Bringing It Down

"We have been too kind to those
who are killing the planet.
We have been inexcusably,
unforgivably,
insanely
kind."

- Derrick Jensen -

The following re-posted from Aquila ka Hecate blog http://aquilakahecate.blogspot.com/2009/06/pagan-values-bringing-it-down.html

Pagan Values - Bringing It Down

What has become of the generation who fomented the Soweto Uprising?

On this day in 1976, I was attending a (Whites-only) school in Rhodesia,as it was then. I barely heard about the trouble, when the rancid pus burst upon the streets of Soweto. I was 16 and in my final year of school- taking 'M'levels in Physics, Mathematics and Biology. I was completely unaware that elsewhere, children of my age had had a gutsful of the Apartheid bag of tricks, the latest issuing of which was a commandment that all Black pupils in South Africa would now be forced to have their education administered to them in Afrikaans.

I hope that, had I been in the same situation they were, I too would have rioted on the streets of Soweto. The person I am now certainly would have - I'm not so sure about the person I was then(with whom I unaccountably seem to share some memories).

I salute the spirit of those youth, even as I look around me today, and wonder where they've all gone.

For the survivors must be about my age- a little older, perhaps, or a little younger - and I wonder how they've grown, and why they're so invisible right now.

Maybe some are in the halls of government, or legislature, or the professions. Good for them - although in the case of many of our politicians, I have to ask if they've mislaid their sense of humanity in favour of overwhelming greed.

For the materialist paradigm seems to have enveloped this land, since 1994, when all was bright with hope and tender with compassion and unity.

The toxic waste land around the corner from where I live - a closed dump - has been slated to become a 'development golf course', of all ludicrous things. I'm so sorry, but I just don't see golf courses, development or otherwise, in anybody's future on this Earth.The reasons are left as an exercise for the reader.

In a similar way, I am less than hopeful for my countrymen and women when a huge ponzi scheme nets reactions ranging from "the investors deserved it" to "you're just jealous because you can't build your own empire". I'm sorry again, but empire building is hardly a calling which should be admired in this world.

Resting from an hours-long bout of programming yesterday, my eyes alighted on the edge of the monitor. And there I saw, chasing up and down the black frame, green and blue double helices of wondrous aspect. My soul connected to the worlds-between in that moment, and I was swept away with sorrow for our failing structures. Yes, sorrow.

We think we're not only the pinnacle of evolution so far, but in the process of further and better upward movement. We believe that somehow, someone will know what to do to make all this dismal failure of a culture come out all right. Somebody knows what's going on, and we will fix it with our superior ingenuity.

No, we won't.

Not least because- despite the conspiracy theorists desperately positing the existence of people-who-know, and therefore people-who-control, nobody knows what's going on, how we got here, and how we, let alone the rest of the living earth, will survive.

New Age sweetness and light be damned. We're falling, fast. Accelerating as we drag every other life form over the edge with us. Which is why some of us have come to the conclusion that the only solution is dissolution. Civilisation must be dismantled - this lethal combination of hubris-ridden humanity embedded in a culture which sees the earth as a vast resource pool has to be destroyed, before (and this is what I'm working towards) it destroys the very fabric of Life on this planet.

In my view, this is a very important, and still under-represented, Pagan Value. The realisation that we fucked up and the very best we can hope to do now, for the sake of the All, is to put on our Destoyers hats, call on Hecate and Kali, and in divine representation of them, Take The Bloody Machine Apart.

Will you give some thought to joining us? Together, indeed, we can do more. You are each and every one of you - collectively and singularly God - desperately needed.