Picture “Uniquely You, Divinely One,” by Tania Marie
She painted this years ago, but I always remember it when I see snow. I love how each snowflake is gorgeously unique, and yet they all work together to create “the snow.” Each serves its purpose in a beautiful form, but the power comes through community. I’ve increasingly found myself pondering Collectivism, or rather, two seemingly similar yet radically different manifestations of Collectivism.
On the one hand, we’ve got a growing recognition worldwide that, despite all the attempts to ostracize the Other, we are more alike than different. We’ve got a growing movement of Universal Love and interconnectivity as people begin to see the humanity in people of different cultures, religions, countries, dietary persuasions, skin colors, genders and education levels. Concepts like “Namaste” (the Divine in me honors the Divine in you), “In Lak’ech Ala K’in” (I am another yourself) and “Hon Sha Ze Sho Nen” (Reiki distant healing symbol meaning, “the Buddha in me honors the Buddha in you to promote enlightenment and peace”) have become more mainstream. Increasingly, people who love humanity and love the Earth have begun working together to nurture and honor the planet with local farms and farmer’s markets, permaculture, organic principles, actual tree hugging, eco vacations, urban food forests, social justice and community clean-ups.
This kind of Collectivism builds a sense of community, honoring each person as an individual who also exists as an intrinsic part of a larger group. I’m reminded of the movie, “Lost Horizon,” in which residents of the magical Shangri-La each perform work according to their gifts and skills. The community thrives because each person finds dignity and purpose as they work together, not as mindless automatons, but as creative individuals who form important networks of support, love and service.
In permaculture, we see this idea in the deliberate joining together of “plant guilds,” in which each plant serves multiple purposes — attracting beneficial insects, pulling certain nutrients to the soil for another symbiotic plant, repelling pests, providing shade, etc. Each function has multiple backups, just like in Nature, and each individual species, plant or feature fulfills multiple functions, just as in Nature. Permaculture creates a conscious model based on Nature, which helps humans to live in abundant harmony with their surroundings. Barren lawns become self-sufficient food forests, beautiful garden retreats, and Nature preserves, all rolled into one, with minimal work after set-up. The rising interest in permaculture principles has grown along with the growing urge for strong community networks. In permaculture, you start planting guilds in isolated spots, but they eventually grow together as the natural web of life expands. In the same way, local community movements of people can naturally increase their impact as more and more people come to recognize the benefits and joy of working together.
All of this sounds lovely! It’s voluntary, organic, natural, and can be done in any number of ways in order to accomplish any number of specific goals. Ultimately, permaculture and local sustainable communities recognize the unique aspects of each situation and the individual participants; however, they result in stronger overall networks. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts precisely because the whole honors and supports the individual needs and potential offerings of each part.
The opposite of permaculture is monoculture. Think vast tracks of perfectly, uniformly manicured lawn. Think vast fields of MonSatan’s GM corn. Think of the vast tons of pesticides, herbicides, armored tractor wheels, patents, and legal shenanigans of the chemical companies and BigPharma folks who rape our planet and force BigAg “phood” on dumbed down, fluoridated and otherwise drugged masses whom they know would refuse to consume their products if they only knew what was in them. Think of the perversion of Nature, Beauty and all that’s right in the world, forced on planet, people, animals and plants, all in the name of “progress.”
Then think of the newly released DSM-V, the psychiatric listing of disorders, which literally classifies every single human emotion as a disease. Even psychiatrists have begun to cry BS! I recently read that over 50% of the US takes some form of mood altering pharmaceutical drug … and this is before the DSM-V goes into effect. I’m reminded here of Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World,” in which people live on SOMA in order to keep them in a perpetually dulled and quasi-blissed out state. I’m reminded of the first and only time I watched “Bladerunner” for a University of Chicago graduate course in Film Theory and English Literature. I wanted to vomit. Every fiber of my being rejected the professors’ insistence that this future scenario was not only plausible, but preferable.
