Some of us are horrified Others never talk about it But when the weather starts to burn Then you’ll know that you’re in trouble
—Tears for Fears, Mothers Talk
We are beings that exist between dream and meat. That’s the weird truth. And when our dreams begin to eclipse the meat, that’s when the trouble starts.
We are powerful dreamers, but the rules our meat must abide by are intolerant of pure fantasy. Our meat is bonded to The Real. It must abide.
More Crimes Against Metaphors
Flying is awesome, isn’t it? It’s no wonder why birds symbolize freedom. We’ve envied birds for thousands of years and our dreams eventually figured out a way to transcend the limits of our meat so we could fly too.
Super cool. Miraculous, even.
Dreaming is an incredible trait, and we’ve spied glimpses of God’s Firmament through it. Unfortunately, our particular kind of dreaming has lead us terribly astray too, disconnecting us from our essential, cosmic relationships—“the grass,” if you will. In forgetting the grass, we’re forgetting the vital, the crucial, the critical. Modernity’s bottomless desire has intellectualized the grass into imaginal commodities and bothersome obstacles to be tamed or conquered in service to its mad dream of “progress.”
Native American cultures recognized that our colonizing ancestors were suffering from this shared madness, and their descriptions of the affliction are the origin of the word wendigo: a malevolent spirit/psychosis that possesses humans, invoking feelings of insatiable greed/hunger and a desire to eat other humans and destroy the environment.1
Native Americans weren’t angels, but they did foster dreams of deference and abidance. They kept the grass close. When our dreams of dominance and defiance came to their door, they had three choices: they could run, they could fight, or they could embrace/surrender. Sadly, every choice lead to assimilation.
That’s how virulent our dream is. It now dominates the entire planet.
Where’s Reality?
“Go touch grass” has become a popular online insult, a way to shame others who they feel have lost connection to reality, which is a joke in itself since we’re all under the spell that promises we can customize reality to our dreams. In the 21st Century, losing touch is for everyone!
We’ve become so lost, so delusional, the grass has become an abstract. We peddle in hide-the-grass technologies and ideologies to flex our greatness and perpetuate the dream at any cost. But the grass remains. In avoiding to “touch grass,” sooner or later the grass comes looking to touch us.
Climate chaos, pandemics, megafires, drug resistant pathogens, mental illness, environmental disasters, mystery diseases, species die-offs…these bad tidings are just the grass tapping us on the shoulder and whispering, “Hey, remember me?
The Heresy of Stopping
We make a lot of hay out of our escalating polycrisis. People have opinions!
We need less people. No, more people. We need hope! No, we need action. No, we need “active hope.” Trust the science. Do your own research. God and country. Blood and soil. No negativity, only positive vibes. More taxes. No taxes. Less doom. MOAR DOOM. Nihilism is the threat! Tax the rich! Invest in potential savior technologies. Peaceful protest. Criminalize protest. “Effective altruism.” A Green New Deal. A reform bill. Carbon credits! Meritocracy. Originalism. A balanced budget. Different leaders. Less government. Heat pumps. LNG terminals. Nature preserves. More jobs! More oversight. More regulations. Tougher laws. Increased military spending. No, more freedom and liberty. Armed teachers. Bibles in public schools. More studies. Accurate reporting. Fight the sun with aerosols. Vigorous debate. No more debates. New rights. Men’s rights. The planet needs rights! Better education. Economic stimulus. Quantitive easing. More centrists, please. Cancel the woke mob! Shut down the government. Don’t panic!
Anything, everything, as long as nothing fundamentally changes. The show must go on. All things considered, debated, argued, pitched, lobbied, platformed…except the simple answer that sits before us all, basking in the noonday sun:
Stop. Yield. Abandon this way of living while the means to reorganize are available.
To suggest this is akin to sacrificing/eating/punting a baby on primetime TV.
It’s the unholiest of the unholy.
Stop? What kind of stupid fool/communist/Nazi/idiot/extremist/socialist tree fucker are you? Are we going to go back to living in caves? You’re insane! Get back to work, slacker.
And the winners of our way of life won’t give up their gains and power, they mastered the game, why would they stop their good thing? Winners keepers.
Sorry you didn’t figure out how to make the system work for you, thems the breaks. I did, and I’m not abandoning my success. Follow my lead or get out of the way. Work harder, longer, smarter. No handouts!
These are the people who will shatter when the grass comes calling. And they may decide if they can’t have what they want, what they feel is rightfully their’s to claim and hold, then they’ll make sure nothing’s left for any of us.
The grass cares nothing of our disputes, bargaining, or denial. It operates on time scales that brush aside our whole evolutionary existence as a speck dust threatening to blot out the sun. Its rules are non-negotiable. Irrevocable. The more we resist, the more brutal the consequences. If we want to salvage any semblance of our to-date achievements, we cannot continue to ignore the grass.
Lack of imagination is not an argument. It’s time to become uncomfortably lucid. The grass is out there, reaching for us all. A lot of chaos is already baked in and the bitterdough is rising fast.
Kill your darlings. The future you’re scheming towards doesn’t exist. The emergency is white hot. Just because you aren’t smoking doesn’t mean you’re not on fire. Scientist’s predictions are inherently conservative, and don’t account for all variables. The time to correct course is shorter than advertised.
Hug the grass. Tick tock. Abide, or die.
We scorch the earth Set fire to the sky And we stooped so low To reach so high A link is lost The chain undone We wait all day For night to come And it comes Like a hunter, child
—U2, Red Hill Mining Town