I very much agree with your sentiments, unbrainwashing, etc. I remember how I felt back when I read Ishmael seven years ago (which is what started me on this path). That was such a great experience, to realize how deeply this cultural mythology had ingrained itself in my way of thinking, to feel liberated from that. I read it a few times and Daniel Quinn's other books to really hit the message home, then followed up with Thom Hartmann's Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, and thus was drawn into to the notion of Peak Oil.

I think since then, however, I've been so obsessed with Peak Oil and how society is going to deal with it (reading theoildrum.com all the time) that I've forgotten the spirit of Ishmael, of the necessity to abandon this culture and not try to "fix" it. In particular, being such an avid follower of theoildrum.com, I was often reading pretty well thought-out analyses of our way of life, the huge problems with it, and how it has to change - authored by people who are still very much a part of that "old way of thinking" taught by Mother Culture. While many of those people acknowledge the impossibility of infinite growth and the limits we are soon to be facing, the focus is still quite anthropocentric, and by reading all that material I was drawn into that way of thinking again. Drawn into the search for solutions, ways to cushion the economic downfall, ways to save all these human lives.

It was the film What a Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire that made me realize, shit! It's these human lives that are causing all the destruction we see. They're consuming the planet. This population will have to be cut down hugely, somehow. The destructive culture HAS to come down, and I have to help make that happen, not try to inhibit or slow down that collapse. I'm just surprised by how easily I was lulled back to sleep.

That film was very much inspired by Derrick Jensen, Daniel Quinn, and many other important thinkers. It has set me on the right path again, and this time I won't let myself be strayed from it.

A while ago I read a collection of articles by Derrick Jensen that I had downloaded on a file sharing program, and they were all pretty miscellaneous. Some were interviews, some were rants, but few really stand out right now. But there's one article I just read yesterday by him that was really good, called "Beyond Hope", excerpted from Endgame. Here's a link: www.orionmagazine.org/index.p...cle/170/