Resurrecting Community
What rises, what was buried, and what we must tend to.
Long before the Easter story was told, humanity was already telling it. Ishtar, the Babylonian goddess of love and fertility, descended into the underworld and returned — and the world bloomed again with her. Persephone rose from the dark earth each spring and the grain rose with her. Osiris was killed, gathered back together, and restored. These are not competing stories. They are the same story, told in different tongues across thousands of years, because the human heart has always known this shape: what matters most can be lost, and its return is possible.
Community is one of those things. Not the word — the word is thriving. It appears in app download pages, mission statements, subscription upsells. “Join our community.” Community as product. Community as the warm feeling that keeps the metric moving.
That is not what we are talking about. We are talking about the older, harder, more demanding thing: the experience of being genuinely known by people who are genuinely present. The kind of community that has a smell. That argues. That feeds you when you are sick. That notices when you are absent.
We did not lose community because people stopped caring. We lost it because we built a world that makes presence expensive and absence cheap.
Community was not lost passively. It was squeezed out — by urban designs that eliminated the front porch, by economic pressures that consume every hour, by technology engineered to capture attention rather than deepen presence. These are not acts of God. They are choices. They can be made differently.
So what does resurrection actually look like? Not policy, not platforms — the small, specific, almost embarrassingly simple things.
It looks like eye contact. A real one, held a beat longer than the transaction requires, that says: I see you, not just the role you are playing. It looks like a smile offered to a stranger on a sidewalk — not performed, but meant. These tiny acts are not sentimental. They are the atoms of community, the smallest unit of acknowledgment from which everything larger is built.
It looks like knocking on the door of the elderly neighbor and asking if anything needs doing. Carrying the groceries up. Sitting for twenty minutes because she hasn’t talked to anyone today and you have twenty minutes. This is not heroism. It is the baseline of what it means to live near someone rather than merely adjacent to them.
It looks like staying. Staying at the block party past your comfort zone. Staying in the difficult conversation. Staying in the neighborhood long enough to be known. Real community is built not in grand gestures but in the accumulated weight of showing up, again and again, in ordinary time.
The spring traditions knew this. Ishtar’s return was not automatic — it was called for, celebrated, met with ritual and intention. Persephone’s emergence was not taken for granted — it was tended, honored, received. Resurrection in every tradition requires the participation of the living. Someone has to roll away the stone. Someone has to be there when what was lost comes back.
On this particular Easter Sunday, that someone is you. The invitation is not abstract. It is the neighbor whose name you almost know. The face in the elevator you have been too distracted to meet. The friend you keep meaning to call.
What has been buried can return. But not by an algorithm. Not by an app. Only by the decision, made again today, to show up — to know and be known, to stay, to tend the small things until the larger ones become possible again.
Happy Easter.
The Enemy Is Always Fear
In our utterly corrupt and confused and abusive culture, it’s no surprise that our strategies for finding happiness in our personal lives are lacking. How could it be otherwise? Money is supposed to be the great strategy for happiness, yet the obscene wealth of the Bezos, Musks and others has not led to unheard of levels of joy. Indeed, they seem no happier than anyone else, broadly speaking.
As we inherently know, more money does not mean more happiness. Assuming we’re getting by financially, we can X that one out.
The tv, internet voices or whatever has all sorts of remedies to remove the obstacles to happiness. Only problem is they’re all bogus. A pill, a fresh relationship, a new car – not going to help. The road to happiness is within, and the obstacle to your happiness is your fear. Let’s confirm why this is true.
We first have to back up a bit to understand the nature of reality and what is happening with this thingie we call Life. Life happens, is happening, only Now. This moment in time is where we, and everything exists, and nowhere else. Whaaaa? That’s not what we learned growing up! We’ve learned so much that is false from the old broken culture, we’re ready for a reset that encompasses a truer foundation.
So, how could Now be the only time that exists? It’s quite simple really, and obvious if we know how to look. You see, there is some truth in religion, speaking of the Eternity of God (for Christians), and describing us as God’s children. Which requires that we must be eternal as well. Like begets like. The whole damn universe, or universes, exist only in this infinitesimally small point in time where the future becomes the past. Kind of mind-boggling from the old world’s perspective. Yet that doesn’t make it untrue.
