Photo by Garvit Nama on Unsplash

Community and withdrawal from dystopia

Suppose We The People had a practice run. We took a day and lived it as a free people. As if we were sovereign, and not indentured servants in a plutocratic dystopia.

Oh, yes. That’s what we are.

We have no freedom. We are forced to work for ignorant abusive fools who imagine themselves to be “our betters.” We work day after day, year after year, decade after decade, not for ourselves or our loved ones. We work for lazy morally bankrupt and spiritually empty fools. We waste our short precious unrecoverable lives doing this stupid useless work.
Now, you may think WE are the fools. I mean, WE are doing the work and they are simply reaping the rewards. It’s easy to see it that way. But, in fact, we are—at least up to now—victims, and THEY are the fools.

Fools are people who, given the incredible gift of life, as a member of a social species, reject their fellow humans and exist as hated atoms, with no real community ties, incapable of friendship or love. For them, all of existence is a transaction. No matter how many people they surround themselves with, they are alone because for them there are no people. Only Human Resources to be exploited.

That’s what their luxurious toys are for—to dull the pain, and distract them, and to desperately try to feel alive. That’s why they break the rules, do horrible things for thrills. They seek stimulation through drugs, sex, expensive toys and lawlessness. That’s why they demand our obedience and praise. But self-isolation never creates satisfaction or joy.

They have chosen vertical death. They stand, but they may as well be in the ground. While they experience spiritual death, they spread physical death and misery even to those they would love if they had that capability; to their spouses, phony friends, children, their circle of lost fools. They destroy billions of human lives, of animal lives. And they destroy the biosphere that sustains all of us.

They themselves have no life. It’s all business.

Community

Life as a member of a social species is centered on community with others. Life isn’t a solo experience; it’s a shared one.

We have been isolated from each other, separated by an artificial rat race of competition. The abusive elites have taken everything from us, everything we produced, and left us to fight over scraps. We produce all of it and the elites produce nothing, yet nearly all of it is under their control.

It’s a gigantic swindle.

The most successful tool to isolate us is—ironically—so-called social media. We communicate on platforms which were, of course, created by us yet designed to divide us, to facilitate our exploitation. No difference between people is too small or insignificant to trigger anger, rage, hatred and ultimately violence—all while we continue to serve our unworthy masters.

And what’s the enemy? What’s the ideology and set of ideas we are taught universally to hate and fear? Why, it’s called Socialism! But the truth is, we don’t need ideology, one called Socialism, or Communism, or Democracy, or Capitalism, or Libertarianism.

We need to simply see our neighbors, embrace them and exercise our hearts and minds. Can we try that? Can we take a day off—just one day!—and live fully as human beings and not cogs in a wheel of abuse?

I say let’s try. Let’s do it in the simplest easiest way. And let’s do in now.

Withdrawal from Dystopia

How would we live this day, this utopian day of freedom? How would it start? What would we do? How would that feel? What would be different? What could we learn from this?

And where could it lead? Could it lead to permanent freedom for us? For all of us?

Let’s explore together. Let’s think about it and then do it.

The day begins the same. We wake up. (Okay, we do until the day we don’t wake up.) On this day, we go slow. We don’t get up right away. We slowly draw a few deep breaths. We relax. We don’t have a busy day planned. We have no obligations.

We open our eyes when we are ready. We get up when we are ready. But since there is nothing to fear or worry about today, getting up is easy—even exciting! It’s a FREE day!

To make it easier, this first time we are doing it on a weekend. We aren’t ruffling the feathers of the establishment. We aren’t gettin ourselves into trouble. Not THIS time. This is a practice run.

We shower, stretch, get dressed. We take our time. We don’t do anything to impress anyone. We are simply living. Getting comfortable. We are getting ready to go outside into the world. That is all.

We do something we never do, just to do it. Something that’s fun or interesting or simply a different experience. It’s not what we usually do, so it makes us remember that we are alive.

On this morning, let’s go outside—maybe with our coffee—and sit, and look out and just take it all in. Quietly. Let’s let our thoughts come and go, holding onto none of them. Just be.

We watch. We watch and pleasantly chat with people who pass by. We watch and listen to birds. The sky. Maybe we do something else. I plan to bring a harmonica and practice. I’m teaching myself harmonica. I may also bring a book—a physical book. Perhaps a book of short stories. So, there could be some quiet watching, some pleasant conversation, some reading, some music.

There are no requirements. Just do whatever feels right.

We are getting to be comfortable with ourselves and with our neighbors. We are in our place, on our stoop or our porch or on a lawn chair on the sidewalk in front of our home. It’s very simple, very relaxing and strangely stimulating, yet it’s something we never did before. Not like this.

Do you remember how to “just be”? This is a very important human activity. Doing nothing is actually an essential part of living. When you don’t know how to pause—deeply pause—you have forgotten how to live.

On this day, you will eat when you are hungry and rest when you are tired. You won’t have any appointments, nothing scheduled. If you DO have something scheduled, do it but don’t add to it. Get back to your free day once the task is done.

You might take a walk, again looking around and greeting friends and strangers as you encounter them. If you see a dog, pet her. If you see a person working outside in the heat, bring them cold water. If someone is carrying a heavy bag of groceries, offer assistance. Adding human connection—benevolent connections—is the essence of the good life, for you and for the people around you.

