I really hate conspiracy theories. A lot of people assume I'd be into them, and sometimes I get a good chuckle out of them, but overall they annoy the crap out of me. They more often than not completely lack a logical sequence, even when some really good information is dug up.

The biggest thing that really pisses me off, though, is how much any non-mainstream idea, particularly those that are critical of "the system" (however it's being defined), will always be relegated to "conspiracy theory" by some people, regardless of whether there's any conspiracy involved, or whether or not the "theory" was something verifiable and even outright said by the government or corporations (insomuch as there's a difference).

Conspiracy theories are not deep, educated analyses of current events and politics, and to conflate the two is either completely stupid or the epitome of virulent anti-intellectualism.

Here's the straight skinny on conspiracy theories as I see them: Conspiracy theories serve the purpose of defense mechanism style denial for those people who can't outright ignore or deny the evil shit that's going on. Instead of honestly evaluating exploitative systems of oppression and the role of privilege in maintaining these systems (and thereby having to question the legitimacy of one's own privilege) the cause for the situations we're collectively in, or the atrocities performed by our culture, is projected on others, perhaps a nefarious cabal of "power elites", or even maybe by interdimensional aliens looking to suck our brain energy.

Note: those people who buy into conspiracy theories the most are middle class white males, i.e. those people with plenty of privilege.

Now, I'm not saying there aren't evil motherfuckers trying to rule the world. I say that there are a lot, actually. But I have no reason to pretend that they're trying to enforce one-world government and are all part of a crazy devil-worshipping cult. I can just point to the fact that we have a sick, disfunctional culture that's set up to centralize power. I don't need to insert more meaning than that to assuage my guilt.

And I'm not saying that aliens or other non-human humanoids aren't out there. They might be. I just see no reason to blame this culture's ills on them, and certainly no reason to assume ill intent on their part.

This is a beautiful post from Sean Donahue at Green Man Ramblings, reproduced here because I think it's important, and have touched on similar things with a piece some months ago.

I was a vegetarian for seventeen years. And in the end, it was reflecting on the same questions that led me to stop eating meat that made me start eating it again.

Throughout my years as a vegetarian, I subscribed to the idea that a plant-based diet required less use of water, fossil fuels, and other "resources" than a diet that included meat.

But that's not necessarily true.

Here in New England, the soils are rocky and the growing season is short. A vegetable-based diet requires the importation of protein and fat from distant places, using tremendous amounts of fossil fuels. But the land here is great for grazing sheep and cattle. Eating the flesh of a grass-fed steer who lived out its life on a farm a few miles down the road costs the life of one animal, eating soy trucked across a continent costs the lives of many.

In many parts of the world, agriculture is a large scale operation that destroys habitat. Here in rural New England, small scale animal-based agriculture is an essential part of preserving land that would otherwise be more intensively developed.

The answers to questions about the most sustainable diet is vary widely from place to place depending on soils, climate, population density, and the history of land use.

Some may argue that its not sustainable or realistic for everyone everywhere to eat a diet that relies on sustainably and humanely raised or hunted meat. But I am not necessarily making the argument that it is. Sustainability is not a simple equation. There is not one diet that is appropriate for everyone everywhere. (Though from a health standpoint there are some pretty good indicators of what our bodies did and didn't evolve to eat -- see http://www.toddcaldecott.com/index.php/food/diet/146-diet-a-short-history.)

Every food choice we make has its costs in plant and animal lives.

For a long time only the animal lives matter to me -- for the same reason that for many people only human lives matter, and for others only the lives of humans of the same ethnic background matter -- because we most easily see ourselves mirrored in the lives of beings who closely resemble us and whose sentience is expressed in ways similar to our own.

But when I came to know plants more intimately I came to realize that they too are sentient beings with a desire to live.

Many vegetarian have misinterpreted this as a mockery of their beliefs. (Which oddly echoes the arguments I heard in my years of advocating for animal rights that talking about animal suffering somehow made a mockery of human suffering.) But the emerging field of plant neurobiology is demonstrating that plants have complex neural networks and recognize the difference between self and other. And as an herbalist when I write about talking about the plants, I am not speaking metaphorically --- I have conversations and relationships with Skunk Cabbage and Ghost Pipe as deep and meaningful as my human and animal relationships.

There is no choice of not killing. Our lives depend on the deaths of others. Just as the lives of cattle and bison and salmon and turnips and kale and redwoods do. To truly follow the philosophy of deep ecology and view ourselves as "plain members of the biological community" we need to recognize that we are as much a part of that web of life and death, eating and being eaten as any other species.

There is a sacredness in that. For me I have found that as an omnivore I am more conscious of the ethical and ecological choices I make about food than I was as a vegetarian. When I look back at myself as a vegetarian I see someone who was concerned primarily about what kind of organisms were represented directly on my plate. (And I know this is not true of all vegetarians.) As an omnivore, I am concerned about the web of relationships represented by the food on my plate, and the questions I ask about my impact on that web don't have simple answers.

Eating for me is a sacred act. And I give thanks for all who died to give me life, and honor them as best I can by living a life of working for love, justice, healing, and holy pleasure.

