Savage Gods




Savage Gods by paul kingsnorth

The evangelist and the poet. Poetry has become the talk of ideas but not revolutionaries. Can we not speak, can we stop from knowing everything. The language smothers everything we cherish, such as the silence, such as the pure thought, the unobstructed connection to our soul. I dont know if its just in america, or the western world, or throughout the world but do we all really want to sue the smoker next door whose smoke comes across the fence, or imprison the homeless but not the makers of war and weapons.

The silliness of it all. The jurisprudence society, the law of the land out of hand.

Its true for me, much of what i write comes out of outrage or spite or even revenge, in thought if not in deed.

Can we all just shut up and still be friends? Can we all just stop ourselves from "knowing", wanting to know all about the things we have absolutely no control over, such as the politics, the governing bodies that have institutionalized  our education system at all levels, our economies, our freeways to hell.

Democracy and voting, the reasons we believe we have control, investing and indebtedness, the ways we fell we can better survive, petitioning and rallying, the ways we complain, but none of those things change anything. The ways we want to change because we want to change the things we are not meant to change.

Get a million people on the street for a cause and all youve done is burn off more energy, forced the unchangeable system to gather more weapons, more resources, more capital to defend itself. We see ourselves the enemy of the system but we are merely the enemy's muse for destruction. 

The kings and queens, the princes, the emperors, the dynasties took over god, using It's name to make laws, restrictions, interrupting a natural spiritual connection, and when the kings, queens and the others became presidents, representatives, prime ministers they turned god into making money as the natural order of the world, so we followed as they lead.

When did the representation for an ox.    Become Ox, and did that magically distance ourselves from the natural world in small increments as we passed from the physical world to the almost totally abstract world we live in now. Think about how the land has drifted away from our lives except in the form of state, national preserves where people and cars mix with grizzly bears hunting elk, lions bringing down gazelle on the open plains.

I had corn fields behind my house and i was not raised on a farm but had plenty of room to explore right from my back yard. Snakes, toads, mice, every varmint residing near the river and in the fields, both the eaten and the eaters, were within reach. I drew birds of prey. 

The seashore had huge flocks of pelicans, seabirds and there were plenty of fish in the sea and starfish clinging to the rocks at low tide.

I am sometimes amazed at the personal loss of the sights and sounds i once treasured. Later, i found similar examples in the desert but that too has been trampled and earmarked for exploitation.


Borrego springs reminder.

Maybe the fact that prose represents the bible, the magna carta, the koran, the constitution, the torah, the declaration of indepence, we should all suspect, rather than respect, the languages from whence it all oppression originates. It could all be lies, representing nothing but .the growing distance between us and nature, hence climate change hardly becomes " natural" for us because were so far into the body and mind abstraction to understand how reality even works.

Where did it all go wrong. Was it world war one, or the russian revolution, or slavery, or when we left africa, or crawled from the sea?

Go back, further back, where did the break begin, 

William Golding-"the Fall is thought."

Kingsnorth implies all of this, that either the problem is european thought, thus language or just one of the problems. We do imagine the primitive soul is the innocence before the Fall

Are we as writers trapped in a mental prison of our own making. An alcatraz where escape is impossible unless one is willing to brave the unknown.

Ive never realized the quaintness of rural sonoma, marin, mendocino counties though ive been through there many times. Words never struck me in those places, not like the desert where minimalist landscapes bloom in my imagination. I can see death there more easily. Scarcity in abundance. But when i see the ruby mountains, i see gemstones, aquarius mountains, i feel new beginnings.

There is part of the language that remains sacred, not part of the Age of Reason, hubris of law, justice and equanimity, or lies and truth, self-deceptive, guiltless or driven apology and confessions, advertising

Yes, language, perhaps, is the ultimate authority we must resist being taken in by. We do need to stop talking and stop the talking in our 

.heads and listen for the silences between the words, natures code is speaking.

I used to believe 5hat it was religion or governments or personalities that were/are the culprit behind all our problems, or maybe even the language itself that imprisons us in our makeshift prejudices, unless it is memory based on physical characteristics, like in a lineup of offenses toward us. We remember the eyes, the colors of our fears, though we dont know where or what life we saw them in.

But, no, its more subtle, its the primordal gene of dominance any society emits through its lessons of survival and necessity, that dominant authority one feels right with, without proof, only a built in trust, maybe misplaced, maybe not irrefutable, but absolute.

For example, The early christians faith turns to a dark, chaotic reality when placed in a modern context. Who can realistically believe in a god of revenge, or even love in a world reliant on the killers and saints battling it out on the streets, on the battlefields, in homes, and in our hearts?



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