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Second part of conversation with Benett F, on historical abuse in the UK, beyond the Dutroux affair, knowing thine enemy, Red Ice Radio and routing out psychopaths, the error of opposing the matrix, living inside a house of cards, how the system creates sociopaths, cultural engineering, what we know and don’t know about sociopaths, the social engineers’ philanthropic goal, ideological agendas, ambiguity and liminality, good and evil, the quest for wholeness, pre-tribal living (a return to), civilization as process, the shaman class and false ceremony masters, Stanford prison experiment, the missing link in social development/decline, trauma and language, animal goals, intuitive language of birds, removing language, the danger of restrictions, the accident of mass society, society as extension of nature, creating a world in his own image, consentient desire, overlooking the unconscious, a thousand failed intentional communities, the task of deconditioning, a total commitment to non-violence, the urgency of escape, peaceful parenting, motivations vs. intentions, the spiritual perspective, you & the universe, the energy of acceptance, the metaphor of marriage, letting the Tao guide us, beyond instinct.
Songs: “El Mariachi” & “Monkey Said,” by The Freak Fandango Orchestra; “Closing Time,” by Stealing Orchestra.
I’d like to make a distinction between tribes and bands. You’ve written ‘tribal living’ in the list of topics. What I’m proposing is a band. There are a number of differences, but the key one is that a band has no power structure.
You can find a summary of differences here:
http://anthro.palomar.edu/political/pol_2.htm
I wrote pre-tribal living.
My apologies
ahem- great podcast, no, an excellent one for this reason: it could be seen, or heard rather to epitomize an example of what a conversation between minds diametrically opposed, yet tolerant of the other’s point of view might actually look like.
kudos to both of you, every time i winced or clenched my teeth in anticipation of a rigid rebuttal you surprised me with openness.
however i found myself wondering how someone with an ideology so very dear to his/her heart along with a vehement gift o gab, not to mention a tenacious grip on said ideology ever hope to win over prospective co-habitants of like mind? clearly language in this ideal world envisioned would be expected to fall by the wayside right? pretty sure i recall that being discussed as being preferable. if so, i seriously doubt the possibility without some earth wracking trauma (which seemed to be envisioned) that would somehow have struck dumb all the co-inhabitants thereby granting bennet his vision made real.
i would not ever like to tread on anyone’s dreams for a better world, but it seems as though bennet is as open as he is articulate so i hope he is receptive to this comment.
also, if this vision of utopia or cult following is to be imagined let’s say, one would also have to imagine it as an idea of some merit for anyone else to feel inclined enough to swing by say, for a cup o joe, but minus a good gab to go along with it. what would be the point really, all the talking, rule making, fact checking, deletions of prospective members based on the desire to talk incessantly for long periods of time without coming of for air, or the inability to to utter full sentences, or the ability to sign ASL or the ole nod and grunt?
i wonder if it is a matter of actual quietude, or merely conflicting opinions that might prove to be the greatest hurdle. could bennet be able to not talk if he found any like minded people? what steps has he taken beside this very courageous leap in putting himself out there? i think a healthy exchange of ideas and heck anything interesting is a wonderful way to share one’s self.
i couldn’t do it, and you couldn’t make me. so interesting to see how many like minded types beat a path and sign up.
that was an enjoyable read (for me)
perhaps needless to say, I don’t personally see eradicating conversation as either the means nor even necessarily the end of removing the language-ideology implant of “good & evil.”
the medium is the message (or massage)… it’s more about who controls who (language or tongue)…
heh heh-touchay, eh! agreed, and exactly. propaganda, preaching, all round manipulation aside if the language itself doesn’t convince a body to even entertain an idea then i’m all for heading for the hills. after all is said and done and it seems a tad boring, or the alarm bells go off and the first question you think of revolves around,’okay, who’s the sheriff, and why the heck am i whistling a tune from, the good, the bad and the ugly . . ?’
then i guess if i was still hung up on the idea, or turned flexible, i might turn the spotlight inward and wonder why no one wanted to join my burg. sometimes language and logic isn’t enuf to convince a body when a thing isn’t even appealing.
To clarify:
1. Abandonment of language would not be a prerequisite for joining the enclave. It would be a personal choice on my part, because frankly, once I’m outside of civilisation, I’d rather live in a (mostly or entirely, not yet sure) silent way. I once sat and smoked weed with two strangers, who just happened to be rastafarians and who did not like me, for several hours in a row. No one said anything but there were all kinds of levels of communication taking place. “We don’t like you, why are you here?” was one message broadcast. “Because it’s not your place, and because there is currently nowhere else I’d rather be” was my response. “You smoke that joint in a way that is disrespectful to what we consider to be a sacred plant” was another message. “I smoke it this way because I enjoy it” was my response to that. And this conversation went on for a long time, psychically very tense, physically very relaxed, for a long time. With no words. I liked that, and would no doubt like it even more if I was with like-minded people rather than people who have as a central belief that I am a “white devil”.
