Starhawk, the ecofeminist author of The Spiral Dance, The Fifth Sacred Thing and The Empowerment Manual and founder of Earth Activist Training, talks with Pinchbeck in a Substack livestream about the second Trump administration and the condition of the American left. She says her sense of dread had lifted somewhat because opposition was slowing the administration down, and argues that its cruelty is paired with ineptitude because empathy is a form of intelligence its figures lack. Both note the oddity of now defending institutions they once protested, including aid bodies they regarded as intelligence fronts. Pinchbeck argues that an organic American left was never permitted to form, and Starhawk calls for soul-searching about why progressives failed to build a coalition broad enough to absorb the frustrations the right has captured.
Guest: Starhawk
In brief
- Starhawk argues that empathy is a form of intelligence rather than mere sentiment, and that its absence explains why the administration keeps miscalculating how its actions will land.
- Starhawk says the reaction intensified once affluent people were hurt financially, citing Elon Musk's cash-handout appearance in Wisconsin as an example of political tone-deafness.
- Starhawk warns that tearing down flawed institutions now will not produce the decentralized, more just society the left has envisioned, but something more authoritarian.
- Pinchbeck argues that the American left was never allowed to develop organically, citing the killing of Fred Hampton, drug prosecutions of movement figures, and the shooting of protesters at Kent State.
- Pinchbeck describes Jimmy Carter as the last president to take the energy crisis and conservation seriously, after which trickle-down economics arrived and Democrats survived by imitating the right.
- Starhawk announces an Earth Activist Training fundraiser and ritual, with permaculture scholarships for people of color, indigenous participants, and federal workers who have been fired.
Full text
Hey everybody, thanks for Sorry, we had a little bit of confusion about uh figuring this out. We seem to have got it now. Um, happy Easter Sunday, I guess it is, right? Yeah. Yeah. If you all of you who celebrate Easter, happy Easter. And Passover, I guess also. Yeah, it's um I guess the good news is that people were very worried that Trump was Trump was going to um announce some kind of like martial law thing this weekend and um so far it doesn't look like that's happening. Um I guess there was January 20th they said there was going to be a 90day period to decide if the southern border was an emergency.
Um I mean maybe you know it's still early in the day so it still could happen. I should knock on wood, but apparently if he doesn't do it today, then um he loses some of his special, you know, privileges or whatever. Who the knows at this point. But um yeah, but I appreciated you reaching out to me, Starhawk, um about um one of my recent pieces and um we started a little bit of an email discussion around how you know what's happening and how like people we know like Charles Eisenstein who we thought were like I don't know, sane and soulful people uh have kind of like migrated over to, you know, cuckoo land. And um yeah, it feels like um just we're in a very different situation than we were, you know, 5 10 years ago.
And um and I thought I would love to get your, you know, your wise perspective on on what you're seeing and and what you're feeling and all that stuff. So I was excited to that you reached out. Yeah. Well, oddly enough, just this weekend, um I found myself starting to feel hopeful. Um you know, the sort of basic underlying level of uh gloom and dread like suddenly shifted. Um, I think partly because we're seeing enough opposition to Trump that it's slowing him down. And also, I mean, those guys are just this incredible combination of like cruelty and inepness at the same time. So, they keep making big mistakes.
And uh I think it honestly has to do with the lack of empathy. That empathy it's not just feeling compassion for people or feeling sorry for people or caring about people. Um, it's actually a form of intelligence. Like it's being able to see the world through somebody else's perspective. And if you can't do that, then you can't really imagine how your actions are going to land with other people. And I think they really think like Elon Musk really thinks putting on a cheese head and going to Wisconsin and throwing million-dollar checks around is going to make everybody like him and and it's a surprise to them that they're pissing everybody off.
But they've now committed the greatest sin ever, which is hurting welloff people in their pocketbooks. And I think they're starting to see the reaction to that. You know, the tragedy is I'm not sure how much, you know, so many important things are being destroyed. So many people's lives are being destroyed. you know, the damage that they're doing on the way is going to be very, very hard to recover from, right? I mean, and it's, you know, it's kind of ironic if you're coming from a more leftist perspective because, yeah, there were many things that were very aggravating and frustrating around kind of like the system. it did kind of seem bloated and um you know it did kind of seem like you know our aid organizations were actually like CIA fronts in many cases and so they've sort of taken a lot of you know points that the left would be kind of like behind but they've now kind of like torqued them around twirled them around so they support this like far rightwing uh reactionary kind of um initiative.
Yeah, it's and similarly with similar was Go ahead. Oh, just this kind of very odd turnaround where suddenly we're having to defend inctions we've been protesting against, you know, for decades, right? And yet, uh, it's kind of like, well, if they fall at this point, we're not going to get the beautiful, um, decentralized, more democratic, more fair, more just society we've always been envisioning, working for, we're probably going to get something that's even more authoritarian. So I think it's a wakeup call both you know to protest the right and also to look and say well where have we on the left um you know like obviously what we've done has not worked. We have not built a strong enough broad enough progressive enough coalition to fight these guys effectively.
