11 jun 2012

i am sad when no one is here, when no one stops by to read what i have to say, but i don't want to call attention. i don't want to invite you because if you're invited, then you don't come of your own volition. i simply wish to sit here and be me, and for you to find me here being me, and for you to love me as i am.

i don't think that's too much to ask...

like ants, humans are designed to live together in community. we work together, play together, eat together, entertain each other, encourage each other, keep each other well. unlike ants, humans have burdened our societal living with layer upon layer of complication, structure.

what do we need to live? shelter, food & water, clothing, love. what do these things have to do with closed circuit televisions, with weddings, with money? outside of the context that we place on them, i mean. does a closed circuit television provide shelter? does a wedding provide love? money can purchase food and shoes, but you can't eat money or wear it. not really, or not for long anyway.

to be responsible to each other, to live maturely in community, does not require that we submit to the crush of bureaucracy. malcolm gladwell tells us in "the tipping point" that when a group grows to over 150 (if i remember correctly) people, we cannot each know the other. up to 150 relationships is manageable. beyond that, to maintain peace and productivity, we must establish the impersonal systems that comprise bureaucracy.

why do we choose to live in groups of over 150? is bureaucracy somehow natural?

living in shared organisation is natural for humans and shared organisation is culture. but that's not what we mean when we say we want to shed culture. instead, we mean we wish to drop the systems of monetary exchange, the fashions, the technology, the entertainments and distractions, the fried food, the specialised footware. we mean the things that are extraneous to our survival and detrimental to our happiness.

going to work to earn a living by making a thing that will be sold to someone else who is going to work to earn a living by making things that i will purchase... the circularity is pointless. if we could remember how to grow our own food, build our own homes, make our own clothes, sing each other to sleep... we would have more space in our brains for happiness and in our hearts for love.