Think about your own life. Do you not feel like your fundamentally the same person you were ever since you became aware of your sense of self as a small child? Of course you do, because of course you are. All the years since you found yourself in a human body, you’ve been the same. Events never stop, the world ever turns, and yet we are always Here. Your body and behaviors have changed, you’ve learned, yet you’re still you.
The other side of our Eternity is the infinite sea of Energy we’re ever a part of. We don’t doubt this side, as each moment we’re living attests to this infinite energy. One of the reasons sports has such great appeal is because of the totality of Now. No going back once the ball is in the air. The suspense we feel, the quieting of our minds as we wait for the ball to do something good or bad (from our perspective and that of our team). It gives us a little tiny bit of a sense of our Eternity. We are experiencing Life right Now, and there is no other place in time where we can be.
Now back to fear. Having narrowed reality down to this moment we are all sharing, we have a much clearer vantage point for addressing our thoughts and emotions. The question becomes ‘How do we feel Now’. And how are we reacting to the ever flowing events in our lives?
This is a question of our intent. Our intent is the core of our being, our ‘soul’ in the Christian tradition. And what are our options? Ha! We know something of our options from all the ugly we experience in this corrupt culture we live within. What we learn as part of the truth of our existence is the requirement of integrity. There is no way to find the peace and love inherent in this Eternal Moment if we don’t take care of our responsibilities or if we act like a ‘hater’, taking advantage of others or acting poorly towards them. Look at most any CEO or politician.
As we come to understand the tremendous value of integrity in finding happiness, we also begin to see that fear always presents itself when we’re out of integrity. Hard to feel great about oneself when we’re ripping someone off or ruining someone’s life. I can’t understand how our ‘world leaders’ can act with such ignorance. As noted, money is a false god.
Yet if we comprehend the Totality of Now, we better understand our intent and its power. And we begin to see how fear is attendant to bad behaviors.
Easy to argue that there are a thousand reasons to fear that don’t involve bad behaviors. Agreed. Yet those fears disappear when the threat is removed. The fear I speak of doesn’t leave. It becomes stress or some other form of fear -hate, anxiety, neurosis or ‘just’ stress. It’s because we’re out of alignment with Life itself. (God if you prefer.) Bound to make us fearful.
So. what’s the alternative? Glad you asked. The counter to fear is Love. Love is what’s left once our integrity is restored and we let go all the negativity of the old culture. Love emerges within us on a grand scale once we get rid of the obstacles to Love. In truth there is only one obstacle. The only real enemy – fear.
The trauma the old culture has caused makes all this that I say much more difficult to understand. Our daily (right Now) lives are too much and too often a struggle. We cannot put our fears in boxes. We must get to their core, their falseness. We are living in eternity. There literally is no fear in God.
Love is indeed letting go of fear. This game/battle/learning is all happening Now. There is no other point in time that exists. Your body knows. It’s your ground for this experience. Use your intent to focus on breathing and being in your body. Let go when others attack or the world gets you down. Letting go right now is always your wisest choice. Happy to be with you…
Hempopolis
It’s clear plastic pollution is a huge issue for our culture. Creating plastic is energy intensive and creates caustic pollutants. Single use plastic, packaging, crap products, it’s a terribly long list. Microplastics only break down so far, and are harmful to our health. Our oceans are devastated by them, landfills hardly better. Animals, insects, plants, we humans. it’s quite insane by any reasonable measure.
My name is Jim Prues and I’ve been working on this issue for a while. Over the past year I’ve had a dozen meetings with city (Cincinnati) and county officials, but no one has taken a real interest. So I’m raising money to build this website and database hub, where bioplastics can have a digital home.
As fossil fuel interests see potential cutbacks in their use as fuel, they are even more determined to keep the fossil-fuel plastics production in tact. This does not serve us. Here’s the link to my indigogo campaign to further this effort…
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/hempopolis-the-bioplastics-hub/x/3772132#/
The Farmers Awaken (not in the US yet)
A few years ago the farmers of India captured the media’s attention with their blockades of major roads in and out of India’s cities. The Modi government had created and tried to enforce policies that supported the agribiz corporate agenda, and made life that much tougher for the already poor farmers.
