Incremental and Lasting Change: Create New Systems and Safety Nets Before Summoning Destruction

Today’s post is actually a comment I left when Ines, the writer of the blog post “Starving the War Machine ~ Let’s Try This Again,” privately emailed me to challenge me to advise people to crash the financial system en masse. Her post throws down the gauntlet to “Hundreds and thousands of people in the Alternative Media and the great researchers, truthseekers, wanna be gurus and Cult leaders that come from all walks of life [and] pride themselves for the knowledge/information/intel they acquired” who continue to operate in the financial system. Apparently, one of my readers, Anthony, suggested in the comments section that Ines contact me, which she did. You can read her post by clicking through the above link. Here are my own thoughts on her ideas:

Thank you for emailing me Ines, and Anthony, thanks for the suggestion. While I personally spent many, many years starving the war machine and then later trying to get our community set up so that it could survive the kind of financial chaos Ines is championing, I have found that a) most people are not interested in self-sufficiency or even resilience; b) this sort of widespread chaos is exactly what the PTB are hoping for; and c) it takes money to get things in place as a safety net.

This is not an excuse. I have poured thousands of dollars into rehabbing land and creating a food forest, which I’m turning over to 5 other people when we move. I also use these gardens to make bumper crop food donations to local food banks, feed neighbors, friends and impoverished people I encounter. I address the issues in the most practical ways I find, which includes doing my best to get local communities to do what you, Ines, and I and others are personally doing: taking responsibility for ourselves, growing our own foods, using plants to heal, focusing on energetic as well as community resilience.

In America, we are nowhere near the level of resilience where I could in good conscience recommend people try to crash the financial system in a week. Right now there are not enough safety nets in place. We are moving to a city that has many more of these nets in place — several public food forests, many, many community gardens, an ethic of “Community Capitalism,” where those who do have money voluntarily funnel it back into local projects that support people and the earth. I forget where you live, Ines, but the level of poverty and dependence on welfare of some sort is off the charts right now in the US. Even the so-called “Middle Class” is living paycheck to paycheck or going into debt.

After nearly a decade of starving the system, I eventually realized that it takes money to plant food forests, create community gardens and turn lawns into farms. I barter for lots of things — literally tons of things if you count four years of free wood mulch to enrich the soil here — but it has still taken money for garden tools, purchasing more mature fruit trees that can produce in 1 year instead of 4-5 years, and getting unusual perennial vegetables that will produce for decades. It has taken money to make this yard so incredibly beautiful that people who otherwise had no interest in gardening have torn up their own lawns to grow flowers and food, or have joined community gardens because they feel so inspired.

A rag tag yard would not have done that, because while some people are motivated by pain, others are motivated by beauty, joy and love. Isn’t that what we’re aiming for in the New Earth? As Anthony says, the trauma and chaos may arrive anyway. No need to summon it faster than the “elites” already are. If you really want to make a change, imho, if you’re already self-sufficient, then radiate that outwards by getting gardens into your community, teaching your community how to heal themselves with herbs, how to use energy to shift their opportunities and health.

Once we’ve done this at a critical mass level, then I think your idea of crashing the system could have merit in that the system could easily become obsolete. We are nowhere near that point yet, although I continue to plant fruit and nut trees, turn gardens over to new people and plant more. I know others doing the same thing. First things first.

People will do pretty much ANYTHING if they see their children starve. Research the connection between high food prices (or no food on the shelves) and revolutions. I agree we need a change, but not all change is good. If we don’t want the “elite” swooping in with their “Solution” to the Problem and Reaction, then we had better have solutions already in place and easily replicated. Otherwise that revolution will just usher in a new level of slavery and/or the eugenicists’ dream of massive population cull. If people really want to take action, then get the new food system in place for your local community if you already have it in place for yourself. See the Ron Finley Project or Will Allen for details on how this is the real revolution.

I feel your heart is in the right place — and again, I don’t recall where you live. In the US, though, the masses are not ready for the next French Revolution, even though we’re being prepped for it, guillotines and all. A true, positive, lasting, sovereign change will involve a new kind of safety net that preemptively makes the system obsolete before recklessly crashing it. Since the “elite” plan to crash it anyway, we might as well prepare for the best, which also allows us to prepare for the worst. No brainer, imho.

Peace and love to you,
Laura