LOCAL Interview :: Globalization
John Trudell and an artist discuss the perpetual war mentality
Everyone has blindspots. The value comes when we step back from our knee-jerk reactions and try to understand people and see the value of such.
Amongst all the people that i have so far stumbled upon, or found via others' writings, John Trudell speaks to my heart most. Whereas intellectuals like Chomsky speak to my critical thinking faculties, Trudell has another angle that some of us haven't forgotten the value of looking into.
Still, Trudell is a product of "society" like the rest of us, and you read of his background and you can see that clearly. Thus, he utilizes tools around him, such as notable superficial Leftist concepts, or blindspots which he may well want conversation for, if you ever meet him. He is not perfect, like all of us. Yet his background is heavy duty struggle, including the insanity of having to deal with the untimely deaths of his family (including three very young daughters) due to a very suspicious fire; through all that, he kept trusting in his heart, i see.
His heart as it manifested in his earliest work with the American Indian Movement at Alcatraz and in his Berkeley radio show, and later thanks to the thoughtfulness of Jackson Browne and his gravitation towards speaking his heart in spoken words, of late accompanied by a Reggae band with some pretty damn good music.
Still, i have to wonder if the music industry isn't tooling him, at least in the mass consciousness. The up-side of which, at least gets him some note for his *much more powerful talks*.
The following text is made in a kindof strange way. i am quoting him, yet i am inserting, via "[]" and [( )]", both direct things he says elsewhere, as well as my own ideas which i think go deeper than some of these 1980s views of his (which i claim he would agree with if he read them). i am also making my own comments within all of this. His direct quotes are in "green" (if i do the html right, that is) and mine are in the other color. i don't know of a better way. Perhaps you do? Feel free to compose such, and share with me!
Ultimately, i'd like to engage in conversation with John and/or like-minded people, both online and in person. i see that my own unique take on things, including my own life experiences and challenges, and connections to the earth and people, could make a serious difference, at least in continuing to evolve John's extremely excellent sharings.
The first part of this was actually read in public yesterday at a popular cafe in Arizona for open-mike night
Trudell: "We see the physical genocide that [those who struggle in a seemingly perpetual 'Us vs Them' dichotomy] are attempting to inflict on [indigenous people's] lives and we understand the psychological genocide that they have already inflicted upon their own people. And that's the trade-off that they want us to make for survival--that we become subservient to them..."
me: That we serve the interests of the aggressors, the real terrorists, these severely alienated, largely de-individualized human beings; that we be 'happy' with the 'reforms'. Reforms, even tho such reformers must continually remain vigilant because of the nature of the meta of reform politics; the nature of the *always war*.
Trudell: We no longer understand our connection to power--our real connection to the earth, [to nature]--power.
me: Power. The continual war mindset can't stop our *spirit*, our *real power*, which is manifested, for example, in the continual re-birth of every young person full of a quality, a vitality and excellence of self (we call *spirit*) which the so far prevailing war mindset works overtime to quash, to block, to get us to forget. Our spirit: the situation in which we are naturally inclined to be who we are despite the war mindset's efforts to force us to forget and not value what our heart wishes to speak.
Imagine a world that didn't coerce us to silence each of our truths. Our self-truths. The truths we dare not share which we disguise in our lives, and seldom even share with anyone else; but which we'd like to imagine we could share, but have often convinced ourselves that we *must not ever* share. Unless those truths are now "accepted" as valuable--such as heterosexual love truths--yet even those truths are under represented and largely confined to a rather superficial idea. (Take your average idea in the mainstream media of the "love" between a "wife" and a "husband")
Imagine a world which realized the value of *authentic sharing* all through-out life! Where we would see, all around us, and be openly encouraged and richly rewarded, for daring to share the wildest possible truths about ourselves and our ideas of everything under the sun! Such would take time; smart people wouldn't automatically trust that anyone *really* was so inclined. And anyway, we'd have to be on our guard that another German *Weimar Republic syndrome* (where coercive power allegedly sought to bring its strongest opposition into the open and then better move against it later) wasn't the actual underlying intent.
But for now, dare to imagine beyond the spoonfed imagination, while you keep up your guard. And dare to articulate your vision somehow! Dare to escape as many traps as you can identify. Like the one about using real names, your byline. How many traps can you brainstorm?
Trudell: We want to be free of [this] value system being imposed on us. We do not want to participate in that value system; we don't want to [reform] that value system, we want to remove it from our lives forever. Liberation [not revolution]--we want to be free...
me: Free to create and evolve our own imagination. Imagination is the basis for the mystification called 'culture' after all. Every mystification across the board begins with imagination! Whose imagination even begins to allow our most excellent and beautiful spirit imagination to come out into the open? Surely not the imaginations of those perpetuating 'Us vs. Them'!
Trudell: We must never underestimate [the firmly entrenched fear-stuck mindset of coercive power]. They are committed against us 24 hours a day.
me: Look at the history of colonization and of the f.b.i.'s illegal Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) and all the writings of whistleblowers who once blindly trusted.
Trudell: The [fear-stuck mindset] uses 100 percent of their effort to maintain their [superficial, deindividualized] status-quo. 100% of their effort goes into deceiving us and manipulating us against each other.
me: We have all these divisions out here and our rigid mindsets about diverse people whom we have reduced down into these ideas about people we blanketly call "bad" or "good". Those leading us and managing us in the Left and Right and beyond, don't lead us to try to UNDERSTAND each other. Their media, whether in the mainstream, the "alternative", or even the "radical" systematically DOES NOT even try to promote understanding or try to discuss CONTEXTS for seemingly irrational beliefs and behavior!
Why don't they teach us to understand each other better? Because they are really *the new boss, same as the old boss* and they don't really want change. They want reform. Even the "revolutionaries", apparently. All of those who head up the "leadership" all seem to share a belief with the prevailing system where we, the masses, are viewed as mere tools to be utilized by those "who know how to run things".
