Goood morning SuperForest!
I’m sitting here on the porch, ahem, lanai of Zero One, and the wind is blowing and the sky is overcast and Melissa is slouched down next to me and we’ve just eaten an amazing breakfast of kale from the garden, eggs from the hens, and papayas from the farmer’s market.
We were talking about faking a marriage, or really, just going through with one with an amazing pre-nup and exit clauses, simply as an excuse to get all of our friends and family to gather here on Kauai. It could be lovely. Perhaps an amazing an generous relative or well wisher would gift us some land and some seed money to get Zero Two going? We say: We’re getting married! We send out invitations. People rsvp or find better things to do. Flights are booked, vacation rentals located, bags packed. Our people arrive and we party and celebrate. But inside: This was all just a trick to get you all in one place. A ruse wedding just to bring you all to paradise and force you to have a good time there. Mwah ha ha! Sinister deeds!
Business. Lovely business. Move this person here, have them say this and that, then have them report back. Move the pieces on the game board. Minimize loss, maximize profit. Get what you want done. Play the game with the Universe.
Why play all the games? Why not just say to our friends and family: We love you! We want you all to be here! We’ll say and do whatever you need to hear to make that happen. Come to Kauai. Live here on Kauai. The life here is healthy and good and here we can make a difference. That would be more honest.
Instead, I could plot and scheme and use clever wordplay to hide my true intentions (which are, to be clear: build beautiful gardens for my friends and family to live in.) I could say that I was getting married to get you to come here. I could say that I was building botanical gardens and hide the fact that my “non-traditional employee/employer relationship” really meant that I lived in community and tried to make decisions based on the needs and interests of the land first, the community second, and how best to share the resulting abundance third.
In short, what I’m dancing around, trying to say, overusing commas, is that I’m done goofing around. I cannot believe how much time I’ve spent hiding my light from myself, rallying against wars and at war in myself, writing endless words when silence was what I needed, and breaking up my writing time with annoying meditation.
I have discovered a way out of the business life. I will now embrace a love life. For through my dealings and wheeling and failures and successes I’ve discovered something true for myself, and that is when business forms between two people then love dies, and fears enters the picture. So, I will no longer enter into business agreements. At least, never with people who I love and care about. Interestingly, I seem to love and care about nearly everyone I interact with, so that pretty much limits my business transactions.
Pop Culture, Politics, sports, all these are just offshoots of business, and business is what I’m over.
I mentioned that I had discovered a way out of the business life, and I believe that I indeed have. I will use this blog post as a prayer to a merciful and loving god, the Universe. Dear Universe, I would very much like some land to build a church on. I would also like some money to buy tools, seeds, tarps, a diesel truck, and a few odds and ends. I am building a church because I wish to serve god. In this case, I will serve god by growing food and caring for the land. I will use the food and land to feed and house people, who will grow the land alongside me. I will use the word church to protect our feeding and housing people, which is outlawed. Business does not want you living outside of business. It wants total conformity. Because when there is love, there is no business. And where there is business, there is no love.
If I can grow my own food, and trade food and my creations for that which I cannot create myself, and if I combine my talents with the talents of others, I can live in sustainable harmony with the land, and thereby escape the world of business.
Let me make it perfectly clear. I wish to escape the world of business. I never wish to buy or sell anything ever again, nor do I ever wish to own or possess anything either. I am content to have only that which is directly around me at any given moment. If I am in the Taj Majal, then the Taj Majal is my home. If I am visiting the Crown Jewels in London, I am visiting them because they are mine to visit. If someone pulls out a gun and demands my money, I will give it to him. Why was I carrying it in the first place?
Oh right, an in-between stage… It’s fine and good to sit here and think: I’m done with business! To heck with the whole crazy, world destroying, happiness-killing, fear machine of it all! But then, where is there to go? What Utopian world is there to slink off to? There’s nowhere I could go where the tuna weren’t going to be extinct within a decade. Nowhere I could go that wouldn’t have trash on the beaches. Nowhere on the planet where there isn’t the spectre of the industrial revolution hiding away in the plants and the waters and the delicious shrimp. Bali? Nope. Nowhere, daddy-o. The whole planet’s gone brown, homes.
Right then. An in between stage. Between business and love. Between the hideous zombie beast of a system we have now transitioning to something cleaner and brighter and a bit better thought out. A world unified. Undivided.
Do you know what that word means? Undivided? It means that there is nothing but you. You are me. You are the Universe. I am you. I am the Universe. We are all together. Got that? Really got that?
Undivided means more than a heart-warming montage of multiple ethnicities holding American flags and sparklers and twinkling at each other in the growing darkness for some mass celebration of life in the heartland. Undivided means that sports and money and politics and country and religion have no meaning whatsoever save for interesting conversation points about history. Because undivided means love. Perfect love. And perfect love is big enough for everyone to share.
