One more thing. If you want to be passive but still resist than you really really need to understand that your only true voice in this is your dollar. Where are you going to spread your wealth? If you oppose the system while eating factory farmed poison from mcdonalds and watching fox news in your new slave made GAP jeans I mean you are a bit delusional.

Every single dollar counts. Money is EVERYTHING to these people. If they cant sell you the bullshit they throw at you then they dont have any real power over you. That is the only way you can hope to overthrow the state we are in withtou resorting to other means. You can teach others as well sure, but then they have to go out and do they're part as well.

Buy local as much as possible. Support local food markets..learn to wildcraft when possible and gather food or hunt.. You dont need a new cellphone every year and the cloths you have are probably good enough. If we stopped to think about where the money we work hard for is going and choose to spend it consciously with our futures in mind we might get somewhere.

I see drones everywhere , when I try to get people involved in psychedelics most have no interest. I suppose the only thing that has ever changed history is small groups of highly motivated people and it usually involves violence.

I have been buying most of my food at the farmers market, I am growing a garden and I never buy cloths.

That being said I look up in the sky and see an airplane spewing aluminium into the atmosphere and I'm forced to the conclusion that the only thing that's going to stop it is a missile launcher.

Its like the documentary says , how many 'likes' on facebook do we think its going to take until something magically happens? maybe as stupid as it sounds that is the answer, spreading the word on the internet until we reach enough people we come to some kind of boiling point where 'someone' is going to actually do something about this.

I'm always wondering why our creator or whatever force put all this together would allow for good people that just want a better planet and are doing their part to go down with the ship. It just doesn't make any sense.

Hence I come to my spiritual conclusion about all of this Its the message I've been getting from psychedelics, Terrence Mckenna talked about it a lot, we are in what seems to be a crisis but its really its a birth, a birth of a new age for humanity.

It takes a great deal of faith and self control to buy into that idea while our planet is getting raped though. We've been under chemical attack for a while now in an effort to pacify us and make us stupid. I hate to think that maybe my spiritual beliefs on this are actually the fruit of their diabolical plan to make me an idiot.

I think too far is where innocent, uninvolved people get harmed.. The Unabomber killed and injured so many random, innocent people.
His statements lash out at modern technological society, but his actions are aimed at random people.

Had he planted bombs at the bilderberg conference or target some elitist corporatocratic individuals than I would consider him quite a genius indeed.
As an activist you should try to gain the sympathy of the people as much as possible. IF you're gunna use violence out of disgust for a modern, mechanical, inhumain society,
target those who have made society that way and are allways busy keeping it that way.
Bombing random people is going nowhere. The Unabomber's ideological manifesto was very true and was a testimony to his great wisdom,
but his actions, killing & mangeling random people, were those of a maniac.




About Natural landscapes rapidly disappearing;
I am all for colonising endangered forrests and violently keeping woodcutters & poachers at bay.
However you can expect large groups of heavily armed men fastroping down from black helicopters to arrest and possibly shoot you.
If you're going to defend the forrests from woodcutting using force, you better bring quite an impressive army.
You could do it ultimately covert. Small groups of activists, extremely well camouflaged.
Hit and Run actions where tractors, woodcutting machines & such are sabotaged beyond repair.
If this group built Vietcong style underground tunnelsystems, they could appear, sabotage
as much woodcutting company's machines as possible, run and disappear into the nearest underground tunnel entrance.

Underground tunnels in jungles and forrests will be tough to find. They probably won't expect tunnels.
A small group staying in a series of such tunnels could seriously delay and thwart a woodcutting operation.
Enough sabotage of expensive machiney could possibly bankrupt them.

Allthough chances are the news will paint a terrorist image of such a group and then get a public okay to
use full force to whipe out this "terrorist threat".

Nature is very harsh, that is one of the reasons we need to return to it. We are domesticated into accepting cozy, lazy lifestyles, and being docile and forgetting that resistance and violence are part of nature. First we must stop supporting their agenda ( Which most will fight to help keep afloat.), then we must strategically and tactically make moves to stop their goals of world domination and control. I for one probably won't be around all of the civil unrest, murder, and eventual total collapse of this system. I don't see enough people waking up, this will cause brother vs. brother fighting, such as in the American Civil War. Fighting to the death for the last Mcdonalds hamburger is where I see things headed. I am in the process of preparing to leave the U.S. and am searching for a place to live away from modernized cultures. Hard thing to do, but the best things in life aren't easy.