Don't take my word for it, study the phenomenon yourself. Start with the highly despised Noam Chomsky, who has often discussed the "highly regarded" ideas of men like Walter Lippman, Edward Bernays, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Harold Lasswell. And then read some Christopher Simpson (who talks of Wilbur Schramm, for instance), and even a little Thomas Szasz here and there (as he exposes the games of psychiatrists). And how about some Jacques Ellul (on propaganda and the formation of our attitudes), and some of Aldous Huxley's nonfiction.
At this juncture, NONE of "our leaders", be they conservative, liberal, "radical", or whatever, help us remember that each of us is born into a community and we are largely products of that community, waking up here or there due to what we happen to stumble onto. In a thought control society it *is*, largely, stumbling!
The truth is we are *supposed* to be tooled. In the eyes of "successful", highly institutionalized human beings we, the "teeming masses" are mere RESOURCES. Even these "productive", allegedly "highly placed" elites have been made into resources themselves! Mere *units of value*. (WE ARE ALL LARGELY DE-INDIVIDUALIZED AND RESOURCED TO FIT THE SEVERELY ALIENATED BELIEVED NEEDS OF A MACHINERY-LIKE SYSTEM OF CONTINUAL WAR AT HOME AS WELL AS ABROAD!)
"Productive" or "parasitical" based on a hidden value system which Trudell is speaking of liberating ourselves from, completely. Not partially, as in reformisms. Completely.
Trudell: We want to be free of a value system that is being imposed on us. ...We have to make our commitment**, we have to follow a way of life that says we are going to reist that [value system] forever. A resistance: something that we can pass on as strength to the coming generations.
A resistance where organizational egos don't get in the way. Where individual egos don't get in the way.
re: ego: When is this 'ego' Trudell speaks of? Attacking 'ego' is all around us these days, i note. Elsehwere in this book, Trudell says that ego is a natural part of "the Earth"--this place we are on--and that our Earth doesn't have useless things here.
The negative part of 'ego' means the unbalanced, the part of ourselves which has become unbalanced, or exaggerated due to the imbalance of the current system of instituted beliefs. This part of us which gets so lost, so alienated, so armored away from meaningful connection and understanding. This part of us which is tooled so that we remain stuck in attacking each other instead of understanding what is going on, which is perceived as threatening to coercive power.
So we're *supposed* to be all divided up; all stuck in these multitudes of rigid ideological camps. Ideological: alienated, rigid beliefs about "What Is Right" and "What Is NOT". True for the sayer, perhaps, yet not automatically true for all. I say, let you have your core belief of how you and those you convince wish to proceed *AND* let's *realize the value* of *being beautiful* with each other--and keep some sort of bridge between our camps!
We kind of have this happening in a very limited way, now. The trick is to avoid being manipulated by those who want to tool us; and to avoid the alienation which leads us to *believe* we cannot have peace. *Realize the value of GETTING TO KNOW EACH OTHER better*!
Trudell: We are in human form, so we have to look out for ourselves as humans. And the ego has a role in that. (note: from page 17 of my notes)
It takes more than good intentions, it takes commitment. It takes that at some point in our lives we're going to have to decide that we have a way of life that we [see great value in] and we're going to live that way of life even...when [these severely alienated people] act against us with brutality and harshness; with lies and bribes.--We're going to have to [strategically] stand with our way[s] of life.
We cannot reach a point in our lives where we're just going to sit back and say well, we will make this compromise with the other side.
resistance consciousness
A resistance where the infiltrators and the provacateurs and the liars and the betrayers do not get in the way. We will not get our liberation if we do not seriously analyze the experiences of our own [and others'] lifetimes. We must become a resistance of consciousness. We msut say that we will not allow [the de-individualized soldiers of perpetual war] to smash [our spirits]. Even if it means we have to deal with the part of [the war mindset] that [socialization/programming/conditioning] has planted in [us]. We will not allow [these severely alienated people's mindsets] to smash us.
me: Look at the fast-forward of "compromise" as it exists in the formal spheres of human interaction today and in history: I don't care whether your group has attained a popular status of "acceptance" or a grey area, or no open tolerance whatsoever. The whole situation is a *perpetual war* where you'd better remain "eternally vigilant" as the saying goes, or LOSE your status, all too quickly. Just look at the games played between nations: Remember when Iraq and S.Hussein were "our great friends"? And when the Taliban was "good"? (Honestly, i don't know of a good example on home ground, do you?)
This is the kind of meta trap reserved for those who convince themselves that piecemeal reform is the "only possible" method towards progress. They look at what happens to the "radicals" (see, for instance, William Kunstler in _My Life As A Radical Lawyer_), systematically holed up in court and "legal" shenanigans designed to tax their resources (see discussion on COINTELPRO, re: Brian Glick in _War At Home_); and they come to a pretty commonsense belief. What they miss is that there is still an alternative, and that is what Trudell is talking about, in my view: a resistance consciousness.
A resistance that doesn't need "above ground" formal organization, nor formalized "leaders".
Trudell on organization: ...the triangularization of life, that's what organization is, because what it does, it places you within these limits...[p.20 of notes] and: When you have triangular worlds and concepts, then...you run into limitations of disrupted, broken flow...so it's not about continuous continuity flow [like the circle idea]. [p.22 of notes]
me: let's try that one on before we judge it as yet another dogma...
Trudell: A resistance which may utilize open challenge, but which remains informal. More oreinted to *consciousness* than all the pit-falls and traps of the current imaginations about rebellion that we're so oft conditioned to go into.
me: It's the same thing with compromise. "Compromise" with a system of war, or war mentality, is an illusion.
De-individualized human beings who obediently do their work (for so many justifications and rationalizations) carry out the orders of their severely alienated bosses and cannot act like the human beings we are naively led to believe they will act like. All we have to see is how these "great leaders" act towards the alleged "enemies" of "society"--abroad or at home, re: the "criminal" set.
