For localism and the love of humanity

I have been writing a lot recently about Zionism, as is sadly unavoidable for anyone genuinely intent on exploring and exposing the nature of the single global mafia.

We all know that any criticism of Israel, and of the Rothschilds, prompts an automatic accusation of being “anti-semitic” and I have not escaped this inquisitional smear-label.

Needless to say, it is not at all accurate and I have been reminded of the extent to which this is so by reading Love & Revolution, the latest and most extensive collection of writing from Mark Josephs, aka Mark the Mystic Activist. [1]

Mark’s writing has been deeply resonating with me for several years now – I have written about it here and here.

We often seem to take a similar approach to things, whether on the political or philosophical level, and I notice that in this latest work he deploys at one point the satirical term “unauthorised hope”, which coincidentally forms part of the title of a fictional work of mine. [2][3]

Given Mark’s Jewish family background, I do not think it fanciful to regard him as an idiosyncratic contemporary representative of a current of early 20th century central-European Jewish thinking that has been a source of personal inspiration for me.

Labelled “anti-capitalist Romanticism” by academic Michael Löwy, the current included thinkers like Martin Buber, Gustav Landauer, Ernst Bloch, Gershom Scholem, Erich Fromm, Walter Benjamin and Franz Kafka. [4]

This broad “cultural critique of modern capitalist civilization in the name of pre-modern or pre-capitalist values” does not fit easily into standard political categories, but is part of what I call the organic radical approach.

It is, I believe, nothing short of a cultural disaster that this thread of freedom-cherishing humanistic anti-industrial Jewish wisdom has currently been largely eclipsed in the public mind by the hateful greed-driven brutality of Zionist imperialism.

But Mark keeps alive the fine old tradition of high-minded Jewish universalism when he writes: “Our Essence doesn’t feel confined to a race, or nationality, or existential doctrine (Religion, Atheism, etc). It experiences itself as somehow deeper and more universal than any of these identifications.

“And it sees others as also deeper than their colour or creed. Our Essence looks from its own depths into the depths of others – and sees their Essence – and experiences a Universal Love”. [5]

Introducing his new 250-page work, he says that although his style is light-hearted, this is “a very serious book” proposing a deep approach. [6]

He states: “Today, in my opinion, we are faced with a global situation that calls for a global revolution.

“Our leaders are utterly hypocritical – preaching greenness while genetically modifying our food and spraying our skies; and preaching freedom and equality while continuously tightening the grip of centralised, absolute, impersonal, digital control.

“We are being conveyed without consultation into a technocratic, transhuman, smart-city dystopia”. [7]

In broader terms, Mark says we are all trapped within “a unified, dominant, global culture cut loose from the natural world, floating dreaming of being digital, mind, abstract information, bodiless, cosmic, computer-people-beyond-people… As if we could dream without bodies! As if we could be bodies without hearts!” [8]

“They’re pacing up and down inside us, even now. They’ve industrialised the countryside, turned fields into factories, and trained us to think in straight lines”, says Mark. [9]

“The collective consciousness, the human mind is being persuaded away”. [10]

“The dominant, modern, global culture has detached itself from reality – from the indefinable Mystery of which we are all part – and is therefore definably insane”. [11]

Not only has the system domesticated us – separated us from our true belonging – but it has also blinded us to the horrendous reality of what it has done to us.

Mark writes: “We visualise disenfranchised, indigenous peoples, addicted to alcohol, meths and glue – uprooted from the deep soulfulness of their ancestral traditions – rotting on reservations.

“We don’t understand that we are those indigenous peoples, that we ourselves have been separated from the land, and each other – from our own ancestral stories and songs and seasonal celebrations, separated from our own Sacred Flight.

“It is somehow unclear to us that we have been domesticated, and set to work on tasks without meaning, that we have been individualised – that we have been addicted to superficial escapism – and that the cities are our reservations.

“We don’t miss the birdsong at dawn, because we haven´t heard it for generations. We don’t miss the unbreakable bonds of siblinghood, because they’ve been shattered for generations.

“We don’t feel the need to make a passionate stand for all that says ‘yes!’ to life, because we’ve been comfortably numb for generations”. [12]

In the best tradition of anti-capitalist Romanticism and organic radicalism, Mark questions the reality of the “Progress” that we are told lies behind the constant acceleration of industrial modernity, including the disdain we are taught to feel for our non-domesticated pre-industrial predecessors.

He asks: “Is it possible that these ancient, ancient ancestors of ours had more finely attuned senses than ours? Yes!

“A better sense of smell? Yes! A closer connection to ‘the animals’ (a word we, ‘the progressed’, use to distinguish ‘us’ from ‘them’)?

“Were the minds of these people not bound, as ours tend to be, by this arbitrary discrimination – and were they, therefore, more aware of themselves as one–type–of–creature surrounded by other–types–of–creatures (other animals, fish, birds, insects, trees…) – and therefore more capable of sensing the existential equality of all creatures? I would imagine so – yes!” [13]

“Why, just because their technology was so much simpler than our own, do we go on to assume they were stupid?” [14]

“Is the global, civilisational trend towards increasingly complex technological dependency, and increasing distance from the natural world – from our flesh and blood belonging within the natural world – progressive? Or have we ‘progressed’ too far?” [15]

Mark suggests, in verse form, an appropriate collective response to this innovative, inclusive and impactful global enslavement.

So here’s my proposal:
that we say ‘fuck that’ –
and take a stand.
A stand for simplicity.
A stand for the truth beyond our truths:
that you and I, both of us, admit
neither of us knows.
I propose a revolutionary pilgrimage
back to each other
back to ourselves in each other. [16]

More specifically, his proposal is for us to come together in what he calls Conscious Tribes.

