Goals

I think it's time we had a talk, you and I.

As many an overpaid, overstuffed waste of skin guidance counselor has said, it's important to have goals.

What they don't tell you is that if your goals are even slightly off the rails, you will get little help.

And that is where I and mine run into trouble.

Our goals, on the face of it, are simple.

We want a patch of land to call our own and the right to manage it as we see fit. Our Fearless Leader has a dream of a palace of rusty shipping containers for his family. I'm partial to a log cabin on the edge of (or maybe within) a forest with a pack of dogs running loose and an arsenal in the basement.

We want a place to call our own, to sit on the porch when we're all sixty, seventy, eighty and beyond.

Nothing too extreme, right?

Where OUR goals run into trouble is in our "why."

We have looked around, taken stock of the world as it is and where it's going, and have concluded that it is, in a word, fucked. We see a planet run by irresponsible fuckwits with no eye for the future and no conception of how to deal in the here and now.

We've seen this, and we want out. We want off the goddamned ride before the damn thing jumps the tracks and kills us all.

We are, of course, not ready. We're a bunch of basically broke losers cursed with enough intelligence and awareness to mind our situation. There are so many things we need to know how to do... and so many pieces of equipment that we either cannot afford, or that we cannot legally obtain. We've got to do our share before we have any right to truly complain... but for once in my miserable life, I actually believe in the people I'm in with. I think we can, and will do it. After all, why should anyone care?

We want to self-sustain. That's it. We don't want to conquer the world, or save the whales, or make the planet safe for Afghan babies. We don't want to tell you what to do. We don't want to tell you who you can sleep with, or whether or not to buy a gun, or which chemicals you want to get good and wasted on. And we ask to be extended the same courtesy. To be left in peace by the powers that be- the powers that have run the world into the shitter.

"Your choice is who you choose to be,
And if you're causin' no harm, then you're all right with me.
My choice is what I choose to do,
And if I'm causin' no harm, it shouldn't bother you."