Now, i realize that i'm getting into a morass, but let's see the value of questioning ALL reductive labels. Just for the sake of it, when exactly are "criminals"? When, exactly, do they break the law? What is the context of that action? How might a liberated society deal with such non-conformers? My own idea is that such persons, who DARE challenge the imposed norms, have MUCH to teach us. Notably, we don't enter into learning from them naively, imagining them not eager to exploit our starry-eyed idealisms in all their learned CYNICALISM... (i digress)
The actual value of compromise, on the surface, looks like the "best" way, but when you realize the illusion, such as the situation of being forced to remain "eternally vigilant" due to the system being stuck in severe alienation and placing no real value on human beings, except as resources and tools to use for terribly cynical ends, you start to see the insane meta game of the whole thing. Example: Reformist-minded formalized identity movements working overtime to coerce their followers into the same subordination that the rest of the colonized "citizens" are already trapped in, re: "consumer society".
Trudell: [This mindset] has every intention to use [their usual methods] to colonize [and re-colonize] you all. ...So all the lies that they dangled in front of your faces, they're going to start to pull the lies back a little bit and they're going to start slapping you with reality.
me: Re: where "force held in reserve" as Chomsky articulates, is more and more openly used via a militarized police reaction to nonviolent demonstrations, re: Seattle et al, or the legalization of COINTELPRO-styled suppression of dissent.
Trudell: The reality is that there is no political freedoms in America. The reality is that there is no religious freedom in America.
me: The only religious or political "freedom" is that which is confined within unthreatening bounds which remain subservient and subordinate to the needs and interests of the shared value system of coercive power; Chomsky backs this up. The Democrats and Republicans or conservative/liberal dichotomies are good examples. So also are the churches of Christians, Jews, and all the rest of the legal religions. American indigenous folks' spiritual practices are largely disallowed such legal recognizance, and so they are able to see this more clearly.
Trudell: You are all going to have to deal with that reality and stop making excuses for America.
We are going to have to talk to all the people that will listen to us about what it is that we [see as excellent and beautiful].
me: Today "we" are tooled by a vanguardist-like "leadership" who have us doing things like marching and carrying signs for the latest terrible situation, another war abroad, which others besides ourselves have decided to utilize as a way to build up a momentum. Do they really want to "stop war"? Well, I don't believe that, but I don't want to get away from the focus of this, at this point, anyway. A better question to ask for now could be: Why are we marching, and why are we carrying the kinds of signs we are carrying?
First, we are marching to "speak truth to (so-called) power"--namely, policymakers and elite implementers who might listen. There's a whole politics to just that question, and our imposed "leaders" try to coerce us to shut up and just go with the flow, because they like to say that it is "all" we can do.
Now, one of the reasons that Noam Chomsky is so despised is because he makes a foolproof institutional analysis about the elites. He and others already mentioned get me saying it's time we *SPEAK TRUTH TO PEOPLE*, INFORMALLY. (And i'll tell you how this fits in with Trudell's ideas, soon)
The history of seeking liberation, even justice, in this world has never begun with the unaccountable terrorists and their supporters and encouragers called policymakers and implementers of the so far, prevailing mindset. These largely de-individualized *soldiers* have never GIVEN out liberation, and seldom even varying forms of justice, without various forms of behind-the-scenes arm-twisting! (again, a whole politics where decisions are made after weighing out the pros and cons and the Public Relations value)
Policymakers, social planners, and other "elites" share *similar interests*, via so-called "good educations" via institutions whose practitioners have a job to do. They're not doing their work for fun! They're seeking to instill the right values. You read some Chomsky, especially on his comments about higher education and the rest, and you see that demystified. Not perfectly, but that's where you are invited to involve yourself in the conversation!!
We are going to have to talk to all the people that can allow themselves to listen beyond their being ideologically and strategically challenged--divided into diverse dogmas as we are.
Trudell: We are going to have to find ways to talk to the people that we cannot talk to now. We are going to have to find ways to be communication ourselves.
me: So if we're going to march, let's use our imaginations in deep ways. Whom do WE want to speak to? And if we're going to make signs, let's make signs that speak to more than mere "elites". Let's *COMMUNICATE* and utilize the tool of marches for more than just single issues spoonfed by our allegedly trustworthy "leaders"! HOW ABOUT *HUMAN SPIRIT LIBERATION*?!! WhAt wOULd THAT bE liKe?? Can YOU envision and articulate your most excellent and beautiful life?!!?
By orienting our motions for excellence and beauty towards general *human spirit liberation*, as was discussed above, we seriously ESCAPE the confines of perpetual "Us vs,Them" and NOT ALLOW OURSELVES to be trapped into remaining as mere tools for whichever institutionalized/"well educated" human being vies for our naivity.
Imagine reaching out to *ALL*, towards this LIBERATION OF OUR MUTUAL SPIRIT (the spirit of our individual selves which we keep deep inside of us, despite seemingly all-out efforts to fool us into forgetting or suppressing such) while keeping a thoughtful understanding about the reality of the situation, at least in terms of how so many *believe* that "nothing can be done" and thus end up betraying us, etcetera.
Understanding history (re: Bud and Ruth Schultz, Howard Zinn, even Studs Terkel, amongst the others already cited), we understand that struggle has always begun *independently* of reigning institutionalized human beings, and usually has only been *reined* "back under control" via the shenanigans of of these same persons whom are subordinated, at least in their *work*, to the prevailing mindset.
The indigenous folks, who are serious about their struggle, have had to understand these things. They have been *systematically* betrayed and fooled by their contacts with institutionalized persons, from the earliest meetings to the games of the BIA (the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs) et al. The *Trail of Broken Treaties* (a book, by the way) reveals that, alone.
Trudell: They are afraid of us. We must always remember that anytime they have to create a system that is built upon repression and brutality and terrorism--with traitors coming in and betraying you--anytime they have to build that system they only build it because they understand that they have weakness and if we will be persistant in our struggle and dedicated in our resistance, we will take that weakness and we will take them down through that weakness.
me: i see no value in taking *PEOPLE* down, personally, only their *behavior* and, ultimately, their rigid, severely alienated MINDSET. Trudell actually discusses this later in this book, when he talks about the problem of "slaying the dragons". He says that "the dragons" have kids, and they remember, and continue the Us vs. Them-isms. So Trudell talks about "making peace with the dragons" and this i can agree with; tho i'd add that with such peace comes an open door where such persons wanting to escape the traps of their mindset may be allowed to come across a bridge and *earn* and/or learn the allegedly excellent and beautiful value of imaginations beyond their value system.
