Off Off-Grid Chapter 2 – Revolution

REVOLUTION

Copyright Michael Bunker 2009

What is Power?

For most of the last six millennia, the world has lived without electrical power.  Cheap electrical power has only been readily available for less than 100 years and only appeared in most of rural America about 30 years before I was born.  This means that likely over 100 billion people were born, lived their whole lives, and died on this earth having never made use of electrical power.  Yet, as we have said, if the electrical power grid was to collapse today, and if it was to remain unavailable for some great amount of time, it is likely that a majority of the people alive today would die within a year.  Readily available and cheap grid electricity has resulted in a world filled with unviable slaves, and it has made man dangerously dependent on a system that has proven itself in many cases to be unreliable; a system that many people are coming to believe is contrary to their eternal best interests.

It is very interesting that we call both the electricity that supports and enables life today, and the force that keeps people under the sway and thumb of the world, by the same name…

“Power”

I can think of no more deliciously appropriate irony.  Let us take a look at a few relevant definitions of the word “power” from Dictionary.com:

Power:  Great or marked ability to do or act; strength; might; force.

Power:  The possession of control or command over others; authority; ascendancy: power over men’s minds.

Power:  Work done or energy transferred.

Power:  Energy as distinguished from hand labor.

Power:  A person or thing that exercises authority or influence.

Isn’t it ironic that we have come to believe that electrical power frees us and gives us comfort and leisure, when in fact it is the primary means by which we have been colonized and enslaved by the world “powers”?

All Power is Coercion!

Write that down.  You’ll need to remember it.  Some coercion is good and legitimate, such as when we teach and train our children up in the way they should go (according to the Bible, this way would be “the old ways,” and “the old paths”).  Coercion can be brutal and tyrannical; or in other forms it can be benevolent, or subtle, or political.  When we use means to bring about good and Biblical ends, we are exercising coercion.  When the world uses marketing, advertising, and trickery, and when it plies the lusts, the carnal desires, or fears in order to bring about cultural or social change, it is using coercion.  Never deny, even for a moment, that all power utilizes coercion.  To deny it is just to stick ones head in the sand.

As we mentioned, man has chosen to use a word (power) for the force and energy that travels through cables and machines, a force that supposedly makes life easier and more comfortable and more fulfilling; and he has chosen to use the same word to define and represent the authority that coercive energy holds over his mind and life.  It is fascinating to note that the Bible teaches that Jesus came to His people, “to open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God” (Acts 26:18).  Satan has (and has had) coercive power over the people, and that power is used to keep them in darkness.  Likewise, mankind has become totally dependent upon earthly electrical power to supply and maintain his desires.  Grid electricity is only a part of the overall coercive grid “system” in the world today, but it is inarguable that grid electricity has made man dependent on it for his survival; and it has, in the past 100 years, become the basis for earthly political and social power.  I guess it could be said today that POWER is POWER.

When grid power is used to coerce minds and enable the lusts and desires of man, political and social power results.  One hundred years ago, much of America, indeed much of the world, lived independently from any system of grid power.  Under that system, most rural people lived lives of relative freedom.  It is true that forced slavery existed throughout history; and it is true that rural people have been enslaved and colonized by others throughout history.  However, it is notable that, prior to the advent of grid power, the people could only be subjugated by military power, or by the persuasive power of philosophy or religion.  Historically, coercion had to come from outside the individual person, group, or society.  It was readily identifiable.  If the people were slaves, they were slaves to superior might and strength.  They could see their masters, and they could see their chains.  They were slaves to superior might and not slaves of themselves and of their own material and carnal lusts.  Contrarily, under the system of cheap and ubiquitous grid electrical power, the people became enslaved to the philosophy and religion of this world; and they submitted willfully to it, because by it they were enabled to fulfill their carnal desire for apparent comfort and security.  The slave is held most securely when he is held by the chains of his own will and of his own fears, and when he is locked down by his own slavish desires for a comfortable life.  For a slave mind to turn against his master and seek to return to a life of freedom, a revolution is in order.

A quick word about Revolution:  In the last chapter I said that when illegitimate power is overthrown by those with legitimate power you have a revolution.  I don’t want people to be confused.  Conflicts are often called revolutions that are not revolutions at all.  When one tyrant is overthrown and replaced with another one, one that has the same ends or the same goals and the same basic philosophy, you have had a coup de tat, but not a revolution.

