

[Posted by John “the Worm Man” Anderson in hopes that thinking human beings the world over who believe that their way is the right way, may re-consider. In a proud yet humble spirit as my First Nations friends would say “I offer this in a good way”.]

“As stewards of the Garden we need to learn the language of our garden and learn to let it provide for us as we learn to share with it so that we might co-create a different future than the obvious path to Armageddon we have bulldozed thus far.” – John Victor Anderson

Please try to keep the following words and their definitions in mind as you read, react and perhaps respond. I write in this unconventional format to emphasis the importance of the definitions of words that may be misunderstood. *All definitions are from Merriam Webster’s Dictionary with the exception of apocalypse which is taken from Greek translation.

Dogma : a point of view or tenet put forth as authoritative without adequate grounds.

: a point of view or tenet put forth as authoritative without adequate grounds. Paradigm : a philosophical and theoretical framework of a scientific school or discipline within which theories, laws, and generalizations and the experiments performed in support of them are formulated.

: a philosophical and theoretical framework of a scientific school or discipline within which theories, laws, and generalizations and the experiments performed in support of them are formulated. Enmity : positive, active, and typically mutual hatred or ill will

: positive, active, and typically mutual hatred or ill will Religion : a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices, “a theological theory”

: a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices, “a theological theory” Heretical : of, relating to, or characterized by departure from accepted beliefs or standards

: of, relating to, or characterized by departure from accepted beliefs or standards Blasphemy : irreverence toward something considered sacred or inviolable

: irreverence toward something considered sacred or inviolable Manifest Destiny : a future event accepted as inevitable

: a future event accepted as inevitable Apocalypse: (Greek: ἀποκάλυψις apokálypsis; “lifting of the veil” or “revelation”) is a disclosure of something hidden from the majority of mankind in an era dominated by falsehood and misconception, i.e. the veil to be lifted.

I have been considering many of the ideas you’re about to ingest or not for most of my life, especially in the past decade as I learn from and teach the worm’s role in all of this. That is another whole story of course. Cultures have always been built around their changing stories/myths. But I need to say these things now as sure as the clergy have felt their calling to the ministry.

Only now have I begun to fully understand what my beloved mom’s firm yet gentle words of encouragement meant. As my siblings and I took turns lying next to her on her deathbed, we gave and received last words of love. On the afternoon before her life’s light went out, my mom firmly squeezed my hand, looked at me with great clarity, and said softly: “Make sure they all know.” I wasn’t ready 6 years ago. I needed to be able to think with more clarity and maturity as I was still coming out of the fog of a life with alcohol. After considering these a-ha moments and interpretations from revelations during my life’s experiences, I’m ready now to “make sure they all know.”

I’d like to begin with my version of the “Rise of the Agriculture” as told from my perspective and interpretation of the dominating religions creation story, beginning from when shortly after humans showed up on the scene and began enabling this rise.

Adam and Eve probably didn’t ask for the fruit and definitely didn’t say thank you, thus was born the concept of stealing. They were kicked out of the Garden of Eden, thus was born the concept of punishment. The two sons of Adam and Eve took different livelihoods. Cain followed the farming (Agriculture) path and Abel the pastoral (hunter, gathering subsistence) path. This undoubtedly led to the concept of ownership, at least for Cain. Cain and Abel made offerings from their respective practices on their lands to their Creator. Abel’s offering from his pastoral life was accepted. Cain’s offering, from the sweat of his brow life was not. Cain, out of jealousy, greed and from his view as a farmer likely thought it wrong to under-utilize animals and growing spaces in creation – murdered Abel. This bore the concept of imperialism as practiced to this day.

Why would the Creator accept Cain’s offering now, anymore than he would then? Not much seems to have changed except technology-which is not evil, only its use and intent are misguided by beliefs. We hold a perceived enmity towards creation in our culture through our production practices of food and all the other supposed essentials of this dominating culture.

