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All the fools sail away

We bring you beautiful
We teach you sin
We can give you a piece of the universe
Or we will disappear
Never to return again
And all the fools sailed away…

– from the Dio album ‘Dream Evil’ (1987)
You may have noticed that I wrote recently that I am preparing for a collapse til around 2020 and I wonder somehow what you made of it. The statement itself may appear confusing, even ludicrous, especially when you know me closer or followed my blogs: I’m not at all a prepper. I don’t store canned food in the cellar, I don’t build bunkers, I don’t hide out in the mountains. When the time comes I’ll just perish with the rest of the community of life, likely early on. This is not something I’m looking forward to. I didn’t buy into a death cult. Life has become such a joy to me recently, but this was made possible with the emergence of the understanding only that living happens from moment to moment, with no guarantee there will ever be another. Preparing, to me, means that those moments of presence become the dominant, or the only, way of being, and that I’ll be able to contribute to other people’s wellbeing this way, especially when it matters most: in the end.
2020, yes, that’s quite a risky prediction. It leaves very little time for coping with the bleakness of a no-future future. If I still broke my head over shallow moral issues I’d be afraid of whipping people into a – possibly unjustified – panic. But I don’t, and people are denying the probability of extinction anyway, so there is no panic to be afraid of. The risk that I’m turning myself into a laughing stock is way more real, although I’m not afraid of this, either. If I were wrong, there’d be an off chance that, within the extra time, we curbed the worst consequences of our culture’s destructiveness, yet it also meant the prolongation of trillionfold suffering until the time civilization had actually reached its limits. It meant that, instead of being grateful for getting to live another year, self-acclaimed skeptics could continue to spew their cynicist acid like they always used to, and yet another round of global exploitation would unfold. Doomer dude was wrong. How convenient.
2020. Few people pretend to know the schedule of future history; I certainly don’t. I’ll not assert I’m right while everyone else is wrong. I don’t want to be right. Equally, I don’t want to be wrong when I look at the ever increasing pollution of water, soil, and air, when I observe the steep decline in social coherence, social justice and social peace, when I hear the drums of war drown out all other utterances. Global debt rises exponentially; so does human population. I see boreal forests burn up, temperate forests dry out, tropical forests getting clearcut. I see record melting of ice caps at both poles, both on sea and land, sea currents changing directions, reefs bleaching, and overfished littered oceans turning acidic and deoxigenized. Temperatures soar all over the planet, breaking records, megadroughts devastating large parts of several continents. The destruction of the ecosphere, hundreds of animal mass death events per year, also hundreds of species extinctions – per day! – and all this goes on for day after day after day while politicians speak after business managers who claim that economic growth is more important than lives. This is also what most activists from the green movement promote when they are proposing ways how to make money from ‘saving the world’. Shopping for good conscience we succumb to Hannah Arendt’s banality of evil. We are so brainwashed, we will never even consider starting ‘right now’ with anything, certainly not anything that is radical in nature. At a time when everything develops ‘faster than expected’, lip service to concern has become the last nail in the coffin of mankind. That’s why we’re fracked is a done deal to me, and it doesn’t really matter whether it happens tonight, or until 2020, or a couple of years later. I am talking near-term, I am talking inevitable. I am talking about mankind breaking everything including themselves, neither be willing nor able to stop the killing frenzy.
2020 is not a date to point at and say, ‘You’ll see!’ Boy, I wish everybody would see already, though most of us never ever will. 2020 reflects my understanding that things have become so unsustainable, people have become so mentally sick, problems have become so numerous, conditions have become so dire that the breaking point seems to have arrived.
I’m flying!
Employing the well-matching shipwreck metaphor we are past the iceberg, with a capital leak in the hull through which sea water presses into numerous sections. Some of the crew who notice the damage are beginning to drill more holes into the hull – for the water to flow off again, they say. Others are trying to get the captain to slow down the ship a bit which would reduce the amount of water coming in, but the radio is blocked with gossip, and some public-relations employee is praising the insurmountable Rolls Royce engines, inviting all passengers to enjoy the phantastic convenience on board. The only valuable piece of information received is the fact that the complete emergency rescuers team has joined the plumbers, for fixing a broken toilet flusher in the King’s Suite. The first mate, with the help of the purser, is plundering the safe while the staff are accusing each other of having stolen pencils from the chart table. The captain is sending a team of housecleaners around; they collect used tissues from recycle bins in each cabin to be stuffed into the fissure in the hull. Some people are still discussing where the annoying amounts of water are coming from and why it is so f***ing chilly. But most of us attribute our cold feet to a broken thermostate we believe we should fix somewhen soon. As the icy water quickly reaches our necks it is hard for me to imagine how the illusion of controlled normalcy could be upheld for much longer; certainly not until 2100. The sinking of a ship, like the decay of natural systems, is an exponential process that ends suddenly, cataclysmicly. Now you float, now you don’t.
For the third class – the Third World – the race for life boats has already begun while the folks on the upper decks still discuss the weather over a glass of Martini. And don’t you worry; even God couldn’t sink this ship! Nevermind them building last resorts in New Zealand, underground bunkers in the Rockies, fortresses of solitude in the Arctic, seed banks in Scandinavia, and spaceships to Mars.
There is no running away from karma, though, and to be among the last of men alive will constitute the ultimate punishment for those who took it onto their shoulders to drive the boat into the berg.
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Will Permaculture save the World?

