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We are a worldwide community, determined to use nonviolent noncooperation to fix the polycrisis, halt climate collapse, and replace this dying civilization with a sane, caring one.

Stop Helping Abusive People and Systems Ruin Everything. They NEED You, So YOU Have The Power To Stop Them.

by | Feb 4, 2025 | General

Photo by Bruno Aguirre on Unsplash

As a society and a civilization, we’ve made bad choices. It’s time to rectify our mistakes.

Who are you helping? Who are you hurting? Have you even thought about it?

You are busy, you’ve got pressures, you’ve got so many people demanding your attention. Take a breath. Slow down a moment. Shut out the nonsense. Give yourself permission and time to reflect.

Right now, you are alive. This is YOUR moment. 20 to 100 years ago you didn’t exist. In a few decades, you won’t exist again. Don’t waste this!

What The Hell Do You Think You Are Doing?

Forget about what you want and don’t have. Forget about what you are seeking or fearing or obsessed about. Take stock.

And think about what you are doing. How are you spending your time? Your days, afternoons, nights?
Here’s what you are doing. You are going to work or looking for work or going to school preparing for a life (you hope) of work. Work is a given and the question is what work will you do and how successful at it you will be.

And you are probably seeking a significant other, if you don’t already have one. Relationships are tricky and just like work (which rarely if ever satisfies), you have a similar experience with relationships. Relationships may have magnificent moments. But they are laden with worries and disappointments.

You are looking at screens, reading what’s written, and maybe getting upset and angry. Online, you are shooting back indignant comments and rallying (figuratively speaking) with like-minded people. You have your “tribe” and your tribal enemies.

But that’s not really it. Here’s what you are actually doing with your life: marking time until the end.

That’s a big mistake, an unnecessary one, but a natural choice because you were born into a world and a society that set up this rat maze for you and tells you to look for the cheese.

I had the same experience. But I’ve discovered that, figuratively speaking, I am lactose intolerant. I have no interest in the cheese. To me, it looks smells and tastes like spoiled milk.

I’m not interested in the maze (or labyrinth)-is there even cheese at the end or choices of paths? I don’t care about the comments of strangers or bots over the Internet. I’m not interested in picking from a restricted menu of shopworn ideologies, religions or philosophies.

I’m alive right now and I want to LIVE right now. Deep down-or maybe not so deep down-you feel the same. But the civilization you live in wants to squash your thoughts and feelings and channel them into a narrow constricted path-a path that gives the rule-makers, the leaders, their shallow meaningless rewards at your expense.

You are being used every day, nearly every moment-and you have not even had the time or perhaps inclination to genuinely reflect on your situation and what you really care about. You’ve been told what to care about. You haven’t taken control of either your thoughts or actions.

You’ve taken direction from outside. Now, as you read this essay, you are finally looking inside and beyond the constricted barriers of socially acceptable thoughts and feelings.

Ask Yourself Real Questions

What would a sane, sensible life be like? If, instead of doing what you are told-or ordered-you could choose for yourself, what would you do? You wouldn’t check off boxes on some stupid life list of (others) expectations.

You’d experience life—the joys and even sorrows of human existence. You wouldn’t run down the clock in a cubicle or on a factory floor, seeking money to just survive and buy shiny prestigious trinkets.

Would you work? Well, it depends on what “work” means. If it means taking instructions from others to produce products and services for profit (and a mediocre salary), the answer is no.

But if it meant doing something genuinely useful and meaningful-like growing healthy food for yourself and others, or producing medicine, or offering shelter…well, that’s something real, something that’s a part of life-not just some aspect of an abstract exploitive system. So, yeah, you might do some farming.

And you’d pay attention to the world you actually live in. You’d experience Nature and other human beings, NOT as a way to make money or “get ahead,” but as ends in themselves. You’d understand, not just intellectually but deeply, that others are people like yourself. You’d feel a kinship with them and you’d care about them. There would be camaraderie, not competition.

There would be caring, love, wonder. Not tedium, exhaustion, abuse.

Self-expression would play a big role in your life. But not just spouting nonsense at others who push your buttons. That reactive behavior would be largely behind you, a relic of a foolish past.

You and those who you spend time with would be artists. Oh, you might not paint—or maybe you would! But you’d tell stories, perhaps write or act or make movies or express yourself in any of a zillion ways. You’d recognize that the arts aren’t empty hobbies that waste your time when you could be doing “productive money-making” work. No, money-making work is what you’ve been doing instead of living. And art is a core part of living.

But You ARE In the Maze!

So, now you’ve taken a real look at your situation. You understand how empty, meaningless and even destructive the maze is. But you still live in this world, this civilization, and you are beholden to the rules. You need to work and make money and you are trapped.

Or are you?

Could you begin to withdraw from this lame abusive and clueless society? Could you and some of your friends live in a different society, a counter-culture? Even if you can’t end your participation in the dying shitshow of our current systems and leaders, you can move in that direction.

And claim a bit of time for yourself, just as you are doing at this moment. Perhaps a slowly growing bit of time, more each week? Could you do this?

The answer is yes. Here’s what you can do.

Do THIS

Join The Saners. We are the people who recognize that our civilization is a failed one, a society that willingly ruins the planet that nurtures us, and that wastes the lives of billions in service to thousands of clueless, selfish fools. We intend to change all this, and even protect the fools who’ve messed this up for all of us, including themselves. Because life can be wasted by being exploited, or by doing the exploitation.

Neither of those approaches is embracing life.

The Saners are following in the footsteps of Gandhi, King and countless others who you likely never heard of. We are harnessing our power—people power, the “power of the powerless”—to change the world. We know this can be done because it HAS been done many times. We know HOW to do it because we’ve studied history and have the examples and framework left for us by our predecessors.

And while we prepare to save the entire planet, and free all of the people on it, YOU can begin to grab a bit more life today and everyday. The plan is to end exploitation and abuse and destruction by withdrawing from our participation and support of all that—in stages.

Right now, at the starting gate, we begin by forming and growing The Saners community, learning to coordinate and enact our plans, and begin quiet quitting. You know about quiet quitting from the (already mostly forgotten) “great resignation.”

Today is the day. Now is the time. Seize it.

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