Trudell: It does not matter how many jail cells they build. It does not matter how many racist judges and sexist judges and classist judges, ageist judges--it does not matter how many of their side they put into their illusionary positions of respectability. It does not matter what they throw at us because we make the difference--we make the decision. We are power. They deal in illusions. And that is all that it is. (...)
They have been able to use the element of fear to control their masses of people... But what good is it to live on this sacred place--what good is it to be here if we can't live here with honor and dignity and respect...then what is the good to be here? (...)
We must not be drawn into their traps [of being in debt and the aforementioned concepts]. ...We have to understand that they want us to be lazy in our minds and lazy in our spirit and lazy in our body. They want us to be able to give up hope easily; they want us to quit thinking. The nature of the people on the earth has always been one of struggle, it has always been. The indigenous people of the Western hemisphere, we learned to struggle and live out of our struggle...
me: Let's look at what that struggle might have really entailed, and avoid the pit-fall of our ideas as imposed upon us by Hollywood and institutions like "reputable" anthropology, which have an interesting habit of leaving out CONTEXTS for why and when certain groups do things. Take the prevailing attitude of "warfare" between the "tribes". First of all, it is obvious that such "warfare" was not the kind of wholesale slaughter that Europeans engaged in from the time of the advent of guns. Secondly, what if the killing war methods of indigenous folks were largely influenced by the impositions of European racist/imperialist attack? Indigenous folks once surrounded by harmonious living might well have had their pre-white-contact fighting oriented to highly valuing the "touch" of an opponent, with killing happening only seldomly. And fighting itself done as one way amongst many to settle disputes. Recall the Eskimo/Inuit method of *knocking* as shown in the film "Man Running".
Enter suddenly the severely alienated maiming and killing of white society, well colonized so that "professional" warfare forcefully imposes itself into the imaginations of a completely attacked group. No wonder they took upon such imagination; did they have a choice? Even pacifists faced with such institutional insanity would be forced to take up arms or/and be slaughtered en masse, it seems. Even so, the indigenous folks often kept their art, as we note in their choice of clothing...
Trudell: In living we learned to live in respect and harmony with Mother Nature. We never forgot who we were. Somewhere along the line, Western civilization, they forgot and they had to struggle against their own people...So let's not fool ourselves and try to make ourselves quit what we believe because it's going to be hard...
They are afraid of consistency. They always throw [single] issues in front of us to keep us [reacting] from one issue to another [(re: the whaling issue, the fishing rights issue)]. They throw illusions and lies in front of us. We must learn from the Vietnam War. The white Americans said they were against war--that is what [so many of them] said and then they went and listened to their lying politicians and their lying politicians said 'we will help you'. And then their lying politicians got them to accept and settle for a withdrawl from Vietnam while [indigenous] people were going through a war right here.
me: the war carried out by COINTELPRO and the routine methods of governments seeking to assimilate their more "incorrigible" would-be "citizens". Read Ward Churchill, Russell Means, and anything by the American Indian Movement, or www.dickshovel.com.
Trudell: The lie was sunk in and the American people accepted the lie.
me: More like, the American people are systematically *conditioned* not to fathom the depth of war. Indigenous folks weren't the only ones who weren't allowed to be understood indepth. All kinds of minority identities (groups warred upon joining together in informal or formalized resistances often become identities) were kicked out of those which were allowed to gain, through major struggles, the status of illusory "acceptance" and reform.
Trudell: When the Black people were struggling for what became civil rights, really they were talking about equality, and the politicians stepped in and said 'we will help you all'. And the Black [leadership] had to settle for civil rights, which is only a part of a life. And now the politicians come talking again...We'd better think about our past experience...
We are going to have to find a way to communicate our thoughts and our resistance and our consciousness that we will not accept [this perpetual war].
me: Trudell was actually talking about the "nuclearization" of the earth; at that time the anti-nuke struggle was all over the place, so he spoke within the understanding of things then, and surely made use of that portion of the understanding that was already in gear. i can't imagine that inserting "perpetual war" there would be problematic, tho i seek Trudell's own thoughts on this.
Trudell: We'd better think real hard how we misuse ourselves because we are energy. We have to deal with that. We are energy.
me: To be "energy" is similar to the naturally occurring, continual re-birth of the most excellent human spirit, as discussed above; for this reason, we need to take responsibility for who we are; this spirit that continually re-occurs; the most excellent human spirit which is right now being systematically manipulated and warred upon to a point where people are tooled in severely alienated, insane ways. We who have begun to understand the situation have a responsibility to help the new generations remain liberated from this death culture.
Trudell: And it's how we use ourselves that allows the enemy [mindset] to misuse us. ...They have interfered in our lives from the time we are born--I look at America--a free country--you have to pay to be born and you have to pay to be buried.
Next section: http://www.intheheart.net/trudellstickman.html
my comments to some of Trudell's ideas (may be some overlapping from this text): http://www.intheheart.net/letter2trudell.html
Where that section leaves off:
Trudell: The technologic mindset says that we are born to die, all right? Now as soon as the human aspect recognizes that definition of birth and death with these material gods and material devils [(notably, an "Us vs Them"-ism)], as soon as people start to recognize that concept, then at some point they become afraid of death--and once they become afraid of death to me it also means you are afraid of life--because we enter into this reality and we're going to continue on into other realities--that's the way it is--the body stays here--but once the citizens become afraid of death in that industrial context--see--then there's the tap coming on the power--right then, there's the energy starting to flow out--right there--it's starting to way off into a dissipated type of thing that someone else is going to harness.
me: In otherwords, our original spirit, our natural trust in our intuitions, our fearlessness, begins to lose value, and we tend to forget about this value, and then someone else steps in that harnesses us as a *resource*. And this is usually someone "well trained" in the arts of severe alienation and a belief that such harnessing "is the only way to do things;" a harnessing, which, by the way, is basically hooking us up to the machinery of the wizards of *Is*.