Let me begin with a couple of uncomfortable questions.
Are you aware of the fact that, every day, 200 species are disappearing from the face of the Earth?
Are you also aware of the fact that, since the beginning of industrialization, the worldwide population of vertebrates has dropped by more than 90%?
If not, why are you not aware? Is it because in our lives as civilized people we are so much immersed in human affairs, so far removed from the natural sphere that we hardly notice what is going on around us, even when it happens on a grand scale? TV bombards us with music, films, news and other forms of entertainment, yet what is most important – because it lies at the foundation of our very survival – is never mentioned. Most of what we think we know is not experienced by ourselves, it is mediated knowledge.
Now, what, do you think, causes such gross deterioration of the biosphere? It is human activity: resources extraction, settlement, food production, pollution, all of them on a global-industrial scale. Mankind is literally consuming the whole world and turning it into human biomass and facilities.
Agriculture’s contribution to the problem are the 7.5 billion people on the planet, a multiplication by seven since 1750, the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. It is for the food we eat that we do exist. This flesh around my bones is food, it is plants and animals consumed by me.
Our human population explosion has only been possible due to ruthless depletion of the soil, killing of currently 70 billion domestic animals and 170+ million tons of fish per year for meat, as well as growing expansion of fields at the expense of ecosystems. All of this is driven by petroleum products, from herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, and pesticides to chemical fertilizer and plastic packaging and cool storage and long-distance transportation.
While the numbers are ever growing, we only have one finite planet at our disposal, and dispose of it we do. For there is no infinite growth possible in a limited system.
We know this for a long time already, so why don’t we stop this madness?
The thing that is in our way is called ‘Western world view’, Utilitarianism, to be precise, and it basically says that we are separate individuals competing for survival in an indifferent world of inert masses that have neither meaning nor intrinsic value. In other words, everything around us is just ‘our resources’ and we can use it as we please.
What Utilitarianism overlooks is that we do depend on the functioning of the planetary system for our lives. Like with a brick building, we may break holes here and there for creating space for human activities, but if we take out too many bricks the building will just collapse on us, and collapse suddenly.
Organic farming and small-footprint lifestyles, if everyone actually agreed upon applying them, would in fact reduce the damage added each day, but neither is civilization willing to reduce its greedy utilization of Earth’s bounties by the slightest amount, nor would it change the fact that increasing damage is done every day by an ever growing human population. Who are we to snortingly look down on the breeding habits of rabbits, goats and locusts?
I do work on an organic farm and I do live a low-impact lifestyle, yet those are not means of “saving the planet” or just “saving myself”. They are not means to soothe my conscience either; for I know that the normal healthy impact that I would have as a member of the global ant population, the elephant population or a stone age human tribe at the end of the Paleolithic, amplifies into horrific destruction in my current existence as a member of our blown-up global civilization. Nothing that we do can make a difference to our predicament – that humanity is likely to go extinct within a few years because we are inches away from a biosphere collapse we brought about by reckless extraction.
Permaculture farms, like gift economies and intentional communities, can be an expression of a deeper understanding rather than a means to achieve a goal. We don’t want to make a buck by helping an old lady across the street. It is not our intention to achieve world domination by feeding our children. We don’t seek to trade potato chips for the lemonade we bring to a barbecue. We do all these things for the joy of doing them, and the joy comes from the joy it brings to those who “benefit” from our actions. If “the World” is “saved” it is going to happen due to the understanding that existence is about more than this little me that wants to survive. A global awakening to this understanding may well trigger forces that curb or reverse the damage done, but to think of it this way is an attempt in instrumentalizing Awakening for the utilitarian exploitation of those Forces. Awakening then evades us while those Forces evaporate into a fog of wishful thinking. It just doesn’t work like this.
To take this current moment, to hold it precious, and to live it with a sense of excellence so that we do the right thing, according to this understanding and without expectation for a specific outcome – this is reward and redemption in itself. The World, it doesn’t need saving.
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Do it yourself

