The Government in the Root

World building in a time of ignorance and despair.

If you could kindly tap the ❤️ at the top or bottom of this newsletter it will make it easier for other people to find this publication. Ahéhee'! བཀའ་དྲིན་ཆེ།! 謝謝! Thank you! ขอบคุณ! شكرا ! תודה! Спасибо! धन्यवाद! Cảm ơn bạn! អរគុណ! Merci y Muchisimas gracias!

My wife and I are very blessed to have several genuine elders in our lives. Not just old people, but persons who have earned the title of “elder” by demonstrating clearly well developed traits of a genuine adult. People who have tirelessly devoted their entire lives to seeking Truth, to understanding what life is really about beyond the incessant theater of distraction forever interrupting sanity and are now able to pass on wisdom well.

Genuine elders in this degenerate age where humans are able to live longer than ever before are in fact, endangered. To find the answer to why this strange phenomenon has arisen one need look no further than the so-called “debate” that just occurred in a carefully contained conversation at the CNN studio in Atlanta between two aging, uninitiated forever-adolescents whom, at this late state in their lives, clearly still know very little of what living is ultimately for. Old they are, true, but elders they are not. Yet sadly, it is likely that one of them will again be elected to lead the curious modern experiment referred to as The United States of America without much pushback because most of us, like them, have become numb, tired and lazy.

As for me, I turned my back on the shit show. Don’t get me wrong, I am tired and lazy too, which strangely enough plays a part in why I opted out. Exhausted by the inability of any politician to make meaningful use of their time whatsoever, instead of joining the masses again in numbing my creative life force by consuming the useless resonance of an argument between two genocide enablers, I instead spent the last few days without listening to anything but birds and music made by my daughter, on a guitar she made herself, from wood harvested with permission from a tree her mother and I grew ourselves before she was born. The only news I have received during the last 72 hours or so has come from children’s stories, the wind and my bare feet walking over organic soil. I learned the emperor has no clothes! I learned that a large rainstorm is coming. I learned that the ants are abundant and like to bite. I learned thus to dig a large swale to hold water on our land and to respect the great ant nation more, to pay better attention to the unfathomably large world under my toes, the realm I all too often take for granted. And so too, I received much wisdom from sitting alone with Silence.

Oh, I am not ignoring the greater world. On the contrary. Our farm has an open door for peoples from all cultures to pass through. And my understanding of the world has, over the last few days, been informed not by angry talking heads on a screen but has emerged from real life conversations with new friends visiting our farm from Taiwan, India, Myanmar, Seattle, Israel, Vietnam, Palestine and elsewhere. The rain informs us of what we will do with our days. Tensions brought here from elsewhere are eased as we break bread together, learning how to eat each others delicious traditional foods around one large table able to seat everyone. First hand accounts of what good and bad events have developed in the homelands of our diverse, ever-changing community instruct us where we should direct our prayers, creativity and resources.

We have our own debates. We are not extreme, but at this point, as many of us here have lived through war, poverty, or a lifetime of lies told us by governments that literally make their fortunes from manufacturing wars, well, we have wisely decided to stop wasting our time actively participating in a systems hell-bent on destroying That Which Gives Life. What they find important, we do not. All blessings, but we will no longer be tuning in.

Are we giving up? I suppose in a way we are. There is no use talking to ones who will never listen. Hell, CNN wouldn’t even let us into the room. There is no benefit in engaging in a system whose entire survival depends on ignoring you. So we are returning to the 50,000 year old way of living. We are being simple. We are bowing before the only master that we all can agree on, that clearly is in charge and not only determines whether we live or die but allows us to be healthy, happy and free, for free. We are realigning our allegiances with what elder, Martin Prechtel has described as “The Government in the Root”, the elders court.

Like so many others, I was heartbroken when Trump was elected the first time. And needless to say, nothing has changed much under Biden. They both clearly care more about systems that deny life than those that serve it. There is no genuine conversation about the state of our Soil being had with them. Although I did not watch the debate I can safely assume the moderator did not ask about how there actions will impact the next seven generations. There is a hugely funded effort by both of these sad, sad men in fact, to destroy Soil, to make obsolete that which future generations will certainly, like us, depend upon. It’s as if they are entirely unawares of what conditions are required for life to continue. War is big business for them both, either directly or indirectly and somehow they have managed to speak so loudly, to shut out all other voices so successfully, that even the most intelligent among us seem convinced that the best option we have is to vote for the so-called “lesser of two evils”. Strange days indeed.

Yet none of this matters to the true masters of the universe, the Holy Beings who were here long before any of us and will remain long after we are gone. The microbial kingdom of elemental forces that determine where the winds blow bow only to Chaos and Chance and woe to those whose ability to remember this has all but vanished entirely due to far too much fast food, gambling, fear and Netflix and chill.

“Culture is the greatest barrier to your enlightenment, your education and your decency.”

