growing up i suppose i was a democrat, though i wasn't actually politically aware in any meaningful way. i knew what people around me believed, i knew that i did not like Donald Trump, and that was really about it. college really changed that. i became aware of america's long history of exploitation, oppression, and terrorism through learning that took place both inside and outside of my classes. i was educated through professors, scholarly articles, textbooks, music (rock, rap, and folk), documentaries, personal research, and conversations with friends. and the more educated i became, the more horrified and angry i grew, as did many friends and peers.
at first, my understanding of the problem was based largely on histories of physical violence and oppression, and my theoretical solutions mirrored the approaches of those who i had read about. i took classes in which i learned about various forms of american oppression, and the grass roots movements that fought them including labor, civil rights, rock 'n' roll, and the 1960s counterculture. i learned about all sorts of american violence, from pre-industrial railroad companies who hired thugs to massacre striking workers, to the Nixon administration's injection of crack cocaine into black neighborhoods. and i learned about the various ways that people responded to this violence. i was particularly drawn to the way that music was used as a backbone for many of these movements. people needed to have some level of understanding of the situation if they were going to put up a fight against their oppressors, and throughout the history of american class war, music has often served as that education. many working class laborers in the early days of industrial america could not read or write, so they learned about their oppression in the form of folk songs, sung on the job while swinging a hammer to drive spikes into a railroad, or a pickaxe in the coal mine. rock 'n' roll became a channel for working class people to criticize and organize against their oppressors, and hip hop gave a voice for people in violent neighborhoods to share their stories to a wider audience. from Woody Guthrie and his guitar reading "this machine kills fascists" to Eazy E and Ice Cube yelling "fuck tha police", i was quickly hooked on music as protest. and, of course, i absolutely adored the counterculture. flowers and long hair and no shoes and copious amounts of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. i wanted to play music, start riots, spray paint peace signs and burn things. "fuck the man", i thought. this phase didn't last very long, though, as i soon began to understand that the counterculture was fundamentally flawed in various ways. besides being a mess politically and organizationally, the so called "free love" and "expansion of consciousness" that many countercultural icons toted led to many cases of drug abuse and sexual assault. much of the value that the counterculture had to offer was lost through its rampant co-option by advertisers and media. the values that i initially idolized were in many ways a creation of this co-option, as advertisers hijacked the flowery and psychedelic imagery to create the image of the hippie that has now become commonplace when thinking about the 60s and 70s.
my college education also furthered my understanding of the issue of advertising dominating culture. two classes i took, history of advertising and history of masculinity, taught me about the devious corporate manipulation tactics that have become standard parts of the world we inhabit today. advertisements are everywhere. our education on how to act with one another socially and culturally comes in many ways from corporate advertising. this advertising teaches us that there are highly gendered social standards which we must adhere to, and that the road to happiness is through consumption of commodities. we learn to engage in a lifestyle of consuming goods endlessly and in excess, without consideration of waste; to prioritize convenience over all else, especially when it comes to sustainability and land. this mindset has contributed significantly to the rampant destruction of the earth we have witnessed over the past centuries, both through the waste produced by consumers and the shady methods companies use to hide the massive environmental impact of their production factories. we have gone from a producer economy, in which our goods and services were produced and provided within homes and communities, to a consumer society, where these goods and services are now produced externally and then sold to us.
companies also employ tactics such as the creation of needs and planned obsolescence. an excellent example of an advertising company creating a need is the first deodorant company, odorono. deodorant did not exist before, and people were able to live perfectly well. but odorono made advertisements shaming women into buying deodorant, informing them that no man would want them if they didn't use this product. while it is perhaps less direct and obvious in contemporary society, this is still something that advertisers use to keep you buying their items, often relying on needs which were created by their predecessors decades ago. planned obsolescence is when a company creates products designed to fail within a short amount of time, requiring you to buy the next model. a prime example of this is the self degrading batteries found in apple iphones.
another example of company manipulation is distortion of the physical spaces consumers inhabit. walmart pioneered the "department store", which is designed to disorient and confuse customers through various tactics including highly gendered clothing sections, putting them into a state where they are likely to buy more. these tactics are now standards, used in stores where a vast amount of americans purchase the majority of their goods, from clothing to toiletries. another manifestation of the convenience mindset is the fast food chain. fast food encourages ease at the expense of health, and creates unhealthy relationships with food. regular consumption of fast food can lead to obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and digestive problems. it is often filled with sugar and is highly addictive, creating a population who spend mass amounts of money on food that is literally killing them, and who are unaware of or unwilling to resist their own exploitation due to brain fog, lack of motivation, and depression, which are all heightened by fast food consumption. the fast food industry also accounts for around 30% of carbon emissions, in addition to generating high amounts of plastic and food waste. fast food also has significant social and economic impacts, displacing local businesses and creating poor working conditions. employees face low wages for work that is physically demanding and often grueling, which can lead to financial instability for families.