Some of my friends, and many folks out there in the world, dream of better conditions to live in; some of them could be called activists, though that doesn’t necessarily include active work towards the realization of specific goals. I noticed that often times people believe their situation to be too constrained, too complicated to allow for actual and rapid achievements, or there is a doubt that things can function totally different from what they are used to, or that this was even worth wanting. 
I mean to encourage you to question your premises, especially when that which holds you back from acting fills you with a slightly bad gut feeling, or even anxiety. Despite numerous (including serious) obstacles that naturally accompany every period of transition I can clearly see how stepping out of the old setup into something different has turned an existence that felt caged and pointless into a life that is meaningful both to me and to my environment. This wasn’t at all about courage, or sacrifice. It was about understanding what was important to me and then, consistently, systematically, steering the ship into a new direction. When one acts from a deep understanding, there are no feelings of fear or loss involved. You just do what has to be done.
Life, of course, is not a pony farm. If I emphasize here on the improvements made I neither intend to convince you of joining me in this place nor do I recommend its way of functioning being taken over; in my life, and in my town, there are too many unresolved problems as to serve as a model for others. I also believe in the power of diversity, in the feasability and beneficial effects of a multitude of paths. So just let yourself get inspired by what is possible when people dare to dream actively. No one knows better than you what you love.
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Distributed denial of servitude

Browsing through the web, following links where they will take me, I notice quite a few people speaking up about abandoning the old system in favour of something more worthwhile, amiable, life-centered.
“I’m not promising anything we do will save us from climate disasters ahead. But becoming more authentic, sustainable, correcting the process of decision making, flattening the power structures, moving from corporations to worker owned cooperatives, and ending this multi-millennia rule by elites who live by might-makes-right is worth doing at any stage.”, says, for enstance, Jason Holland, self-described anarchist and blogger.
Maybe it is just that I happen to stir up more of that stuff because I am looking for it, but I do have the impression that it has become increasingly easy finding it, and that the time is right for a major shift. We still are a tiny minority heavily constricted by mainstream culture, yet the seed of change has taken root in the fertile soil of the human mind.
How can we bring about the manifestation of that which the mind still has to grasp and what our hearts know already since birth?
Small numbers call for guerilla tactics. We do not want to repeat the same mistakes previous revolutionaries have fallen for, though. Violence is not an option. Hollowing out the system from within is not an option. ‘Green’ consumption is not an option. Large organizations are not an option. Each of us stands profoundly alone in the face of an all-overwhelming machine, and the probability of a near-term failure of the Earth’s biosphere.
It is from this standpoint of powerlessness that we can give up false hopes for change on a large scale, chuck out the notion of educating the masses, abandon the idea of pushing the right buttons to rectify what’s ‘wrong’. What we think, what we say, what we do, and how we relate to other beings cannot immediately trigger the drastic changes on a macro level most activists seem to be calling for; the real effect plays out in how it changes ourselves, and how it changes those immediately affected by our actions: our friends, family, pets, gardens, work results etc. The life in the immediate Now, the life in dignity, the life in servitude to Life – this is what the Real Revolution is about. It maymake a difference in the long run, on an accumulated macro level, but I have the gut feeling we ought not even think about it this way.
It is a dire situation we are in –
“If we don’t stand soon not only is the climate a done deal but as we slide into the gravity of collapse as a disparate group at each other’s throats we’ll become ever more barbarous if we don’t fight to end this culture of ego now.” (Jason Holland again.)
Like Jason, I don’t want to make alarmism my standard notion, but that doesn’t mean that the description of the situation as I perceive it has to sound like a preacher’s vision of paradise. On a certain level, there are real threats some of which require instant action, probably even violence. I am not about discouraging anybody from doing whatever they feel is necessary.
Having said as much, I would go into a different direction: Let’s ask the question whether we are acting from fear of what might happen if we didn’t act. Are we seeking company in order to extinguish that feeling of being alone? Why not live up to the deepest understanding we can grasp, and implement that in every minute, every move? What about standing for what we aspire, rather than against what we despise?
We could stop selling our labour for money and instead be dedicating our time for free to our neighbours;
we could start educating our children ourselves, teaching them subjects and skills the schools keep under wraps: how to relate sincerely, how to find out things, how to sustain oneself, how to recognize truth;
we could start exploring our environment at walking distance, taking in smells and sights we never notice from within our cars;
we could give up listening to the telly and start telling our own stories; in doing so, we could give preference to listening to the person in front of us over the person calling in on mobile;
we could stop buying and start creating things ourselves, like food, music, jewellery, and housing;
we could begin gathering in small tribes of neighbourhoods and friends, exchanging goods and services for free, like caring for minors; we could value family bonds; we could value the land and bond ourselves with our blood to it. The land is us, and we are the land. This is how we can stand strong in the face of the violence this culture is engulfing us in.
Each moment lived in the spirit of not being afraid is a denial of servitude to the – whatever your preferred choice of words is – materialistic, utilitarian, short-sighted, imperialistic, exploitative, capitalistic, omnicidal, psychopathic civilization. Each individual following his or her heart contributes to the resilience of the ‘attack’ on the system by distributing the denial of servitude.
Keep in mind that our actions are notto be directed against dominant culture; they are primarily expressions of the different visionsand worldviews we are beginning to manifest today. Then each of them is sending ripples through a culture that, though it has managed to overwhelm the whole planet, is built on false assumptions and ready to fall apart at any moment now, collapsing under its own weight. By refusing to act from fear we become like sand between the system’s cogwheels.
But once again, don’t think about it in these terms. Don’t antagonize, don’t anticipate. By being a builder of community, rather than a destroyer of civlization, life becomes worth living again. Let the ‘problem’ with the dominant culture take care of itself. It already does.
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Permaculture and the Megamachine

