A Life in Rebellion | Ben Morea

Day Ten — Revolutionary Animism

Ben, I was thinking about the first time we met.

I remember, it was in Brooklyn.

At the Wyckoff space. We were at the same party.

That was early on, when I had just reemerged.

At first I didn’t know who you were. But you were very sweet and friendly, and we had a nice talk. Then later I realized, oh that was Ben Morea! And I was shocked. My image of you, I thought Ben Morea was kind of scary, like a scary biker man.

That’s why I never look in the mirror. I’m scary!

You know, I found some pictures from when you were younger. I could only find a few. But you really did look scary.

Yeah, I used to be more intense.

Still I believe you must have been very kind. Like towards the kids, you must have been warm and open.

I was. But I was an intense person.

Will you tell us about your decision to come back to the city? Why did you resurface, after so many years away?

Well, I don’t know how, but someone found out how to reach me. And she called and asked me to come to the city to speak. I told her absolutely not. I haven’t been there for forty years. I’m on some other trajectory, I’m involved with other energies. And the last thing I want to do is get back into the political ideological crowd. So I told her no, I apologized and hung up.

But I kept thinking about it. I first entered the world of resistance because I felt that things have to change, I decided I had to do something. Well, the world in the 60s was not as bad off as it is now. It’s actually worse now. So I felt bad saying no I won’t come back. And so I called her, I said I’ll try it. But don’t do a lot of advertising. If you keep it low key, I’ll try it and see if I fit, see what kind of questions people ask, how do I respond. So they had a small gathering at a space called 16 Beaver. That was the first time I spoke publicly since the 60s.

At first it was a little difficult for me. But I became comfortable with it, and I felt some sense of accomplishment. And then somebody mentioned there’s another place we want you to speak. I said okay, I’ll try it. And that was bigger, like a hundred people. Then somebody approached me and said they wanted to have a big assembly at the New School. And that was like 500 people. At that point I felt comfortable enough. So that was how it happened. It just kept growing.

That was also the time of Occupy right? Like 2011?

The New School was around Occupy. The earlier ones were before. You know, I’m no good with dates. But I felt like it was something that I had to engage myself in. I felt like, I’d spent forty years away, and things have gotten worse, if anything. And if I really wanted to see a change, I should contribute.

How would you describe how the world got worse?

It just feels like we’ve reached a point of larger tragedy. You know, with the environment, and now the pandemic, it’s like the whole thing is coming unglued. In the 60s we had a big struggle, but it was pretty clear what it was — you know, the struggle. But now it seems larger. The whole Earth is threatened with extinction. Everything is exacerbated.

*You said you left the political ideological crowd behind when you left the city. How did you find the political milieu, when you came back?*
In the 60s there were a lot of Trotskyists, Maoists, you know, different Marxists. And I had to spend time dealing with them. When I came back, it seemed there was a more open community, and a lot were less ideological. So it was more of an open base, less controlled. It felt like more fertile ground. I didn’t want to get into those internecine battles.

*What kinds of questions were people asking? Did you feel that you could respond, you were able to connect with people?
* In the beginning I was really nervous if there would be a focus on where I went and what I did those forty years I was away. I didn’t want to talk about that. But if people were more interested in what happened in the 60s, and how it pertains to today, that was a conversation that I felt more comfortable with. So I was anxious to see what the orientation would be. I found that most people wanted to talk about the 60s. Or they wanted to talk about art. Or about Valerie Solanas, some groups mainly asked about her. Every place I spoke, the questions were different. And there were less questions like where did you go, what did you do? So I felt more comfortable with dialogue.

And slowly I began to find a way to articulate what I did, and what I learned during those forty years, that would not pose a threat to where I went. I formulated a conversation around general terms. Like animism. Where I came from, the people were animists. But I didn’t want to identify those people. They had made room for me in their world. In no way would I expose it. But animism as an understanding, I saw could be introduced.

So now I’m comfortable proselytizing and expanding the concepts of animism, as a necessity. I personally believe that we cannot address the problems of the world without animism. Period. Capitalism is doomed. Religious ideology and theology are doomed. The humanist, materialist concept is over. But what replaces it? You have to have an understanding that transcends them. And to me, animism is what is necessary. To understand that we are part of something greater. We are not in control.

The humanist conception perceives the human as a pinnacle, above other forms of creation. And that’s a mistake. We’re no better. We have a different consciousness. But it’s not like other life forms are insignificant. They are as significant as us. And we have to understand how to interact with it. We’re just part of this larger reality. Until we understand that, we’ll never get along with it.

In the city everything is imported, commercial, provided. It seems like where you went, you did something different. You had to find food, you were exposed to the weather. And that also changed your perception of everything.

** Totally. And that’s what I did, it was not an ideological search. It was a search for an alternative. It wasn’t a search for another ideology. It was a search for another way of life.