2. If I have to exert much effort to ‘win anyone over’, then they are not sufficiently like-minded and we won’t be fellow travellers. I know what like-mindedness feels like because I have it with a small number of people already. I don’t want to force anything, or even push it.
3. The language thing is not as important as the consentient values and sustainability. Recognising that violence is inherently wrong, civilisation is fundamentally unsustainable, and having automatised ways of thinking that demonstrate this in every action, is what is most important.
4. When we’re gone, we’re gone. We will not be reachable to anyone who isn’t really good at finding people, and there will be no ‘dropping round for coffee’.
5. Utopia is a ridiculous term for what I have in mind because it means ‘nowhere’, and there already are the places, and there already are the ways of living that characterise sustainable life. We just need to go there, and live differently. It’s by no means simple, but calling it utopian or cultish is not fair at all, I’d say. Utopianism is a perspective on mass society, trying to find a way that all people should live. I want to see mass society crumble (it will anyway, eventually). My ideas are for me and my kin only. Others can do what they like as long as they leave us alone. The best way of being left alone is to go somewhere others won’t find you. That part (the location finding) has been done. Next stage is finding a FEW more people to join. The rest is easy.
Re: point 3, Recognizing that violence is inherently wrong. Without violence nothing within the organic realm of living would exist.
You have a very different definition of what violence is. I mean deliberate acts of aggression by hominids.
You might want to work on clarifying that & defining your terms. All the same, the notion that a total commitment to non-violence is enough to prevent violence erupting in a community is one you may want to examine more closely. Do you think that unnecessary violence erupts in a community, family, or relationship, due to a rational decision?
…and what does sustainable mean? It all looks like a recycling center to me.
We’ve filled this place up with ourselves and our imaginations becoming so successful that the principal adversary left is ourselves. We’re a force of nature that’s become a storm that will blow itself out. There’s nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.
Maybe Benett should look into a monastic life.
I’m prone to engaging in variations of the sort of fantasy Benett is describing. I also know how foolish I am.
The Universe has nothing to lose and nothing to gain, two galaxies meet and tear each other apart. I’m just a temporary aberration (optics). We’re so self important both in thinking we’re making the world a better place and then on the other hand that we’re responsible for saving the world. Demi-Gods and Ape shapes, I don’t know.
I think I’ll go watch the bird drama unfold from the sundeck, that’s always interesting. Will the Merlin go hungry today? I doubt it.
perhaps i’m delusional or merely a glutton for punishment. in any case i will say that i find the combination of your quest for peace and your naive rhetoric curiously riveting.
1. big red flag here in word choice alone. enclave you say? not community, farm, co-op? the negative connotations are numerous.
if you’re not sure now, you should be. as for your less than convivial sacred plant scenario a couple of things popped into my mind unbidden. A) curious that your retelling of the tale made no mention of a concern on your part with regards to respect in that you may have offended these rastas. B) and here i must confess that i had to roll back the tape, o lo many years, to access this info; heaters and hotboxing IS offensive to even non rasta types. slobber, greediness and a total disregard for others. your comment, “i smoke it this way because i enjoy it,” is telling really. C) paranoia while partaking is not uncommon is it?
2. if you have like mindedness already then you are fortunate indeed. do you i wonder have humour? good diffuser, good medicine, worth a try as you might need it.
3. language is your friend, or at least your ally. but if only it were used for good and not evil right?at the end of the day what else do we have besides belly button lint to share, if not from the heart then in the same general vicinity, and for some reason weaving and how to communicate comes to mind.
4. dommage really. but then i tend to favour small tinkly bells so you’d probably hear me coming and have time to scurry away or give me the bum’s rush. what you don’t say explicitly is how you will maintain this seclusion.
5.it’s not ridiculous at all. it means nowhere because it exists only as an illusion. as for cultish it may not be fair but might probably be accurate.
this seems self preservational on your part. if that is the case i am sorry that we failed you to this extent. if you can honestly say you have tried, and who among has not, and failed through no lack on your part of equal measures of laughter, kindness, and wisdom to help yourself or your fellow human then i wish you nothing but peace.
i am hesitant to give advice, but i will say this much: children are our future, women who might lack upper body strength or amazing catlike reflexes, wise elders, pederasts, priests, sleazy weasels, clowns, ne’er do wells, and bonafide cretins can and do exist everywhere.
so unless you plan to live on an island or the last place anyone would find you-say next door to your local police station- remember this, walk tall and carry a big stick, bring clean underwear and preparation H, it’s a cold and damp world out there.
i bid you a fond farewell, i must lie down and fight an indescribable urge to poke my eye out with a fork for some reason.