^ Peoples first step is to figure this out, but many refuse to believe it or can't realize it. Perhaps the universe/nature will help to work things out, it alway's does Fractal you are on point, thanks for reassuring me that there are thinking people out here, who realize what is going on. Wish more lived where I do.

Just because you can't think of another way, does not mean there isn't one.

I can not agree that psychedelics alone can change the world for the better. Gandhi's beliefs and actions affected countless lives. Just as the Unabomber's wisdom and beliefs may have benefited some, it's obvious that neither individual approach actually solved things on a long term basis, but instead, both acted as a single catalyst among infinite other unimaginable possible influences for people. People find their own way to help change the world, and who outside of their life has the right to say it's the wrong way?

Real and radical revolutionary movements are a combination of love and pain to varying degrees, all based from individual circumstance. If a simple act of love could change the world, then our human condition alone would only serve to dilute the events importance in the generations that follow. Things happening right now are more important for me than histories revolutions. But maybe for this reason, history is always, inevitably repeated? You can only learn so much from history books that can be applied to the present, because history doesn't take into account every single human life that existed at the time. Every last possible influence. And I'm a believer in little things helping to create the biggest, lasting differences.

I'm not afraid of the future or what it holds. But how large does the death toll of a war need to be to wake every last person up? Thanks to the separation of not simply the first class and bottom classes, but the separation of First and Third World, empathy has become a scarce resource. Making it an issue for the entire world to ever come to agreeable terms for what "change" means. This is why I choose to be that "passive new age'r who doesn't know anything." Because in my mind, attacks against another living being results in regression if you can't learn from history, if you lack that empathy for your victims. But, there are those who sit behind a computer talking about love & hate & other crazy human emotions, with no real, immediate threats to their life from the outside world, and there are those who are backed into a corner and are forced to react violently. There needs to be polarity in life, along with everything in between.

I'm optimistic for human existence into the far reaching future. As long as we recognize that we live in a polarized world of good and evil, with all sorts of varying degrees of love and hate, that alone should be a reason to be happy, in my opinion. Some say life can viewed as playing the cards you are dealt, and so I propose that there are people inside of this system we so often curse, taking advantage of it to benefit those it has targeted most, in any feasible manner.

Government and Corporate powers have distorted a balance. And I see this big change everyone expects to happen, only to be the re-balancing of good and evil. Because that's is how we consistently learn about ourselves, and what we do and do not want to be in life.

This is the starting point, imo, hand-in-hand with capitalism. This is what gives rise to corporations of the kind we have and entire swathes of people who are completely cut off from the earth upon which they live and which provides them sustenance (which they are aware of only in a very theoretical manner as they have no interaction with "nature" ). From corporations and political power schemes you ultimately wind up with have's and have-nots (a dramatic oversimplification...but essentially it's those who have power, i.e. thew ability to name phenomena and shape their actions, and those who don't and are subjected to such phenomena).

Peaceful revolt is admirable...it is beautiful when it works. The recent Spanish example is great...although, I am unaware of it having caused any real change as of yet (is there any word on this? I should probly go check that thread :wink, Gandhi was a remarkable man who accomplished much, as was Dr. King (although his radical speeches have been tossed aside by history and you never he mention of how his anti-Vietnam speeches lost him a lot of Black and White supporters...actually the day of his assassination or the next day, I believe he was supposed to be giving an anti-war speech). While these efforts do highlight the potential success of non-violent protest, none of these movements (with the possible exception of Spain and its currently unclear effects) were aimed at taking down the actual power structures responsible for this systemic destruction. This is a major difference and I think that the distinction cannot be glossed over or viewed as marginal.

