30/03/2025
As a kid growing up in Australia I’d watch cowboy and indian movies on television from the United States where the good cowboys and cavalry fought off the evil native savages. And I'd play on my bed with little plastic cowboy and indian figures in pretend battles where the indians always lost. I had no idea these North American aborigines had had their land stolen and that they were the freedom fighters and the cowboys and cavalry were the invaders, the baddies. I had no idea that I was watching propaganda disguised as entertainment. As an adult I noticed North American aboriginal dream-catchers and figures of their culture and spirituality (made in China) for sale in 'new age' shops, but no Australian aboriginal culture. And today many Aussies fly to South America to take the 'medicine' ayahuasca from the natives there rather than seek and revere the wisdom and medicine of this land, from the First Nations people here.
As that kid I had no idea the toys I was playing with may as well have been cowboys vs aboriginals, horrifically.
Domestic violence between couples and within the world community expresses itself in so many ways, physical and psychological and there’s an intuitive link between the abuse of Mother Nature and the prevalence of domestic violence in society against women, men, children, g**s, le****ns, trans, minorities and aboriginals. A violence reflected in our degradation of the environment and our spiritual narcissism. A wrong story used to unite and coerce populations - soldiers - into battle to colonise another country to control more resources for more economic and religious (wrong story) growth. A spiritual insecurity predated upon by the ruling classes to coerce other humans since homosapiens invented language, writing and storytelling. Fiction sold as gospel that at its extreme ends in fascism and atrocities born from conspiracy spirituality.
As a kid in primary school I was taught about the devil and God in a religious instruction class and came home that day afraid, looking over my shoulder for demons, a magical hidden evil force, a dark deep state that only an enlightened saviour could save me from, as long as I followed God's law (written by man). Later, at the same school I also learned about science and how atoms and planets and biology works and actually found that truly magical, learning how clever we humans are to uncover the inner workings of nature. And then create technology from that. I remember the realisation as a teen that the television I was watching came from the ground, it was magic built from the dirt, the earth, and human ingenuity. What I was being taught in one school class, religion was completely at odds with what I was being taught in another, science. But both science and spirituality have been corrupted for profit and control by competing elites at war, or preparing for it.
Most of our spiritual stories are of limitless potential and the supernatural like living forever (if we follow the rules). Whereas scientific stories are of logic and limits, like how to make a car but also to set a safe speed limit. Unfortunately though as we know science, maybe first and foremost, also creates weapons of war and terror (used by religion). But without science and its technology there would not exist over 8 billion humans on earth each of us born from the fossil-fuel age. A limited energy dense resource that powered industrial agriculture, industrial healthcare and industrial trade, secured by industrial warfare.
Science knows that infinite economic growth on a finite planet is impossible no matter the energy source, no matter the technology, no matter the politics and no matter any spiritual magical thinking. There is no such thing as 'clean energy' with infinite growth economics, all our technology is made from mining the earth and everything we do creates entropy/waste. But as a civilisation we continue full-steam ahead growing consumption from wrong story, an insecure story, a divide and conquer story of greenies vs rednecks, of muslim vs jew, of leftie vs far-right, of that which has reached its apocalypse.
We had a social life before mega-mainstream (social) media and we will again. Because it will end, every empire ends whether they be capitalist or communist or fascist. We haven't come up with a sustainable empire yet. The power of mega-mainstream media is very weak though, subject to your view, your hit, your subscription or deletion, that's your freedom of addiction.
We're all children still playing psychological cowboys and indians on our beds as our unsustainable homes burn around us. Being accelerated now by a growing far-right Christian conspiracy spirituality fascism - an authoritarianism which is radically transforming the United States - and is now trying to take power in Australia with the Liberal/Republican party of Peter Dutton, One Nation's Pauline Hanson and the billionaire owned Trumpet of Patriots and promoted by billionaire owned Fox/Sky Sun/Herald News and mega-mainstream media X FB, YT, TT etc and their 'almighty algorithms'. Labor, Greens and Teals will also not be able to lower the cost of living but they'll avoid a Temu-Trump leadership with a bankrupting US stye healthcare system.
Are we so divided and conquered as a people that we'd resign ourselves or be narcissistic enough to vote to join the US in fascism with a really bad ending? Or are we going to begin to write a new story? A story with no sides just as nature has no flags, a story of our place embedded within the earth, a new story of our deep ecology. A complete rethinking of what consumerism and growth can be. With gratitude, humility and fierce compassion. PCD
Deep Ecology out now only on Films For Action https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/deep-ecology/