I’m on a tangent. So, we have the world we are currently in, with all of its divisions and destructions and boxes and certainty and fear, and as a counterpoint, a glimmering idea of a future world that we could create, where everyone is taken care of and the human race is unhindered by the illusions of division and identity, and therefore able to share with one another.
During the past several months, I’ve had a few very close friends say to me that they were no longer interested in sharing. They said very clearly that they had shared enough and that they were going to stop sharing and instead, choose isolation. Privacy. Solitude. Triggered and searching for compassionate thoughts, I recalled a time when I myself had knowingly chose isolation. One popped up immediately: It was in 2008 after my fiance and I decided not to get married, and split up. For a year or so, I was pretty crushed. My whole identity had to be rejiggered. I stayed indoors a great deal, wrote a lot of posts, worked on SuperForest, kindled many online friendships, and generally avoided the fairer sex. One night at a bar, I was introduced to a beautiful young woman and we got to talking. She asked me if I was in a relationship, and I told her that I had been planning on getting married, but that we had broken it off. I told her that I felt like a ghost. I told her that I was rebuilding my personality, piece by piece. Sexy, right? I went home alone.
I choose isolation for a year because I was suffering inside. I was suffering, and I believed that my suffering made me ugly, made me unlikeable, uncharming. My suffering robbed me of my wit, my desire to please, to impress. That’s the story I made up. My suffering was what I chose to explore for a year, and for a year I explored it. I hid myself away so as not to inflict my suffering upon the world.
I’ll skip ahead a bit now, and just bang out a few details. Eventually, my fascination with my own suffering subsided. I was too interested in happiness and happiness, true happiness, in America is practically an undiscovered country. A year or so ago, an amazing experience with the plant medicine ayahuasca totally opened up my mind and gave me some wonderful perspective on myself. Ayahuasca shattered what felt like years of rock and ice encasing my being, and was one of the most positive, powerful, revelatory, wonderful experiences I’ve ever had.
Six months later and I’m out of New York, back on Kauai, and suddenly living in nature again. I am now here to start Zero One. Little by little, the energy and the space start attracting like-minded people, (for like always attracts like, and that is why positive thinking is so important.) Six months after that and there is a humming hive of activity at the newly productive Zero One, as gardens come online and fruit trees begin to produce. Six months after that and the project is over and I must leave this wonderful oasis that I and my friends have created and leap into the unknown.
I must say that choosing to focus my attention on solutions and joy, and shift my thoughts away from despair and isolation and suffering, has done wonders for my skin. My posture, once stooped from my endless hours online, is now slightly less stooped, as nascent shoulder muscles come online thanks to hours recently spent in the water. Did I mention? Since Zero One “ended” I’ve been spending a great deal more time at the beach and in the water. Loads more surfing, which is great for the skin, the posture, muscle tone, and leads to incredibly restful sleep.
I have but two regrets concerning Zero One, and these plagued me from day one. The first is that we did not have cameras running at all times, in every room, every hour of every day. What has happened here is nothing short of miraculous, and is why I feel so jazzed to re-create is ASAP. So, cameras everywhere, get it edited together, get it online, share it, send it out across the interwebs, and show the nice folks at home what happens when you start taking real responsibility for your life. Could have been rad. Next time.
The second regret is that I didn’t spend nearly enough time surfing.
Everything else has been a blessing, a benediction, and a gift from the Universe. I would not wish to retract or re-do a single millisecond.
I am asking, oh Universe, humbly and with a smile on my face, for a piece of land here on Kauai. With a stream or a lake or some sort of water feature. Larger than 2 acres. And I would like seed money to build a church. Thank you.
There is a life out there beyond business, SuperForesters. I am exploring the landscape and humbly offer my paltry services as a guide to this new world, filled with love and abundance, that I enjoy so much.
The sun has come out. Joe the gardener tells me that Rock Quarry has waves. I am off to see for myself.
I love you. Thank you. Forgive me. Cheers for your patience.
-Jackson
Jack,
First off: I write to you facing a great Stupa, with Rainbows on my feet, feeling the flow of the Dao.
Multiple times during my three weeks trekking, my sister and I talked of SuperForest, of Zero One, and of the incredible karmic connection between you and I, and all of this. I applaud what you’ve accomplished with 01, and I am supremely stoked for what lies ahead. I have every confidence.
Aloha,
Drake
Jackson,
Posts like these are one of the reasons I keep coming back to Superforest. Your honesty, way of thinking, optimism and positivity never ceases to amaze. I am truly glad I met you.
With that said, I have a different view on some of these items – which I know you love!