Most of the permaculture scene, like all the rest of society, does not question the origin of the many crises this planet is currently going through. These people are still looking for technical solutions when it was technology – and the mindset of separation and control behind it – that has created those crises. Even if we solved one of them – which I doubt because we will not stop wanting to grow, and therefore wanting to produce stuff, and therefore using more energy, and therefore producing more destruction – there still is mass unemployment, mass poverty, mass extinction, desertification, dying oceans, diminished forests, resources depletion, overpopulation, criminality, war, nuclear waste, plastic pollution, child labour, inflation, … you name it. All of this is inherent to the thing that Mumford called the Megamachine, civilization. None of it will go away as long as the notion of separation from, and control over nature prevails, a notion which lies at the very heart of civilization. Civilization HAS to end, or the price we pay is our planet losing its green cover.
If there is any hope for survival of life on Earth it will not lie in doing, for it was doing that brought us here; hope lies in the collapse of belief in the ideology of control. Hope, though, is part of the collective illusion that prevents us from seeing reality as it is rather than the way we wish it to be. Awakening to the true nature of existence is a task that has to be picked up by each person individually, and it implies surrendering to the possibility of complete annihilation, without fear. Fear of death kills everything.

Grief, yes, we will grief for the loss of loved ones – butterflies, bluebirds, sequoias, relatives, friends, last not least ourselves. And it will be for the love of these that life may find a way.

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Sorry, there was too much to do and too little time left

If I was humanity embodied, the decent thing to do was to shut down civilization immediately. I’d stop all production except for food, clothing and electricity. Gas, coal and oil were to be delivered in quantities just enough to regulate inhouse temperatures and allow for food preparation. And I’d launch two ten-year clean-up programs.
If I was humanity embodied, first and foremost there’d be a program for getting rid of radioactive substances. All bombs capable of leaving Earth’s gravity were to be shot into the Sun. The others would join all the radiocative fuel rods currently in use, and those discarded. All nuclear power plants would have to be shut down. Deep holes would have to be dug into the Earth’s crust, in places where plates are slipping underneath other plates, so that, over extended periods of time, the material would end up in Earth’s interior.
If I was humanity embodied, the second clean-up were of more general nature, collecting all the garbage all over the Earth’s surface in order to store it underground as well. We’d deposit the raw material of diamonds, coal and crude oil of the future, and rebeautify the landscape.
If I was humanity embodied, I’d leave a message to posterity, apologizing for the mess still left.
If I was humanity embodied, the decent thing to do was to then go into retreat and think about how to continue from there on – those who’d have survived the shutdown. Though it is not unlikely that, by then, more supreme forces than ourselves would have chosen a path for us that’d look quite similar to the one we’ll probably end up on through bypassing the programs anyway. Only we’d leave the world a better place.
If I was humanity embodied… for better or worse, I am not.
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Life at the end of empire

