Jack Burns Lives!

The Letter

The well-worn porch moaned under the weight of the man’s heavy frame as he moved from the small step to the door. The paint was long gone, having faded from years of exposure in the West Texas sun.

A screen door hung by a single hinge but the door behind it was still solid and tightly closed. The man reached for the handle, grasped it and turned it but the door required a heavy shove to open.

Once inside, he immediately noticed a familiar smell, the smell of a place that hadn’t been lived in for many years. Dusty and filled with cobwebs, it was otherwise very orderly. The furniture was still there, an older style that probably dated back fifty years. Dishes and plates sat motionless in a china cabinet as if frozen in time.

A large wooden table sat adjacent to the china cabinet, and in the center, a set of salt and pepper shakers sat filled and ready for service. There was an old plastic bottle with a thick, solid substance in the bottom quarter and a butter plate. At the head of the table, there was a stack of old magazines along with a faded, legal size envelope.

He picks up the envelope and reads the writing.

“Please Open.”

The man complies, pulls out a three sheets a paper and begins to read.

Howdy. Make yourself at home and relax for a minute. I have something important to say.

I’m the owner of this place but long gone. Not sure how long I’ve been gone, however, because I have no idea when you showed up.

If you found this, you’re either one of the survivors or perhaps even a visitor from another planet. I’m not exactly sure what happened to the country after I left the house, but I can guess. Probably got ugly, and I’m glad I wasn’t around to see it. Regardless, welcome to my home, or what’s left of it.

I died in 2052. Survived longer than most, probably because of genetics, healthy living and preparedness. Age 90, long enough for this world, as a human at least. Don’t worry, though, I’m not in the house. I’m now part of the landscape.

I knew I was dying, so I saddled up my horse and took off for the Big Bend Country to die proper. I wondered off into the mountains and took my life peacefully like I’d always planned. Provided I had a choice, of course. Guess I was one of the lucky ones that did, and I even had the good fortune to become part of the desert landscape. Maybe even a coyote gnawed on my bones somewhere along the way.

I always liked those little varmints. A lot of folks didn’t, but in my mind, they were just doing their jobs like everyone else.

Anyway, I’m gone and the place, or what’s left of it, is yours if you want it.

Only one string attached, as we used to say “back in the day.” You need to read this note and pass these things on to others, if there are others. It’s important, and I’ll take you at your word that you’ll keep the bargain.

Now what I’m going to say is what some folks call an “over simplification,” meaning, I left out a lot of important facts and issues. Maybe so. But I’m a pretty simple guy that always called it like I saw it, and that’s what I’m getting ready to tell you. What I saw.

It always seemed to me that folks that tried to make things more complicated than was necessary were just trying to hide something. Trying to make things purposely complicated. What smart, college boys called an “obfuscation.” Lots of obfuscating to keep people in the dark about what’s really going on.

Well, there ain’t gonna be any obfuscating on my place. We’re shootin’ straight here in West Texas, so here it goes.

Us humans got ourselves in a big mess. Some folks say the big slide started after the Second World War back in the 1940’s, which might be true, but it really don’t matter much. What does matter is what happened, why it happened and what could have been done to prevent it.

Myself, I figure it all started with what we called “organized religion.” When folks started thinking there was a god, and we were somehow made “special” by the god, goddess or “higher being.” I always hoped it would be a woman, but it became apparent as I grew older that not only was it not a woman (a woman wouldn’t let things get so fucked up), but there was nothing out there beyond ourselves.

So, don’t be looking up in the sky or to any gurus for answers. All the answers you need are beneath your feet, right here on good old Mother Earth. In the soil, the air, the trees, the rivers and whatever inhabitants remain.

The college boys call such a world view “anthropocentric,” which is really just a fancy way of saying man is main thing. The central focus of “creation” and over all other living things.

Of course, by the time enough people figured out it was all bullshit, it was too late. There were a small number of folks that knew it all along, but most of the others labeled us as “extremists” or just plum crazy. We chuckled, knowing full well Mother Earth would have the last laugh and kept on trying to tell people the truth. And that’s really lesson number one, that us humans aren’t any more special than any other living thing. All life is interdependent. Trees, rivers, birds, humans, coyotes, insects, molds, blueberries. We all depend on one another in a big old circle of life.

