Concensus abounds in many forward thinking factions that fundamental and progressive changes are needed in archaic systems of governance we still carry as a culture....many of which were formulated in bygone eras with different situations, needs and environmental conditions. These challenges for change can be encountered at the level of building department education and administration in attempts to facilitate approvals for state of the art environmental technologies (far supperior to the ones many codes have calcified into place)...all the way up to international policy and warfare actions...now obviously not at the concensus control of democratic process and world humanitarianism.

Instead of "wishing things were better" or victimizing ourselves into inactivity...or even wasting a lot of time with systems with less than effective public input ...we need immediate and effective methods.... couses of individual action ....which can create updated and relevant systems of governance to replace the outdated and technologically archaic. These we call "Systems of Transcendant Governance"...because they transcend the outdated or unworkable and allow us to create and start using the next generation of law enforcement, judicial, educational, public lands management and governmental processes.

This changeover is not revolution, it is evolution. It is not violent, it is cooperative, but progressive. It is also not rooted in futility or victimization at the hands of entrenched money and power interests. It is not over-burdening, it's enlightening. It carries with it a bouyancy of spirit common to the true american dream...and a lot of hope for those tired of losing the struggle.

Click here to see: Systems of Trancendent Governance

(note: the following transcript is published here as a work in progress. It is developing from the lessons gained from recent political struggle...and as an antidote to the sense of defeat, futility and fear many of us now feel. Its intent is to develop pathways out of the current dilemma and give hope and direction for the future in addition to continuing to understand the factors that have provided us with the current failure in global governance in which we find ourselves today. The work is presented here in a crude form and as it develops to foment guideposts to the discussions and productive concepts which come out of gatherings of activists such as the Steps to Awareness Festival slated for Telluride, Colorado (Sheridan Opera House) May 30 & 31st and June 1, 2003. Your imput is welcome.

Introduction

In the aftermath of disregard for human consciousness and world opinion in which the Bush administration, with the backing of a well oiled corporate war machine and the media it now owns, began its invasion of Iraq, many of us have fallen into despair, futility, depression and disillusion...beginning to believe that there are no effective means of reason or democracy left with which to protect our planet, our environment our democracy and even our personal privacy and safety.

There is, however, depending on the position of perception we chose for viewing the current lesson, a certain possibility that, instead of the disaster some would posit, what we have been given here is an opportunity to solve an even more comprehensive dilemma in the process of gaining sanity and victory over the current one.

A scrutinizing look at the Bush debacle will reveal not just an unjust war waged against an innocent people....but indeed, the wholesale ransacking and collapse of our own economy and (supposedly) democratic political system.

In the words of Dr. Hunter Thompson (Feb, 2003 at the Aspen X-Games peace rally).."In two short years we have gone from a robust economy at peace to a bankrupt nation at war with the world".

The Social Security System Trust Fund has been ransacked, constitutional guarantees of freedoms and rights have been illegally usurped, medical and social programs are in ruins, education funds have been sucked dry, crime is consequently skyrocketing, the four largest banking and investment corporations in the world have been convicted of massive consumer fraud, one third to one half of our retirement funds have been stolen by corrupt financial institutions, 50 years of environmental and consumer safeguards are being shredded, public lands and resources are being jerked out of the public domain and given away in a wholesale free for all to extractive industry, our penal institutions are privatized as are our campgrounds, we have become the enemy of the world... ransacking sovereign foreign nations for their resources in the name of freedom and a Christianity whose founding figure began his ministry by reiterating his reputed father's first dictum for human consciousness..."Thou shalt not kill." (note the period at the end of that statement)...all so that the rest of the world can have what we have too.

We stand now on the threshold of the creation of an entirely new world order... since the obvious failure of the last is nearly complete. We can and must construct for ourselves and future generations, a humanistic and environmental system of global governance...based on the primary care of the global asset.... the environment...the biosphere...above all else. Our last attempt is now the despised laughing stock of the rest of humanity.

We could treat this situation with despair and retreat into our hovels, awaiting the ax which will fall or the nuclear weapons which will inevitably explode...or we can choose the truly buoyant and transcendent essence of the human spirit: we can begin our work immediately to create what, indeed, we must...the next system of transcendent governance...the one which will be left standing when this empire collapses (because all empires do indeed collapse).

We stand today exactly in the same situation our founding fathers found themselves in during the mid-1700's...with a tyrannical empire gone out of control, sucking the life-source, spirit and resources from a fledgling nation dry.

We must, like Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton...gather the entirety of human experience in governance together, assess the current changes and dilemmas, construct the newer , better way of governing ourselves, insure the rights of the highest capabilities of humanity and insist on its credence and enactment....today. We cannot wait. To do that is to succumb to despair.

What follows here ascends beyond the details and problems all of us find ourselves immersed in today. It backs off for the comprehensive overview of human democratic evolution, for indeed, we are at the turning point of human history and this is the pan-humanic perspective we must rely on. We have only one chance to fix a disastrously broken system...and that chance is now. We have no other choice.

What follows may seem complex and idealistic. However, it addresses the comprehensive problems with a completely failed system...one of the most heroic in the history of man. That cannot happen without complexity and we would hope that it would be done with the most idealistic character of mankind we can muster. It dissects the problems that have lead to this 230 year old system's downfall and assembles a formula for the new system of global governance(rather than just a nationalistic one...because in those 230 years we have come from a humanity of nations to one of irrevocably global character. Either we transcend...or we perish...or we live in global corporate domination and despair.

This is not a discourse for everyone. If you cannot comprehend it, or you don't believe it...it's simple enough to leave it. There will be those who embrace the concepts and scope and find themselves fueled to action and intent. They will create the new order and carry us forward into evolution. There are myriad masses who will be left behind.

Obviously, not all of this is immediately possible....or even advisable...especially in the light of the fate other revolutions have met because of their insistence on moving too fast or changing too much all at once. However, by incorporating these perceptions and tenants in our actions beginning today...we can in time arrive at seeing the dream of a world at peace lay itself into reality at our feet. This may take years, decades...centuries to complete. But we have no where else to go...no unsettled continents to flee to. What we must do we must do here and we must begin now.

We are, as humans, born to freedom and democracy. They are the birthright of every human soul. They only leave us if we give them away. We deserve a transcendent governance that celebrates, nurtures and supports that buoyancy of spirit. One in which all citizens feel freedom from fear in their expressions and life's searchings...especially freedom from fear of their own system of governance...one they themselves create and fund. This is pathetically no longer the case today. No one but ourselves can create it. No one but ourselves ever will.

The beauty of the approach which follows is that it is individual in nature and you can begin with it today. It comes from you. In the words of the Hopi Elders..."Do not look outside yourselves for the leaders.....We are the ones we have been waiting for."

Transcendent Governance does not depend for its effectiveness on any other person...though it does involve forming our own communities. It does not require you to wait in futility and despair for someone else to create the solution which will empower it.

This work does not pretend to be authoratative...to know the answers. Its intent is to serve as a collection point for the answers generated by the many who are working on these issues as they become apparent and survive the tests of time. It also brings back to light the principles which have worked in the democratic governances of the past as well as those which are showing promise elsewhere in the world today (such as the government of Costa Rica).

This work is like a filing folder, than a text book. It's a book you yourself may be writing with the rest of us. It's one more place you can file your answers with ours. It is a revisable work in progress constantly being written by those with the conviction and courage not to be sitting down in a standup era of human history. If you join us and start taking action you will quickly find that your sense of futility, fear and despair will vanish. If no other result than that occurs, wouldn't that in itself make your efforts worth it?

Word from the Hopi Elders-

The following text was received from the Hopi Elders in March, 2003. It is presented here because it is the only authoritative guideline for action in response to the current situation we have at hand from the oldest authoritative human body on this continent. The pueblo at Oribi has been continuously habited by the Hopi for 1,000 years. In the failure of all else, let us credence at least, the most likely source of the deepest wisdom we have at hand on this continent now when it has been given to us...and certainly when we need it the most. Several commentaries later in this text refer back to this decree for credencing.

Message from the Hopi Elders - March 2003

We have been telling the people that this is the Eleventh Hour. Now you must go back and tell the people that this is THE Hour. And there are things to be considered. Where are you living? What are you doing? What are your relationships? Are you in the right relation? Where is your water? Know your garden.

 It is time to speak your truth. Create your community. Be good to each other. And do not look outside yourself for the leader. This could be a good time!

There is a river flowing now very fast. It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid. They will try to hold onto the shore. They will feel they are being torn apart and they will suffer greatly. Know the river has its destination.

 The elders say we must let go of the shore, and push off and into the river, Keep our eyes open, and our head above the water. See who is in there with you and Celebrate.

At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally. Least of all ourselves. For the moment that we do, our spiritual growth and journey comes to a halt.

 The time of the lone wolf is over. Gather yourselves! Banish the word struggle from your attitude and your vocabulary. All that you do now must be done in a sacred manner And in celebration.

 "We are the ones we've been waiting for..."

The Elders, Hopi Nation, Oraibi, Arizona

 

The Synopsis....

Here is a brief condensation of what follows (or will follow) in detail:

....there's good news and bad news....

Bad news first. The 230 year old system of government hammered out in America's struggle against empire...now ironically fallen into the hands of another empire... is even farther gone than most of us realize. In fact, it is in total collapse and like the inevitability with an old car...pretty soon it's time to stop fixing it and start over. We have a Judicial system that selects our dictator, a legislature too spineless to guard the constitution and its requirements of citizen consent to be changed, and a Presidency launching an autocratic form of fascism as it militarizes the American landscape. This system of government failed (as some of the founding fathers forewarned) to protect us against the monopolistic dominance of now-global corporations who consider themselves effectively the new form of world governance...and whose coercion and lobbying powers have gutted the effectiveness of our current system....leaving us with criminals at the helm.

Good news actually comes from the bad. The system probably can't be fixed. It was based on grave errors in terms of its geographic divisions in the first place (which have lead to environmentally untenable quagmires) and is too archaic to deal with the digital age, globalization, sustainability, the environmental crisis and an exploding population. Voila...time for a whole new system...from scratch...but not all at once.

