What's on my mind right now is this crossroads of how to present one's persona in a very confusing political time.
One phrase would be a political chameleon or a centrist.
The extremists on either side of the right or left would have you believe that you were safer and more honest and more pure and more blessed, etc. If you were to fully align with some form of extremism, which to me, is very tactically disadvantageous, it's very limiting.
I've had many debates with people on, on various extremes about whether that strategy, that tactic of being a political chameleon is actually wise.
It depends on the circumstances and what you're trying to accomplish and who you're trying to roll with and associate with, and for what reasons.
So for me, I've had to be on a personal journey of reconciling what I would call more of a covert or clandestine or camouflaged identity, where I can blend and I can roam among different factions and have enough of a understanding and fluency with the language of the politics to commiserate on points that I agree with and agree to disagree gracefully in a manner that doesn't get me ousted or shunned from either side.
So I get to have, I would say, a balanced perspective. I balance my information. And I've learned from the intelligence community, what I've studied about them, some of the personalities within it. There's an operative who would say, I wake up every day, I read the centrist newspaper, I read the leftist newspaper, I read the right wing newspaper. And that's every day over a cup of Joe as someone who's deployed in the field and who’s life depends on it and who’s mission depends on it.
So I do stand by that intelligence approach to centrism, so that you can when you need to, when you're contracted to or when it's your own prerogative, be a political chameleon.
But what that requires, though, and this is where it gets interesting, is applying covert arts and clandestine arts, where you may not necessarily be a ninja wearing brown to deflect the night vision, natural sensory perception of the cells of the eye.
There's this nuance about exactly what color of clothing the ninjas would wear to blend in and to have their shadow, their figure be broken up within the shades of the night, nuance around the size of the moon, etc.
But I'm talking about not the art of invisibility per se, but the art of blending in and being able to be anonymous in a crowd, or anonymous in a movement. It's a trade off because there is this, I don't wanna say it's inherent but I’ll say that there is an engineered desire to be more than others certainly in the modern world, where folks in permaculture have called it an identity crisis, where it's difficult for the modernized mind, to the modernized ego, to humble itself into the tao of a village social psychology and a flattened hierarchy of wealth and power.
Because we're all trained to aspire to be rock stars and movie stars. And like Tyler Durden said in Fight Club, we're slowly learning the fact that we're not gonna achieve that. And it's very frustrating. So there's this constant disillusionment and frustration with hoping to achieve more and to be more and to be an icon and to have popularity and fame and fortune and that distraction and that drive to be more than others.
It's sort of counterbalanced by the crabs in the barrel. But maybe the crabs in the barrel are actually doing us a favor, trying to help us avoid our peril and to keep us in a more humble state where we're focused on the soil and on the horticulture and on each other at a small scale, at a local scale.
So maybe that is the redemptive narrative of what the crabs in the barrel metaphor is all about.
But what I'm struggling with, and what I'm talking about is this inherent contradiction or paradox between someone who is either trained to or trying to be a covert operator or a political chameleon or engaged in clandestine activities that inherently, that requires that you trim and prune your ego because you're not trying to stand out.
You're not trying to be seen or recognized or known or associated with anything.
If your cover story is that you're a tourist or you're a journalist, or you're a diplomat or a delegate with a diplomatic cover.
Then you're supposed to work at the embassy and do some very mundane job that doesn't involve being suspected of being a spy.
So in the whole spycraft world that I'm studying, we all have our appetite for clandestine operations, even if it's just wondering who in our workplace makes more than somebody else, or wondering if our spouse or partner is cheating.
There's all kinds of spycraft that we engage in. We don't have to be James Bond or working for the CIA or whatever it is to have an appreciation for the craft and to learn about it and to understand how we fit into that grand scheme of things.
For me, it's at a point politically where I like the idea of minimizing the desire to be iconic and rich and famous.
Because I'm an artist and I have various creative ambitions and impulses, now I have to reconcile how do I achieve certain objectives as an artist, while maintaining that political chameleon cloak, and while maintaining the better aspects of covert operations and better aspects of being clandestine.
Part of that is destroying social media, because it's social media of almost every kind...or at least of the social media accounts, most of the ones I had years ago before, I took this path of going dark in certain ways, they all blow your cover. They all dox your true identity, most of them, or lead people down that bread crumb trail.
Certainly the platforms themselves and their advertisers know everything about you, it's out of your control.
