“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” preaches the old proverb; it’s this subjective beauty that underlies the sentiments and mentalities of the Indigenous cultures – sentiments of an ideological lifestyle that today feel the increased erosion of an already waning cultural identity, mercilessly and abhorrently catalyzed through the ghostly familiar of Manifest Destiny.
-The Lifestyle Necessary
Keith Basso’s Wisdom Sits in Places tells of a man’s anthropological study of the Apache’s connectedness with nature. His journey through the Apache reservation shows examples of a language that harnesses the organic power of nature through symbolic names that have cultural relevancy to the Apache tradition (the closest thing we have to feeling connected I believe is music though not to nature just to our community). Basso’s poetic writings on the “western taxonomy” of the Apache’s culture gave western ideology a clear window into showing a lifestyle that is substantially more sustainable compared to the western thought and practices based in capitalism. In Apache, the natural world cradles the community and the community repays the comfort and life allotted by describing mythical interactions between the two in worlds far gone to the sands of time. These stories not only act as a entertaining way to build community but remain essential in passing on tradition, history, and respect for their own culture (unlike our education of mindless homework and one dimensional histories – lacking in any sort of creativity).
-What went wrong?
The significance of this all shows itself in the stark contrast between these budding cultures – the streets and skylines of today’s cities are cluttered with synthetic signs and commercial ads preaching the bible of betterment through consumerism, where instead of finding comfort in the acute observations of our surrounding area, the city dweller and suburbanite are left to discover and create their own respect for the artistic value in the generic and underwhelming advertising that constantly announces itself – meticulously created and researched by psychologists to understand and discover more places in which these advertisements could be placed to distract you from ever carrying a connected thought for more than 10 seconds, (no wonder our we prescribe so much adderall).
All this does is leave a lasting scar on the cultures ability to observe simple beauty and feel a sense of community. Instead of admiring nature through nature, the suburbian youth of the past 50+ years has lived vicariously through a network of ClearChannel advertising and unproductive television, feeding a desire to consume and using the screen as a roll model for maturing ethically. The volatile state we’ve since seen created the last 10 or so years should best be explained by metaphorically comparing it to juggling, there will be an influx of bigger, heavier, more awkwardly shaped items that needs to fit in the juggle-cycle. The time will come when the balls fall to the floor – unless we pass the balls off to the next nation dumb enough to try and be the moral standard (it’ll inevitably be China, only if they prevent their entire countries death via pollution, bird flu, or gigantic dustbowls from all the construction and land raping – filling the lungs of those caught outside and slowly asphyxiating them until they’re a gigantic sandbag, then the asbestos blanket carried from the landfills surrounding the city by the dustbowl settles and will catch fire when one of the survivors thinks it’s safe to go outside and smoke a cigarette, destroying all the affected area via napalm-like molten blanket)…
-What are we going to do?
There’s an emerging community of “Do-it-Yourself” activists and production based conglomerated niches that have found solace in the lightening speed of the Internet. To our emerging culture I not only readily accept the fact that at any moment there can be a drastic shift for better or for worse, but I look forward to what it will bring. Already millions have begun to connect and form opinions – before the Internet small issues held little prominence in the filter of newspaper and selective magazines. I rest my hope in these blogs and the emerging sustainability movement; I propose we take the ideas and practices that the Native American’s have lived by for thousands of years and grow through it in a way that can be both beneficial and expansive, but this time incorporating and coexisting. Live life a little simpler, even if we do it behind a screen for a portion. “The less you own, the more you value.”
-When every chart following dangerous trends shows signs of uncontrolled growth or decline, it’s basic statistics that determine there will be something dramatic to stabilize it.
1. My hope is for anarchy… leave us to our own devices damnit!
2. Maybe the magnetic field around our earth will switch and kill everyone via horrific sunburns…
3. Maybe North Korea will be the first to blow up an entire country, setting off a chain reaction…
4. What if we die by some Orwellian dictatorship that comes on Obama’s reelection in 2012 (them damn indigenous people are always correct) Obama will unzip his outter 3 layers of skin and some old deranged white Scientologist will rear his ugly gap toothed over porously pitted face with a shit eating grin, where you can visibly see the pubic hair from his love slave caught in his teeth – only to start into a ferry boat dance and then proceed in undoing everything, ending in a religious genocide on American soil as the Mormons and the Scientologists kill off everything we have known and loved in this just world…
5. Bernard Madoff will begin a jail uprising by promising the prisoners loads of cash, only to succeed in getting out and safely back to his NY flat where he will then go back to invisibly raping people of their money until he has acquired enough capita to buy the US out of debt and #4 will happen.
Your FMLY here acts as a community and an outlet for ideas and art. If anyone actually read this and feels inclined to comment here are some questions: What do you think’s going to happen and what recent events do you most see proving this point? What do you want to happen? What can we do? What are you going to do as an individual?
FMLY Affair – Sly and the Family Stone
My FMLY’s Role in the World Revolution – Beirut
Good piece of writing– but I would not be so dark about it. I believe there is hope but it is going to take individual efforts and change our greedy wasteful ways. We could start with little things. When you walk down the street and trash blows by–pick it up. End a day at the beach with a clean up. Turn off the lights when you leave a room. Reduce waste and bring bags to the store. These are just simple life style changes that we can do. We can’t give up on our planet and people. We just need to respect it and make the changes now.
As for anarchy– not now– help Obama make the changes we need to make the planet greener. This may be our last chance! Encourage him to move left–stop funding wars and start funding cleaning up the mess on our planet.
Somebody’s Mother
I agree with the Individual can make a difference, but what gets me – and the recent Daily Show really helped me put this into perspective – is that we’ve created an entire economy based off trying to finagle people out of there money without doing any real work. This is where I get anarchy from; without castration of wall street from national affairs we will never get our head out of our ass fast enough to do anything about the environment. I read recently someone was arguing that Obama shouldn’t concentrate so much on the environment because our economy needs more help- this is what makes me angry, this is what creates darkness, the fact that some people will never fully realize NATURE and our life. We’ve only been using oil for like 150 years or something, but we have already succeeded in using it all up… There’s a mentality shift in the process and I think some heads will roll (or it’s my hope that some of the businesses and firms – those who have used OUR tax dollars for benifits and – will be fed to the guillotine, let’s get another french revolution going).
On another note- let’s change this font color so we can read the comments!