“Nowadays we seem to think that chaos must result where men are not hemmed in by police regulations; yet we must remember that an enormous proportion of things goes on without laws. Every day you can see how men make way for each other in the most crowded streets without our having to have a law about it. 98% of our life goes on without laws; and some day it will be possible to get on completely without law and force. But for that man must be inwardly free.” –Rudolf Steiner in, Schiller and Our Times
With scientists predicting a global temperature rise of 6 to 10°C within the next ten years it is hard to imagine humanity is going to get anywhere near the actualization of those fancy dreams we once had, and still have. Yet I do observe a somehow schizophrenic split when reading paragraphs like the one quoted above. They still do speak to me, thrill me. It feels like these ideas are settled in a different universe where there is no runaway greenhouse effect and all of our silly science fiction stories still have a real chance of becoming true.
Both universes belong into the realm of imagination, though. There is this moment, now, which becomes enormously more intense with the realization that it cannot be conserved for long, that things are constantly in flux, and that it is no wise idea to postpone anything. The time to live like we always imagined to live is now.
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How many scientists does it take to change the World?

Even if signing petitions, voting for the right guy, or replacing light bulbs were working, the monstrous amount of things going “wrong” today should make it obvious that fighting each and every one of them separately is simply not an option. Nor will the attempt of global control do any good. Both build upon the same dysfunctional foundation.

Most people never ask the question why there is such a lot of trouble around in the first place, why so much is in disarray, is falling apart, is going to waste, is deteriorating or being destructed, why all those disasters, misfortunes, calamities, sorrows and adversities are happening at the same time. Those who are aware of it normally come to see the usual suspects, greed and money, at the root of everything – which is already a step into the right direction, though there are levels way deeper than these.

Some ask, “Why is nobody doing anything about…” you name [it], and, ironically, the answer to that is the very same that can be given to the first question, the one that’s rarely ever put. What comes up when one is inquiring down to a relevant depth may seem both ineffective and at the same time way too big to be handled by any one person, yet I found that it is much easier than it seems, and it may well be the only feasible path there is – apart from letting things sorting themselves out; because in the end, they always will… dissolve.

Eisenstein sees a fundamental disconnectedness at the root of it all, a disconnectedness that prevents people from acting from love, care, courage, and commitment. “But where does such love, care, courage, and commitment come from?”, he writes. “It can only come from personal relationship to the damage being suffered.”
Now, if that is so – and I hold that it is – then that which is the cause of disconnectedness needs to be looked at thoroughly, in order to arrive at decisive action. From my view there is no replacement for this kind of understanding, and it cannot be faked or emulated.
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Fund a mental

Feeling a new blossoming in the urge to write essays, and having finished most of the work connected to the translation of Thomas Henry Pope’s novel „TheTrouble With Wisdom“ I decided not to jump to the next translation project immediately, but to look into the material that I have created so far. With several years of abstinence from writing regularly, I had almost lost oversight of all the utterings that have collected over the years of awakening out of the civilizational paradigm. There is the idea of gathering some of the better articles in a philosophical-spiritual diary.
Pulling most of the relevant texts together in one file has been a no-brainer and an expenditure of merelythree days. During the last two weeks I have been doing nothing but drafting the outline of the book and eliminating everything that definitely does not belong into it. I am half way through with that, and, at this stage, it looks like it is going to be a 300+ pages Brontosaurus containing more than 100 texts, many of which turned out to “sound” very similar in tone and line of argument. I do have a hard time eliminating some of them while keeping others, when there is hardly anything with which to discriminate them by.
While sifting through those essays I re-encountered many interesting sources of information which they have been based upon, and it is somehow a fun thing to re-evaluate them in the face of the knowledge and understanding I have today.
A less pleasant discovery was hearing about what has become of some of the people who provided that information.
Anson Chi, the author of the novel “Yellow on the outside, shame on the inside”, has been arrested for trying to blast a major gas pipe and has been sentenced to more than two decades in prison. I remember having had a short email exchange with him about his work in 2009; he told me he was already writing on another novel – that never came, of course.