You said that you changed a lot, from this experience.

To be honest, this might sound extreme — if I hadn’t changed, I’d be dead. This way of life allowed me to change. If you’re stuck with an urban consciousness, you can’t survive it.

*Will you say more about how?*
You have to begin to understand that nature is in control. You’re in its domain. It’s not in your domain. You’re in its domain, and you have to find a way to live with it. To be part of it. If you resist it, or antagonize it, you’re done!

That’s the beginning of animist understanding: we have to find a way to fit into nature. Nature doesn’t have to fit us. That’s what the Western, capitalist mind thinks, that nature is there for us to use. That’s how some people have destroyed the environment. They think of it only as a resource that they can use to make money, with no consciousness of what harm it might do. So they extract things from the Earth that they should have left alone. They do things with animals that they should not have done. That’s why we have pandemics! Their actions caused the pandemic. And if they don’t change, there will be future pandemics. The next one will be worse. Same with the storms, hurricanes, tsunamis, wildfires, drought, all of that. They’re only going to get worse.

I don’t know how to put it exactly, to make it clearer. But there’s a connection between what you do, and how nature responds.

That’s what you experienced directly when you were living in the wilderness. You had to learn how to interact.

Not only to learn, but you have to accept your role as a subservient part of a greater whole. You’re no longer in charge. See, that’s why the overuse of science is dangerous. It’s not that I’m against science. But the capitalist world thinks it can correct the problem through science. You can’t correct the problem through science. Science can maybe help to explain to you the problem. But you can only correct the problem by understanding nature, and changing your relation to it.

I like that way of thinking, to say that animism is a way for us to understand nature. That’s usually how we think about science. But you’re saying that actually, as an understanding of nature, animism is more powerful than science.

And animism is a way of understanding that the universe is alive. It’s a living thing. It’s one. You are part of that one. You are not in charge of it. You are only part of it. And if you understand that you are part of it, then your need is not to control other parts. Your need is to coexist, and be part of the whole process.

I mean think about it: the universe. Do you know how many stars, how many galaxies there are? We’re talking billions, they can’t even count them! And these idiots running around thinking that we are the center — of what? The Earth is not even a speck in terms of the universe.

For you, the sense of being part of it involves the sense of being small?

Being infinitesimal.

Being part means being infinitesimal?

Because the whole is so great that if you’re part of it, you’re infinitesimal. And you have no choice. It’s not up to you to decide.

*Also there’s infinity in the smallness. So both ways, it’s beyond us.*

Right. Like in Tantric philosophy there’s a saying: if it exists here, it exists everywhere. I always remember that saying because it’s so true. Whatever entity exists in the universe, it’s all made up of the same elements, like hydrogen or oxygen or whatever. So what exists in the universe, exists in us. There’s a whole universe in each of us. You’re a walking universe! So we’re both: we are a universe, but we are also part of the universe.

*So it’s an insignificance, but it’s a connection. But it’s hard to sense that connection maybe? Or I feel like people are aware and afraid of their insignificance, but not so much their connection.
* Actually I would say most Western people, not all people, but in Western culture they don’t think that they are part of something greater, they think that they are something greater. That’s the mistake. They feel like wow we’re reaching this… They’re not reaching anything! The further you reach the further you get away from what’s real. Like they got to the atom bomb, and they think that’s a high point. They’re getting closer to extinction by the day!

*And they say that’s progress for humanity.
* They think it’s a high point that humans have been able to understand the force of an atom. It was always there in nature, and so to understand it is one thing. But to recreate it is going to bring you to doom.

And the audacity — like America has hydrogen bombs. And they want to keep other countries from having nuclear bombs. Like they’re trying to keep Iran from having nuclear bombs. Meanwhile Israel has nuclear bombs. Well, if Israel could have them, and the US could have them, anybody could have them. I mean that’s logical. The US is not special.

They think they rule the world. And the war is always with non-Westerns.

They think. But what they forget is that nature rules the world. Nature doesn’t need an atom bomb. It is an atom bomb!

**Right, the sun is the atom bomb. **

And if you get to a point where you’re in the way, and nature doesn’t want you there, you’re gone! That’s what’s happening now. Nature’s saying that’s enough. You messed up enough.

So we have to recognize, people have to recognize that they’re only part of it. They’re not in control. The human is not the pinnacle of creation. The human is part of this creation — and only a part. Until we understand that, we’ll never get it right.

But to change the concepts of the human mind — a revolution is easy compared to changing the way people think. That’s overwhelming! That’s going to take a lot of work, and a long time.

*For you it was a long process of changing your thinking, changing your way of living… How do you think about it?*
I actually put in words in my mind: I wanted to go back to ground zero and see what I really needed. I went into the wilderness with nothing. I gave it all up! I gave it up to see what is really needed. What do we need to live? And that’s what led me towards animism: understanding that I am part of this larger reality.