-Terence McKenna

Walk away from the noise (Citta Vritti). Surround yourself with Real Culture, not modernity’s seductive display of unstoried costumes and mindlessly reproduced ethics but genuine soil-based culture. Learn from where you come from. But first learn who “you” are. You are not a political entity. You are of the eARTh. You are the meandering song your ancestors began singing millennia ago before concepts became distractions. You are the center of the same living Myth your grandfather, in a rage that spawned from the trauma of displacement, attempted to wipe out in order to spread the narrow view of compartmentalized culture over the multi-faced goddess whom gives all life. Inside you, dormant but still breathing is the memory of how to live well in a place. Scared and understandably bitter, hiding in the shadows of your clogged arteries is that natural part of you that knows still that voting for any of these clowns is to admit defeat, to spit in the face of your children, to allow the dragon to swallow you whole. You are far grander, far more creative than anything being force-fed you now. Be bold.

Of course, we mustn’t be foolish. We must rest. As Bayo Akomolafe says, These are urgent times, we must take it slow. Before we rush to the battlefield we must first seek out the few real elders living among us who have proven they are capable of dispelling ignorance, able to offer worthy instruction. We must learn from them. People like Martin Prechtel, Noam Chomsky, Tyson Yunkaporta, Brother Cornel West (who happens to be running for POTUS in case you didn’t know), Julian Assange, Angela Davis, Vanessa Machado de Oliveira, H.H. the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet, Tiokasin Ghosthorse, and of course seedkeepers Jon Jondai, Vandana Shiva and Rowen White, to name a few. Like good seeds, there are not many left, but we are extremely fortunate because some still remain. It is our responsibility to listen well to what they generously share and keep their intergenerational wisdom alive for a time beyond now.

drawing by elder Martin Prechtel

Genuine knowledge keepers able to offer guidance, though rare, can in fact be found all around us, like the incredibly wise homeless man I often run into on the bus who most seem to ignore, like the 500 year old tree that looms over the center of town many forget to say hello to, like the billion year old stars that mirror down to us forgotten codes that make clear the path away from amnesia and hate. Yes, now is no time to get wrapped up into made up conspiracy and useless obsession with patterns and baseless curiosities that form from prepubescent ponderings. We don’t need another podcast guru. What we need now is genuine embodied wisdom, the old fashion kind served up by The Government in The Root, lest we drift swiftly into the black hole of sensual atrophy.

The only way other worlds can come into view, is if we look at them. The only way elders can rise into places of beneficial authority is if there are enough conditions present for them to be seen. The only way we can be gifted again with the lost art of how to live well is if we cultivate once more an ability to attain what Buddhists often refer to as Right View. If every night we waste our few hours of free time staring into a computer (which is itself but a container of stolen artifacts, precious stones unceremoniously mined by slaves from places few of us have but any awareness of let alone any relationship with), than we will merge into the kind of post-human that can only imagine a world run by business-as-usual, thinking the best we can do is vote for Twiddle Dee instead of Tweedle Dumb. We are what we eat.

Yet, if we instead decide to cloak ourselves in memory inducing hand-spun clothes not purchased from some random strip mall but crafted with intention by ourselves or by a good friend from plants they themselves harvested and grew, if we decide to listen to stories not told us by Hollywood but by our own uncles and grandmothers, if we educate ourselves not with textbooks funded by corporations that have a vested interest in us supporting monoculture farming, petroleum and agrochemicals, well, we will soon experience that a very different reality is possible, a very different way of walking through life, of seeing, of receiving information, of reacting to what information we receive, etc. Indeed, we will soon re-member much, much more and dream enormously vaster dreams.

Voting for one of two forever-adolescents is not the best we can do. There are ways of governing that look wildly different than what most can see now much less imagine. A return to right relations based in reciprocity, respect and awe are required if these ways are ever to again surface. A concerted effort to shift our attention away from the fearful dramas that have a vice-grip now on our collective consciousness must be made. Discipline is required. And courage. Great courage. How scary it can be to think differently than the majority. Terrifying it is to be the first to take the leap.

It seems that, for myriad reasons, many are unwilling to point out now the obvious. I suppose this is understandable. Coming to terms with our current reality is certainly a frightening thing to do. Yet we cannot begin to fix our situation until the situation is seen clearly for what it is. “Woke” friends of mine seem to get off on declaring every four years the usual progressive anthem that states, “The math just doesn’t add up! A vote for a “third party” is a wasted vote!”. Yet the fact is, this strange math doesn’t seem to include the most important votes of all, i.e. those cast by Earth.

