One thing that I don't feel is given enough discussion these days is the phenomenon of urbanization. Living in cities is far from something new, we have evidence of it going on for thousands of years, but its present scale is utterly unprecedented. At the beginning of the 20th century 13% of the world lived in cities, now it is estimated to be 50% and is perpetually growing. This shift towards a city based human population might very well be the most fundamental change in human history. It affects just about every aspect of life that can be imagined and is consequently something I think a lot about. One of the primary reasons I enjoy writing is that it makes you define and explore your thoughts in a way that you probably wouldn't otherwise. As I start out on this first instalment of what will no doubt be a relatively long exploration of this revolutionary transition in mankind's behavioral pattern, I'm a decidedly rural person. I grew up in the woods and now live in pastureland bordering the sea. Cities generally seem to me like savage attempts to make lives short soulless struggles in which the individual is obliterated by the sheer volume of almost identical lifeforms writhing all about them. Concrete, cars, cacophony and confusion replaces the world we once knew. Anyone who has ever flown must admit that it is a pretty insane situation when viewed in its entirety. Every single resource that can be moved by man is poured into these insatiable hives, and all that comes out is an ever larger population and mountains of unnecessary crap to fuel the consumer capitalism behemoth. For all the noise and drama that cities contain, they seem to mine eyes nothing but intensive people farms. Why mass manufacturing humans in small spaces came into fashion is a well documented story. Here is the short version: Industrialization requires a large urbanized working class in close proximity to the factories. So at least the origin of this trend is clearly discernible, but what about its result? The cities in California where I live have extremely little industry, and yet millions of people live in them anyway. I'm of the opinion that far more of this worlds problems than is readily admitted originates from these new fangled population packed people containers. Such is my perspective at the beginning of my investigation, we shall see if it is the same when I reach the conclusion.
3 comments:
Letter to Zack + 20 years;
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Honest and open dialogue, from a friend and supporter. Your ideas underground and therefore can only survive by communication and connections, the very substance of your task. Trying to keep connections, create new ones is a difficult job, and in the hours of war and depression it seems all but impossible to speak to American's across diplomatic and economic idiocies - and yet the difficult of your task is the other side of the judgment American's are constantly making about you. Many American's are very busy buying the new red ipods, xbox 360s, and plasma TV to worry about such states as urbanization and global warming. Your determination should be to keep talking with all who seek a peaceful and simple place in this world and to those that have not understood or been awakened to this, that is how the revolution continues. The U.S. and those in charge know this, and that is why you and people with your ideas are in trouble. You accept trouble and the fear of jail and harassment, the normal conditions under which resistant men face today.
FBI and conservatives come after people like you with guns and hate because deeper than their corporate machismo and personal feelings, they understand your threat like the Panthers and Vietnamese learned so well as a reality. The threat is a simple one because you are making connections, political . . maybe, religioius and moral connections, maybe one day connections with future prisoners and Cubans and Russians, and these are forbidden connections under the policies by which the government is skilled at enacting and enforcing. They know what you are about, they know you are serious, and they are serious about you.
Overall the majority of the public is petrified by your ideals and way of life. There is mythology surrounding you, more than me. You come through in public as an embodiment of the public nightmare, an enemy within. Not the traditional enemy that existed outside of the states borders, but with some similarities to an English Muslim, an enemy within the state, a spin-off of the past ideals of the Panthers and Vietcong, of Latin’s and Africans, and the poor of this country. Expendable and clamorous lives who have refused to lie down and die on command or to perish at peace with their fate, or to exist in the world as slaves and beggers.
However, your case to rebel is more complicated than a Panther or Zapista, you do not have the passionate consequence from slavery. Your resistance is a choice. Your “no” could have been a “yes.” Society knows you could have had everything going for you, your life could have been secure and standard, but you said “no.” Moreover, you attack the very properties and ideals that you were supposed to inherit. The Panather and Vietnamese acts came from the proximate threat of extinction, put on the line of self-defense, but that is not true of your history.
Society will be traumatized by your ideals. What to do with Panthers or Civil Rights leaders has never been complicated. They were jailed or shot down or put in the front lines of wars. For you, there is no blueprint or answer. What to do with the lives and blueprints of the middle-class and white, will they put you in cross-hairs or gun-sights?
The mythology of fear that surronds you is exactly what society demands, it demands more mythology and more unreality to live by. However, you break the myth of silence and ignorance by refusing to be indifferent to human life and death, maybe determined to raise hell, but from where? From what sort of mentalities? And what views apart from yourself? Not from an open door of mindless insanity and rage, but with a new kind of anger. This anger may be useful in communicating like a slow burning fuel which can be defined over your whole life. But the question still is, why? Why are you going, where people might follow?
Jesus and Che died, but they gave some people hope. I think you see or hope to see your life in the same type of way; as teachers of the people, conscious in human life that still awaits liberation and education and consciousness to those that are unaware of our current system. To teach those that are enchanted by careers and selfish ways, those that are unaware that the human future is created out of suffering and loss. Those whose wages are drained by paying for wars, constantly mortgaged and indebted to the consumer system. To understand no principle is worth the sacrifice of a single human being. The American fear and dread of change has only transferred itself to a new setting. To not assume the quality of life within our communities is exactly what we have to offer. There is a certain respect for the power of truth, which creates a revolution in the first place. Turn the question of violence back on the creators, to not ask of yourself to justify your defiance, ask Bush of his defiance, the DOJ of their defiance, and the south of their methods and morals.
I am compassionate to your ways, in the 1960’s high schools were divided by black and white. Streets and cities were divided by black and white. Today little if anything has changed. It is difficult, if not impossible to change human minds. Students are Harvard all went to work in manual labor in the late 1960’s, the idea was from Marx, the whole system is corrupt, you can’t just change on piece of the puzzle, you have to replace the whole system. The Harvard students wanted to work in factories to mobilize the working class, overthrow the ruling class. Didn’t work because the working class, the majority, is a main part of the problem, because they support the ruling class, they are bought off by profits and capitalism. The working class has historically been racist, pro-war and anti-women rights and environment. The idea is not to create a movement from within, but to create a movement from outside the system and convert the working class. In the 1960s it was Cold War, U.S. v. Soviets. The only alternative to the U.S.’s system was worst! The USSR. Than, after Stalin’s death, Russia became a capitalistic society. Than you could realize both systems didn’t work, the alternatives, the allies of the resisters were the Vietnamese. They were the people that were marginalized by capitalistic society; they were the leaders in the fight against capitalism, by resisting it. Vietnam came and the U.S. quickly shot down the only alternative to our society.
I feel your ideas are simple and true. However, there was a time when your ideas would could be understood, but not in this modern world. We live in a different age, an evolving world, and a different time than ever before. We live ina commercialization society and urban society, much different than anything ever seen before. But I am too weak and busy to resist, however, I don’t just accept my predetermined destiny. I take my destiny and make it my own and follow their path but walk the pace I wish to walk and for me, that is enough. I feel the machine is too powerful to be stopped, but your efforts are noteworthy.
You have rejected the future you were drafted into and having refused, are denied a place in America. You have refused to conform to the countries methods and to leave the country, leaving you an outsider from the stronghold of the majority. The question now, is what can be created.
you can always hire one half of the poor to kill the other half.
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