Civilization/Politics Archives - Macska Moksha Press

How Will Communities Handle Troublemakers? [part 3 of a 3-part series]

August 6, 2024 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

“?” courtesy Khaydock, CC BY-SA 3.0. Landscape: the Coast Range in Sonoma County at sunset.

Part 3 of a 3 part series. In part 1 of this series, “Farewell to a Garden,” I shared photos of my veggie growing this year at a farm in Sonoma County that I just left. In part 2, “Why I Hate Market Farming,” I explained my departure. In this final part, I discuss some big picture reflections highlighted by the experience.

An increasing number of people are collapse-aware. They see that the United States is in decline, economically, politically, socially and otherwise. The systems that provide for our needs are at once decreasing in quality and increasing in price. The status quo serves fewer and fewer people even as its ecological footprint metastasizes beyond the finite limits of our planet. Sooner or later, something will give way that reveals our system as the house of cards that it is. Whether this is gradual or quick is unknown, but regardless of the timeline, the collapse aware know that the time to prepare for other ways to live is now. This is why I got into farming in 2005. The disaster that struck New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 showed me that we cannot count on big institutions to take care of us; my anarchist friends who traveled there to help out reported that the localized, community-based efforts were much more effective than FEMA or the Red Cross. Hurricane Katrina was but a small taste of the wider-spread challenges we will face as the big institutions either fail or turn openly authoritarian (perhaps simultaneously) and as climate chaos becomes more intense, so we need to build alternative means of support based on mutual aid now. Metaphorically, the time to plant a vegetable garden is not when the grocery shelves have just been emptied. You want that food in the ground already, and if this season is just a drill, you’ll have some nice meals anyway.

Margaret Killjoy talks about the triangle of prepping: gear, skills and relationships. Gear includes physical resources like tools, blankets, camping supplies, first aid kits, plus food stashes like buckets of rice and beans,or boxes of canned goods (and a can opener!). Skills include knowledge and experience in how to do practical things, including how to use the gear. Relationships are about people to cooperate with when times get hard (and to learn from and have fun with in the meantime!). I’d say that, in the end, having trusted, reliable people around would be better than going it alone with a cache of firearms and ammo, though I know folks who are prioritizing both friends and guns, and I don’t have an argument with them.

The first two, skills and gear, get the most attention, and there’s plenty of resources out there about those topics, so I won’t be addressing them here.

Relationships/Community are my focus today, and specifically the question of “How do we deal with assholes?” (I put “troublemakers” in the headline in case people share this post on social media.)

Why I Hate Market Farming [part 2 of a 3-part series]

August 4, 2024 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Part 2 of a 3 part series [Read part 1 here]

“Zeus” cherry tomatoes

Agriculture as currently practiced in the United States is, by and large, quite harmful to both the environment and to human health. Yes, there are a handful of people who are trying to be respectful of the greater-than-human world and beneficial to their fellow Homo sapiens, but they are the exception, not the rule. Unfortunately, much of what is labeled “organic” is part of the problem, with the industry’s mechanized practices, utilization of plastic, depleting of soils, killing of wildlife, profligate use of water, and labor abuses, among other issues. As I’ve mentioned before, the single greatest threat to biodiversity worldwide is habitat destruction, and its single biggest driver is agriculture. Further, toxins routinely applied in agriculture have deleterious effects on local and far-flung ecologies and on workers and consumers alike. Agricultural labor is some of the most dangerous in the United States (ranking far ahead of policing; maybe we need one of those black and white American flags with a green stripe in it to show solidarity for those suffering far more than the members of the “thin blue line” for their service to the populace).

All this is without even getting into how agriculture changed human cultures for the worse. We broke our ties of reciprocity with our home ecologies, and became dominators, leading us directly to the multiple environmental crises we are facing today. As well, agricultural society spawned patriarchy, slavery, private property, debt and elevated war to new levels of violence.

In sum, it’s a big mess.

