The point of this essay, apart from pushing for everyone with a yard to degrass and plant useful things, is to demonstrate that I have made a start already in preparation for a projected New World that may come into being when the Pandemic is over.

We are currently seeing the limits inherent in the types of understanding gained through rationality and technics. While there may have been a moment when it could be reasonably argued that new developments in the intellectual products of humanity were oriented towards the improvement of human life, there can now be no doubt that these have facilitated greater levels of immiseration and despair than ever before imagined.

I do not belong to a specific Land, but to my mom, my family, my community, my Ancestors. I do not draw my powers from a specific Land, but from my body, my mind, my spirit and my relationships. However, I am accountable to all the Lands that sustain me and the people I share them with.

A decolonial approach for life beyond neoliberalism

And the liminal revolution in-between

“The country I live in is a strange one, a place where the poor express their frustration by stealing and destroying electronic devices, while the rich express theirs by threatening to shoot everyone.”

Grounding and centering are foundational practices of witchcraft.

I place the root ball in the carefully dug furrow and close the earth over it, firming it down and move on to the next until there’s a row of young tomato plants, ready to extend their roots into the earth, to grow. And when it’s done I sit down and have a drink. There’s dirt beneath my nails and I think once more, I could do this forever.

“The film is asking us to come to terms with some difficult realities which we have yet to face: namely, that sustaining our infinite growth, industrial civilization on renewables is neither desirable nor possible, yet that is exactly what green capitalists are intent on pursuing.”

Sustainability, as we conventionally call it, is not actually sustainable. Sustainability continues to use finite resources as if they were infinite. Sustainability leads to greater harm to all life, not greater friendship with all beings. The products of sustainability—solar panels and biofuels — require Empire.

As the ravages of Empire play out, cultural recovery may become our goal again in the future — and we may find ourselves by choice or necessity living in small localized kinship groups once again, looking to our own ancestral traditions for a template to survival.

Trees are such beautiful creatures, are they not? And wise too. If you listen with a wild ear, if you watch them with wild eyes, they will share their lessons with you.

Sounds awfully romantic, doesn’t it? But as lovely as it sounds, it is also true.

Oh you'll go outside again, work at a job, hate the president. But that old world is gone, let it go and prepare for the new.

May you take care of your essence like a lioness takes care of her young, and may your heart shine with the innocence of a child, seeing the world through the hopeful eyes of tomorrow full of sweets, toys and ice cream. We still have to fight, with hope and confidence in seeing what we are in each other's eyes, even if by videoconference.

Going outside for a walk or, more daringly, a trip to the grocery store, we are more aware than ever of our proximity to others just as they are of us. Jean-Paul Sartre’s summary observation in No Exit that “Hell is other people” has assumed a qualitatively more severe level of significance.

Soon the leaves will unfurl and the cherry fruits will begin to form and grow, ripening in the heat of the summer months. But that time is not yet here and the blossoms are still at their best. Perhaps Hanami is one of the best mindfulness practices, the most easily applied.

The grim realities of the capitalist system could not be clearer right now in the United States. The sudden disappearance of labor has caused the entire economy to go into crisis overnight, for one simple reason that should have been obvious all along: all value comes from labor.

The cultural impact of ultra-processed foods is “a consequence of the desire to consume more and more as to create the sensation of belonging to a more modern and superior culture." With this, late stage capitalism has changed the concept of poverty and hunger.

What comes after COVID-19? What will our world look like? And how can we make a more beautiful world in the ruins of this crumbling empire?

While leftists craft ridiculous conspiracy theories, some people are literally conspiring to keep us alive.