Re-Entry Blues: Militarism vs. Mother Earth

I admit: I’m having trouble re-adjusting to life in the U.S.A. Having just returned from two week shamanic journey through the Lake Baikal region of Siberia and northern Mongolia, where BTW, I saw no evidence, none, of chemtrails poisoning their glorious 360° skies, I am plunked back into the strange, crazed, complex conundrum of  contemporary American life, where, despite the gradual militarization of local police forces, most citizens (read: consumers) still seem to be willfully ignorant of the hell that “our” Military Industrial (plus Medical Agricultural Academic) Complex Empire continues to perpetrate upon people and planet. (Or might this be what the current opioid epidemic is about? The intense need NOT to know, instead to numb ourselves to ghastly reality?) Given that so many “jobs” depend upon raging American militarism in one way or another, I guess I should not be surprised. And yet I am. Over and over again. Always surprised. All my life, surprised. Perplexed. Stunned. Crestfallen. 

Will I “get over it?” No. I will not. Though the gift of being temporarily in a place where militarism is NOT the overriding atmosphere has deeply affected me, given me respite, it has also made me even more decisively aware that what we must do is to create real value — value that lies underneath the scrim that so-called “money” has overlaid upon the natural world. 

Here is another person who has also realized that the one obvious way we, as individuals, can shift our attention from destruction to creation is to re-enter our original communion with the land — and, I would add, in concert with each other. I find it gratifying that this post has been widely shared. Thanks to Darvesha.

Frida Berrigan: Growing My Way Out of Dystopia

Meanwhile, the latest:

House Passes $700 Billion Military Bill Sure to Make ‘War Profiteers Rejoice’

Which of course, leads once again to that old, fundamental question:

Is There An Alternative to Plundering the Earth?

Excerpt:

One thing remains generally overlooked: the abstract wealth created for accumulation implies the destruction of nature as concrete wealth. The result is a “hole in the ground” and next to it a garbage dump with used commodities, outdated machinery and money without value.[37] However, once all concrete wealth (which today consists mainly of the last natural resources) will be gone, abstract wealth will disappear as well. It will, in Marx’s words, “evaporate”. The fact that abstract wealth is not real wealth will become obvious, and so will the answer to the question of which wealth modern economic activity has really created. In the end it is nothing but monetary wealth (and even this mainly exists virtually or on accounts) that constitutes a monoculture controlled by a tiny minority. Diversity is suffocated and millions of people are left wondering how to survive. And really: how do you survive with neither resources nor means of production nor money?

The nihilism of our economic system is evident. The whole world will be transformed into money – and then it will disappear. After all, money cannot be eaten. What no one seems to consider is the fact that it is impossible to re-transform commodities, money, capital and machinery into nature or concrete wealth. It seems that underlying all “economic development” is the assumption that “resources”, the “sources of wealth”,[38] are renewable and everlasting – just like the “growth” they create.[39]

About Ann Kreilkamp

PhD Philosophy, 1972. Rogue philosopher ever since.
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4 Responses to Re-Entry Blues: Militarism vs. Mother Earth

  1. Dixie Damron says:

    Missed you! You’re my compass. So glad you’re back.

  2. Bill Chisholm says:

    Our material wealth has left us spiritually bankrupt….. it is the justification for our military excesses around the world… protecting our interests abroad… so that we can steal the resources of others, exploit their labor.

    During my wilderness school instructor days, I was sitting out in the forest with a minimum of material things, the real basics and yet I felt myself to be the most complete, most connected that I ever had been as a human being sitting in the abundance of Nature.

    When I hear folks talk about doing away with poverty, I must ask which kind, for to me spiritual poverty is a far worse state than material poverty.

  3. rose day says:

    Hi Ann…so happy to read how inspiring was your latest sojourn…getting away from it all truly does seem a matter of ‘vacating and re-creating’.

    RE: US Militarism vs. Mother Earth…

    The US Military seems but one source of the institutional plague which presently besets our country and tangentially the entire planet…think…Religion, Health, Education, Housing, Employment, The Law, Finance…the list cuts across a myriad of demographics and could reach into eternity.

    The catch for most alive today is that these very institutions are touted as lofty and worthy of veneration within mind-control paradigms that seemingly have been in place throughout the ages.

    Ann, I honestly believe that large numbers are awakening to the charade that has played out for millennia and I personally am slowly coming to a place of peace that sees humanity championing personal sovereignty as a way out of this mess…we can no longer look to nameless, faceless institutions for the fix.

    Said institutions depend on our fear and neediness for survival and our personal responsibility will eventually render their ‘services’ obsolete. They know this and thus the present ramp-up in atrocities that would have us running for cover yet the run for cover by the masses appears to be on the wane…a real deviation from expectation.

    Worldwide power mongers would logically be the very last to accept ‘Game Over’ gracefully but as the masses hang tight in the knowledge that leech institutions are no longer necessary, THE GAME IS OVER.

    Pundits argue that it has taken humanity a long time to muck up Mother Earth so we’re looking at long-term reunification yet, in certain timelines, events occur in warp speed so I’ll opt for the bullet train on this stage of humanity’s voyage forward.

    Welcome back and thanks much for your efforts toward keeping us inside the loop on this incredible ride.

  4. Janice Berndt says:

    I am in agreement with Dixie. I missed checking in with you every day and I am glad you are back. What a wonderful gift you were given-to be in a place where militarism was not pervasive.

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