Poll Of The Month: Are All Involuntary Governance Structures Inherently Ecologically Degenerative?

November, 2025's poll in the Mirrors For The Mind, Heart and Soul series

I`ll just say right off the bat, that I am sure most of you know where I stand on this. That said, I would like to invite discussion and expose myself to views that are different than my own to hone my solutions based approaches in the future. So firstly, I will elaborate on why I answer yes to the above question, and then I will invite you all to vote and share your own opinions on the topic.

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As someone that deeply cares about our elder kin in the forests, rivers, mountains, tundra, natural deserts and oceans I am compelled to take an honest look at why ecologically destructive behavior is being chosen by human beings.

When greed motivated selfish humans sought to clearcut the ancient rainforest in the Fairy Creek watershed (on Vancouver Island) and other ecologically literate and courageous humans stood up to protect that extremely rare type of forest habitat, I asked myself, “How is it still, legal for us to clearcut the last few ancient forests in Canada, when there is so much second growth forest to supply our wood needs?”

The answer I discovered after some research was unsettling, it was not just corporations like Teal Jones that were profiting from destroying these ancient forests, it was the BC government and federal government. Each tree chopped down is a pay check for them via their “stumpage fees”, “licencing fees” and other taxation related rackets.

The federal government of Canada claims it can make something illegal for ecological reasons (such as they did for laws against killing migratory birds) yet, it only does so when that action does not cut into their big profit industries.

The same government that has promised (for decades now) that they will stop cutting down the endangered old growth primary (ancient forest) has continued to green light it, profit from it and send in para-military RCMP goons to remove anyone standing in the way of their pillaging. The people in government have changed over the years, and people were really excited to hear each of their campaign promises about stopping the destruction of the old growth forests, but once in office, the clearcutting of ancient forest continued unimpeded (and in fact facilitated and encouraged) by those successive governments. The government continues to attempt to pillage the old growth forests today and forest defenders persist in their defence of the sacred.

All the prime minsters of Canada since I was born, everyone of them supported and profited from pillaging ancient forests, poisoning the water with strip mining and destroying the soil with big AG subsidies for toxic/degenerative corporate practices. (top image shows impact of government approved and profited mining, background Photo of lower image shows ancient forest being clearcut on Vancouver Island taken by TJ Watts for the Ancient Forest Alliance.)

People that buy into the religion of statism tell me that I just need to “vote harder” and that “you cannot complain about how the industry does things if you are unwilling to vote” but voting has accomplished nothing to stop old growth logging in the long history of the statist regime of Canada, so why should I expect that to suddenly change now?

The same can be said of the ecologically devastating fracking and mining operations in Canada (encouraged, facilitated and often enforced at gun point against the will of local people that are suffering due to those water poisoning, forest destroying and polluting operations).

The same is true of how the government in Canada has crippled ancient traditional regional food systems, and instead imposed corporate GMO big ag onto the landscape, poisoning the soil, water, air and food supply.

The military industrial complex (here and abroad) is the same, continuing to inflict massive ecological harm locally and abroad, never slowing down due to changes in government people, but rather doing what that Permanent industry has been doing since day one, profiting from destruction, death and pillaging.

As someone that strives to look at this world using the ethics of my ancestors and the permaculture design moral imperatives I sought to comprehensively assess whether or not these patterns I describe above are intrinsic to modern governmental structures, or if there was some other factor I had not accounted for.

The following are some of the realizations I came to and expressed in my essay titled “Why Involuntary Governance Structures are Not Compatible with The Permaculture Ethical Compass”

Firstly, What is involuntary governance?

Any form of government that is imposed upon individuals using violent coercion without the consent of that individual (this applies whether one would describe that governance system as a “Fascist”, “Communist”, Feudal Dictatorship or “Democracy”).

In it’s idealistic format, Democracy involves using the threat of violence (via armed agents of state which will come and harass, kidnap and potentially kill you if you resist) to coerce the minority into capitulating to the will of the majority.

