I have spent the last 15 years trying to figure out how to save the world. What it comes down to is our minds are addicted and we have to let go of everything we know. Caution, this is guaranteed to blow your mind.

What is Going to Happen: We’re Screwed

We are going to turn the fucking planet into a desert. It cannot be reversed, we are screwed by civilization. Short of an alien invasion that sucks (I deleted what was here) people off the planet there is nothing we can do to stop it. Go see nature and forests while you still can. They will be gone in a few generations. If you need a preview of the world to come, go to the Middle East.

Just while I was an organic seed farmer the growing season in Southern Oregon changed by two months in under 10 years! I can literally watch the deforestation and desertification creep across the hillsides year by year. Cut forests are not growing back, existing forests are being replaced by arid climate species. Standing forests are young barren tinder boxes now going up in great summer conflagrations. The snow pack is dwindling. When I moved to Ashland, the snow was as as high as my van up in Green Springs, now you are lucky if the ski area opens for most for part of the season from lack of snow. It’s either dry or its so warm we get rain instead of snow now.

Set to Auto-Destruct

Our brainwashed forefathers and mothers have dumbed us down and taken away all alternatives except the nipple of civilization. The land is locked up, the resources locked up, the education to make a living from any other source than the poison feed chain is forgotten.

The incentives of the world are all brutally locked down to slavery for all. Make quarterly profits for monthly paychecks and monthly rent checks or you are homeless and hope-less. Corporation, politicians, governments, educators, religions, media all on auto self-destruct pilot.

Civilization works when there are 100 million of us. It is catastrophic when there are 7 billion humans consuming the world like locusts. When you see the night satellite images of the world aglow with electric lights, think the cancer of human civilization metastasized upon the earth. Obese cities despoil the countryside giving back nothing but sewage and pollution.

For a system to work, you have to give back equally what you took. Animals exhale CO2, plants exhale O2. Without the cycle, the system dies. Civilization in the form of cities and towns sucks and sucks resources with zero give back. Before the slave trader Columbus was found lost at sea, humanity was in balance with our relations.

Why I’m Pissed: Nature is Helpless and we Rape Her Every Day

Some early civilized tribe got a wild hair up its … and decided that because they could, they darn well would start to take from nature more than they have given back. They would domesticate and slaughter other species because humans can.

Civilization is different than tribal culture. Civilization replaced other species’ space to live, aka nature, with domesticated land and life, with farming, forestry, mining and development.

Larry Korn, my co-permaculture teacher, said “Nature is very yielding.” Larry was right. Nature allows us weak mind-diseased primates do what we will with the 30 million other species we share this planet with. Nature does not judge. Nature is very patient, she thinks 100,000 years at a time. Nature is a closed system. Nature gives direct cause and effect. If we keep destroying, ecosystems and biodiversity, we will take every other helpless creature else down with us.

By “save the world” I mean, not mercilessly taking down the helpless other species with our overpopulation, over consumption and over shoot. Thus leaving a world with only cats, dogs, humans, cows, farmed fish, and genetically altered plants. In such a monoculture, disease will eventually take it down because of a loss of genetic diversity.

What Kind of Being Are You? What Do You Stand For?

Have you ever sorrowed for the life in the meadow as the bulldozer crushes the life that relies on that space for their home. Can you imagine the the screams of agony as the animals are crushed in their homes? What kind of monster are you to support this endless, ruthless, soulless destruction?

We have unleashed hell on earth and every civilized person is responsible.

The motto “America Land of the Free” is the biggest crock of shit I have ever heard. In truth, it means to do as we darn-well please with our money, fulfill our every desire, to exploit any and all, to take what we want from anywhere, to be the greatest weapon of mass destruction the world has ever seen, to be jackasses. To impose by force our system of development, exploitation and destruction on all others. To act like the obese fools we have become. America deserves the government it has and what we are going to get. Nature always bats last.

There are a few great people in this world but there are certainly not enough of them and they are not receiving the respect they are due.

