(excerpted from The Grateful Unrich: Revolution in 50 Countries: Chapter 12: Zootown)
After a year traversing the planet and a few months of blue-collar reality working 80 hour weeks with a Pipefitters Union in Minneapolis, my plunge back into academia at the University of Montana in the fall of 1989 is reverse culture shock central.
I am a reader/grader for a Philosophy 200 Ethics class. The teacher is a wannabe aristocrat who plays violin in the city orchestra and worships Aristotle from the safety of his intellectual ivory tower.
My first tests come back and Aristotle tells me the kids are lazy and doomed to gas station employment, since they have forgotten the sacred commas and can’t spell teleology.
I tell him he is brainwashed and that modern Western culture is a product of centuries of dualistic and atomistic philosophies and their logical consequences. The primary result has been a substantial devastation of the diversity of life which existed on this planet prior to the adoption of said worldview. Read the rest of this entry »



