The only way for us to win is not to play.
At the core of the Machine is a whirlwind of human and planetary energy sucked into a global positive feedback loop that’s formed a funnel of destruction and death, mowing down everything in its path. An out-of-control vicious circle is very difficult to stop; there is no point underestimating the daunting nature of this task. Such a system has a huge investment in ignoring warning counter-signals. This, coupled with the addictive nature of power, makes for a very persistent system, which, indeed, has persisted very well for some 6,000 years. The heavy investment of the rulers in power-enhancing technologies also makes a big difference. And yet, and yet… a well-aimed negative feedback will stop a runaway loop cold.
History, so far, shows only two ways such Machines of domination were stopped. The first is a system-wide crash: the Machine ran out of — ruined — “nature services” that provided the resources human labor could gather and amplify, with resulting starvation, flight and desolation. This is the option accompanied by the infamous Horsemen: Famine, Pestilence, War and cannibalism (this shadowy horseman is rarely mentioned but rides along with the others as sure as Death). The second is a slower collapse with a silver lining: the workforce vanishes into the underbrush, merging with tribes and rebels off the radar, scavenging for real value, and leaving the Machine to grind to a halt. In other words, either warning signals are heeded and human energy redirects itself away from the Machine, or nature pulls the plug. I hardly need to emphasize that it would be much to our advantage not to wait for Mother Nature’s solution. Will it work? It’s the only thing that ever has. All it takes is a critical number of people quietly ducking out.
When the Czechs and Slovaks withdrew from public life into private and family affairs after the 1968 Soviet invasion, I was grievously disappointed. I envied the Poles their active and celebrated opposition. Now I see it as the sanest response they could have mounted. They withdrew from the system. They laughed at it in a million clever jokes. They worked as little as possible, they taught their own kids to look under the surface and see the lies, they believed nothing official but found their own sources of news, they created connected networks of craftspeople and others with useful skills to trade and get things done privately. And they put most of their energy into living. The system weakened; how could it not? The power structure, artificially propped up by Moscow, collapsed overnight when the Soviets could no longer ride in with the big stick. My old countrymen and women paddled with the current, while the power elites struggled against it, trying hard to control the situation. To no avail. It is a lot easier to harass a few dissidents than to go after millions of people who are most notable by… doing as little for the system as they can get away with, just minding their everyday lives, and not believing anything you say.
So it works in the modern world, just as it worked long ago for lowland Maya, or the Hohokam, or Norte Chico. It’s our last great hope: passing over the swamp that waters Babylon, we rain our energy onto the watershed that feeds the river of Life.
March 6, 2015 at 11:27 am
Yes, unfortunately for all life, The Machine is too large and has too much momentum.
While we can and do withdraw our support from The Machine, it will continue on its path of destruction. This, of course, cannot long continue. Things that can’t go on forever, don’t.
As we withdraw our support and build parallel human support systems in harmony with natural cycles, we will have to resist the sucking whirlpool of the demise of the temporarily dominant society.
Focus on the local, organize bioregionally, preserve what we can of the knowledge of our Way. Meditate on the Irish Monks who held back the Dark Ages until enlightenment could return.
Fortunately, once The Machine has run out of fossil fuel, there will not be enough energy remaining for its return. A thousand years from now, all will be well, as all life participates in sharing the natural flow of energy on this planet.
March 6, 2015 at 1:48 pm
Definitely the way to go. The more that we pull out of the machine and begin to live sane lives, the less energy The Machine has to continue it’s wreckage. The only question is how to get enough people to pull out.
My current strategic thinking is built along the lines of Joanna Macy’s ‘Three Dimensions of the Great Turning’ [ http://www.joannamacy.net/thegreatturning/three-dimensions-of-the-great-turning.html ] or as I learned when I did community organizing in Detroit:
“Agitate, Educate, Organize”. I won’t disparage those rebelling and resisting, they are buying us the time to organize a completely different way of doing things (as malanlewis puts it above “Focus on the local, organize bioregionally, preserve what we can”), and then, probably the most important part–educate. We need to find ways of letting more people know about alternatives to The Machine–the more people who know they can pull out, the more people who will pull out.
Thank you for writing so clearly about this. You are doing important educational work.
March 6, 2015 at 4:55 pm
You are brilliant, Vera. There is nothing as compelling as an example from actual experience. It’s lovely that your disappointment with your people has become appreciation, and it informs your wonderful work.
Moonraven, yes educate! My partner and I are in an exciting space – winning the imagination of high schoolers through intelligent and resourceful permaculture landscaping. The trick is to bring them in through art, technology and construction, then have them reward themselves with a harvest of watermelon and canteloupe and wild-foraged blackberries. Get them to smash up concrete from council’s roadworks and stack it into retaining and duck-pond “urbanite” walls, go cut bamboo tomato stakes and build wicking boxes from old pallets. Food tech kids harvest ingredients. Care of Animals kids feed weeds and unused leafy greens to chooks, rabbits, goats, sheep and the resident alpaca, Pedro. Manured bedding straw becomes hot compost (wow! that’s microbial metabolism??), and they meet and photograph the zombified cabbage moth caterpillers, dying slowly but protecting their erupted parasitic Brachonid wasps, now pupating, from hyperparasites. And so on.
