New Normal, Old Normal, and True Normal: Establishing Autonomy for Normal People

So here we are folks; it's March 2021, about a year into what I jokingly call "coof season." The last twelve months have been months of trial, learning, and distillation. The water is getting boiled out and everything is revealing it's pure concentrated self; from the collective to the individual, we're all more ourselves than we were twelve months ago. That's something to meditate on, because if you don't like something as it reveals it's truth, it's up to you to work on that. Our personal responsibility for this world should be more apparent now than ever.

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These nerds saw grass for the first time today, but they knew their true selves and quickly got to doing chicken things.

One thing that's become distilled in my own life is the need for community. I've realized more than ever the need for people around me, and my own place in that system. Self sufficiency is a pipe dream, and I'm glad to see I'm not the only one realizing that. People are seeing now, and hopefully not too late, the detrimental effects of state reliance and cultural compromise. Here I'll show what I'm doing about it in my own life. Some of what I'm working on to become an autonomous entity, participating only in vetted cultural systems that I voluntarily participate in. I don't mean this as an all encompassing guide, there are undoubtedly better things than I am doing, but if I can light someone's libertine spark plug by spilling my life story in a short article, I think we're all winning.

Anyone that's read my blog can see my story over the years, working slowly and mindfully to establish a homestead on my urban half acre. Early in my own libertarian (and I use that term loosely) journey, I realized and began to reject the state's immoral influence over my food and my ecosystem. That's not a thing that I personally can recognize and idly abide. The radical insurrection of permaculture was my first foray out of the theoretical and into the physical manifestation of autonomy.

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Summer, 2018

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Summer, 2018

In a move towards autonomy on a food production model, I put in eighty feet of swales, trenches dug on contour to catch water, in my 40x60 foot food forest. I now don't have a lawn to water, have a garden that doesn't need water, and I'm replenishing my hyperlocal aquifer. Who needs a government to build a lake, treat water with chemicals, and charge you to pipe the water to your garden when you have a natural model that waters your garden for you?!

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Summer, 2019

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Summer,2019

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Summer, 2020

Looking at a few before and after pictures helps it sink in for me how much this soil is capable of, with just a little tending. Without a relationship with the soil in your place, insurrection can be pretty baseless. And autonomy even moreso. I've come to an understanding that with the average american meal travelling 1500 miles, our relationship with our true local soil is dead. The fundamental radicalism of composting, of peeing in your yard, of giving and receiving from your soil in a closed loop is astounding. Stick around for summer 2021 pics. It's gonna get wild.

Even stronger than a composter permie though, is a community of composter permies. I stated that self reliance is a pipe dream, and I'll stick with that to the end. No man is an island, no family either. Trade, counsel, security, you can't provide all of it for yourself, not without excessive labor and inadequate quality. So while growing your food is super cool, what if you do that with your friends?

A lot of people around the world are turning on to that idea. Look to the progress being made on a global scale by the freedom cells movement started by John Bush and Derrick Broze. Nearly twenty thousand people have organized so far into small groups as a distributed network of intentional communities worldwide. As the Freedom Cells were getting off the ground, the Man Scouts (my slightly more culturally exclusive intentional community) were getting started as well. By chance we came across yet another local group started by my best friend and someone he had met. All by chance and through the setting of clear intentions, distilled from the early days of 2020, these groups sprung up. Coming into spring, these three groups are going gangbusters getting local people set up in an increasingly autonomous intentional network here in Texas. Two of our members bought farm land this year, many started their first gardens, most have been conducting trade within and between our groups, some have even gotten into cryptocurrency. Hell, just a week ago we held a joint event to get one of our families set up with a raised bed to grow food in!

The prevalence of these kinds of groups just in my area makes me think these community awakenings are probably going on all over. I've read a lot this year, mostly on the hive or steem social media blockchains (and never on mainstream media) of people getting involved in community markets, neighborhood meetups, and local interest groups.

Self awareness is a brilliant tool for autonomy work as well. Know thyself, right? Almost as fundamental as soil health, if you are aware of how and why you work, you can get a lot done, and fast. These aren't things that are developed overnight on any level. They take work, and knowing how you work best can save you a lot of heartache in the process.

