My Compass Points to Colorado

This morning I put 45 minutes into the Community Rights effort. It was basically 45 minutes full of grief and despair. When you see it pointed out to you again and again how corporations have rigged the system to the point where most people in the country feel powerless to the point of self-destruction, and most methods of activism surrounding you is the one-corporate-harm-at-a-time type, grief and despair are just part of the program. Or to say it another way, it's all part of the decolonization process. I'm not complaining here or need support of any kind, that's not the intent of me writing this. It's an attempt at a description of what I consider to be an important and essential part of my life.

My compass points to the courageous folks in Colorado working toward an amendment to their state Constitution giving local communities the right to govern themselves. I want to see a Wisconsin Community Rights network some day.

Barbara Ehrenreich's New Book

Barbara Ehrenreich's new book "Living With A Wild God" has moved up to the top of my reading list. I've listened to an interview and talk with her while delivering mail the past couple of days. I was interested so much in what she had to say that I forgot to deliver some of my customer's packages and had to back track. That's one of the ways I can tell if a thinker has really got my attention. Along with her stories I agreed with almost all of what she had to say. She deplores monotheism; doesn't think God has a care in the world about goodness and morality; thinks we're paying a heavy price for close to erasing all of the animistic rituals from the face of the earth; and how the animistic gods don't requite belief.

What most interested me, though, was her description of one of the mystical experiences she had in her teens (I've heard the psychologist James Hillman say that most of us get closest to God in adolescence and towards the end of our life). I would like to read more of her description of this. She said it was both ecstatic and horrifying at the same time. Plus, to all of you Daniel Quinn fans out there, it sounds very similar to the experience that he had at the monastery in his early twenties, which he described in "Providence."

Another quote that points to the idea that I got from Robert Bly's "Sibling Society" years ago: We are the only culture to have ever colonized ourselves; and the political left are the gatekeepers. Also, I think this is perhaps why environmentalist and author Derrick Jensen has received close to a thousand hateful emails from folks on the left and only a handful from those on the political right. I've also heard Thomas Linzey say that the "progressive" community will not likely be the ones to carry the Community Rights work forward, a whole new constituency will arise and will be responsible for moving it forward.

"Corporations essentially define our economy, out society, our jobs, our educational system, and our leisure time. Our state legislatures once defined corporations as subordinate entities, yet now We The People find every aspect of our lives subordinated to corporate "needs."--Jane Anne Morris, pg.41, Defying Corporations, Defining Democracy

It's because of these corporate "needs" that I deliver so much junk mail and you get so much of it.