Kindness is the core of a humane society. We have been missing that. On this day, you have begun to restore it.

I hope you get the idea. You will spend this whole day un-rushed. You will see and hear and feel and experience your body, the world, people and animals that pass by. Your activities will be analog—no digital anything on this day! Maybe, just maybe, by the end of the day as you drift off to sleep, you will feel love for life and the profound calmness that comes from not being owned or used by anyone. You will have begun to restore your connection to people—not a “pragmatic” connection or a stressful schedule of co-ordinated activities. Just a human connection.

This day off is significant. It is ground zero for a revolution, a peaceful revolution that defangs evil by refusing to be a part of it. Of course, this one day doesn’t embody everything necessary for a better civilization, but it does lay the groundwork.

Civilization

Over the coming weeks, you may want to do a few more free days. Still on the weekends. Normalize freedom. Normalize living as a human being. Normalize comfort within yourself, with neighbors, with strangers, with the Earth.

Then take the next step. You are ready to share your experience and invite others to join you. To try the same thing. To free themselves—if only temporarily (for now)—from isolation and servitude. And so, in your neighborhood, there are now two of you, or three, or a dozen.

Sometimes you get together to enjoy the day, to check on neighbors. See if they need anything. See if you can help out. Kindness is the opposite of transaction. It gives without asking. This is the essence of a truly human civilization.

It is the exact opposite of the society into which we were born.

Now, let’s go further. Next, you and your group will live as complete human beings on a Monday. A “workday.” A day of your life that you are expected to sell cheap to your employer. Another wasted day, another day closer to death.

But today you are “sick.” Or using whatever excuse you prefer to enjoy today. Coincidentally, a number of your friends from the neighborhood are experiencing a similar ailment. All of you are going to do something pleasant. Together. You may go to the park and toss around a frisbee. Tell jokes. Stop for coffee. Write provocative slogans in the street with chalk.

Everything you do you will do for no material gain. You will do things because they are things that living social creatures with brains and emotions do. This day is your day and once it’s done, you’ve lived it. Nobody can take it from you. Whatever happens in the future, you had this day and it was yours. Completely.

We want to replicate this freedom and joy for ourselves, for our neighbors and loved ones. But also for people everywhere—into the future. For as long as our species exists.

From Here To There

We don’t need to guess how to change the world. We know how.

We get rid of evil by refusing to cooperate with it. That’s how dictators are ousted by The People without firing a shot. Dictators and other abusers (for example, today’s ultra-wealthy elites) are disempowered when we refuse to follow their instructions, their orders, their demands. You see, they don’t actually do anything. They depend on us for everything.

And when some of us refuse, and others join, they are revealed as weak impostors, as NOT job creators or creative geniuses. At that point, they usually flee or, if they hesitate and are unlucky, they are seized by an angry mob.

But noncooperation ends evil and you should do your part and urge everyone you know to do the same. This wins and better execution wins faster.

What about the new civilization we want? The free civilization where humans are valued for themselves and not as means to enrich a chosen few? That civilization where we live our lives and not waste them in servitude?

Your practice run, those experimental free days—they were the start. We are already on our way. We need to expand on it.

We will need neighborhoods to figure out how to grow food, produce or acquire medicine and medical expertise—maybe you have doctors in the neighborhood already. And we need to meet other actual human needs. Not superfluous crap.

Because we need livable neighborhoods, with enough for everyone. We will need to do THAT work, like growing food, but absolutely no useless work and no work for money. We must remember that work costs time and that time is life. Stupid work costs you part of your life.

Most work isn’t worth it. In this new society, we will work to produce needs and share it all. That’s all the work, a sharp decrease from what we do today. We will work 80-90% less. None of it will be deadeningly stupid work. We will work less and live more. Much more.

This curtailed labor will slash CO2 emissions and other world-destroying effects of our insanely destructive modern society. Earth will have a chance to heal, although much of the existing damage is irreversible. Our damaged Earth will be an eternal reminder against backsliding.

Now, getting all this to operate smoothly will take time. We will adjust and correct course. We will work with other neighborhoods to share and to fill the gaps in the needs of those nearby neighborhoods.

This kind of learning will take place locally everywhere. And there will be additional widespread coordination as well, for bigger problems like repairing the biosphere and stabilizing the climate. The focus will be on fixing problems because there will be no money involved, no preferential treatment, no selfish motives. The reward is the same for everyone: better lives.

Right Now

As I write these words, Americans are organizing and taking action to remove a fascist dictator who is causing havoc worldwide. This is a normal pattern of abused people ousting their oppressors. I expect this to happen not only in the United States but in countries across the planet. For example, the people of Serbia are in the streets to end the reign of their current dictator, just as they ousted Milosevic a few decades back.

If you are in the United States, I urge you to join Indivisible.org, an organization that is mobilizing a huge coalition to restore human rights and human dignity to citizens and immigrants. Wherever you live, please help local and regional movements fighting for human rights and real freedom.

I would love for you to join The Saners at WeAreSaners.org. We are the group providing the vision and direction of where we want to go. Restoring the time before the current wave of fascism isn’t good enough. The old elites will simply finish destroying the habitability of the planet, given the chance.

We mustn’t give them the chance. We must withdraw our support and build a planet-wide humane, sustainable and caring society, for ourselves and future generations.

Let’s go!