Telling Stories

Structure, not content, determines how energy will flow, where it will be directed, what new forms and structures it will create... In the same way, political groups based on hierarchy and levels of authority inevitably breed new power-over structures.  A revolution that challenges estrangement, that confronts the inherent violence of the few having power-over the many (or, for that matter, the many having power-over the few) cannot come through a structure that itself gives power to some over others.  

We could say that culture is a set of stories we tell each other again and again.  These stories have shapes.  The shapes of the stories - not the characters, the setting, or the details - shape our expectations and our actions.  It may be helpful to look at some of the stories that underly modern Western culture, for only when we recognize them and see their implications, the structures they create in us, can we be free to change them.  

Apocalypse. This is a story about time.  It tells us that time is a thing, not a set of relationships, somewhat like a one-way street, that history is a story with a beginning, middle, and end, and that the end will be a big bang, a grand climax.  

The main character in this story is a God who stands outside the world.  The assumption is that after the bang, we too will get outside the world to something better.  The story teaches estrangement.  This world is only foreplay; this life is only a prelude.  

Another version of this story could be called Revolution.

                          - Starhwawk

When It Is Right

"Is it worthwhile to reveal the intimacies of the past life? Will the people be sympathetic or disillusioned when the facts of my life are told? Would they be interested or indifferent? Will the results be harmful or good?"  - Rosa Parks

(1932) Medicinal Plants of North America

More I’s

Last year,

There were more I’s. 

More individual plight,

Less organized fights for human rights.

Last year,

It cast a sleepiness over everybody,

In the self-determined loneliness of

A techno-logical world,

In our cocoons, 

Addicted to the way we feel inside them,

The way we can forget inside them,

That we are needed, that we need.

This year,

Just let it go.

Let us clear our bodies of it.

No more euphemisms to cloud our talks,

To help us continue our clichés.

Who are you when the world is changing?

Can you keep yourself, while still recognizing your place

Among the brothers and sisters you have not yet met?

This year,

Because of all those eyes seeing life, 

We need less narcissism and more introspection,

We need to remember the pen that stored our thoughts,

We need a grip, 

Hands curved, fingers wrapped around

A consciousness we all share despite perspective eyes,

This year,

Remember,

Write it down,

We need less I’s.

GridCar

A Life

More Eyes

If you had many more eyes

Maybe it would be possible

To look past, these bullshit lies

You used to be unstoppable

Flying, above the sadness

In your mind, back into time

And find dying, your spark

Breath to life the unbroken you

Remember, what you wanted to do

Remember the world, you stayed

Awake thinking about, now you doubt

This whole reality, we can remake