Over the years on my own path, I've come up with a few things I like to regularly check on with myself. I'm a deeply anger-driven person, believe it or not. I'm almost always passionately angry about something. Using that self awareness, I like to look at things that make me angry, and then do something about it so that I live a less angry life. Being dependent on outside groups, cultures, or services that I don't feel are as cost efficient as I want them to be makes me really frustrated. Being a lifelong learner helps a lot. I have my mycelial network of interests that all fruit into progressive systems. This blog is a spore, a seed, where the fruit of my own network can be spread to yours. I like that fungal analogy.

On a philosophical level, all that is great! When you take it out of your head and manifest that decentralized autonomous reality though, that's when everything you do or read or hear gives you goosebumps at the potential.

There's so many ways you can establish another small piece of your own autonomy. Knowing yourself, knowing your culture, knowing your soil, knowing your language. When Derrick Broze says "you are free, you are powerful, you are beautiful," he means it in a spirit of full insurrection, and we need to start acting like it. Master your language, and understand that in our current climate of collectivism, parasitism, and division, those are revolutionary words. In healing my own relationship with my language, I've come to an understanding that, while the modern world may consider me a radical, I'm merely working towards normalcy. Not the old normal of 2019, not the new normal of 2020, but a timeless normal of sanity, respect, and autonomy.

While we renew our relationship with language, it's high time we reconsider our definition of revolution. In America especially, the media for decades has portrayed revolution is a bloody and violent thing, and I'll be the first to agree that violence has a time and place in our lives. But in a time when the product of our labor is siphoned off of us from birth til we die of cancer $100,000 in medical debt, eating like a king is revolutionary. In a time when our saint (English translation of Monsanto) gives us "food" and water that simultaneously fails to nourish us and chemically robs us of biological function, planting a garden is insurrection. In a world that nickels and dimes us to death with trinkets, printing toys (or better yet, wind turbines) on a 3d printer using filament made of ground up credit cards is a dangerous uprising. The status quo is falling, the old normal won't help. Get on the Road to Autonomy with us. We can't be stopped when we come into our own power and own it. They know that, or else they wouldn't be pushing to redefine and cancel your culture. They wouldn't be making stories that muzzle you and lock you away.

The people that feed off of our lives are scared, and they are right to be. Hop on board, we're moving out. There's room for you.

Love from Texas

Nate 💚

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Nate that was an awesome read, you also made the best of the space, I used to do vertical gardening in the city, now the farm allowed us all agricultural follows. Cheers

I have a friend that's about to start a vertical hydroponic garden. I'm excited to help him manage it and set it up, but that's not my style for here at the house.

Thanks for reading, I'm glad you enjoyed it!!!

I never done hydro, im all trying parma as much as I can and compliment the ecosystem

Agricultural follies not follows

Stunning post that makes me want to work harder at the community thing! Darn right this is the path.

Amazing to see before and after like that. I love seeing before shots too of our crazy place. And so excited you have chickens again... been making kick ass garden omelettes lately.
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Dear God, I can't wait for an omelette! That looks phenomenal. One of my most memorable meals (mmm...) was a garden fresh omelette. Eggs from my farmer friend, homemade cheese I made with milk from the local dairy, onion and jalapeno from another friend, and our own fresh tomatoes.

When I say "eating like a king," that's exactly what I mean. There's nobody on Earth that eats a better meal than that.

Do garden omelettes include grass? ;<)

This reminds me that I received a handful of eggs from my twin sister's chooks today. I tasted one at lunch and must say that it was one of the best eggs I've ever had!


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That is awesome to hear!

I wouldn't include grass, but I've often been known to include dandelion greens in my omelette.

Dandelions in an omelette. Interesting to hear that :<)


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I'll do it later on and make a post to confirm. Not today though. It's lunch time today.

Looking good, I admire anyone who chases a lifestyle and more importantly lifecycle that is endlessly renewable. A good community is the family we pick for ourselves.
Vive la révolution!