“big red flag here in word choice alone”
So rather than ask more questions, you’re jumping to conclusions?
“enclave you say? not community, farm, co-op? the negative connotations are numerous.”
I started using the word enclave because all the while I said “consentient community”, no one had a real clue what I was talking about or was prepared to think about it.
“if you’re not sure now, you should be”
Why? It really doesn’t make a whole lot of difference either way. The language is NOT the most important thing, really.
“your retelling of the tale made no mention of a concern on your part with regards to respect in that you may have offended these rastas.”
The idea of ‘taking offence’ when no violence has been performed is a horrid artefact of liberal humanism, and I’ll have no part of it. The space involved did not belong to them and I did absolutely nothing to them whatsoever. Do you not know that rastafarianism has fundamentally racist beliefs?
“heaters and hotboxing IS offensive to even non rasta types. slobber, greediness and a total disregard for others. your comment, “i smoke it this way because i enjoy it,” is telling really. C) paranoia while partaking is not uncommon is it?”
Barking up the wrong tree. You have literally no idea about these things, yet you invent imagined ideas and then say they are ‘telling’.
“if you have like mindedness already then you are fortunate indeed. do you i wonder have humour? good diffuser, good medicine, worth a try as you might need it.”
Of course I have humour. Am I obliged to prove it to YOU? Even if I tried, we could have very different sense of humour. I’m happy with that part of my life, and don’t feel the need to discuss it really.
“what you don’t say explicitly is how you will maintain this seclusion.”
Did you consider that telling strangers on the internet how I will remain secluded might threaten that seclusion? 😉
“it’s not ridiculous at all. it means nowhere because it exists only as an illusion. ”
Err, no. It exists. It has existed for a very long time. I suggest you learn about it.
“so unless you plan to live on an island or the last place anyone would find you…”
Yeah, I do.
“it’s a cold and damp world out there.”
Not where I’m going 😉
“i bid you a fond farewell, i must lie down and fight an indescribable urge to poke my eye out with a fork for some reason.”
Something tells me your fondness is insincere. Farewell anyway 🙂
on the contrary bennett, i wish you nothing less than joy, and peace of heart that can be found in every nook and cranny in life. strength and gentleness as well as the unexpected beauty that i hope always lifts you up when life and its burdens become unbearable. especially for the children and the child in you and yours. i am sad that you wish civilization to crumble as me and mine are part of that civilization as well.
the fork comment was unnecessary and unkind, i gladly take it back. i am truly sorry that it hurt you.
Enkidu, why did you give in to the temptation?
Listened to both podcasts, still not certain what it is about Bennett’s ideas/vision that apparently gets up Jasun’s nose so very far.
Maybe because i’ve lived in the sf bay area here in norther california for half a century, where many many experiments in alternative living have sprouted, bloomed, prospered or exploded. I was 15 when the Jonestown massacre went down, yet overall what i’ve seen of various different ways of living together is that it’s about as ‘successful’ as your average job, marriage, or family.
Bennett seems to be excruciatingly careful of not forcing anyone to join or even talk about his ideas. I think more people should give their dreams a go – otherwise we tend to be carried along by brute circumstance. If the world as we perceive it is material for us to work with, well, why not work with it?
Jasun, i don’t know if i remember correctly but haven’t you had some difficult experiences with gurus? (ha, i know i have!) Did you try your hand at guru-ing yourself for a bit? Anyways, if those experiences were vexing I can see why Bennett’s ideas may be upsetting to you – but not everything in the way of an alternative to our society need turn out so unpleasantly.
One can learn lots simply by making the attempt. If you don’t find Bennett’s ideas compelling, well don’t pursue them.
“Jasun, i don’t know if i remember correctly but haven’t you had some difficult experiences with gurus? (ha, i know i have!) Did you try your hand at guru-ing yourself for a bit?” Still interested in answer to this question – seems to have fallen thru the cracks.
I did, and wrote a book about it, still unpublished. It comes up briefly in tomorrow’s podcast, with one of your own favorites, Mr. Random Dude.
Thank you for the answer.
I found the way you and others in the comments treated Mr. Freeman to be very unfair and frankly mean. I am not interested in discussing this, it is simply my opinion which i wanted to make clear as not doing so could easily lead readers to think that i tacitly condone this behaviour.