Well, we can fight them, but to have prevented this takeover and to have channeled into some of the frustrations that underly it and I think we can. I think we could uh that's what I've been writing about and working towards. But I think we also have to do a little bit of soularching along the way. We can't just do what we've Yeah, totally. I mean, um, a little bit of soul searching, but on the other hand, um, you know, in some ways, we've also just, you know, like those of us who call ourselves like leftists. I mean, that term is kind of problematic sort of like to a dichotomy between left and right.
But um because you know in the 60s and 70s there was an effort you know a lot of people wanted to build a left in America and simply they weren't allowed to do that because you know you had leaders who were assassinated on the left you know whether it was like you know um what was the Black Panther guy uh Fred Hampton or whatever or or people were put into jail on trumped up jud drug charges that a lot of the movement's energy and and econ um you know finances went into trying to like rescue these leaders and so on and you have innocent protesters shot at Kent State and so on. So the you know I guess in a way you know um uh you know America's always been kind of iron fist in a velvet glove and now there's just there's no more velvet glove. It's just iron fist you know. Uh so yes, so we weren't allowed to have a leftist movement um an organic left and and also the two-party system, you know, made that functionally impossible. Uh and then you had, you know, the rise of Reagan.
Jimmy Jimmy Carter was probably the last like, you know, sane policym president in terms of, you know, recognizing the energy crisis and the need for conservation and so on. And then uh but nobody wanted nobody was ready yet to give up on the idea of like endless growth and you know endless wealth and so on. So then you had trickle down economics and then the democrats realized their only survival strategy was to basically uh imitate the right. Uh so you know a lot of the problems that we have now are you know was really quite responsible for them. um you know like the telecommunications act of 96 which um allowed for media monopolization and also gave sort of tech platforms the uh kind of right to so all this stuff was kind of like yeah like you know the right moved further right and the democrats moved further right um and so I don't I don't think we can beat ourselves up too much because also the amount of money on the side of the right has just you know always been quite huge and now it's just gargantuan I mean that now it just really feels like in terms of um media control um you know the right has also uh gone past the sort of progressive middle of the road establishment um in terms of building these media networks and also creating their own sort of infrastructure of influencers.
Um yeah so you know I don't really know you know what we can do at this point. Um um you know but yeah in in a way um it's like a it feels like a fire you know maybe like a forest fire is like the right metaphor that sometimes the fire just has to you know burn itself out and then you know whatever like seeds are left are going to sprout after it. I I don't know how you feel about that. Well, I guess the analogy I've been thinking of is like America is like a sort of gigantic, you know, 18 ton truck and uh that needs a lot of like repair and uh you know, a lot of things weren't really working very well in it. Um, but we decide to put somebody in the driver's seat who's like a kind of mean, nasty five-year-old with no sense of control who's rapidly driving the whole thing off a cliff.
Uh not sure how far to carry this analogy, but it's like do we, you know, do we eject him, get somebody back as some sense, and then say, well, what do we need to do to repair the truck? uh we replace that smoky old diesel engine with an electric engine or do we need to rebuild a you know start all over again with a whole new and uh I'm not you know I I tend to be a renovator rather than a tear it down start a new person when it comes to things like buildings and you know I'm the one who will like keep nurturing that, you know, that broccoli and cutting it down, letting it resp sprout, and cutting it down, letting it resp sprout. Um, but politically, I've always was more of the we need to start all over again. Um, however, at this point, I'm not so sure about that. I think uh I don't know that we're in a point where starting all over again um if we're going to do that or even if we're going to say well how do we repair this damage um we've got to actually have a vision of what we want and have a strategy for getting there.
I think that's what we've seen in recent years. You know, we've had some incredible revolutions like the Egyptian Revolution where people threw out a dictator that' been there for 45 years and did it nonviolently, but they didn't have a plan to take power and consolidate power. I mean, I know some of the organizers and they didn't want to do that. They wanted to transform power and create democratic power. But what happened was people who weren't hesitant about taking power grabbed it and now they have a new form of autocracy that's perhaps even worse than the old form. So we've got to I think we have to be clear about what kind of system we want and how we're going to get there.
Uh and it's hard to do that when we're just overwhelmed by kind of going like this thing is heading to the cliff. it's going to smash. How are we going to survive? Um, but I also think this is the time to do and to think about that because once the smash happens, right, um, we've got to be prepared to figure out what we're going to do with all those pieces and to do it quickly and not uh, start the thinking then. Yeah, somebody just said in the chat, "Yeah, I totally I Yeah, I totally agree with uh with that." Um I mean, I did personally try to create like a long range model.
