Animism or Death
Everything is Alive. Embrace it.
The time to choose is NOW
The ice is breaking up.
The insects are vanishing.
Many species are now climate refugees.
Powerful people who either don't care or are profiting from these changes are in charge of policy.
(I could go on, but you get the idea.)
As a wise person once said, “Shit is all Fucked Up,” and we are in serious trouble. We need help. Who can we turn to?
Rich people aren’t going to help us. They’re only helping themselves. Starry-eyed billionaires with “radical ideas” aren’t going to help us. Their solutions are only available to the wealthy.
If Elon Musk really wanted to help, he’d just go ahead and start retrofitting hospitals, schools, public buildings, low income neighborhoods with his solar panels and batteries at NO CHARGE. He could afford it.
Besides, do you know how much conventional energy goes into manufacturing solar panels?
LET’S FACE IT: our current Western worldview hasn’t been that great for our future. We’re staring down the barrel of a big-ass cannon that WE LOADED. We’ve poisoned the soil, and stripped it of its nutrients. We’ve released the Black Snake into our waters and choked our air. We’ve perpetuated the idea that “Nature” is something OTHER, something external to human function.
And now, we’re in trouble. We may very well end up joining the dinosaurs and Neanderthals, sooner rather than later. We may well have chosen DEATH.
Things look bad, but there’s a way forward: a way to WITHSTAND the coming changes, outside of the conventional.
Instead of perpetuating this culture of toxicity, maybe it’s time to go FULL ANIMIST.
It’s not a technological question, nor a scientific one. It’s a worldview question, and your worldview needs a reset. It doesn’t matter if you’re Christian, or Jewish, or Pagan, or Buddhist, or Muslim, or Atheist, or WHATEVER. It’s far beyond those ridiculous appellations and abstract Othering.
Instead, the Animism I’m talking about is the Oldest Way (older than that, even!), the innate understanding that comes when you participate in your biosystem. You need to understand yourself and everything that surrounds you as part of the same System, a System soaked through with Life Force that has the right not to be poisoned.
It all starts with thinking differently, with almost a kind of “click” noise within you.
It can start small; maybe you decide to stop spraying dandelions with toxins from the hardware store. Maybe you go for a nice walk and encounter something mysterious in the woods, and it moves you. Maybe it’s a matter of abandoning the way you’ve been thinking, or perhaps you can incorporate it into a shape you find more useful.
Maybe it’s more profound. Maybe you’re visited by some unseen profundity and start to understand that the Life Force exists within everything that Seeks, even rocks and rivers and mountains. But unless you’re open to it, it’s not going to happen.
However, it has to happen. You MUST embrace Animism, or we are ALL going to die.
Imagine: a fish who thinks that water is “somewhere else,” someplace other than the rock it lives under. That’s us. That fish is us. We’ve been shitting in the water for SO LONG that it’s choking us! So we keep hiding under a rock, thinking “maybe if I move this seaweed in front of the entrance, I’ll be OK.”
So, now is the time to choose. Do you choose death, or life? Do you understand the world through a new lens, a lens in which everything has inherent value, where the rivers, plants, stones, and even buildings and pipes and automobiles are PERSONS who have the right not to be POISONED?
The Systems we’ve depended on for centuries aren’t going to save you. Rich people won’t save you (many HATE you). Start-ups won’t save you. There’s no way to “innovate” your way out of Greenland’s collapsing ice sheet. Silicon valley isn’t going to bring back the bees. There is no “entrepreneurial” solution to soil depletion.
So: instead of turning to politicians, or rich people, or ‘start-ups,’ why not turn to Life? Why not turn to the Fullness within all things, the Nature in which we move regardless of where we live, and the Mysterious Things that float along with us, supporting us in spite of the fact that we keep poisoning their water?
This is the only choice — the only option for saving humanity as part of the System instead of its conqueror. It’s the very first step we need to take if we’re going to start cleaning up this mess so we can actually survive into the future.
The only thing you can do now is to Embrace Animism. It’s ANIMISM OR DEATH; there is NO OTHER OPTION.