Above is an excellent presentation by Elizabeth Burdock (aka WhichBetty) at the The People’s Reset titled Roots Of Resistance : How Reconnecting To Nature Restores Freedom.
I am re-posting her entire presentation here for anyone that missed it and to shine a light on her important work.
Here is her website:
Info on her presentation and work from The People’s Reset website shown in screenshots below:
I am also sharing her presentation because so much of what she expresses is a mirror of my own life’s work and formative years.
In the presentation above Elizabeth talks about how she grew up spending much time on Bowen Island.
Well, I also spent much of my childhood on a nearby island at my grandparent’s bed and breakfast called “The Pink Geranium” on Galiano Island in BC. It was from them, and my time in the forest, at the ocean shore and climbing the mountains inland that I developed an awareness of our non-human kin. My time developing an animistic awareness of our elder rooted kin and other beings in the forest would similarly result in the kids in public school ostracizing and bullying me as Elizabeth describes was her experience above.
Despite what the priests of the cult of modernity’s materialistic, reductionistic, domineering and anthropocentric atheistic mythology (and their disciples) told me (when I was young and seeking elder council within an orphaned culture) about how only humans possessed sentience and there is no such thing as a tree spirit.. I continued to reach out to beings I perceived as kin. I continue to reach out to commune with them to this day.
I love how she describes her self as inherently feral and that she remains “barefooted and unsupervised” to this day. This reminds me of my Substack friend Fiona and this lovely post she shared from her childhood recently.
It feels serendipitous and synchronistic that I am guided to connect with the works of kindred spirits like Elizabeth and Fiona at this time in my life (when I live in a highly “civilized” landscape in Ontario, and sometimes feel quite alone in my deep love for the pathless woods and my reverence for our more than human kin). Aside from my beloved ( Johrey M. ) there are very few here that cherish places without any signs or sounds of industrialism and fewer yet that remember and still fan the flame of that innate spark they had as children to speak to trees like old friends, whisper blessings to rivers and listen to the secrets of stone beings.
Thus, I am grateful for this presentation and these new connections, as they remind me I am not the only feral and uncivilized earth loving tree hugger that sometimes felt misunderstood within the anthropocentric institutions of modern industrial statist culture. This feeling of spiritual comradery is a medicine that offers healing and hope which I deeply appreciate.
As Elizabeth, I am also someone that is most comfortable in the forest. Being in the midst of ancient trees feels like home to me more than a box made of bricks, drywall and wood. And being in an ancient forest also feels safer to me than being in a town (despite the fact that large predator beings live in the forest).
Speaking of the anthropocentric dogmas of modern industrial statist culture, I agree with Elizabeth’s assessment that the public education system (and government funded information propagation systems in general) are designed to sever our innate connection to our more than human kin.
We live in a time when children in Canada and the US are capable of identifying over 1000 corporate logos, yet most can identify less then ten plants. I do not think that is by accident, but rather the result of a successful multigenerational campaign on the part of statist regimes to sever people’s connection to the land and instead implant an artificial sociopolitical identity designed for breeding a monoculture of humans that are consumers dependent on corporations.
Below will share more on the history of that structured and strategic attack on the innate characteristics of what it means to be human and develop a natural connection to place. What follows explores the origins of the modern government “education” system (The Prussian Human Domestication Model).
Children carry innate animistic awareness of the intelligence of our more than human kin, they carry a vivid intuitive awareness that sees into the heart of a person or situation and they are intrinsically inquisitive and ask the hard questions (many of which we adults stopped asking long ago through regimented indoctrination into institutionalized dogmas.)
This is why the state seeks so relentlessly to crush and stamp out that innate spark with their Prussian “education” model, as it replaces potential rebels, seers, healers, visionaries and cultural catalysts with order followers, government news trusting adults, big pharma dependant people, complacent tax paying government institution cheerleaders that form a monoculture type human work force (mentally enslaved and economically enslaved all while preaching how free they are).
The Prussian compulsory “public education” model was (and is) intended to create a permanent state of obedience, consumerism, anthropocentrism and compliance to debt slavery/taxation systems in adults, was developed from farming techniques used to break horses and to domesticate animals.
Bear in mind that the original domestication of animals involved the mutation of wild species into an infantilized form with a smaller brain and an inability to adapt or solve problems.
To domesticate an animal in this way you must:
1. Separate the young from their parents in the daylight hours.
2. Confine them in an enclosed space with limited stimulation or access to natural habitat.
3. Use rewards and punishments to force them to comply with purposeless tasks.
Effectively, the Prussians created a system using the same techniques to manufacture a distorted form of perpetual adolescence (looking to the government as a mommy and daddy figure) and obedience to the state and thus domesticate their people.
The system they invented in the early nineteenth century to administer this change was public education: the radical innovation of universal primary schooling, followed by streaming into trade, professional and leadership education. It was all arbitrated by a rigorous examination system (on top of the usual considerations of money and class). The vast majority of Prussian students (over ninety per cent) attended the Volksschule, where they learned a simple version of history, religion, manners and obedience and were drilled endlessly in basic literacy and numeracy. Discipline was paramount; boredom was weaponized and deployed to lobotomize the population.