I wrote a book called How Soon Is Now? It took me like 10 years. Um um but um yeah, I mean I I guess one little area maybe I would push back a little bit like um I'm you know I'm I'm not not sure that Trump's what Trump is doing is as is as senseless and immature. I mean, it's terrible and yeah, they are they are very uh you know, brutal and adolescent, but I I do think there might be more of a plan uh in um kind of even like these tariffs uh that he's doing which uh now nobody in business can trust if they can build a factory anywhere. They don't know if he's going to raise the tariffs or lower the tariffs.
um it's like an effort to um break the middle class even the upper middle class. So you you more completely centralize wealth and power among a very small group and that group. So if the US for instance goes bankrupt or if all these companies go bankrupt, people like Peter Teal and Musk will be able to just buy up um whatever they want like companies uh and then if the US is forced to you know default on its loans or whatever then um public lands like Euseite you know could be sold off to like the Saudi um wealth fund. And um I've been looking a lot at the ideology behind the tech oligarchs uh which is like people like Bellagi Serva Basan and Curtis Yarvin in this book the sovereign individual. So it's kind of ironic because they're now pretending they you know they love America and they care about America but actually their ideology is that the nation state is finished and that the future is what they talk about as like commercialized sovereignty.
Um, so it'll be like and you know Trump announces like freedom cities. So these will be like surfoms where they have a corporate ruler or an oligarch that will be setting the rules. There won't really be the rule of law but you can see they're just eager to discard the constitution and the rule of law. Uh, and that's um, yeah, it's uh, you know, then they also think unfortunately um, you know, it may seem totally like they're doing this in an inept way, but they're just being very because they think that they have to kind of go as fast as possible and before a meaningful resistance or of forms, you know, which maybe we're now starting to begin to see with the Harvard and and, you know, even the courts and so on. But um they're trying to push as fast as they can in this direction before they encounter significant resistance.
Um yeah, and um um because you I think a lot of them are seeing a future where the environment breaks down. I mean, they're pretending they don't believe in climate change, but of course they know that's happening. Uh and they, you know, they see LA and you know, North Carolina and so on. So that's why they want to grab Greenland and Canada because they see that those are going to be where populations will be moving. That's where the money is going to go. that's where it's going to become more possible to live as as the south becomes too warm for many people has too many natural disasters.
Um and also they want those resources for artificial super intelligence uh with the idea that they can actually um have breakthroughs in biology that allow them to live forever. Um so I think there is like more of a plan underway u that people like Curtis Arvin have actually kind of spelled out. If you read the book sovereign individual, you get a um a deep sense that there's like um a construct they're following that it's not it's not as chaotic as as it seems, you know. Um I guess I guess I wanted to ask you also, so we talked about how um you know, certain Oh, go ahead. Oh, I was going to say I do agree with you that they do have a plan and I have read some of that stuff about Yarvin and that you know their kind of horrific vision for the world.
Um, I just think that because of their lack of empathy, because of their inability to see the world through other people's eyes and understand how this is landing with people, they may be underestimating the kind of resistance that they are generating by doing it so fast and uh so blatantly and brutally, you Now, I think they could do the same exact thing if they did it slowly and subtly. Uh, and we really would have no chance of resisting it. Um, so uh anyway, that's that's kind of where I feel there's some cracks in the system. Let's see. And I do think that's there. Totally. I guess Uh, I do think that's the agenda of the techno bros.
Although really like, you know, it's ironic because as bad as the system is for so many people, if there's anyone that it was really working well for, it's like Musk and Teal and all those guys. Uh, you know, I think part, by the way, I see that Penny Livingston joined the Oh, hi, Penny. Yeah, it's great. Yeah. And she had a great comment. She This may sound strange, but I'm curious about the military. Their first oath is to protect the Constitution. What about starting there as it could bring the most conservative people on board? Um, thoughts? I I I think that's a very profound uh possibility or comment.
Um and um um yeah, I mean essentially if you go to Curtis Yarvin's philosophy, it's about about you know, it's the control of the military is basically what it comes down to. Um and if they're in a position where they can, you know, because obviously we have this massive lethal force, um you know, if they have a strangle hold on on that it's extremely difficult to imagine resistance. But if the military um yeah it doesn't really support um this anti-onstitutional um scenario then maybe something else can can happen. But of course that's also very terrifying because then you end up in kind of you know you could easily end up in a kind of civil war situation um where you know this country does have all these like nuclear weapons sitting around and all this other stuff. So, I don't know.
It's um it's an intense it's a very intense threshold we're in. And um you know, they've also seem like you know to Starhawk's point about how fast they're going like they seem to want to precipitate this constitutional crisis and almost you know bring it to a point of civil unrest or civil conflict intentionally. Yeah. And I do know one of my old organizing buddies is really focused on how do we organize the military and let people in the military know that they actually have not just the right but the responsibility to refuse unconstitutional orders. I think that's a really important place to focus because of that.
And that is where revolutions succeed is when the military, hey, we're not going to do the work of the autocrats anymore. And most of the people in the military um you know have no vested interest in uh a world of freedom cities and oligarch you know rulers. Um, and you know, in the fifth sacred thing, you know, the novel I wrote years ago, the futuristic novel, where it really centers around the question of how do you resist violence without becoming what you're fighting against? And in the end, the way they win is by turning the soldiers against each other and recruiting them and bringing them in. I also wanted to ask you, so we talked about how um it's been interesting to see the neo-reactionary or far far right Trump regime kind of co co-opt certain issues that matter to the left in a way that has kind of made it very confusing.
