In my youth, I was homeless for a while, hitch-hiked across the states for a while, and lived on an organic commune for a while. While I was there, I met some uber-neo-hippies, and this one was a white kid with dreads who lived in Maui in the national parks, and in Nicaragua in the rain forrest for a while, just living off the land and being one with nature.
This guy stank. Big time. What holds white-people's dreads together? Dirt. Dirty dirt. Smelly dirty dirt. It's not cool, it's just dirty.
But he had this scar on his shoulder. It was about the size of a nickel. While he was sleeping in the rain forrest, a little bug came along and used its numbing saliva to render the insertion of its eggs under his skin painless. It deposited a few eggs in his back, and flew merrily away. The dude... ok, he had issues. But he let them incubate in his flesh and hatch. They burst through his skin painlessly, he claimed, and flew away. He said he felt like he had given birth. Only his babies were bugs.
I had started this post to be about the anger thing. However, Jack Faust recently posted a link to an article about the holographic culture we live in. Some hippy who lives in Central America was going on about how Americans are stupid and live in a bubble. I responded that there's nothing better that anyone has to offer, and questioned the validity of the opinion that we should return to living in dirty grubby nature. Jack suggests that it's better to get back in touch with Nature. I'd like to offer the above anecdote as a major reason to appreciate our alleged disconnect from Nature.*
When humanity was supposedly in tune with nature, we died young. The main reason for this young death was insects. Filthy nasty germy insects. They suck. They swim up your urine stream and block your urethra. They lay eggs in your flesh. They carry malaria and plague. Insects are the dominant species of the planet.
People who advocate returning to nature to get back in touch with their alleged role in the planet's ecosystem have forgotten the basics. Jack accused me of being a yuppie. I don't have a problem with that. I'm kind of flattered with the "young" part of Yuppie. Yuppies recycle more, buy more hybrid vehicles, and generally contribute less to the destruction of the planet than your average college student, after all. We bathe more regularly too.
Having actually lived on a commune where I was very much a part of an agrarian subculture, living in tune to the seasons and phases of the moon, living dirty, living grubby, I can attest that soap ROCKS. Insecticide? ROCKS! Clean house, nice clothes, central heating and air conditioning? They all ROCK! They rock out loud. Maybe I appreciate these things more for having been a part of the alternative life cycle than the average American, but so what? Who says living dirty and dying younger of infections caused by insects is a better option than living longer and being out of tune with Nature? Some hippy? Fuck him. I'm eating me a Ho-Ho. Mmmm.
*I say alleged because we aren't really disconnected from Nature. As Hermetic Magicians, we know that the Archetypal Man took on human flesh out of Love for the Image of God. We are mortal for Love's sake. We are part and parcel of Nature. We aren't separated. As such, everything we make out of nature, every adaptation of nature, every chemical, plastic, landfill-filling item we discard is, technically, Natural. We can't get out of touch with Nature any more than we can decide to stop having bowel movements. As long as the heart beats, the blood flows, the brain fires electrical impulses through tubes of water matching the salinity content of the ocean, we are very much natural beings. Cars, planes, computers, and global warming are natural. Being out of tune with the planet's cycles is natural. Whatever "solutions" we come up with to address whatever "man-made problems" we created are going to be natural too.
Head for the Red: The ongoing adventures and insights of a magician's attempts to accomplish the Great Work.
Interesting posting. I enoyed reading.
ReplyDeleteWish you could climb down froim the fence and say what you really think...
this post was a teensy bit jaded right? was that intentional? are you trying to provoke a contrary reaction, because I'm usually the 'smile and nod and let them believe whatever they want' guy, but I gotta take issue with the assertion that insects are the dominant species, certainly they are more biologically evolved than us, they [and many species in general] have functions that could actually be termed powers in some cases, they are faster, stronger, more efficent and alll round better made beings, but they're not the dominant species, they didn't invent air con, or cars, or computers, or emo's, or iPods, or writing, or vidacin, we are the dominant species.
ReplyDeletegranted it is solely our non biological capacities that has placed us here, I always considered science ironic on the grounds that it disproves the very thing that conceputalised its existence, the child that consumes the mother, but yeah, man is the dominant, and collectively most dangerous, species on the planet.
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Not everybody who lives close to nature dies young, even in rain forest, because all the accounts of medicine men and shamans I have seen referred to the elderly guys, so maybe the magic stuff counts for something with nature. and where it doesn't lets just consider it as a 'hippie' version of chlorinating the geen pool?
I agree as a species we are not out of touch with nature, we are out of BALANCE with it, to go all movie geek a second, in the film the matrix its said that humans aren't mammals, but a virus, mammals naturally balance their existence to the eco system, while humans since the industrial age have grown increasingly out of sync with the world. and this produces consequences. Whether or not you buy global warming and melting ice caps etc (which is true btw regardless of personal opinion) there is plain, frank and startling evidence of the negative impact man has on this enviroment. like the levels of toxic metals in sea creatures from tuna to whales, pollution, which has become a desensitised and over used word, but with a very big meaning, and all the rest of the whack consequences.
ok thats a little off topic and not at all magical or mystical, so um, here's my little addendum to make postable... gaia, spirit, agrppia book three chapter 23, and um, I bought some cinnamon for my bune pot, and an engraving kit, to give the seals a go myself, I have more than one brass pot so if i screw it up, I get a second chance. God Bless second chances.
It's got nothing to do with living on a commune. It's called appropriate usage of logic and reason. Soap is a better invention than sliced bread. I've never lived on a commune in this life and I have no memory of any past life where I did. Soap rocks, technology rocks.
ReplyDeleteIt's this kind of bullshit I've never been able to understand. People want to 'get back to nature and live a much simplier life', so they hide themselves in forests, lie in isolated cabins they build themeslves with no power tools. Just the sweat of their brow and the fabrics that the land provides.
They do this because they can't handle staying in the cities with other people and wanting to feel the rhythms of the planet because if they stay in the cities with everything, they can't 'be real' or 'be who they really are'.
Bollocks!!!!!
You want a simplier life, a life that's easier, you aren't gonna have it by pulling a ranger rick and going native. They aren't doing shit. If they weren't complete dumbfuckers, they could do it within the cities. They think cutting themselves off from modern civilization is the key to living a better life. You live in the forest, you get based on what you bring to the table, just like with magick.
This is some of *the* dumbest shit I've ever come across in any lifetime. If they really were capable and didn't just whine about cities and people in large numbers, they could simplify their own lives, even in the most crowded neighborhoods. It's like their drug addicts or something.
I like my cable, my internet, my car (even though I hate driving, but I'm not gonna bike the 20 minute one way drive), I like the new batman movies, the transformers one (and looking forward to the next one), indoor plumbing, indoor heat that doesn't come from large fires, fridges, ovens, my laptop.
Living a simplier life and getting back to nature is in *how* you live, not the shit that you've got laying around you. It's what's inside, not your bowling trophies. If the stuff around you is tempting you to do stupid shit, that's your own failure.
Don't blame technology.
Good article. Your position is definitely valid. I equally respect people who have an urge to go 'back to nature' as they often put it.
ReplyDeleteThere is a strong sense of romanticism in the rejection of industrial technology though. I do think technology has a continuous potential to better peoples lives.
But not at the cost of ecological destruction or oppressive submission. There is a balance that needs to be sought.
I'd say that what we need is more (as in 'more advanced') technology, not less.
ReplyDeleteI'm in total agreement with you Qabalier.
ReplyDelete