"The final dream of civilization is that everything will be controlled, organized, categorized; all wildness and spontaneity will be eradicated. Fish will live in fish farms. Trees will grow in tree farms. Animals for our food will live in feedlots. Humans will live in cities completely isolated from any other creatures (except cute pets), isolated from anything that might remind them of true wild nature. "Inferior races" will wither in poverty until they vanish. The Earth will be remodeled in the name of production. Any spontaneous, uncontrolled expression of life will be crushed."
--Miles Olson, Author
Unlearn, Rewild
Break Free from the Machine
Wanted: A few Good Warriors to Change the World
By Thomas J. Elpel, Founder of Green University® LLC
Listen up first graders. My name is Mrs. Smith.
Good morning Mrs. Smith!
Welcome to the Machine. In this classroom you will learn to sit quietly and pay attention to me.
Yes, Mrs. Smith.
Forget your personal interests in life. I will decide what is important to learn. You will be obedient and follow orders.
Yes, Mrs. Smith.
You will obey your teachers to start with, and when you are an adult you will obey your employers, doing whatever meaningless task they tell you to do.
Yes, Mrs. Smith.
You will become good consumers and purchase whatever the commercials tell you to buy. You will go to college and pay for a piece of paper that says you are qualified to serve the Machine.
Yes, Mrs. Smith.
Above all, you will live out the rest of your days enslaved to the Machine, working to make monthly payments on college loans, a mortgage, a car, utility bills, phone bills, and more. Your life is not your own. It belongs to the Machine.
Yes, Mrs. Smith.
Individual: No, Mrs. Smith. I will not be assimilated!
Thirty years later...
The Machine is everywhere and infinitely large. You cannot stop it by yelling at it. You cannot stop it by marching in protests. You cannot stop it by throwing rocks at it. You cannot stop it by burning down buildings or blowing up dams.
We will lose half of all life on earth to the Machine this century. Below the sea, the coral reefs are dying and the fisheries are dwindling. Restaurants are substituting one fish for another on the menus as earlier species disappear from the oceans. The seas will be fished out by the middle of this century.
Above the seas, our world is turning into deserts. For every bushel of corn produced, we still lose more than a bushel of soil. We have lost at least half the earth's topsoil already. Soil carbon has been oxidized back into the atmosphere, exacerbating global warming. We have destabilized the global climate and we are losing more species to extinction every day.
What is the Machine?
The Machine is everything you have ever known and everything you have ever been told. The Machine is the unconscious collective sum of humanity. It assimilates everything in its path, turning meadows and wildlands into subdivisions and shopping malls. The Machine sucks the life out of children, making them into automatons that work without meaning and consume without purpose.
Is the Machine alive?
No. The Machine just assimilates and grows, assimilates and grows, consuming everything in its path. The Machine is only interested in its own culture of pizza, beer, and celebrity dramas. The real world is irrelevant to the Machine. The automatons live like zombies, oblivious to the loss of soil, habitat, and species around them.
If we cannot defeat the Machine, then we should escape and be free!
There is no escape. You can hide, but the Machine just keeps coming, devouring everything in its path. Your hiding places will be consumed and assimilated one by one until they are all gone.
Then what can we do?
The Machine has one weakness - it is utterly unconscious of its own existence. We can walk and play among the automatons unnoticed. And for those who are interested, we can study the Machine, figure out how it works, and redirect it from inside. I am looking for a few good warriors to help me. Are you up to the challenge?
How does one become a warrior?
Every human being is born with an inner light. It is a guiding light that can lead you through life, following a path that is uniquely yours. Learn to listen to your heart and not your head. Allow your inner light to guide you.
The path of the warrior is not an easy one. The greatest challenge is to stay focused on that inner vision against the pomp and glare of Machine culture. Social conditioning starts at an early age, shaping the child to conform to the expectations of society. Rather than pursuing their own interests and passions, kids are molded to fit the Machine, to sit in desks and follow a routine prescribed by others. And they are bombarded by media glamorizing the Machine. Day by day, year by year, kids become increasingly confused until they lose track of that inner light.
They may still emerge as teens or young adults with idealism or optimism, but they lose the ability to steer themselves and crumble under the weight of should's and should-not's. They learn to follow the rules and jump through hoops towards imaginary achievements.
Between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five, most kids lose the light forever and become automatons enslaved by the Machine. Some are assimilated into the Machine without regret. Others rebel and try to prove that they control their own destiny. They refuse to be assimilated.