Trudell: It's like self-control. They tell us 'self-control', what is "self-control" all about? Please tell me. What is "self-control" really all about? I mean, if we're living entities, we are energy spirit, energy flows so, "self-control" means that you gotta dam the energy, you know dam--that's the true dam nation. Truly. You can look at anyone that's in control, really!
...No one's in [serious] control, trust me, no one, alright!
There are power systems that have been created where authority uses violence and manipulation and deceit and all of the aggressive behavior patterns to remain in authority but that doesn't mean that they're in control. We need to understand those distinctions.
...When we're born into this reality as human beings they say to us--not things of the spirit--they tell us that we don't have a spiritual identity, they tell us we have a religious identity and under that religious identity we are the trinity of the [slavery] chain: guilt, sin and blame. We've already "sinned" and we're already guilty and we [learn to] accept it...Free-dom.
harnessed into mindsets
a damning
diseased spirits
We accept that as a normal reasonable perception...We're not guilty...our lives are a series of experiences and in that course of series of experiences there may be experiences that do not make us feel good about ourselves...we have a series of experiences so we can learn the difference, to stop doing what does not make us feel good about ourselves or to...remove ourselves from those types of environments. That's why we have a series of experiences, but people don't experience their life and look at it and learn from it.
me: Looking at the context of this, this is because we're preoccupied with the imagination imposed upon us. Also, as far as when we feel good or bad, we have to remember the context of society's imposition. Each era of "society" has a set of "norms" which are not systematic at all. They change according to the politics which reign. As a favorite poem of mine says, "all good was once banned as sin or crime." A little history can clear that up. So, we have to remember that we may feel "bad" in a superficial way because we dared to question or inadverdantly challenge the "norms" of the authoritarian society surrounding us. The trick is to tease out the deepest part of our feelings of badness or goodness and see if they fit close to our being as opposed to them fitting in the imposed "norms".
That's not easy, and we're not supposed to be able to really do this. We're taught that we really can't do anything without some specialist to oversee us...
Trudell: People have the tendency to have the same experience over and over, and it's a guilty experience or its's a neurotic experience or it's an experience based upon no real true value of the self and so as [the reigning mindset] leads us into that destruction of the self, the mining of the spirit to the mind as they feed upon us, so they get us to...take what is the real spiritual aspect and value of us and replace it with a more aggressive behavior pattern.
me: the perpetual war mentality replaces our individual value diversity with at least a 98% reduction to that of tool, or "unit" of resource value, fitting snugly within the needs and interests of the severely alienated war system.
mining minds in civilized ritual
the religion of business and machine
Trudell: Think of a word like "proud"..."pride"...I had to think about it because that's part of the thing..."Indians are proud"...I had to make all that happen...than one day it just kinda like dawned on me, Oh that John Wayne's proud, you know; that people dropping napalm off of these planes in Vietnam, they're proud, these people that hand out diseased blankets, they were proud, and their god was proud, they were all proud, and yet they were not very good people--and here I am I say I'm gonna be free and I want my liberation and I'm gonna be proud? No thank you--now to actually think about it, [we see] a part of the mining of the essence is the words and the language that we use and that we speak. Now every time any individual in this room uses the word proud I bettcha, realistically to me, they could just as easily say grateful...they were happy, they were thankful, the things that really speak of the spirit not with the ego.
me: Ego here seems to mean a concept of abstract identification with a value system underneath being "proud" or having "pride". Obviously a manipulation technique to get the uncomprehending to focus on the superficial while not looking at the deeper reality. Manipulators, like social and cultural managers, then, seek to speak to our desire to be included, yet consistently tool us for hidden values.
Trudell: We've been conditioned see, so we've been conditioned to just speak and use language and words frivolously in ways we don't truly understand and when we truly don't understand it then we don't understand the impact that it's going to have on us in the long run, we really don't. [Social and cultural managers] tell us power is woever makes the most money with reality; that's not power, that's greed. They tell us that if we vote once every two years or four years, we're exercising our powers. That's political manipulation exploitation violence and greed, it's not power. But if we look at its goal--they have all [the control of our imaginations]--that's power, then obviously we don't have any--and the reason we don't have any is because we believe the lie and we give it away. Why do we believe the lie and give it away? Because we don't...listen to our intuitions, we don't listen to our instincts. We don't trust ourselves. We were given that information to enter into this reality for a reason. But we're programmed not to trust [ourselves].
Now, if we're sitting in this room tonight somebody in this room is going to go off and tell the bad guys what we're talking about. Now in reality, in that reality, these guys got all the power right--they got all the guns and money and laws. Now if they have all the power, then why do they have to have someone come here to run back and tell them what we're talking about? Because they're afraid we might think. They don't want us to think.
me: Noam Chomsky actually quotes several social theorists, like Lippmann and Bernays, talking about us, the "stupid masses" not having the "capacity" to think. Read about this at: http://www.monkeyfist.com/ChomskyArchive
Trudell: They don't want us to clear the pollution out of our minds because we can do it by activating our thinking process--but if they have all the power, then why are they so concerned about what we think? Because it's of the mind. I'm not going to believe the lie anymore--you would have nonviolent change--and you would have quick change--because the system goes upon our self-rationalizations and self-justifications and insecurity: lack of respect for self.
(from page 21 of my notes), on rationalization, justification: ...that's about emotions and suppressing feelings. ...feelings, that is how the Being talks to the human. So we should always be open to our feelings.