One of the protestors, Mr. Singh, had this to say in November of 2021…“The root of the agricultural issue in India is that farmers are not getting the proper value of their crops. There are two ways to see reforms — giving away land to the corporations, the big people, the capitalists. The other is to help the farmers increase their yields.”
And after the year long protest, the government gave in, reversing the policies that initiated the protests. Make no mistake, the agricultural system in India is still a not mess of long-standing grievances and more recent issues, often around changing climate, yet it was clearly a victory for the farmers.
Just this past month, July 222, farmers in the Netherlands are making their voices heard with similar protests, blocking streets and entrances to grocery stores to make their point. In this case the Dutch government is using the need to reduce nitrogen emissions and runoff as the reason for new laws that hurt the farmers.
There is no question the agribiz model of farming sucks. It produces shitty food and the nitrogen runoff here in the US has devastated the Gulf of Mexico, creating vast ‘dead zones’ where fish cannot survive. Yet instead of sheparding the farmers of the Netherlands into organic, wholesome growing methods, they’re taking an approach that screws the farmers but leaves corporate agribiz pretty much intact. More BS.
We’re seeing uprisings in Africa as well, where Mr. Smarty Pants Bill Gates thinks bringing in big tractors and ‘the Agribiz Way’ to these farmers will make them ‘more productive’. Perhaps. It will surely make them more in debt, more exposed to nasty chemicals, and less in touch with the land they’ve worked for thousands of years.
Now we’re seeing Canadian farmers who see the writing on the wall that their government wants to impose similar harsh measures that large scale farms can comply with, but most small farmers cannot. Does it seem like there’s a pattern here? You bet.
And what is this pattern I speak of? It goes by multiple names, the two most common being The Great Reset (World Economic Forum 2020) and The New World Order (popularized in the 1990s). Now, these terms both immediately bring ‘conspiracy theories’ as the defining characteristic, yet if you’re part of whose behind corporate media would you not take this exact approach. Invalidate the idea regardless of truth – which is what corporate media has been doing for at least 40 years now.
Looking at our world, and why farmers and so many others are not putting up with the bullshit anymore, and there can only be one of two conclusions. 1) The Great Reset is clearly in evidence, and we must do whatever we can to resist. 2) These vast imbalanced are just the result of corporate greed, and we must do whatever we can to resist.
So, conspiracy theory or clear truth, our response must be the same. We must do whatever we can to resist. It’s what World 5.0 is about, and it’s just in time…
Living In Community
Our true destiny…is a world built from the bottom up by competent citizens living in solid communities, engaged in and by their places.
– David W. Orr
Communities are the lifeblood of human existence. ‘No man is an island’, and we do well to hold this context. Sadly, our communities have been abused and destroyed by the usual suspects. This must change.
We’re already starting to see smart communities evolve that have a pioneering spirit and an ecological soul. Intentional communities, smart growth initiatives, the new urbanism and a host of other creative actions are pointing to ways we can live in greater health within our communities. We still have a long to go.
Until recently, the mainstream model for a city had changed little since the last major “innovation”—designing cities around cars. Ouch. Cities have been undergoing substantial changes in recent times, whether it’s designing smart growth and public transit like Portland, or determining how to reconfigure a city like Detroit, with great voids where neighborhoods and factories used to be. Like many “rust belt” cities, Detroit has lost substantial population and money due to globalization. And yet even there things are awakening.
Awakening
Cities are indeed awakening, as are communities everywhere. The Awakening, our grand journey into wholeness, is very much grounded in our communities. And while the most dramatic changes may be found in cities, rural, suburban and every other kind of community is experiencing this as well. It’s part of this massive shift to the World 5,0 culture.
These days many of our communities are virtual. Whether it’s an online group we’re part of, facebook, twitter or other social apps – the rich texture of our communal life is endless. The requirement is that we rebuild and recreate our communities to reflect our values and goals, wresting them back from corporate and government overlords who have ruined communal life with their dictum of profit at all costs.
Community blend
Another great realization these days is that we now well understand than our communities are in truth, ecologies – interwoven and interconnected arrays of people, land, architecture, natural resources, and all else that ties us together. At the same time, our particular local setting very much determines the kinds of communities we are part of. This is damn handy as it is in our local communities that we can have the most impact in effecting change. Local initiatives, local politics, local business and local health create the context for our local lives.