The overthrow of the Russian Czar system that began in 1917 is called The Russian Revolution, but the results show that it was really a coup de tat and not a proper revolution.  The book Animal Farm by George Orwell illustrates how the new rulers adopted the same tyrannical methods and philosophies of the old rulers.  The Russian people, poor and powerless after centuries of life under the thumb of the Russian Czars, threw off the shackles of the czar only to find themselves under the thumb of the Communists.  While it is true that many Russians did have hope that things would get better and that they would be afforded basic freedoms and that their conditions would improve, in reality, after the revolution, they wanted the same things they had always wanted.  There was no real change.  There was no revolutionary change in the philosophy of living.  If the Czar had offered the peasants some fundamental freedoms, they would have been more than happy to continue under the Czar.  The people had not experienced a wholesale change of heart and mind – they had just had enough.  Most Russian peasants wanted one simple thing; they wanted the government to get off their backs.  The average Russian countryman didn’t have an overwhelming love and admiration for the Bolsheviks or the Mensheviks or for any other new political voice or party.  The people just figured that any government that promised them freedom had to be better what they been experiencing.  Freedom sounded better than the serfdom they had experienced under the Czar.  This is, unhappily, the truth behind most so-called “revolutions.”  When the people find their current state intolerable, they go along with whoever might overthrow the latest tyrant.  We will examine these motivations and their results more later on in this chapter.

The First Revolution:  Revolution in the Mind and Heart

If the people of Russia had been truly converted to a whole worldview of freedom; if they had individually and corporately experienced a conversion to a compelling and complete philosophy of freedom; if the average Russian (and the people as a whole) had been committed and irrevocably bound to a truly revolutionary idea, then the Communists would have quickly gone the way of the Czar.  Once a man is wholly and truly converted to a right philosophy of freedom and life, he is never going to be satisfied with less than that.  A true revolution, then, is founded on conversion in the mind and heart.  When the mind is converted, the man naturally follows.  Tyrants know this.  Colonizers know this.  Why do you think that the prophets of industrialism and consumerism spend billions and billions of dollars on converting minds?  What do you think advertising is?  The industrial consumer society is built wholly on consumption, and the minds of consumers must be completely and utterly colonized in order to make the people true believers.  Jesus Christ knew the power of the marketing forces of the world.  This is why His apostles warned, “We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out.  And having food and raiment let us be therewith content” (1Ti 6:7-8).  Jesus brought a revolution, and He did it by converting the minds of men.  He and His messengers taught men that worldliness (the world’s way of doing things) was folly, and could lead only to eternal disaster.  His philosophy was revolutionary, in that those who were converted to it valued nothing (even their lives, families, etc.) more than they valued obedience to Him and His Word.

When I teach that the mind has to be decolonized, I am teaching and advocating nothing less than true revolution.  This revolution must take two forms.  The first revolution is internal.  It is a conversion of the mind: an overthrowing of the old way of thinking, of the old lusts and desires, and of the old worldview.  The second revolution is external.  It shows forth the product of different wants and desires, different principles, and a different worldview.  Decolonization is a revolution.  Decolonization is the process of coming to different conclusions than we have come to before (or than the world expects and pushes) based on the facts in evidence.  It is the process of having our minds rewired so that we think differently, so that we want different things; and it is the process of shedding the lifetime of false conclusions we have reached based on false and misleading evidence.  Every element of the industrial system (which is the prevailing system of the world today), its foundations, its systems of survival, its methods and maxims, must be examined.  From our youth, when our carnal minds were first encouraged to abandon the old paths and constantly seek whatever new and modern wisdom was being preached by the prophets of “success” and “comfort,” we have been undergoing training and indoctrination into the global industrial system.  The world calls us “consumers” because that is what we are.  The world system needs eaters and buyers, so it creates and trains them.  Colonizing and training minds is the ultimate purpose behind public education.  In an industrial/consumer society, the mind must be colonized; and that colonization must begin at an early age, so that real production forever remains in the hands of the elite, and so that no one ever dares examine or question if the emperor is actually wearing any clothes.  Only if you have followed the world’s system of colonization, and only if you have succeeded in showing yourself an apt and able proselyte of the consumer religion, will you ever be accepted (or even tolerated) by the world system.