Systems of Transcendent Governance are created from a selected grassroots base, incorporate the necessary removals of business and religion from government, re-individualize (decentralize) services and needs, establish the health of the biosphere as the bottom-line criterion, utilize and mandate renewable technologies and are assembled in place parallel to the existing forms of governance and displace or supersede them over time...hopefully in a manner which depends on intelligence and time rather than conflict and coercion.

The beauty of this system is that there is no begging, lobbying, stumping or convincing within the corrupted framework of the existing system to be done. We invent the new system in place right now, independent of the old one and automatically integrate the necessary principles, protections and integrities. We bring them into existence with autonomy and allow or insure that they succeed the existing over time....until they are the system. A silent and skillful revolution which requires no waiting and does not argue with imbeciles.

Many of these systems are already in development, some already in place, such as a new, independent digital/paperless media to replace the corrupted, arcane paper, NPR, and television one. Organics and the elimination of pesticides by community and regional groups...supersceding the failed consumer protection and health agencies such as the EPA, FDA, USDA, etc...are great examples of how jurisdiction change to ones of intelligence and void of corporate contamination can happen without notice or conflict. These are not dreams, they exist and are working today. Many of these new systems contain entrepreneurial opportunities for the advanced progressive spirit, much like the myriad solar electric and hot water service provider business which our region now hosts and supports.

Karmic systems of Justice...now being piloted regionally, indicate how we can simply eliminate the need for a privatized penal institution by dealing with human errors in a better way.

Transcendent Governance begins with the individual confronting and changing their consumerism and establishing sustainability in their own lives, often with radical reduction in stress levels...leading to more time for their own health and providing the energy to fire local community activism toward evolutionary governance. (Smart Shelter Network is already graduating people through its residency programs who have achieved healthier, stress- and toxin- reduced lives and are moving forward into a saner future).

It is futile to battle the current system, which is obviously on the verge of collapse anyway. Our energy is much better spent in constructing the transcendent systems to replace it now, so that as it falls, the new will already be in place and operating to supersede it. This eliminates the real danger threatening our future, which is not the current regime...but what will befall us after if self-destructs. Indications are strong that the economy is toast. Crime is escalating as a consequence of curtailed services and economics. When the public turns on Bush, which it certainly will, the government will collapse and history teaches us that that situation will leave us vulnerable to military coup and takeover. Having the successional form of governance in place, functioning and solid is our best assurance and our ticket to delivering a viable and healthy planet to our children and the future.

In the words of the Hopi Elders (quoted above here): "We are the ones we have been waiting for." That's a mouthful. In it is a little hope and a lot of work...what do you say we begin?

The Situation and History

 

By acknowledging the origin of the current dilemma (which is within ourselves) and understanding its nature, we gain the power to transcend and remediate it...albiet, a hard pill to swallow for most of us.

(this is discussed briefly in the principles section below and may be redundant here)

 

The Analogy to the American Revolution...where are the heroes

The American revolution was fought by an untrained group of progressives outnumbered and outgunned by the largest military empire in the world, but on its own soil...which gave way to guerilla warfare on home soil...the formula for victory...also the one which lost us the Vietnam conflict.

Unfortunately, we seem to be missing the heroes of the first American Revolution. The loss of 2500 American Lives in the world trade center incident equals about one night's cruise missile attacks on Baghdad during the Gulf War. After 13 years, the Iraqi people were still functioning. The world Trade Center incident, however, brought the U.S. to economic ruin, collapsed the airlines industry, resulted in rescincion of constitutional rights, turned a nation angry and paranoid.

Where are the heroes?

Collapse of the American system of Governance and why

Our growth beyond the scale of individual effect in our systems of governance.

Our concepts of meaning and effectiveness regarding our relationships, our family, our neighborhood, our community, our bioregion, our state, our nation or the planet are all a function of our perception. We can believe in what we can see. These aren't things about ourselves we can change, they are basic parameters of human nature.

Once a family, a neighborhood, a community or a nation become too large, we sense our growing insignificance in it. Up until the 1940's, every member of the U.S. House of Representatives represented 30,000 citizens. Today, they represent over half a million. Our communities have burgeoned to incomprehensible sprawling mass and so has our sense of futility in having real determination in our system of governance.

The solution is to change the scale...and we can do it....not by usurping control of the city limits and screening who lives inside it, but by consistently recreating comprehensible spheres of governance as the existing ones become too large and impersonal.

Your neighborhood is defined by what you can see (distinguish) standing on your roof top. (Generally). To have a community, and consequently a sense of meaning and effect, you need to be able to experience that community. Many of us (probably most of us) don't. The reason why is often because what we could see yesterday grew out of our perceptive limits today. This is dangerous if its not replaced by another, redefined and comprehensible entity of neighborhood. If that doesn't happen (and it does require our direct action) we recede into media addiction, artificial relationships (gangs, identity groups, etc) and eventually into fatalism.

One of the basic tenants of transcendent governance is to redefine and vivify comprehensible entities to which we belong. These need not be geographic, but are often defined ideological and are not related directly to distance.

Many of us have found rejuvenation on this scale by becoming involved with other peace activists, marches, demonstrations, etc. All of a sudden, a family missing has been found with a whole new group of people we otherwise would not have met. This is a healthy step to reconstruction of the governance we create. It is startlingly powerful in the encouragement and life it affords.

 

Decentralizing the governmental, regulatory, and supplier entities in our culture.

We have seen in the past one hundred years an almost continuous trend toward bigger government, more anonymous regulations and increasingly monopolized service and product industries. As a result, we have gigantic utility corporations which can hold entire state hostage for ransom, military machines that can be turned against public will on innocent sovereign nations (and even ourselves), and corporate manufactures of increasingly toxic chemically based consumer products who have clandestinely dismantled all reputable and effective consumer protection and safety protections government once afforded.

No amount of consumer advocacy, regulatory change or personal activism is likely to effect a return to sanity. We now find ourselves with little alternative but to embark on a swing back toward decentralization.

The bright side of this is that this is the one sphere of personal influence and proactive endeavor where results are immediately visible and count. This trend began 20 years ago and the technologies and methods are time tested and abound.

Here in Western Colorado, we already have about 6,000 homes no longer connected to the electrical power monopolies fueling global warming and riding slipshod over democratic consensus about where and if their power lines will contaminate our backyards and national forests.

Networks of those whose health and immune systems are already damaged by the pesticides and formaldehyde in fragrances, home products and building materials have already developed the healthy substitutes for all of those products and make them from native ingredients as needed as their only guarantee of quality and ingredients. Smart Shelter and a number of other regional entities have laid groundwork in linking the EI community (those with environmental illnesses) and providing education and lifestyle transitions which enable many to regain health as well as promoting public education about fragrance, toxic products, pesticides and contaminated living environments. This kind of decentralization antidote restores information resourcing and distribution to the affected and knowledgeable grassroots, where it belongs and where it is least likely to be contaminated by manufacturer interests.

Community activists across the country work daily to ban military recruiters from schools, educate youth about the realities of war and the armed forces and consequently free their communities of the costs and deterioration of militarization.

The potential for restoring autonomy and personal, neighborhood and community control to our systems of governance are so myriad and simple they require little more than conscious examination of what we buy, where it comes from, what we can do. Thanks to the internet, millions of workable alternatives abound.

Insistence on Integrity and accountability:

Many of us who have gone over the limit for patience and disgust are now finding the time in our lives to openly and forcefully confront elected officials, corporate officials and incompetent retailers. Insistence is the key here.

The stocking of pesticides in our grocery store candy sections (Montrose City Market), Scott McInnis sneaking in the back door of public fundraising events (Hotchkiss), neighbors spraying toxic herbicides whose vapors cross the property lines of those with allergic reactions, community activist groups insisting on organic/non-chemical bug and weed programs for their parks and streets (Ridgway), community environmental organizations battling the encroachment and incompetence of coal-bed-methane natural gas wells in pristine forests (WSERC), citizen initiatives to ban off-road vehicles in the State of Colorado and sue public lands managers who failed to effectively regulate them in the first place for damages to restore our ransacked wildlife habitat.

America is getting uppity and it's about time. Futility, passivity and being "Mrs. nice guy" are vanishing with the girdles and push up bras. Insistence on integrity, accountability and response to consumers and constituents is what will put consciousness back on the map. There is nothing wrong with anger, indignance and confrontation...in fact, besides effecting productive change, they can clear your psyche of some pretty nasty snarls and depression. Depression, after all is only anger turned inward. You can attain nirvana later.

Antidotes for the erosion of effective democratic local community control

(stories of the Tri-State/San Miguel County/Ridgway power line battle and loss of local authority through the state legislature)...loss of say in our governance

Positive solution...the current Ridgway/regional pesticide alternatives working group

Places, functions and examples of civil disobedience and humor

("Attempting to Putt Story" Idarado mine tailings pond dilemma and public awareness. The journey out of a sense of futility through clandestine action

Removing religion from governance

Removing Business from governance

Making it fun

dismantling of antitrust protections

dismantling of privacy

dismantling of consumer protection

skewing of policy to benefit the rich

gutting of social security

gutting of constitutional reform

empowerment to use the military against the people

gutting of credence to national consensus and the un

All that's been proven is how decayed(far gone) the American system of governance is

Fading days of Capital Corporatism

The Dilemma and Psychology of the Pathologic Conservative

(note-this text was created early on, and reviewing it now a month later seems very angry, polarized and derogatory...a more balanced perspective which explains these characteristics as inherent in all of us and result of interpersonal dualism seems to more in line with what is intended here...but no chance to rewrite this yet...publishing a work this way as it is developed and prior to completion and pier review is like handing out your laundry...everyone gets to see the stains your soap didn't cure...don't shoot yet, more to follow)

 

The emotional anatomy of the conservative mentality is built around insecurity. It is symptomatic of beings frozen at early points in their life, usually by artificially rigid family/community environments typified by the religious, the abusive or the neurotic. It typically sees the world and its constant dynamism, progression and change as the enemy and responds by amassing protective fortification and ballast to protect itself against perceived attack....the ballast serves its attempt to slow progressive forward momentum by overloading the barge. These are people who do not understand the world and spend their lives building protective armor to defend themselves against it...money, power, military, elitist hierarchy, country clubs, back room political parlors and possessions (consumerism). The natural conclusion of this condition is that they will insist on and defend these artificial protections with tenacity. Voila...George W. Bush and company.