I appreciate the opportunity to publish this disclaimer.
Sure. It doesn’t carry much water however if you don’t cite specifics. I just looked at my own responses and there’s noting that could possibly be called “mean” even from the most over-protective of perspectives.
FYI, & IMO, Benett doesn’t need to be mothered; quite the contrary.
hi Jasun. My statement is not about you, or about Benett. It is about who I am and how I want to treat other people.
“I found the way you and others in the comments treated Mr. Freeman to be very unfair and frankly mean.”
How is this not a statement about me or Benett?
Just judging from the comments section, I have yet to hear the podcasts, I’m reminded of the anarcho-primitivist, John Zerzan, who also has a critique of language as well as sedentism, domestication, mass society, technology and other key features of that experiment in hierarchy of some 10 or 15 thousand years that we all know and love, civilization. Before that experiment, humans had been living in basically non-hierarchichal bands for some million years and although mammalian aggression was a feature of life, mass warfare was not. Yes, civilization is a blip on the time-line of human existence, so you want to talk sustainability?
The latest experiments in re-wilding are occuring on large tracts of land whose whereabouts are undisclosed, at least that’s what I’ve heard on Zerzan’s radio program, Anarchist Radio, out of Eugen, Oregon.
Jason, would you consider doing a podcast with Zerzan?
Warning: Zerzan endorses (or merely reports?) violent anarchist opposition to mass society and civilization and has a section of his program called “action news” about things like gluing up ATM machines, freeing mink from their cages, the forest resistance movements in Germany and Russia, or, more problematically, the nihilists in Mexico and elsewhere who maim and kill scientists, CEOs, and others in AI labs and other techno-industrial centers.
Given the current predicament sustainability is worth talking about. This circumstance is clearly going over the cliff, yet the so called elite appear to be forging ahead with the ancient dream of Universal Empire while we’re telling ourselves more techno-narcissist stories.
I don’t think your summary of human experience necessarily holds much water either. It seems to me that as soon as there was an abundance of food, whether through natural surplus or human ingenuity, people settled down into clear hierarchical patterns. The Natives of the Pacific Northwest coast being an example of natural abundance, the closest they came to agriculture was burning their camus bulb lands to increase harvests. They were settled, had a definite class system with hereditary chiefs at the top and slaves at the bottom with plenty of raiding and warfare. Pre-European contact there were settled agricultural societies living along the Mississippi as well. How about Polynesians, what were they up to? Etc.
Who knows what sort of experiments have been conducted by humans over the course of a hundred thousand years? Like on the Pacific N-W coast, the evidence may be underwater as a result of the end of the ice age. We like nice, neat, simple, linear narratives but it just ain’t so.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kristinakillgrove/2015/06/24/review-first-peoples-series-chronicles-origins-and-spread-of-modern-humans/
We can’t go back to living off the fat of the land at this point regardless (not much fat left) so what does sustainable mean? Let’s not be naive, there are no easy answers. It would be an interesting experiment to see how a group of people that have lived their entire lives in an over stimulated, hyper intellectual state of convenience and entitlement would fare attempting to fend for themselves. I’d prefer to find a small town in an environment of my choosing and just try to do my own thing and attempt to get along I think.
The common thing among the peoples that you mention, and about whom I know little, is that they were settled; and although they did not live in cities they had hierarchy, warfare, some stage of agriculture as a result of being settled (=domestication, sedentism). Before people became settled, they were wanderers, nomadic (or more precisely called hunter-gatherers if they existed before the beginnings of agriculture and cities, say before 15,000 years ago). Anyway, this is what I’ve gathered from my scant anthropological reading. An interesting book along these lines is Wandering God: A Study in Nomadic Spirituality by Morris Berman.
What’s sustainable? The opposite of the present techno-industrial arrangement. If we can’t go back willingly, then we’ll be forced back with great travail by the natural limits to infinite growth that a finite, yet benign, planet imposes on us. Of course the imposition won’t be benign but a palpable die-off. Darker times are ahead.
I wasn’t speaking from an individual perspective, but from a historical, species perspective, insofar as my limitations permit. Personally, I sometimes would just like to forget about it all. I have my own individual problems that won’t be solved by worrying about human destiny!
That humans lived for 2 million years without civilisation and all the misery it entails is not some kind of far-fetched theory. It is established anthropological and archaeological fact. It’s just that it’s hardly ever allowed to be seen because it runs counter to everything that civilisation teaches the young in their prisons.
Patrick Wood: Technocracy Rising Interview (Part 1 of 3)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNkDiBOO4H0