Freddie deBoer’s recent essay about the escapism built into much of online life is well worth your attention. When I was first drafting this post yesterday, I wrote that Freddie missed some important points. I’ve now re-read it a few times to ensure I wasn’t misreading him and I suspect he wouldn’t necessarily disagree with what I say below. So just take this post as a “yes, and…” to Freddie’s.
The Tao makes no effort at all yet there is nothing it doesn’t do if a ruler could uphold it the people by themselves would change and changing if their desires stirred he could make them still with simplicity that has no name and stilled by nameless simplicity they would not desire and not desiring be at peace the world would fix itself Taoteching verse 37, translated by Red Pine
This is week three of a continuing series of letters with Jason Becker. Week one is here and week two is here. Dear Jason, Your description of Tulum was very interesting. It’s the first I’ve heard of it. And, yes, I can see what you mean by it being a contradiction. I like the idea of lifting people out of poverty; at the same time, it sounds like the usual corporate greenwashing.
This is week two of a continuing series of letters with Jason Becker. More information and the letter from week one can be found here. Dear Jason, It was interesting to read about your history online and a little more about the motivations for this project. I sincerely hope this project leads you to the interactions you are looking for. With that, let’s move in the direction you’re wanting to go.
I reserve the right to celebrate holidays in my own way, and today is no exception. Candlemas appears to be another of those holidays that is a mix of traditions. (In my mind, there’s no need for this to be a controversial statement. Blending and adapting traditions is just what humans do. To be clear, this is different from the colonial impulse, which is about force and monocultures.) In the Christian tradition, Candlemas is a remembrance of the presentation of Jesus in the Temple as well as the ritual purification of the Virgin Mary.
A couple of months ago, Jason Becker created the Letters project in which he and a volunteer correspond for a month via email. I volunteered and was given the month of February. We will be cross-posting these between our blogs. Here is the link to his post containing these letters. Dear Jason, I was immediately interested when I saw your post about a letters project for 2023 and grateful that you accepted me when I volunteered.
In Hunger Mountain, David Hinton describes the Taoist cosmology as it developed in ancient China as a “spiritual ecology” in which the Cosmos is divided into two elements: Presence/Being and Absence/Nonbeing. Presence is simply the empirical universe, which the ancients described as the ten thousand living and nonliving things in constant transformation; and Absence is the generative void from which this ever-changing realm of Presence perpetually emerges, although it should not be conceived in a spatial sense, as if there were a pool of emptiness somewhere in the universe.
One of the main goals of the functionaries of Empire is to bring everything and everyone into the imperial system. Totalization is, in fact, the motivating impulse behind Empire. Empire has a remarkable ability to assimilate threats to the system. Protest movements turn into think tanks. Rebels become a marketing segment. Empire will validate your criticism as a healthy expression of free speech and award you with a position guaranteed to shut you up by paying you off.
David Hinton’s new book is an exploration and treatment of the wound deep in our culture—the illusion of separateness from the natural world. Our Greek and Christian cultural inheritance tells us that we are spirit-centers standing outside and above our fellow-travelers on the planet and our truly important kinship is with the divine, immaterial world. The result has been climate change, deforestation, pollution, mass extinction, and the malaise within humans themselves.
I have an longstanding interest in what could be called alternative modes of living. Examples: Hermits Tiny houses Permaculture food forests In fact, I participated in an alternative mode of living by growing up in a radically fundamentalist Christian church that practiced separation from the world through strict rules for living. (When Rachel and I married we had neither wedding rings nor a television!) Having lived through experiences of what can only be called religious abuse, I believe I possess some clarity about the dangers of these exercises.