The degree of current toxicity in political power is prescident...probably not equaled by many short of Hitler and Napolean...with one difference...the latter two were men of obvious genius (superb mental capability, despite their corrupted intent). The current tyrant poses an even graver danger because of his profound ignorance compounded by the abusive insecurity of the conservative mindset.

Add to this dilemma the adage that "what we resist persists" and we have a glaring explanation regarding how paranoid and overwhelmed with senses of impending doom many of us involved in the attempted forward movement out of the Iraqi war and the shredding of American Constitutional guarantees have contracted...myself included. By fighting this perceived enemy, we have instead bought into the dynastic tyranny which fuels it...and, whether we realized it or not, we have credence his power in our own minds in the process. The obvious result is the plummeting into paranoia and despair so many of us in the peace movement have incurred, especially since the war on Iraq began, albeit in the the face of overwhelming global sentiment against it. Basically, our resistance only bought us a ticket to the ignorance, insecurity and tyranny of the present administration.

Knowledge of the true essence and psychology of this Pathologic Conservative mentality can provide a powerful lever for our personal escape from the bondage of despair and into lives of productive hope and progressive change. It can lay the bulwarks to construction of governmental tenants which can prevent this debacle from repeating in future history. It may even, in the long run, provide the opportunity for growth on the part of the afflicted themselves...provided we do the obvious...that we give them progressive example by relinquishing our resistance and railing against current injustices (which is little more than a victim stance anyway) and grab the only bootstraps that can walk us out of this mess (which are our own) at start moving forward...away from this mess and into a constructive, progressive future in which a planet will be governed by a system which selectively shields us from rule by the paranoid and the abusive and restores the reins of power to the creative and compassionate aspects of the human spirit...the one which understands the world, revels in nature, sees no separation between a child and a redwood and can produce valued products which support the environmental symbiosis instead of ransacking and isolating it...which is the unfortunate destiny of any culture which tolerates dominant, pathologic conservatism.

We need carry forward from this only one precept...that is that conservatism is based on retrogressive fear and that, whatever we decide to do, we cannot substantiate that backward force by resisting or credencing it with our attention or fear.

The Conservative, Conformist mentality (versus the Progressive Naturalist) as the fundament creating the cycle of empire and its demise.

The dichotomy of mentalities in human nature (which is, of course, only a handy oversimplification) may go a long ways in explaining how we got here, what is happening, why and what to do about it.

There is a progressive attitude toward the universe and life which contains the transcendent intellect. This is a spiritual function which witnesses nature and surrounding events to a human life with respect and reverence. It seeks to, and eventually does, understand the processes and intricate ballances....finds niches and symbiotic relationships which allow man to thrive without destroying other creatures and consequently creates a fulfilling, spiritually resplendent and sustainable human culture in balance with the biosphere. This is the fundamental mentality of most ancient (the conservatives would call them primitive) civilizations...many of which are noted for their intricate balance with natural forces and species developed often only with the experiences of thousands of years.

There is a conservative attitude toward the universe and life, originating in lack of understanding, fear and the consequent pathological need to create defense and stack up synthetic bastions of security against the inevitable disaster wrought by what is seen as the adversarial force the progressives would call nature. Conservatism necessitates conformity, because only out of conformity can come the organization necessary to create these defenses....cities, armies, industries, financial institutions and the like. Institutionalization, the logical conclusion of conservatism and conformity only exists on the tenants of lies...myths concerning the justifications for the pillaging of other cultures, species and the biosphere for the sake of stacking up barriers and protections against the inevitable attack by a vicious nature.

The entirety of human history can be explained and understood on the basis of these two dichotomies...which dance in helical spiral around each other through the eons of time, one rising as the other wanes...then the balance changes again.

The current irony in American culture...which is that this most vicious attack based on quest for resource is happening at a time of unprecedented abundance in the culture...is in start contrast to that which produced the autocratic regimes of early Stalinism and the rise of Hitler, which were founded on a deprived and bankrupt, certainly downtrodden population base.

The current phenomenon has little to do with deprivation. It is the natural outcome of psychotic obsession with self-protection...which is the addictive disease of the conservative bent.

All addiction can be seen as obsessive-compulsive thirst for dysfunctional substances which once rendered or promised to fill fundamental spiritual voids. Self esteem, shattered in youth, can be bandaged temporarily with the exhilaration of drugs, alcohol, sex, gambling, etc. Once that substitution is experienced and in the absence of any corrective information or source which can correct the original deficiency...an obsession for the substitute sets in, producing an insanely tenacious bonding with the substance which indeed will often kill the deficient persona which is addicted to it. Reasoning regarding the dilemma is seldom met with anything but denial...and a vicious defending of the righteousness of the sufferers right to his own poisons.

This is a formula which fits the current state of the American consciousness to a tee. It is based on a spoiled, insulated, consumer addicted society whose real dilemma is that it has long lost its touch with the land, the planet, the biosphere. Consequently, it can only have a relationship of fear with it. The knee jerk conservative response to that fear inducing prospect is to stack up more substance, even at the expense of the lives of innocent women and children...who are hopefully kept at least half a planet away while they're slaughtered. Confronting that behavior as unchristian or un-American is met with the characteristically vicious and defensive self-righteousness of addictive denial. Voila, the American conformist ultraconservative "christian" right.

Any drug and alcohol councilor or long-term sober member of addictive recovery programs will testify to the near bulletproof nature of denial in the addict prior to their complete disintegration and attaining a productive bottom. (A productive bottom here refers to one which produces turnaround changes in consciousness...not just complaints and whining).

On the level of the progressive/conservative dichotomy, the conservative in end-phase addictive disorder cannot be talked miraculously or with any sort of reason into suddenly releasing their security blankets and developing a respectful, non-fearing, humility based and consequently spiritually wholesome relationship with the planet, its biosphere, the environment and the rest of humanity. They are petrified, invested in their protections, panicked out of their minds and probably not capable of that level of reasoning inherently anyway.

The lesson of the addictive bottom/recovery cycle is that the guacamole here is probably about to hit the wall and anyone who stands in its way will get splattered...reasoning with snowballing globs of guacamole is probably the best formula to being sucked into its destructive tail wind anyway...which has certainly been born out in the current despondency, exasperation and despair most of us feel having recently attempted to bring the administration and planet into the light of humanism and reason.

If all of this is true, then, just as in the instance of the terminal alcoholic whose last threads of life are unraveling, the ironically best thing for all sane bystanders to do is stand aside, turn it over to the universe, get out of the way and plan for what to do with the pieces. It's a sad fact, but none-the-less systematically born out, that most terminal alcoholics and drug addicts do not survive the bottom. However, some do. Many codependents...those sick enough to try to float this sinking ship...go down with it. That is our choice and probably the only effective choice we have here.

The addiction of consumption driving the current hierarchy and recent usurpation of all effective forms of governance in the hands of the now criminally corrupted multinational corporations, financial institutions and the puppetry of government will follow this scenario as the helix of progressive/conservative dominance in this culture twists through its inevitable zenith of failed protectionism fueled by the guaranteed futility of any attempts of humanity to insulate or stack product up as a defense against (and at the expense of) the environment which created that life form in the first place and upon which it obviously depends...despite its love for the belief that its intellect makes it superior to nature itself...which is the most devastating form of insanity man can produce.

What we call empire is the equivalent of that heady phase of cocaine addiction when the drug has become daily, the thrill is overwhelming and the disasters are not yet at hand. Trying to reason with anyone...or any culture...at this phase is truly trying to reason with insanity. Empire is the phenomenon of disease...but there is power in understanding that disease. It gives us the formula for productive action, the prescription for hope and the light for finding the way out.

Grappling with the conservative plummet diverts energy from the progressive track, which desperately needs all the energy it can muster to foster healthier coexistence with a wobbling biosphere.

Detaching from the destruction and letting it smash itself to bits not only prevents the progressive energy from being wasted...siphoned off by the Bushes and the Cheneys...but it frees it to be applied where its needed...to a wobbling biosphere needing help and toward the creation of the next turn of the helical spiral when once again the vibrance of natural law and resonance between species and the welfare of the planet as well as the higher functions of humanity will come back into their day...which is inevitable.

The question we face today is not whether the Bush era of American insanity and autocratic fascism can be stopped...because it can't...indeed it shouldn't....but what it is that we can begin creating today that will be made competent, viable and complete to take effect after the guacamole of right-wing fanatic conservatism has been scraped from the interminable walls of time on which it will without uncertainty splatter.

What you will also find, I believe, if you give this rationale a try and begin using this scenario as a pattern of daily action is that not only does reason dawn, sanity reappear, but also hope begins to permeate and the healthiest of all human acts starts its effect...and that is to be placing effective positive, progressive, environmentally sound, humanistically viable acts back into the universe in which we live.

We go up and over the top of despondence with the transcendence of progressive action. We formulate and enact today the entities of diverse transcendent governance. In this way we float. And we win.

Otherwise, what you resist persists.

 

Dealing with the fear, the paralysis, the outrage and the despair

Text on the personal level aspects of this crisis follow in detail. But the immediacy of the impact of what has already visibly happened, compounded by this even more potentially abysmal synopsysis concerning the depth and significance of what is really going on is or has brought many of us (indeed all of us with the courage and intelligence to see) to emotional and spiritual crisis...especially in the face of now intentionally infuriated masses who have been propagandized into considering us traitors and cowards...and pose the real personal threats of violence and retaliation ...not from the government, but from our own communities at the governments bequest.

