The candlepower has always been there, but I never knew where to direct the lumens. I was a high school dropout … and then a college honor student, winning best-of writing awards in two departments. I had a townhome in the suburbs, a girlfriend who tolerated my taste in entertainment, and a stable job teaching.
But the writing was hollow, the accomplishments ephemeral, and I was
becoming less tolerant of environmental toxins through following the advice of the best doctors in the world at the Mayo clinic.
I read Gatto’s ‘Underground History’ and began to seriously question my work, even though our school was in the process of a fundamental transformation towards student-centered learning. But the district administrators beat me to it, ignoring positive job reviews and demonstrable success (my program drew in students from 4 neighboring communities and generated a profit for the district) because I couldn’t work around fresh paint and required accommodation. The program ended, and my employment ended.
I spent the next 6 years trying really damned hard to never work for anyone else again, and create safer housing so I could begin to heal the damage done to my health and cognition by civilization’s bastard stepchild – endemic toxicity. This has been a difficult and painful crucible that has led me to fundamentally question civilization and its stories of promise.
Rewilding, anarchism and primitivism hold value to me for many of the common reasons: it minimizes the use of dehumanizing technology, has been proven to work over millenia, avoids many of the perils of heirarchy, and does not treat the Earth like a giant roll of toilet paper.
But the call towards balance is more basic than that. Since I’ve been a small child, I’ve been confused and hurt by authority. This feeling is deeply visceral. I knew that something was broken and wrong, but I could not articulate why.
To the extent that I’m able to, I am trying to simplfy and find a new balance.
Thank you for the opportiuity to share.
