The earth- which is also a body-produces the conditions for our bodies, and for all that our bodies can produce.
In returning to the consciousness of the organism in its entirety we find both the means for our liberation as individuals and as communities. With this shift in consciousness we optimistically dream the separation that has allowed for untold violence across the body of the organism to become impossible. The recalled, remembered, rewritten relation stills the violence, slows the extractive practices, quiets the urge for totalizing meaning and places the organism back inside a web of interdependency- this is our fantasy, our dream, our urgent hope.
We see that all transgressions against the organism, all acts of violence and oppression are done to the entirety of the organism. That organism is the earth, our home- to every person alive today and to all the generations that continue to come- the violence seeps through and we are woven together in a web of shared destiny. If we can not begin to see the implications of that shared destiny we are doomed to be extinguished as the conditions for our survival are increasingly infringed upon by the machinations of the capitalist juggernaut that has taken the place of democracy and humanist governance. We have not been given a choice. The means of our survival is too deeply woven with the manufactured desires and superficial successes of material accumulation, property, ownership, and fantasies of liberation through acquisition. We must face the toxicity of these fantasies.
We consider grief and mourning to be the first step in recognizing that we may not be able to change the trajectory of global climate crisis but we can develop the means to live ethically and justly in the fallout of these unfolding crisis. This belief in the power of mourning to recalibrate our relationship to the crisis- to fundamentally recognize our inability to change the course of events that have long ago been set in motion- is to also recognize our place within the network rather than continuing to uphold the paradigm in which humans are the masters of the earth.
This process of recalibration will challenge our deepest held beliefs and will also require a revision of the long held hierarchies of knowledge that place the Euro-centric Enlightenment subject as the master of knowledge production.
From this view point the first work of the Burl Concentrate will be to actively consider fundamental knowledge that has been lost, erased, or hidden within hierarchies of specialization. Our initial projects will be to consider reactivation of such knowledge, and the research and methods to develop new strategies of care.