We’re finding our ground and empowering our selves, neighborhoods and communities. We’re taking a fresh look at priorities and possibilities.
By applying the principles of ecology and the World Five Platform, we find ourselves far less stressed, far more connected, and far more happy in our surroundings. How nice.
From Corporations to Cooperatives
There’s really no need to expound on the state of our lives and our Earth in this time. The evidence is abundant and clear. We live under the rule of the global corporate state. Nation states, especially empires like the U.S., still play a large role, but the controllers are obviously the people behind global corporations, especially financial ones. We are not helpless and we can no longer tolerate this.
While stats like the relative wealth of the 1/10th of 1% compared to the rest of us can be eye opening, they do little to aid us in finding a remedy to this unconscionable situation. And these same elitists and psychopaths have no interest in the remedy.
We do not change something so substantial in isolation. We change everything. Starting with ourselves and our context about living. This Great Turning encompasses an evolutionary leap, a new way forward with a vastness we were previously unaware and incapable of.
Contrary to the old adage that ‘money is the root of all evil’, money is but a tool. At issue is the way money is managed, which is very poorly in the corporate state. These soulless institutions were designed to limit liability, and allow those behind corporations to profit unduly. By rights they should be illegal, as their intent is not the common good. It is the corporation, not money itself, that needs to be banned.
So it’s clear that corporations, since their ‘modern’ inception in 1600 where Queen Elizabeth first allowed the charter of East India Company, have sped the introduction of technology and fostered global trade. It’s equally clear that they’ve outlived whatever usefulness they may have had.
Western Europe’s centuries of colonialism were done at the behest of corporate interests, just as United States imperialism exists today to continue the dominant, controlling role corporations have in our world.
The obvious question becomes what about all the manufacturing, trade and services these corporations provide? Surely we can’t just disappear corporations!
No, we can’t. But we can, with political will, force their end by converting them to worker-owned cooperatives. How we muster such will when nation states and media are in lock step with these corporate behemoths is the real question.
Change or Die
In this crazy year of 2020, we’ve already been forced into some pretty substantial changes. COVID-19 has most of us in masks in public, social distancing and avoiding what used to be commonplace like going to a game or shopping. All changes we didn’t seek, but changes we have to deal with none the less. And that’s just coronavirus stuff.
Change or Die applies to the more active resistance to police abuse. If you’re a person of color, your very life is threatened by systemic racism and cops who want to control others instead of supporting their communities.
We’re seeing Change or Die being applied to the Democratic Convention and we’ll surely see it next week at the Republican. No crowded convention halls, no physical back room deals – it’s all had to change.
Here in Cincinnati we’re having another bout of gun killings. Last weekend 18 people were shot with 4 of them dying. Here’s a piece from WLWT.com about how 2020 could see the most deaths ever, passing 2106 as our deadliest year so far. And this piece was published on August 4, before this past weekend…
These are just a few top of mind examples of the incredible changes we’re facing and hence the incredible strain we’re under. If you live in Eastern Iowa you’re facing even more challenges, as the ‘storms’ there last week devastated the area.
Which points to at least one or two more ‘Change or Die’ points. Climate Chaos is already upon us. The media changed the term to ‘climate change’ from ‘global warming’ because global warming sounded too scary. I guess we’re not scared enough yet. Iowa’s huge agricultural footprint points to another Change or Die – Industrial Agriculture.
Modifying our food plants so they can withstand pesticides being applied to reduce bugs or weeds – what could go wrong? GMOs. And why might that be some disgusting shit to put it our bodies – it is. And this before we mention topsoil loss, ocean dead zones, runoff from factory farms where caged animals live and die for our meat-heavy diets.
Change or Die. It’s a new mantra, a new meme. Alan Duetschman actually wrote a book on the topic back in 2007. A main theme of his? We don’t like to change, and don’t do it much.
I counter that we change plenty when it’s life or death, as we’re doing this year. And yet there’s an even more interesting and compelling context for ‘Change or Die’. It’s how we run our personal lives.
