I use the term Statism in my educational writing quite often and sometimes come across people that have no idea what I am talking about. This recently forced me to realize how effectively the statist belief system renders itself invisible to the masses.

Statism is so ubiquitous and normalized on earth now it renders itself incognito. We have become like the fish swimming in water without a non-water frame of reference to describe the water.

Our indigenous ancestors however (yes we all have them regardless of skin color or ancestry) came face to face with statism and saw it clearly for what it is. They lived before statism dominated the earth, and so to them, it was an imperialistic force attempting to replace their place based decentralized animist worldviews and leadership structures with a centralized governance structure enforced by violent coercion and funded by state sanctified theft (aka taxation).

Put simply , statism is the belief system and governance structure that uses violence to extract labor, energy (sometimes money sometimes other forms) and obedience from diverse groups of people in the interest of furthering the goals of those that dominate said systems.

Statism is 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.

The task before us then, is not so much to reveal statism (as that may be impossible for those so engrossed within it to see anything outside of it) but rather to embody the antithesis of statism (to become the “red pill” if you will).

One might describe the polar opposite of statism in a variety of terms such as bioregionalism, place based culture, indigeneity, agorism or voluntaryism (though strictly defined terms, as James Corbett astutely pointed out when he interviewed me about Regenerative Agriculture, can become a prison and weapon of sorts).

What we essentially need to do then, to become the medicine that treats the spiritual sickness of statism, is not to describe the sickness, but to become an embodiment of the cure and alternative to that system governance.

We must become the red pill and live its truth, not by words, but by example.

So what are the core tenets of a person or community that is the antidote and/or antithesis of Statism?

– Loyalty to your local community members above all else (that includes the community members you depend upon that are not human beings by the way). That means loyalty to your watershed, your bioregion and your neighborhood (for all of those communities directly influence your health, longevity, knowledge and skillsets).

– Seeing all life as sacred and worthy of respect and reciprocity (statism seeks to profit from all life, seeing life as a “resource”, with the well being of lifeforms as a secondary priority at best)

– Refusing to support systems that desecrate the sacred, inflict oppression on our fellow community members and engage in theft.

– An intimate knowledge of, love and willingness to defend the place where you live.