Having lived a life of paranoid neurosis, doom saying, negative thinking, victim mentality and cynicism...at last a condition in human history in which my talents flourish. If you fit any one of those adjectives, welcome...we have at last come to familiar ground and have something to contribute....that's because we are already experts at living with all these dilemma. The false or unmanifest scenarios we feared in our past which never manifested were simply training episodes to prepare us for the present.

The myriad conversations I've had weekly in connection with the peace movement have turned from the tentative optimism and indignation prior to the war on Iraq to abject terror and depression following it...mostly in the face of the now graphically demonstrated principle that there are no effective reins of control or balances left tethering a now overtly fascist autocracy in control of the government.

If we succumb to paralysis we sign our prescription for a hideous withering and death. The tentacles of darkness and futility which are generated deliberately and daily in the cabinet of the white house and broadcast through the corporate media will strangle all those it can grasp or do not yet know how to wiggle free.

The antidote for this dilemma and the first step out of this victimization is unlikely, but profoundly effective...whatever your personal paranoia and fear is today...surrender to it.

Fear is not real. It exists only in our imaginations...although it insists on its own reality and has the capacity if given credence to paralyze and eventually erode us into darkness.

Just as in the futility of fighting the present regime, resisting fear is futile..even counterproductive. What you resist persists. By fighting or running or arguing or media saturating ourselves we give our power to the dark forces and they thrive.

Many times, beginning years ago, I learned to diagnose when I was operating from fear...which in itself is no easy task unless practiced..often necessitating help, which might be a good idea for all of us now. I would deliberately sit myself down in quiet, conjure up the worst of the fear, relax myself and then own it...let it pass through me. I would not leave that meditation until it had ravaged my psyche and left.

It turns out that fear cannot harm us...contrary to the most impelling knee jerk reaction we have to it, which is to either buckle or run.

Fear is an apparition. It has power in direct proportion to the amount we resist it...feed it...harbor it. That's what we're doing when we saturate ourselves with negative media, rants and railings against the inequities. Becoming quiet, letting it pass through, dealing with the worst releases that fear to go along its way without us and sets us free to use our energy productively.

The problem is seldom the fear itself, but the resistance we stack against dealing with it.

What is your fear? Is the CI(A at your door, are your rights violated, is the media all lies, is the government turning dangerous, are your neighbors getting ready to lynch you, is the bomb about to go off?

Sit with them quietly. Live through them. Let them pass through your psyche. If we're going to die, we're going to die. Our fears will not dictate or predict that. If it is our destiny, the only real alternative we have is to deal with that reality when it comes and gracefully. We cannot stop it. So our fear has no function...except in the hands of Ashcroft and Rumsfeldt...where it becomes a weapon with which to debilitate the progressive consciousness and its productive actions.

Inevitably, I can withstand the sensation of allowing the aberrations of paranoia to pass through me...once I recognize them and face them with humility and peace. They usually don't even hurt. Often I laugh as I watch them vanish over the horizon behind me that I gave them such power. Almost immediately I become empowered with quiet, clear energy...and this is the critical time, because it is not enough to successfully utilize the buoyant freedom which can come from this fear-cleansing meditation...that energy must be put into effective personal action...and immediatly...in order for change to actually occur and to prevent my relapse back into the demonic paranoia or my weak defenses against the administrations next onslaught, because certainly there will be more and this battle will without doubt escalate.

This psychic armoring through invisibility is not only a powerful weapon...but possibly the only one we really possess outside of the progressive actions we take and their unpredictable results in time.

The situation is definitely plausibly grim. That is not paranoia. But the point remains that our only hopes of effective transcendence over it does not begin with our victimization by their generated fears and our resistant acquiescence. The first step in the creation of transcendent governance must be personal spiritual transcendence above the abysms of fear and doubt. It won't work to do this once and think the dilemma is resolved. This must be practiced daily into habit until it becomes the buoyant property of the progressive mentality...like the air-inflated water wings on the arms of a four year old...somebody better keep blowing them up.

 

 

the constitution was framed amidst rampant strikes and conflict. It structured a government which silently deselects the working classes from power by procedure in which only the affluent can afford to participate

Media has been bought by Corporations (including NPR) starting with Chronkite's stopping Vietnam and the Westinghouse/GE network takeovers-see specific discussion under concepts for changes below

The first sixties...what made them work...grassroots movement of consciousness that stopped a war...the music, the flare, the fun, the industries

The second sixties...global protest of Iraq attack

We stand now with an entire political and economic empire in shambles (the hunter thompson quote)

This is our opportunity to invent the transcendent system of governance, because nothing about the current one is working

the wholesale in-your-face dismantling of a 50 year legacy of environmental science and consciousness and a 230 year old experiment in democracy...all by the cancer of big business and greed.

Principles for the Solutions

There are a few principles which have risen over time to serve not as the solutions to problems themselves, but as good testing criterion or direction finders to indicate where a solution might be found or what values it should reflect once it' discovered. Here are some that might serve as a platform for criterion in our search for viable Systems of Transcendent Governance:

The solution to a problem cannot be found on the level on which the problem exists.

The now historic recent world-wide resurgence of peace activism and its failure to stop the initialization of global warfare by the Bush administration serve as graphic reminders of this tenant, which insists that problems can only be successfully solved when we rise to a level of consciousness significantly higher than that on which the dilemma exists. Much was learned about the truth and motives and history of the current regime by playing on their ballfield...but it is their ball-field. This principle would instruct us to stop doing that if we want realizable results we can sustain in time and watch with hope of effective remedy. Ironically (and thankfully) at least on a consciousness level, elevating ourselves is not that much of a challenge, given the level of consciousness on which the current system of governance now operates. The dilemma for most of us, however, comes with the confrontation on a personal level that ultimately we produced this disaster and only through changing ourselves will we ever be ready to start with the changes in the system of global governance circumstances now demand. The bright side of that dilemma, is that now we have no alternative to supersede our current levels of consciousness from the personal and the national (selfishness, consumerism, patriotism) to the global scale...the scale of humanity itself...and the welfare of the biosphere on which its existence dangles. But that is where this tenant would insist that the solution lies.

To any set of problems, a solution exists.

This is one of the most optimistic, positive tenants exemplifying the buoyancy and transcendence of the human imagination I know. It is encountered consistently in Architectural Design, which can often become bewildering in the number of demands a project can inflict and the number of ways anything we create can fail. The tenant, however, reminds us that our perception is dualistic in nature...it sees problems...it sees solutions. If one exists, then so does the other. It's guaranteed. We are well armed if we enter an era to grapple with the overwhelming or seemingly impossible with this principle at the front of our minds. The current global situation is a challenge, not a sentence of doom. We have the capacity to find the solution...that is inherent. The solution exists (in fact, many solutions exist)...that is guaranteed. Often, belief in the opposite (which we call futility) leads to the statement, "well, there's nothing I can do about it." which is patently in error and actually nothing but a flimsy excuse for inaction.

What you resist persists.

Many of us now realize that fighting the current regime in its long-ago-concocted enterprise may have done nothing more that empower it. Certainly it tied us to the anger, fear and victimization which many of its architects intended. To resist the current power is to give it ours. That doesn't mean that nothing can be done. It does mean that what will be effective won't be just fighting it. This principle combines with the one discussed above indicating that solutions can only be found by attaining levels of consciousness which supersede that on which the problem exists...which indicates the need for transcendence...or rising above...rising above the problem, rising above the resistence...regaining our own power, focusing on understanding the roots of the dilemma, seeing the part in it we play, constructing the solutions and putting them into reality. We cease fighting and start working. In that realm comes sanity. This is the antidote that has lead many of us out of the crisis of victimization, futility, anger and despair.

We created this situation. We can also fix it.

This is the puppy that plugs the hole in the finger-pointing dike, points it back toward the source (we are the source) and in the process regains us the power to rectify it.

The corporate-capital empire now diabolically bent on empire and militarization exists only by virtue of the fuel of personal consumerism. Name one multinational corporate abuser that doesn't make its money by selling the products we buy...energy, goods, fast-foods, toxic clothing.

We created that machine with our charge cards and our checkbooks. They are just what happens when you turn low-competence humanoids loose with your loot.

If we change, they will. If our consumerism goes away, so will they. If we don't, they won't.

As hard as the pill of self-recrimination is to swallow, if we do, a powerful gift lies as the just reward on the other side....we regain control over the situation. It makes our actions effective.

General Electric and Texaco do not give a snit about your political views regarding Iraq. When you buy their appliances and gasoline, they count that as a vote for world dominance and act accordingly. They are not watching our lips move, they're listing to our spending habits talk.

I take responsibility for my consumerism. I learn about, acquire and utilize sustainable alternatives (this is the basis of the Smart Shelter Residency program system). I gain freedom. And the problem goes away.

If I don't, it won't. The number of peace marches I buy 30 gallons of Texaco gasoline to get to will (now obviously) not amount to a hill of beans at the corporate boardroom table of Haliburton, which is obviously the center of global governance today.

To find a solution, you must first gather all of the problems.

At times like this it can become next to impossible to convince a beleaguered and bewildered population that the answers lie in digging up the rest of the problems. Any architect will tell you that if you base a building design on only part of the problems that the project contains...the rest of the problems will certainly find you...and the design will most certainly fail. On the other hand, if we are thorough in our excavation...if we see that there are grave problems with the American system of governance current...and we delve even deeper (instead of running to hide) until we know for certain we have reached the last and the bottom...then the principle discussed above which guarantees that for any set of problems there is a solution can take hold and provide the buoyancy to float us out of the situation. If, on the other hand, if we pretend that this culture doesn't have a problem with sustainability, which is rooted in our own consumerism and ignorance of the biospheric facts...then no solution we pretend to find will ever survive the test of time. If, however, we face the current excavation and examination challenge with courage and dedication, we will indeed arrive at a point where we will know with intuitive certainty that we have found the last of the culprits and from that point we will then move into the sunlight of evolution...and without doing that thoroughly we will not move forward at all.