The Indian folk that were here before us understood these things, but we either killed them or rounded ‘em up like cattle into what we called “reservations,” because they weren’t like us and would be getting’ in the way of what we needed to do.

First order of business was chopping up the land into smaller segments and applying values to it. What we called an “appraisal.” And we also had these things called borders, which made no damn sense whatsoever because they rarely if ever had anything to do with how the land was naturally organized.

This was a key development, because once you controlled the land, you controlled everything. Land ownership was the key to power. Some of us saw the folly in this design and knew full well what all that power could do, but again, no one listened. It all fell on deaf ears. Just remember this…humans don’t own the land. We’re part of the land. And this, too. Power is dangerous. Power attracts the worst and corrupts the best, as my friend Ed used to say.

Well, humans set off on this path thinking they were the main thing and more or less saw the earth as their personal playground. And on the playground, we developed a little game we called capitalism. It started out simple enough and seemed fairly harmless. We had little shops and family owned businesses where people would sell or trade something they made. Baked goods, farm animals, crafts, clothing or food. Worked pretty dern well for a while. Some of us even tried to get back to that simple ideal, but we were only able to do so in small communities.

Things got out of hand in the late 1800’s when we created these things called “corporations” and gave the corporations the same rights and privileges as human beings. And talk about power! Before you knew it, there were massive corporations that had immense power. In hindsight, it seems absurd when you realize how they were constructed, and how they actually worked, but as it’s often said “hindsight is 20-20.”

In most cases, corporations had a small handful of people that controlled large numbers of people. The controlling people at the top made a ton of money and wielded incredible amounts of power, not only over the people at the bottom but over entire communities, even nations and the whole planet. The folks at the bottom were more or less at the mercy of the folks at the top and could lose their work at any moment. Again, the college boys had a word for it, hierarchy. Basically a system where people at higher levels control others, often to the point of limiting their freedoms and negatively affecting their lives.

It essentially replaced another age-old system we called slavery, a system where you worked for another man but for no wages and with no freedom. Most folks saw capitalism as an improvement, but in the end stages, it really wasn’t because most people were trapped in meaningless jobs paying off enormous debts they could never escape. We called it wage slavery. And as you may have guessed, all the payments and profits pretty much went to the people at the top of the pyramid. Most folks walked a fine line between relative prosperity and what we called bankruptcy. One minute they’re ridin’ high, and the next minute they’re damn near in the soup line. Not all, though. Some of us lived within our means. All you need to know about bankruptcy is it’s bad, and it’s what happened to folks that spent more than they made in an effort to get to the top with the fat cats controlling everything.

Oh, profit…..what that word really means is I give you less than you gave me in a system of exchange. The difference is the “profit.”

We also figured out, with the help of the college boys, that capitalism was inherently “inegalitarian.” That’s a fancy way of saying it ain’t equal. It means my profit or making things better for myself is usually accomplished at your expense. Trust me, you want this system about as much as you want cholera. (If you don’t know what that is, there are some books behind you that will explain it.)

“Greed and usury were always the carbuncles on the neck of America.” So sayeth the great poet Lew Welch, and he was right. Fine fella. Some of his books are on that shelf behind you.

In addition to the corporations, we created these things called “governments.” Governments were all powerful, although not really so much different from corporations. Both were run by small groups of people. Both collected money from the populace. And both were corrupt as hell. Both could wage war, although governments would wage war on a much grander scale than corporations, although usually at the behest of corporations. Corporations sometimes had their own little private armies, but they really needed help from governments to do their bidding on a grand scale.

And as you might guess, the top folks in governments were chummy with the top folks at corporations. They worked hand in hand in making sure the folks at the top kept making bigger and bigger profits, even if it meant destroying competing governments and corporations that got in their way.

The whole government thing was really interesting in that was very similar to religion. Vast numbers of people were convinced of its legitimacy, even though it was plain as day to some of us that it was basically a crock of shit. Governments were clever, too. They made laws or rules that made it a crime to speak out against them and used goons with all sorts of weapons to enforce their rules. But the most clever thing they did was to convince people that the government was “theirs,” that they were really in control and had a say in what was going on!