i can personally attest to the struggles of working in fast food; i have spent two summers at taco bell, and one of them as a night shift employee. while working there, i consumed mostly food from there, as did most other employees i worked with. i also worked from 11pm to 4 or 5am, 5 days a week, and became extremely addicted to caffeine as a result. during my time working nights at taco bell, i was incredibly disoriented and unwell due to working conditions, and i did not have the capacity to realize the immense impact on my health and my life that it was having. i remember one night i tried to call in sick, and my boss told me i had to go into work anyway because he didn't have enough staff to run the store. my hands were shaking uncontrollably by the time i arrived home the next morning, unable to pour the cold medicine i was taking into the small plastic cup attached to it without spilling. not to mention the fact that i very likely contributed to the contamination of food with disease. the company encouraged taking any and all shortcuts to ensure the highest possible profits, and met standards only when they were under inspection. i am fortunate enough to be in a position where i am not financially dependent on a food service job, but many people i worked with were not. many immigrants work in fast food, often employed at multiple locations simultaneously to support their families. additionally, recent studies have uncovered the harsh reality of prison labor being exploited by fast food companies such that people are forced to work 80 hour weeks for literal pocket change.
with all of this knowledge and understanding of the flawed systems that i had been inhabiting for my entire life, it was hard not to feel hopeless, and it seemed like many around me felt quite similarly. we had an understanding of the situation, and we were becoming increasingly efficient at forming critiques of it, but when it came to taking action to change things, we were lost. the violence and drama of the counterculture was clearly ineffective, and it seemed to me that, while mass protests were valiant, they often didn't accomplish many significant practical changes. although I didn't yet have the language for it, it was around this time that i began the journey of decolonizing my mind.
i was initially inspired to go down this path by the iconic ethnobotanist, cultural critic, and advocate for responsible use of psychedelics, Terence Mckenna. hundreds of hours of lectures given by Terence in the 80s and 90s are available to listen to, and i had my mind radically expanded and changed by many of these. he simultaneously critiqued american culture in a way that i found effective and useful, and advocated for the expansion of one's own personal consciousness through use of psychedelics and general shamanic practice. Terence postulated the theory of what he called the archaic revival - a return of ancient practices and perspectives that could heal the diseased culture that we currently exist in. Terence was a ray of hope for me in a time that felt hopeless, and he showed me that there was more to reality than i previously understood, that i didn't have to confine myself to the understanding of reality offered by conventional american society. Terence was always very open about the fact that he was a flawed individual, that he was to be questioned like any other distributor of information and ideas. and the more time i spent listening to his lectures, the more i began to realize that it would serve me best to make my own way, and to leave Terence behind.
i began to develop my own practices for healing my culturally diseased mind. this initially manifested practically as meditation, self care routines, journaling, shadow work, and spending time outside and with plants. i became highly aware of my use of language, and learned that language is powerful, as it shapes our understanding of ourselves and reality. before i began these practices i was using language that had been taught to me by a sick society, and i examined my own speech patterns i was able to recognize and heal disease within myself. cutting out the use of binary words like "good" or "bad", avoiding apologizing when not necessary, and being more restrained with my use of the words "should", or "need to" to when they are only really necessary are all examples of changes i made to my language use that contributed to the mindset shift i have undergone. additionally, i spent time examining and healing old wounds and past traumas through meditation, holding space for grief, and affirmations. meditation allowed me to identify wounds, holding space for grief allowed me to feel the pain of the wounds that i had been repressing, and affirmations allowed me to patch the holes in my psyche that told me i wasn't enough, that i couldn't contribute to changing the world, and remove various other limiting beliefs. this work was incredibly difficult. i was working in the dirt of my own mind, pulling up roots and planting new seeds.
this mental seed-planting led to an abundant harvest of mindset shifts. i have cultivated a consistent mind state of presence, gratitude and bliss. capitalism demands that we are fast-paced, stressed, and productive all the time, and provides us with "leisure" activities that mostly act as distractions from the disastrous situation we are currently facing. with the practices i had developed, i was able to slow down, start to really appreciate life and the world around me, and remove the distractions in my life. the activities i participate in for rest, relaxation, and enjoyment shifted from mindless tv watching, scrolling, and junk food consumption to things that really stimulate and engage me; spending time with plants, consuming and producing art and music, engaging with community, exercise, meditation, and learning about the world in various different ways. i never thought i would be someone who eats healthy and exercises, but through discipline and going outside my comfort zone, i have really fallen in love with both of these things.
these new practices and ways of experiencing the world also allowed me to finally find a practical form of revolution that feels effective, productive, and contributes to my happiness - working in the dirt, literally. i began to notice opportunities that would have passed me by with a traditional fast-paced capitalist mindset. the first of these opportunities was a paid summer research opportunity for the digital humanities summer insititute at my college. i applied to the program with a niche topic i was interested in - the intersection of the counterculture movement and the development of the personal computer - and i got in! it felt like such a blessing to be able to live on campus and do research on a topic i'm passionate about, and it also led me to another opportunity - working on campus for the rest of the summer as a forest preserve manager. i got to live alone in a beautiful forest, make money doing physical labor for land and plants that i love, and spend my free time relaxing, learning, and making art and music. i also became involved in the campus community garden. i made connections with various incredible humans and plants through this, and learned how to care for and communicate with both. through a friend at the garden, i learned about a local farm located behind a school building. this farm provides large amounts of food community, as well as a plant-based education for the children who attend the school. it was incredibly inspiring to see people in an urban setting who were taking steps towards self sufficiency. i continued to work with these various places, plants, and humans during the school year, and am currently in the process of creating documentaries about them as part of my honors thesis.
all of this has contributed to my current focus: self-sufficiency. largely inspired by permaculture, the “food not lawns” movement, and various other groups and individuals, a dream has begun to take form in my mind. a dream of a self-sufficient suburbia, where everyone grows food in their backyard and trades among themselves; healing the land and ourselves along with it, reducing our reliance on government and corporate systems. working in the dirt.
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