This is an invitation to share and live our longings. A call to the loosing ones in the fearful game of a destructive civilization. A call for authenticity. I’m looking forward to all kind of answers. To encounters and joint steps. To living shouts, comments, criticism of the symbols and more translations (arabic, spanish). I'm looking forward to the realization. This is a call to create oases in the waste lands of this world, wherein we can live again. » basko@riseup.net
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LANGUAGE
To communicate I’m using symbols such as letters, words and metaphors. Symbols are abstractions and always separated from the perception they’re describing. My understanding of symbols is determined by experiences and encounters I had with them in my past. Therefore someone who resonates with my longing might not resonate with the symbols I use to describe it. I wish to overcome the power of symbols and language and to return its space to the non-abstracted life.
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PREMISSES
I’m an anarchist. I don’t respect any domination, hierarchy and imperative. I don’t serve nor follow any person, cause or idea. In the same way I don’t demand for any domination over other living beings. This declaration of my own autonomy is a first step towards freedom.
I’m an egoist. I act because of me. My being is my behaviours origin and maxim. The consciousness of my egoism gives me on the one hand the freedom and strength to assert myself. On the other hand it limits me to my self and preserves me from the megalomania of imposing my view upon others, that caused so much atrocity. A network of relations for every ones good arises only if every single one is aware of his self-interest and subjectivity.
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REASON
For many reasons it makes no sense to continue living in the global culture of our time. Many others have filled books with the reasons and every day there are new ones to be added. I confine myself to state that our culture is insane. Joining her means running towards a steeply dropping rock and dragging everything one can reach with his arms, for that it falls and shatters together with us. This doesn’t change if we believe there would be an invisible bridge leading us to the paradise of a completed civilization. Because even if this bridge existed, it would lead only into the hell of an artificial system.
For many reasons it makes no sense to continue living in the global culture of our time. And for as many reasons it makes no sense to improve or change this culture, to take up a position or to fight out battles for the good inside her. Because this cultures madness consists not just in the way of approaching its goal but rather in the goal itself it strives for.
The wars and massacres, the tortures and crisis, the bloodthirsty games for power and resources, the environmental catastrophes, the systematic violence, injustice, exploitation, poverty and misery – the atrocities of our time I become outraged about are just the tips of a range of icebergs, which people have created with the culture of civilization. And they let it freeze higher every day with the coldness of their ignorance.
LONGING
I’m longing for space for the free life. Space for the free life is what the earth represents since millions of years for it's living beings: The space in which they live their peculiarity and enjoy the world. All living beings make up this space through finding complete expression of their own being and following their desire to enjoy the world. Thereby they constitute the infinite cycle of life and enable each others existence. It's the whole of this free life what we call nature. The human civilization, which is nowadays spread over the whole planet, has left this cycle. In it's logic nature is not living space but resource to keep an artificial system going. It is trapped in a vicious cycle of destruction, fear and frustration. And it is destroying piece by piece life on earth.
I grew up in a stronghold of this civilization. I perceive it's destruction, experience it's falseness and feel it's advanced culture of fear. I am part of the few who profit of it's mechanisms – through an easy access to material goods, technologies, food and money. But still my life in this civilization is frustrating. As I am a part of it, I can not be myself but always have to meet a function or play a role.
Through the satisfaction of vicarious needs I often don't feel my actual needs anymore. The anaesthetization of my senses deflects me from the closeness to the free life. The omnipresence of fear discourages me from standing by myself. And the extent of the destruction of nature makes me feel incapable of reconnecting with it. But deep inside me I am longing for myself, for the joy of being, for the freedom to live my peculiarity and enjoy the world. I am nature. And I long for the satisfaction of my desires inside the cycle of life.
In a world, that was transformed into a desert of destruction and frustration by the mania of civilization to create an artificial, controllable system, I want to proclaim an oasis. I want to contribute to create space for the free life. For it overgrows the desert!
PATTERNS
In order to survive inside this civilization I got myself countless patterns of perception, thought, feeling and behaviour. Most of them don't correspond to my proper way of perceiving, thinking, feeling or behaving. To be able to live in a space of the free life I have to get conscious about this patterns. As a child of this civilization I have learnt to separate my senses, to put them in a hierarchical order and to abstract my perception into symbols, instead of living right in my perception with all my conscious and unconscious senses. Since then I limit my thinking to the narrow space of this abstraction. I have learnt to move in a linear time and not in the eternity of the moment. Since then I am chained up by the imperatives of the past and chased by the fears of the future. I have learnt to secure my existence by fighting for the possession of resources or more precisely their abstraction in money, instead of being embedded in a cycle of receiving, using, creating and giving. Since then I spend most of my time in fear of scarcity and an endless striving for stable property. Those and many other patterns give the civilization I live in its pretended power over nature, which it's renouncing and destroying. In order to create space for the free life I want to free myself from this concepts and their patterns. The free life is the union with the moment of being.
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VISION
This is the vision of X, a piece of land, where we proclaim the free life. It’s not at all the first vision and far beyond being the first place. It’s just the place we create. We are the ones sharing this longing and finding together to live it. X could for example be here: 29.083964,-10.382856. Or completely elsewhere. We see X symbolically as an oasis in the desert.