In taking down the corporate power structure/capitalist system that feeds it, you are taking on the "Old Money" of the world. You are taking on the global elite who have everything to lose and "nothing" to gain within a paradigm shift (as far as the monetary/materialist benefits that they now reap). They have the power, financial and political and have no intention of giving it up so that there can be more equality or less economic catastrophe. A real quick aside, there's a statistic that says if you can eat 3 meals a day for 3 consecutive weeks, you are in the richest 15% of the world. That means, in any sort of global shift away from this system, you will have less possessions, less material wealth (ideally you'll still be eating regularly and so will many more) and less stuff in general compared with what you have now. Now, imagine you are in that fraction of the top 1% that has special catalogues of gizmos and gadgets that start at a million dollars; how do you incentivize these people, many of whom have never known anything else, to give this up? They have private security companies (and national militaries and politicians) in their pockets. I see no way around armed resistance if we're seriously going to attempt to take this system down...there's too much vested power with too much military force behind it to take down peacefully, imo.

We have seen countless examples in Latin and South America where union organizers, political dissenters and other "small fish" get taken out, merely for dissenting with regards to the status quo. Things are better in the USA, but at the same time, there are still assassinations (by government agencies and NGOs) that take place, there is the silencing of activists, the controlling of media through propaganda and numerous other examples of manners in which those with vested interest in keeping this system have worked on entrenching it. This will not go away peacefully...or at least I see no reason or mechanism by which that can/will happen. There's so much to say on this topic you could write a library of books and only scratch the surface, but I'll leave it at this point for the time being. Great topic Ray.

violence vs violence = violence
kymatica - a movie worth watching touched on this in a very good way.

I think you're spot on, fractal. And I find it's entirely possible to take action without hurting anyone-- and that can have at least some repercussions for corporations. For instance, one can sabotage a chain store to the extent that it's forced to leave. You can not only stop spending your money there, but you can very directly dissuade others from spending theirs (i.e. something foul in the ventilation system).

However, in quite a few cases, I think I would be able to use physical violence. Not against civilians, but against others who had taken to using force... I feel death is not the end, and feel that neither to kill or be killed is of necessity a tragedy... and so situations which provoke direct change, yet with gambler's hand dispense death to those involved, are not to be avoided at all costs.

WW2 comes up for me as an extreme situation of this caliber. How many would knowingly sit by with passivity while Hitler's Germany committed atrocities? Is not the use of violence justified in that situation?

Non-violent protest is the tool of the oppressed against the oppressor, like in India. It worked because the country stood together; when the Indian people ceased cooperating, India stopped cooperating. But how many millions of Americans stand voluntarily with the corporations? There's not enough solidarity to effect a change. The country can keep going the way it has been if a million people drop out in protest, probably could still function if ten million dropped out in protest. But you would need to have tens of millions to effect that change....

Perhaps what is needed is to replace what the Americans are spraying with something else that will make everyone love nature, any ideas....??

I think the answer is simple: once there is a movement that has reached a critical mass, a majority of people that is willing and able to use violence WHEN THEY'D BE FORCED TO, you no longer need a lot of violence to stop corporate and government injustice.

If you stand a chance of winning with the use of violence, in 99% of the cases you will no longer need to use it.

This is how the berlin wall, apartheid and the milosevic regime fell, and the regime of mubarak (althougn we have yet to see how much will realy change in egypt).

Psilocybin, of course!



But does it make it right to sit back even if you feel you cannot win? Do you realize how little it can take to make a difference?
If a commercial food processor eventually condenses into one or two machine-run processing plants, small acts could kill the company all together.

RayOfLight

No positive change can come through violent action... Progressive change can only come from individuals who inspire inner strength, global unity and true compassion. By bringing any harm to others we are only in the end harming ourselves. <3


Much Peace and Understanding

Applying this to the civil war WWII and countless other examples...I'd have to say I disagree whole-heartedly. Sometimes, when every other option has been exhausted, you have to take up arms. Imo, at these junctures in history there's no way around it...you simply couldn't love Hitler out of the equation, or Stalin, or Mengele...true evil must be excised by violence.

The Black Panthers, despite what the propagandistic storytelling we know as "history" tells us, were rather non-violent on the whole, if you look at the number of social movements and projects they started compared to the number of violent altercations they were involved in (and not framed for). They were assassinated and unjustly incarcerated one after another...the FBI couldn't be loved into stopping their heinous atrocities.

What about Cambodia? Pol Pot couldn't be loved out of power, nor could the US bombing campaigns. Nor could US bombing campaigns in North and South Vietnam, or Iraq, or Afghanistan. I've been to the white light...I've seen that all there truly is is love, but let's face it...in this physical plane, sometimes love ain't enough.

