Beginnings

Welcome to a new blog. Yet another voice in the wilderness. Another person you'll never see or hear or touch but whose blinking words will perhaps bounce around in your eyes. Maybe some of these words will make sense to you. Maybe you'll think I'm crazy. Maybe we all should be a little crazier, take chances, breathe deeply in wild places.

This blog is here to document a new life and a new way of life for someone who has always lived with concrete underfoot. Where trees were imprisoned against their wills in parks and outside the city. Where food magically appeared and we traded pieces of paper to get it, and every year it was cheaper. Where the real world didn't exist. Where civilized humans reigned.

That old world three weeks and 2,000km ago still stands. But the cracks have arrived. It wasn't built to last you see, like a forest or a mountain. Now I am home, since home is where you are. I couldn't have asked for a more beautiful place to be. I am learning this place and perhaps, if I could be so presumptive, it is learning me. I want to fit in here and this place wants me to fit in. I want to stop being in charge, controlling everything.

I should probably explain the Museum Fremen. The series of books that have had the greatest impact on my life are the Dune books by Frank Herbert. Mentats are his creations--human computers and believe me you're infinitely more intelligent and perfect than any machine.

Museum Fremen, though despised by their fellows, exist to carry the old ways in a world that had forgotten them. Since all life is cyclical, one day these skills would be needed again. Museum Fremen would be the teachers. Nothing lasts forever least of all a world built on a depleting store of cheap energy.

Herbert's stories are so complex and thoughtful. He was talking about peak oil and permaculture long before they were developed or widely understood. And for Herbert a key theme was ensuring that humans, all humans, reached their infinite potential.

We, civilized humans, are not reaching our potential. We are fat, lazy, blind, dim-witted, disgraceful beings. And to make matters worse we are destroying the planet through, paradoxically, our ignorance and active participation. It's getting harder and harder to ignore this truth.

I don't want to be part of the death machine that's destroying the planet. It seems to me therefore that I have two options.

I can first pick up a gun or a bomb or a stone and smash the destructive system before it removes me and the earth permenantly. I likely won't do much damage and will be seen as a "terrorist" or "madman" by the civilized, who like to be told what to think. There is nothing wrong with this approach and I encourage anyone to embrace it if they feel the call. But it's not for me.

My second option is to live as I believe I was meant to live, to become a Museum Fremen. This means dirt under my feet and under my fingernails. Stars lighting up the night sky. Hard, physical work. Offering and bartering my labour, not selling it. Not taking too much and giving back all, and I mean all, I take. Embracing appropriate technologies like those developed in the stone age. Harvesting perennial crops. Planting trees to feed me and other beings and to capture some of the greenhouse gases cooking this beautiful earth.

This also means embracing poverty. Not the kind of poverty you see on TV but the peasant's poverty. We're told all the time that poverty and peasantry are terrible fates but they're most certainly not. They are essential if we are to live in harmony with the earth. Neon and skyscrapers need not apply.

And teaching and learning with others. This is the most important thing. We need to learn from those, and there are a lot of us, who are beginning to see through the blinding haze of civilization.

Stay tuned, I'll let you know what we're doing and maybe you'll be inspired to try some new things yourself. And we're always open to suggestions.