Some Tough Love For Humanity

Photo by Bram. on Unsplash

Ignoring our opponents; choosing instead to live and build a better world.

Today, America seems to be filled with sore winners. In the recent election, the victors were proponents of rape and the degradation of women. They hold that women should not control their own bodies and that women are, in effect, only fit to be sex slaves and incubators.

I do not exaggerate. We are already hearing crowds of pathetic “men” (sic) chanting “your body, our choice.”

Yet these same people are astonished that women won’t let bygones be bygones. In fact, virtually overnight a movement has come to America from Korea: The 4B Movement.

Women are, increasingly, disengaging from men. They are choosing to reject sex with men, reject giving birth, reject dating men, and reject marrying them. This is considered radical but endorsing and promoting and committing rape is now acceptable.

Who’s crazy? Who’s clueless? Who’s actually cowardly and weak?

Yes, women are rejecting their own degradation and rejecting the insanity that legalizes and sanctifies their abuse. Our institutions of religion and government are evil and stupid. Who would choose to keep wading in that cesspool?

Why We Disengage

More and more of us are disengaging. This makes sense and actually can be a key component to change the world for the better. We really need this right now.

Consider the dehumanization. Of women. Of black people. Of brown foreigners. Of people who don’t approve of violence, of rape, of cruelty, of baseless fear, of greed, or an insane disregard for Nature and Life.

The crazy people are afraid of the sane people and are afraid of reality. The winners, deep down, can’t enjoy their “victory” because they are whistling in the dark. And they are in a very dark place, indeed.

But the sane, caring people who have courage and morals-not fear and greed-aren’t going with them. Women, increasingly, are freeing themselves from the abuse of men. And every sane caring person is learning to disengage from evil, and to focus on the good.

We will ignore our stupid opponents, do what’s necessary to replace this dying civilization with a society that respects Life and Nature. We didn’t do this sooner because we didn’t know how.

We felt weak, powerless. We tried to work within the rules, voting and protesting. When that didn’t work, many gave up. Today, millions and perhaps billions are in a state of ineffectual despair.

But that’s ending. We are discovering that the powers aligned against us are mostly illusory. Our oppressors aren’t strong; they are, in fact, completely dependent on our cooperation and active support. Like movements of the past, our emerging movement—The Saners—understands the power of nonviolent noncooperation.

In short, we will begin ending our support of cruel actions and actors in stages, and disempowering them. Simultaneously, we will build new structures designed to help people, provide healthy food, medicine and other necessities for everyone. We are preparing to save the planet by reducing production of (mostly useless) crap for profit-sharply reducing greenhouse gas emissions, freeing up the time of every worker so they can-instead-live as free human beings.

Why should we waste our lives as Human Resources, as wage slaves to unworthy elites? ANY elites? Who cares if they are plutocrats or a communist party? Why not-in our short precious lives-be FREE?

The elites are issuing orders. As we slow down our work, make “mistakes”, call in sick and ultimately simply refuse to extract oil for them…well, their game is over. They don’t and can’t do anything. They are impotent. The emperors will be buck naked and a subject of deserved ridicule.

This can happen and I’m determined that it will happen. Movements harnessing nonviolent noncooperation have humbled empires and made the most fearsome of tyrants flee in terror. We can and must do this now, and do it worldwide.

It starts with a few people. With the 4B Movement. With The Saners. With YOU. And when people see their options-death and cruelty or life and love-people will increasingly choose the latter.

They won’t shoot at protesters. They won’t pump oil. They won’t work to make yachts and private jets, or cheap shiny commodified crap to sell and further enrich a few greedy clueless big shots.

Many of these things have happened before. Ordinary people shut down the oil industry in Iran as they prepared to depose the tyrannical Shah. Police have refused to shoot at protesters, despite orders from dictators; this happened in Serbia because the protesters were their own loved ones, and they did not love Milosevic.

All of this is possible, doable. We don’t change the world by appealing to or trying to persuade authorities. The authorities cannot be persuaded. Hey, they actually think they can keep pouring gigatons of CO2 into the atmosphere and keep their stupid game of greed and power going.

They are literally insane. They can’t grasp reality.

Not everyone will join us, but we are starting and we will grow. We will have enough people to get the job done. We will make kindness and refusal to cooperate with evil the centerpiece of a new worldwide culture. Working at for-profit corporations will be seen-accurately-as the moral equivalent of working at a concentration camp. Concentration camp workers committed a Holocaust, and corporate employees would be accomplices to ecocide.

We will all see this and need to choose sides. Enough will choose life and love for our side to win. And when we win, even the defeated win, too. Because they and their children will have a chance to survive and flourish on a living Earth, and not simply perish on a dying planet.

This is tough love. This is for us and our loved ones. But it is also for our opponents who are, ultimately, simply mortal humans like us. Except we don’t dehumanize.