That system (though it is rarely experienced by those living within nations that label themselves as such due to voting fraud, corporate lobbying, blackmail, and the hyper-consolidation of wealth allowing plutocrats to buy politicians) even if it functioned as advertised, would be inherently immoral.

Threatening other people to behave as you want them to and give you their money (because you and your friends think they should) is ethically wrong. That ethical principle does not change simply because you attach the word “government” or “democracy” onto the equation.

I offered a section in my book that spoke to a concept called Voluntaryism, however, due to printing budget limitations I was not able to fully elaborate on my thoughts on Involuntary Governance (“Statism”) and how I feel that such systems of governance are incompatible with the permaculture design ethics. I aim to remedy this in the essay below.

The following is an adapted excerpt from pages 293-301 of my recently published book (Recipes For Reciprocity: The Regenerative Way From Seed To Table).

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When I look through the Permaculture ethical lens at how much of our modern day society operates and is organized I immediately recognize that we have been conditioned (through multiple-generational programming) to accept many ideas that are degenerative, immoral and that do not align with the ethics of Earth Care-People Care-Future Care.

Image Credit to Matt Powers

Involuntary governance structure’s failures listed in the context of the permaculture design ethics:

1. Earth Care - Whether you feel that it is a minority or people or a majority of people that (whether due to ignorance, apathy or greed) will choose actions that are ecologically degenerative (actions that harm the biospheres/biodiversity of the living Earth) involuntary governance systems are not a viable solution to that ignorance, apathy or greed.

   If you feel it is a minority of humanity that (whether due to ignorance, apathy, greed or a combination of those) are inclined to make ecologically degenerative choices, having a government with a monopoly on force only serves to allow those people choosing degenerative actions a platform through which they can dominate all other humans (and non-human beings) via weaponizing institutionalized theft under threat of violence (aka “taxation”) to further and accelerate their degenerative/greed based endeavors. Those who are driven by greed and those who are apathetic to the well being of others (sociopaths) gravitate towards positions of political power (and excel within said government structures).

   If you feel that it is a majority of humanity that (whether due to ignorance, apathy, greed or a combination of those) are inclined to make ecologically degenerative choices (though, I personally do not think this is the case) having a government with a monopoly on force which exerts the will of the majority on the minority through the threat of violence only serves to disempower the few who do care about the living Earth and empowers those who wish to pillage her, to do as they please.

   Also, not only do involuntary governance structures attract sociopaths and psychopaths into positions of power it is also important to highlight that Statist structures (and the corporatocracy that dominates nation-states in modern times) also actively exerts pressure on the population and provides incentives which results in the creation of more sociopaths and psychopaths.

   In addition to how Statism empowers/encourages ecologically degenerative businesses and behaviors in citizens, it also directly funds and engages in mass ecocide itself, through weaponizing government funded thugs such as the

   C-IRG in Canada and how our tax dollars are used to enforce the will of corporate industry at gun point to Clear Cut some of the last ancient/primary temperate rainforest watersheds on Earth.

2. People Care - Violent coercion of a minority at the behest of a majority (democracy) of a given population is the most ideal form of involuntary governance I have seen presented to me and that system of governance is inherently immoral. Violating the few to please the many is wrong, we may have been conditioned to think it is the best we can do, but as you read further below, you will find that is a fallacy.

   As I outlined (with an abundance of supporting evidence) in my article on Anthropocentrism and The Continuity of Colonialism the repeated result of imposing statism onto cultures that existed without a centralized state previously, was that agents of empire and governments were weaponized in order to commit acts of genocide (via methods such as using food as a weapon with the intentional extermination of the Buffalo in order to starve and destabilize indigenous cultures so that their land could be stolen and allocated to the state).

