Fruit of the Stone Trees

A Reflection On Blamelessness and The Collapse Of Industrial Civilization

I own a chainsaw. Actually more than one. For a Druid that’s a bit like a vegan admitting you have a slaughter shack in the back yard. A spiritual practice that focuses on sacred trees isn’t supposed to have the tools to destroy them, or at least that’s what some people believe. The other thing about Druids is that we don’t follow conventions, even when it comes to Druidry. It’s difficult to believe that the ancient Druids were restricted to building their houses and fires out of fallen wood, digging around in the snow with numb fingers trying to stay warm. In the book That Hideous Strength C.S. Lewis describes Merlin as taking a vow to never use metal to cut any green and growing thing. Then again Merlin was able to do a lot more than most people could even begin to imagine, and while I’m able to converse with animals better than most (which isn’t saying much) I’m a long way from having the magical chops to get by without physically addressing my animal needs.

Maybe it’s with a cringe of hypocrisy that I hear about the cutting of old trees in order to make way for Progress, because I’m guilty of that sin myself many times over. The progress that I was working for may not have been a giant subsidy dumpster, but in my head I had a plan for the landscape that was at odds with what nature had intended and therefore any stones I cast towards others are only going to bounce back and bruise me as well.

It’s easy to play the blame game. The other guys always seem to be doing something we don’t like. Those jerks over there, if only they would do what I think is right then the world would be a better place! Would it though? One thing you start to pick up when adopting a habit of self-reflection is how absolutely un-qualified humans are to run the universe. After all we can’t even manage our own bodies. If suddenly put in charge of our autonomic nervous system we would collapse dead on the floor in a matter of minutes if not seconds. The idea that we know what is right and what should happen is merely a function of the ego- a survival mechanism that stops us from surrendering our families to home invaders or catching pneumonia from sleeping outside in a rain storm.

Whose Will Is It Anyway?

When people ask why the gods would allow bad things to happen, they are making two assumptions. The first is that our physical manifestations are essential to the grand scheme, and the second is that we could do a better job if we were in charge. The number one philosophical question that people always bring before religious leaders was answered long ago, but any occultist worth their incense knows living that truth is a lot more difficult than realizing it. The flash of the highwayman’s blade or the sapling sprouting in the middle of your garden puts you right back in survival mode, and contemplations of the larger project take a back seat to more immediate needs.

This can’t be helped, or at least it’s a really long term project that takes many lifetimes to overcome. On the other hand we can practice blamelessness, or at least stop carelessly throwing around nasty thought forms at people who refuse to conform to our ideas of what should be. For me RFK Jr. is a great recent example of this work in progress. People are literally trying to silence and murder him, throwing the most terrific slanders, and yet somehow he manages to compose himself in a way that tries to relate with his opponents rather than turning against them in fit of rage and righteous indignation as is the modern habit. He’s looking at the larger picture where more malice and division only sorts people into support columns for the dysfunctional elite. By engaging rather than attacking he is adapting the Gandhi strategy of non-violence towards 5^th generation warfare. It was a novel approach towards liberation from a colonial power in an information age, and it seems to be making significant headway in our disinformation age as well.

A test for me to live up to these principles came up this week with the Civil Beat article about old and beloved trees being cut down in order to make way for Skyline, our doomed boondoggle of a rail system that has already started crumbling before it was even finished. How easy would it be to write an article condemning the Evil Jerks Over There without my own self putting the slightest effort towards considering the true long term implications?

The Riddle of Steel

Hawaii is an extremely isolated collection of islands with no metal ores. Our access to metal is restricted to using whatever is brought over in ships and flown in on planes, and some day in the not too distant future those ships will dwindle and the planes will cease altogether. Meanwhile the sea levels will continue to rise, necessitating a retreat from the land where most of the development that has taken place, leaving all that wonderful metal encased in concrete to uselessly rust away beneath the waves. How wonderful is it that someone built elevated platforms full of rebar that can continue to be harvested from barges on calm winter days a century from now?

This is one of the central themes of Star’s Reach: A Novel Of The Deindustrial Future from John Michael Greer that explores a Progress-free future 400 years from the present day after our civilization has long since collapsed and another one is struggling to be born. It’s a highly recommended read not just for the entertainment value, but because it takes a lot of outrages that we have every right to be angry about at the moment and puts them in the sort of perspective that can win a little peace of mind when properly meditated over. Maybe Zuck and Oprah are doing us a favor by holding undeveloped land until their their guards turn on them. Maybe the world’s worst medical experiment is finally freeing up suppressed alternative healthcare modalities and making them safer and more effective with the help of freshly unemployed scientists and practitioners. Maybe the akua wanted those trees to be turned into beautiful tikis by the ancestors of the ruinmen who will hammer the scrap of Skyline into the much-coveted tools of the long tomorrow.

Umma Do Me

In my own personal experience something happens when I try and tune my frequency and stop the negative broadcasts. Suddenly there is creative energy available to do new and interesting things with. When I see someone doing something that strikes me as wrong, it’s a reminder of the course corrections that I need to make. Now I’m not about to throw my chainsaws into the landfill so that nobody can use them, but I have adopted a different approach that tries to work with the akua rather than being turned into a tragic unwitting tool of their ultimate intentions. I ask the oracles if it’s okay to cut down a tree, do my best not to take pleasure in the process, and use the remains with the care and appreciation of the tiki carvers. It’s a tough standard to live up to, and sometimes the instructions I get are confounding to say the least, but it’s always more rewarding to be a player than an NPC and more often than not things start to make sense in a way that was impossible to predict with my limited psychological bandwidth.

It would be nice to plant a sacred grove using appropriate local substitutes one day and create a space where no saws are necessary, but that’s another story for another time. Until then may we all learn to blame a little less and appreciate each other a little more, especially if we think they are wrong.

Ku’ia kahele aka na’au ha’aha’a