The holographic model indicates that the solution for the planet will be the same as the solution for the self...the patterns are identical, only the scale changes

In a hologram, each particle of the whole contains the image or pattern of the entire whole. That can be a wad to wrap your brain around. Another way to see that is that whatever the pattern for the solution for the planet is, it will be the same pattern as the one that produces a healthy life for the individual. An even simpler way to condense this concepts is the statement: "It starts at home, it starts with me." If this is true, then it also follows that if something is wrong with the government or the planet, then that same thing is wrong with me. This often seems improbable and unlikely, it is, however, irritatingly consistently true. In it is also sown the pathway out of dilemmas like this...because what it also means is that if I change those patterns in me, there will be a corresponding change in the governemt and the globe. Impossible? How do you know if you haven't done it? The specifics are myriad and consist of what you will find below.

If you ignore anything long enough, it will go away.

This usually appears to those not familiar with its power, on first contact, to be flippant and unlikely as a solution...even irresponsible. It is anything but. Most of us are control freaks and insecurity riddled...many plagued by constant bouts of over-responsibility, which usually leads only to wasted time and energy directed at problems which, given their own time, will solve themselves.

It's a gonzo way of saying "God or the Universe will take care of it." Which can be an excuse for procrastination. On the other hand, using this principle can enable us to disconnect from something like the Rasputin Cabinet of the present administration and direct our efforts toward, intelligent, productive, transcendent things we do have some control over...leaving the empire with enough rope to hang itself...which it certainly, eventually will.

On a personal note, this principle came into my life 20 years ago and has remained because of its uncanny effectiveness...including removal of a $30,000 tax bill I could not then, nor would I ever be able to pay...ignored it long enough, sure enough, it went away.

The test, of course, is the amount of courage you have to practice this and the length of your attention (or should we say "in-attention" span).

 

Principles of the Eastern Martial Arts (or "give them enough rope, they'll hang themselves")

Obviously, the reigns of money, power, media and military retain with the corrupt these days. To fight that is futile at best and dangerous ultimately and probably....besides being a strategic waste of energy.

Here, the principles of environmental warfare (dealt with in the Smart Shelter Residency programs and resource files in more depth) come in handy. We can only win by being smarter, which given the current opponent, isn't that much of a challenge. But the most efficient method of victory obviously does not lie in the numbers, as demonstrated prior to the Iraq invasion. It lies in finesse, understanding the momentum and patterns of the adversary and allowing them to destroy themselves by simply redirecting their violence toward their own demise...kung foo, jujitsu, karate. These principles allow 105 pound dainty women to down 275 pound attackers with a laugh. Herein lies our hope.

The actual tactics are way too involved for discussion here, but we need seriously to keep this principle in mind. It holds the key to victory. It also requires a dose of faith to effect...we have to believe in the ultimate just reward the universe holds for the fundamentally unjust...of which we find ourselves now not at all in short supply.

The Synergetic Solution.

Bucky Fuller was as close to god as I'd ever hope to come and he left us with this most astoundingly practical key to the infinitely expanding and benevolently loving nature of at least the better part of our universe. He coined the phrase "Synergetic Resonance" or "Synergy" to describe a phenomenon experienced only by the most diligent of inventors (or obsessed...depending on what you see). What Synergy is is a condition which can only be arrived at when all the problems and characteristics of a situation are known and when, usually at the last conceivable moment of endeavor, a miracle happens and a magic ingredient added results in our getting back much, much more than the total of what was invested in the work. This isn't fantasy or idealism. This is a solid and recognized principle of physics now, thanks to Bucky. It is real and it works. In the ultimate extent, it is probably our real hope. Not only can we find the solutions guaranteed provided we do the work necessitated with the attitudes indicated by the principles above...but if we do it right, the result will be an explosion into a level of human experience (global resonance and consciousness) than mankind has not in the entirety of its existence witnessed. If you're like me, this is just what I need to hear right now. It is also the bottom line...it is the founding principle for a System of Transcendent Governance.

 Art is the Indicator that Synergy has been Reached

In the myriad research experiments with Native Lifestyles and Natural Building over the past years, a nearly invariable principle has surfaced...when the ultimately magical combination or solution has been found, it will produce the myriad unexpected parallel solutions indicated by Bucky's concept of synergy, but it will also produce a result of stunning beauty and aesthetic. That beauty...that art, which is the signature of the ultimate solution...is the litmus test for having found the best there is.

This principle also seems to work in reverse...and leads to the principle which follows here...if you are searching for the right solution, start by finding the aesthetic...or the art. In it, you will also find the synergy.

Ultimately, if it isn't fun it's not worth doing and probably wouldn't work anyway.

The catchword "sustainability" upon which we have hung so much these days involves more of a question that just whether or not the planet will run out of resources before we run out of needs. It also asks the question...will we run out of zeal before sustainability is achieved.

If you want to insure the durability of a movement through time in order to assure its success, the best way is to make it fun. It took 10 years to stop the Vietnam war. The battle against the current military regime is not yet one year old. What made the 60's work...what enabled the durability of the peace protests to sufficient impact and scale that made them effective ultimately was that the 60's were a bunch of fun....parties, music, marches, movements. People dropped out of corporate careers just to have fun.

That's the magic ingredient...fun. And it's the one we're missing today. All our peace marches around the Iraq thing...all the harangues on Bush are so serious. Just now we're starting to see the humor...the "United States of Aggression" 9-11 dollar bills with the Bush mug shot on it...the music at the peace rallies. If we are to sustain this momentum, we've got to find ways to make it a kick.

I asked Pete Seeger once what the formula he used for his quest to clean up the Potomac. He said, "Gary, it's simple...good people, good food and good music." I said, "That's it?" He said, "Yup, that's it."

So what are you sitting there reading this for? Have you raised any hell today?

No one else is going do it for you.

No brainer here, but so poignant. As the Hopi Elders say: "Do not look outside yourself for the leaders."

The Power Base We Do Have for Effecting Change

It's easy enough to conclude at the current point of affairs that we do not possess power sufficient to effect significant change. This is not the case. What follows here is a brief description of the power we do have and how they can be brought to bear on the situation

We control the services in our communities and nation

We control the investments and much of the capital (stocks)

We control who watches the media

We control the consumer markets

We control the workforce (the arguments for cutting back or dropping out)

We control the tax revenues (strategies for tax payment redirection when they're being misused)

We control the local, effective political regime...whether recognized or not.

(notes to be developed) We control the services of this nation...because we, as citizens, provide them. We control the wealth of this nation as citizens...because we create it. We control the politics of this nation because it is a democracy by foundation and definition and we can take it back. We control the media generated corporation initiated fear because we as individuals choose what we focus on and where our energy goes...and that's all fear is...repressed energy....and it is certainly true that "We are free". If we don't feel it, its because we gave it away. We control the markets these corporate predators exploit. If the market disappears, so does the predator. The choice is ours. We are the power.

 

Outline for the Solution- General Concepts for Change

Nowhere to go...we're out of fresh continents

You have a choice today...fight a proven corrupt system or invent the one to replace it

Win by thinking bigger, longer and over the top

The antidote to despair and victimization

A transcendence right here

The investment in the long run

We can't wait for tomorrow...and we have nowhere else to go

"Empires collapse by over extension"- tom hayden

The winners are those who created what gets left over

Governance in which the least talented float...and the antidote

the smartest people are not the aristocrats, moneyed or businesses, they are the artists...we escaped monarchy, now we must escape corporate capitalism and small town domination by insecure business interests...conversation with film industry guy fm cb...not the criterion for intelligence.

we have an economy and government geared to empower and protect the business and money interests...its obsolete...now we need one that protects the resources and the environment

Citizenship is not a right by use...demonstration of responsibility

Access to rule by the highest level of consciousness

Placing the environment and welfare of the planet first is no longer a debate.

Identifying the players

Ascending groups and locales

Government and law are effective not on the basis of who is in charge, but in who is believable.

Finding the highest standards possible

Insisting on their transcendence

Empowering the Highest Levels of consciousness

Staying beneath the corporate radar (and the governmental one)

Singularly, one of the most self destructive aspects of any viable or recommendable changes in systemotology has historically been their premature ascendance to recognition or enactment. This invariably does two things: First, it forces its growth and expansion prior to its seasoning and adaptation to larger levels of use...which builds a shakey structure, albiet on a possibly good set of plans. As good as the design may be, hasty construction missing the major pillars of suport only time, trials and seasoning can produce will result in a structural collapse. The second failure point is the premature volatality of change which threatens the structure currently in place, which by the time its corruption and dilution force its obsolescence is probably totally in the hands of the psychotic conservative mass. This is characteristically a group (as discussed elsewhere in this text) pathalogically isolated from change and the interface with nature, bent on isolation of its continuity with accumulation of material and the illusion of power...invariably at the cost of subliminally excruciating frustrations resultant from the sacrafice of all personal intuition, spiritual ascendancy, revered individuality and the growth inducing nature of volatality...which change invariably threatens to provide.

A systemic transcendance cannot occur without the threat and eventually the anniahlation of this class of repressed, conformist conservatives. Any system which rears its head to the extent of posing viable threat to the invested system is quickly eliminated by the status quo...often simply fueled by the leadership tapping the pain of repression extant in the repressed populace and pointing a rationalizing finger at the new invader and convincing the agonized masses that the innovation and its presenters are the cause of their agony. The crucifixion of christ, the german blitz kreig invasion of europe, the anniahlation of the american indian and the bush administrations's corrupt invasion and overthrow of the sovereign nation of Iraq without provocation are examples graphic enough of the power of this principle fueled by the internal frustrations and fears of empowered conservative heirarchies refusing succession of superior systemologies and choosing instead to destroy them.

American and multinational corporations and their governmental lapdogs...the CIA, the corrupted regulatory agencies and the legislative/administrative money funnels to the corporate coffers are the systemologies most threatened by transcendance. Their capacities to destroy...silently and off the screen if possible...frontally and with impunity if not...are legend.

