Before I publish part 2 of this project, I thought it would be worthwhile to delve into a key life experience which forms much of the rationale behind it. This is not an academic effort by any means, though I do argue that the Manifesto of the Human Family is supported by evidence obtained using the scientific method. Cultural relativism, participant observation, and cultural materialism are key methods involved in its creation.
The idea behind this project is simple: human animals in state societies don't know how to live, or be human animals. This is of course a generalization, since some of us have managed to get in touch with a humanity that we never received from the enculturation process; yet it is nevertheless an accurate assessment based upon observations I have made of disparate groups over the course of a lifetime spent living in different regions of the world.
I've known a sea of faces, and listened to their voices. I've walked the streets of cities, passed through innumerable towns, and explored the countryside. I didn't understand what I was seeing until I involved myself with a group of people who sought to escape the corrupting influence of human civilization. I learned an invaluable lesson while I was a part of their community...it changed how I thought about myself, others, and this world.
In the beginning, they were just *there.* There wasn't an hierarchy, division of labor, or haves and have nots. This is what attracted me to them in the first place. They wanted to live in a sustainable manner with the land, and attempted to make everything they needed with their own hands. It was quite a sight to see. I had never seen anything like it before in my travels - it was a marvel.
I fit right in, and it wasn't long before I discovered my own talents: I was good at making sturdy, durable things with my hands, and I had a strong back. One of the elders of this community took me under his wing, and over time I learned how to listen to trees and recognize their primeval significance. I discovered how to only use trees that had fallen, or reached the end of their life cycle. The vital tree *must* be left alive, just like the very large ones. If they are destroyed by our hands, we destroy a web of life. We are a part of that web.
He taught me how to focus the power of my hands. He also taught me how to be alive and be a human animal. We are not what we do, and we are not the artificial things which might surround us. We are the land, the trees, the deer, and the lake. He didn't "teach" me these things in the sense that I sat and listened to words...he guided me on a journey that I had elected to take.
Something had to happen first: the concrete, glass, and steel had to be ripped out of me. The vulcanized rubber, the packaged ham, the rules, the laws, and illusions of a living death had to go. This wasn't something that I was told, but rather something that happened to me in stages. It was both a rational and spiritual process. The rational had to be reforged in order to accommodate the spiritual, and live in a unity that is meant to be. Nothing in this artificial world remotely resembles it - there is no formula and no ritual to coax it out, because this spirituality is a living thing. It is just like the trees, the land, the deer, and the lake. It just *is*.
It will grow if we demolish the prison built to contain it. That prison is called the state society. While we exist in such societies, these societies also exist *within* us. I became painfully acquainted with the reality of the situation over the span of five years in this community, watching an amazing thing encroached upon by the state society. Over time, folks in the group decided to listen to a small circle of people, and these people became the trustees of the land we were living on. This was the beginning of the end. An hierarchy emerged, and it wasn't long before the concrete, glass, and steel returned with an inhuman vengeance.
I left after the circle of trustees made the first of a number of power plays. They were in control, and it became *their* community. The agony of my departure was almost unbearable, and I spent the better part of a decade attempting to understand what happened, and why.
The Manifesto of the Human Family is a result of this experience.
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