Who can live with a light heart while participating in a global slaughter that makes the Nazi holocaust look like a limbering-up exercise?
– Daniel Quinn in Providence
The more time I spend at my job, the easier it gets to ignore my pain. I can shut it off and let my body function. I can remove all external thought and simply become part of the machine, pushing a button over and over and over again, lulling my heart back to sleep with rhythmic clockwork.
I have heard that the key to mediation involves a repetitive motion or word or phrase. I wonder if they mean something like this catchy little jingle from my early teens; “Hi this is Peter with Moore Information, a public opinion research company. Could you spend a few moments on the phone with me to discuss some issues in you state?” Mediation helps you transcend your body, senses and emotions (meaning it removes your humanity) so that you won’t rise up to crush the system crushing you.
After days, weeks, months of this, I can simply forget about Urban Scout, collapse and rewilding. I can bump my schedule up to 5 days a week. I can find “comfort” and “relaxation” in television shows like Dancing With the Stars, Battlestar Galactica, and cheap DVD’s (4 for $20) at the local video store. I could even have a couple beers or smoke a bowl. Than I could go to bed and get up the next morning and do it all over again. Let myself slide a little more. Focus on pushing the button, pulling the lever. Yes sir. No sir. Click, clack, click. If all I have to do involves pushing this little button, and I learn to focus on the button, a sort 0f meditation if you will, than I can ignore my own pain. I can bury it.
I can wake up every morning and read the paper and believe that technology, the government, the scientists or God will save us. I can bury the feeling deep down that any of this Urban Scout stuff ever happened. I could chalk it up to my more “radical” days as I sip on a can of cheap beer around the summer barbecue with the guys, “Ha ha, remember the ideological 20’s?” On weekends I could work around the house, go fishing, go on a hike. Take my girl to dinner, the movies and a bar. I could work on that novel, write some more music, play a few hours of the latest Grand Theft Auto and plan what colors to paint the nursery. I could sell all those philosophical and anthropological books and field guides and buy pop music CD’s to fill their place. I could forget their contents and fill the void with music loud enough to drown out any reminder of life before. I could read my voters guide thoroughly and happily send in my ballot and believe in this culture again. I could make believe that things will work out. It wouldn’t particularly feel that difficult, I’ve done this for most of my life. We all have.
I could pretend again, that civilization and humanity mean the same thing. I could turn away from the horrors, slaves and environmental destruction and focus on the great works of art and culture, the scientific discoveries and space exploration that civilized people seem so proud of. I could forget that for all the beauty civilization creates, it comes as the cost of destroying the world. I could forget about the thousands of indigenous human cultures that created beauty, music, art, culture and lived sustainably. If “ignorance is bliss” than denial means feigning ignorance in order to feel blissful again.
I could continue doing this for the rest of eternity… Except, the way of life that affords this kind of denial has already begun to slide. Soon I won’t have the choice to deny what our culture has done to this planet. No one will.
Instead of remaining in denial, I could continue to recognize that the way I live threatens every living thing on the planet, and the longer it lasts, the worse off of a time we will all have in the coming years. I could acknowledge that civilization will not stop killing the planet. Call it what you want to call it: extraction of resources, progress, economic growth, manifest destiny, we all know the end product looks like the desert wastelands of the no-longer-fertile-crescent. I could allow myself to feel the pain, rather than swallow it into cancers and random acts of violence and alcoholism and whatever else unmetabolized grief turns into.
You want the truth? I prefer depression over denial. At least depression acknowledges the horrors. I would rather contemplate suicide than blow away the truth in a hazy cloud of reefer smoke and video games. I don’t see denial as the way out of depression. I don’t see suicide as the way out of depression (though it seems easy when depressed). I live with depression from time to time, and I move through it with honesty, clarity and solidarity with those who understand what civilization has done to us, and feel it too. I welcome the grief with open arms.
