The Author’s Kingdom #6

The Author’s Kingdom is a series of articles, where the Author explains his perception of Heirs to the Kingdom. It is written to cover the festive season of Christmas 2016.

 

Modern Living?

When I first began to write HTTK, I was asked what would be the one bonus of the world grinding to a halt in a major disaster. I have not forgotten that moment because as I remember it, I took less than a second to answer it. It may appear like an odd question because in all honesty who would even want the Modern World as we know it to end?

Sad as it may appear, I would.

When asked at the time I answered without even questioning, and my answer was, the collapse of modern banking and multi-national corporations would be the greatest gift to humanity that we could ever wish for.

It blew the mind of the friend that asked the question, for a moment they stared at me unable to completely comprehend what I had said, and in my mind I could see in their eyes that the fight between green and stone had already begun.

Heirs to the kingdom is exactly that question answered through my eyes. I have brought the state of today down to simple camps, those who would fight to maintain the status quo, and those would throw it away for a more simple and sustainable way of living. Mason vs Loxley.

Life today is unnatural. As a race of beings we have sold out our values and given up our heritage and the skills that allowed us to develop into the beings we have become. Today no one really understands those vital skills that brought us here, we no longer knit, crochet or weave, we do not labour in our gardens to grow our own food that is healthy and chemical free, we have lost so many of our stone cutting and wood working skills that if disaster struck, we would more than likely starve to death, because eating money would not be a viable survival option.

Today we are born into a world where everything is created by machine, packaged and assembled in convenient large stores, where we travel out of town and collect what we need with the little money we own, and then we head home and eat the food, that is not really food, but some chemical laced enhanced molecular plastic mixed with a few real organic ingredients, and we sit at our electronic devices that inform us of the world view, that seldom contains the truth as it is manipulated to death by the media, and we live the fantasy of thinking this will make us happy.

We go to school, where once again we are taught the world view which is not really the truth, and we are taught to pass a test after years of sitting in a small classroom that will not help us create a good life, but it will inform the world of our place in the endless mass of working opportunities. We will be condemned to spend the next forty years, not earning enough to really live, as we can just about afford our bills. Without even noticing we have entered the labour machine and a lifetime of boredom and resentment as we work longer hours creating more rubbish for the world to buy. What we buy has designed obsolescence built into it, and it will break so we will throw it away, and add it to the landfill where it will decay and poison the land. We will simply buy the newer improved version and tell ourselves we cannot really afford it, but that is what credit cards are for, and again we will hold the fantasy that we are happy. Welcome to capitalism, a system of legal slavery, where we are the source of revenue that makes the top 4% richer and richer, and all we get is a pitiful existence as they reap the benefits of our labour.

I do not know anyone who really loves their job, I see a world around me filled with people who are becoming more and more isolated from each other. Everyone complains about their life as they count what little money they have and hope it might just be enough to get a cut price holiday for two weeks each year. They hold some false hope that by sitting in a strange foreign land for two weeks will somehow magically make the people they live next door to nicer, and their job somehow better when they return broke, and feeling a little worn out from the endless cocktails they drank to cover the fact they were counting the days in dread, and wishing their holiday would never end.

This is what we called the world of Modern Man. I could write pages of this stuff on the modern world, and the fake charade that people endlessly play to con themselves into thinking they are happy. I am told I am cynical, I argue that maybe I am just better informed, I am told I am just some unrepentant old hippie, and I agree, I am. I am told that I am just a dreamer, and need to grow up. I respond I am a writer, I watch people and study life deeply, and yes I do dream, it is a wonderful dream, because it is a dream where everyone wakes up. They snigger, tell me I am lost cause with a head full of magic and I smile… Maybe?………………… Stone Lover… Hippie!

I am a dreamer, I do indeed have a head full of magic, oh and what glorious magic it is, you see I have seen the greatest kind of magic there is. I have had the joy of spending the last 35 years of my life working in something I did love, and I am lucky to have found another love to sustain me through into old age, and it is not part of the machine, it is not part of some elaborate money making system, hell I am not sure looking at my bank balance each month there is a name for what I have become, I simply call myself writer. I do dream, I do look at life, pull it apart and then find ways to put it back in a way that has wonder, and yes I am not ashamed to say it has magic, deep and glorious magic.

I began my career in horticulture, I look back with great joy on it, because it was magic, I have had the privilege of working with something so wondrous and magical, it made every day a joy. It took one simple ingredient to make everything fascinating and glorious, you may know of this magic, it is in many books, and has been talked of often in the modern world, and yet it also something that was once a deep part of who we were as people, and yet most people have forgotten this wonderful and glorious magic power. I call her Runestone, you will probably know her better as Nature.

Want to meet her? Simply go outside and turn around and take a good long look, go on… look up… There she is in the form of a tree, go on take a good long look. Enjoy the structure, man could never in his wildest dreams create something that complex and intricate, and keep it looking as simple and beautiful as that. We see trees every day, and yet we never really take the time to look at them, and it is such a shame for there before you is the wonder of true magic. Look at its feet, look at that brown stuff it sits in, that my dear friend is the earth on which we live, and it is rich and organic and filled with millions of micro life forms and trace elements, all of which have one task, to sustain life.

We do have a choice in this world, and it is one that is not the easiest, but it is still a choice. We can live hand in hand with nature, we can throw away our paper money and grow our own food, farm our own livestock, weave our own clothes. The sun has free power, so does the wind and the water, and the crazy thing is, we have created the technology to actually do this, but we don’t.

I have built up this lifestyle and called it Loxley, Woodland, Green. All you have to do to sample it is read Heirs to the Kingdom, there it is, a simplistic way of living that reunites man with the earth, in a way that provides the very best of the modern world, working side by side with what we now call the old world view. It is a world which requires community, people working together, laughing together, sharing a way of life and at times crying together. It is a world of balance, and one that will not destroy what surrounds us, but respect it and nurture it because there is the understanding that actually we need it.

To quote John Lennon “You may say I am a dreamer, but I am not the only one.” I am not, there are a lot of people out there who think as I do, and within the story that I have written is the message of my belief that mankind can change, and can turn away from the banking world dominating multinational corporations to build something more in tune with the earth. We have forgotten that we are a part of this earth, we have forgotten that we need to understand that, and live as such, because if we do not, then just maybe like my story Nature will turn on us and there will be a mass extinction, and no amount of paper money or gold bars will prevent it. The reality is that if we continue treating the earth as we have, which is basically as our personal asset to strip and dismantle, mankind will not survive the next 1000 years.

Heirs to the Kingdom is not just some random fantasy filled with love and the struggle of a family against another family. It is a very serious message of what could be. I actually think it will be worse than I have portrayed it, but the message written throughout all of it is very real. I see the modern world as a con, and I do not believe I am wrong, the irony is because of the way world is, HTTK will never be a best seller and so my message will only reach a limited number of people. That is OK, because if a few of you understand my words, you may be able to change a few small things, and that could lead to other changes etc… I believe that if one man changes the way he lives, it does have an effect on others, and they may change as a result, and they will affect the lives of others, and so on….. and so on. But hey I am just a dreamer!