Rock on, Snozz.

Such an intense subject, all I can add at this point is that we should listen to our intuition, and try to be peaceful. If someone or a group is threatening our lives however, violence might be the only answer.......I hate to use a Star Wars analogy here but we at the Nexus are similar to Jedi Knights and Jedi Masters. We have great knowledge, understanding, and wisdom, and are generally against using violence, but when it is necessary we must engage certain enemies.

I believe true world peace could never be permanent, as important events lose significance with every passing generation, but the only thing that any violent act does is perpetuate more violence. If people must come to harm to make a real, lasting change, then encourage those that find themselves in such a life threatening position to not retaliate, because the impact of passivity would shock the world more than the unoriginal, unsurprising, uninspiring act of murdering each other more.

I think one main thing people have to concider is that it is ok to break the law. I would never ever encourage people to make judgements or act based on the observance of law. The more that people disobey unjust laws the less power these laws begin to have. A perfect example of this was the age of slavery in the United States and the underground railroad. Many canadian and american people stood up in the face of unjust laws and broke them in order to bring about a better world. We are not sheep and we are definatily capable of making informed choices if we would just stop being so afraid and wake up.

"If you could flick a switch and open your third eye, you would see that we should never be afraid to die"

I've pondered much about world problems, nature, oblivion, hopelessness, apocalyptic thoughts. What are the world's problems, exactly? As I see it, there are three basic "problems" in this life. 1) Fear of death 2) fear of the unknown 3) fear of pain. Those three things exist in the individual, and can only be dealt with there. The world's problems are really your problems. Just about everyone is afraid of death, the unknown, and pain, and all the violence and suffering on earth is the result of people wanting to avoid those things for themselves. In order to avoid those things, people inflict the big 3 problems on others. But of course, it's all one organism. But don’t these three problems exist only because people don’t want to accept them as they are?

Nature is an interesting monster. Every time you see an angry person, they're raging at their own nature. Every angry person out there is a wandering soul, inflicting pain upon themselves by being angry at the world, unknowingly being angry at themselves. People who realize this have the opportunity to let go of the suffering. I think nature has presented humans, and all creatures, with an unsolvable puzzle. The puzzle is this.... you have the idea that something is wrong, and you want to preserve your existence, yet no matter what road you choose, everything comes to an end. There is no right way. You can pick up a sword and start swinging it at everything you consider evil, and in the process, become a monster yourself. New enemies keep re-spawning, and you'll still die eventually, as will everyone and everything you know. Or, you can drop your sword, give up, resolve yourself to non violence. You'll still die. No matter what you do, you die... and there will probably be a good deal of pain along the eventual road to the end, whether it be in the form of someone killing you, or just being ravaged and slowly degrading from old age. Everything you know will be lost no matter what you do. To quote someone roughly, there are no winners or losers in life, only those who live to fight another day.

As for violence, I see it as a natural phenomenon. I think people are under a mass illusion that violence is only something that bad people do. No, when people get hungry, when people get desperate, when people don't know where to find shelter, or food or water, or when people are deprived, they tend to abandon civility because they know civility will no longer serve them. Instead, they start stealing, they start trying to beat anyone who gets in their way, they claw for resources. Violence is like a Plan B for organisms. If a system of co-operation breaks down, then violence and ruthlessness become the only chance of survival. Sure, you might hope that a desperate person might politely commit suicide and not bother innocent people who have everything, but that's just not the reality of how humans act.

The best people could possibly do to reduce violence is reduce environments which lead to violence. Societies should seek to reduce poverty, lack of education.... and also realize that to continuing to war against countries which are already pissed at you is a sure fire way to create more future enemies. I hope countries also start realizing that imprisoning people in mass quantities for things that shouldn't be criminal, such as using certain substances, only creates an environment of despair, suffering, mental illness, which basically results in much more crime. Creating suffering for others tends to result in backlash of suffering.

And so, I hope people strive for a society in which everyone is more co-operative, and loving of each other. I hope people can accept that violence is just naturally what occurs when people get desperate, when they feel unloved… so we might as well try to get along with each other so we don’t hurt each other.