Turning people into machines has already moved behind Hollywood and into reality. We’ve got super soldiers and video game drone bombers. People so addicted to texting that they can’t converse face to face anymore over dinner without checking their iPhone. We’ve got TV-aholics, twitter junkies and the peculiar syndrome that nothing is “real” until the masses get hypnotized by it on the evening news. People have begun micro-chipping children, and in the UK, they can monitor your body with implants to observe cancer or see if you’re taking your drugs as prescribed. The Affordable Care Act has within it vague enough wording to permit mandatory RFID chipping for all participants, and even though science itself shows that genetically modified organisms cause cancer, obesity, IBS and endocrine problems, Codex Alimentarius mandates GMO’s and RbGH as the only legal foods. International Codex compliance also means no more natural remedies, only BigPharma drugs. Codex Alimentarius went on the books in 1992 — with creeping implementation akin to boiling frogs.
Meanwhile, the US will deploy troops in 35 African countries now, not counting wars in the Middle East. Thirty-five African countries! This Corporate United States of America has gone far beyond self-appointed policeman of the free world; it’s now the Police State of the world, using remote controlled drones to kill any and all dissidents, including the secret, executive ordered and recently affirmed legal murders of any American citizen, without accusation, without charge, without trial, even on American soil. Kafka’s “The Trial” comes to mind: it tells the story of a man, K, “arrested and prosecuted by a remote, inaccessible authority, with the nature of his crime revealed to neither him nor the reader.” At least K gets a trial, though! If things unroll as planned, we can soon expect to see 30,000 drones in American skies. That is a lot of surveillance technology and weaponry — all in the name of “security.” Then we’ve got the UN, NATO and Agenda 21 — all in the name of global “peace” and “sustainability.”
But this ain’t your mama’s “peace” and “sustainability.” Collectivism implemented from the top down is fascism. Faceless, rapacious corporations replace the inherent urge for humans to love and cooperate with one another, and instead give us laws, regulations, civilian police forces, all-seeing-eyes of many types, paid snitch on your neighbor programs, debtor’s prisons, unreasonable searches, secret Presidential kill lists, and mandatory cooperation with a one-size-will-be-rammed-in-to-fit-all totalitarian dictatorship.
On the surface it all sounds so similar, though: peace and sustainability, enough food for all, no need for borders, no differences between nations, states or races. One form of community arises naturally and honors diversity: Uniquely You, Divinely One. Global Collectivism, by contrast, demands a one-world government, one-world religion, forced disarmament, and forced slave labor in which everyone’s equal because no one has any rights or privilege. Well, almost no one. Somebody needs to keep the masses in line! Just like monoculture gardening evokes a war on Nature –nonstop weeding, pruning, spraying, attacking– so does monoculture Collectivism. What could naturally flourish with just a little bit of planning and working with Nature (or human nature), suddenly requires nonstop vigilance in order to maintain order. An artificially imposed order. An order that bucks Natural Law and requires chemicals, weapons, murder, propaganda, and a Police State to maintain.
I’ve been studying Runes again, even more deeply than I have in the past. Some people know that the Nazi’s co-opted Runes, as well as ancient, sacred symbols like the swastika, and the burgeoning German Folk movement, perverting a natural wellspring of humanity and turning that into what most people consider the most famous repressive regime in history. Deeper research into WWII reveals that the same small groups of people who have funded both sides of every single war in the last many centuries made no exception with the Allies and Axis powers. What I find so interesting, is that then, as now, humanity had this upsurge of latent spirituality and empowerment. The puppeteers quickly capitalized on those emotions and perverted the movement, but its initial spark came from a deep soul longing to reconnect humanity and the Divine. Today I stumbled upon the following video that compares and contrasts Hitler and Rudolph Steiner. Both drew from key concepts the Thule, but what they decided to do with those ideas made all the difference in the world! Literally. Perhaps we can learn something from the contrast. Although simplified in the video, the issues do illustrate how noble ideas can quickly turn to something else, unless we remain pure and clear in our intentions and actions.
We live in potent times! Here, in 2013 and beyond, what form of global awareness do we wish to invoke? What type of Oneness do we wish to invoke? What kind of peace and sustainability do we wish to invoke?
(Here’s the link. It won’t let me embed the video anymore. You might want to turn down the background sound on this video. I personally found it quite distracting.)
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” ~Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” ~Martin Luther King, Jr.
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