Transition United States

[three_sixty]

Great resource here for grassroots networking in local communities dealing with local economic self-sufficiency, food production and environmentally sound practices.

http://transitionus.ning.com/notes/Help_--_Who_We_Are

[Rootsie]

I have been thinking about how what we have is a spontaneous global movement all towards the same life-affirming values, and what's more that it is center-less and leader-less which makes it way more difficult to f*** with.

[three_sixty]

i think that a lot of the issues surrounding the economy, imperialism and the environment have similar solutions and i think that this is an area where a lot of people can come together and come to the same conclusions. we are realizing this global system does not work and there are some common denominators as to why and in the what we should do about it.

[discipleofmaat]

Again Rootsie, I ask you to please tell me how these current 'changist'/transitional affairs are ANY different from the "Fallacies of the hippie movement" that you spoke about in your article.

http://www.rootsie.com/articles/070820032.html

[Rootsie]

What I am talking about here is how, almost 50 years after the advent of spontaneous global communication, there are people on the ground all over the planet doing their little thing for the good of their communities, and this is the ultimate revolution because it comes from the bottom up, is informed and grows by the understanding that similar struggles are taking place all over.

If some former or present hippie is aiding in this, behind the scenes, that's a good thing. if 'hippies' with bank are awakening to their responsibilities it's all to the good. To me the fallacy of 'hippieism' lies in the arrogance and thinking that the right philosophy and the proper physical trappings are enough--kind of like some Rastas.

I wonder what gets you so riled up that you don't really seem to respond to what I'm actually saying in all this. I wouldn't expect you to re-read what I said in all those posts, but it's pretty annoying. I wonder yet again and to this you have never responded--what is your vision of how this is all going to shake down, and what should good people be doing right now? Obssessive posting on message boards? Sarcasm? Cynicism? What?

I stand by what I wrote back then, but what are arrogant privileged ones to do? Just nothing and think it's something? That has been their mistake all along!!!

[discipleofmaat]

What I am talking about here is how, almost 50 years after the advent of spontaneous global communication, there are people on the ground all over the planet doing their little thing for the good of their communities,

I cannot argue about the decency of events and actions.  But what has changed?  When has there NOT been people doing little things for the good of their local communities?

and this is the ultimate revolution because it comes from the bottom up, is informed and grows by the understanding that similar struggles are taking place all over.

WHAT REVOLUTION, Rootsie???  All I ask for is an elaboration/explanation of this revolution. 

TRANSITION UNITED STATES?!?!  From what to what?  I'll tell you what.  From a white/male face of white/male supremacy to a push for global control with a smiling friendly colored face.  Yeah, transition from forceful violent rape to date rape with some roses laying on the pillow the next morning.

To me the fallacy of 'hippieism' lies in the arrogance and thinking that the right philosophy and the proper physical trappings are enough

You don't see similarities to today's "neo-hippieism"?

You know, actually I am out of line here.   I'll admit that because here I am actually judging not you, but your words.  I am judging your previous words of 2003 (when it seemed there must have been something in the water - there was a plethora/outpouring of self-truths and realizations and acknowledgments).  What I saw was boldness and honesty of looking in the mirror.  A boldness and honesty that helped me develop and also look in the mirror.

But now it seems you have jumped ship.  It seems you have taken the EASY path of smiles and comfort instead of continuing to address PRIVILEGE and the ills of WHITE/MALE SUPREMACY.  It is almost like ones have conceded to white/male supremacy and have instead chosen to "paint happy portraits" while locked in a prison.

Is it denial?
Is it concession?
Is it sick and tired of being sick and tired?
Is it giving up and giving in?
Is it Obamic absolution?

Let me use this analogy and tell me if I am on point.

I liken today's attitudes to Schindler from 'Shindler's List'.  Although he could not stop the actions of genocide, he saved as many people as he could.  Is that where we are going now?  Instead of identifying and challenging and addressing what makes us complicit with the controllers, we are instead just trying to maintain or reacquire sanity?  Are we 'Schindlering" our sanity?