   The phenomenon of statism (and expansions of the imperialistic and parasitic way of living that such a system embodies) resulting in the mass murder, oppression of and theft from indigenous peoples is not something that only exists in the past but rather it is a ubiquitous and integral characteristic of statist systems of both the past and present.

   Thus, there is no logical way to argue that using violent coercion on a minority could be described as “people care”.

3. Future Care - As stated in the Earth Care section above, involuntary governance structures invariably result in perpetual ecological devastation, degeneration and the pillaging of the living inheritance of our great grandchildren, therefore such a system embodies the opposite of “future care”.

   Additionally, through federal (involuntary) governments borrowing from transnational banking cartels (such as the IMF and BIS) and then passing that “deficit”/debt onto future generations that have yet to be born these are governance structures that essentially sell out the livelihood of our unborn grandchildren by saddling them with debt they had no choice in having added onto their tax burden.

   Thus, involuntary governance structures (such as democracy) embody the opposite of future care (trading in the well being of both the inheritance that is health of the living Earth and the financial potential of our grandchildren for short term selfish gains).

We have all been indoctrinated since we were very young to unquestioningly accept the domination of involuntary governance systems (aka multi-generational organized crime syndicates) in our lives and see the “big brother” figure as something that is necessary to ‘keep us safe’. However, students of history quickly learn that the facts do not support that story of the role of governments in our lives.

In my interview with Riley Waggaman, I elaborated on how involuntary governance structures (and the oligarchic interests that dominate and control them) are incompatible with the Permaculture Ethics by saying:

Earth Care: The Earth provides us with everything we need to live a life of peace, fulfillment and abundance. Each time we make a choice we must consider how this impacts the Earth (which includes her soils, her waters, her atmosphere and all the non-human beings that call this planet home). If we make a conscious effort to find a way to care for and give back to the living planet that sustains us all in our day to day life, we engage in the sacred act of Reciprocity (ensuring that the cycle of gifts she offers us can continue). Earth care also involves protecting intact ecosystems from being “developed” (destroyed) in the name of what some (sustainable development enthusiasts) euphemistically refer to as “progress” (pillaging ecosystems for profit).

Unlike the WHO’s “One Health” treaties and UN’s “sustainable” development goals (and other similar greenwashed globalist propaganda), the permaculture design ethic of “Earth Care” calls for increasing the impact we have on the ecosystems we are a part of, not minimizing the impact we have on them. Unlike the anti-human greenwashed globalist propaganda, Earth Care does not involve programing people to become misanthropic and see themselves (and their fellow humans) as some kind of disease or imposition with regards to our impact on the biosphere (telling them to lessen their impact and ‘leave no trace’ avoiding interacting with wilderness areas and forests). Rather, Earth Care invites us to see from the more ancient perspective of our ancestors who lived in close relationship with the land to unlock our potential to intentionally have a huge impact on the land (which is positive). Earth care invites us to see that we were given many gifts as humans which can serve to increase biodiversity, beauty, resilience and abundance within the ecosystems we live.

People Care: We are all part of one family. People care acknowledges this innate truth and acts accordingly. Kindness, Compassion, Cooperation, and helping lift each other up (whether that be in families, neighborhoods, communities or with complete strangers) is all part of people care. As we remember that innately kind and loving part of ourselves that we were all born with and begin to allow the natural human characteristics of compassion, tolerance and kindness to guide our actions we increase the resilience of our communities and family of humanity as a whole. Helping those in need, offering our patience and kindness to seemingly ‘difficult’ people (who need love the most), taking time to teach the children to connect with nature, these are just some of the expressions of people care that can help heal households, strengthen communities and serve to regenerate and reconnect our family of humanity as a whole so we can all share a bright and abundant future together. The Permaculture ethic of People care is not an excuse to embrace hubristic, degenerative and ego based anthropocentric perspectives and priorities, rather it reminds us that humans are conscious beings, worthy of being cherished, nurtured onto their highest potential and respected for all their infinite diversity, just as the other non-human beings on this planet are.

