Put bluntly, Politics is Sex by indirect means.

Power itself is a mindless energy, and only in a mind/material continuum can energy function as Political Power.

The Political character of Power reflects, not simply the potential of whatever material is at hand, but is in fact more reflective of the patterns of energy within our mind’s psyche.

True, our psycho-dynamic adapts our survival and reproductive behavior according to environmental stimuli, but that adaptation will in the end more profoundly reflect all the un-balanced psycho-energies of our neurotic preoccupations than the original external environmental stimuli.

In other words, our psychological environment has more influence over the character of our Political behavior than any simple material environment.

For example, hierarchy: Many peoples throughout evolutionary history have suffered prolonged periods of food scarcity, but only those peoples with a highly neurotic psycho-dynamic surrender to the behavioral adaptation of hierarchy.

Indeed, psychologically balanced, wholistic peoples would die of hunger before surrendering their psyches to the neurotic psycho-pathology of hierarchy.

But man’s FEAR creates this powerful neurotic inner-conflict with Man’s FEARLESS gender archetype.

Unfortunately, not only does such powerful inner-conflicts become chronic neurotic preoccupations, but fear also grips and stimulates the anal-sphincter; and chronic fear thus creates chronic un-conscious anal preoccupations.

Unfortunately because, not only do fear-driven men un-consciously know that we are inadequate to our fearless gender archetype, but also fear triggers a deep psychological association with homo-erotic anal stimulation.

Thus such men in a state of chronic fear will un-consciously see ourselves not only inadequate as men, but also men with deep latent-homosexual tendencies.

And men preoccupied with that kind of powerful un-conscious self-image will easily and submissively surrender, like hysterical women, their own unique and individual spirit path, and instinctively regress back to the weak, helpless child seeking the security and authority of a patriarchal father-figure hierarchy.

This is why our human psycho-dynamics molds the character of our Political Power far more than the original change in material environment that initially stimulated that behavioral adaptation to begin with.

Not only is Political Power within anal-hierarchies un-conscious Sex by indirect means, but un-conscious homo-erotic sex by indirect means.

Every boy raised in the anal-hierarchy of civilization will always have deep un-conscious latent homo-sexual tendencies.

“Carbon-capture hydrogen plant”
http://www.peterheadhydrogenpower.com/go/doc/1141/119911

and one you won’t like, but he does put a good case to the contrary :-

http://www.newswithviews.com/NWVexclusive/exclusive113.htm

Anyway….

“Energy crisis as power cuts loom”
http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=145612007

I think the question is, can leaving-types of people conscienctiously consort with each other rhizomatically to produce energy?

Yes they can.

So how do we find the leadership to do such a thing?

Many energy co-ops are very powerful, I don’t see why a small group of leavers would be enough to innoculate an area into a new age of sustainable and more importantly, equitable, energy production.

imagine this: a consortium of geologists, engineers and techies finding materials, creating materials, and employing amterials of the earth for clean energy production.

How many would it take? 2 geologists to find the metals and minerals, a metalurgist to purify, an engineer to develop the manufacturing, a few people to work the solar panel factory, a crew to install them, techies to monitor them, and a cadre of customer service and network-based support.

Does that really seem unreasonable in the most-unlikely scenario of total machine shutdown? Changing the energy scheme doesn’t change our desires or our capabilities, it only changes who benefits from them.

If we can take out the pyramid equation, many current endevours can truly serve humanity, rather than an oligarchy of initiative and capital.

It’s up to us to really ask the questions and find the solutions, to take what we’re passionate about roll with it.

Capital for a long time has presented itself as the only option, and we know much better as the prize winner in economics won for the concept of microloans.

So now that we know the masters, the keyholders of all that is locked up aren’t our only choice, why do we continue to choose them again and again?

For our part, Ishthink.org is running off solar-powered network servers, and I think that’s a big step.

Regards from Buenos Aires

Especially looking at something like those graphs and thinking about how little of the map is still open.

Like I said, you’re right that there are plenty of primitivists who simply “can’t cut it” in civilization (and again, that’s to their credit). But I actually draw hope from how much of the map is still open. This is peak; this is the high water mark. This is as bad as it gets, and there’s still an awful lot of that map that’s dark.

Jhereg — yeah, those are the questions that are guiding my life right now. And you nailed the approach, being open and honest. I add vulnerable to that as well. I remain “optimistic” as well, which isn’t exactly the frame I want to use, because my so-called optimism isn’t based on hope at all, instead it’s based on faith, but it sort of works. I refuse to fall into despair, and defy that gravity, while at the same time I try to be as honest with myself as I can about what possibilities are in front of me. This often includes questioning just how much space there is for going beyond civ and also questioning the approach of others in the so-called beyond civ movement. I’m really just exploring, I really don’t cling to my perspective(s) and questions very tightly. I’ve found it’s much more fun for me that way.

- Devin

I think you’re right that a significant contingent of primitivists are those who “can’t cut it” inside civilization (which is to their credit). But it would also be an exaggeration to say all, or even necessarily most. I’ve been offered everything that civilization would deem “success”: power, wealth, status, etc., and I have, at one time or another, walked away from each in turn, because accepting it would preclude a tribal life, a life that could satisfy the things I really, deeply need.

I’ve often taken issue with Nietzsche, saying that the Will to Power is a mental illness that afflicts those who have no freedom. Only slaves want power, because he has no concept of freedom. He’s never experienced it. All he can really dream of is turning the tables—becoming the master himself.

As for how to create rhizome, I think we can already see the beginnings of that, and that it’s much closer than you seem to be willing to appreciate. You’re right, energy was concentrated before fossil fuels. It was concentrated by the cultural construction of food that demoted anything that wasn’t farmed to “not food.” Primitive skills eliminate the centralization of energy, and thus, they eliminate the possibility of hierarchy.

Of course, that’s only the first part. Equally important is learning how to interact with oen another in a tribal maner, and how to interact with other, non-human communities, as well. We step into this mode of existence fairly naturally for the most part; the rest we’ll stumble through out of necessity.

Sorry, Anonymous was me. I deleted my cookies trying to troubleshoot a web site, and forgot to fill in my info again before posting.

But, anyway, I think you’re on the money with these questions, I mean, these really [b]are[/b] the questions we need to figure out aren’t they?

Sometimes it does seem insurmountable to me, partly because I’ve never been particularly comfortable at community activities. But it does seem to me that the only way to do this is to do it the only way we’ve ever seen it done; we begin by improving ourselves and helping those around us, rhizome appears to arrive as a natural consequence of this. It seems important to me to also note that the recent discussion on [url=http://anthropik.com/2007/01/radder-than-thou]Radder Than Thou[/url] play into this a lot. How are we going to build community if we’re deliberately trying to eschew conventions in even the most trivial ways? At the same time, we certainly don’t want to quash individualtiy, so there’s a balancing act there, but I think the best way to acheive that balance is through an open and honest approach to the life around you. Perhaps I’m letting my optimism run away with me, but I think everything will flow naturally from that.

What I don’t want to do though, is insinuate that any of this is easy, I don’t think it is. But the difficulty doesn’t seem to be outside of us so much as inside of us.