That's how it works and it has turned all of us against one another through distortion and it continues to perpetuate itself. So it's of our minds. The one thing that is feared by this [external] predator energy is that we would use our minds and that we would attempt to see clearly with our minds and our lives [--our experiences]. Somewhere in there as the evolution of life continues on, we are being historically placed in a position where we have to do something or we are the enemy of our future. Because apathy makes us the enemy of our descendents.
me: this apathy can be noted in our refusal to even understand the war happening on all of us. To understand it and try to even avoid it. Like the Jews in nazi Germany who walked silently to their deaths at the hands of a machine gunner, we have learned, in our own experience of the imposed coercions of everyday life, to "go silently". And we are thus the enemy of our own desires to survive, especially if we suddenly find ourselves (or our descendents) demonized in the popular imagination. But even if we're not demonized, we stand to be tooled. Just look at this new concept in the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual" (the bible of psychiatrists). Have you heard about "Oppositional Defiant Disorder"?
Basically, it's applying a mental "illness" label to *all* rebellion which is viewed as "improper". Little kids (our descendents) are now being so labeled (not in isolation, either) when they dare express their intuitive rebellion towards "legitimate" authority in the home, at school, et al. Once kids are seeded with the concept that their rebellion is "sickness", they will grow up to believe this, and it will be that much easier to bring Soviet-style psychiatry to the Western world. (Still can't believe it? Let's look at the relative quickness upon which adults now accept that they have a "learning disability" or some other mental "illness" or "disorder"! But think nothing of not questioning the idea that their imagination is now much more subordinated to coercive power!)
Trudell: That's reality and we can't blame the predator because we have minds and we have the ability to use those minds.
I get frustrated sometimes...and I get concerned sometimes that maybe people are afraid to even think about challenging the concept of democracy and that's where all the good little nazis come from, the ones that are afraid to challenge the concepts when they see the contradictions...That's where you get good little nazis. And the distortion and the feeding process off of us to keep us distorted and insecure, that's to hlep us become good little nazis. It's all got to do with planting that seed and that idea and concept of fear.
...Now before "civilization" encroaches upon and turns human beings into "citizens"--the human beings always take that responsibility very seriously--but once "civilization" turns human beings into "citizens" then they no longer consider those responsibilities [to our original spirit and our intuition and our highly suppressed authentic selves]. My feeling is that because they have been severed spiritually from their consciousness, their [individual, informal, non-ideological] spiritual consciousness and had it replaced with a *religious* consciousness [--deindividualized, formalized, ideological, with beliefs subordinated to the desires and boundaries of coercive powers, i.e. the state] which is [much more limiting].
I might not be able to act upon it in any major way and any way I can act upon it may seem insignificant to me, but it's not insignificant. Because it's got to do with our belief...our minds...and if we believe the lie if we believe there are Presidential elections going on that we really have a choice in, then we're denying ourselves reality. So at least people if we can't do anything about it at this point other than to recognize the truth for what it is, let's do that. It's like we're all snowflakes and as soon as we sort our minds out and we make a more clear definition of reality in relationship to our responsibilities, then we will be a blizzard.
So anyway, with whatever is going on for us we need to trust ourselves, we need to trust ourselves, we shouldn't lie to ourselves, we should never lie to ourselves no matter what we do, I mean if even we do things we don't want anybody else to know about, we shouldn't lie to ourselves about what we're doing--because the basis of turning the illusion into the reality is based upon us lying to ourselves....we are told and programmed that we are insignificant, but the reality is to understand the creative energy of the creative mind; we are programmed to think that's like a common goal thing, but the creative mind is always in process...when we were young, we were "daydreaming" and we were told not to daydream because that was "bad".
When we were young, we had enough, we had the instinctive...the DNA was just activated and we knew how to use that energy to daydream because...who made the daydreams? So it was like medicine to me...Feel better, right? But they were telling us 'no no no no no don't daydream don't daydream, you'll put the screws in the little thing backwards, you'll mess up the numbers', you know, you won't do well in assembly line daydreaming.
So one day we "grow up" and we're big kids--get off "adults"!--we don't have daydreams anymore--but what the "adults" feel is they feel insecure and neurotic, they don't know how to communicate with anyone--they don't know if the people they love, love them, you know it's very bizarra, yet it's called "normal".
(...)
...the framework of democracy...It was the dark ages just given new terminology and another disguise so the peasants and the serfs would continue to accept it.
me: Aldous Huxley and Eric Fromm have similar thoughts on that one. See www.intheheart.net/huxley.html
Trudell: But anyway, to me it's the same energy but as children we just instinctively and automatically knew to use that energy to make the daydreams--to make the medicine that would make us feel better. As adults people use that same energy to be neurotic and insecure.
Now, if we would understand...when it changes from human being to "citizen", part of it is to leave the dreams behind...it's just like we've been drugged, terrorized and drugged--nothing but deception and slight of mind--deceit--you know--we go from being human beings to citizens to junkies and who wants to be a junkie: Think of the war on drugs, all this talk about the war on drugs, alright--while the very very large large majority of people in this country are shooting material up their arms right and left and they're getting to rebel into some types of very violent situations in this country because they can't get the drug to shoot up the material... and a junkie does not think, and to me there's no difference between that junkie that buys heroin on the street and jacks it up his arm, and that one that is over here selling out humanity or turning his back on humanity because they want more excess, they want more and more of the material.
It's like I was saying about democracy, we've got to challenge "democracy" but we also have to challenge our own over-need to consume.
So the idea of us having this understanding about this external predator what that means in a way is...look, the situations that are happening to us in our life are part of an initial deliberate design...it's not an accident these things happen and are happening becuase there is a system operating that feeds upon the spirit of the people--HUMAN physical BEING spiritual--and there is an authoritarian system out there that has defined power in terms of authority and material, that has defined power in terms of making us guilty just for being here.
(...)
I haven't seen any philosophy come yet that's made enough sense to me to pick that up...because it's a darkness that is part of the illusion to me.
me: to me, this "guilty just for being here" is largely the Christian religionist concept, so i wonder where else such crops up. i see it in the more cynical parents, but no more than that.