So I've minimized the platforms that I use to promote my works, to those where I have the option to at least disable comments to minimize the trolling activity.
Doesn't mean that I expect to be completely anonymous, although it's a matter of having dials and controls.
How much of my face do I want out there, a little bit or a lot, and under what terms and conditions and on what platforms?
So I'm comfortable now with how I'm going about what I'm doing, because there are hats that I wear that are offensive to some people, and vice versa.
There's people who embrace me for what I represent in one camp, and there's people who reject me for what I represent from the other camp.
So if I'm gonna wear multiple hats and be that political chameleon that I have to be in order to achieve objectives that are transcendent of the extremism of either the left or the right...
I'm my own player, my own operative, my own intelligence shop, with my own objectives and my own missions and it's one link chain of command.
Under those circumstances, I wanna have as much control as I possibly can.
I've made this joke with another friend of mine who's on a similar path, which is, isn't it nice that we don't have a Wikipedia page yet?
Because if we did, that would blow our cover on everything.
All of the dots would be connected on both sides. All sides that are not in agreement with each other would see that we are operating behind enemy lines from both of their perspectives.
They may or may not appreciate the transcendent agenda, which is, for me, it's to unite and define common ground, for me permaculture is about uniting the right and left and growing a strong foundation, strong nationhood and nationalism and a very natural nationalism, holistic nationalism that's not xenophobic and not racist and not bigoted but that is rooted in the ideas of live and let live.
I've talked about that at length. So if I'm exposing and blowing my cover by saying that, then so be it.
Yes. If you're leftist or if you're a rightist, I want you to make peace in the center around the practice of permaculture design in your life and communities, I think that will smooth out those rough edges of extremism and help people really make a home, a beautiful home out of the earth.
A beautiful home out of the land that they share with people they don't necessarily agree with, spiritually, politically, etc.
In order to do that mission, I'm gonna have to break some eggs to make some omelettes and I wanna do that in a way where I have as much control as I possibly can of the narrative of who I am and what I am and what I'm doing.
But the paradox, again, is that, well, how do you then reconcile...Okay, well, that means I'm political. I'm committing commercial suicide. Because if I wanna keep my profile low and keep my self below the radar, oh well, then if I'm a musician, then I have to be wary of the potential of creating, of getting on the charts and getting booked and being in any way shape or form, a star.
And the fact is, on small scales, I have already achieved that. So it's a matter now of dialing down, rather than dialing up that exposure.
Again, it tells you where I'm at in the grand scheme of things, to say, I don't have a Wikipedia page that I'm aware of.
If I did and it was honest, then it would have a discography of all the albums that I've done, and some of them are iconic in their own right within certain sub cultural, underground musical genres.
I've written for various publications that are iconic in various worlds.
So if all of my resume and all of my creative works and accomplishments and credits were all in one place, then it would be interesting to a lot of different factions how I was able to dance between all these worlds.
I'm not trying to promote that. I'm trying again, to minimize that.
And if I were to in any dimension of any of the work I'm doing, stand out and be more recognized than I am as an individual voice, than it would create that exposure.
And it would create that stew of understanding of my backgrounds and I'm trying to avoid that.
So now it's an interesting art of thinking about what people like the Green Berets do, where it's not about them being the force or the tip of the spear, it’s about them being in the shadows and training up the indig so that they themselves become the tip of their own spear. They can be the most well trained and well armed. Well equipped, highly skilled replicas of the special forces, so that they can do operations on their own behalf.
And the Green Berets may or may not accompany them, sort of at the other end of the spear, the handle of the spear, if you will.
But they’re supporting those efforts from the shadows as much as possible.
Because what would happen if it was known or exposed that these US covert operators were there tipping the scales of tactical advantage to an underground militia of some sort anywhere in the world.
That's the job of the intelligence community sort out. And to get people in there, maybe wearing flip flops, hawaiian T shirts and shorts so that they don't cause any alarm as they're going through customs.
There's a whole art to being squared away, and not looking squared away when you're entering the host nation under whatever cover story and action cover.
That stuff interests me because as a civilian eco warrior, a solo militia, a security force of one with my own agendas and my own objectives and missions it does become a very interesting study to look at what these guys do, the contractors the ex- tier one operators working in private military companies, doing missions of security detail or other forms of intelligence operations or training operations abroad outside of the military.
Those would be people I would hire, people I would study, I would be mentored by because they have that experience and they know what it's like.