Never the less, just as in all the other hurdles to transcendant systems, the overstory and successional governance must be dreamed, tested and constructed. The key to accomplishing this, just as in the application of the threatening overwleming weight and power of the corrupt is used to the advantage of change through the principals of the eastern martial arts in environmental warfare...the incapacity of the corporate structure to detect, focus on and destroy low level, insidious, scattered, illusive, disbersed and clandestine changes which occur at rates beyond the myopic attention span of the corporate neurtocs (which is actually not that difficult to exceed) is understood and carefully watched in order to guage the rate of safe progress in enactment of the transcendant systems in order to avoid their destruction or the cost of overt battle against an overwelming (albiet bloated) oppressor.

In the ultimate extent, the battle and balance are probably functions of ego. After years of repression and frustration, the isolation and criticism encountered by the true innovators, the excruciating agony of exertion and the maddening demand for consistency and commitment over time...falling lure to the heady thrill of first recognition, acquiescence and success are very difficult to endure...equivalent to remaining calm and intranscient staring into the eyes of the medusa. But this, as veiled as it is, is probably one of the fundamental survival tests for the transcendant system...that it be buried, hidden, or removed from public site on discovery and first success. This allows it to refocus its growth below ground until the root system is well developed.Pacing its growth simply strenghtens its trunk and limbs. It's critical that the headiness of sucess feeding the ego be turned back into the soil as fertilizer and integrity.

The one aspect of a transcendant system the corporate and governmental protectionists cannot combat is grassroots asscendancy and patience over time. This may mean generation for any particular systemology to evolve and supplant the decayed predecessor.This may not come as heartening news to those impatient to see it come about in their own lifetimes...but then the reason behind that demand is invariably egotistical in the first place and therefore would predestine anything that did succeed in the shorter time frames to demise and futility.

Taking offices of the fading regime

Do not invest in the ineffectual

Alternatives to victimization

"What you resist persists...working against a corrupted system is futile"

Trying to asceed or be heard by a broken system is a waste of time

Is it eliteism...Athens, Rome

The evolving media-maybe it has more to do with what we expect than we know

Know anyone who doesn't suffer from media overload? I don't, myself included and I don't watch any television, will not listen to NPR (much less any of the other bought off CIA propaganda machines we are all required to pay for), don't read newspapers and barely subscribe to digital media sources...which are obviously the way out of the paper consumption which leads the worlds driving force for deforestation and chokes our landfills with uncomposted corporate drivel (note my objective, detached and calm opinion on this subject)

We welcomed the advent of the community newspaper at our cabin door in the late 1800's as welcome relief from the unbearable monotony of living in the untrammeled American Wilderness and paradise. Gossip about the neighbors without the walk or horse ride...progress, by crackey. Then the radio, then the television...now the frantic onslaught of corporate-competitive shrieking nonstop advertising and propaganda soaked news.

At least we had an independent media in the 60's, albeit dripping with detergent commercials and swept-wing Dodges...the first annual throwaway automobiles. Then Walter Chronkite went to Vietnam, came back and announced that the war was corrupt. He retired soon there after, startlingly prematurely and CBS and NBC sold to Westinghouse and General Electric corporations....the worlds first and second weapons manufacturers. Since then, nausium has reigned and wars proliferated.

Multinational corporations started buying up the newspaper chains, even in small town America...like Montrose, Colorado (my home sweet Neanderthal home) in which the Montrose Mainly Depressed has gone from an overtly inept owner/editor monopoly dominated by a publicly exposed child molester to a suspiciously CIA-tainted corporate chain exporting its rotund profits out of state (to a destination no one seems to understand) and whose editor now deletes at his will any references to "depleted weapons uranium" and direct mentions of the Bush atrocities from letters to the editor prior to publishing, because "that's his job".

The bastion of public radio in its inception as the source for all that commercial broadcast was spineless and too bought off to broadcast began its pathetic erosion at the hands of NPR which has been overtaken by the same CEO's now sitting on the board of the Corporation for Public Broadcast who also sit on the boards of the Multinationals that NPR would hopefully watchdog. Two operatives trained by the U.S. Army of Intelligence (barely distinguishable from the CIA) have full time positions in the editing room of NPR (this according to Amy Goodman of Democracy Now...one of our only hopes for oppositional, intelligent journalism.)

The NPR strategy has been brilliant...erode the integrity, flush the loud mouths, inject the morons and go to a formula of vacuous, feel-good trash that will produce the illusion (in the brainless) of having heard the news...while so infuriating and alienating the American intelligence that they will abandon public radio all together and it can be silently canned and defunded down the road...because they know... as we the thinking part of America knows..public radio was the only island of sanity in U.S. media...the only threat to their empire.

The brilliance of this change in format is that so many have swallowed it, and you the supporter of KVNF or KOTO or whatever your community radio is...are paying for these goons to do it. KVNF pays between 15 and 30 thousand dollars a year (depending on which story you buy) for NPR. Profit generating propaganda machines for the corporate/CIA monopoly. Nice maneuver guys...don't we also pay for the CIA and corporations too? Is this double taxation?

So, lets cut to some solutions here and get beyond the finger pointing and the whining.

Isn't it time to take a good look at where we are as Americans with media. This habit we have of greeting whatever yellow journalistic rag arrives at our cabin doorstep with glee should have ended. But if it shows up there, we cart it inside and feel some obligation or need to read it. Its printed with toxic ink (now out gassing on our dining room table) and is printed on dead trees, living only weeks ago in an era in which we need the trees standing because they are the antidote to the human pollution creating global warming.

Following this respiratory toxification, our minds are then polluted with garble and giberish...all bent on propping up plummeting consumerism.

Voila...after you realize the same problems with radio and tv...we get the digital news services...moveon.org, grist magazine, local newsletters, digital publications by our favorite environmental heroes...all of which enter our lives, even digitally, with some imbedded obligation to be read immediately. That fries the brain of the new world elite and in damned short hurry.

Why the urgency? Why the obligation? Experiments not with the corrupted media itself, or its more independent and hopeful digital replacements can be quite interesting. This thing called media burn out or information overload has an origin not in the obvious before us, but in our cultural concept of and expectations surrounding awareness itself.

This "a dose a day" concept of news which happened with the daily newspaper, the nightly news, has probably passed out of meaningfulness in our lives...it has certainly gained in its impacting wallop with the increase in technological efficiency of its delivery systems...cable, satellite, networks, big trucks. Unplugging from it will go a long ways to freeing up your time and de-escalating your stress level...two prime ingredients in regaining a quality natural lifestyle...you will find that you get everything you need to know...but in different, less stressful and more community-based ways. You don't need to miss or lose anything either...you just need a news technology that will store it until your ready or need it...which is something we'll see is already developing...down the page a bit.

Why do I need a daily shot of news in the first place. Is my life missing something. Where does the obligation to read or hear it come from. What happens if I terminate the daily inoculation. (The prospect of ignoring the news can put the fear of god in many...it did me) What will I miss, how will I know.

But it is this expectation...in most of our cases..demand concerning this daily dosing that creates the information overload and also provides the media vehicle for government and manufacturer consumer and war propaganda we inadvertently swallow.

We would not need an antidote for the current sense of despair and futility currently infecting America if we hadn't swallowed the toxin in the first place.

Now this line of thinking is beginning to provide us with the formula for a transcendent definition and form for a new media.

I'll cut to the chase and simply inflict it on you...you can upchuck it later if it won't digest.

The new media is all digitally based...it does not ever see paper, ink, printing presses, huge corporate buildings with incarcerated advertising staff, delivery trucks, doorsteps or rubber bands. It arrives at your computer as a digitally storable resource...with no landfill impacts should you chuck it and no storage requirements in physical space should you elect to store it.

I have an old ford van full of paper resource files for the natural building network...all paper and magazine clippings, which takes an afternoon to move and grows alarmingly every year...along with a digital resource file with digitally acquired clippings from my computer news services all stored on a hard drive exactly the same size as my wallet. The digital storage file contains three times the number of documents that the paper files do. I'm in the process of scanning all the paper documents into the digital file and then shredding the newsprint (and the file folders...and the filing boxes) into compost, which I put on my lawn as nutrient and to same water...to become the soil base to grow new trees...which is where it should have stayed in the first place...and would have except for my media/news addiction. (well, that what it is isn't it...the 6 o'clock news addiction, the daily newspaper fix). Then I can sleep in my van on hot summer nights again.

But, now Smart Shelter has initiated a program which encourages, supports and lists media transitioning to paperless digital forms as an ongoing lifestyle program and environmental/consumerism initiative.

What has evolved with the paperless/ digital media program from Smart Shelter is a recommendation that publications...lets say for instance...the weekly small town resort paper the Crested Butte News...offer me a reasonably priced annual subscription in which I receive only an email weekly with one or two sentence summaries of their current stories and a clickable link to that story if I want to see it. This way I get a quick scan of what's going on in Crested Butte (digital headlines) and the freedom to gain deeper information if time and desire permit.

Also part of that subscription is what is now becoming the obvious antidote to digital media overload...the searchable archive file. That is, that list of one line headline descriptions goes into a huge historic archive file, available and searchable on their website filed by category or subject.

Now, instead of succumbing to the knee-jerk obligation of daily digital superfluous news dosing, I have a list in my favorites of the best news sources in my field and when a subject...say for instance..."water uses on the Colorado River" comes into immediacy and need in my life, I click on the good old Crested Butte News web site because Steve Glazer, easily Western Colorado's lead water environment guru, writes for them. I go into their archives. There are all of Steve's articles listed in chronological order under the subject "Water issues" and I can search through and open any one of those documents as relevant, digitally cutting and clipping quotes and facts I need, compiling my own text or report...instantly...with no constrictions on space, time or mood...and no tree died and antiquity will be preserved.

Note what happened here, because I now have a technological change which allows me to redefine my cultural expectations about news and correct my media overload consumer habits painlessly...simply by changing my daily routine...and cultural definition of news.