Trudell: Because of this guilt we must submit to the whole concept of the male dominating god...all these systems hav enot been healthy for the well-being of the people.
me: i'd replace "male dominating god" with "dominating god" so to steer clear from a *female dominating god* concept!
Paola Igliori, the editor of the book, to Trudell: You also were talking about how we forgot how to dream and I remembered hearing about these people I think in Indonesia somewhere, that were found to be the people in the world without neuroses, they all together shared and acted out their dreams--and created dreams and fought their shadow in their dreams and they could interact in their dreams as if they were awake, so they knew what they were fighting and they would fight it to the last and before defeating it they would get a gift...their power back. They would do this constantly...this is something totally lost.
Trudell: Getting our power back is bsically how we use our minds, it's connected to our perceptions of reality--see we live in a world now, in a historical period of time, in a technological reality, no matter what color paint it has, where the majority of the people are so wrapped up in the material, that there is no way they could make it in this world without it.
The more that material becomes out of their reach, the less their chance to make it in this world is, and it's like...people having their mind robbed...their understanding about what a creative entity the mind is...having that understanding robbed, and when that understanding becomes robbed then basically the mind has been robbed.
(...)
I think that the intelligence of children is underestimated and because of that, in a way, it becomes almost like a prison for kids...
me: He might enjoy reading John Holt's _Escape From Childhood_ where, inside, he talks about the mainstream concept of "childhood" being like a "prison garden".
Trudell: The education system to me is no more than programming. Programming the imagination into submission and programming the imagination into external dependency, helping to create and perpetuate a lack of self-confidence in the individuals.
Some people deal with it by living a life of panic or everything is a crisis or suppressing it and having bizarre behavior in other ways, and I would say that the majority of people hide behind this false image of pride to hide their fear. I mean it messes people up to let it dominate...so to me it's important [that] children understand that fear is a natural thing and understand about responsibility, responsibility having to do with their ability to use their minds and think for themselves...
And that's the way all of the people on the planet lived at one time...whether the tribes were in Italy, i Africa or Asia or what is called America, at one time all the peole lived this way.
...College...was just a different military, you know; they can mistreate you anyway they want and you've got to put up with it...it's like you gotta do what the rank tells you: it is the same system.
(...)
The thing about children's intelligence just generally...I think that we can explain reality to them and they can handle reality much better than probably the adults can [with our neuroses and heavy insecurities], and I think it's important that children understand the reality of fear; fear is a natural instinctive thing that happens...fear doesn't mean one has to panic--you have to handle what's in front of you, and if children are encouraged to think for themselves, encouraged to understand responsibility, then things like fear won't stop them from living this life; things like fear won't be a chain or a club to keep them in line as adults and human beings--and they are going to experience fear--all children are, all human beings do, and everyone has to find a way to deal with it.
(...)
...the tribes [versus the change to "civilizations"] understand about human weakness and human strength--they know about this, so the tribes always built their societies to live in harmony the best that they could with their perceptions...to live in harmony, not to exploit, not to take advantage of..but to look out for the group...the tribe was put together in a way that the weaknesses weren't exploited or fed upon..they kept in balance.
(...)
Well the tribes aren't intact in the same way they were before, but I think we can still do it as the individual--and again it's about how we perceive...and I think just for kids in general...the best thing we can leave them is a peaceful understanding with their mind.
Trudell: That's right.
Because we cannot protect them from the predator energy all the ways that we would want to, so to me it's give...help to create the perceptions, the ability to use their perceptions, use their imagination to live through, rather than have them submitting to someone.
(...)
Somehow, technology has a way of helping people to forget that they're on the earth, the earth becomes an abstraction...and to me when the earth becomes an abstraction, they forget where they're at...Once people no longer understand the earth as a reality, but see it as an abstraction, then their power is gone and then they become fearful, paranoid and very aggressive either as the perpetrators or recipients and that's "normal" for them.
(...)
...belief...that's the chain they lead us around by, what we believe...but to me the reality is that for love to truly work it has to be based upon caring, there has to be caring first...if people can't care for each other than they are not gonna love one another....
(...)
I went through tragic things but I don't live in suffering. ...I went through those walls, made peace with my demons a long time ago. I made an agreement with them to ignore them and stay with my craziness when it comes up, and they leave me alone.
more on belief:...if we don't understand the languages we are speaking and if we're all off in the belief and we don't really understand what that's all about, then someone else...there's a system that manipulates our mind and then we create situations that keep us tottaly out of balance, or in varying spectrums of balance.
(...)
Paola asks: What in your opinion can be dont to blow the hypocrisy and the blindness of the enormous mass of hard-working, naive, righteous middle class Americans, who are just fuel for the bunch of real theifs and murders...what can be done?
All we can do is speak our truths the best we can.
Additionally, on page 21 of my notes i found the following: "maybe there is a simple solution, and to tell ourselves the truth about breaking this chain...tell ourselves the truth and be honest with ourselves. And maybe there is one answer...is tell ourselves the truth. And we all have our own way and mechanism of doing it, we shouldn't judge ourselves and therefore we shouldn't judge others. We are all responsible for what we do. We can make decisions about what we see wabout what is right and wrong and through our own truths and perceptions, but about judgments...we have to be very careful about that. ...as far as I'm concerned, everyone should go out and speak their truths and do the best that they can with the best that they have. They should not judge, they should just speak their truths...to themselves, to the world...whatever works for people and it's not aggressive towards others, then I have no problem with it. ...People that go out and do these things, they're fulfilling their responsibility...they're speaking their truths the best they can to those who want to hear. Some people are going to do it in an organized manner and what they call their form of organized manner, whether I agree with organization or not, that's not my business..."
Trudell continues: And if speaking our truths means to organize politically or however it is done, then those are the forms that it takes. ...That is the general statement I will say. The more specific things I would say is we need to understand what it is that we're doing. We need to understand the languages we speak; we need to take time to understand the systems that we're surrounded by. But there is something about reality we need to have an understanding of. Because when I look at the situation around Leonard [Peltier], the situation around the Lakota Nation...the outside world doesn't get it. They can't really pay attention to it.