Let’s not forget that it was “the math” that kept us in Vietnam for so long. “The math” continues to claim that the U.S.A. is doing better now than ever before. The math can tell us whatever we want it to tell us. It can support the left, the right, corporate interests, the KKK. More informative than math thus, is our gut, our quality of life, birdsong or lack thereof. When was the last time you danced? Is our air clean? Is our water drinkable? Do people around you know how to care for children well? Do they have time to do so? Do they have amble support? Does your education inform you of what the names and uses are of plants native to your homeland? Do you cry when you see children being bombed? Do you sleep well? Are you happy?

A dear old friend and fellow apprentice of Myth, Simon Yugler recently shared on his Substack a beautiful mythological take on the recent debate between Biden and Trump. To be honest, it is the most I have read about the debate thus far. As I said earlier, I didn’t watch it, intentionally so. Yet I found Yugler’s article to be a worthy read, far more informative than anything I would have likely read regarding the mind numbing waste of time masked as something important that everyone was suppose to offer their precious attention over to from any of the mainstream media conglomerates making a fortune off the embarrassing failure of our democracy to display any form of maturity whatsoever. Yes. I encourage you all to pour yourselves a strong cup of tea and immerse yourselves in his full eloquent portrayal of the peculiar events unfolding before us in these strange bardo times (see link above). Simon kindly gave me permission to share with you here the condensed version of the ancient Story he refers to in his piece. It aligns perfectly, I feel, with what we are speaking of now.

Behold! The power of Myth!

Once upon a time there was a king. And once a year, this king got his haircut. But over time, people began to notice that once a year, a barber went into the king’s quarters and never came out.

That’s because this king had a secret: he has the ears of a donkey. And every year he would ask his barber if they noticed anything odd about his royal person. Not wanting to lie to their lord, the barbers told the truth, which were the last words they said before the king had them executed.

One day, a young barber was asked to come. He gave the king is annual haircut, and the king asked him if he noticed anything unusual. 

But this young barber wasn’t stupid. He knew this was the castle that barbers like himself went into and never came out of. So he said nothing. 

Relieved, the king let him go. The young barber left the castle gates, and walked down the road into the rolling hills, where he dug a hole in the ground. Hour after hour he had been holding in his secret, and into the hole he spoke the words: “The king has donkey’s ears!” 

Well, time passed, and from that very spot began to grow a crop of beautiful reeds, perfect for making the shepherd’s pipe flute. But after this flute was made, it didn’t play any music. Instead, the sound that emerged were the whispered words of the barber: “The king has donkey’s ears!”

The flutes began to travel with their owners down the road, and soon everyone in the kingdom knew the king’s secret. Eventually, the word was out. Some say that the barber was found by the king and led him to the place where he dug his hole, and was spared. Others say that the king was simply embarrassed after his secret was let loose.

Because the earth will never hide the truth. And that is all I know.

Those whom “lead” us now are unfit to lead and we should not vote for any of them. Period. And furthermore it’s high time we had some real talk about how the lives we ourselves continue to lead are daily casting votes for both of these uninitiated man-boys in myriad other ways. Inconvenient I know. Yet now, at the eleventh hour, is no time to bullshit. “Another world”, to quote another great elder living in our time, Arundhati Roy, “is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.” If we can see clearly that the emperor has no clothes, that his ears are those of a donkey, that nothing they say is true and that their actions will result in the death of countless living beings and potentially the existence of life itself as we know it, it is our duty to think differently, to act differently, to live in a different way, a way that does not support the world they envision but invites “another world” into view. This is not easy to do. In fact, this is very hard to do. No one said any of this was going to be easy. But here we are at the crossroads. We can see both paths lead to ruin. So the only option then is to forge a never-before-seen route, a “scared third way” governed by the Holy Mother eARTh.

Let’s be humble, courteous, and get to work.

:::All blessings:::

“Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness – and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe.

The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling – their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.

Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them.

Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”

―Arundhati Roy

---

*Dedicated to the memory of Cambodian elder, Master Kong Nay (Khmer: គង់ ណៃ), the legendary Cambodian musician from Kampot Province in southwestern Cambodia who played a traditional long-necked fretted plucked lute called chapei dang veng.

Master Kong Nay was a master of the chrieng chapei genre (Khmer: ច្រៀង​ចាប៉ី) in which a solo vocalist performs semi-improvised topical material within traditional epics self-accompanied with the chapei.

He was one of relatively few great masters to have survived the Khmer Rouge era, and was known as the "Ray Charles of Cambodia". Like Charles, Kong Nay was also blind. The fact that most of the remaining chapei masters, such as Prach Chhoun and Neth Pe, are blind was a rather remarkable coincidence.

In 2017 he received the Fukuoka Arts and Culture Prize for his lifelong dedication to his craft.

Master Kong Nay was born on March 15th, 1944. On June 28th, 2024 Kong died at his home in Kampong Trach District in Kampot province, Cambodia at the age of 80.

---

**Recommended interviews with a few of the elders here mentioned:

Martin Prechtel

Tyson Yuktaporta

Rowen White

…

#maypeaceprevailonearth