As I mentioned in the last chapter, words have been redefined, reality has been obscured, and old truths have been convoluted and twisted until people actually believe that they are the philosophical offspring of their forefathers.  Every American child is told, “If you work hard and excel and do what the world expects from you, why, you could grow up to be the President!”  Hereby the child is trained to believe that freedom exists in the possibility that right behavior (meaning behavior consistent with the desires of the colonizer or of the system) can ultimately lead to political power and the authority to coerce others.  These children are not told that most of their ancestors came here because they had had enough of government coercion (and of the coercion of government churches, by the way), and that they wanted nothing more than to be left alone so that they could farm and be free.  We have been taught what to want, and we have been taught that wanting the right things is what makes us good and valuable to the system.  Our first revolution, then, must be in the mind and heart.  In a sense that parallels the Christian experience, we must be converted.  Our desires must change, and we must be convinced – not just in our minds and in our hearts – but we must be spiritually convinced of the dangers and death that accompanies the world’s way of doing things.  Only when it is given to us to see the world as it is, will we be made willing to engage in revolution.

The Second Revolution:  Overthrowing the System

The second revolution is external.  When the colonizer finds out that revolution is afoot, he becomes very, very angry.  When the slave-holder comes to learn that his slaves have been turned against him, he will become distressed and fearful.  When the proselytes of the industrial/consumer religion see that you have become a renegade to their cause, they become avowed enemies.

The first step in the Second Revolution is the recognition that something must be done.  Decolonization starts as an internal process, but at some point it must break outwards into the world in which we live.  If the mind and heart are converted, the body will inevitably begin to obey its new “operating system” (much like computers obey their programming).  Once we learn and believe that our system has produced death, destruction, cultural and social decay, slavish dependence, and an unviable life, it is natural that we will want to begin to exit that system and free ourselves from its influence.

Ultimately, this book is about this second revolution; however, in order to extricate ourselves from our dependence on the world and its consumer system, we must first recognize that we are slaves to it.  That is the purpose of the first few chapters of this book.  If we do not recognize our slavery, we will never move towards freedom.

A Pair of Tests

Here are a couple simple tests that you can use to judge your dependency level, and whether or not you are a slave to the current system.  In order for these tests to provide useful information for you, you must be totally and brutally honest with yourself.  The tests are shockingly simple, but it is also remarkably easy to cheat on them.  Remember, the carnal mind is capable of rationalizing any behavior and any lie.  So, if you cheat or lie to yourself, you will only be harming yourself.

The Dependency Test

Ok, here is the first test.  We’ll call this first test the “Dependency Test”.  Answer each question honestly.  I recommend that you get a pen and paper and that you write down each answer fully and thoughtfully:

1.  Would you call the world we live in today morally and culturally good,  or morally and culturally corrupt?  Are you and your generation more wholesome, holy, and righteous; or do you believe that society and the culture has degraded through time?

2.  If you know anything about your own history or your own ancestry, would you say that you are more or less dependent on the world “system” than your ancestors were?

3.  Can you feed and clothe yourself?  Can you provide heat, light, shelter, etc. for yourself and your family?   If the world grid system (electricity, “just in time” food, water, etc.) was to collapse, and no outside help was forthcoming, would you be likely to perish?  Be honest here, because here is where the mind is able to fantasize and create unrealistic “solutions.”  If today or tomorrow, starting at noon, your electrical power was cut off, and you had no access to the “just in time” food and water delivery system, would you survive?  If so, for how long?

4.  If you were able to survive for a time (maybe you are a survivalist, or a “prepper,” or maybe you have access to survival material sources, or stored food, and maybe you live next to clean water source), is your survival temporary or is it sustainable?  Is it based on “pulling through” or bare survival; for example, making it until the grid system comes back or until help arrives from outside?

Now, depending on how honestly you have answered each of these questions, you ought to have some kind of indication of how viable you are in your current situation and how dependent you are on the world system for your well-being and survival.  Many, many people are as deceived about their physical condition as they are about their spiritual condition.  I hear it all the time, people will say, “I have 3 months (or 1 year or 7 years) supply of dehydrated food,” or “I live where there are a lot of deer and other game animals,” or “I took some survival courses,” or my all time favorite, “I will just go into the woods or the wilderness and survive off the land.”  Right.  Anyway, as we mentioned in the last chapter, the concept that “survival” is just a way to temporarily bridge the gap during a crisis situation until things return to “normal” is a failed survival philosophy.  It insists that the anomaly of grid living experienced during the last century is “normal;” it presupposes that the industrial/consumer grid system is “good;” and it absolutely rests on the ridiculous notion that the industrial/consumer Ponzi scheme can continue indefinitely without collapsing.