Wel isn't that what LSD did?  Didn't LSD and weed soften the pain of what the generation that was born from the elation of WWII, the baby-boomers, REALIZED that the country really stood for and would never stop until the world was ruled?

Has that global power pursuit ended?

Is it possible that you simply got tired of "beating yourself up" and this "changist" transition has given you dressings and anesthesia for your self-inflicted wounds?

Is it possible that you have settled for the fact that the recent events have been something that most whites and most blacks can smile about, together...a political/racial kumbaya?

Because I do not see one indication of challenges to privileges nor white/male supremacy nor imperialism just because of a face-change.

Hippies stood for more TRUTHFULNESS than this propaganda "all aboardism" that they have thrown in our faces.   Dead children in Palestine and Afghanistan prove to me a lack of change, unless those bombs had skittles and hershey kisses in them.  The call to be a STRONGER POWER THAN EVER by the great president lets me in on the agenda.

But see, I read too many "conspiracy theories".  I am misguided.  My imagination is getting carried away.  I am overcome by hostility, see.

Things are worse now more than ever because there is a smile instead of a gun behind the implementations.  As a teacher, do you not sight that children are more 'messed up' today with leniency and their toys and electronics and a multitude of choices and "time outs"?  That is because a false-smile and coddling climate allows the almighty ego to dictate instead of consequences.  The ego makes ANYTHING real.

Is there an ego revolution?

and what should good people be doing right now? Obsessive posting on message boards? Sarcasm? Cynicism? What?

Personally, and this is just my ridiculous notion but I believe that ones should first ACKNOWLEDGE and AFFIRM TRUTH.  And if you are telling me the truth that not only is privilege-mindset subsiding but perpetual benefits towards the privileged, I am all eyes and ears.

Then I would buy into your revolution.

Until then, I see it as the hippy movement all over again...I see it as the conversion of Europe to christianity all over again.

Born-again-Americanism...again.

(BTW, Rootsie just go ahead and ban me.  I do not belong here mucking up the flower garden.  Just let me spew my negative vibes and hostility and pessimism over at the Speaks)

[Rootsie]

Wowsers.

Your post makes me want to know what is really bugging you.

I am not aware that I am turning away from anything I've ever said or believed. I am certainly no less committed to addressing racism and privilege, and in fact I don't even get where you're coming from on that. 

I was talking with my daughter and said that the Obamas are roughly my contemporaries, a little younger, and how much higher the stakes are for blacks, how much more life and death, and whereas I could choose to 'drop out' and consciously NOT go to Harvard Law School or wherever, I can't second-guess their decision to do so. And get into the arena, and engage in debate people whose ideas they despise in order to move some things forward. I don't believe everybody has been co-opted, I just don't.

One thing I'll never regret is the LSD though. Ha. But really. Precious insights.

I keep in mind always what Ayinde has said about the proper role of whites, and about how its the worst sufferers from whom the impetus for lasting change must come. What is different and yes revolutionary about the possibilities which exist now is our ability to see ourselves as a whole planet in a vast web of connection. The bastards can talk about 'global connections' while right under their noses there are any number of little projects going on which provide models for how business can get done and people can live decently without trashing the planet. And it's not about 'aid' or any of that but about solidarity and collective effort, and invisible heroism.

Again and for the umpteenth time I ask you to answer my question--what is your vision for the future? What are we supposed to do in the meantime? Everything you say may prove to be true, but the question remains--what do you, Disciple of Ma'at, do with yourself here and now?  What is a disciple of Ma'at to be working for in this time? And if this question bothers you, why?

Why would I ban you?

I understand your anger. I understand your grief. I feel it every day. Lots of good people get the picture. I get the picture. I don't think Obama is just a figurehead. I don't think the fix is in. I think what we do about what we see matters. I don't think Obama himself matters all that much, as I said. I think something much bigger is afoot, and that Obama's appearance on the scene is catalyzing it. Just the feminine intuition...you say you honor the feminine principle...