The people in charge were supposed “elected” by us regular folks, but once those folks were elected, they never seemed to go away, even if huge numbers of people didn’t want them any more. They just stayed and stayed and things got worse and worse.

Now, there was another system of governance we called “democracy,” but it didn’t go over well with the government and corporate folks. Democracy means that everyone has a voice and a real say in the affairs of the community, but as you may have guessed, small groups of powerful people saw that as a real threat to their power. Everyone having a say is a direct threat to hierarchy, so the folks at the top of the hierarchy are going to do everything they can to make damn sure you stay in your place. Remember that.

Which brings me to perhaps the most clever of all the tricks our government carried out. They told people that the wars being fought (at the behest of the corporations) were actually being carried out to spread democracy, when in fact they were frequently designed to eliminate democracy.

I never figured out how they pulled the wool over the eyes of so many people, but they did.

Where capitalism really got wings and took off was with the discovery of what we called fossil fuel. Oil and gas. Once we discovered oil, things were never the same. We made automobiles (the funny looking things that are probably piled up in big heaps or just sitting on the side of the road with weeds growing over them), planes that could fly through the air, rockets that could go to outer space and weapons that could blow up entire cities. We tore up the whole damn countryside looking for the stuff, including most of our ancient, pristine canyons and mountains. We went completely nuts and built an entire economy (that’s what we called the capitalist system) around the stuff.

It was all interwoven. We needed oil to fuel transportation and the war machine, and the economy needed transportation and the war machine in order to remain viable. Then people, millions and millions of people, needed oil and a vibrant economy to maintain their lifestyles. Funny thing is too few connected the dots and realized that war means death and if you’re dependent on war to survive, well, you’re dependent upon to death to survive. Sorta odd and really stupid, but that’s what we did.

Well, the end result was all the war and capitalist expansion completely fucked up the neighborhood. We tore up everything. Dried up lakes, polluted the air, drove entire species of animals to extinction and heated up the place so nothing would grow in many regions. People starved and entire communities, even nation states, disappeared.

So, here’s a summary of what we learned, and if you and other survivors plan on doing any better, you’d better listen up.

1. Humans aren’t any more important that other forms of life. We all need one another to survive and have any quality of life.
2. We can’t “own” the land. We’re part of the land, and it’s impossible to live in harmony with the land if you divide it up into little parcels that pay no attention to soil, rivers, plants, trees and critters. Flora and fauna.
3. Hierarchy is a way for small groups of people to control large numbers of people and enslave them to varying degrees. It’s as bad and deadly as bacteria. Be forewarned.
4. Capitalism is inherently non-egalitarian and ultimately oppressive. It’s another bad bug unless you can keep it small and corral it. We never could, so proceed with caution.
5. Corporations are sophisticated systems of hierarchy designed to take capitalism to the highest levels of greed, graft and corruption. In its ultimate form, industrial capitalism, it will destroy everything. As my grandfather used to say “I guarandamntee ya.” If you need an enterprise to produce things, just make sure everyone in the community is an owner. That’s called a cooperative, and it will work just fine if you need to produce goods and services.
6. All governments are bad. If you want to have a way of organizing things, use democracy. That ain’t the same as a “government.” That’s “governance,” and it’s different. Make sure everyone has a say in things. The college boys also used to call such a system “anarchism.” It’s a system where everyone is equal, has a say and all work together for the good of the community. No one has the power to coerce others or gain enough power to harm the community. The second envelope you found contains more detailed information on this system as well as cooperatives. It was written by one of my college buddies, a fella named Lewis. Make sure folks read his stuff.

Depending on when you found this, there may still be good food in the pantry and meat in the smokehouse. There’s a shotgun and a rifle I left in good working order with ammo for hunting game, assuming there’s any left. You’re probably better off getting the garden going again and staying away from meat, though. Only take the game as a last resort.

Seeds are in the box to the left with instructions on what’s what and when to plant it.

The well served me faithfully for fifty years. I hope it serves you as well.

Oh, and there’s a collection of books on the shelves. Pay close attention to that Abbey fella. He wrote a bunch of stuff about what really happened as it was happening. Back when we had a chance to do something, but didn’t.

Good luck to you, amigo, and may the wind be at your back,

Cactus Jack
1962-2052