Why Should You Keep Reading?
I fear that our remaining opportunity to realize this dream is limited. We have lived through an incredible but brief moment of time, a window that I believe is in the process of closing. Perhaps you have noticed by now that life for everyday humans seems to be getting worse. At our end-of-year celebrations we say, “I’m so glad that 20– is over!” And then the next year is worse. The trend is clear, and I see no reason to expect it to change.
I’m trying to say that I believe water, food, and energy are going to become more scarce and expensive, and that infrastructure will continue to degrade. The more dependent your lifestyle is upon complex external systems to ensure adequate supplies of essentials, the harder you will be squeezed. I don’t enjoy saying this, but I don’t expect any of us to see that situation improve, for any sustained period, during our lifetimes.
The good new is this – We are all unbelievably fortunate and have SO MUCH to be grateful for! It’s still an almost unimaginably wonderful time to be alive. And the more we disconnect from toxic Late Stage Post-Industrial Capitalist “civilization” and its insidious mind control, the more we are able to see it.
The Good News!
Not long ago, we, as a species, passed a momentous threshold. And it happened without the faintest of celebration or fanfare. At some point in the 20th Century it became possible for all of us to attain, to some degree, the Dream of Elysium. We achieved the means for all of us to have fine shelter, clean water, palatable food, and radically improved medical care in adequate quantities, all while enjoying ample free time with the materials to explore a vast range of creative self-expression.
And we no longer needed to kill each other to acquire this!
[In the timeline of our modern human existence, it was only yesterday that a land with abundant quantities of milk and honey provided sufficient incentive to invade and engage in ethnic cleansing to dispossess all former occupants. And this wasn’t just an Old Testament phenomenon, this is the standard pattern of colonization right up to modern times. In fact we founded the great “civilizations” of North America in the exact same fashion].
My writing sucks, so why should you keep reading?
The True Nature of Technology
The bountiful gifts bestowed by our most recent history didn’t end with just adequate shelter, water, and food. So many other wonderful, efficient, life-enhancing and preserving developments became available to us. Technology is NOT just electrons. Technology is every method humans have developed to accomplish a task. Not all good technological advances are high tech solutions. And, I assure you, not all high tech advances present good solutions!
There are ages upon ages of incredible low-tech solutions to timeless human problems. But our consumer economy requires that we dispose of this wisdom as quickly as possible because it is open source and cannot be monetized! I firmly believe that the fifty-thousand year curriculum of anatomically modern humans has furnished all the required technology for us to enjoy rich, fulfilling, healthy, human lives. And we can enjoy it for a fraction of the precious energy (i.e. consumption) that we are wasting to live distracted, unfulfilled lives. And we can do this while minimizing our dependence on exotic sources for our essentials.
My writing sucks, so why should you keep reading?
The Upsides to Downshifting
I think we have begun our descent from “peak civilization.” But there’s still time to create lives that, while simpler and less hyperstimulating, are also far more fulfilling. The key is to negotiate the largest “downshift” in consumptive expectations that we can stomach.
The upsides to such a “downshift” include –
- Reduced dependence upon complex external systems to provide essentials makes us antifragile, while providing increased freedom and control over our lives
- Reduction in the number of products that we own also means reduction in the number of products for which we must also furnish shelter, climate control, space, and energy. [OUR POSSESSIONS ARE OUR DEPENDENTS!]
- Scaling back in these areas results in reduced economic strain, which in turn yields –
- Increased personal energy, free time, and financial power to devote towards the pursuit of our own creative self-expression, as well as more quality time to invest in our friends and loved ones.
I fervently believe that the activities in the last bullet are the ones that matter most for human beings. I want access to those gifts to be far more available to ALL of us. But that last item also presents the greatest obstacle to the wider acceptance and success of this proposal.
- From my own experience, the personal fulfillment derived from an investment in creative self-expression is eroded by the absence of community to share it with.
- It’s hard to spend time with friends and loved ones if they are firmly bound to the yoke of consumption
- It’s no good to increase our free time if we haven’t disengaged from dominant society. We’ll just be sitting around looking for society to provide us with entertainment. In that situation free time just means continued addiction to consumption, with all attendant mind control