“We need Tribes – groups of ten, twenty or thirty people who know each other well, who are close, who meet regularly, who help each other and rely on each other, and who support each other in learning to live together in Universal Love, in becoming the revolutionaries capable of the First Successful Revolution!” [17]

The aim, beyond mere mutual aid, is to cultivate together a new quality of consciousness that can be the foundation of our future world.

Mark explains: “By ‘Conscious Tribe’ I mean a non-biological, extended family. Or, more accurately – because it might include biological brothers and sisters, for example, or parents and their children – by ‘Conscious Tribe’ I mean an extended family not limited by biological bonds“. [18]

“I believe that our unified commitment to the non-biological, consciousness-committed extended family – the Conscious Tribe – can be the ‘social glue’ we need in order to shape the alternative cultures we seek to co-create”. [19]

“On a very practical level, this means aligning our daily activities with our awakening consciousness – it means learning to plant and harvest and cook, and build and make, and transport and travel, and heal and share knowledge in ways that make us less and less dependent on the alienated dominant culture, and more and more embedded in nature, and locally self-reliant”. [20]

An important part of the global mafia’s incessant propaganda is to tell us that the way we live today, in its prison world, is the only way we could ever live, that another world is impossible.

But this is obviously not true, as Mark is at pains to point out.

He writes: “Local community. Deep relationships. Responsibility for our locality. Contact with nature – with the trees, the animals, the insects and birds… with the weather, with the waxing and waning moons, with the equinoxes and solstices.

“Time out, down time, holy-days. Celebration, appreciation, gratitude. Local, poison-free food. Poison-free water. Creativity and contribution (as against wage slavery).

“I believe all of these things favour the evolution and transformation of consciousness – and that asphalt, street lights, traffic noise, plastic food, work-work-work, and junk, escapist entertainment don’t”. [21]

The richness of Mark’s writing is hard to convey in a short review of this kind.

The essays that form the book are interspersed with poems and allegorical tales which he says “are intended to remind us that it is joy that will give us the energy we need for our multi-generational revolutionary journey”. [22]

But all is interwoven. Thus, for instance, we find buried within a jokey fictional account of a heretical movement that emerged within a bizarre Squirrel God cult, the following nut of essential truth: “Our existential insecurity and sense of separation create an inner state of disempowerment, making us easy to control, manipulate and exploit”. [23]

Mark insists that it is by rediscovering authenticity in our lives – mentally and physically – that we can shake ourselves free of the mafia’s control and exploitation.

He writes: “We share a process, a journey, not just of letting go of the centralised, alienated, artificial lifestyle of the dominant culture – but of letting go of the cultural conditioning we have internalised.

“In fact, the two are inseparable. As we grow our own medicines, in our own gardens (for example) we both let go of the cultural conditioning that tells us to distrust all healing outside of the doctor’s surgery and the hospital – and, simultaneously, we gradually ease our real, everyday lives back into harmony with the natural world”. [24]

Although the Conscious Tribes concept lies outside the usual political classifications, Mark argues that its political aspect could best be labelled “Conscious Localism”.

“I see Localism as the way back to diversity, to reconstructing local traditions, to knowing the land and climate we live on and in, and to finding each other again”. [25]

Mark’s writing is aimed at playing an active role in the forging of a new consciousness and the book contains detailed recommendations for how to set up and guide local groups.

He tells readers: “If you feel, as I do, the amoral, artificial, mechanical, global grip tightening – I invite you to study this text closely, and discuss it with your friends – and act on it while there remains room for manoeuvre!” [26]

To help advance the love revolution, Mark provides some inspiring happy endings for his fictional accounts.

There is this one, for instance: “From Buenos Aires to Hong Kong, from Johannesburg to Reykjavik: the Great City Dig-Up freed the suffocated earth – replacing the asphalt and concrete with vegetable gardens and orchards, forests, meadows and wild lands – and gardens of flowers, medicines and herbs.

“Where once traffic had flowed, rivers soon gurgled along. Where once great city plazas had proclaimed the importance of shopping – great lakes came to proclaim the importance of beauty.

“Where once people had almost believed they were not of the Earth, they were now happy to realise they were”. [27]

And this: “The many creatures cheered. The seven aunties sobbed with happiness. Surveillance cameras crackled, the air was filled with sparkling, flying microchips and 25G towers shattering – like fireworks of celebration.

“And slowly, slowly – for everything takes time – the good people of Smart City Central re-accustomed themselves to feeling the Love in their Blood – and other tender, forgotten emotions”. [28]

[Audio version]

Love & Revolution can be obtained via

https://www.tribusconscientes.com/

[1] Mark Josephs, aka Mark the Mystic Activist, Love & Revolution: Radical Honesty, Conscious Tribes, Local Community. All subsequent page references are to this work.
[2] p. 108.
[3] https://winteroak.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/47-random-fragments2.pdf
[4] https://orgrad.wordpress.com/a-z-of-thinkers/michael-lowy/
[5] p. 133.
[6] p. 13.
[7] p. 52.
[8] p. 11.
[9] p. 140.
[10] p. 11.
[11] p. 39.
[12] p. 221.
[13] p. 158.
[14] p. 159.
[15] Ibid.
[16] p. 12.
[17] p. 53.
[18] p. 17.
[19] p. 19.
[20] p. 17.
[21] p. 51.
[22] p. 15.
[23] p. 32.
[24] p. 134.
[25] p. 211.
[26] p. 14.
[27] p. 149.
[28] p. 207.