I've been thinking about changing the tone and direction of this blog. Up until now I've mostly been focusing on the intellectual side of rewilding and related subjects, occasionally adding in a bit of real-world know-how to help people make growing feral cultures more possible. This has been great, and has allowed me to examine some subjects I've been wanting to, and share that with all of you to get your input.

But I realized lately that there is something missing. As my previous post "Survivalism and Rewilding" discussed, I've been thinking more and more that for us to have a chance to build rewilding cultures in the long term, we need to adopt and adapt more mainstream survivalism in the short run. I think about this especially in terms of defense, because our culture breeds sociopaths and psychopaths in numbers, and because common firearms are just so damned effective.

Another, slightly less obvious (okay, still pretty obvious) goal with this blog has always been to convince poltical radicals who haven't thought about rewilding and self-sufficiency in a deep political sense that they're important subjects.

It naturally follows, then, that I should make a space in which subjects related to survivalism, homesteading, and prepping are presented that is friendly to people who don't drink the capitalist cool-aid. It always astounds me the extent to which almost every survivalist forum, show, podcast, etc. is completely dominated by people who think a "free market" (if it's so free why do you use military force to make people play along?). I also keep hearing really ironic lambasts against environmentalists by people preaching permaculture and stewardship, because they value the economic system more than the natural world (not that some pseudo-greenies don't piss me off from time to time). There's no place I'm aware of that is friendly to people with deep, radical analysis of politics, and also presents useful information for self-sufficiency. It's especially mind-boggling to me, considering that both subjects are completely intertwined in my thought and practice. Given that it seems the collapse of the West is entering to the faster, more obvious stage (it's been collapsing for a while now, in case you didn't get that from my other pieces) I want to get this stuff going.

So I think I might make this blog more about Survivalism for Radicals, making a place where genuinely anti-authoritarian folks can learn some really good skills and ideas without being bombarded by the same old pissed off conservatives who label everything they don't like as socialist (instead, we can have pissed off anarchists calling everything they don't like fascist?). Maybe I'll just look into starting a forum of some kind for this. Sound good?

(Oh yea, and also a place without stupid Alex Jones-esque conspiracy theories. I fucking hate conspiracy theories)

Ever have someone tell you that we're all just as responsible for environmental damage, because we use oil from the ground and wood from clearcut forests? I keep hearing this from time to time. The problem is, it's complete bullshit.

I didn't choose to live this way. If you're reading this, you probably didn't either. I've tried to live in a different way. And I mean radically different, separate from the industrial economy. Then I encountered a series of problems: legal, logistical, social, and corporate. Corporations, for instance, own most of the land in this country. That makes it hard to find a place to set up camp. Laws exist to keep people from living without a house, even if you actually have one and they just don't like it (because you made it yourself and it doesn't require you to contribute to the economy). And very few towns are set up with the intent of making it easy for someone to get around without an automobile.

We're also duped into thinking that expensive schooling is the only way to get educated (or a valid way at all), putting us into debt, which requires us to work, which means we need an address, a car, insurance for the house and car, debt from the car, etc. etc. Considering that a lot of our impact environmentally is from food (i.e. the stuff that you need to live), it's hard to fault a family of four with parents working wage slave jobs for not always buying their food from the local organic farmer who doesn't use artificial fertilizer. Even I'm not able to abstain from oil-related commerce, and I'm considered pretty handy in the wilderness and garden. I've had friends who lasted for a while living off the land, and without already having funds you have to resort to skirting the law (read: without being well-off to begin with, it's too damned expensive to be poor). They're all eventually forced back into civilized society, usually because of laws. They tried to live another way. Our culture hates that.

Like so many situations in our abusive culture, the model of abuse and victim blaming is replicated: Blaming the average citizen for being in the situation they don't like and didn't choose (but maybe thought they did) is like blaming a dependent housewife with a controlling husband for staying with him. She could leave him if he's violent or otherwise abusive, but the deck is stacked against her.

That's not to say that citizens aren't ever responsible; plenty of people go on and use plenty more energy and oil products than they need to, fully aware of the impacts. They definitely share at least a bit of blame. But the real people at fault, the real enemies (yes, enemies) are the people who think they own everything and are calling the shots. It's the people sitting in offices trying to control the world and using everyone else as resources and pawns. They set the system up so that we need to buy their products, to buy into the system.

Blaming everyone for the damages of this culture is pretty damned racist and classist. It's the same old "we're all one" bullshit that white, New-Agey peaceniks always spout to cover up their race and class based privilege. It's the pretension of saying that because you're not personally racist (always debateable) that you don't contribute to racial inequality.(Here's a clue folks: simply saying we're the same isn't going to help make us all equal, no matter how much your guru says the law of attraction can fix the world). It lets yuppies ignore that not everyone can shop at WholePaycheck to buy supposedly non-poisoned food, or have easily accessed public libraries to bring their kids to (or themselves).

Until we ditch this habit of activists, especially those of the armchair variety, innappropriately/disproportionately pinning blame on victims, we aren't going to see any useful action. Useful action springs from correct philosophy and analysis. We're unlikely to see the average Jane and Joe on the street digging deep at the roots until the shared story of our culture is no longer the one perpetuated by mass media and public incarceration schooling.

I'm not holding my breath.