I suspect everyone goes through some sort of radical change at the point of death, no matter who they are. They could be the most hateful, evil bastard ever, and they'll still come to the same type of realization as anyone else. Likely, they'll realize it was all an illusion, all a show, and all self imposed, and self reinforced. I sometimes wonder what real death is like.... if the soldiers out there killing each realize at the point of death, "oh my God... it was all a dream. What a nightmare. I'm glad it's over"

I don't think personality has anything to do with anything at death, except the final thoughts one has, the final trip. But the truth one may come to at death is beyond ego. Death is the end of the egoic stuff. Take our spice adventures, for example. Once that stuff hits our brain, we become aware of something else..... something we never even imagined possible. All your logic, all your beliefs and ideas, all your prejudices, all your hate, all your assumptions of self identity, and everything you thought you knew about anything goes right the fuck out the window.

Everything in the universe is subject to the same truth, and subject to death. You can turn the other cheek, or not. The choice is yours. Either way, you will die, and the truth of your being will be exposed. Personally, whether I turn the other cheek or not, I won’t be filled with hate. The only way not to hate is to surrender. Surrender to what is. Any hate is really self hate, and I wouldn’t wish to go out, nor live this life hating my own nature.

It’s not really others that are violent, it’s not the world that’s evil, but that’s my own nature. The world is a reflection of my own nature. I can’t see anything in the world that isn’t part of my own nature. Animals killing animals to survive, death, pain…. Yep, that’s all part of my existence, that’s all part of my whole experience here. I do not know why this is so, but I know that it is so. I no longer ask why it is so, for asking why perpetuates the suffering. Asking why is a wish to avoid that suffering. Wishing to avoid suffering is the only kind of suffering. There is no other suffering. So when I look at the world and see all the suffering in it, yes it saddens me, and yes I want it to change. But the nature of the world IS my nature, and my primary task is to not hate myself. If I hate my own nature, I've lost everything, even if I appear to win anything on the physical plane. If I'm willing to hate in order to get love, then I've forgotten what love is. I've fallen under a spell of illusion. The primary focus is your own soul. Remember that when you are disgusted by the world.

You see people, we’re all the same. We are all the same nature. No one really wants violence, yet most people are willing to resort to it if they feel they have to. We are not separate from this. Most people here come to the conclusion that violence is sometimes necessary. People say they want peace and love and beauty… yet they’re willing to kill and become what they hate to get such things. They’re willing to hate so they can experience what they love. I’m not damning anyone, I’m just pointing out the truth that people don’t like to admit. I’m not promoting violence that’s for sure, just pointing out some truths that are hard to face.





The nature of the puzzle is unsolvable. No matter what road you take, as long as you seek to escape reality, no road will free you. Fight back, be non violent, be an activist, be a couch potato, whatever. We all end up the same. I think the creator put it together this way because it’s so compelling and mystifying… and tragically beautiful in its own way.


Unfortunately, I do not predict a bright future for humans, and especially the whole planet, over the next couple hundred years. Lord knows, no matter how much human loss occurs, it’s nothing compared to the impact that humans have on the entire animal kingdom. But anyway, the reason I don’t see a bright future is because I see overpopulation and lack of resources becoming the biggest problem the world has ever seen. I think people will just keep increasing exponentially in numbers until all of a sudden, there won’t be enough resources to support the whole system, and it will crash and a lot of people will die. It will turn to a world where everyone just fights for whatever resources they can get. But, I don’t think this will mean the end of humanity, just the end civil society, the end of healthy eco systems on the planet…. At least for a while, a very dark period. It should all even itself out over time though.

Obviously, I don’t want this to happen, but I feel opinion and activism are irrelevant. No matter what system of thought or government is utilized, I think the population will just grow until there aren't enough resources. People are just going to keep fucking because it’s like the strongest desire ever. That’s how people are wired, they want to reproduce. I don’t think people will stop until they physically can’t cram any more bodies on the planet. There is no “new world” waiting across the ocean anymore. Every liveable continent is taken. All the resources are being tapped. Wars and disease are killing millions, yet the population keeps going up. Even a 1% increase, which is considered slow, means a doubled population in 70 years. Can the world handle such an increase? If anything will save the planet, it’s a comprehensive plan for sustainable living. But currently, the powers that be seem to still believe in an infinite growth system, despite its obvious impossibility on a finite planet that cannot even adequately feed its current population.





I agree strongly.