- William Kötke
“The years as a sawmill worker in Oregon and California caused me to understand the point of view of those people. The Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War and the Summer of Love in Haight Ashbury woke all of us up to the realities of the planet. Years as a labor organizer and union business representative allowed me to understand why it is so difficult for the masses of us to make sudden beneficial changes. The years spent chopping wood and herding sheep for Katherine Smith, an elder of the relocation-threatened, Big Mountain Navajos, instructed me of the great strength of people who live with the earth. In residing with the Jicarilla Apach of New Mexico I came to understand the functioning of a tribe.”
People everywhere are waking up to the awareness that, with pollution, war, global outsourcing of our jobs, and rampant unregulated capitalism, we are pursuing an unsustainable path that can lead only to disaster. But there was a time when people began to wake up to this before – that period of time is called “the 1960’s.” Today on Conversations With Extraordinary People we hear from a man whose voice was first raised in the sixties, and still speaks to us from the middle of a forest in Southern Oregon where he continues to walk his talk.
William Kotke is a widely traveled and published author of the underground classic, The Final Empire: The Collapse of Civilization and the Seeds of the Future. He’s been a journalist, a novelist and essayist, and was active in the Civil Rights movement (with CORE), an anti-Vietnam war activist, a labor organizer and staff representative of Earthfirst! and the Native American Resistance.
The psyche of civilization has been sold a bill of good, he says, taught to believe that it’s possible to have infinite growth even though we only have a finite supply of the fuel for this growth. We are told “Don’t pay any attention to the guy in the black suit. And the 5,000-pound gorilla is not a 5,000 pound gorilla. If we could wake up to the true meaning of this – a real understanding of the exponential curve, we could all act quickly and change things.
In our conversation, we explore the materialistic values of our civilization that teach us that accumulation of wealth and progress are the same thing, how we are causing the death of our soils, forests, and fish stocks, and how we need to re-envision the role we play in the community of life. He says, “We are proposing to create no less than a completely new human culture – one that relates to the earth in a completely different way. Those who choose to respond in a positive way must gather the seeds of natural cultures and the truly beneficial things created by civilization – and carry them through the Apocalypse.”
William agrees with me in one of the diagnoses I made in Our Culture On the Couch http://
William’s approach is twofold – the first has to do with focusing your energy more locally, eating from your watershed, and participating in the right kind of community. The other is helping to awaken people from our illusions. He gets very specific – and talks about how important it is that we really develop and use local seeds and discover the incredible productivity possible through permaculture, eco-villages, etc.
“To be actively mobilizing toward the setting up of what might be called “seed communities” is the really significant action. If people don’t actually get out of the money economy to a significant degree, if they don’t create a new land-based culture that aides the earth, all the other political and environmental efforts will ultimately be meaningless.” – William Kotke
The psyche of civilization has been sold a bill of good, he says, taught to believe that it’s possible to have infinite growth even though we only have a finite supply of the fuel for this growth. We are told “Don’t pay any attention to the guy in the black suit. And the 5,000-pound gorilla is not a 5,000 pound gorilla. If we could wake up to the true meaning of this – a real understanding of the exponential curve, we could all act quickly and change things.
William H. Kotke is the author of the underground classic book. The Final Empire: The Collapse of Civilization and the Seed of the Future and also the recently published Garden Planet: The Present Phase Change of the Human Species.
Mr. Kotke has been active in the Civil Rights Movement (Congress of Racial Equality), United Farm Workers Organizing Committee, Anti Vietnam War protest, Earth First!, Native American Resistance and the Permaculture Movement.