This system worked so well that Prussia became one of the most powerful countries in the world, at a time when the idea of ‘nations’ (rather than regions, kingdoms, tribes or city-states) was first being promoted as the dominant form of social organisation on the planet.
The Prussians began to make plans to spread the institution of schooling as a tool for social control throughout the world, as it facilitated the kind of uniformity and compliance that was needed to make the model of nationhood work.
Prussia was described jokingly as an ‘army with a country’ or a ‘gigantic penal institution’. Towns and cities were built like prison blocks, grey grids of rigid cubes and plain surfaces. Their motto for education was Arbeit macht frei, “work sets you free”.
There are many schools in Australia today with a similar motto in Latin: Labor Omnia Vincit, work conquers all. Now, as ever, the creation of a workforce to serve the national economy is the openly stated main goal of public education. And, as ever, the inmates of this system are told that their enthusiastic compliance with forced labour will be in their best interests at some future point.)
Germany’s compulsory education system expressed six outcomes in its original syllabus documents:
1. Obedient soldiers to the army.
2. Obedient workers for mines, factories and farms.
3. Well-subordinated civil servants.
4. Well-subordinated clerks for industry.
5. Citizens who thought alike on most issues.
6. National uniformity in thought, word and deed.
And it spread like wildfire: to Hungary in 1868, Austria in 1869, Switzerland in 1874, Italy in 1877, Holland in 1878, Belgium in 1879, Britain in 1880, and France in 1882. From there it quickly expanded further to European colonies (US and Canada).
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For more info on the Prussian “education” model, read book below and watch video in comment below :
This is why I described statism as being exclusively anthropocentric (as perpetual economic growth is an imperative and all ecological considerations are secondary to that).
It is that which turns a land that is biodiverse and culturally diverse into a land that is a biodiversity depleted monoculture and a culturally and spiritually impoverished, uniform and oppressed collection of human beings.
It is the bulldozer that flattens both forests and your unique spiritual essence and replaces them with a strip mall and a “patriotic” implanted identity that stunts your true potential.
Getting back to the presentation above, at about time index 5:00 Elizabeth shares about her time learning to forage for food and I especially appreciate what she says about nature phobia.
She talks about the connection she developed to Stinging Nettles.
This also seems especially serendipitous considering that was one of the first plants I became confident in foraging and creating with and considering the name of her talk the name of my article on that species below:
Also please check out Elizabeth’s awesome post on Nettle on her website here:
https://whichbetty.com/the-power-of-stinging-nettles/ (screenshot down below and in the thumbnail for this post)
Regarding her description of her experience with her friend of the Squamish Indigenous people and how they taught her that everything has a spirit (not just humans) I will offer my own in depth exploration that re-affirms and provides broader cultural context for that truth via the article below:
Regarding Elizabeth’s wise suggestion to start out choice to rebel against a system that is antithetical to life by beginning at home with food sovereignty, I humbly offer the following post which echoes and expands on the truths she shares.
What she speaks about this part of the presentation in particular concisely expresses one of the main driving motivators behind my writing the post below on creating Bio-Cultural Refugium:
Regarding her wise suggestion that we should start our path to rebel, cultivate food sovereignty by learning to identify local plants and fungi as sources of food and medicine, here is a post I created focused on spring foraging for those interested in starting to learn to forage and “de-mystify” your surroundings:
And last but not least here is a fun way to combine some of those wild spring foods to enrich the gut brain connection that Elizabeth talks about towards the end of her presentation:
Though there are a great many more parallels between what Elizabeth and I are working to share with the world I will stop there or I would be here all day sharing post links! :)
Please check out her website and support her work if you can.
How I became aware of this “conference”, why it is offering an extremely valuable service and how you can give back
Over the past few years I have been grateful to virtually attend the People’s Reset (previously called “The Greater Reset”) online thanks to a recommendation from James of The Corbett Report.
Several of the presentations in past years (such as Lyla June’s presentation titled “Architects of abundance: indigenous regenerative food and land management systems and the excavation of hidden history” from back in 2023) have been a huge inspiration for me and my work in designing regenerative food systems. Lyla’s presentation sent me on a deep dive to research regenerative pre-colonial oceanic gardening practices and that resulted in me writing an entire chapter for my next book on the subject (which I published as an article on Substack here).
Elizabeth’s presentation this year is inspiring me in different ways and will likely result in similar enrichment in ideas and perspectives that will result in me providing a framework for a more holistic approach to designing food forests in my previously mentioned book in progress.
So these “conferences” (now referred to as “activations”) are having a real impact on people’s lives, empowering individuals, enriching communities and inspiring people to become their best selves and envision a way to put their unique gifts to use for the benefit of not just mankind, but the living Earth as well. That is a sacred service which I recognize as valuable, and so I have donated what I can to help ensure that Derrick Broze and Miriam Gomez can continue to create events like this going into the future. I hope you will donate too if you can, as these people put a lot of their time and effort into creating this platform that uplifts so many, and essentially gift it to the world for free. Honoring their act of faith in embracing gift thinking in the form of a donation keeps the gift in motion so they can continue to do their important work creating parallel voluntary societies and emergent regenerative cultures/communities.
You can donate to their important work via the link below:
https://thegreaterreset.org/donate/