Nothing We Know Will Work

Your education was worthless because all it taught you to do was survive in and perpetuate civilization. Modern religions and governments only reinforce the status quo. The mindless mind and gateless gate meditative expansive “all as one” blissful thinking does nothing. The only great awakening that is occurring is, “This situation is stupid.” But that does nothing either. Meditate to chill out but not to save the earth.

The great religions of our time say, “Have more babies.” The governments say, “Grow the economy.” The corporations say, “Consume more.” Stupid is as stupid does. I’ll be impressed when the Pope gets down on his knees in tears and says, “Oh Lord, forgive us for we are destroying your creation.” I’ll be impressed when the evangelicals are standing in front of the loggers holding crosses saying, “You shall not destroy God’s creation.” It’s not going to happen because the purpose of modern religion is to reinforce civilization. Blame yourself, the consumer, because you pay the logger to cut the tree to wipe your ass.

What kind of government spends as much on its military as almost all other domestic spending combined? What government spends more on its military than all other nations combined? Answer: An insane government enabled by an insane, foolish, weak, addicted people.

Even China ended its one child policy because it decided it is most important to grow the economy. Even the country that controls everything cannot control its own population. One child families are the only way forward because they would reduce human population from 7 to 1 billion in 120 years. Do the math; use 20 years for one generation.

Capitalism and money twist our priorities. The imperative for profit ensures exploitation. Domestication removes the desire to protect nature because we no longer depend on her. Instead, we depend on the stockyard, cow death-camp, where you can smell the shit of 10 miles away. We de-personify other species when we group them into one lump of beings that because they cannot talk to us. Then we call them all “nature”. We commoditize another species when we equate them and their homes to money.

We can envision a world of efficient tiny houses but we do not have the resources for all of us to have fancy houses. Nor can we stop truly insane people from over exploiting. As long as we have money and domestication, aka dominion over nature, we will destroy all other species. Civilization is just one rolling uncontrolled fireball of destruction. The satellite images of lights in the night sky is civilization burning the world.

We are going to burn every square inch of burnable fossil fuels. We will cut every tree if we have to stay warm. We are going to let concentration of wealth grow to inequities for which Medieval monarchs would be proud. We will allow money to control government. We will fire every gun to impose our way of life.

Bottom line, we cannot solve a problem with what created it in the first place. No one will ever be able to solve the problems created by civilization with civilization.

Reminder the problem is not humanity, humanity has lived in harmony with nature for millions of years. The problem is the mind disease called civilization or Taker culture as Daniel Quinn calls it. Yes, civilization must die for the earth to live because in civilization you have to destroy the world to live. I hate to be a downer but someone has to tell you the truth.

Step 1: Admit You Are an Addict

We are all addicted to the easy life, which is actually the hard life. Tribal societies had to work a lot less than we do because resources were far more abundant with 1000x fewer people. Tribal life does not require the work to pay for modern excesses.

The kernel of the civilization addiction is that our over thinking, endless competing, worrying, surviving is a mind-program or meme we can’t stop running in our heads. We can’t shut it off because we have no alternative.

We have to expand our hearts and get some balls and admit that the way we live is destroying the world, no ifs ands or buts. Every excuse for civilization is BS. Civilization causes scarcity, hunger, wealth, poverty, slavery, war, genocide and extinction.

Step 2: Admit You Are Blind

I have hinted at it above, but almost all civilized humans are blind to the destruction. By destruction I mean the death of non-human life and their home. All life, not just humans, have a creator given right to life and freedom from genocide and extinction. Because of our programming, aka education, we cannot see or empathize with the destruction. Here is a short list to meditate on. Reflect on how it feels in your heart and what you are willing to change in your life to end it forever.