Future Care: Caring for the future can be expressed in many ways. It involves, preserving, regenerating, saving, sharing, donating, ensuring we do not take more than we need and refusing to contribute our energy to destructive and degenerative institutions. It also involves actively involving ourselves in the sacred act of reciprocity with the living planet that sustains us all. This can be building soil, helping native pollinators thrive, healing our local water cycle, encouraging remediation of soils damaged by human activities and more. We are the architects of what will become our shared future and what our great grand children’s future will look like. No matter how seemingly small the action, each one we choose sends out a ripple effect and begins to solidify the path we will walk to our shared future. Like the Iroquois (or Haudenosaunee) a group of peoples indigenous to the regions now called Canada and the United States, who taught their children to consider how each of their actions would effect the next seven generations… we must consider how the choices we make will effect those who call this land home after we are gone. That is if we wish to avoid the mistakes of the past and chart a course to a brighter, more equitable, peaceful and abundantly shared future.

Much of the essence of future care ethic can be understood in proverbs such as the one which says “A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit”.

In stark contrast to perspectives/belief systems such as transhumanism, the WHO’s “ONE Health” treaties and the “sustainable development goals” of the UN that are focused on giving energy towards a future that involves futile attempts at the total domination and quantification of nature and the human mind (involving an obsessive focus on reductionism, materialism and an irrational fear of death), Permaculture’s Future Care design ethic instead invites us to embrace the innate gifts of the human body and mind, using those gifts to remember the more ancient perspective that sees humans as humble stewards of nature, capable of learning much from our elder species and that we each came here with gifts that can have a huge positive impact on this world to leave it a little bit more beautiful than it was when we got here for those that will call this place home after we are gone.

More recently in an essay titled “Old Growth/Tree species distribution, soil depth and linguistic artifacts as indicators of cultural maturity” I shared that this land where I live used to be filled with highly advanced forest scale farming systems that were apparently indistinguishable from an intact climax forest ecosystem to the colonists (or at least regarded with as little respect as the non-tended “wild” Carolinian Forest that once existed here from horizon to horizon.

The people that lived here used axes and fire to clear small percentages of the forest for building their towns and polyculture (three sisters) annual crop fields. When these communities decided to move their corn, bean and squash fields to a new location, those previous three sisters plots transitioned into being tended in alignment with the ecological succession of native tree species as part of an advanced 50 plus year cyclical food forest plantations. Those food systems became permanent self-perpetuating food and medicine production systems as part of a highly advanced regenerative farming system had been being implemented on the land where I now live for literally millennia by indigenous horticultural experts. Their clearings became new food forests (which to the untrained eye functioned just like an early succession native forest ecosystem) less than a century later (becoming a functional old growth forest that produces food for both humans in large quantities and wild life centuries later). These communities left abundance and ecological integrity in their wake.

ast forward to today, in what is now called southern Ontario in the Eastern Woodlands of Turtle Island, 99.98% of the primary Carolinian Forests and old growth food forests that once dominated the landscape from horizon to horizon have been cut down in the last 150 years.

What was once a thriving forest ecosystem with Paw Paw (Asimina triloba) groves thriving underneath a 100 foot high plus super canopy of Butternut, Eastern White Pine, Sycamore, Black Walnut, American Chestnut, Giant Oaks, American Beech, Shagbark Hickory, Sugar Maple and Tulip trees with large tracts of anthropogenic food forest mixed in is now mostly GMO soy and corn fields, strip malls, hydroponic greenhouses, factories and concrete. Based on my research and field expeditions I estimate that no more than one tenth of one percent of the original forests (untended primary Carolinian Forest, which stretched from horizon to horizon as well as anthropogenic old growth food forests, which used to cover tens of thousands of acres here in Essex county alone) still exist today.