That information did not need to impinge on my already packed life until it was needed. I'm relieved of the daily hassle and stress of reading the newspaper. But I feel security in knowing that not only is the Crested Butte News a source of vibrant community watch dogging information, but now it has become an historical archive treasury for the community.

What this digitization does for the cost of operation for a small town newspaper, or environmental publication is incredible. We waited for 30 years for a decent alternative to the Montrose Mainly Depressed in vain because the quarter of a million dollars the presses required to print paper publications gave them an effective monopoly. In fact, the one promising competitor that did appear for a time and gave good independently generated journalism which started turning overs lots of rocks in this putrid little stream of corrupt small town politics went broke and out of business because of the spinelessness of the owners/editors, the pressures from the real estate industry cartel that produced a huge chunk of its advertising cash stream,and the huge capital investment and operating expenses connected to paper production news.

It might very well still be alive and well today had it been an all digital publication from the outset...except of course for the spinelessness of the owner and editor...little can be done about that...composting I suppose...progressive cannibalism (those are subjects for other discussions, however).

The viability of these digital journalistic resources are already redefining journalism. The capacity for anyone with a computer and an issue to generate an independent information source is infusing fresh blood and energy into available American media at blinding rates. It is basically, singularly responsible for the incredible uprising, dissemination of information and coordinated movements of the peace activism which visited Bush's announcement of the terror he and his Rasputin cabinet have now inflicted on the middle east.

This information technology change has hugely vast potential for freedom of the press, release from corporate media dominance, culling of the CIA media propaganda machine...and finally...freedom from the tyranny of consumer paranoia inflicting advertising. We can now do the absolutely necessary...to sever once and for all all business interest and consequent domination of our journalistic media.

This would be a great place to interject a little entrepreneurial note, for those of you who might be journalistically inclined, politically progressive and a bit venturesome. The entirety of the success of these systems of transcendent governance (and the economic landscape which supports them) is to restore free enterprise to a corrupted regime of corporate capitalism (and there is a huge difference between the too...in fact, they are mutually exclusive).

The antidote to the pathetic state of small town newspapers delineated above is to create new ones....duhhhh! But now, this is not a pipe dream. It is a realistic necessity. One person, two or three...maybe a combination of a social busybody with a flare for writing, a shmooze-and-sell sponsor solicitor, a business guru...could launch a high end intellectual news service on a shoe string to supersede the corrupt news print debauchers serving the lowest common denominator and the real estate industry, conservative financial magnets and the christian right...which is the basic condition of all small town paper-based journalism in most of America today.

They could do this by reporting the news, soliciting annual subscriptions, publishing digitally, emailing linked summaries to subscribers, archiving their articles on a searchable web site and selling not the obnoxious advertising which has infiltrated printed media, but links to the websites of sponsoring interests...businesses, organizations, whatever. This gives us a daily, weekly, monthly...whatever...email one-liner summary (together with an events calendar) of what's going on in the community with links to the full stories if that's what we want and access to the web pages of like minded businesses and services...all at very little capital investment...just some sweat,imagination and legwork. It is through the establishment of enterprises such as these that the progressive mind in combination with the benevolent technologies ( for certainly there are myriad malevolent ones as well) will create the successor economy and infuse the minds of the deserving above-average-IQ progressives with the real information they need to reinstall democracy to a gutted republic. It is also the pole vaulting opportunity for the frustrated risk-takers with the courage to shuck their corporate jobs and start doing something for the world, instead of milking it to death and having to lie about it on a daily basis.

Well, that should be enough to paint a vivid picture regarding the changes in media. We need not, nor could we ever, restore television, radio and newspapers to democracy, integrity and sanity, much less unfettered...non business biased community service. They have been eaten and are now deeply deposited down the stinking digestive tract of American corporate diabolitry and nasty little farts in American culture like the real estate industry.

We need only protect freedom of the internet (a threat we must give grave vigilance to) in order to provide the springboard for restoration of vibrance and sanity to media...this is how. The beauty is, its already happening, much of it...indeed more than you need to read...is already available and the searchable archiving function is bound to follow. The rest of what we need will come from affordability, instantaneous distribution and reputation...which is the market-competitive nature which insures health and integrity in all of our economic and cultural structures.

Here there is vast hope. It gives you a voice and an audience too. Smart Shelter network has a paperless digital initiative in developement...check out the website home page for leads at www.smartshelter.com or contact the network with links from that website for further info if you don't find what you need posted.

Don't pledge money to public radio stations that broadcast NPR. Call them during NPR programs during their pledge drives and tell them you'll donate if they remove this CIA/ corporate brain cancer from the last bastions of freedom's airwaves. Tell them Gary Duncan told you to. Kick butt...makes you feel good.

Along the line of further redefining and recreating media is the media that has come from the peace movement around the opposition to the war in Iraq. Myriad videos of independent origin and content not to be had anywhere else as well as several excellent lecture series...most notably the one Elizabeth Glick has produced (Out Loud Series...Telluride) with knowledgeable speakers has brought to us an in-depth knowledge of what is really going on in Washington that no newspaper ever would...and without the insults to our intelligence. Icing on the cake is that we get to ask the media/speaker questions...wow...a two way media...what a novel concept.

Smart Shelter established (and the work continues) a regional network of community forums at which can be shown the independent videos and presenters in each community. All the media we need in terms of awareness of what is really going on globally can come from networks similar to the one to be found on the Smart Shelter website. It is simply a listing and identification of regional members of each community who present public viewings and presentations from independent video/ film makers and presenters such as the slide show on Iraq with Sue Gray who will provide an unbiased and personal, intelligent perspective of events...rather than the corporate/military/CIA commercial media spin. That means even you can become an originator of media presentations and input. Instead of thinking we need to put a newspaper into our brains daily, how about a good, independent video or speech once a month and a real discussion at a get together with the rest of our community. Media health and reduction of overload...definatly better quality. Doesn't this make the Denver Post, now owned by a huge multinational corporation and obviously well bent toward flag-flapping something we just don't need any more, to say nothing of the millions of trees that it kills each year to bring you their used car sales ads...whether you wanted them or not?

Recap of its corruption

Elements surfacing from the peace movement

digitalization technology as the way out

The independent expressed perception-video and the internet

The nonprofessional media-sue gray, damacio lopez

Unplugging from the daily dose we've been programmed to receive (newspaper, the news staff, tv)

The freedom of gaining information when we're ready instead of on their schedule...searchable digital news sources and archives

the paper de-evolution...all digital

Gathering for community independent education, awareness...the regional network

Websites

The new heroes-amy goodman, moveon.org, mark cooper

The NPR, CIA nightmare...and we're paying for it

The future for independent, instantaneous, global, personal media...it's happening now

The Costa Rica Paradyme

We are the market...we are the services...we are the investors...its all a result of our consumerism

Reaching out to other countries...international media

The Tenants- Specific Recommendations for a new World Order

A political and economic system in which the best, instead of the worst, floats

Power and wealth only accumulate in a democracy through criminal acts.

Bioregionalism...the only workable political map for the environmentally conscious

The watersheds/ the continents

Divisions of the country...we've gotten too big

Karmic Systems of Punishment and remediation

Identification and Centralization of communities

We separated church and state...now we remove business from politics

Community Industries that obsolete Corporate deterioration

Proactive policies and laws that require sustainability

Empowering the United Nations and the World Court

Banning national manufacture of weapons and armies

Making it fun...what made the 60's work

Investment in the long-run

Ridding our communities of the military..recruiters, high school programs, propaganda

De-corporatizing our communities

Creating the illusion/ believability of authority

The new media...change your definition

The Energy Dilemma and Progressive Pricing

The irony of a planet obviously being depleted of its resources, an economy now obviously ransacked by the costs of defending (or usurping) resources belonging to others in the face of flagrant energy inefficiency embodied in the proliferation of "Bloat Barges" (those are the Hummers and the dually stretch monster pickups of Ford and others of late), rising electrical appliance addiction in the home, complete absence of heating and cooling efficiency standards nationwide and the gobbling of public lands to polluting and destructive coal bed methane natural gas drilling...now epidemic in the southwest....is that the solution to energy conservation and efficiency (two principles conservative money rakers consistently deride and despise...despite their obvious necessity)...is so damned simple. (Quite a sentence, huh?)

The irony that only the criminal could devise (for wealth and power only accumulate in a democracy through criminal acts) is that...at least in this neck of the woods...the more inefficient a home becomes, the more electricity a person uses...the cheaper the cost of it becomes. That's right...up to 1000 kilowatt hours of consumption per month ( I live on 250) you pay the going rate. If you install energy guzzling air conditioning, power hog refrigerators and the like...and consume over 1000 kilowatt hours, the rate gets cheaper...an incentive for waste. In fact...Delta Montrose Electric Association (the local energy mafia in this terrain) will even help you along the road of energy waste. If you buy one of there rebated electric hot water heaters from a local retailer, they give back what looks like a lucrative wad of cash to get you to plug it in. Because electric hot water heaters are one of the most inefficient uses of electrical power in the home...you're going to be giving them back their rebate "investment" in two to three months of higher power bills. For the estimated 20 remaining years of the water heater's life, you will be paying them through the nose...while 6 times the amount of solar energy that would be required to provide all of a properly designed home's energy needs...including hot water...is falling on my home every day...unused.

Does DMEA promote solar hot water? Nope. Does Tri-State Electrical Generation (their wholesale power supplier)? Nope. Could they get into the solar business and show a profit in research, development and installation of solar hot water? Yep. Would that save the planet? Yep. So why don't they do it? Why don't they move ahead into the twentieth century? (Yes, I know this is the twenty first century...but we've got enough problem getting them pulled kicking and screaming into the last one...god help us trying to get them into this one). There's one really good reason an ex-Tri-State employee pointed out during the battle for yet another federally funded and completely unnecessary power-line through a wad of irate citizen's back yards and view corridors...apparently (according to that source) most of the Tri-State and DMEA honchos own stock in the coal companies which fire the grid electricity they peddle you whether you need it or not. The more you cooperate with their global warming agenda (coal fired electrical generation is the number one reason for global warming) the easier they make it on you.