People say to focus on the more beautiful things in the world in order to feel better. But when I see a beautiful world, I also see our civilization destroying it. I have a lovely girlfriend, and a loyal supportive family and group of friends and I also see civilization enslaving them. I have so many things to live for and feel great about, and I feel great about those things, and yet I also see the larger oppressive forces at work. None of these beautiful amazing things will rescue me and the rest of the world from the clutches of civilization. When people in denial say “focus on the beautiful things” they really mean “ignore the destruction.” So while I have a lot to feel thankful for, and I do, I more often think about stopping the destruction and escaping slavery.
Of course, this helps me remember that I live as a slave, and that reminds me that I don’t enjoy living as a slave, and that makes me not really enjoy life all that much in a general sense. I focus on the pain because you can only stop it by looking at it and figuring out what causes it. You don’t fix your car engine by disconnecting the check engine light. Pain exists in order to motivate us to change our behavior, because the behavior threatens our survival. We need to look deeper. We need to see the beauty and recognize the destruction, simultaneously. Sometimes we need to escape and only look at the beauty and sometimes we need to feel the full force the horrors of civilization.
I feel like a pendulum, swinging back and forth from the horrors to the beauty to the horrors to the beauty. I have moments of despair and moments of escapism and I try to balance those out so that I can remove civilization from this planet. Eventually the pendulum stops swinging. Perhaps not a pendulum, but a balance beam; an edge. Sometimes I slip and fall one way or the other.
I actually do watch Dancing With the Stars occasionally and Battlestar Galactica religiously. I play video games from time to time, go to the movies take my girl out to dinner, listen to punk rock at maximum volume and tear around my motorhome. I have my vices and use them to relax from time to time, to escape when the pain feels beyond manageable. I also struggle with indulging the vices too much (see my chapter “Addiction Vs. Rewilding”). Everyone has limits, everyone has a different level of support. I don’t judge those who remain in denial, or who lose themselves to their addiction to Civilization. I lose myself sometimes, so how can I judge those who don’t have the support to rewild? I use the support that I have to help support others. If this all works out, it will work because we have created a culture that supports rewilding. I grieve for those who remain in denial, who do not have the support to break the addiction, and I do my best to create a more supportive culture for people to break free. I also recognize that some people will die defending civilization. While I don’t judge them, I still have no problem with stopping them from destroying the planet.
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12 responses to “Denial Vs. Rewilding”
Scout, this is why i love your blog. i’ve already emailed this post to everyone i know. great stuff. it’s stuff like this that makes the internet a valuable tool and a real source for supportive community. thanks for putting yourself out there and giving folks like myself a little more affirmation that what we’re thinking, feeling, and doing isn’t crazy (well i guess it is from civilization’s perspective, but that’s a good thing, right?).
Once again, you hit the nail on the head, Scout.
Amen to this.
It gets real maddening and lonely when you see the bars on your cage, but you still feel unable to escape. When you want to live radically, at least someday, and you see other people who end up just conforming to consumerism; even people who share your viewpoints.
Maddening and lonely.
Hey Gabe and Peter, thanks so much!
great writing. best part for me tho, was when u said u watch BSG religiously. i was beginning to feel guilty for loving it so much. “When people in denial say “focus on the beautiful things†they really mean “ignore the destruction.†…great fraking stuff man!
Thank you for this, Scout.
“…We need to look deeper…. Sometimes we need to escape and only look at the beauty and sometimes we need to feel the full force the horrors of civilization.
I feel like a pendulum, swinging back and forth from the horrors to the beauty to the horrors to the beauty…. and I try to balance those out so that I can remove civilization from this planet…”
Here are two links which look at the beauty and the horrors at once, that I think you might like
http://hostfile.org/6dif.swf
That’s an online video game made by this guy:
http://ivoryboy.com/
Thanks for your courage and clarity!
Hey,
This post reminds me a lot of a book called Lullaby by Chuck Palaniuk (remember that dude who wrote Fight Club?) Lullaby is all about how civilization has this terrible numbing/lulling aspect to it; it literally puts us to sleep.