They may be doing security detail for someone who is rich and famous, someone who has infinitely more clout and power than they do.
Yet, these silent professionals, because they are in love with their craft, it's enough for them to have their man card, to have their sense of purpose and service and duty and honor.
All of that being literally in the shadow of these rich and famous figures that they're doing executive protection for that they would take bullets for being their bodyguards or their escorts, or whatever.
But to me, I'm interested in the psychology of those types of operators, because they have made a bonsai tree out of their ego.
They could be sitting there, squared away, standing there, doing their security detail, armed to the teeth, with all their communications, and putting all of their training and background from battlefield combat and their own deployed covert operations while they were enlisted, etc.
They're applying all of that skill and knowledge, and yet they're able to say, in their inner sanctum, I'm not the star.
I'm not the center of attention. I'm trying to minimize my exposure.
I'm trying to not go and post on social media. Hey, look, here's me shaking hands with so and so executive, rock star, political delegate or diplomat, or royalty, or whatever detail that they're on, they're supposed to be the silent professionals who are secure psychologically, emotionally, in there place in a totem pole.
But what I love to think about is that those people who are over exposed, who are vulnerable, who their faces are out there and they need to have protection, the security detail of those former tier one operators.
That those people, they sacrifice a lot.
They have all of that glamour but what they lack is that ability to be a clandestine operator, the ability to be the covert operator, and the fulfillment and the satisfaction that comes from that.
So I'm leaning towards wanting to be in the shadows. And it's interesting for me in my artistic development and careers that maybe yes, there's a place for me to be the front man.
But, if I'm gonna operate these ways, maybe I'm only that front man in a very underground, dark manner, where my performance of my music is something that only happens deep in the jungle with a few people, in a small setting.
Where no one is aware that it's happening, and that that becomes more fulfilling than playing a stadium or touring the world in a very public manner, where I'd have to have a lot of security, because people would not, in some places, be very thrilled about what I represent.
How do you hack your own stardom lust and say, the the more spiritual path, the more secure path, the more fulfilling path is to think like these operators who go, it's not about me. it's about the mission.
And so I don't need to be the front man that the world can throw arrows at. In fact, I cannot let one arrow come my way. So I have to be as anonymous as possible.
So yes, I'm out there in the world. I don't have cosmetic surgery. I'm not wearing a mask in public. I'm me. I'm out there. And I'm in this limbo of not being recognizable to anything but AI at this point, so I can walk in the world.
But I'm walking a fine line of if I'm going to promote and push and develop my artist career, I'm probably gonna find ways to do so that I'm not jeopardizing other aspects of my political development.
There is a way to think about my mission as an artist and actually transform some of that energy and apply it to people who have a similar agenda, but that are far more comfortable being on stage, being in public, having a Wikipedia being on social media.
So it's an interesting craft. Now, I'm saying, if we have a similar message, and I don't wanna be exposed, hyper exposed or overexposed, then the people who already are, if I can train them to deliver and be a vector and to carry the message that I care about, then I can be anonymous.
And they can be the ones who have chosen that path of hyper exposure, which limits them and keeps me unlimited in ways that they're now limited.
So yes, they've got more money, more clout, more power, more influence, and yet they've had limitations.
I don't need to sacrifice the freedom that I have to operate in a more stealth manner.
So that's my personal reconciliation of the how and the why, why you would choose to be more clandestine.
And a lot of people, they just can't fathom that. They cannot fathom shutting off social media exposure and being addicted to scrolling and refreshing to see how many likes their post got to be able to break free from that, and to have it not be all about you and your ego.
But to have a broader mission that can be fulfilled by other means.
To me, that is an advanced path of wisdom, spiritually, tactically and strategically.
I derive an understanding and appreciation from those operators who have achieved that internally.
This one of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite former Navy seals, who says, we get paid to go places and do things that billionaires cannot pay to do.
That's not an experience I'm gonna have in this life. I'm not gonna be in that club, but I'm gonna study the people who come out of that club and talk about how they designed their ego and their mind, the story that they have of a humble, shadow dwelling, clandestine covert operator who does not get credit for the good deeds and the good times that they have.
And only in very small circles could they ever even talk about their war stories, until maybe years later they're declassified, and they can write a book about it.
So I guess, what you have look forward to you if you stay clandestine, you stay covert and you shut it, you zip it until it's declassified, and then you can write your best seller.