Essex County, Southern Ontario, today, over 1700 square kilometers with less than 1.6 square kilometers of primary forest remaining. Mostly toxic and soil degrading GMO corn and soy fields, some patches of untended second growth forest, with a growing number of toxic chemical dependant, fracking extracted petroleum gas dependant hydroponic greenhouse operations suffocating the land in and around Leamington.

The most aggressive and arrogant deforestation of Southern Ontario (peaking in a clearcutting frenzy about 120 years ago) was in large part instigated and encouraged by the “Dominion of Canada” government putting out advertisements offering “free land” to anyone that would clear the forest, sell the old growth trees to the military for their ship masts and grow a monoculture annual crop on the land. The government propaganda conditioned settlers to view the forest as an “obstacle” and something that needed to be cleared to bring “order” to the land. One of the main motivations behind that push was to get people to do the dirty work of chopping down the 250-400 year old white pine to supply British with masts for the Navy to be able to perpetuate it’s war racketeering operations.

This place (which many now call “southern Ontario”) is where the majority of the pre-colonial food crops of this region have been removed and/or forgotten/relabelled (some now judged by the priesthood of industrial GMO agriculture/chemical horticulture as “weeds”).

I would estimate about 98% of the food on the shelves of large grocery stores here is produced by non-native species and the majority of items are either imported or contain imported ingredients. ‘

The absurdity of how people relentlessly spray these useless front lawns with poison and then complain when one of the few surviving elder oak or hickory trees gifts them real food in the form of nuts (describing the acorns or hickory nuts as a “mess” and paying someone else to gather the nuts and throw them away, while they go to the store and pay top dollar for imported walnuts or pecans) is sometimes very challenging for me to witness. This is a place where people spend huge amounts of time fighting Milkweed, Cattails and Elderberry with machines and poison when those three native plants could be feeding them. It is worth noting that most of us will find that the same type of situation that I describe above is occurring in your locale.

I propose that what I describe above expresses a quantifiable degree of the cultural maturity that shaped the current average landscape and species distribution here.

Based on what I know of the forest species distribution of this region from a few centuries ago to now, I give the current culture that stewards this place (modern industrial Canadian Statism) a 2 out of ten.

In other words, in areas where the naturally occuring tree species, soil and climate result in thriving long lived old growth forest habitats, if you look around you and find most of the old growth has been chopped down by members of one culture, that lack of water cleaning/attracting, food providing, air cleaning, soil stabilizing and soul nourishing speaks directly to the degree of Cultural Adolescence and Spiritual Impoverishment of said culture.

This brings me to the last couple notes and a post i’ll quote that offers more on why I perceive statism (aka “involuntary governance”) to be inherently ecologically degenerative.

Firstly, I stumbled across this today:

I told Kate that I think she asked a great question and that I believe part of the answer to that question can be found through looking at how the statist religion (involuntary governance institutions) indoctrinate children into in schools into an extractive, materialistic, anthropocentric, capitalistic, reductionistic and exploitative mode of thinking about and interacting with the living Earth.

My wife was a school teacher and she told me about the curriculum they push on kids here in Ontario, telling kids about the logging and mining industry and telling them how here in Canada we do it “sustainably” and that old growth forests are a “renewable resource”. They get fed a bunch of lies about how mining is “sustainable” because after we pillage the bones of the earth for minerals with explosives and chemical solvents, the site is “remediated” and allowed to go back to nature. Well, many of those kids buy that bs story (I did) but the truth is that as I expressed to someone recently here, in the river valley Wadi Faynan, in modern-day Jordan, is the site of an ancient Roman copper mine. Two thousand years has not been enough time to heal the damage from the mine. To this day the growth of the plants is stunted and their reproductive systems severely damaged. The sheep there still have disturbing concentrations of copper in their feces, urine, and milk. Goats that live there have adapted genetically to survive but their milk and meat is poisonous to humans. A deathly monument of slag still rises 30 meters high.

