What a Way to Go: Network

Life is not allowed to happen anymore. Where it does happen it is stamped out, if not by those who kill it, then by those living it, decaying within due to the conditioning they've received before liberated.

I say this as a member of a community, for which I've always felt blessed to have found. I missed them as I was in the west, and fled to the east again when I couldn't take the weight of all this anymore without them. I am back now, and I came back to find out that they are splitting up. My family is falling apart.

Like with all the rest of the world's problems, I keep being told not to let it bother me. It does bother me. I think it's nuts not to let these things bother you--the killing of the living world that sustains you, and the destruction of peoples ability to be family. It bothers me immensely. But when it bothers you, you're regarded as a freak, rather than someone to listen to and maybe even heed in some way. I want to shout in front of all these people and say, "HEY!!! SHUT UP AND GET ALONG OR I'LL COME OVER THERE AND MAKE YOU ALL CRY!!!" but it wouldn't work. The usual answer: Just take care of your own problems. We're a world taking care of our own problems, just working and paying bills. I don't want to take care of those problems. I want to grab the real problem and destroy it, but nobody listens. They're all too busy with their little feuds and their bills.

My last refuge, however, is destroyed. I think of Cuba Gooding Jr. in the film, Instinct, where he confesses to his "patient" (teacher) that what he's really afraid of is that he's going "back in the game. Put me back in the game, Ben! I'll do the work. I'll do ALL the work, just put me back in the game! I'll make you like me, Ben!"

I can't go back in that game. I never was in it. I have no idea how to be in it. My last refuge dies, then I die with it, and they can't understand why I even consider it important. With each feud they just roll their eyes and talk about how tired they are of the one thing in our lives that was right. They just want to hide from it, pay their bills, and go back into their own little games.

I, on the other hand, keep wishing I had a button. A button that, when pressed, would wipe out the entire Taker population of the human race... industrial civilization and those who are slaves to it. Wipe out everybody but those who know how to live with the land. I do not have this button. Push-button solutions are the invention of the civilization I hate most. They sure as hell have buttons that wipe us out, though.

I hate to say this: We need to find that button. I've shown friends this film, told them about books, talked to them about it all, and they all just think to hell with it... go back to their games, pay bills, and hide. I've seen no progress. I read in A Language Older Than Words where he asks how someone can look at the destruction and NOT feel rage and a desire to do something. I agree. How can you not? I know of nothing to do, but I'm pacing insanely wishing I had something I could do. I've no money, no vehicle, and no way to get much of anything done, but if I had that button to press, I'd slam it with my fist so many times you'd swear I was playing Joust. You know, that video game where you've gotta wail on the damned button just to stay aflight... that's the one. I hate that game, just as much as I hate what you've got to do in this world just to barely stay afloat.

And all the ones who worked and paid bills and played the game are just one inch higher than I am now that it's collapsing in on them. I look at them and wonder how they feel any better than me. We're in the same boat now, but I didn't do the work to help accelerate it. They did.

If we don't find that button soon, the last innocence of life will wither and die. If we have it and we don't push it, we too are the murderers. What are we willing to do here? We're all there is, I'm sorry to say. No progress has come. No minds have changed. Nobody's going to build the boat with us. As Quinn's character in After Dachau was forced to write: NOBODY CARES.

And goddammit, I'm not going to the game. I'm not sitting there and doing nothing, hiding, paying bills, paying taxes, being a good little boy. I'll do whatever it takes. I want to know who else will also. How far are we willing to go? How much are we willing to give up so that we have something left? Who is with me here? Who is ready to go insanely far enough for once?

Help me find that button so I can push the damned thing already.