Horror and joy. Joy and horror. I heard Alice Walker on inauguration day say that's what life is about. Wise elder. She should know.

As for Schindlerizing, it's possible to have the whole picture and do your thing at the same time. What is important is not to become paralyzed by despair.  I'll write more later.

[discipleofmaat]

Your post makes me want to know what is really bugging you.

ever heard of oppression?  ever heard of egotistical illusions?  That will give you a hint.

What is different and yes revolutionary about the possibilities which exist now is our ability to see ourselves as a whole planet in a vast web of connection.

What is this "NOW" you mention?  You act like the Temple was rebuilt.

Again and for the umpteenth time I ask you to answer my question--what is your vision for the future? What are we supposed to do in the meantime?

And I will answer to the umpteeth time.  The future is 1/3 of reality/truth.  The other two components are Past and Present.  We cannot do anything about the past except to TRUTHFULLY acknowledge it.  So before I move to third base I seek to securely grasp first (past) and second (present).  There are still lies that must be corrected in the past.  There is still the TRUTH about the foundation of this country that your consider 'great' and founded by 'great' men.  There is still the TRUTH about why this person...this drop of acid was placed in your midsts.

Just as much of the shenanigans of the hippy-era turned out to be an experiment by the powers, so is the entire 'democratic' structure.  The purpose of democracy was an offshoot of christianity and led by the same Constantinian/Greco-Roman dogma: "the means by which to conquer and rule".  And it has worked.  Christianity gave Europeans/whites egotistical and hierarchical class-status over the 'savage infidels'.  And then America (E pluribus unum - from many Europeans nations to ONE) gave Americans/whites egotistical and hierarchical over japs and krauts and dinks and slopes and gooks and chinks and spics and NOW rag-heads...again lowly infidels.

And for the new age, Obama shoots up the hallucinogen of rainbow-esque inclusion which just tickles white folks' fancies.  It is the stress relief they have been dying for...wanting to "just get along" so badly instead of IDENTIFYING, ADDRESSING AND REVERSING the implementations, just like the hippies.

Didn't you guys hold hands and sing songs and pass joints with black brothers and sisters yet NOT address the perpetual systematic applications?

Same thing today.  Obama is The Beatles.  Obama is Joplin.  Obama is Hendrix. 

And all of a sudden, there is a "NOW" attitude.  As if something is any different than under Bush or any other time for that matter.

I don't think Obama is just a figurehead. I don't think the fix is in. I think what we do about what we see matters. I don't think Obama himself matters all that much, as I said. I think something much bigger is afoot, and that Obama's appearance on the scene is catalyzing it. Just the feminine intuition...you say you honor the feminine principle...

Aww don't patronize me with the "now you said you respect/honor the feminine and disciple, I am female" card.  If you really sight what I say you will notice that femininity and female are different.  Just being a wombman does not qualify anyone for representing the feminine overstandings.  Just like being male does not DISqualify anyone neither.

If you do not think Obama is a figurehead then you do not understand the country you so love.  Bush was a figurehead.  They are/were ALL figureheads.  See, you believe in the tooth-fairy.  And it is not hard to understand why.  You are loyal to both Christianity and Western society, both which affirm your identity as a white European.  That is why I am so surprised by your about-face.  You WERE on point when it came to peeling back the layers of false-truths especially as it pertained to what we cling onto in the area of "identity".  But the good ship Obama has thrown you a life raft from the self-misery of being white.  Now you can feel good about being white again.  No more guilt.   Doesn't make you FEEEEEEEEEEL GOOD to sit with blacks and chit-chat and smile (trip) about Obamic shrooms?  Is that not true?

And do you call that a "solution"?

Its the daisy age, part II.

And the same powers that chopped the heads off of 'my' guys: Malcolm and MLK are the same powers that chopped off the head of 'your' guys:  JFK, RFK, Joplin, Hendrix, Morrison, 4 'sacrifices' at Kent State, atrocities of the Manson Family.

BOOM!!! end of the 'revolution'.
BOOM!!! continuation of the same global imperialistic agenda

I understand your anger. I understand your grief.