The news isn't even conveyed to them, but even if the news was conveyed to them, they really can't get it, they really don't understand it. It's because they believe in "democracy"; they believe that "democracy" is going to make their lives better for them. They believe that if they are subservient and obedient to male dominated religions that life is going to get better for them.
me: Let's make it clear that it really ain't the "male" in these dominating religions. Not all males are dominating. And so it's not a "natural" reality. Male is there, and we're in the control cartels, but that's an all too convenient reduction, which automatically alienates a lot of males! To become subservient and obedient to female dominated religions (re: matriarchy) would not solve the problem, just put a new boss in the place of the old boss.
Anyway, religions are interpretations made by elites who know how to play the meta game of subordination to terrorist/coercive powers. (So there's a difference here from spirituality, which is an individual earth/universe-connection-seeking method of inner hearing.)
re: Peltier: Trudell: The situation is darker for the "citizen" than it is for the tribes. In the long run it really is. For every Peltier they put into prison, the way they've put Leonard in, for every man they do that to that comes from the tribes, they will do it to millions of their own. That's just the reality of that. It doesn't make it better and it doesn't make it worse, that's just the reality of it.
re: a war between the forces: Trudell: It's the forces of aggression against the power of life. The forces of aggression have found a way to convert the power to life into an energy that feeds the aggression. So this is where we, as individuals and human beings can...see, the only influence we're ever going to have on this is when we start to understand that we are a part of a life flow and it is not about force. We are not from the forces of life. Understand that there is a difference between power and force. ...That's what I mean by we need to understand the languages we speak. We say things, but every word has a concept and a meaning that goes with it...
...the problem is, often people look at these forces of aggression as being in power. What I'm saying is, people look at political systems, economic systems, military systems...they're systems of authority and aggression. So these systems are here...we have aggressive authority systems imposed upon us. That is very real.
(...)
We live in a time and a space where every one of us has been traumatized and in part, that has a lot to do with this reality--generally, it's locked in by trauma--traumas come in many, many forms...some of them are inflicted deliberately by insane people.
me: Obviously, there are the truly insane, severely alienated persons; yet even then, there is an element of care, in my view, even if the empathy side is gone. What social and cultural managers believe is that they are doing something for the "ultimate good" of masses of people. Trapped as they are in their own institutionalizations (and the superficial, illusory rewards, such as in material wealth), they don't dare imagine something beyond this "reality". Secondly, when i think of people who beat their kids, i think of a context to that too, even tho i see the method as messed up. But, even the beaters are "preparing" their kids, in the "best way they know how" for the insanity they've gotten to know all too well, in their own experience of life...As for the most insane who are not working to carry out social policies, directly, that's a harder question, yes.
Trudell: We live in a time and in a society where what I know about pain is I know you can always expect it because you're living. What is unnatural about it is that this is a society that seems to dwell on it and wants to inflict it everyway that it possibly can. See that is the abberation. The abberation is not within me as an individual where the only way I can relate to love is through pain, or the only way I can relate to pain is through love. That to me is just an abstraction. It's an abstraction that is beyond my comprehension in a living reality.
And when I speak of 'I' I speak of a collective 'I'...all of us, but for me I do't see the internal predator as being our enemy, it is the external predators, that has infected our mindset and then we use our mindsets to do battle with ourselves. They taught us to slay dragons...the whole western civilization mentality is to slay the dragons. But the whole reality is why slay the dragons, you can't slay the dragons because the dragons have children and the children will remember so there will never be peace, so for us it's just a matter to make peace with the dragons.
me: but this shouldn't be the reason not to slay! And as far as making peace, wouldn't a generalized effort to liberate humanity's spirit (our individual intuitions, feelings, and truths) be a way to make serious peace with the dragons? Since to liberate would be to promote the value of liberating even these people who actively aggress against us, empathizing with the them that they have been conditioned to forget and distrust and devalue, while not allowing them, encouraging them to escape the prisons of their war mentality and severely alienated behavior!
Of course, such liberation may still be stuck in the prison of what is viewed as "liberation" or "liberatory". But i see that Trudell has something going here about our original spirits versus the imaginations forced and coerced upon *ALL*.
Trudell: When I look at Western civilization, it's so messed up. They want to over-complicate everything, and I think they do it through intellectualizations or apathies, or whatever, but they want to over-complicate everything and sometimes I think they've been conditioned to want to over-complicate everything so that, therefore, they don't have to act...and perception...what does it take? It takes for us...not to lie to ourselves.
me: the question then becomes when is a lie a total lie, or when is a lie a situation of future truth that is not allowed to be true right now? (etc., surely) So i guess it comes back to Trudell's words on not judging others' ways of doing things, if it seems to work for them; minus the obvious aggressions. Not the ideologicalized alleged aggressions that we're told are "bad", but the most obvious...and one place all this gets hooked up on is when kids are brought into the scenario... The best i can recommend is to find out what kids, themselves, have to say. Here's a history of what they've said at this site:
www.geocities.com/artme4phun/
As for something contemporary? Look up the key words "youth liberation" or something similar.
Trudell on speaking our truths: there's nothing difficult about..I mean there is truly nothing difficult about looking at oneself in the mirror and well, look, I'm kind of fucked up, or these are my strengths and my weaknesses...this is me...and it proceeds from there and just accepting that, who we are, and proceed from there and make things much clearer.
But to me there are intellectualized concepts that are basically abstractions that create the illusion that we're doing something...
...everybody is trying to find a way out from the mess they're in and they're using dark age intellectualizations and remaining confined in these concepts of Freud and all the rest of these people....
me: Yep, and who was this human being named Sigmund Freud, after all? Basically, he was a pioneer for a school of thought, an institution which is now in power--has the power to manage and control us, within the usual limits, like other institutions now in power. But as a man, Freud was a product of his society, with a "good education" and everything, and probably quite trapped when we compare him with a less colonized human being, say a two-year-old. To read about John Trudell's background more indepth try: www.dickshovel.com/JTT.html
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