Processes of circularity

I'm in the early stages of writing a work on regenerating community for an RMIT conference later in the year. Here is my first thesis and a quote from Val Plumwood to give an idea where this work is heading.

Thesis One. It is not possible for communities to regenerate when their systems are based upon linear, aggregate-growth economics. Regeneration is embedded in the processes of ecological circularity – the sharing of resources.

In Western thinking, in contrast [to Aboriginal thinking], the human is set apart from nature as radically other. Religions like Christianity must then seek narrative continuity for the individual in the idea of an authentic self that belongs to an imperishable realm above the lower sphere of nature and animal life. The eternal soul is the real, enduring, and identifying part of the human self, while the body is animal and corrupting. But transcending death this way exacts a great price; it treats the earth as a lower, fallen realm, true human identity as outside nature, and it provides narrative continuity for the individual only in isolation from the cultural and ecological community and in opposition to a person's perishable body. Val Plumwood

Religion, there is no reason to argue

I used to think, naively, that religion is arbitrary; that people are entitled to their opinions and beliefs so long as they don't abuse others. But, of course, religion is anything but arbitrary. Over the past week I have had three very different encounters with religious extremism. One from each of the main monotheisms.

The first was virtual and Islamic. I watched a documentary on SBS detailing how the Taliban are operating in Pakistani villages that they've captured. It revealed that first they use terror to frighten people into submission by beheading dissenters (an oldie but a goodie). Then they take over schools, kick out the girls and teach the boys with only one book, one way of life – Sharia law. The journalist asked a Taliban official why young boys were fighting this war and the response was, "they love to carry the guns for us" (as boys do), "we teach them to use the guns and when they're older to fight the infidels". 

"Get them early!" It's the same slogan for all monotheistic religions and, of course, advertising. 

The second was a little more personal and Jewish. I read newmatilda this week and made a positive comment on a Jewish writer's intelligent argument about both anti-Semite's and certain Jewish lobbyists' bigotry. I thought it was very good and clear-eyed. Whenever I make a comment online people can click on my blog name and it will direct them back here. Last night I received an abusive Anonymous comment attempting to upset my goyishness, especially by virtue of the fact he (or she) knew part of my family was raised Jewish. Right-wing Zionists can be so vulgar for chosen people, enlightened by God.

The third was my most direct experience and Christian. Today, in hospital (more knee troubles), an 83 year old Catholic man lay next to me and between life-challenging coughing fits proceeded to tell me that no one can live without God. I reminded him that the Djadjawurrung had lived in this area for 40,000 years before the missions and the state destroyed them. "Children today need to be caned by a priest or teacher", he ranted, "otherwise they will never know discipline". He later said, sensing he hadn't convinced me, "if you have no religion, you're no good; you're a communist". He had grown up in a country whose people were only given these two monological options – oppressive religion or oppressive secularism. In the end it's the same thing. We shared the air and we shared numbers. I am 38.

All three men are products of childhood propaganda. They've never grown out of it. They have suffered a similar thing to what obese kids suffer today – a life-sentence of being fed the fruits of industrialised agriculture, a new era of oppressive secularism I call pop-fascism. All of this is against nature, disembodied from wild nature, hateful of wild nature. The Taliban official was partially veiled to screen his face on camera, the Jewish Anon was fully and cowardly veiled behind his cum-stained digital screen, and the Catholic man, dying beside me, was fully transparent in his resoluteness that his God will soon offer him just rewards. None of them think of the soil when they fear death, the richness of microbial life. The possibilities for wild new life to rise from it.

Men require the silencing of others to make their mutable truths concrete. Today is the Twentieth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre and the sole dance of the beautiful Tank Man (Tank Man Tango).

In the past few years I have many times dreamt of being tortured by men who hate that which is not in their own image. It's as though I'm preparing myself for my final hours. I'm hung up in a dark cell, I've been there for several days. (I have been in a hospital for nearly a week). I'm thinking that this will all end soon. I get lanced by a hot poker. I swallow. I choke. I like to think that none of this will hurt me, that I have my humanity. I'm punched in the groin with a metal glove. I will not hate these men, they are frightened, I have no fear today, they will not have my liberty today. I am free-dying. Then acid burns into my skin. I scream. Silence. 4 minutes and thirty three seconds. More screams, then –

relating

to the care of souls,

it says)

He had smiled at us,

each time we were in town, inquired

how the baby was, had two cents

for the weather, wore

(beside his automobile)

good clothes.

                        And a pink face.

It was yesterday

it all came out. The gambit

(as he crossed the street,

after us): "I don't believe

I know your name." Given.

How do you do,

how do you do. And then:

"Pardon me, but 

what church

do you belong to,

may I ask?"

And the whole street, the town, the cities, the nation

blinked, in the afternoon sun, at the gun

was held at them. And I wavered

in the thought.

I sd, you may, sir.

He said, what, sir.

I sd, none,

sir.

And the light was back.

For I am no merchant.

Nor so young I need to take a stance

to a loaded

smile.

I have known the face 

of God.

And turned away,

turned,

as He did,

his backside

Charles Olson, from The Maximus Poems, 1960

(With thanks to Ianian, Pete O, Meg and Z for their added love this week).

The flux and detritus of the immutable

Every atheist must admit that God exists, because God exists in our minds, as an idea, a concept, a joke and as such God exists as an intellectual thing, a word made up of three letters.

I've been reading Why is there something rather than nothing, which is a kind of compendium of philosophical constructs from Socrates to Heidegger set out by Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski. His summary of St Augustine is alarming:

For Augustine there is only one historical process; here, contrary to the doctrines of some Greek philosophers, there are no cycles, regenerations or returns. And the things we consider to be the result of chance are all parts of the the wise plan of Providence, which is veiled from us. p.70

Wow! Judeo-Christian-capitalism is outlined in the 4th Century, which is essentially this: turn your back on ecology and chance by creating veils and mediations based on an idea of God; the desire for the immutable.

St Anselm, 600 years later, again summarised by Kolakowski, is similarly interesting:

...no experience is necessary to attain intellectual certainty of God's existence. p74

I wonder if no experience is necessary (of ecological life) to believe in the idea of cycles, regenerations or returns. On the way to the train and out of the city tonight we came across this Church of Returns; a Christian-based op shop had dumped its excess and some of us were skip-scabbing in celebration.

Tent city

Camping in a caravan park is essentially returning to social habits that are more welcoming and less gated. The thin sheets of canvas or tarpaulin that barely separate us all allow for greater spontaneous play and sharing of resources.

Where Permaculture is a blueprint for our species' survival in terms of food, tent cities are the future for sustainable shelter and social warming.

A permanent culture designs for constant flux. Flux and mutability is possible when land is made available for collective use, and not owned privately. Impermanent culture, or Judeo-Christian-capitalism, designs for dominance and permanency at the expense of the landbase, and thus the social base. Judeo-Christian-capitalism is the dominant hegemony responsible for global warming. No doubt the fine Jew, Jesus Christ, is deeply saddened by the 1600 years between St Augustine and George W Bush, that have paved the way for hierarchy and sociopathy to so blatantly lead the attack on the ecologies which support biodiverse life.



Zeph finishing breakfast, about to join the neighbouring kids for a hit of cricket at the council-run caravan park at Port Fairy.