And unfortunately that is the problem.  You understand anger and grief but you do not understand MINE.  Just as I do not understand yours.  That is an Obamic/MLK mindtrick to think that there is empathetic bonding when the foundation of our separation remains in place.   And this separation did not JUST begin in 1555 or with slavery.  It began with the semitic/monotheistic conversions of Europe.  It began with the spiritual hysterectomy and demonization of femininity.  Before then, we looked to the SAME stars and SAME sun and acknowledged and affirmed the SAME energies and forces, especially as related to the power of OUR own mothers, thus "The Great Mother".

And we are both under the thumb of male supremacists, particularly white/male supremacists beginning with and following the implementations of the Greeks.  Democracy (as practiced in the West) is an implementation of linear-thinking Greek men.

The ONLY true Unity is TRUTH.  You ask what I am "doing", I am ACKNOWLEDGING and AFFIRMING truth, FIRST.  And I cannot even get past acknowledging because ones are too caught up into their egotistical comforts and illusions.  Ones actually think that an Obamic election means something other than people giving in to illusions instead of WORKING to build reality.  Punching a chad and placing a bumper sticker on a car is THE EASY WAY OUT.

I heard Alice Walker on inauguration day say that's what life is about. Wise elder. She should know.

So its the good ol'  "Martin Luther King once said..."  "Frederick Douglas once said..."  "Paul Lawrence Dunbar once wrote..."  "Selassie I once said..."

You know what Rootsie, perhaps I could accept your stance better if your response started with:

White/male supremacy is subsiding/diminishing/reversing because...(fill in the rest)
The evil imperialism is is subsiding/diminishing/reversing because...(fill in the rest)
The masses are displaying their power and a revolution is in effect because...(fill in the rest)

Again I state.  The best way to curtail a REAL revolution is to give the illusion of one.  Why do you think a governmental mind-control pacification drug known as LSD was all of a sudden 'released' to you guys?  Your revolution was curtailed.

And black peoples' pacification drug of choice was called "desegregation".

Both mixed by the same pharmacists.

You mix King, Kennedy, Mao, Marx, Joplin and Hendrix and you got Obama today.
You mix acetone, ephedrine, drain cleaner and other chemicals  and you got methamphetamine today.

The NEW weed and LSD.
The NEW flower children.

Same thing, each "better" yet WORSE.

No LSD and no desegregation would have REALLY caused a revolution.  But instead, we still have US bombs destined for some non-white childrens' skulls somewhere in the world.

From Kennedy to Obama...
From Vietnam/Cambodia to Iraq/Afghanistan...
From the massa's house to the White House...

Yup, I see the CHANGE.

[three_sixty]

i have been thinking about this.  i think that discipleofmaat's concerns are very pertinent. if we do not address issues of privilege and status then we could very well re-create what we don't like all over again, but in a new form. looking through the transitions site and the links some post(not all, but some) i think a lot of us are still caught up in an outgrowth of america's empire status - being this world community kind of mentality - global one-ness. i find that many are just waiting to burst into this global civilization thing without recognizing where exactly this stems from - how our very perceptions of the world - with us on top has led to this kind of conclusion. all of a sudden it is the whole WORLD that must change because we see that we need to change. it's like there is no stopping to recognize that WE need to re-evaluate ourselves and our perceptions - that the world has been under the grip of our illusions for so long - that maybe we should actually trying to lessen our impact on the world, away from empire and paternalism, no matter how well intended. nope - just one big jump! as if most people in the world are just dying to become part of this new global consciousness - we are projecting. i think a lot of people of the world just want to be left alone and have more self-determination without our meddling - they want to provide for their families and communities, etc. simple. not some global gaia experiment led by an intelligensia overwhelmingly white and socially mobile. privilege is not addressed here and it is just waiting to be co-opted. so not to shit on this - the question is, how can we get this well intended movement to engage these issues more?

