The Renaissance

We have come through that terrible time when we were the slaves of money and marketing-brainwashing and the stupor of being governed by a stuporous bureaucracy. 

We have come through in tatters and ruin, not in triumph, but that is not a bad thing.

Enough of triumph.  Only children think you can win anything.

Wiser, we have come through, wiser to our own childishness, and wishing for something else. 

Let us not take planning as a substitute for doing, let us not take bureaucracy as a substitute for cooperation.  Let us choose a chaotic life over an orderly morbidity.  Let us choose freedom but not over compassion.  Let the good people of the Heartland join hands with the good people of the Coasts for the sake of the good hearts that they share however differently articulated. 

Let us go fearlessly towards peace, towards a brave peace, towards a poetry of courage and a gentle honor.

Let us understand death again, so that we can be alive.

Let us build only as much shelter as we need and no more. Let us clothe ourselves only as much as we need and no more.  Let us eat only what we need and no more.  Let us remember the making in all that we need.  Let us remember the body of the earth in all that we partake of.

Let us celebrate life and create a culture of life.

Full of good and happy things, full of honest work that we can be proud of, in which the good person is understood and let to flourish in that goodness.  In which our animal natures are not teased and  tormented for the sake of culture and money and glory and leadership. 

Let us not tease and torment each other.

With marketing.  With pornography.  With entertainment.  With fantasies that lead us to destroy the earth in their pursuit.  With social competitions that are empty and destructive, with the dire infection of consumerism.  Let us not inflict it upon each other. 

Teased and tormented we are, with the idea of being a leader; with the idea of business success; with the idea of sexual domination; with the fear of each other; with the images of ideal bodies that we are supposed to look like in order to be accepted, loved, safe; with the withholding of approval until we conform to a dead obedience; with vague threats of a misery and poverty and darkness if we do not also strive to consume the earth as fast as possible.  Let us not inflict this upon each other.

Let us walk free, run free, walk under starlight again, in our own humble and utterly unique and fragile bodies, among animals, as one of them again.