There’s no data on how fearful we are. No pundits who describe a year as particularly full of fear or full of release, minimal stress, etc. That said, 2020 is probably the most fearful year since at least the 1960s, when so many of us were convinced nuclear war was imminent. The COVID-19 disruption. BLM with so many ruined lives from past brutalities and a bully president. Economic desolation with so many of us losing work and/or businesses. The fear level is overwhelming.
Here, at ground zero of our individual lives, we find another ‘Change or Die’ situation. Even in these times where our very species feels threatened, we can choose to live without fear. Now that’s a change. Fear is the conditioned response we’ve been taught as a reaction to pain our whole lives, and our corrupt culture is heavily predisposed to making us afraid because it serves their ends. I could go on and on about the corporate empire we live under, but my concern here is to remind you of the freedom you have within that pretty little head of yours.
Regardless of what the world throws at us, we maintain the power of out intent. We are (potentially) the masters of our intent, so we can choose love over fear this second. (That said, in my case it’s been about a 30 year process.) At least when I started working to rid myself of fear, I understood the real choice, which is how I play it right now, this point where the future becomes the past. This point of Life, Now.
The greatest learning on my quest was ‘A Course in Miracles’, a very curious work notable for lessons like ‘There is no fear.’ and ‘I need do nothing.’ – a far cry from what we’ve learned growing up in this broken culture. This quest is so central to the quality of our lives that I write extensively about fear and love in my book, ‘World 5.0 – We Move From Here’. And if the idea of the Totality of Now seems foreign, I’ve an article on World5.org that addresses The Three Truths.
So, even as our world is crumbling under the weight of all the bullshit in the old culture, a new culture, built on Life Itself, is emerging. Those of us living within the new culture, if only in our personal lives, know ‘there is no fear’.
The Gates of Delirium
(from the author) I wrote this just before the coronavirus became a threat in the west. At this point it’s just more delirium…
We find ourselves today with the likely choice of Joe Biden and Donald Trump as president at the end of 2020, both men seemingly getting a bit soft in the head. This when the world is in chaos and climate chaos is taking a daily toll, along with our many other ills. We are at the gates of a delirious world.
Anyone of clear mind and warm heart knows the vast extent of our woes and the massive effort needed to transform our lives and save our planet. Joe Biden and Donald Trump are both less than idea candidates to lead this effort.
While Joe is clearly the better choice, he would need a hellofa vice president, as Joe doesn’t seem as ‘with it’ as one would like. His memory is not what it was. His debate skills fail him. His record is not progressive, and the dem elites would rather have four more years of Trump than an actual revolution against moneyed interests.
Which leaves Bernie Sanders as the only alternative. Bernie has his flaws. I can see a hundred ways in which he could soften his attitude without softening his positions on issues. But he remains our best option and the leader of our revolution.
We who see some glimmer of truth in this broken culture understand that a revolution that takes us from a money driven, hateful, sick, elitist family owned corporate culture to a world of peace and love is not easy. In truth, we know it cannot happen until enough of us realize who and where we are and stand up against the corruption and the old system.
That we must rise up is a premise of World 5.0. We must rise up. This year of 2020 is crucial. This is a magical time. We have suffered under the thumb of kings, dictators, elites and monsters for long enough. Electing Bernie Sanders could have a great impact in moving us forward. Yet, our movement does not die with Bernie or anyone else. As the French poet Victor Hugo noted, ‘You can’t kill an idea whose time has come.’
The time for World5 is now. We already stand together here in Life. This tiny place in time where the future becomes the past. Our intent is the tool that powers our experience. And only love makes us happy. These are the three truths of World 5.0, and they lead us into our new reality – the recognition, realization, in your bones awareness that we are all here together in life.
We have some time on the event horizon to make Bernie our president. But you don’t help with our task on the couch watching the tv.. Right now the great need is for us to rise up.
Hemp for the World
There’s a lot of energy in the air these days surrounding hemp, and with good reason. Hemp was removed from our culture back in the early 20th Century when a number of laws were established that demonized hemp and marijuana. Now, as we’re learning that so much once held as true is false, it should come as no surprise that our illusions about hemp are crumbling as well.
