Image by Carlo Villarica via Flickr
The Essays of The Man From the North by Rivera Sun
Writer, Dandelion Salad
February 9, 2018
Muster courage to resist. Outrage is a mere spark; it must ignite the flame of courageous determination or else its light dies swiftly. You will need the stronger fuels of love, hope, and vision to sustain you through the struggle.
Build up your muscles for the marathon of change. Drill and train. Focus your mind. Release the illusion that a normal life is possible. It’s not. Life-as-usual is a race toward extinction. You may not be the first lemming toppling off the cliff’s edge, but you will hurtle over by the time this madness of endless profit-driven growth is done. We must break the chains of expectations and turn the strides of our life in a different direction.
When all of life is at stake, our lives must be thrown into resistance to tip the scales of the world toward life. Assess the patterns of your day-to-day life. If you find yourself spending more time watching movies than at organizing meetings, make a shift. Show up at protests more regularly than parties. Participate in boycotts, strikes, divestment campaigns as often as you go to the grocery store, the bank, or the post office. Train for change as frequently as you exercise your body.
The pull of normalcy and the status quo is strong. Like an undertow, it will try to drag you under and suck you back into the current of our destructive culture. Floating along in complacency is a sure way to be thrust over the waterfall onto the smashing rocks below. You must swim against the current of what our society, workplaces, entertainment, and advertisements call normal. Everything will try to drag you back in line with enticements, burdens, debts, pressures, warnings, and even threats. But remember where this culture is headed: we are hurtling toward death. You must have the courage to step out of line and resist.
Hope, love, and vision can strengthen you for the struggle. A few good friends can thwart the loneliness of the path. Clarity – inner and outer – can bolster you against the mockery of others and defy those who call you crazy for speaking truth about our dire situation.
Our lives – and the future of the Earth – depend on your courage to resist. Cultivate the fuels that can sustain the sparks of outrage and propel us through the long-haul of the struggle we face. Shift the pattern of your life into training and action. Remember that many others are striving to do this as well. Across the country in the hearts and minds of thousands, people like you are turning against the tide, swimming against the current, breaking free of the stampede, and racing toward the chance of life!
Author/Actress Rivera Sun syndicated by PeaceVoice, is the author of The Dandelion Insurrection and has just launched the sequel, The Roots of Resistance, and is the cohost of Love (and Revolution) Radio. Website: http://www.riverasun.com
The Man From the North is a fictional writer in Rivera Sun’s novel, The Dandelion Insurrection and the sequel, The Roots of Resistance. The novel takes place in the near future, in “a time that looms around the corner of today”, when a rising police state controlled by the corporate-political elite have plunged the nation into the grip of a hidden dictatorship. In spite of severe surveillance and repression, the Man From the North’s banned articles circulate through the American populace, reporting on resistance and fomenting nonviolent revolution. This article is one of a series written by The Man From the North, which are not included in the novel, but can be read here.
From the archives:
End the Occupation of the Corporate State
Rivera Sun’s The Roots of Resistance, reviewed by Guadamour
What Would Happen If We All Refused To Go Quietly To The Slaughterhouse? + The Roots of Resistance
The Problem is Civil Obedience by Howard Zinn
The Man From the North: Disrupt! Interrupt! The Ground of Resistance is Ours. by Rivera Sun
The Man From the North: Liberty and Strategy for All by Rivera Sun
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“Train for change” don’t just change trains…!
Y’know, what happens in the US has colossal repercussions all over the globe, because America is the “New World” that everyone looks to; but is also a richly diverse Indigenous World ~ or actually, more precisely, a multiplicity of ancient ‘worlds…’ all present at the same time, however desperate the money-crazed bigots are to achieve and maintain a perfect occultation of the spiritual roots of this vast land.
So if I am not wrong, then these United States could yet be the source of a truly great and universal shift of perspective; we need an irreversible revolution in this country ~ an authentic renaissance of advanced ecological ethics and progressive political morality. It can happen.
We just need to summon the existential confidence to re-connect our proverbial dots, and suddenly we’ll see the inevitability of it all.
The Pentagon brass may appear invincible, the judiciary obscene & the cult of “intelligence” overwhelming…but nobody is exempt from the true facts of life. Trump has done us all a great service, because his ostentatious grip on the greasy pole of temporal power is so demonstrably & dramatically ephemeral.
There can be no freedom, so long as free thought is proscribed and education consists entirely of brainwashing. We should challenge the intelligentsia; the academic elites in this land ~ to stand up and be counted, to speak out, inspire and be an example all can admire and emulate.
There is a ridiculous conceit among academics that you must not be political, or controversial in a dangerous way that will rock the establishment boat. Why is that? It is sophist nonsense. The business of intellectuals and academics is to be VERY controversial! It is certainly not their responsibility to dispense pabulum and milk sops to the dumb shits who dare not think at all. If you are paid to think, then do it ! & do it well !!
The late great William James, arguably one of America’s greatest free thinkers, was not afraid of controversy. So why not emulate that fine example, and those countless women, academic or otherwise…especially those of mixed ethnicity and of colour… who are not even acknowledged as being capable of original thought, let alone listened to!
Join the dots. Join the human race.
Where would you recommend buying these books online? Something cooperative or independent. I’m done (trying so hard) buying books on Amazon. Nice writing.
Thanks, KC. Both books are available directly from Rivera Sun’s website. Links to each book are given in the author’s bio in the above post.
I highly recommend reading The Dandelion Insurrection first, then the sequel, The Roots of Resistance. Very exciting stories! You will enjoy reading them!