X is a healing biotope. Through the past thousands of years (and especially the past century) of human civilization, nature got disturbed in most parts of our planet. With X we want to create a place, from which this injury can be healed. We want to restore the natural cycles of life, to free the energy of life. As human beings, we want to become reconciled with ourselves and with our source of life and we oppose any oppression of the longing of life.
X is a permaculture place. We want to create X as a living space working for the well-being of life in all its manifestations. I consider the ethics, principles and techniques of permaculture extremely helpful for the creation of a natural community of life in which I, as a human being, can realise my full potential without destroying my environment.
X is a community of life striving for self-sufficiency, for the independence of external resources. An important part of our freedom is the ability to live sustainably from the resources of the land we inhabit. This doesn't mean that we have to seal ourselves completely off from the surrounding civilisation and that we always have to do without all its products, but that we create a way of live that allows us on a long-term basis to be happy and fulfilled independently of it. X is a community of all living beings sharing this living space. In every moment we strive for the highest form of everyones individuality and the best possible cooperation amongst ourselves. We live freedom, respect, transparence and self-responsibility.
X is a shelter for people passing by. For the vagabonds and disappointed, for the free ones and all those looking for a better life. We welcome them to be among us and to enjoy this space for the free life. We invite them to create this oasis together with us. We wish that they help stretching the roots and branches, for that the whole world becomes a jungle of life. We ask them to respect life, to stay genuine and to discover their singularity and the beauty of nature.
X is a place free from imperatives and artificial borders. A place for the spontaneous cooperation of life.
X is a work of art. Because real art is authentic life. X is a space for honesty. For liveliness, creativity and transiency.
X is no ones property. In case the land of X is bought, it should be transferred to a foundation or association with unchangeable purpose.
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DREAM
I lay down under a young fruit tree next to a dying cork oak and dream my own dream of a land for the free life. I dream of a landscape at the edge of the desert. Of a landscape that once was a forest, maybe hundred years ago, or just a few decades, a landscape that was destroyed by human civilization and since became more and more barren. I dream about how we settle on this land. In the beginning we might live in large tents, very close to the soil that will feed us, and to the air that gives life to us. We build natural dams to collect the rain in winter, for that it seeps into the earth and brings it back to life. We desalinate the water of the close sea with the warmth of the sun, to have some water until the lakes are filled. I dream of planting trees: peach, almond, chestnut, apricot, banana, avocado, lemon, orange, tagasaste, palm, acacia, moringa, olives, carub, fig, oak, hazelnut, arbutus, cherry... I dream of building vegetable plots, winding on the terraces along the lakes, slightly shaded by trees; round gardens with potatoes, beans, corn, pumpkins, chickpeas, zucchini, carrots – surrounded by stonewalls and trees, shading and protecting them from the wind; gardens with herbs and medicinal plants.
I dream of building a tower, as home for the pigeons (pigeons spread the message of the free life in the world) and nesting site for the swallows (swallows fly hope into the desert). A tower as a vantage point, from where we see the world, the stars and our vision. A tower to call out the beauty of life, to let it overgrow with lichen and grind down by the wind, to let it fall to the earth and overgrow with moss, as soon as the forest towers its top.
I dream of chickens on an island in the middle of the lake, taking their sand bath under growing palm trees. I dream of a land without fence nor wall, that becomes more and more green, where argan trees, cactus and acacia grow gradually into the desert. I dream of hedgehogs and snakes, of flowers, beehives and birds. Countless birds landing here and refreshing themselves. I dream of a well and a firestone at the entrance, where we can wash away the old patterns, that are chaining up our lives, and burn the concepts, that made us into tormentors and victims of a destructive logic.
I dream of a place full of living art, full of passionate and free creation, while nothing is rigid, everything lives and flows. I dream of a space without time. I hear a gong in the tower, remembering us once a day to pause and observe, to become conscious about ourselves and what surrounds us. I see fish looking for algae on the shore of the lake.
I see a round kitchen where we cook with a big reflector, concentrating the heat of the sun. I see our social existence as an interaction between the striving for free, autonomous individuality and the dedication to a loving community. I see us gathering in circles to create transparency and authenticity. I see all possible situations of our social life, the conflicts of our interests and perceptions, of our needs and fears, our longings and insufficiencies. I see all life developing, in cooperation and conflict, harmony and opposition, with the common desire for a honest life and an authentic contact with everything surrounding us. I see meandering paths through a living landscape. I see a library in a shady garden. I see visitors who come and go, who create and live with us and take away our vision. I dream of X being a shelter for people form the subsahara on their clandestine journey, putting the dream of a free, sustainable and independent life next to their dream of europe, demanding them so much horrible suffering. The borders have to be destroyed and conquered but not paved with dead bodies. I see us as guests on earth. I see us playing music into the night. I see people dancing, whirling and rolling over the earth. I feel freedom. I see people not being afraid of closeness. People loving and not submitting, respecting and not competing. People laughing, when it feels good, and crying out when it hurts. I see people being themselves and finding complete expression. I see people of all generations living together. I see us sowing and harvesting, dissolving and arising. I see children. I see me dying. I dream that life is tracing circles.