They throw parties, get drunk, and smoke cigarettes and pot, thinking they are being wild and free. And yet, they play right into a trap of the Machine. They mimic what they see in Machine culture, pretending to have fun until it feels real to them. Ultimately, they are reduced to consumers, dependent upon and addicted to the corporations, money, and jobs that supply the goods.
Those who knew how to play and have fun in nature as children may find themselves lost as adults. They sit around the campfire, drinking and talking about sports and dumb movies, because they have forgotten how to play. The only way to "connect with nature" is to pass a joint around and get high. But getting high and thinking one is connected with nature is very different from immersing oneself in nature and truly connecting.
In the end, they are broken by the Machine, plugged into a life without vision. They work meaningless jobs by day, numb themselves in front of the television by night, and get wasted on the weekends to pretend they are free by forgetting that they are not.
Unfortunately, those who lose respect for themselves also lose respect for the earth. They are automatons, blind to the beauty of nature. A few may profess to love nature, but they bring the party with them, leaving behind a trail of cigarette butts and beer cans.
Once assimilated by the Machine, there are few that ever wake up again to remember their inner light. All that was human is lost. They may one day become productive members of society, but merely as instruments of the Machine.
But we can make a difference. Here at Green University® LLC we are looking for a few good warriors to change the world. Through multiple levels of training, we can help you break free from the Machine and empower you to make a positive difference in the world.
Breaking Free
Start by reclaiming lost freedoms as a hunter-gatherer. Learn to butcher deer, tan hides, and make your own clothing and equipment. Learn awareness skills, ecology, and wilderness survival skills. Discover true empowerment by using your own two hands to meet life's basic requirements for shelter, fire, water, and food. Learn how to walk free in a world full of artificial boundaries.
Experience self-reliance as an individual and within a tribe of like-minded individuals. Learn to prosper in the absence of regular employment, to thrive without paying rent or a mortgage. Enjoy an abundance of free food without being dependent on a job or grocery store. Learn how to be self-sufficient and survive independently in a world full of automatons.
As apprentice warriors you gain hands-on experience in alternative construction, sustainable living, and green business development. You learn to think for yourself and to create opportunities you never imagined possible. Learn how to secure your own rural or urban homestead without paying a mortgage, how to eliminate utility bills, and how to greatly reduce your food expenses. Learn to live free of the Machine, even while you live within it.
How far you go in the program is entirely up to you. For some, the inner light will guide you away from the battle, but set you free to live a life that is true. For others, the inner light will guide you to become warriors of peace, and together, we can infiltrate the Machine and render it harmless.
Together we can reach out to the next generation and introduce kids to new possibilities. We can connect with anyone who shows a glimmer of light and hope and help reconnect them with the natural world. We can provide an example of freedom, demonstrating that any person can be free to live their dreams.
And for those who are truly dedicated, we can maneuver ourselves into positions in business and government where decisions are made and take over the controls. We cannot shut down the Machine without rebellion from the automatons, but we can give them new tasks to green the Machine and halt the destruction of the planet. The automatons will never notice. They will do whatever the collective unconscious of the Machine tells them to do.
We cannot run away from the Machine. Not any more. We must make our stand and make a positive difference. But please understand that the path of the warrior is not an easy one. When you break free from the Machine you develop awareness. You connect with the earth. You learn to care.
We may yet lose half of all life on earth this century, and yet the automatons won't even notice. They are not aware of the natural world. It won't look any different to them. But you will notice. You will feel the pain of loss of every plant, animal, and child to the Machine. You will feel both the joy and the anguish of awareness.
Expect the Unexpected
As apprentice warriors, you must also learn to expect the unexpected. Watch your backside at all times and learn to sleep with one eye open. Every moment is an opportunity to hone our awareness skills as we stalk up on each other for the attack or count coup and run away.
Finally, as a warrior, never forget that death is stalking you.
Death stalks all of us, warriors and automatons alike. But automatons never see it coming. Each day they go to work being busy at something they don't care about, only to one day retire and live out their days glazed over in front of the television until death stalks up behind them and finishes them off. To live and die as a automaton is to have never lived at all.
As a warrior, you cannot escape death, but you can see it coming. You can learn to be aware every moment of life, always on guard for death, or on guard for another warrior-in-training ready to leap out at you. In the words of Thoreau, we seek "to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life."
As long as you are aware, you are alive, and when death finally comes, you can face it like a warrior, alive and fighting to your last breath.
If you think you have what it takes to be a warrior of peace, then Join Us at Green University® LLC and together we can make a positive difference.
Interesting stuff?
Challenge your preconceptions about reality:
Roadmap to Reality
"The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth. That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch. A prison for your mind."
--"Morpheus"
The Matrix, 1999
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