You know, like the sense that, you know, the intelligence agencies were actually working through our aid organizations and so on. um a lot of people I know on the left felt kind of a satisfaction in a way when US aid was dismantled because they were aware of its um propagandistic uses for the American empire and so on. Uh but another aspect of this has been the um RK Jr. kind of like maha movement and how many people that I know and I'm sure you know from like the transformational culture, the burning man world, the kind of like yoga world uh ended up kind of like making a uh you know got sort of converted into this RFK thing and um you know kind of like many people feel that we are getting too many vaccines and that it is causing negative health effects and they're they're excited because RFK has has promised to focus on like organic food and you know kind of like uh you know examine whether pharmaceuticals are beneficial for us or get rid of uh you know sort of psychopharmarmacological um drugs that a lot of people have a lot of suspicion about including me I feel they're way overprescribed and overused. So I'm wondering how you um think about all of that and what you've seen in your communities and so on.
Yeah, I mean I come from the world of um paganism and witchcraft uh which is you know deeply tied into herbalism and all of for years and years and centuries and from permaculture where we're very much involved in you know regenerative land use and organic farming and it's alarming thing, you know, because what RFK has done is he's a kind of a mix of things. Some of his are good ideas. There are things we've been talking about forever, like we should get chemicals out of the food supply, but he mixes it in with this uh complete um abandonment of some of the stuff in science which is valid and good and important like actually having evidence and actually doing the research and doing your best to do it in an unbiased way. Um couple years ago I was at a conference and I heard Josh Fatal speak. Josh was one of those uh three American hikers who were uh hiking around the Iranian border and got caught and accused of being spies and were imprisoned for a couple of years in Iran.
And he talked about being there in prison and listening to the propaganda and realizing that propaganda is always a mixture of truth and lies. It always starts with something that's true, you know. So you start by saying, you know, chemicals in your food are bad for you and we all go, "Yeah." You know, and deal with those pesticides. We all go, "Yeah." and you know the big pharma huge profits off the COVID vaccine, we all go, "Yeah, but that doesn't mean the COVID vaccine doesn't work and that it isn't effective and that it isn't a good choice to actually take it if you have the opportunity to uh or that it's injecting you with uh I don't know what you know, microchips that are feeding information somebody. So, um I think on the left in the natural foods and health world, you know, like we can't abandon evidence and actual truth and we need to understand that truth is not always easy to figure out.
And then it is often nuanced. It's not always it generally never is either or one thing completely or another thing and that when we we also have to be guided by a kind moral compass I think that um it's true in the new age movement and in any movement you know that when you lose touch with some really core values like compassion passion and justice, um, then you're going to go off the rails. And it doesn't matter how much you disguise it in new age jargon or talk about, you know, not being judgmental or whatever, uh, you end up supporting like Eisenstein, you know, some really, really vile and awful stuff. Um, but my fear is that RFK is going to delegitimize all of our legitimate concerns about chemicals in the food supply and uh chemical farming and all of those things. So, um, you know, I've had questions about vaccinations.
I, you know, so many friends who didn't vaccinate their kids. Um, but ultimately when it came to COVID, I kind of went, hey, I'm in my 70s, right? I have asthma. Uh, I am not exactly like slender. I have all the things that are going to make this thing deadly for me. And if I can get a vaccine that'll keep me from getting it, I should be grateful and thankful. And uh I probably got like more vitriol for posting that I got a vaccine than for anything I've ever written about Palestine or witchcraft or supporting Hillary Clinton, which also pissed a lot of people off. But uh I felt it was important to say, yeah, we've got to not throw away our common sense and not throw away like our basic human decency.
Yeah. As you said, I think it was a very complex and nuanced issue that we didn't really weren't able to deal with very well. I mean, Bill Gates had gified out, you'd had these series of conferences with the sort of WHO and infectious disease organizations like what happens if there's a virus like this and how do you handle how do you control information and so on. So they kind of used this very wooden kind of like and people felt like they were being condescended to and when they had to make a personal decision and and then you know it's probably also true that the vaccines well we know the vaccines you know at first they were like these are 100% effective covid and they were like these are 90% effective and they were like these are 70% effective these are like 30% you know they kept changing the goalposts and and meanwhile we now also know that it was almost you know highly likely to certain that it was a lab a lab leak like it was it was a it was a laboratory created kind of hybrid uh and the government refused to admit that and so on. So they created a huge amount of um kind of yeah collective negativity or mistrust.
Um and um and that you know it may be the case with the vaccines that they were you know they were excellent for people in their you know elder years like my mother and so on but maybe not so good for healthy people in their 20s and 30s um who were probably going to be able to fight off the off the illness. and some of them maybe developed, you know, heart issues or or or whatever. So, you know, there was not really Yeah. a way of addressing that society. And it it's kind of amazing. I feel like something really changed with co like maybe it it it was really I mean it almost feels like a shift in in consciousness kind of towards a more um confused uh situation like like you know but I'm kind of curious since we mentioned him you know both of us had relationship with Charles Eisenstein I published and edited one of his books sacred economics and really when I had my web magazine years ago I gave him like what was a really you know kind of like a big platform and I you He was writing a lot of the stuff that I also wanted to say that I did say, but I I was focused on building the sort of network in the platform.