That was a decision you came to, it was like an intuition you had when you left New York?

Yeah, I had that thought before I left. But I didn’t know how to implement it. Like I kept sensing that art and politics were important. But they weren’t enough. There’s something missing, what is it?

I had to give up all material comfort to find out, what do we need. And it was a spiritual awakening. It was an animistic understanding that I could not have found if I had stayed in the city.

Day Eleven — The Will to Live

Ben, we are waiting for your revelation today. Because we always come here thinking we’re going to ask Ben this or that. And you always introduce something great and totally unexpected. A new subject opens up every time. So we don’t have to ask you anything!

Actually, there is something I was thinking about. Use the metaphor of a car, say you have a car and different parts start to break down. The starter goes out, then the transmission goes out, then the radiator. You wouldn’t say well it’s a starter problem, or it’s a faulty transmission. You would begin to realize that the whole car is just old — or not even just old, but it reached the point where it’s no longer viable.

But people don’t look at culture that way. There’s global warming, there’s nuclear disaster, now there’s the pandemic: nobody says they’re all part of one problem. Instead they treat each issue separately. They want to solve the pandemic, so they make a vaccine. They want to solve global warming, so they cut greenhouse gasses. They don’t recognize that the culture itself is malfunctioning, and that’s the source of all these breakdowns. It’s really one problem, in a sense. And you’ll never solve the real issue if you treat them each separately. The only way to solve it is to recreate the whole cultural reality. The whole thing. To recognize something is wrong with this way of life. This culture, or whatever term you want to use. Something is wrong.

And that’s not really addressed by the Left, as far as I can see. Do you think?

**Maybe people try to think of the totality, but some just focus on the economy, or the environment, or discrimination. But not the intricate relationship between these powers. **

I was thinking about it, in other words I think that everybody has to confront it in their realm. So people who are involved in political struggle, that’s where they’re going to confront the problem. But at the same time, you have to consider it in its entirety. You can’t say it’s only a political problem.

Say a person who’s a school teacher, they have to deal with it in the classroom. That’s where they are every day. So they have to find a way to deal with it, to bring some understanding to their students. Or a person who’s an artist, they have to deal with it in their art. Whatever world you’re involved in, that’s where you’re going to deal with it. But even though that’s where your main energy is focused, you have to address it as part of the larger problem.

*To recreate the whole cultural reality, you said? That’s a major reframing.
* And that’s the only way… It may not be solved in our time. It may not be solved for generations to come. But we have to at least lay the groundwork so that it can be solved.

See that’s why, to me, the political struggle alone is not enough. It’s not just politics and the economy: you have to deal with the universe! In other words, the universe is the reality. And we have to figure out how to fit in it.

**Cosmic politics! That may be something only you can say, Ben, to frame the struggle in terms of the universe. **

Maybe I’m the only person foolish enough.

But in a sense you are doing it, in your life. Like living in the wilderness, you established a political relationship with nature, right? Mountains, stars, trees…

Right.

Bears, deer, mushrooms… You told us about getting sick from mushrooms.

I almost died. Twice!

Did you see some spirit? Like the spirit of a coyote, or a bear, or something?

No. I seen the void.

The void…

To be honest with you, I don’t have any recollection of that. I was completely unconscious. You know the word psychotropic? Where plants induce visions and consciousness. It wasn’t a psychotropic event.

Also you were hunting, so you had to learn how to track the animals and follow their movements. And you learned how to butcher and use different parts, like dry some part, or salt it. Did you ever eat raw meat?

Well, I don’t want to freak anybody out. But my habit, the minute I killed a deer, was to eat the heart raw, while it’s still pumping. Not the whole heart, you know they’re pretty big. But part of it.

Did it taste good?

I wouldn’t use the term good or bad. It’s a way of joining with the animal, on some other level. I don’t know what word to use, words are so limited. But it’s a way of recognizing its life force. It’s not just meat, like I got food so I’m gonna eat it. Instead you’re communing with it. Rather than treat it as an object, as a dead animal, you treat it as life. It was living, breathing, still pumping… And eating the beating heart was a way of connecting with the life I received.

One time, you won’t believe this, but one time I shot a deer in the heart. And it kept running. It ran maybe a thousand yards. And when I found it and gut it, I saw that the heart was split in two pieces. That’s how powerful the will to live is. The deer had run that distance with its heart split in two. 

*You felt awe?*

Absolutely. It’s a spiritual thing. To realize that the effort to live, the force of life is so strong that it could run with its heart split. It’s not just the deer, it’s this life force. It’s the same with all life. Even viruses, like now with the pandemic — they’re not going to just give up now that there’s a vaccine. No, there’s a vaccine and they’re gonna fight it, they’re gonna mutate and survive. Because it’s a living thing! And the more prevalent the vaccine becomes, the more mutations there will be.