So, in terms of environmental and social collapse, if we are to have a livable planet and healthy societies, one of our central efforts must be to radically change agriculture. For some starting points, see my “Six Things We Must Do So That Farming Is No Longer Massive Ecocide,” in which I spell out that agriculture must be de-monetized, de-corporatized, de-mechanized, re-localized, re-seasonalized, and re-naturalized.

People may be surprised to hear me say this, but, in service of these goals, farmers markets and the market farming that support them are not, in my opinion, all that helpful. Yes, they are local and seasonal by definition. However, many if not most are mechanized, few are naturalized, and all of them are dependent on monetization, which leads to corporatization for the larger operations. Farmers markets are all about income generation, which means bowing to market pressures that are driven by customer expectations, or at least the market farmer’s perception thereof. Which can end up resulting in a heavy focus on crops that are resource-intensive to grow or serve only a minor role in providing calories. Think heirloom tomatoes and fancy salad greens.

Agriculture Was a Dick Move

June 18, 2024 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

An irrigated field of Alfalfa in the desert of the Imperial Valley in southern California

Given the state of the US these days, it can be easy for people to be cynical. Our culture is driven by greed and domination, resulting in profound economic inequality and horrific environmental destruction. The lives of most of us citizens are defined by struggle and anxiety when it comes to providing necessities for ourselves. In the natural world, wildlife habitat is shrinking and species are going extinct. Our politics are corrupt, our media is vapid, and social polarization is seemingly widening. An increasingly chaotic climate is stressing our systems and pushing the limits of adaptability for many plants and animals.

Some people assume that it’s “human nature” to be destructive, both to ourselves and others. Some welcome the prospect of human extinction or even wish for it. “Humans suck,” they conclude.

I am not so cynical, which in the eyes of some might make me “naive” or a partaker of “hopium.” These folks can believe what they want and give me any name they’d like. If they are so convinced that we as a species are nothing more than a blight on the planet, then I leave them to it. I know there’s no point in arguing with beliefs.

Yes, “beliefs” is what I would call them: ideas that are held not because they are unequivocally provable—they are not—but because, for whatever reason, they provide comfort, even though they are so despairing. And here I must quote Gandalf, who (in the books) said: “Despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt. We do not.”

Where I Stand in the Discourse on Gender, Sexuality and Identity

April 30, 2024 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

The first time I met an openly trans person was at a party in the early ‘90s in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where I lived at the time. An old friend was hosting the get-together and his social circle drew from unconventional strata of society, including artists, the theater crowd, the SCA, pagans, poly folks, kinksters and gender-benders. The sort of crowd where nearly everyone could recite dialogue from the “Rocky Horror Picture Show.” Being an outsider myself (I had moved to Minneapolis with the explicit goal of finding my place in gay culture there), I was delighted.

The trans person was a trans woman and we conversed for quite awhile. She was interested to talk about herself and her experiences and I was interested to listen and ask questions. I can’t remember many details now (this was over thirty years ago!) but at one point she emphasized how important it was to her to be able to use the women’s room in public places. This was a point of curiosity for me, as I had never given the subject any thought before, but I accepted her concern at face value.

Over the years that followed I met other openly trans women, though no trans men. I’m sure I also met trans people who were not openly expressing themselves, and just didn’t know. Ten years after that Minneapolis party, now living in Portland, Oregon, in the early 2000s, my opinion of openly trans women was simple: I considered them to be some of the bravest people I knew. After all, they were going public in expressing their sense of identity even though it exposed them to serious risks ranging from social ostracism (with consequences for employment and housing) to verbal harassment to violence. How ironic, I thought, that “courage” was considered to be such a macho trait, but that the people showing the most of it were those who were most outwardly breaking with male norms. I admired them very much for their strength, and also appreciated how their choices challenged a system of roles that I personally found (and still find) stifling and oppressive.