So I was like, okay, I thought he could really be the star, you know, kind of speaker of this whole new movement. And in retrospect, boy, do I regret that because over time, I became more and more less and less impressed with his perspective. And then finally, um, he just lost his way. Uh but now I just find him to be such a destructive and negative um you know kind of force with his you know fairly large following and just kind of like you know ambivalence around Trump and basically really like this guy Dave Dinger has been writing some great pieces about him that basically you know he only kind of like you know sort of straw mans Trump and not and not the sort of anti-Trump perspective. he really doesn't he's really he's really basically supporting supporting this right-wing movement with this sort of pretense of moral objectivity or ambivalence or whatever.
So I'm curious if you have any insight into, you know, what happened to him and maybe, you know, some other people in in in our in our sort of shared anarcho, you know, kind of anti- capitalist neospiritual culture who ended up kind of veering off in this weird direction and how that happened. You know, I don't know him well personally, not nearly as well as you do. I maybe met him actually once. I've known his ideas and interacted with him and for a while there thought you know, he was writing beautifully about um broader possibilities and shifts in consciousness and things that I agree with. Um but you know, I've been thinking a lot about this.
I've been writing this book kind of chapter by chapter on Substack called the movement we need and thinking about what are some of our core human needs um that we haven't addressed very well on the left just using that term loosely for convenience and I think they have been addressed on the right uh in very negative ways but in ways that are in some ways easier to do like our need for belonging for feeling we're part of something larger than ourselves. I think a real huge, you know, human drive and the rightwing says, "Okay, you belong. You know, if you're white, you know, you're good. Youong, you have value, which is another one of our needs. Um, you can feel that you have agency and power by identifying with this very powerful person." and it's powerful movement and you get conspiracy theories like that create a sense of meaning and purpose.
Um and the left like we have attempted to say we're trying to create a world where everyone belongs. Doesn't matter whether your color or your race or whatever. But in effect, we spent a lot of time telling people, "Oh, you said that wrong and you're wrong for that." Correcting each other's language on the internet and making people feel like if they make a misstep, they're going to be ejected from the movement. Um, which makes people feel unsafe and feel powerless. Um, and you know, we have a bigger challenge as a movement to create a sense of power and empowerment because we're up against such huge powerful systems.
Um, but I think people need to feel that, you know, we need to feel a sense of safety. We need to feel a sense of belonging. We need to feel a sense of that we're valued, that we can make a contribution, that we have some agency, and we need some framework that gives meaning and purpose to the world and to us. And I think if we can recognize that, we actually have the opportunity right now to build a much broader and stronger and more uh powerful movement. And I think some of that ethic has to challenge this idea of individual sovereignty that uh if there is an ethic that comes from permaculture that comes from understanding of uh what I've been talking about for decades, you know, of the idea of the sacred being embodied being inherent in humans in the natural world.
It's an ethic of interdependence and interconnection and relationship and we um you know that means again like with co that there is always there's a tension between your individual sovereignty and your responsibility to community and to other. So maybe yeah, if you're a healthy 23 year old, the vaccine might not necessarily be the you and I do know people who have had bad immune reactions afterwards and gotten sick from it. But you might also have a responsibility um to not infect other people around you who might be more vulnerable. And again, we need to just recognize that's not always a simple eitheror, right, wrong, black, white thing. It is a kind of nuanced tension.
But that tension has to come back again like you know like the compass swinging to north to saying you know we are interrelated, we are interdependent, we have a responsibility to one another. And that part of our value as human beings is how we fulfill that responsibility. And and in terms of Charles's work, you you feel that that was a um he got a little bit too caught up in the personal sovereignty kind of idea or how does that relate? Yeah, both the personal sovereignty I mean I see that not just in him but in a lot of people altogether but also in um certain and this idea that uh you know we are beyond duality there's it's not right or wrong that we must accept everybody and I think it misses sort of The this is kind of the common sense that in a sense yeah we are beyond duality and everyone has a sacred spark and we should be open to everybody but that doesn't mean we have to abandon judgment about people's behavior and choices and the impact of those choices. So, you know, I am sure that Donald Trump has a spark of the divine uh you know, is some strange aspect of the goddess.
But that doesn't mean I have to say all of his behavior is good and that I can't thank him in a way that is cruel and destructive. And the most compassionate thing might be to uh stop him. Um I'm gonna I'm gonna be I gotta go grab I got to plug in my phone quickly before it died. Okay. But yeah, can you hear me? Yeah, I can hear you. Um Okay. Um, what was my point? Um, by the way, there have been many wonderful comments in the comments section, and it's also nice to see that people seem to agree about kind of like this RFK situation, uh, and some other some other perspectives.
It's very nice to hear. Um, oh, I guess what I was wanting to think about, um, you mentioned how, um, the left became too focused on this kind of like ideological purity, um, around like um, you know, cancelling people and so on. And, um, you know, now in retrospect, that really looks like a total disaster. Um and uh you know among the people who got cancelled um you know there was like this me too movement and um a lot of the men who were cast aside or thrown out of their careers were men who were more on the left like liberals and so on. Uh and um and that that sort of leaded led, you know, led to the situation where you only have like you have most of the very powerful kind of like menosphere voice now or all these like right-wing men.
