walking

walking (or thoughts on a revolutionary 2019)

I like to walk. I also often think about walking; living at the pace of walking. Sometimes a walk is just a walk for the sake of moving one’s body. Mostly, for me, a walk takes me from one place to another. Still, I often choose to walk because I feel that I need the time between what I’m leaving and where I’m going to ground and be still and quiet. I don’t listen to music or the news or some podcast. I just walk. I let my mind wander or think; I try to take in the world around me as I do. I haven’t thought much about this practice in my life – I don’t count it as spiritual or meditation though it is intentional. But it is also a daily part of my existence and it is a daily practice.

There is a good bit of appropriate criticism that as people trying to make a better world, we focus too much on what we’re against and not what we’re for. I would like to switch that up – I want to think about what we’re walking away from and what we’re walking toward.

Because we are not much in practice of the world we want to see. We are reactionary, we are distracted, we are anti-capitalist in name only as we make few if any excuses for our deep dependence on it. Who is it that said that? Something like: we will never destroy any system on which we are dependent. We are so enmeshed in capitalism, we have no hope of destroying it. But we find ourselves in this bind where we cannot completely, perfectly remove ourselves either. So we think: fuck, it. Why try? Or: we tried for a year or even five and it didn’t overthrow the whole system so to hell with it. In that response, we were wrong; for two reasons. First, we forgot that more than overthrowing the system and saving the world (over-the-top phrasing intended), that walking away from capitalism – in whatever ways we could do that – saved us. Secondly, the end of capitalism is a long, slow road. Until it’s not. We don’t know what the turning point will be; if it will be a revolutionary moment or a slow transition. Either way, we will not make it out without having built a world where we don’t need it. Which – flip that – means that we need to build that world to make that change happen. We each need to take our part of the responsibility for the better world that we want to see. We cannot leave it up to others any longer.

I think we do that by walking. Literally and metaphorically. We need to slow down and take time and stop reacting and instead start building. Not with the state; not with grants and non-profit status, not with the blessing of our city councils (which isn’t to say that there isn’t dual power work that is important to be doing). But we are in a crisis moment for our entire species. And we have the means to change the course. We can choose autonomy and a new world or we can keep spinning our wheels. First, we need to walk away from most of the planet; some conservation types and scientists say half. We need to stop fantasizing about going back to the land (seriously to my fellow white people, stop that; there’s another blog post coming about that but it’s so colonial). Instead, we need to consider that if we walked away from the places on this planet that we could and let them regenerate, then things like reparations suddenly aren’t so hard because we’re not being so damn greedy. Things like maintaining the survival of the species we’ve pushed to the brink of extinction wouldn’t be so hard because we can consider their land theirs. Et cetera.

So, then what are we walking towards. Realistically – not some hipster progressive’s weird smoked meat induced wet dream – we need to and, more relevantly, already are, walking towards cities. Which means that we need to be building and recreating the most equitable, sustainable, accessible cities we can; cities that are human and planet centered. Cities and towns full of strong, healthy communities in relationship with each other. We have given in to such an isolated life, more concerned with likes on facebook than sharing a meal with our friends and neighbors. We have let the non-profit industrial complex make our actions in attempt to make a better world look more like work, less like life. We rarely stop and as community or collective just have time together without some purpose. In that, we have stopped being responsible to each other and for each other. We make excuses for our deep relationship with capitalism by never making space to be accountable for those choices nor building community within which we just don’t need to make them.

The reality of what we are facing is no small task. Yet we must do it. And we must look forward towards a new and radically different future; not back to some mis-utopianized past.

In this, the first week of 2019, I want to make a call for us to follow the inspiration of so many around the world who have done this and continue to do so. The Zapatistas say, we make the road by walking. I want us to start walking. I think that looks differently than we can possibly imagine and we have to be open to changing how we walk through our days if we are truly going to turn the tide. I have laid out here many of the topics I want to write about this year and I plan to share them on this site. To a revolutionary 2019.