what goes up

ah, civilization gasps as it's secret is discovered by people who have lived so long under it's heel they have forgotten what is known in the very mortality of their own bodies: that it is not invincible.

civilization is a house of cards. in the name of "progress" we have consumed our natural environment. we have cut down the forests and pumped dry the wetlands. we have poisoned the waters, the air, and the land. we have conquered nature, or so it would seem. the concrete, the tracts and tracts of suburban homes, the highways, the malls. all of it so solid, everything so well-ordered, it could never be otherwise....

new orleans is the beginning. the entire city underwater, levees breached, the water still rising, homes rich and poor swept off and obliterated, oil rigs washed out to sea, sewage and the chemicals (from factories and that shit people keep under their sinks to make their homes 'clean') polluting the ground and water for hundreds of years to come. the highways and bridges destroyed. the roof off the invincible superdome ripped apart. no cell phones or e-mail. no work. no cars. no commerce. disaster has struck and the cards are toppling over.

gas prices will rise to $4 per gallon. people are looting in the very face of police and law enforcement. (unfortunately, an officer shot in the head, by one such looter, survived and is recovering.) a city of millions, and the surrounding areas also hit by the hurricane, are rendered uninhabitable.

the effects of civilization's cause will be felt and paid for by all. you cannot systematically destroy the world around you and not ultimately destroy yourself. these major breaches in the omnipotence of civilization cannot be created by us in opposition to it. they will be created by the system itself, a system whose own lust for the conquest of everything will eventually punch giant holes into it's own ordered existence. what we can do, is to exploit and take advantage of every punched hole, of every opportunity that disaster has provided for us. a return to the same self- and world-annihilating ways is absolutely the opposite of everything we are fighting and striving for! we must carry the new world in our hearts into the flooded cities of the one we currently live in.. if we are to turn the tide, if we are to live in the way we dream of living, we must revolt and help others revolt against civilization, against this system whose end is the end of everything.

the cards will only continue to tumble. hurricane katrina was an expectation filled. how long will we have to wait until the next outcome of civiliation's "progress" will appear? and the better question: will we be prepared?