Weekly SPARK - Experiment 29
Modern technology does not give you security.
SPARK EXPERIMENT
Specific Practical Application of Radical Knowledge
SPARK- Experiment 29
Modern technology does not give you security.
(Matrix Code SPARK029.00)
Notes: Security is imaginary. Security is a concept of the human mind and does not exist in nature. No amount of money, possessions, insurance, power, or fame will give you security. Seeking security is an obstacle to living.
You are born into a culture that places you halfway up a technological ladder. All of the steps below you are missing. You are taught that light and heat appear by turning on a switch, money comes from bank machines, clothing comes from shops, music comes from CDs, and food comes from the refrigerator, from restaurants or from the grocery store. If you want to go somewhere you get into a car, a train or an airplane and arrive quickly with almost no effort. This is how Western culture teaches you to relate to the world.
Nonetheless, beneath all of the modern technology is a planet made of rocks, trees, water, dangerous hungry animals and treacherous weather conditions. Modern culture does not teach you how to live on this planet without technology. Your natural collaborative relationship with the planet has been replaced and destabilized by an artificial technical webwork. Because you were born into modern culture you do not realize that the steps are missing in the ladder. You think that technology is the natural order of things, but it is not. Lurking silently deep in your heart is the awareness that you have been deceived and that there is a discrepancy. The discrepancy is called Techno Penuria Phobia (TPP), the fear of the lack of technology. Your body senses that you no longer know how to survive on the planet, and you are filled with the terror that your technology could fail you.
Experiment: These experiments are not intended to propose or support a back-to-nature fanaticism. What these experiments ask of you is to invent small ways to live without technology for a while. When you do the experiments you will establish within your body new knowledge so that the technology is no longer a required necessity for your existence and well-being. By performing these and other such experiments you will be replacing the missing steps in the ladder of technology that stretches between you and planet Earth.
Walk barefoot. Every day walk barefoot for a while in the dirt, on the concrete, in the cold wet morning grass, in the rain, in the fresh soft snow, even in your house. You have a cultural fear that if your feet are cold you will get sick. This is not true. Expand your Box. Not wearing shoes inside or outside of the house gives you direct physical contact between your skin and the skin of the earth. The experience is nurturing even (perhaps especially) when it is uncomfortable!
Learn to hold snakes, bugs, spiders, and rats. Go to the pet store or children’s zoo. Ask to touch all the creatures. Look into their eyes. Allow yourself to have the realization that there is almost no difference between you and salamanders. The difference between you and monkeys is trifling. You are not like the primates. You are a primate. You are an animal. Breathe as an animal. Walk as an animal.
Go outside. Look down. What you are looking at is the surface of planet Earth. Everything above where the pavement ends is space. You are standing on the surface of a strange planet hanging out into space. Think of the photographs of the surface of the Moon or of Mars. You are standing on the surface of the Earth. Look up. That is the wide-open universe – a lot of space. There is nothing between you and that space. The space comes all the way down to the surface of the Earth. You are exposed.
Keep going. Make your own soap. Hand make candles. Play musical instruments with friends, even if you do not know how. Build your own musical instruments out of bones and wood. Read poetry out loud together rather than listening to the radio or watching TV. Put away your TV for a month. Go to an Asian grocery store and buy and prepare vegetables that you never tried before. Hand sew some clothing and wear it in public. Grow a vegetable garden and eat a meal only from what you have grown. Sit in the dirt in the forest for three days and nights. Camp out with almost nothing. Make your own pen, ink, and paper. Write a letter by hand and mail it by passing the letter along from friend to friend without using the post office. Walk fifteen kilometers to get somewhere rather than using any mechanical devices. Do one or more small experiments like these every day to eliminate your neurotic dependence on technology. These experiments will establish a new relationship between you and the world. While you are reconnecting to planet earth please give this also to your children. If you won’t, who will?
SPARK - Experiment 29 in other languages!
If you want SPARK in your own language, join the SPARK Translator Team by contacting Clinton Callahan at clinton(at)nextculture.org.
Stay wild,
Your random SPARK Generator.