The challenge is to furnish our classroom and to build a gorgeous garden, chookhouse, arbour etc with out buying stuff, and without polluting. We don’t mention doom. It’s all achievement, and exertion, or problem solving, and picking up basic skills like using an electric drill and propagating plants. After the fact they can ponder that Sustainability is not boring and is not a call to personal privation. It’s an opportunity.
We can do this. We can shift away from the machine – through a thousand approaches, attractive to each generation, and arrive at a place where many, many of us are ready to reject the machine because we have found something better 🙂
March 7, 2015 at 7:35 am
Wow, Angie,
That’s great. Teaching teenagers that creating a sustainable world is an exciting opportunity. Enticing them with fascinating projects.
Yes, a thousand approaches to arrive where they are ready to reject the machine because they can see something better.
Thank you for doing this work. This is the work that needs to be done.
March 7, 2015 at 5:12 pm
Thanks moonraven! It’s a wee little drop in the ocean, but gosh it feels good. It is so damned hard to stay buoyant.
Vera, I expect you’ve come across the work of Canadian economist Nicole Foss? We attended a seminar she and David Holmgren delivered, essentially on pulling the plug. I think you’ll like what she’s saying. David was talking about retrofitting the suburbs for local economies, also good stuff.
March 7, 2015 at 5:29 pm
Good to hear, Ange! Do you have a link on the talk? I recently took a look at the Automatic Earth and it was full of Ilargi’s “debt rattle” count-down. (And thank you… blush.) Good on you too, my goodness, work with young people is where it’s at… good to know you are thriving.
March 14, 2015 at 8:28 am
Your reference to ‘Big Men’ reminds me of a poem I once penned, entitled ‘Step outside‘, and that alludes to a part of the story omitted by your narrative: the part where each clan finds the need to protect itself from marauding neighbours, beginning the descent of homo fatuus brutus into interminable warfare. Though currently ongoing, the tale does not end well.
March 14, 2015 at 10:24 am
Well, Wibbler, that story has been repeated ad nauseam, but generally, boundaries were defended with minor skirmishing and raids, and if one tribe got too big for its britches, the others formed an alliance to cut it down to size. A sensible system.
Here is an interesting post on the value of boundaries.
http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2015/03/04/gardens-need-walls-on-boundaries-ritual-and-beauty/
March 15, 2015 at 2:42 am
Interesting viewpoint. Yes, boundaries have their place (I’m very fond of my own epidermis, for instance), but you seem to be suggesting that this also applies to various subdivisions of humanity… which suggests that you’re in favour of perpetual warfare and disagree with the maxim that ‘The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation’… You surprise me. And this from the one who once berated me for ‘divisory’ left-vs-rightness… most odd!
March 15, 2015 at 10:08 am
If you are fond of your epidermis (and I presume your immune system too) does that mean you are in favor of perpetual warfare, Wibbler? 😉
March 16, 2015 at 8:15 am
[…] 1. The corposystem tells us that we must not talk about overpopulation. Mostly it tells us this by telling us how we MUST talk about issues, in a way that excludes real discussion of solutions and instead mandates “aintitawful” ranting and/or sound bites or euphemisms in our public utterances. I have chosen not to participate in these “acceptable” displacement activities, basically because I believe in not “feeding” the growth of the corposystem (as described much better by the attached https://leavingbabylon.wordpress.com/2015/03/06/pulling-the-plug-part-2/). […]
March 29, 2015 at 5:41 pm
As someone who grew up in Soviet Union, I can say that, ironically, Soviet system was a lot friendlier to small-scale farming than American corporate fascist oppressive greed machine. (that’s the only name I can come up with, sorry–some places are getting as oppressive as communitsts, CA is one example) The truth is that in USSR, pretty much everyone had a small land lot on which they grew food. It was a big-time weekend hobby for many, to work in those gardens. Many had country homes (no, no US building inspector nightmare). No, no one would threw you off your land for an outhouse. The collective farms had shared land and ironically were a lot closer to modern US ecovillages than any US subdivisions, HOAs or just clusters of privately-owned parcels.