The Slavery Test

The first test was the Dependency Test, and it was designed to make you consider how dependent you are on the system.  This next test can be a little more painful.  I call it the “Slavery Test”, and I am hopeful that it will cause you to think very carefully about how enslaved you are to the current system.  This test necessarily rests upon what we have learned in the previous test.

Ok, here we go:

1.  If you were to determine through prayerful consideration that the current industrial grid system is dangerous for you and your family and harmful to your physical and spiritual condition, could you walk away?  Immediately?

2.  Write down what conditions hinder you from walking away.  Are you broke?  Are you deep in debt?  Are you locked into a long-term mortgage or some “obligation” from which you feel you cannot walk away?

3.  If you became convinced that moving to an off-grid or off off-grid lifestyle was the thing to do, would you be hindered from doing so by your family?  By your friends?  Would you be threatened with the loss of the ties of family and friends if you rejected their lifestyle and moved away from it?  Would the persecution you would suffer from renouncing the world’s way of doing things keep you from obeying your conscience?

4.  Are you hindered by your ignorance?  Do you feel like you don’t have the skills, the strength, the know-how, or the courage to leave the grid system?

5.  Are you hindered by your circumstances?  Are you physically or mentally unable to make a change in your lifestyle?  Are you suffering from the consequences brought about by your poor or unbiblical decision making?  Are you hindered by an unbelieving spouse, or some other situation that is regrettable, but of your own making?

6.  Are you paralyzed by fear?  Does the thought of leaving your comfort zone keep you from ever challenging the things you have believed all of your life?

Answering these questions can be very painful or irritating.  Chains are often painful and irritating… especially those we may not have admitted we have.

We have now arrived at the precise spot where the rubber meets the road.  I hope you have been honest in taking these two tests, and I hope you have written down your answers.  Slavery is often identified by the use of chains.  Chains represent the restriction of movement, and their use represents the submission of the slave to the one who has put him in chains.  Chains can be physical, mental, or spiritual.  There are multiple types and kinds of chains used by the world to keep folks under the impression that they are helpless or powerless to change their condition, and it would serve us well to do a quick study on these methods (or chains).

Blind Mice and a Carving Knife

Secular government intelligence agencies learned decades ago that there are basically four factors that motivate individuals to join or support certain causes or movements.  Agents can be recruited or manipulated by using these four principle motivations.  These motivating factors (or chains) are used by intelligence agencies, politicians, individuals, corporations, families, and nations to motivate individuals and groups towards certain actions.  In the espionage business, these four motivations are known by the acronym M.I.C.E.  Knowing what M.I.C.E. means, and being able to recognize what motivates people (and ourselves) will go a long way in helping us to identify and quantify our the chains that bind us:

M – Money (includes Debt, Comfort, Leisure, “Stuff”, etc.)

I – Ideology (Patriotism, Religion, Philosophy)

C – Coercion (Compromise, Fear, Force, Hostility, Grudges, Disaffection)

E – Ego (Excitement, Position, Status, Importance)

Understanding M.I.C.E. helps us get a grasp on what motivates people, and a thorough study of it can help us identify what chains are being used to attempt to hold us or manipulate us.  Go back through your answers on the Slavery Test and next to your answers try to identify and write down which motivational chain is being used to keep you enslaved.  Every spy in history was recruited according to a motivational propensity or predilection; and one or more of these motivational categories were used in the recruiting.  Satan uses all of the tools in these categories to motivate worldlings to operate according to his power.  Every world religion and cult except True Christianity uses one or more of these categories (and the elements within those categories) to motivate to action to bring about loyalty.