Hemp is the common name for cannabis, the first plant cultivated by humanity as we crept from a Hunter/Gatherer culture to an Agrarian one. This were several reasons for this. First, hemp is an extremely versatile plant, with edible seeds, rich oil and strong, fibrous stalks. Second, it’s particularly easy to grow, needing little in the way of fertilizer or pest control. And finally, hemp is native to many parts of the world, so it was accessible to large segments of our ancestors.
Hemp has a strong historical influence on every continent, with varied cultural and religious traditions. It’s written about in China as early as the 5th Century BC. It was commonly breathed or smoked by various tribes in the Middle East. Many African spiritual practices involve consuming hemp smoke to enhance awareness and generate visions like the Dagga ‘cults’.
In the United States, as early as 1619 the first Virginia House of Burgesses passed an Act requiring all planters in Virginia to sow “both English and Indian” hemp on their plantations. In more modern times, hemp was a popular crop in antebellum Kentucky and other southern states. It was commonly used for a variety of products, most notably the paper on which the U.S. Constitution was written. Several of our founding fathers were hemp farmers.
All that changed when newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst decided to demonize the plant, his financial interests better served by printing his newspapers on wood pulp supplied by forests he owned in the early 20th century. Dupont’s new plastics were far more valuable in a hemp-free world as well. His nephew, Harry Anslinger, commissioned ‘Reefer Madness.’
Today, we can still follow the money. The lumber, textile and petro-chemical industries are the most influential in keeping hemp illegal. Then for pot there’s the pharmaceutical industry, the alcohol lobby and all those anti-drug agencies with self-preservation interests. We learn much from understanding these connections.
With this background, let’s consider how hemp might again play a pivotal role in our communities and culture.
With hemp, we have a low-impact, high-yield crop that can be used for a variety of purposes. The stalks and fiber can be used in composites as a wood substitute for an array of products. They can also be processed to create ethanol. This is a carbon-neutral resource, since the carbon released is but the carbon the plant ingested during its life. Durable, light-weight, and strong, it’s difficult to imagine all the uses for industrial hemp were we to focus on designing and building hemp-based products.
With hemp oil we have another energy-rich resource, which can be used in cooking, as lamp oil and as a medicinal, as its high concentration of essential fatty acids is great for the skin and overall health. Hemp seed can be used for food as well. They’re highly nutritious with a good deal of protein. Hemp has remediation properties too. It absorbs heavy metals in the soil, reducing their toxicity and harmful environmental effects. There are vast expanses of hemp in the area of the Chernobyl nuclear accident for just that reason.
Hemp can be grown successfully in nearly every state in these United States. One can imagine a culture where locally produced hemp provides a good portion of the energy, food and product needs for our communities. This approach would provide employment in both production and processing of the plant. It would also reduce the environmental damage caused by our pollutive, subsidized corn production. Re-integrating hemp into our culture is a key to the new localism.
And then there’s marijuana. The heathen devil-weed [a term coined by Hearst’s yellow press] was blamed for all sorts of bad behavior as part of the demonization process. Marijuana actually reduces aggressive behavior, unlike alcohol. The demonization and slander against the singular most influential plant in human history is but one example of the dysfunctionality of our culture.
Weed does indeed have psychotropic properties of note. Being stoned has a curious effect on the mind. Most say it tends to enhance whatever we feeling or experiencing at the time, offering a heightened experience of music or games or food [the proverbial munchies]. It is often used as a mind-quieting agent as well, as the stream of thoughts so constant to most of us becomes less pressing in a marijuana state of mind. In our fear-ridden, highly-stressed culture that alone could be of great value.
Medical marijuana is much in the news these days, being legal in a number of states, though often still prosecuted by the Feds. Its value in alleviating the worst effects of cancer treatments, chronic backache and other issues is well-documented. Imagine if our culture actually encouraged research on medical marijuana [sigh]. Not likely when the legal drug cartel called ‘the pharmaceutical industry’ has so much influence in government.
Finally, it’s worth noting that marijuana has not been placed as the medical cause in a single death in this country. Compare that with alcohol, tobacco, or the host of concoctions the pharmaceutical industry markets to us constantly. Mary Jane is decidedly benign.
Just say no to politicians and pundits who espouse the evils of hemp. They are uneducated, disingenuous or both [surprise, surprise]. Let’s say yes to re-introducing hemp into our culture, and to creating local jobs, products and health.