Michael C. Ruppert, whom I discovered in connection with my inquiries on the causes of the financial crises of 2008 (“Crossing the Rubicon”, 2005 [sic!]), and whom I followed to his analysis of the money trail of the 9/11 events (The truth and lies of 911, from November 2001 [again sic!]), in 2009 came out with a film called “Collapse” (see blog entry) within which he already confirmed that he, despite sporting a rationalistic mind, had a hard time dealing with the expected end of civilization emotionally.
Recent inquiries revealed to me that Ruppert had entered a social downward spiral and went through much physical, mental, emotional and spiritual turmoil since then. Following video footage through the years you can see how he physically deteriorated under the weight of his knowledge and his personal condition until he committed suicide in April 2014.
In six webisodes of „Apocalypse, Man“ (mind the comma) Ruppert explained in late 2013, early 2014, how his research on governmental corruption had led him to look into the dangers of a corporation-driven worldwide war for resources, and how all that had became irrelevant by the discoveries GuyMcPherson made regarding climate change. I’ll come to that later.
Looking back at my own development it seems clear to me how becoming aware of the deeper driving forces in and of our world can lead you to a very dangerous place. What is going on in the world on the material, vital and mental levels can hardly be taken without adequate spiritual development. Yet, for some people, sufficient spiritual understanding can only be reached through a complete destruction of every foothold in society. There has to be the insight that nothing will make a difference, and nothing can be done, and that this is not a bad thing at all.
Information of any kind has absolutely no value to anybody unless it meets an open heart and is being backed up by personal experience. True communication simply cannot be established. All warnings are cast to the wind, and you have to let go of trying to change the world, trying to change society, trying to change people’s minds – until you arrive at a place of calmness.
For both Ruppert and me this development was necessary; for both of us it has led to a major crisis; for both of us it meant an opening-up to spiritual life. And if this doesn’t take root in you deep enough and fast enough, too much knowledge kills you.
I had my breaking points in 2008-09 when I understood that I could not continue life within the framework of German society, and again in 2015 when, after years of struggling against malicious forces, it has become crystal clear that false, manipulative, or incomplete spirituality, abundantly present especially in big intentional communes, can be an even more destructive force than plain materialism.
It was a close call, but in the end I overcame the moments of crisis through surrendering to what is. I am grateful for that because, otherwise, I think I wouldn’t have been able to bear the things McPherson has to say. I wouldn’t have been able to understand his advise on how to look at this kind of knowledge, and what to do about it. It’s sure scary, if nothing else is.
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Dear White People

When I talked about being able to return one day and be at peace with my culture of origin, I did not know how that was supposed to happen, with all the mess it had created in me and in the world; at the same time, how could I ever be truly at home in the foreign place I went to?
My studies pointed out answers rooted in Zen Buddhism and non-dualistic philosophy. Yet another, deeply compassionate answer has been provided by Bayo Akomolafe, a westernized African academic living in India, if I may attach some handy labels for convenience.

In his open letter of this month, “Dear White People“, he came to astonishing conclusions. Astonishing because, despite so many words, they are so simple and obvious.

He is speaking about how indigeneity has become a concept to the taste of the Western mind, how it serves to perpetuate the dualistic paradigm, how humankind could actually decolonize the world, and what true indigeneity would look like:

“The much hated neoliberal capitalism and the techno-utopic longings for permanence, for abstraction and dominance are just as indigenous (and ‘natural’) as naked dances by moonlight (and other such spectacular ways Hollywood likes to depict non-western people). […]

 A different way to think about decolonization is as intimacy with where we are. It is accounting for and opening up to our embeddedness, not grappling for a Plato-nic identity or transcendent quality. […]

We are constantly touching each other, infecting each other, so that it is impossible to trace out an original point. This suggests that my ‘blackness’ co-arises with your ‘whiteness’ – and that we are hyphenated aspects of each other. […]

What changes when the anxiety of ‘arriving home’ or ‘becoming indigenous’ is replaced with a studious slowness and a curiosity about where you are? […]”

This last question points out that, actually, Akomolafe is not so far from Buddhist views, in that he indicates contemplation and meditation on reality-as-it-is were a way forward. Which does not mean, and you can check that by listening to other messages from the author, that we leave the state of affairs unchanged, but that, by staying open to the suggestions a change of mind brings with it, we change our ways in harmony with what we find in and around us.


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