• We have environmental amnesia. Because we live such a short time we cannot see the destruction and death of billions of individuals and entire ecosystems. Imagine seeing your home from the day Columbus landed with the mind disease to today.
• One of the few semi-intact ecosystems are the shreds of the remaining old growth redwood forests. That is what earth looks like. Almost all people driving out of the redwoods do not realize they re-enter the human ecozone.
• When you drive across the Mojave that is not what the desert used to look like, it has been grazed down to the sage brush. The grasses and most of the pronghorn sheet are gone. Pronghorn sheep run from the ghosts of the extinct predators. Bison range is gone on and on. Here is the darn extinct American predator poster for your wall.
• Global warming is caused by deforestation created by agriculture, development and of course repeated forest clear cutting.
• The genocide is externalized. When you drive to café-latté or dollar-cheapo you do not see the destruction because cities and towns despoil remote rural areas.
• Media is exclusively fixated on creating conflict to legitimize and make the central control system more interesting. The ad-based model encourages consumption and even shows what has to be destroyed or who has to be exploited to build your home, fuel your car or feed you.
• The entire population is basically native-horticulturally blind and clueless. We know no better than the programming we receive. All animals are essentially bio robots. We are taught how to slave to get happy-yaya points to buy fun things and safety. But almost none of us get the seven life kingdoms, what they do, how they interact, what they even look like and why should you even care? Can you just name them? What if one of them collapses like fungi because multi-layer old growth forests are gone?

Step 3: Admit You Are Clueless

I know of fewer people in the entire world than I can count on my fingers that have the skills to create a regenerative community or business to save the world: Ianto and Linda, Bill, David, Jeff, Tom, Edward, Yvon, Allen and myself. It’s a really short list. These are people that can walk into any town and instantly tell how many people the region can support doing what livelihood, what’s nuts about the current community design. Almost no one alive can see any alternative to the town in front of them. If the trucks stopped bringing the food tomorrow everyone would starve pronto.

I am stunned at how clueless a people that pride itself as being the crown of creation are. We have great universities, monstrous corporations, ginormous governments and we cannot even take responsibility for our own existence in the slightest. With all of our “smarts” we cannot figure out how to live harmlessly.

Tribal community is another essential survival skill. A tribe is a group of people with whom we live with and make a living with. Today we are living in towns and cities of strangers. We all compete instead of cooperate. That is one of the greatest curses of civilization and capitalism is turning one against each other and everyone against all species. Billions of us effectively run into the forest with chains saws, bulldozers. We run into the fields and prairies with plows and poisons. We run at each other with trade wars and real wars.

Step 4: Here is Why You Should Be Terrified of Civilization

Civilization has wiped out the old growth plant ecosystem that creates air and rain. WTF? Yep, it took earth 1 billion years to balance the cycle of 02 creators (think plants and tiny creatures) and CO2 creators (animals). The level of plants, old growth and algae we had just 200 years ago is almost gone.

For example, old growth forests create rain. An ocean weather system dumps half its moisture on the coastal range, then more moisture has to come from somewhere to rain inland. However, the old forests, the prairies as tall as a man on a horse are gone.

What really P.O.’s me is that these hugely important ecosystems only work when they are intact and they were taken by long-dead generations for a few bucks in their wallets. These ecosystems cannot be regenerated in less than thousands years once civilization ends. Look at the Middle East. It was despoiled 3-4 thousand years ago. It will probably take 10,000 years minimum after humans are gone to regenerate. The seed bed, mycelium network, temperature regulation, consistent moisture gone.

Old forests, rich prairies and oceans regulate earth’s temperature. They keep earth from overheating and drying up. Try this in the summer. Stand under a large tree with a moist lawn under it (lots of plant ground cover) on a hot sunny day. Then step into the sun and wait a few minutes, then step back into the shade. You will feel a 10–14˚F (6˚C) temperature change. That is what is really causing global warming: deforestation. That temps and CO2 rise together is coincidence.

Be scared of civilization because we are addicted to it, blind to its destruction, generally have no useful skills. Civilization is a runaway train, chain reaction, destruction mind disease passed down from one generation to the next. So what are you going to do to make the world a better place?

Free the mind ✌️ Free the world

Share these ideas person-to-person. Don’t just read these essays, post links on your social media to essays that resonate with you. Our speech is not free if dissenting messages are hidden by search engines, and mainstream media. You found these ideas, now share them with others!

Chuck Burr is author of Culturequake: The Restoration Revolution. Revised Fourth Edition. 10th Anniversary.

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Painting: March of Progress by Mark Henson.

Seven Kingdoms of Life: Bacteria, Archaea (single-cell with no nucleus), Protozoa, Chromista (algae), Plantae, Fungi, Aninalia.