I do believe that you do have to involve yourself in “business” and the “system” if you do truly want to change the world.
Our natural instincts tell us not to trust anything that doesn’t look or act like us. As you know, nature is very beautiful and bountiful, but is also very systematic and unforgiving. The majority of people still have that outlook, which is why racism, bigotry and stereotypes exist.
I believe, unfortunately, that we are still in the very early stages of evolution.
Because not everybody can (or wants) to break through all of the bullshit that fills our day-to-day lives, you will always have a hard, and sometimes impossible, time trying to get them to understand. It’s not their fault, they were probably just never really exposed to this way of thinking or were told from an early age that trying to break away from the system is insane. That is how my father raised me – go to school, go to college, get good job, have kids, help raise kids, work until 60, retire with a brittle old body, die. Which is how most people, at least in this country, are raised.
What I am trying to say is that the majority of people will never listen to you unless they think you are one of them.
It is almost like since birth everybody has been playing Monopoly. Their parents played Monopoly, their siblings played it, all of their friends play it, their superiors have told them that they should play it. Everybody they have ever met plays Monopoly. Then, one day, in the middle of a nice game, somebody barges in that is not dressed like them and doesn’t have the same hairstyle and says “Why the hell are you playing Monopoly? The game you should be playing is Uno!” They would just say “Yeah whatever” and keep playing. No matter what that person does, they will keep playing because they think he is nuts. Now, even if that person really wants to reach them and does something shocking like kick the Monopoly board to get their attention, all that person would get back is anger and resentment for ruining their game and telling them what they have been doing their entire lives and what everybody they know has been doing is stupid.
Now, say instead, that person wore the same clothes as them and cut their hair the same way and quietly walked in and asked if they could join. “Of course! You can have the thimble!” they would probably say. That person plays with them that day and keeps coming back and playing with them. After awhile, they start feeling really comfortable around each other and become friends. Then that person says “Hey, I heard of this game called Uno. It is supposed to be really cool. We should give it a shot some time.”
You are likely to get far less resistance.
Wow, that was a long metaphor for a simple point.
What I am trying to say is, in my opinion, if you want to change the world, the systems, the ways we interact, you have to do it from the inside. Otherwise, you will always be known as those really nice, but really crazy people that built this weird church-cult thing and they all wear dresses and run around and pee on their gardens.
I would love so much if everybody in the world read this post and said “YES! This is what I was looking for! I am so on board!”
I just don’t think it is going to happen. At least not anytime soon.
In the meantime, I am going to try to change what I can in what I think is the most effective way possible.
And I know you already touched on that, I just wanted to dig a little deeper.
I also think it is good to view everything as a business and approach it with a business mentality. Even love.
It is all about minimizing loss and maximizing profit, like you said! Try to minimize the amount of anti-love you are giving out and maximize the amount of love you are giving out. And you can set forth certain policies and procedures to make sure you do that.
I think it would benefit to look at Zero One as a business. A profitable business as well. Because in the system we live in, however fucked up it may be, you need money to do anything. Especially something like this. So, my suggestion would be to turn Zero One into a business that can support the growth of other Zero One’s. Otherwise, you will start running out of land that people want to just give away.
I hope I made some sense in that rambling babble I just typed.
Much much love, Jackson.
Matt
Dear Matt,
I love the Monopoly/UNO analogy! that totally vibes with me. i would like to fold up the board, put the pieces back in the box, and go outside to work in the gardens. The answers to all of our problems lie in the garden.
Jackson,
I completely agree. What I have been working on is how to get people to go to the garden.
Or perhaps I have been working on a way to create opportunities to show people the garden and the gardening way of life!
Matt ….
I am coming to the conclusion that it is rare for people who did not grow up marginalized and/or impoverished to understand the importance of grooming and appearance when trying to sway someone’s perspective. I’m so energized when I see our generation fighting for change, but it is bittersweet because I see that much of the message is discounted (or downright ignored) because of physical appearances.
Years ago I wondered why the Green Party can’t win elections in America when so much of the platform would create positive change. I then saw some people canvassing for votes in my neighborhood and knew instantly that they would be treated cordially, but they would not secure a single vote. Why? Because the message would be lost on the dreadlocks, the piercings, the clothing.
Our appearance is a social signal to others. The hairstyle, clothes, tattoos, and adornments we choose communicate messages. When our appearance calls attention to ourselves, it’s easy for the underlying message to get lost. My point is, in order to bring people in, it is probably a good idea to give strangers who are new to the message a feeling of comfort.
The people who are searching for the garden are going to be easy to talk to: they’re just waiting for the doorbell to ring. 99.99% of others are going to take one look at the messenger and …
Well, you said it better than I. Thanks Matt.