Um, and um, I think in a way uh, particularly for white men, let's say, um, it began to look like a worse and worse bargain. The sort of progressive culture uh, in that you're kind of saying your sexuality is not good. You know, you're you're you've inherited all this privilege. So, you know, you don't need to get your art, you know, at the Whitney by any it's only going to be artists who are, you know, gay or Native American or whatever. You don't you don't need to get your books published right now. pay you have to be accept the guilt for these generations even who didn't really do anything necessarily for it and and also like you know you have to be you know walk on eggshells around women because they're very sensitive and are easily victimized and so on.
So unfortunately I think that this ideological purity kind of like constructs on on on the left which developed through the academy and so on over the last like 20 30 years or maybe through this um right-wing hellscape that we've plunged into and um I still don't it's nice to say interdependence of course um and we agree with that but you know what's like the you you know, if you're like a, let's say you're a 25-year-old, yeah, all sorts of people. 25-year-old white man who wants to, you know, have a great career or like um do something big in the world. What are you going to look at? You're not going to look at um going back to the land in rural Appalachia and building a permaculture farm. You're okay, I could be like a crypto trader.
I could be an AI programmer, you know, and you know, but joining the rightwing that, you know, that's going to be my avenue to wealth and power. Um, so I mean that's why yeah I'm just curious if you this book and what would be the new movement what's what's the what's better life that you're offering and contribute to the earth in a way that's kind of I feel like part of the problem right now well I think that we have to see a movement as an ecosystem and an ecosystem has multiple niches in it. Um, niches for all kinds of different identities, different uh capacities, different orientations and that it's not a zero sum game. You know that our value as human beings, it's not limited. You know, if I say women have value, it doesn't mean men don't.
Or we say people of color now we want to value and center their experiences and in some ways red address some of the imbalance. That doesn't mean that there's no room for white men. There's a lot of things that white men can do and will do and should do um and probably can do better than anyone else. One of which is talk to other white men. Um, and you know, I have all of felt, you know, I mean, I've been a feminist since uh back in the early 70s when I first wandered into the women's center at Bennett and uh they were they were choosing new directors uh in truly like ealitarian, anti- athoritarian fashion by having everyone throw their name in a hat and pulling out the names of the new directors and I ended up my after my first meeting as one of the directors of the women's center but uh I've also often felt that um you know we wanted to redress this situation where women who were victims of rape and abuse and harassment were totally totally discounted and not believed and often um attacked for bringing forth the truth of what they said.
And so we say believe victims, but I actually think in this moment what we need to do is say we need to give victims a fair hearing and support victims. Um but we can't be less fair than the criminal justice system. You know, we can't condemn people without a fair hearing. And even if somebody does something, we need to offer them a path back. you know, somebody who uh you know, I'm not necessarily talking about someone who's uh died in the wall misogynist unless they actually change, but someone like Al Franken who has this history of supporting women and women's rights. Uh and probably did some stupid when he was on Saturday Night Live.
um you know, why couldn't there be a path back for him to regain respect and regain his um standing? And you know, uh, I do think some of this goes back to a culture that devalues not just women, but the set of qualities that have been assigned to women. you know those qualities of caring for others, nurturing, of really stewarding the next generations, of responsibility. Um, and has assigned to men, you know, all these qualities of aggression and innovation and, uh, protection. And you know the feminist movement was about saying hey right these qualities are not actually distributed by uh gender or by the shape of your genitalia.
They are human qualities. We all have them and we all need to have them. Um and you know the later form of this has been about people kind of rejecting the idea of gender altogether and saying well you know who's to say what's a woman and what's a man. Um but ultimately what we I feel like we need to do is to revalue those qualities of caring and nurturing. And you know, I know so many young men now who are beautiful fathers in a way that nobody was when I was a child. You know, uh I think of one of my neighbors. I always have this vision of him carrying his uh little baby son in a backpack and a chainsaw under his arm going out to do forestry work.
You know, the the qualities we associate with masculinity can also be associated with nurturing and caring and taking care of earth, taking care of nature, uh taking care of the planet. And that that's where people can find a sense of value and of agency that doesn't have to be based on uh I am I can control others. I am more powerful than others. I can you know bully and uh disparage someone else in order to elevate my value. And I think if we do that for men, you know, I think men are hurting. Young men are hurting. Um, but I think that's also because they're being offered these terrible and false solutions to their lives that are not going to make them happier.
I was telling you, you know, if you, you know, if you really want to be attractive to women, you know, if you really want to have girlfriends, if you really want someone to fall in love with you, if you really want to have like great sex, you know, the kind of sex that even if you're an atheist, it makes you want to believe in some god that you can thank for making people capable of experiencing this. It's actually really easy. All you have to do is just pay respectful attention to the women in your life and the non-binary people in your life. Listen to them. Focus on them.