Good luck reforming a dinosaur (literally) industry. And the progressive solution, which also provides the neglected and intentionally sabotaged research, development and education funding for solar and conservation, is much simpler and easier to administer than a bunch of new standards and regulations the industry and public would only proceed to evade anyway.

It's a program called "Progressive Pricing"...in which waste produces discomfort for the purchaser....energy conscious people are rewarded and a portion of the energy industry revenues (not tax dollars) are dedicated to moving the dinosaurs into the age of the sun.

It works like this: when you sign up for power a determination is made of how many users exist in your household or business. At the end of the month, your total energy use is divided by the number of people receiving service...this tells us who the energy hogs are. Power bills are not calculated on the basis of a flat line curve which treats everyone equally...or in DMEA's case, rewards the energy hogs with a descending rate structure after they prove just how much coal they can squander. In Progressive Pricing...energy rates are based on how much each person uses per month and they escalate steeply once a point of inappropriateness is reached. It's a beautiful system, its adjustable, its fair and it accomplishes conservation of our resources automatically without any further law, regulation or enforcement. It's also already in effect in some of the hard hit areas of California following the energy industry's nasty agenda to hold the state up for ransom...which inadvertently created a crisis only conservation could control...and did.

Under Progressive Pricing, the "Bloat" consumers can keep their electric heaters in the driveway to melt snow they're too fat to shovel...they just have to pay for it. Those 10.000 sq ft trophy homes that are occupied in ski areas by corporate moguls (read thugs) for two months out of the year can use all the power they want...provided they pay a whopping wad for it. The excesses milked from the arrogant, ignorant and belligerent are used to provide ridiculously low (even free) energy services to those who build energy efficient homes and are conservative in their resource use. The curve is adjusted annually to provide about a 10% excess, which is applied locally via research grants and installation programs to develop and ramp up the fuel cells, solar, energy conservation programs, and passive/active solar design, etc.

This is sanity. The irony you may not be aware of is that under your current (DMEA/Tri-State) good-old-boys-down-at-the-coal-pit back scratching system reminiscent of the railroad tycoons and robber barons of the late 1800's is that part of every power bill you pay is used by these people to send lobbyists to Washington and Denver (if you live in Colorado) to lobby against global warming remedies like the Kyoto Accord, to prevent energy conservation and solar research funding and to elect autocratic fascists like "W" and his Rasputin cabinet. You are paying for this lobbying. You don't know it. Most of us would be abhorred if we knew what our power bill ends up whispering into the ears of Scott McInnis and Ben "Wrong-horse" Campbell (excuse the local jokes if you don't live in this area).

So you see, Systems of Transcendent Governance have to start with restructuring our personal consumption (Base Line Solar is a good starting point...part of the Smart Shelter Residency Programs), then we need industry reform like Progressive Pricing, then the slats supporting the current tyranny go away and so do the tyrants. You don't get one without all three. By working from the bottom up (beginning with personal consumption) revamping the government after the industry is reformed would happen almost automatically.

The roles played by electric companies like DMEA, their cohorts and the real muck rakers who build the power plants and insist on their right to pollute like Tri-State, and the most diabolical of all..the people who make the power plant turbines, transformers and lines like General Electric and Westinghouse, who are the largest weapons manufacturers in the world and now own essentially all of America's commercial television media

The personal responsibility we all play in propping up this system is balanced by the tools we have to change it...personal energy conservation, solar conversions starting with the low-cost Base-Line Solar techniques, getting our homes off grid, or partially that way, becoming active in power politics and programs like Progressive Pricing (currently Green Power programs are making huge dents in this dilema...Community Office of Research Efficiency in Aspen is the national leader)

Don't have the time, you say. Do you have the time to shop for another planet? (More on Progressive Pricing and Base Line Solar Technologies as well as solar energy service providers in Western Colorado along with builders specializing in passive solar design with natural building materials and techniques are in the Smart Shelter Resource Files and some are available on the Smart Shelter Web Site at: www.smartshelter.com. A great resource for solar education and training is Solar Energy International of Carbondale/Paonia, Colo. See their web site at: www.solarenergy.org . Get smart about this stuff, start using it, you'll feel much better about things when you do.

Renewable Energy...we've got plenty of hardware nobody is using

Much of the rationale needed here is discussed in the energy industry topic above. Now that the world, including America, has become painfully aware of what the corporate and financial interests fueling this country's energy systems will do to keep their boat afloat, many are clamoring even louder for renewable energy...more solar, more fuel cells, bio-diesel.

The irony is that we do not have a shortage of renewable energy resources or technologies. In fact, we have more of them than can be currently used. The problem is, the average American refuses to use them. Is this taste of shoe leather in our mouths coming from familiar footwear?

Any day of the week a call to any of the regional solar energy service providers now abundant (at least in Western Colorado) can land you a solar hot water system capable of heating your shower water or your whole home. Photo voltaic systems capable of allowing you to pull the plug completely on the power company line (or even sell back to them your own home-generates solar electricity) abound. The Base-Line Solar techniques taught in Residency programs like Smart Shelters allow virtual energy independence for an entire kitchen and laundry room at a cost of a couple of hundred dollars...capable of paying itself off in two to three years. So cost of solar technologies is no longer a barrier.

The problem America has with renewable energy use is not the systems and technology or the availability...we have entire warehouses full of this stuff.

The problem we have is getting the average American to use it. Are you?

We will not stop pillaging third world countries for their energy resources as long as you and I are writing checks every month for them to continue doing that.

The personal changes we can make today

Creating the businesses/industries that will make it happen (60's analogies)

(gonzo solutions..progressive capitalism)

systems of policing

Systems of taxation

Elected officials

current dilema-1940's legislature caps going from 30-500,000 constituents for house of reps

campaign financing-access to the poor

salaries

required non-ties to business/religion

Access to the Systems of Governance

Paid legislative lobbyists must be deleted (fm: Josh Hayward-Light Source Institute. It is inherently discriminatory that we allow access to congressional representatives and elected officials only to those paid for those connections...at the behest of the moneyed class. This deprives the ordinary citizen from equal representation. It skews influence to the interests of industry, corporations and large financial institutions, which will inevitably self-destruct out of the their self-centered myopia and greed. That doesn't work for the citizenry, and ironically it doesn't end up working for the entities who produced it either. Unless a system of representation is constructed which consistently readjusts its numbers and structures to accommodate representation by reasonable and recognizable community entities, we doom ourselves to this selective and inherently corrupt system of influence. Paid lobbyists are more the result of overwhelming numbers of constituents each elected legislator is structured into representing than it is to outright corruption of influence...although there is plenty of that in itself to go around.

The size of the nation determines the size of the legislature. In the 1940's the U.S. House of Representatives decided to quit adding new representatives as population increased. The chamber had in excess of 400 legislators and was obviously in danger of becoming unwieldy. The obvious conclusion, which was not accommodated, was to break the country itself down into smaller, more comprehensible nations which could accommodate human comprehensibility in terms of the average citizens sense of meaning in contrast to the number of other citizens vying for representative input and expression of needs. Consequently, in the years since that decision, the number of constituents a representative has in the congressional district which elects them has gone from 30,000 to 500,000. If a representative spent 2 minutes conversing with each person they supposedly represents and did that 24 hours each day, it would take them over 20 years to talk to each person in their district. They are elected for only two years per term. Is it any wonder that the U.S. leads the modern world in voter apathy...a byproduct of a flawed system size as much as inherent national media bloat and lethargy. Division of the nation into smaller countries (much like the national entities of Europe) might seem heresy...in fact it lead once to a huge civil war. But wouldn't a bio-regionally redefinition of smaller American nation states...The Rio Colorado, The Mississippi, The Hudson...give us a more personal and comprehensible sense of the country we belong to...based on the way the planet itself has decided to divide itself...than this bloated and artificially (rectilinearly) divided country, the United States, whose system of governance is in ransacked shambles due to corruption and futility anyway. If that became the paradyme, then we would re-divide a nation each time it reaches its toxic population ceiling...a point at which a sense of futility regarding effective governance descended on the citizenry. How much trouble should we be willing to go to in order to insure legitimate effectiveness and say in our system of governance. A better question might be...how much more collapse are we going to be able to endure until we do?

Solutions to the bloated, ignorant and incapable majority

citizenship as a use by right is a ticket to operating at the lowest common denominator

the republican party only empowers through deception of the ignorant via their media ownership

unless we remove the incompetent masses, no removal of the corrupt will sustain

intelligence, responsibility and integrity requirements for functional citizenship

rescindable citizenship on trial for non-responsible action

self elimination through ignorance via toxification/ consumption

Criterion for citizenship

voting/participation is mandatory

if you're not informed and active that's ok, but you're not a citizen

capacity to place environment, community, neighborhood on equal or above level with yourself-no self-driven motivators

demonstrated capacity to understand the issues

not-economically based

Inherited wealth-non generational inheritance

On the personal Level...what we can do today that counts

Dealing with the disaster scenarios, depression, fear, paranoia and despair (see text in introduction)

Consuming less...more wisely

Working less

Forming community

Getting active

Changing your media

Detoxing your lifestyle

Fuel and energy transitions

Living situations/space reduction

Native/organic food sources

Baseline solar

Permascaping

Retrofit of existing structures

Boycotts

Financial support for activists and key organizations

Paid mentoring

Healthcare

Neighborhood associations

Drainage basin groups

More music, more play

Decorporatizing your lifestyle and your shopping

Paper reduction/digitalization

Transition to a sustainable/natural profession

Find your community and relocate

Being forthright about speaking your truth

Being active, rather than the passives(email, web, media)...get off your butt and march

Correlation with the Hopi Elders

Letting go of struggle

creating community

looking at our lives

celebration

moving forward my not resisting...but transcending

the river has its destination

Current Smart Shelter Projects...assembling the pieces

Native lifestyle transitions/ residencies and research

Natural Building Technology development and education</