“Degrowth” is a tough sell: We need positive language to work toward positive outcomes

April 16, 2024 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

The seeds of Big-seeded Biscuitroot (Lomatium macrocarpum), a traditional First Food of western North America. Photo taken in eastern Oregon, Aug. 15, 2022.

March 14^th was “Earth Overshoot Day” for the United States. What that means is that, if every country in the world consumed at the rate of the US, the limit of the planet’s annual regeneration of resources would run out on that date. (At this website, you can see which countries overshoot and which don’t.)

I don’t know how they calculate their dates, and I’m sure folks could quibble over methodology, but we can be confident that it represents a legitimate warning about the status quo and its danger to people and planet. We need to use less. Far far less.

Personally, I would argue the solution is about systemic change not individual choices. If each person had a share to work with—that is, if the ownership of the resources of the planet were divvied up among everyone and our own decisions to forgo on any particular resource meant that resource would be preserved in place—then it would be all about individual choices.

But it’s not.

Environmentalist & anti-war goals go hand-in-hand

April 3, 2024 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

The remains of Japanese dead, equipment and caved-in bunkers on ‘Scraggy Hill’ which was captured by 10th Gurkha rifles in fierce fighting in the Shenam area during the Battle of Imphal, 1944.

I’ve been anti-war as long as I can remember. When I got a call from a military recruiter in high school, I already had the clarity of conviction to give him an unambiguous no, and he didn’t have any chance of budging me (although he tried). Everything I’ve learned about war since then only increased my dedication to the principle.

As the song goes: “War can’t give life. It can only take it away.”

I’ve also been a tree-hugger for as long as I remember and for me, my anti-war ethic resonates in harmony with my opposition to the needless killing of any living creature, including plants.

The human toll of warfare is tragic beyond accounting in lives brutally cut short, grievous injuries suffered, cultural heritage lost (museums, religious structures, libraries, schools) and to vital infrastructure destroyed (hospitals, power plants, reservoirs). War as now fought has been with us at least since the establishment of agriculture, and as technology has advanced, its devastating abilities have escalated. Last century was the bloodiest in human history and we must we must make sure that record stands. Armed conflict at that scale with the current arsenal would be nightmarish beyond reckoning.

Less spoken of, but gaining increasing attention, are war’s effects on the environment. Not just active war-making, but the consequences of all the industries, institutions and infrastructure that supports it; what we could put together under the heading of “militarism. Effects include the ruination of habitat and farmland by battle, the killing and disruption of wildlife, the release of lethal pollutants, the damaging processes of weapon manufacturing, and the large-scale release of carbon emissions. Over all this hangs the threat of a nuclear winter, the worst environmental disaster imaginable.

Bernie’s New Video Demonstrates the Price of Hillary’s 2016 Primary Cheating

January 27, 2024 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

I watched Bernie Sanders’ recent video on Gaza, and it got me thinking about how different things could be now if he hadn’t been cheated out of the Democratic nomination in 2016 by Hillary and the DNC leadership. To refresh the details in your mind, you can read a bit about it here and here. It was a big enough story that even the New York Times had to acknowledge it, though with their characteristic understatement and obfuscation. The leaked DNC emails (leaked not hacked) revealed an internal plot against Bernie that was immediately overshadowed shoot-the-messenger messaging that turned the spotlight on Julian Assange. We learned that big “D” Democratic doesn’t mean little “d” democratic in the primaries.

I was never a Bernie fan, and I’m not now. One of my most widely read essays to this day is 2019’s “No, Bernie’s Not Antiwar,” though by early 2020 I wrote another piece supporting his candidacy, in part because his following among youth was so strong, and I felt they deserved to get who they wanted. Since then, he hasn’t done much to impress me other than his attempt to stop the killing in Yemen under Trump.

Nevertheless, when a popular video-sharing platform suggested his newest video to me, I gave it a watch, and I was pleasantly surprised.

Someone Must Stop Biden, But Who Will It Be?

