Greetings from Brushwood

According to Rolling Stone, "She’s Tina Turner, Bessie Smith, Janis Joplin, and Robert Plant all rolled up into a tiny but explosive package.” Don't miss a special evening with Austin singer/songwriter Patrice Pike.

Is more inherently better? Since our culture has staked its entire way of life to this alleged cause/effect relationship, perhaps we owe it to ourselves to examine it more closely.

SO HERE WE ARE at the point just before the point of no return. We hope. Cultural homogenization and environmental degradation without end. If we accept for a moment that it is the highest aspiration of the individual to abandon an egocentric world view in favor of a vision of oneness and “humanhood”, it would seem our three most powerful cultural “systems”—the market, government, and the mainstream media—are actively and purposefully (if not intentionally) steering us away from that aspiration. We find ourselves in desperate need of a new and better way of living.

The Brushwood Rebellion is a simple grassroots response to rampant consumerism and the gargantuan scale and frenetic pace of contemporary American life. Speed and greed, if you will. These are the nemeses of our global environment and the developing world, and even a threat to our humanity, such as it is.

Here’s a good place to start: slow down. As author and teacher Hugh Prather is fond of pointing out, we have not yet come nearly as far as we think. Even those folks engaged in meditation, prayer, yoga, and the like, could multiply their benefits by taking the foot off the accelerator. (Don’t brake suddenly; you might get rear-ended by the masses, all blindly barreling along on their way to bigger and lesser things.) The discipline that any serious spiritual practice requires cannot even begin until we have taken this essential first step of quieting the mind. But there’s another compelling argument for Slow—it is also an excellent first step to addressing many of the aforementioned unintended consequences of the frenetic pace of modern life. And while Slowism might not transport us instantly to a place of enlightenment, it may take us to a spot considerably closer to that place than the one most of us are currently inhabiting.

Slowism. It just slipped out before, but I like the sound of it. It could be the official religion of Brushwood. No dogma, no infrastructure, no sacred cows. We could put the entire “philosophy” (with room to spare) on a Post-it and just hang it there on the refrigerator. But pardon the digression—this is a rebellion after all, and you might like to know that we’re rallying on behalf of community, cultural and economic regionalism and diversity, and the decentralization of economic power. We’re also fighting (light-heartedly, of course) for an awakening to true riches—much of it free, the rest of it cheap, all of it slow. The art of friendship (itself an endangered species), cold Sierra lakes, the hole-in-the-wall, lunchtime barbecues, afternoon lovemaking, first tracks, independent art and artists of all kinds (like Patrice Pike), full moon kayak expeditions, the Brushwood Lounge, meditation, and long meals with family and friends, to name a few. I know of no one who feels they are doing enough of these, and yet these things are inevitably the first to go when it comes time to choose amongst all of those overblown obligations to commerce and society. Call me reckless, but I’ve gradually begun to get reacquainted with at least a few of these items over the past year. Happily, there’s more “work” to be done. (I’ve only begun to Slow.) The international Slow Food movement, profiled here by Colleen Gavan, can be a model for a new generation of positive activism that skips right past painless and goes all the way to pleasurable.

Having Slowed, perhaps the next step is to reevaluate this nearly universally held corporate-sponsored assumption that a high level of consumption makes some sort of direct contribution to well-being. Is more inherently better? Since our culture has staked its entire way of life to this alleged cause/effect relationship, perhaps we owe it to ourselves to examine it more closely.

While the purported benefits of giantism (cheap goods) seem concrete to the consumer, the socially and environmentally devastating consequences are largely invisible. That is to say they appear to be happening somewhere else, to someone else. Generally speaking, most of us have not yet developed an interest in “things unseen”, nor are most of us particularly interested in anything that smacks of “Less.”

Here’s an interesting take from a recent article by George Monbiot in the Guardian, from Manchester, England:

“It is impossible not to notice that, in some of the poorest parts of the world, most people, most of the time, appear to be happier than we are. In southern Ethiopia, for example, the poorest half of the poorest nation on earth, the streets and fields crackle with laughter. In homes constructed from packing cases and palm leaves, people engage more freely, smile more often, express more affection than we do behind our double glazing, surrounded by remote controls.”

This is not to suggest that poverty causes happiness, but after centuries of trying, it should also be apparent to us that we can’t pick spiritual fruit from the material tree. Maybe it’s time to reassess. On this front, we turn to Peace Corps Volunteer Tiffany Martindale for an alternative perspective on abundance.

While the pursuit of Slow is largely a solitary endeavor, there is also, it seems to us, a great need to return celebration to a prominent place in community life. This notion is the impetus behind the music portion of the Brushwood Rebellion. We would like to celebrate with you, and that’s the reason for holding these little events. So in addition to the benevolent iceberg thing, consider this humble rag your personal invitation to an evening of awesome music and community celebration. Think of it as your patriotic duty as a citizen of Brushwood.

We wish you peace.

Pride S. Wright

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