Mining is one of those things that happen in a half-mythical “somewhere else” less important, unless you live there, in which case it’s your water and air, your lungs and skin, your cancer, and your child’s health. Which is why mines are always fiercely opposed by the people condemned to endure them.

Modern mines are often worse than ancient mines as we have new machines and poisons used in the process of extraction. But the statist propaganda tells kids mining is “environmentally sustainable”.

Same for forestry, they get told how after a clearcut, new trees are planted, so its all good, you get a new forest. Well, anyone that has ever visited and studied an old growth rainforest (like the one the government is attempting to profit from cutting down on Vancouver Island right now) will understand that is nonsense and lies, as those eco-systems took millennia to become what they are today and those trees getting planted after a clearcut, are intended to be part of a tree farm, cut down again and again, never to become old growth or ancient forest trees again (as long as the government exists).

Lastly, I will share some pertinent material from my essays titled The Spiritual Destitution of Statism, Perpetual manufactured cultural adolescence and their ecological impacts and my essay on Implanted Sociopolitical Identities. In the forst essay I stated that in modern society, spiritual poverty begins when we train children to be able to recognize more than a thousand corporate logos yet less than ten plant species. It becomes spiritual destitution when we train humans to organize themselves into silly sociocultural geopolitical identity groups involving the religion of Statism and this results in a species with immense potential squandering our gifts inventing ways to insult, dominate and kill one another (and the living Earth) for profit and ego, rather than live in service of Creation

One of the many degenerative inevitable results of this widespread ecological illiteracy, “plant blindness” and statist dogma leads to a sort of impoverishment of the soul. Statism leads to materialism, anthropocentrism, domination, violence and “plant blindness”. Plant blindness leads to spiritual blindness. It does not matter how many times someone is brought to a building or institution designated as a place to know/connect with the divine, if one embraces statism and lives with plant blindness and in a place so ecologically degenerated that they can no longer walk in the Cathedrals that the Creator designed called Old Growth Forests then their ability to perceive and know the will, genius and beauty of Creator’s design is impaired and their perception of beauty skewed.

Being raised in a place devoid of the ancient majestic rooted beings that once dominated the landscape distorts peoples baseline assumptions for what a forest is, influencing increasingly anthropocentric, materialistic and degenerative lifepaths in humans raised there. Multi-generational amnesia results and ecological illiteracy leads to poverty of the heart and imagination.

Modern Western Civilization (the human organizational structure that involves state organized theft and pillaging using violence to create metropolitan centers of biodiversity stripped human habitation, necessitating soldiers and leading to shorter and more dull lifespans) is a very adolescent expression of our immense human gifts.

In fact, one might say that the prolonged (and artificially manufactured/perpetuated) state of adolescence is a central driving factor in perpetuating this self-destructive, short sighted, and hubristic application of human ingenuity (“civilization”).

The statist indoctrination system (which public government schools are a big part of) conditions children to internalize what I describe as an “Implanted Sociopolitical Identity”. Once they get you to invest yourself in this identity with flag saving, national anthems, team sports, military propaganda and other forms of brainwashing they begin to train children to think like a machine, to “get a good job, pay their taxes and support the economy”.

This could also be described as “Sociocultural hijacking”, for what it really does is implant a fabricated cultural identity based on immoral and degenerative statist and/or anthropocentric, oppressive and imperialistic dogmatic religious ideas where a genuine, intact, ancestrally grounded organic cultural identity (that nurtures children’s innate love of and reverence for nature) should be able to germinate, grow and evolve naturally.

It involves first the fabrication of superficial sociocultural identities (“forged sociocultural identities” if you will) and then the process of inserting that sociocultural identity construct into the mind and conditioning people to relate to it positively with emotions.

As John Taylor Gatto explored in his book “Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling” the advent of modern state mandated (or strongly encouraged) public education systems plays a significant role in inculcating people into the statist forged/implanted sociocultural/sociopolitical identity.

(RE: The government education system and author I mentioned above.

