Of the Amish, punks, and pod people

Punk is the liminal state between the Amish and the pod people, the art of living in the ruins

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I live in an area with a substantial Amish and old order Mennonite population, the other day I stopped at a roadside stand and bought some produce from a family with a horse and buggy in their driveway. When I cooked up the corn and ate the tomatoes (raw with a little salt) I could feel the nutrients coursing through my body, I felt like I was vibrating with more energy, and that I was more alive. Good fresh food grown from heritage varieties makes for a much healthier life. The Amish have come to a deeply admirable way of life, they do not participate in the empire’s wars, they know how to make high quality buildings and furniture that will last for generations, their way of life is sustainable, they have real deep rooted community, and a deep religious faith to see them through hard times. The Amish will survive separate from our dying anger filled technocratic empire regardless of whether the empire turns into a transhumanist dystopia, muddles along as is, or collapses.

It is a great way of life, but sadly not one open to most of us in America who do not know how to raise a barn, or harness a horse. I certainly don’t know how to do any of these things. So increasingly those of us not raised in a traditional old order religious community are going to be faced with a choice, take the CBDCs and live a restricted life in an urban area as a pod person under tight surveillance with no personal freedom, or take the punk path. What do I mean by the punk path? Well punk was a response by young creative people to the economic malaise of the late 70s. For the first time in the memory of living people living standards were going down at least as measured by household incomes. So the punks rather than just sitting around and moaning about it, took the anarchist approach of doing it yourself with whatever you have at hand, rather than waiting for new stuff from corporations, or the government to save them. People lived in squats or found other very cheap group housing, ran off zines late at night at copy shops where they had friends who could let them in, made music on cheap guitars that wouldn’t stay in tune played through crappy transistor amps scrounged from pawn shops. They grew guerrilla gardens in abandoned lots, and produced a lively vibrant and fun culture out of next to nothing. In short the punks were a cultural movement who figured out how to improvise if not a “good,” life, then at least an interesting creative lively life in the ruins.

Those of us who are going to reject the shiny baubles offered by the increasingly desperate technocrats like the VR goggles and marginally practical electric cars, are going to have to learn the punk spirit of DIY and improvising with discarded things no longer wanted by those who will choose to comply. Don’t take this too literally. I don’t mean getting a Mohawk and playing loud 3 chord music in a band, that was a response to a moment now past. What I mean is like the punks improvised with what they had at hand, we are going to have to do the same. For us it is going to be cast off computers that don’t run the latest VR software, gas engined cars and motorcycles, abandoned areas of the country, like Detroit, Arkansas, and Appalachia. Of course there are other currents to draw on than just punk, like the off the grid and voluntary simplicity movements of the 60s and 70s, permaculture, urban pioneers, the Roman villas set up in the country by the aristocracy fleeing the fall of Rome, prepping survivalism, etc.

The important thing to realize is the shit has already hit the fan. We are currently fully in what Evola called the Kali Yuga after the Hindus, Spengler’s winter, Strauss and Howe’s 4^th turning, “soft men make bad times,” etc, etc. This is a wake up call. If you wake and bake, or are a day drinker, cut that shit out! The time for 8 hour video game or Netflix marathons is over. There may be a time we drink mead merrily in new feasting halls, but that time is not now.

So what is it time for? Well for starters time for getting less dependent on the system in very practical ways, like this summer I did not put up an air conditioning unit, and I am trying to eat less and exercise more. After a couple of weeks without air you don’t miss it, at least in the Great Lakes States. It’s time to stock your library with good reading material for living in the ruins, this could be everything from Henry Miller’s Big Sur, and The Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch to Bill Mollison’s Permaculture books, ideally as real paper books, but if you can’t afford that at least start reading up on a more frugal improv based life on your device. Start collecting hand tools of all types, most especially non power tools for wood working and gardening like chisels, planers, saws, and gardening shovels and hoes, etc. Learn to garden and to fix things. Set up solar hot water and photovoltaics if you can afford to. Above all make your mind resilient and keep in mind we are a liminal time of flux, and that the punk attitude can help with exit from the pod. Punk is the liminal culture between pod people and the Amish. Get a manual typewriter, a bike, a woodstove if you can afford it, and you live in an area they are still legal. Store away beans, rice and other dry storable food, salt, water, and if you are not a pacifist get a gun and lots of ammo. If you have kids teach them how to do things grounded in reality like building and gardening as early in life as possible. As the bridge generation to a new Amish type life we have a strong responsibility to educate young people on practical survival skills. Above all don’t let it be a downer, the punks managed to thrive with vitality in meager material circumstances, do learn an instrument and do some dances. Pray if that is your thing, and maybe even if it isn’t.

No one sane will miss the wage slave cubicles as they decay into particleboard sawdust in the abandoned downtown skyscrapers.

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