True Christianity is the only religion that concedes in its doctrines that these motivations are inadequate for the production of true, spiritual loyalty and love.  True Christianity teaches that a love of money is the root of all evil, and that the desire to operate according to the principles of mammon is a sign of the damned and not of the elect.  Jesus Christ taught that feigned or human loyalty would crumble under pressure and stress.  True Christianity teaches that there is a new and spiritual Kingdom, not of this world, and that the desire for the things of this world (money, position, power, status, etc.) will be one of the first things slain in the heart of the regenerate.  Jesus Christ and His Apostles taught that we could not obey or love Him without His gifts of Grace and Mercy, and that we must receive a new heart and a new mind from Him in order to see and hear clearly and to obey Him.  The Bible teaches that coercion or servile fear (like that used by modernist “christianity” to motivate or “save” people) is insufficient to move people to Godliness and obedience, and that we must have the gift of new operative principles divinely imputed and imparted to us in order for us to operate truly as Christians.  Jesus Christ taught that the low and humble would be made high, and that the meek would inherit the earth.  He taught that those who would be rich will be made eternally poor, and that the poor in spirit would be the rich in His Kingdom.  He taught that we are of a different country, and that we are ambassadors of a different and spiritual nation.  In light of this wisdom, it can be a very valuable for us to re-examine our motivations and see how we are shackled by our own sinful principles.

Let’s do some exercises.  Here are some other things I hear or read almost every day when I am contacted by people who read the things I write.  Pay attention to what people are saying, and see if you can identify the motivation.  Then, maybe write down some things you yourself have said, or some things that others have said to you that expose and uncover our true motivations.  Here are a few examples:

“I was raised on a farm, and I would never want to go back to that life!  I love the conveniences of modern society and don’t want to change anything.”

From this we can determine that this person is motivated by category “M”, specifically leisure, comfort, and money.

Let’s do a quick rundown of many of the other excuses.  The motivational chains will be listed in parenthesis:

“I have a family to support and debt to pay off.” – (Money, Fear, Philosophy, Coercion)

“I have a job and things are tough out there.  How would I survive?” – (Money, Fear, Philosophy, Position)

“My family (friends/church) would disown me.  My children will think I’m crazy.  My wife will leave me.” – (Fear, Position, Status, Philosophy, False Religion, Ideology, Ego, Compromise)

“I don’t have any skills.  I would be lost. I’m old/young/single and unable to do what I would like.” – (Fear, Compromise)

“I was always taught that this (the way of the world) is the way to live.  If it was good enough for my parents, then it is good enough for me.” – (Ideology, Philosophy, Status)

There are no lies as dangerous as those we tell ourselves about ourselves.  Most slaves and most colonized people are not willing to rise up and overthrow their oppressors for a few basic reasons:

First, they do not believe that they are slaves, or they think that their condition of bondage is acceptable, or that slavery is better than freedom.  In some cases, the mind is so thoroughly colonized or the slave has been so thoroughly brainwashed that he actually comes to have the same mind as the slave-holder or the colonizer.  There is a term in psychology called The Stockholm Syndrome.  The term “Stockholm Syndrome” was coined to identify a psychological reaction often seen in abducted hostages.  Quite often, when a person is captured, enslaved, or abducted against his or her will, after a time they will come to identify and show loyalty to their captor or hostage-taker.  Although the psychological response has been around forever, the term was first used after a bank robbery in Stockholm, Sweden in 1973.  In that case, bank robbers held the employees of the bank hostage for six days; and during that time, many of the hostages became loyal and emotionally attached to their captors.  Some of the hostages even fought to defend their captors after they were freed.  I believe that most of the people who defend this current world, who love it and become emotional or defensive when it is disparaged, or who advertise for it and who are loyal to it, suffer from a mental condition that is identical to Stockholm Syndrome.

Second, they have been taught from a very young age that conformity and syncretism are good and right and that they will lose everything and be poor, hungry, and miserable if they do not conform to the world’s way of doing things.

Third, their consciences are seared.  To admit that they are slaves, or that they are helpless to improve their condition, or that the philosophy and ideology on which they have based their worldview and lived their lives is wicked, would be a final burn burden on a conscience already seared by a lifetime of compromise.

Examining our motivations helps us to understand just who has the rule over us, and exposes what lies we have believed.  Many revolutions have begun when the people, brutalized by tyranny, weighed down by burdens they cannot carry, and hoodwinked by lies and deceptions, suddenly come to an understanding that things do not have to be the way that they are.  A revolution ought to start with a good and accurate sense of our current condition.

Revolutions are bloody things, and they can never be done half-way.  A revolution will (and ought to) cost us everything.  Jesus said, “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me. He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it” (Matt. 10:34-39).

I said towards the beginning of this chapter that the Second Revolution begins when we admit that something must be done.  That is the topic of our next chapter.