Watch: “The Prussian Connection – UNDERGROUND HISTORY – John Taylor Gatto” )

For additional context on how the government school system uses cult indoctrination techniques to induce kids into the statist religion, watch this:

And sadly, as I document in the this post on “Reconciliation Day” and this post on Lithium mines, even some (not all) people with indigenous blood linked to Turtle Island have succumbed to this sociocultural implant psyop, and they are now actively supporting degenerative operations such as Clearcutting the last ancient rainforests on Vancouver Island and Lithium Mining which destroys the Boreal forest, rivers, streams and lakes up north.

There are very compelling and tempting narratives used that flatter the ego and tell you that “you are part of the greatest nation on Earth, your people are kind, courageous and industrious (unlike those other humans born on the other side of an imaginary line)”, various tales that tell you acquiring money will make you happy and “you are on the winning side, and to the winner will go the spoils of war”.

There were those that have blood indigenous to this continent that warned of these potentials centuries prior, warning of the corrupting influence of swearing our allegiance to centralized imperialistic government regimes, focusing our lives around the acquisition of fiat currency or gold, instead of honoring the gifts the living Earth shares with us all.

This was before I learned about the generational amnesia I had been living with and before I began to excavate the shards of my ancestral past to chart a path towards a more organic cultural expression of who and what I am to set down roots.

I love the land that most people now refer to as “Canada” deeply, but I no longer erroneously conflate that love and admiration with a relatively new involuntary governance structure and some arbitrary lines that were drawn in the sand by well organized thugs.

State propaganda systems and social engineering technology which allow for the nudging of people to become stuck in that feedback loop of being both indoctrinated to feel loyalty towards and also implicated in the nefarious actions carried out by institutions, so they get stuck in a sort of multi-generational Stockholm syndrome. In modern times (with an increasingly literate population that likes to think of themselves as “civilized” and “advanced”) the means for constructing narratives that induct people into these mind traps are increasingly complex.

Here is one way this psyop is weaponized:

As James has highlighted in much of his work about “sustainable development” and “green” government/NGO rhetoric, a large component of this psyop aims to use greenwashing to pacify, induct and render compliant the demographics that are inclined to care about the integrity of the biosphere. Though, at the same time, those same mind trap architects draw up schematics for different specialized mind snare traps that target the demographics on the other side of the spectrum (whom are ecologically illiterate and/or more inclined to apathy and exploitative views towards the non-human natural world).

There is also greenwashing COINTELPRO type psyops and hijacking of terminology that serve to convince people that if they care about the earth they should be doing something the government is pressuring them to do or avoid doing (typically with the express intent to get people to buy their corporate partners degenerative products, such as lithium battery powered vehicles, and/or for the purpose of eugenics and depopulation agendas).

Mishelle Shepard has also explored these types of psyops on her excellent website and I discussed them more in the post below:

The revolution will involve fermented cabbage, courageous fellowship and the pursuit of hap-piness

James Corbett and I also discussed this form of sociopolitical identity hijacking in our conversation about Malthusian propaganda in the natural fertility enhancing foods Solutions Watch episode (linked here)

These mind control methods are especially insidious due to their ubiquity and perniciousness. Having become so normalized through multi-generational institutionalization, we have become like fish born into and swimming in toxic murky waters, never having known what clean and clear water looks like, and thus accepting this as “just the way it is”.

This is a system that attempts to tell you that clearcutting all the ancient forests and replacing them with monoculture tree plantations is “sustainable” and “renewable”, a system that turns rivers filled with fish and sparkling clear water into muddy toxin filled raging torrents and then they pretend like mudslides and landslides are normal.

They want to normalize a life path that sees our non-human kin in the tree families, our water kin and stone kin as inert “resources” waiting to be exploited, extracted and turned into cold dead products to create “economic growth”. They want to normalize overconsumption to feed their corporate partners and they do not care if it turns this beautiful earth into a toxic wasteland.