I have been able to reverse the effect of the dominant culture’s conditioning to carry enmity toward creation by questioning authority and practicing logical critical thinking which has been severely impaired by belief. I continually gain more reverence while standing in awe of the incredible web of life so few seem to be aware of. The mis-interpretation of this piece of “Creation Story” was the direct path to a current prime directive of our Totalitarian Agriculture paradigm:

“Grow more food, to Feed more people, to Sell more stuff to, to Enslave more souls, at All costs.”

The eventualities of our current paradigm all have causation which can be traced to this prime directive. We do all of this in a yearly quest to have the Creator accept the fruits of our labor.

This is NOT gonna happen, folks — not while holding and promoting enmity towards Creation through the agriculture paradigm.

We are beginning to understand that Agriculture—as practiced since its beginning—is a dogma, a religion that assumes control over natural systems it has sparse understanding of and no business attempting to control. Relatively little applied interdisciplinary study has been done by this culture compared to the billions of years of intelligent design by evolution. Maintaining monetary profit is put far ahead of any consideration for maintaining the web of life. These assertions may be defined as or called blasphemy and heretical to those who deeply believe that Agriculture and all its related motivations are their sacred calling in life. I would say, “You got that right!” (by either definition.) I have come to know and understand that the unlimited competition or “survival of the fittest” dogma IS that perceived enmity our culture holds for our creation. And that only through complex webs of co-operation has anything survived this long. We are the ONLY living things that consciously refuse to co-operate and continue to act like we are outside the bounds of the dynamic equilibrium of the Creator’s processes. We are the ones that are responsible by choice for this current creation and abominable stewardship of the place we also call home.

As I come to better understand through my personal apocalypse, Agriculture has proven itself impotent in that we have continued this agricultural practice for centuries despite the same result: desertification, destruction of the soils and destruction of up and downstream supporting biosphere. Agriculture is the most destructive human activity we engage in. It engages war chemicals and machines, the nuclear industry, mining and foolish shape-shifting of the earth to fulfill the “at ALL costs” prime directive. Agriculture is as disappointing to billions of humans as those who prophesize the end of world or claim that a “Rapture” is going to take place on any give date. Armageddon is what human choices are creating over time, therefore not hard to predict.

We are able with this prime destructive force, for the time being, to grow enough food (of very suspect and limited health value) with untold irreversible damage to every other living thing to feed 9 billion people using agricultural practices and philosophies abhorrent to nature. It doesn’t matter if we only have 7 billion people yet nearly 1 billion go hungry and an average 25,000 starve to death every day. If you don’t have the money to unlock food from Cain’s ancestors’ warehouses you are not entitled to it. Tell me this is not an inhumane society or that we would do this to our pets.

Ponder for a moment: How much healthful, regenerative food could be grown and harvested in a system that mimics nature in its abundant web of life? The Garden of Eden system does not engage in wasting and currently feeds “every other living thing” on the planet from cradle to grave without a drop of fossil fuel, sweat of anyone’s brow, or so much as a dime! Permaculture designers/practitioners are proving as much, as they can show 50% more yields (weight, calories, and nutrition) than current best practices. Limited experience and re-establishment time is needed to do this relative to the time spent developing Agriculture with far less yearly physical inputs from humans and re-enabling regenerative benefits to all living things.

