Going Underground: Building a Caring Alternative Parallel Society

As the poet, dissident, and member of the Czech underground resistance movement during the communist regime, Ivan Martin Jirous wrote, perhaps in “Parallel Polis: An Inquiry”:

“If it proves impossible legally to compel the ruling power to change the ways it governs us, and if for various reasons those who reject this power cannot or do not wish to overthrow it by force, then the creation of an independent or alternative or parallel [society] is the only dignified solution ...”

With the shadow of totalitarian or techno-feudalist regime change looming over us and already detrimentally impacting our lives, and the dismal prospect of a further descent into superficiality, falsehood, blatant corruption, vulgarity, and barbarism, not only in the Disunited States but also elsewhere in Europe, the UK, and around the globe, we need to be making preparations right now, and developing alternative infrastructure – and a faithful record of our history – while we are still at liberty to do so.

A Little Something for Your Ark, Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt

In these increasingly dire times we have plenty of warners, but what we desperately need right now are more arks.

As Michael Ventura wrote: “[A]ll of this passing things on, in all its forms, may not cure the world now—curing the world now may not be a human possibility—but it keeps the great things alive. And we have to do this because, as Laing said, who are we to decide that it is hopeless? And I said to my son, if you wanted to volunteer for fascinating, dangerous, necessary work, this would be a great job to volunteer for—trying to be a wide-awake human during a Dark Age and keeping alive what you think is beautiful and important.”

~ James Hillman and Michael Ventura, We've Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and the World's Getting Worse.

So, with that in mind, here's a little something to stow away safely in your ark, as we make preparations for the dark times ahead of us.

“Some want to turn the clock back, harkening back to some golden age of nostalgia, when women, children, the lower class, parishioners, and people of other races and creeds knew their place; not back to the 1950s, but further back: to Dickensian times and to (corporate) feudal fiefdom. They want to wind the clock back to a time before the hard-won battles for civil rights, social reforms, and worker representation. A time long, long before the ‘woke virus’, ‘illegal immigrants’, and gender identity, when life was more conservative and white lives mattered; though with a new, fundamentalist, Christian nationalist (or Islamist, or ultra-Zionist, or even atheist) and isolationist twist. And some will go to any lengths – and I do mean any desperate, violent, draconian lengths – to bring this vile and unholy vision about.”

~ Preface to Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt, a story of resistance.

The Root Causes of Why We're FUBAR

Or “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea”

I'm tempted to simply post:

“The U/S is FUBAR and the UK is heading the same way.

“That's it. That's the post.”

I was going to say that coming in the wake of Trump's abominable Big Ugly Bill, the message will be clear to all but the hardcore sycophants in Cult 45/47. However, large swathes of the population, especially in rural areas – ordinary, everyday, decent, law-abiding folk – are probably misinformed or oblivious to the facts.

But, of course, the spread of right-wing authoritarian regimes, faux-populism, faux-Christian nationalism, straight white male supremacy, oligarchy, and veiled eugenics sweeping through the US and reverberating throughout the West – toxic as these may be – have their root causes elsewhere. 

Though the allure of quick and simple solutions to horrendously complex problems is undeniable, and tempting, especially to those of us who have done our own research – that is, shunned the experts, the libtard fact-checkers and the Marxist wokerati, and watched a few videos on YouTube – we have to look deeper and further afield.