I have friends who sometimes urge me to get medicated because I get so depressed by the state of our civilization and what it is doing to the world…but lately I too have realized that lately that if I’m not depressed looking at that kind of horror, then there is something terribly wrong with me. I’m glad that my depression reaffirms my sanity in many ways..I worry about people who know the evils going on so that they can stay comfortable who just shrug and say “that’s life…”
Keep up the good work Scout….you help me feel proud of my rewilding efforts….
Carrot
True meditation is not dissociative. True meditation is revolutionary. True meditation is about noticing what’s there, ugly or beautiful, and that mental stance itself begins to develop an experience of self that there’s something beyond the ups and downs of mundane life, a sense that there’s a hidden mystery that underlies and infuses this exoteric life that otherwise seems dull, destructive, and dead.
I think a lot of people interpret that as passive escape, but really it should inform and provide inspiration for the spirit of revolution.
Doesn’t mean it’s easy at all though. Man, I totally struggle with the same things, I feel trapped in a dark corner somewhere and sometimes it feels so soul-denying just to go through an ordinary busy day.
I wrote a bit, sort of on the same topic but in a really different angle, maybe you can relate to some of it.
http://www.edgeofgrace.net/2008/05/25/a-magical-approach/
Great post.
I don’t get depressed waiting for it to end. I feel that it all will wind down, actually sooner than expected. We are looking not a peak oil but instead peak civilization. We are also looking at peak stupidity. Civilization is writhing like an injured bug seeking an end to its collective pain. One end is just a new beginning, as something new arises.
Watch, hope or pray as you will. The End is closer than you think.
I love your writings man. I was feeling really depressed when I started thinking about that I have to get a job to pay the rent for the next month.
Then I visited a friend who lives in a tipi in a national park in the suburbs of Stockholm. So this month I’m going to find a place to built my tipi and become one of the squatters there. I can’t get myself to whore for the machine again (at least right now). I just fucking can’t! I rather live in a tent and dumpster food and play in the street with my guitar for some money. It’s not going to save the world but I will have some energy left (and desire to live) to do something about this insanity…
“Never before has a civilization reached such a degree of a contempt for life; never before has a generation, drowned in mortification, felt such a rage to live.” – Raoul Vaneigem
We have met the enemy, and he is Solitare/Minesweeper. @.x
My advisor always says to me “why are people not in the streets in a full revolt if you think the world is so bad?”
Because it’s not bad enough…yet.
What I understand…
1. Life means suffering. To know about the world, to see what happens, to understand humanity’s imperfections and the repercussions of actions….
2. we suffer mentally because we want…we desire…and then we are attached to these desires. Does it not hurt to want people to stop behaving insanely and see that they still do? It would hurt more (for me) to ignore it, probably. I agree with what you’ve written. And, for myself, I cannot deny my own humanity by hating and attacking something I am a part of. All I can do is say “yes, and..”…and create new, better ways. Creation does not imply the at times violent crash of other things – but I don’t think it has to be forced. I like your pendulum metaphor.
I don’t know if you’ve been hanging out with phony meditators or what – these folks who don’t rise up to crush the system. True meditation is by no means an escape. It sharpens the senses/emotional states and gives them freedom to move…it does not dull them. The people I know who meditate for real on a daily basis follow their heart’s path…wherever that takes them. Meditation only makes me more….accepting of what I already am. Human. Heaven and hell in one body. Love it or…?? suffer.
I love your writing and the way you push us Scout, please keep it up.
t
awesome article!
“I grieve for those who remain in denial, who do not have the support to break the addiction, and I do my best to create a more supportive culture for people to break free. I also recognize that some people will die defending civilization. While I don’t judge them, I still have no problem with stopping them from destroying the planet.”
i love this part ^
keep it up.
put that book out!
-kid cutbank