I believe that Overconsumption is a symptom of a spiritual sickness that plagues those who are cultural orphans lost in the delusions of statism and no longer are aware of their own indigenous roots (we all have them).

For more on that watch “Wendigo Thinking, The Path Of The Sacred Warrior and the Reclamation Of Our Indigeneity”

Also, I would argue that Statism is the prime mover that perpetuates overconsumption. As Derrick highlights in this clip

“GNP” is really the measure of how fast a statist regime can turn living things into dead uniform commodities. Statist regimes inculcate their citizens with propaganda systems to make them into obedient consumers and extract taxes from them (using the threat of violence) which those statist regimes them give to corporations that pillage the Earth (Big Ag, vegan or non vegan, Clearcutting forestry operations, Big pharma and the military industrial complex).

The proponents of techno-optimism, transhumanism and “Bright Green environmentalism” would tell you that we can have our cake and eat it too, but they seem not to care whether or not we end up living in a planet that is a giant open pit mine and factory farm.

I personally do not think an expanding human population necessitates the depletion of resources and means that forests nor other species will die off. (for more info: https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/are-there-limits-to-growth )

Human habitation of an area can actually increase biodiversity, water quality and beauty rather than diminish it.

It is more a matter of the ethos and self-image driving cultures that determines whether or not they serve as a blessing or an imposition on an ecosystem.

Cultures that perceive themselves as having a responsibility as stewards and caretakers, while seeing nature as being comprised of myriad beings all possessing a sprit (like humans do) and offering gifts tend to be driven by motivating factors like gratitude, reciprocity and making use of every part of another being they kill/harvest while only taking what they need to live healthily. Some of those cultures can live in an ecosystem while simultaneously enriching it.

Cultures that perceive themselves as the most important organism on the planet, being entitled to exploit as they see fit and having no responsibility/need to reciprocate, seeing nature as a collection of dead/intimate resources and stupid animals (worth less than humans) take and take for greed without restraint and kill for pleasure and profit. Those cultures typically decrease biodiversity, poison the water and desertify once lush ecosystems in their endless quest for more disposable superficial pleasures, comfort, opulence and attempting to fill a void in their heart (where gratitude should be) with more material things.

The first type of culture does not require living in teepees or mud huts, but it does require humility, being willing to constantly learn new things/skills, pattern observation, biomimicry, courage and determination.

The second cultural trajectory only requires that we keep on having faith in and voting for politicians (that are part of intrinsically degenerative statist regimes), buying stuff from Amazon, Walmart, keep on making excuses why we cannot grow our own food, buying big ag/factory farm food and move into the wonderful utopian smart cities being constructed for us.

Thus, I propose it is the trends that arise from the statist religion (see link below for more info: https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/why-i-do-not-celebrate-canada-day ) which are the most significant factor in deforestation, desertification, soil erosion, water poisoning and many other degenerative trends. One can live regeneratively or they can be devout statists and follow blindly as multi-generational racketeering operations continue to pillage the Earth.

Involuntary Government (every last involuntary form of government that uses violent coercion) is the single most ecologically destructive force on the planet.

Now that I have explained my own stance on the question posed for this month’s poll, I want to know what all of you think.

Perhaps I have not considered all the variables and my understanding of these issues needs a lot of improvement. Perhaps statist regimes are not inherently ecologically degenerative and I have yet to have considered all the facts. If you believe that to be the case, please let me know by voting in the poll below and then explaining your vote in the comments section.

FYI: “Ecologically degenerative” describes processes or systems that cause a continuous decline in the health, integrity, and functioning of ecosystems, leading to a loss of biodiversity and a diminished capacity for the environment to support life (human and non-human).

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I would appreciate it if you could elaborate on your reason for voting for what ever option you chose in the comments section to promote constructive discussion.

Thank you in advance to those who are taking the time to vote and comment to promote constructive discussion and hold up a candle to the mirror.

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