Take them seriously. Believe me, you will find somebody who will think you're the most marvelous person in the world because that is so rare. Um, yeah. But if you try to control other people um either physically with violence or bullying them on the internet or all of that kind of masculine stuff, you know, you're going to end up alone in your basement just uh whacking off by yourself because you're not going to be attracted to them. And you don't have to have a six-pack and you don't have to be like, you know, muscular and strong or slim or anything. Believe me, I know men that are uh, you know, small and funny looking and whatever that somebody is going to think is the most adorable person in the world.
If you only learn to actually treat other people with respect and meet them face on ultimately it goes back to a culture that is profoundly suspicious of sex general. you know, it's the sort of puritan and um antisex stuff that's built into western culture for thousands of years. You know, if we lived in a culture that really thought sex was a good thing, then we'd be in a very different place right now. Uh, I'm noticing that I'm having a response to um stuff that you're saying in terms of like you're using the word we a lot and that's also been one of my big problems is like I don't know how we create a Wii, you know, at this point like um the rightwing seems to have a Wii going on. Um but uh on the progressive and the left side um you know because we could say like yeah we would like to address people who make m stakes in some way that's not just casting them out, but what's the Wii, you know, that does that?
Like where where is that Wii? Like how does one Yeah, it doesn't really feel like we have um a unified uh collective anything. And so people end up just in these kind of alienated atomized kind of scenarios I think we need to where the power of social media also means that go ahead. Oh I think the Wii that's a very big Wii right now. That's a wei. That is everybody who is standing up for justice in whatever way uh that they can. And that has to include, of course, you know, the people who um have historically been targeted and oppressed. Um the people who are currently being targeted and oppressed.
But it also has to include people who've historically been privileged but who are willing to say right uh I I I I understand what you mean but I'm more asking like how do we actually substitute that we you know the we the people whereas at the moment like um you know like if we were all part of some you know organization or we had you know what I mean it's like what what where's where's the Wii right now because uh I don't I don't I don't see it, you know. You know, uh I think it was Peter Brooks like this very conservative columnist just put out something saying like we need like some unified anti-fascist organization uh you know to fight this right now. It was kind of astounding that someone from his political perspective is standing up and saying this. Um, and I don't know if we'll get Oh, David Brooks you're talking about from the Times. Yeah.
I don't know if we'll get I don't know if we'll get a centralized organization or, you know, a great leader. I don't think we'll I don't know if we'll get like the Martin Luther King, but I do think that we can create something that has a sense of a unified um set of goals and ideals that we can all feel part of. And there are many many ways to create that sense of belonging. Uh there's a an institute at UC Berkeley called the Othering and Belonging Institute where they do a lot of work and research and a lot of good writing about this. You know, how do we create a sense of belonging that doesn't depend on saying we belong because that other group doesn't belong.
And one of the ways you do it is by encouraging people to actually talk about their core values and share their core values and speaking about those deep questions of value. Um, which you know we haven't always done on the left. you know, we have sometimes we do, but I think we could do more of it in our groups and our organizations. And I think when we do that, we'll find that there are common values we hold that do transcend those categories of left and right and that allow us to ally together um and create that sense of we. I remember years ago there was an attempt to create like this declaration of interdependence.
Um you know maybe it's something like that. Um, yeah, the David Brooks uh thing was kind of interesting. I mean, not to belabor it, but I just wrote a piece about about that. I mean, um, yeah, he's somebody through his whole career was a conservative, you know, went to the Hoover Institution, you know, he's a fellow at Hoover Institution, which is libertarian think tank. And, you know, he's argued against the minimum, you know, raising the minimum wage for decades. He argued against raising the taxes on the wealthy. He uh argued against um you know foot football players, you know, high school football players bending the knee in solidarity with Black Lives Matter.
So his whole career has been for wealthy people against collective solidarity and now they're coming for him because if this Trump thing goes on like he's been an anti-Trumper from the beginning you know they're lining up to go after you know everybody in the establishment to um you know ever said a negative thing about Trump and with AI you know they're going to be able to do that find all those people and all that stuff. So now he's quaking in his boots and now finally he's like, "Oh, like you know, we need a movement. I'm not a movement guy, but we need a movement of collective, you know, solidarity and civil disobedience." I mean, now that we have, you know, you know, but but you know, so these people who are actually have been, you know, incredibly respons and um the the the wealth inequality and the kind of um kind of mistreatment of the workingclass people that is what led to Trumpism. um you know so yeah so it was kind of you know I felt a little bit of shout shout shouting fraud yeah yeah I think is the right word on reading his column although of course it's not it's not good for anybody that uh these guys are ending the rule of law in this society and just coming after people with retribution um one mo one one model that's always intrigued me I don't know do you know this guy Christopher by the way really getting wonderful stream of amazing uh comments uh so I really appreciate all that stuff in the in the um but um a book that I really loved which maybe for me is what I think is most likely uh strangely enough is this book by this guy Christopher Botch. Do you know him?
