by stonefruit » Thu Jul 28, 2011 5:02 am
This is a question I want to answer, and I think I have a good story to tell.
I came of age in the Reagan years and was formed in part by my experience of Iran-Contra, all of the heinous interventions in Central America, Granada and all that. It was incessant, obvious and disgusting.
A sainted uncle of mine, more of an older brother really, turned me on to punk early in the movement. Not just the music but the DIY aesthetic, the demand that everyone think for themselves. I never stood up for the pledge of allegiance in school.
By college, I suspect I was one of the few 20 year olds in America that had already read all of the classic texts of anarchism. And that was for my own edification. It had nothing to do with degrees. My art was pretty avant garde too and my knowledge of aesthetic modernism ran pretty deep pretty early on. This too had nothing to do with degrees. And I certainly did my fair share of LSD and mushrooms as a youth. Which, as brother Bill Hicks says, will squeegy your third eye quite cleanly.
My political philosophy was a contradictory mishmash of anarchsim, liberalism, conservatism, populism (still is in a way, I guess). I grew up steeped in a profound distrust of power. I thought I always assumed the worst of it. My whole life.
Then 911 came along. A common theme in this thread.
For a year, I believed in the "blowback" theory. We armed, trained and funded a monster and we were surprised he acted monstrous?
Then, the first year anniversary of 911 rolled by. My ex-wife and I were walking around the local university campus. The student center had butcher paper hung upon the walls, upon which people could write their sentiments. I had no interest in reading any of them. I knew they would all be "the victims are in our thoughts and prayers" and "let's go nuke us some sand niggers!" Both equally insipid and equally missing the point. I read a few and this is in fact what they said. I walked away. My ex-wife waved me back to read one in particular. Reluctantly, I came back to read the one she was pointing at.
It said "The Bush and bin Laden family have been making money for years through the Carlyle Group." What? What's that about?
I've always been a voracious reader. I've got a bushel of advanced degrees now (in fact just got a PhD), but I have always learned more and faster on my own than in any formal degree program, and honestly don't give a shit about degrees.
By this time I hadn't finished my first formal masters degree, but with all humility I would honestly say I had already given myself a near masters degree in much of the humanities and social science disciplines. Exactly what I needed to research and understand that single sentence quickly and comprehensively.
Within days, I was online 16-17 hours a day for two months researching that single sentence. Needless to say, that led me deep down the rabbit hole instantaneously, right into the dark heart of deep politics or conspiracy theory or whatever you want to call it. I saw the interconnectedness of it all, the weirdness of it all, the depravity. The horror.
Holy shit. It was infinitely weirder than I could have ever imagined. The rot in the system was way further along than I could have ever imagined. The depravity was more astounding than I could have ever imagined.
Two months I researched it. I remember one time I woke up soaked in sweat. These revelations were ravaging my body. I went to the brink of madness, literally.
It was time to disconnect. I went to nature. I camped for a week by myself. No internet, thank god. I healed myself. Nature healed me. But I would never be the same.
I got a masters in cultural studies on the social construction of conspiracy theory, using the Bush family as a case study, but that just put the bow on it. That was just the tip of the iceberg of my research.
Now, I would consider myself an expert in deep politics/conspiracy theory and can tell which ones are bs and which ones are true, no matter how weird.
How did I come to RI specifically? I don't remember. But it was revelation. Jeff is an incredibly good writer. (I wish he would start posting again). And he was never afraid to jump right into the weirdest aspects, UFOs and the paranormal. Areas my lingering propriety and desire to focus on the more obvious and easily provable prevented me from attacking. But he did it with such grace, wit, and intellectual rigor. I stood in awe. Each new post was a treat.
But we are fucked now, brothers and sisters. The RI mentality probably pervades 0.01% of the general population of the core states of global capitalism, at most. And there is no way we can break through the Brave New World/1984 conditioning of the sheeple to bring them sanity or any encouragement to peek behind the curtain. Even after the collapse to come, it will still be hard, still perhaps impossible.
So, now I have two contradictory ambitions. To continue my decades as a vagabond, to be, as Islamic haditha puts it "as a traveller in this world." I've been all around the world. Low budget backpacker travel is one of the few things I can say I do very well, and enjoy immensely. But it can get lonesome. And if you are travelling to run away from aspects of yourself, it won't work. I learned that pretty early on.
Or, get stable, homestead, and control my own water, power, food, and sewage and let it all fall, ensconced in a community that loves me where you can still hunt, fish, farm, ranch, and these are living traditions there.
