City Abandonment Reservations

notes on another utopian dream, personal in nature

Scenario Crux

Building here :: try to find the glow of a city. I'm trying to(o). I figure, 'hell, you can read all the rant below, but what am I left with?' So from here on, I'm putting together framgments of a place I live. I've found some mushrooms! And some old manuscripts of the place. Dense. My brother, Rae and I found a somalian restaurant here. So come back - if for some reason you would be interested in how a person puts together information on a place.

Presage

The City Abandonment Plan is a dream I nurture about changing my lifestyle. Crudely stated, I want to live in the country and and grow food to eat. But for me, the City Abandonment Plan has become the most radical protest imaginable in response to the general state of (global) affairs. Dating back to Epicurus, I suppose the idea has been escapist historically. But the abandonment of the world's global cities, at least in dream form, would be more aggressive than escapist.

Ken Gave Birth

The City Abandonment Plan was born of a romantic vision of the global city.

The city is where we gather to do business. Many of us work hard to meet what we understand to be our needs. Cities are the factories that produce global order. Of course, the world does not revolve around cities. Nonetheless, the political economy depends upon every aspect of cities for it's execution. The global order depends on the workers in the city - it relies on the work many of us do. The city is first a place. It refers to the infrastructure and arrangement of elements integral to the support of life. More than any of this, the city is the people who occupy it. This people is a flexible group with pluralistic interests. But the mechanisms of global order often bring that people's interests into unison. Urbanites work hard to meet their needs, which are influenced by traditional perceptions and the consumer machine.

Many of us love the city for its activity and opportunity. The mechanisms of the city show us the way to fulfill not only our material and physiological desires, but our social wants. The city is the meeting ground for artists, hipsters, activists, academics and other elite. Critical mass is reached in the city, to the delight of those of us who participate. There are conferences, demonstrations, theatre performances, shopping spectacles and raves. Behaving like a great digester or fermenter, the city helps reproduce culture.

Everything about the city is easily appropriated as a testament to humanity's achievement. This is never really the case (since nothing can speak for humanity), but it is true in some ways. The elements, transformations and processes of a city can be read as our lives. The city has something to tell us about what we are.

clearHead

As "The City Abandonment Plan" implies, I think many of us should take a step back from the city. We need some mental distance in order to take a look at who we are. Actually leaving the city (or staying away) is not the gospel of CAP. The City Abandonment Plan is about starting something new. It is about allowing a dream to infect our thinking. CAP, more than anything, is a call to evaluate our participation in a global system, and consider the meaning of our everyday actions in a global and poetical context. Take an American example: the act of riding the bus to work in Chicago is not different from eating lunch in the US army mess tent in Iraq. There is nothing wrong with getting where you need to go, or eating. The fare, as well as the food, however, is subsidized by the global order, that wants you, that needs you to take that trip/bite. CAP is about real freedom - the freedom to see the real decisions we make unconsciously, the freedom to not be scared and hungry (though I have never been hungry). I will call this freedom clearHead to avoid the ugly connotations of that more common use of the word.

clearHead is foundational for The City Abandonment Plan. But this is basis upon which I felt impelled to do something. clearHead, as my terminology implies, is not about thinking something in particular. Following the Marxist example, clearHead refuses to acknowledge a gap between mind and body. Words, actions and thoughts exist on the same playing field. Looking for a place to start protesting the global order, and looking for what we really mean and sentient beings, CAP would inquire into our physiological and social needs. What does it take to be happy?

CAP for me

CAP, for me, is about touching the soil with a carrot seed. CAP is about seeing children learn in a school without teachers, but only caring friends. CAP is about taking the time to think about ethanol vs. bicycles. More than any of this (since the earth provides all), CAP is about having the time and mental environment to love life: to sing, write and organize labor.