When You Speak Truth To So-Called Power And They Don’t Listen

Live simply so that others may simply live.

- Mahatma Gandhi

As with most news, the generalities stoke fear. Global supply chain shortages!! But of what? And what’s needed?

Are the shortages a hoax – engineered by the powers that don’t listen when you speak truth to them – so as to control virtually everything and keep the masses in perpetual struggle and oh so grateful when they can get basic necessities or that new gadget?

Or are the shortages the consequences of covid-times along with the natural karma that instant gratification of global resources can’t continue?

Or all of the above?

You can do your own research of products and come up with your own answers but my point here is to present the idea and start the discussion about essential goods and services. Seems time to streamline, which is a humongously global task, so I won’t pretend to have logistical answers, but rather ice-breakers (no climate crash pun intended). I think it’s time that more people consider what is essential and how those choices can be implemented.

How many choices do we need? How many ice cream flavors, hair colors, shirt colors, mouse pad designs? And since it’s that time of year, first off I say, get rid of the kitsch and schlock stuff, for example, the full-sized Halloween skeletons I see dangling on and off of people’s houses and in their yards. Sure, someone finds it amusing and someone has a job making them but if you had a choice, which would you choose: Halloween skeletons or cooking oil? A no-brainer, right? Which would you choose: a steering wheel cover with your fave design or the herbal aspirin I use when I get a headache from thinking about this stuff too much?

I love my pillow but now that I think about it, if it would help save the world, in cooler seasons I would roll-up a summer t-shirt or two and use that; to hell with pillows if it’s gonna be to hell WITH pillows.

We need to start making choices so as to avoid choices being made for us, whether by the universe or the powers that don’t listen when you speak truth to them. Yet already choices are being dictated; a friend in Australia told me that “...the unvaxxed will be barred from entering ‘non-essential retail’, meaning pretty much most shops apart from supermarkets.”

Aside from or along with draconian vaccine mandates, my suspicion is that the Global Retail Industrial Machine (GRIM) is favoring online shopping. As example, a news report about the paper shortage mentioned a company switching to making boxes (while showing a clip of an Amazon warehouse).[1] Amazon is where the money is. As big-box stores drove out a lot of local, small businesses, the new trend seems to favor buying online which favors the mega-corporations and their delivery systems – such as Amazon, UPS, and FedEx – as well as favoring those who can afford computers and reliable online services. GRIM does not care about poorer countries and hard to reach peoples, except if there is slave labor and resources to extract.

And this is beyond physical items. It’s about ways of living and thinking. Journalism hangs in the balance. Julian Assange, via WikiLeaks, disseminated journalistic truth to the powers that don’t listen when you speak truth to them and they’re trying to slow cook him for that. Our existence with Mother Earth hangs in the balance. In Colombia and other places, Indigenous so-called activists have been killed for trying to protect the essentials of living: a river, the land, the trees.

According to a 2020 Global Witness report:

“In Colombia, where 65 such activists were killed, a third of the attacks 'targeted indigenous and afro-descendant people, and almost half were against small-scale farmers.' … On a per capita basis, Nicaragua, Honduras, Colombia, Guatemala, [Mexico], and the Philippines were the most dangerous places to be a grassroots environmental activist, according to the report.”[2]

If the essentials go, what will we have except superficiality and drivel, trinkets and clichés.

And this is beyond ways of thinking. It’s about that word that often elicits comments like “weird” and “spooky.” This is about spirituality or spiritual energy ... and by that I am thinking of the essence that permeates all beings and so-called things; the inexplicable, indescribable that shapes all. Because if we don’t honor and respect the spirit of someone or some thing or some place, then that person/thing/place gets treated only as an object to be chewed up and shat out ... which is what’s being done to the earth with the minerals and metals and trees and waters. And the promotion of such a lifestyle is chewed up and spat out by false prophets peddling success, survival, and superiority, while trying to get others to swallow the destructive drivel.

The Essence of all beings is what is essential. Yet how that plays out in the material world with day-to-day and long-term needs is what's being shuffled in the deck. I think it's time to not just play the hand you're dealt but figure out who's doing the shuffling and what ways the 'game' can be changed.

NOTES:
[1] “Paper shortages are impacting schools, grocery stores and more”

[2] “It Was The Deadliest Year Ever For Land And Environmental Activists”

Mankh (Walter E. Harris III) is an essayist and resident poet at Axis of Logic. Check out his newest book Moving Through The Empty Gate Forest: inside looking out. In addition to his work as a writer and small press publisher, he travels a holistic mystic pathway staying in touch with Turtle Island. His website is here.

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