Shadow Culture Manifesto(still) in progress:

[transcribed from Adbusters #62]

01 This time we’ll get straight to the point.

02 The act of asking for less, not more, is a radical act. It may be the most
radical gesture of out times.

03 Even though, you know, it is usually overlooked.

04 Consumption is the foundation of civilization as we know it, far more powerful
than, say, religious faith or political ideology. This society stands or falls on
consumption. Consumption is our daily contribution and most intimate connection to a
doomsday system.

05 Did we say a doomsday system? We did. Can anyone still fail to see that we live
in times genuinely different, more fragile and uncertain than ever before? Human
societies have faced terrible threats and instability in the past. But not every
human society, at the same time, in every corner of the Earth.

06 In exchange for some of us living as the wealthiest and most privileged humans
ever to exist, we have fettered ourselves to eye-poppingly complex systems that we
depend on for our survival. Trouble being that these same systems are now failing or
being actively withdrawn at almost every level. The degree of interconnectedness is
incomprehensible. Imagine a castle somehow suspended in the air. It’s walls,
floors, turrets and dome riddled with hairline cracks. Where will the first total
failure occur?

07 This is the vertigo of collapse.

08 Anyway. Take away the endless growth of consumption and you need to come up with
a radically different system. Do you see where each of us has a role in this?

09 On this point, nothing has changed. Certainly not since the day the President of
the United States of America told his people to keep on shopping or the terrorists
win.

10 (Don't they seem to be winning? Or at least, not loosing?)

11 What is changing is the sense of urgency. We are in the process of imagining the
next civilization while living within the existing one. Some came to this purpose
because they felt disturbed or repelled by the culture that we live in. Many more,
now, are just looking for a softer landing when we go spinning off the ragged-ass
end of this falling star.

12 There's a wild kind of energy to it, a tearing off in all directions. The
proof is in, again, that the key component of advance in any sphere -
innovation - has nothing to do with private interest or ownership or the
exchange of paper money.

13 We are inventing a way of life with less. We are asking the following question:
Take away consumerism. What does the next culture look like?

14 And? Are we finding any answers? Seeing any patterns?

15 Let's be bold enough to say, yes.

16 We are finding a next culture that looks something like the barn-raising parties
of our grandparents, the community canning kitchens of the Second World War, the
quilting bee, the teach-in, the village shaman, the underground economy, the
monastery, the potlatch, the agora, the cooperative, the commune, the squat.

17 Except different.

18 We have never had so many people with so much knowledge, so much power to share,
so much longing to work toward a new and different purpose, and so much need to do
exactly that. Those who ask less have more to give. The hunger to contribute and to
learn doesn't vanish as our own demands diminish. In fact, the opposite appears to be true.

19 If we went in for slogans, this might be the one:

20 Self-reliance and mutual aid.

21 Might we say this is what democracy looks like? We might. More than that, it is a
kind of freedom.

22 But the pierogi-making party instead of the blockbuster Hollywood film? It sounds
corny. It even feels corny. Then again, a lot of things are done in this world that
seem strange when observed with the benefit of distance. Like spending 15 hours a
day in front of different types of glowing screens. Like paying for food that would
grow out of every crack in the pavement if someone would plant a seed. Like watching
golf on TV.

23 Does this make us outsiders? Not at all.

24 We refuse to be outsiders because we refuse to cede the culture. Far more is at
stake than following our bliss. Ours is not a lifestyle preference but a moral
imperative.

25 Still.

26 We have the capacity, more than ever before, to decide our own terms. We can
generate energy and treat our own waste. We can build homes, raise food, create new
forms of community and family. If we choose, it is possible to design and produce
any product we require. We may do so locally; we may do so globally. What we cannot
do is do it all alone.

27 In every respect we are working to produce the impossible, prototypes of a
parallel way of life. The working model looks something like this: a sphere composed
of interconnected clusters. At any given moment, some nodes are forming, others are
dissolving. Seen at the level of the individual, it is a galaxy of possibilities and
a person might contribute to none, one, ten or an infinite number in series. At the
system level, it is a network. More metaphorically, a net.

28 We are the people, sitting on the porch, sharing a meal at mid-day, asking more
and more from each other but less and less from the earth and the state – less
of its schools and shopping malls, its trade rules and tax regimes. We are the
people who serve to remind that there are other ways to live, and that anyone can
join in that imperfect search.

29 We are living from beneath, on the fringe, in the shadow.

30 A shadow culture.

Revolutions 'Free Parking'...

Year in year out I see them come :–
and depart

Fighters for the dawn
Heralds of the revolution!

Eyes burning bright as the night was dark before them. Soldiers from the abyss - “Where have they been?” Sings Ian Curtis in a Promethean machine. Yes, now where is he? Where art thou burning numinous beings? The firesticks devoured by the grease pit of chronos. Woah and where are ye? Harbouring but a sweet memory, latent cells in evolutions machinery.

Nailed, is the will of your spirit to the isomorphic beat matrix of patriarchical derivations that wear the veils of language? Have symbols and words rendered you bit by bit into some sane but mad machinic assemblage, where neural tendrils, senses and perceptions are as dead stone cardboard hieroglyphic buttons!

Reasons
Numbered sails in the infinite wind: Marilyn… a candle adrift.
Monarch slave of the architects programming.
Clocks in the pocket of the zeitgeist blowing

Dice in the wind…