January 26, 2024 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

UK demonstration against Israel's attacks on Gaza [Alisdare Hickson from Woolwich, United Kingdom, CC BY-SA 2.0]

October demonstration against Israel’s attacks on Gaza [Alisdare Hickson, Woolwich, UK, CC BY-SA 2.0]

The horrific violence being perpetrated on the people of Gaza by the state of Israel has appalled much of the world and mobilized millions to take to the streets in protest, including in the US. That this genocide can only continue with the material assistance of the US is beyond debate. That Israeli and US belligerence is now threatening a regional conflict is also clear. That such an expansion would cause unimaginable suffering is assured and that a world war could subsequently ignite is a real concern.

Biden is the person most responsible for how bad it will get—or how much it could turn around. He’s the man behind the wheel, reputedly more so on this issue than any other of his presidency so far. But two recent news items showcase his severe deficiency, ethically, and in realpolitik.

Will Gaza be to Biden what Vietnam was to LBJ?

January 9, 2024 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Vietnam War protest, 2/1/66. [The Tribune / SEARCH Foundation, CC BY 4.0]

In March 1968, President Lyndon Baines Johnson (aka LBJ), declined to run for re-election after a near loss in the New Hampshire primary to antiwar candidate, Eugene McCarthy. Johnson was a strong supporter of the increasingly unpopular conflict in Vietnam.. The nomination contest that followed was waged among McCarthy and Hubert Humphrey, the Vice President, and Robert F. Kennedy, brother of the recently assassinated JFK. After RFK himself was assassinated, Humphrey won the Democratic nomination handily, and lost the election to Nixon. It wasn’t a clean win; Nixon secretly sent Henry Kissinger to talk to the Viet Cong, urging them not to make a peace deal with the Johnson administration because they’d get a better deal from Nixon. This turned out badly for everyone all around.

Fast forward to 2024, and we have an increasingly unpopular war in Gaza that is enthusiastically supported by the current Democratic president, Joe Biden. The Democratic party apparatus is striving to avoid any embarrassing near losses in the primaries by downplaying the contests and refusing to hold debates with other candidates. It’s arguably the least democratic process the party has held since 1968 (which had ended up leading to reform).

It’s impossible to know what would have happened in 1968 if LBJ had reversed his position on Vietnam. He still would’ve had to deal with the Southern backlash against his Civil Rights legislation and white resentment of the urban race riots. If RFK had not been killed, he would faced the same challenges. But if Nixon had been denied, it’s a fair wager that the Vietnam War would have ended sooner, and certainly would not have included the secret bombing of Laos and Cambodia that Nixon and Kissinger orchestrated, which was one of the most heinous war crimes of the century (in a century full of heinous war crimes).

This year is a similar inflection point.

The Nebraskafication of the US

October 27, 2023 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

I was born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska, and I got out as soon as I could because I found it so wretched. But much to my dismay, the last few years have seen the rest of the United States become more like the place I fled.

It’s been said about Omaha that it’s “too Southern” to be a Northern city, but “too far north” to be a Southern city. That is, the culture and the politics of Omaha are too conservative for a Northern city, but geographically it’s just not in the South.

I personally found it to be narrow-minded and bigoted, with the threat of violence being a constant undertone. As someone who was struggling to understand and come to terms with my gender nonconformity and gay sexuality, the atmosphere was hostile. (For more on this saga, see my book, “Confessions of a Queer Catholic Nebraska Boy.”)

I haven’t lived there for three solid decades, and I’m willing to believe things have changed—during 2016’s post-election anti-Trump protests, I saw rainbow flags being carried in the photos of Central High’s student walk-out, which would’ve been unthinkable when I was that age in the ’80s—but nonetheless the shadows I sought to escape there have seemingly spread across the country.

I’m not just talking about specific cultural afflictions like racism, sexism, homophobia, and the rest, or particular political stances in favor of “Capitalism” and militarism and against “Socialism” and peace, but about the spirit with which they are held, which is, in a word: belligerence.

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