now i am positive that as we start to re-evaluate our relative comfort in light of economic events - and we see that in many ways the globalized economic model - which depends deeply on exploitation of others to work - we can and are coming to some good realizations. i just wonder though - how deeply will we go? I mean there are nature-centric communities in Israel called kibutzes which deal with communal living and are within themselves, supposed to represent a different way of functioning. BUT - they function with the full protection of one of the most violent regimes in the world. i think for this reason, the obama phenomenon could be dangerous - while there is a co-option of this "coming together" through "service" - we are staying on the trajectory of empire with the corporations/military-industrial-complex/banking calling the shots. a federal government greatly enlarged over the past 8 years through reasons of the "War on terror" and centralized by empire and intertwined with the corporate state. this, by definition is fascism.

now - i am positive that as we in local communities dis-invest from these structures to maintain our savings/wealth and into more local endeavours which actually benefit us - we are reducing our investment in imperialism. i think there is positive movement in this regard - but just how far will we go?

[three_sixty]

We are starting to ask the right questions.

http://www.davidkorten.org/content/simple-test

[Rootsie]

"There is a tragedy in this situation, for all of its absurd comedy. In the hippies, after all, we have a group within the West that has made a correct analysis of its moral and spiritual corruption, and is trying to live an alternative. But how to live an alternative while benefiting all the time from the privilege the system confers? Certainly, the answer cannot possibly be to withdraw from the complexities of the situation by setting up an illusory Maginot line between 'us' and 'them'.

Every white American and European is 'them', like it or not. And there must be one item and one only on the agenda: to dedicate excess funds and excess leisure and use the voice privilege gives us to bring down global white supremacy. This can take as many forms as there are humans to envision it, but if this is not the one motivation in the hearts and minds of every privileged white, hippie or not, any happiness they think to find in life on Earth will always be elusive. There is not a meditation technique powerful enough or a quartz crystal big enough to give enlightenment to a spiritually and morally degraded people.

There is one thing that characterizes white privilege perhaps above all else, and that is the attempt to mitigate the pain of one's complicity in it. Whether through mainstream diversions like material consumption, the media, sports, entertainments, and alcohol, or alternative forms of 'feelgoodism' like hippie fests, 'free love', sweat lodges, and clouds of ganja smoke, the attempt is the same. What makes the hippie movement so irritating is that they believe they are truly living an 'alternative lifestyle', that they 'walk lightly on the earth.'

The white West is the one-ton gorilla sitting square on history. Some whites clearly feel it is enough to voice their opposition through an alternative lifestyle and all of its trappings. What they fail to see is that a much more serious and focused response is required, one that involves personal sacrifices, another idea met with discomfort by the privileged. If hippies think that by playing poor and powerless they can deflect responsibility from themselves, I have only one question: what's that you smokin'? And if smoking it is what keeps them from confronting the challenge to create a truly peaceful and just world, I suggest they stop. "

So I don't usually quote myself, but I went back and read the hippie essay from 1993, and I don't see anything different between what I said then and now. You sling a lot of accusations but make few true responses to anybody, which is too bad.

The only one here who refers to Obama in terms of hero worship here is you.

Just for the record, in my previous post when I referred to 'now' I was actually thinking of this era of instantaneous global communication which began I think in 1962 when I was five years old.

I hope you're about half my age, 26 or so, like my youngest son. Why can't you disagree with me in a respectful way and settle down and really debate this instead of all the outburst?

Hahaha believe me there's nothing 'soft' about LSD. Like with so much, you conflate a lot of information and draw dubious conclusions. The history of psychedelics is ancient and whatever the CIA thought they might use it for, they gave up on the idea fast, though Tim Leary might have been CIA.

As I made clear in the essay you keep using to be disrespectful to me, I think some good things happened in the 60's and some ideas starting gaining traction that stand a chance of bearing fruit now.

But like I said WAY back there in my very first post, the mistake of many lies in their apocalyptic desires/expectations which cripple them in the here and now of the work each person can do, pretty much the same mistake the hippies made. How do we defeat imperialism and white supremacy?