B he he wrote a book called LSD and the mind of the universe. uh and um he did a lot of um highdosese LSD uh with his wife kind of guiding him. He's a he was a professor and he had this um he kind of beamed into this sort of prophetic forecast of what's going to happen in the next decades and you know it was kind of like a lot of destruction a lot of collapse but then I think you'll like this part like sort of new communities that are more authentic and how they're relating and how they're dealing with the earth sort of rising up and then those communities forming these kind of kind of like a new more like earth-based culture that's kind of like reckoned with the ravages of you know post-industrial civilization kind of emerging um and um I mean that was that you know that that would be a nice uh uh you know kind of like outcome. I don't know if you you know from from where you wrote The Fifth Sacred Thing to where we are now, you know, how are you seeing kind of like where we might go from here? Um and I know you said in the beginning that you're feeling more optimistic because you're seeing more uh spirit of kind of like rising up in the people.
Yeah. I mean, when I wrote I wrote The Fifth Sacred Thing like in the late 80s and early 90s, um and uh it's kind of alarming like how clearly all the bad parts of it seem to be manifesting. Um, and the good parts of it I think are harder. Uh, you know, in the book it's set in the Bay Area and the idea is that the country has fallen apart. Interestingly enough, the date for that happening was 2028 in the book, which is like alarmingly like both close and more and more plausible every day with what's happening. Um but that in the Bay Area they resisted the takeover from the authoritarian forces and they've built this multi-racial multicultural naturebased society that extremely democratic and uh you know when there's streets and everybody's growing food and uh all the different religions and cultures and lang languages are all valued and celebrated and it's a diverse and a beautiful place.
Uh but then in the story the question is what happens when the southlands who've turned into a kind of technofudalistic society what happens when they invade the north and how do they resist and um that was my overriding question at that time because we were doing a lot of nonviolent direct action and civil disobedience. um around, you know, what was going on in Central America and around the forests uh and various kinds of US intervention and around nuclear weapons and u was really questioning you know this is fine to do in the US where we're suffering relatively um you know the consequence es are sometimes really hard, but they're not like being dropped out of helicopters or blow torches in the armpits. But what do you do when you're really facing unrelenting violence? Can nonviolence work? Um, and I wrote a sequel to it, you know, about 10 years ago called City of Refuge.
Um, where the question was really different. It was much more inspired by what I saw during occupy. uh it was a question of how do we build the new world when people are so damaged by the old and uh part of what I was saying in that book is we have to develop some of those structures if we want a world where people are going to be more directly democratic we have to teach people how to make decisions together and how to actually get along and work together because the biggest constraint in all of our movements and in the permaculture movement as well. It's never you know we always say it's permaculture systems don't fail because the graywater system goes wrong. They fail because um of conflict in the group or the organization.
No uh eco village ever collapsed just because they had a bad gardening season. They collapse because people get in conflict. So that's why I've been doing a lot of work on what we started to call social permaculture. Uh which is really how do we design and develop human systems? How do we really think about our groups and organizations so that they meet our needs as human beings in positive ways in ways that actually further justice and equity and diversity and you know that balance of inter individual freedom and interdependence and inter relationship and I think if we can you know we have to do a lot of that work as vital as it is right now to stand up and protest all the stuff that's going wrong.
It's also important to continue that work of developing the skills and the tools and the sets of ideas we need for that new world so that we have them ready to put into place whenever we have the opportunity uh and that we can do it skillfully. uh we can do it without as much um failure and damage as we often see along the way. I'm kind of rambling on there, but thank you. Beautiful. Yeah. Uh so I think uh if you don't mind, I think it's maybe time to wrap up for today. I want to go out and catch a little of the afternoon sunlight. Um but I really appreciate uh hearing your perspective meeting you again and I hope um people will join your your newsletter and follow your um your your work as as you think about this whole question of social permaculture and movement burn building and this sort of perilous time.
Uh also people you know I hope they will follow also my my Substack if they don't already. Yeah. And um yeah, we had you know a long long hourish conversation. We had 543 PE people uh PR or stay with us just yeah some we got a lot of amazing comments. So this is really I think Substack live is a very um wonderful platform right people who really maybe we could do this again. I'm not sure if you could do three people on on a Substack live. If you can I think that could also be very interesting. um to experiment with, but uh we'll look into that.
Um thank you everybody for joining. Uh it was great to have you here. Thank you so much Starhawk. Feel free to say any last words uh that that that you got. Thank you for setting this up and making this happen, Daniel. It's been great. Uh it's great to connect with you again and have uh such an interesting discussion. And yeah, people can find me at starhawk. sub. com sub. com and be great if you subscribe. I should also say uh we're going to be doing a fundraiser on uh the 21st which I guess is tomorrow uh for Earth Activist Training which is our permaculture organization and we give diversity scholarships for people of color and indigenous folks.
And uh we are also offering scholarships for online courses now to any federal workers that have been displaced and been fired. And we're going to have a ritual and a presentation. You can hear some uh the wonderful work some of our students are doing and some wonderful ideas about strategy and also a little earth healing ritual. So that's tomorrow at 6 pm Pacific time and go to earthactivisttraining. org and you can get the details on that and thank you. Fantastic. Thanks everybody. Well, we'll see you again soon I hope. Bye. Chowo chiao.
Automatic transcript, lightly edited for readability. Originally published on the Liminal News channel.