College students were sent to work in fields for 1 month every year, getting close to land and learning to work on it or could do house building internships. Though unfortunately, these were not organic but rather pesticide-laden fields. But at least it wasn’t like using non-citizens slave labor in the fields laden with pesticies, poisoning them (I’m talking about “illegal” workes in the US). Much hypocrity here. It was MUCH easier to drop out and live rural life in Soveit Union, if one desired, than in the US, as one could get rural house with land lot for free for lifetime lease, basically (inheritable by their children indefinite lease from government–this was the only form of “land ownership”). I’m familiar with Slovak withdrawal descirbed in your article (from the societal/government affairs) seen inside USSR iteself–tand his is exactly the way US and its system make me feel. I don’t see any hope for this system. Combined with overpopulation and overcrowdeness, it’s a tax robbery, building inspector terror, suffocating regulations, greed ruling everything, Monsanto etc. Dropping out of society completely and living in remote land is the only hope that seems to be. I’d return in Soviet Union, if I could. Look up Agafia Lykova, they lived in a national park for generations after dropping out when communists came to power. They were actually treated very well by Soviet government, when discovred in the 80s, and gotten help. In the US, they’d be arrested and evicted as squatters, probably, and forced into some project in the city. This is the truth.
March 29, 2015 at 6:38 pm
This (U.S.) system worked pretty well when there was land stolen and given away for almost free. When the Pennsylvania gentry of the 18th century impoverished people so much that farms were lost all over the land for failure to pay $3 in taxes (or other small amounts). Taxes had to be paid in gold or silver, and specie was not to be found, for most folks. So they abandoned their farms to those who could pick them up for a pittance and went to Kentucky where fresh land was made available. It’s a sordid story that repeats over and over in different guises.
America had a good dream, but failed on the economic front. You can’t do democracy by politics alone.
Thanks for the mention of Agafia Lykova. Here’s the story.
April 4, 2015 at 12:46 pm
Interesting, I should learn more about that part of Pennsylvannia history…. I guess all governments thoughout history are oppressive in one or another way, and one has to find a niche where they can survive and do what they like, at least for the time being. Some are more lucky, some are less.
Right now, tax on a small rural property with low market value in New England can reach over $2,500 a year. Speaking of unaffordable tax that can drive people out… I agree, the story repeats over and over. By the way, Russia is giving agricultural designation land for free to citizens now, in certain regions (one reason I’m considering returning there after 18 years in the US). Also, a lot of abandoned land/houses in villages that one can get very cheap, as soon as you’re a citizen.
All over the US, everthing seems to be bent on preventing small scale agriculture at any cost. Suffocating ridiculous building codes, high taxes, intrusive authorities, neighbors hating someone for growing vegetables instead of fake worthless “lawns” or for having farm animals, restrictions on acreage to own farm animals, prohibition of tiny houses or just small houses, well digging restrictions, ridiculous food regulations prohibiting sale of home grown food stuffs. (I’m mostly speaking of the West, where I live). They want to turn everything into a giant playground for wealthy retirees and rich yuppies, filled with 2nd and 3rd homes and a class of people living by “serving” these. I have no more illusions about the place, I see totalitarian government and police state…now come the drones, good luck doing what you want on own property, one will be fimed from drowes everywhere soon. The remaining “pockets of freedom” in some places…I doubt this will stay for over a decade, the “codes” and inspectors will be there too, the way things are going.
Agafia Lykova doesn’t want to move to “civilized” parts, but her location is now opened for a small number of short-term visitors she’d accept to share her way of life. Life of Lykovs’ was not idyllic by any means, their mother died from hunger during a famine year (back during Soviet times, before they were discovered).
April 5, 2015 at 8:38 pm
PS: To think of it, things went wrong way before the Pennylvannia situation in 18th centry. Native Americans come to mind. “Democracy”…it’s a dirty word.
April 7, 2015 at 3:47 pm
Democracy did not stand a chance without its economic component. The people put up a fight during the 19th century but lost.
Here is a good post from
Ellen Brown.
April 19, 2015 at 4:58 pm
Got to mention a quote from infamous source:
” We are going to argue that industrial-technological society cannot
be reformed in such a way as to prevent it from progressively
narrowing the sphere of human freedom.”
April 19, 2015 at 5:00 pm
“It is said that we live in a free society because we have a
certain number of constitutionally guaranteed rights. But these are
not as important as they seem. The degree of personal freedom that
exists in a society is determined more by the economic and
technological structure of the society than by its laws or its form of
government. [16] Most of the Indian nations of New England were
monarchies, and many of the cities of the Italian Renaissance were
controlled by dictators. But in reading about these societies one gets
the impression that they allowed far more personal freedom than out
society does.”….. “Constitutional rights are useful up to a point, but they do not
serve to guarantee much more than what could be called the bourgeois
conception of freedom. According to the bourgeois conception, a “free”
man is essentially an element of a social machine and has only a
certain set of prescribed and delimited freedoms; freedoms that are
designed to serve the needs of the social machine more than those of
the individual. Thus the bourgeois’s “free” man has economic freedom
because that promotes growth and progress; he has freedom of the press
because public criticism restrains misbehavior by political leaders;
he has a rights to a fair trial because imprisonment at the whim of
the powerful would be bad for the system.”