This previous paragraph brings up the issue of what happens to “every other living thing” when they run into us, the self appointed gatekeepers of life [enmity]. In general “every other living thing” pays steeply when humans of this culture cross their paths. The web-of-life is subjugated to Agriculture and its “all costs” paradigm. All species from the plants and insects to the whales far too often pay a toll of extinction. Belief in the dogma of Agriculture enables science to force life in the web to give up their painstakingly evolutionary derived identity, diversity and connectedness. For example; those of us that have reverence for life refer to genetically modifying organisms (GMO’s) not selective plant breeding, as to what really takes place; “Trans-Species Rape” (TSR). We’ve used the term “rape” to explain what we’ve been doing to all the other “Natural Resources” for quite some time now so there is no reason not to in this case. The people and organizations that deal in TSRd organisms are most often interested in owning patents on life to enslave humans to the “prime directive”. We must to be honest with ourselves. For decades now they have been using guns or e-coli as an infectious agent to perform their “TSR”. On top of that the TSR industry and researchers force us to eat the resulting offspring (no labeling). It does not get much more abhorrent than that. These are violent forced acts, often at the point of a gene gun or other means of hauntingly similar bio-warfare techniques. There are numerous documented human to human cases of horrific acts using smallpox blankets, syphilis/gonorrhea “research”, forced sterilizations and nuclear accidents and fallout research in the name of progress and manifest destiny – we must acknowledge that similar horrific acts justified by enmity continue to devastate people and the planet in the name of agriculture. This does not bode well for our salvation or hopes that the Creator might accept our offerings.

Another personnel apocalypse is that the science of Elemental Chemistry with its protocol and proofs through replications and falsifiable peer reviewed ethic should have never been applied without systematic comprehensive precautionary guidelines while studying and experimenting with “life” involved. Here’s why: “There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know”- Donald Rumsfeld. I could not have said it better; it can’t even be called science. This is the poorest way to observe and interact in our quest to evolve, when we only need to observe, understand and mimic what billions of years of evolution (nature’s experiment of what is successful to this point) has given us.

The transition during this evolution of perspective can be a quick as it takes to read and comprehend this manifesto, but physical on-the-ground change does and will take time. So I am not proposing absolute and immediate abandonment of our agricultural practices. Enough minds need to make different choices and abandon long held and un-questioned beliefs for the evolution to take place. Similarly regenerative practices and intent need time to replace the rampant enmity. These “Sins” are why we continually have needed to ask for forgiveness since we started Agriculture. As my dear friend, sage and mentor John Cruickshank used to quip, “There are no such things as sins, only consequences.” The only reason we got kicked out of the Garden is because we didn’t ask! We stole and we have been stealing the ability to live from every other living thing ever since! “Thou shall not steal” is the only commandment ever needed. We need to ask forgiveness and we need to accept that forgiveness from ourselves and reconcile these things unto ourselves! We have thoroughly earned the tag of the “Taker Culture” by never asking for consent. Yet we have little real reason to take from the Garden when it is, like, totally willing to share as it does with every other living thing.

I have faith that we will step back into the proverbial Garden of Eden because it’s still here, a little a worse for wear to say the least, but it’s still here. We can personally make the choices necessary to step back in, without losing our shirt so to speak. We will thrive with every other living thing when we stop destroying our mutual home with human ego and contrivances to control life’s processes in service to that pathological prime directive.

If this is not an apocalypse, perhaps you already knew these things and your conscience has been anesthetized by being repeatedly forgiven by your chosen forgiver on sacred times of the day or week, week after week causing an addiction and the symptoms thereof, as I once was. Many of us that believe in this Agriculture are engaged in spreading it to the four corners of the earth. And those supporting them have become people chasing money therefore acting like humans doing rather than the human beings we must be in order to become good stewards of our home.

As stewards of the Garden we need to learn the language of our garden and learn to let it provide for us as we learn to share with it so that we might co-create a different future than the obvious path to Armageddon we have bulldozed thus far. Also, as stewards we need a new prime directive based on sharing, collaboration and regeneration so we, and all that support us, are given fair opportunity to evolve in peace.

With that said, I hope this has been an apocalypse that will add to the shifting away from old beliefs and an embracing of our world from Abel’s long sequestered perspective. While realizing, learning and progressively evolving to know what is important to reform our hearts, minds, and world, as this call to reform closes. We need to realize that our imagination is an unlimited resource.

Start imagining.

We need all of you.

Respectfully yours,

John V. Anderson

Colorado Worm Man

Image: NatalieMaynor at Flickr