It’s like antibiotics. Antibiotics were beneficial to some degree. They found something, it could help people. Then they overused it so much that it lost its efficacy. Now there are superbugs that developed to overcome the antibiotics. That’s how strong this life force is. It overcame the antibiotic.

That reminds me of these microorganisms, you know, there’s microplastics everywhere. And there are organisms that are adapting to use the plastics. Some life forms are already evolving.

That’s what this culture doesn’t understand, that all these things are alive. And they’ll do whatever they can to stay alive. They’ll mutate and pass it on, so the next generation survives.

**When you were hunting and you started to eat the heart, that was a kind of intuition? **

It was almost instinctual. All of a sudden I realized I could connect to it. It wasn’t like I thought about it in advance and decided to do it. I could just feel it. 

*And you would use most of the body parts, not just the meat but the heart and different organs?*
All of it. Or I tried to. That’s how Indigenous people are. If you’re going to take the life of an animal, you should use as much as of it as possible. First of all, I would pray before I took a life. Before I went hunting, I would pray and ask permission, and say thank you. I would express gratitude for that life that I was allowed to share. I wouldn’t just take it for granted.

*But how did you learn how to do it, technically? You learned from others, or you had to just experiment, like how do we use this part or that part? *
It’s a combination. But the first thing is the recognition that if you’re going to take a life, you should make use of it as much as possible. This life is so precious that if you take it, you can’t waste it. You can’t throw it away like it’s nothing. Indigenous people knew how to use everything, even the hooves. They had a culture built on that. Being new to it, I didn’t. So I’m sure that I was not as complete as they were. But I tried.

I imagine you learned a lot about plants too, like medicinal plants and such?

I did. I learned so much that I used to write a weekly article for a newspaper. For instance, you know about vitamin C, how important it is. Well the needles of a pine tree have more vitamin C than oranges. So if you live in the mountains, you don’t have oranges but you’ve got pine trees all around. You can just take a branch off a tree.

*And chew it?
* Make a tea. Then there’s certain plants you drink the tea from and they’re blood purifiers. Like yarrow, it grows everywhere. So we would pick yarrow and make tea with it.

That’s another understanding that Western culture lost: everything you put in your body is a medicine. For some Native Americans, medicine is the most used word. Everything is a medicine. Things you do in life are a medicine. Things you consume, food is medicine. Even earlier Western cultures understood that, how foods help the body. We’re losing that more and more. Now you get a vitamin pill.

When you say that things you do in life are a medicine, what do you mean?

It’s how you live. How you move. Like some older Native people have a way in their everyday life where they never turn around, they try to flow one way. I don’t know how to put it into words, language is a problem… I[']{dir=“rtl”}ll show you. Say I stand up, and I start to walk over here. Then something happens, the phone rings. So I’m going to come back to answer it. I won’t turn myself around. I’ll just change direction and go this way, instead of turning. And come back.

You’re always facing ahead, is that the idea?

Generally speaking, people in this culture are constantly turning themselves around. But some people in Native American cultures have a different consciousness of space and movement. Like when I enter a room, I know which way I came in, and I try to not turn. And that’s a medicine!

That’s beautiful.

But how do you tell that to people? Like how do you tell a Marxist, don’t turn around. They’ll look at you like, what? We’re talking about workers, you know, labor issues. Who cares about turning around!

*Because also it’s mainly unspoken, I guess. You could just notice people doing it.*

Well it’s unspoken but it’s not unspoken. They pass it on to their children. And certain people are really strict about it. But everybody’s conscious of it. In the ceremonial life, you’re supposed to follow it. That’s where it’s absolutely imperative. Then you could go to the next level and try in your daily life. There are some people who try to carry that, continue throughout their whole life. Like myself, I try never to turn around. So that means I’m conscious of where I am, all the time.

It’s about being aware of the space around you. You have to keep in mind what’s behind you.

And you remember how you came in the room. You’re conscious of your movement and where you are on the planet every second.

You learned that from the Native community you were with?

Well I observed, I understood it. I don’t know if anybody ever said to me don’t turn. But I understood, like for instance, there are certain ceremonial people you cannot walk behind. They come into a room and they sit in the corner, or they sit with their back to the wall. So I could see that, and I began to realize that there’s certain people you cannot walk behind. It’s not spoken, but observed.

*It’s embodied, more than just verbal.*
And that, to me, is the full sense of consciousness. That you are conscious of every step you make in your life. That’s why I can’t relate to most political people. I mean we’re talking about consciousness, life — we’re talking about the universe! The stars move a certain way. You never see a star go a different way! Every star goes one way. So you have to observe the universe. But you can’t tell that to political people.

*Because their conceptual reality is so different. It’s hyper-focused on certain problems. But it’s also abstracted.
* And then, simplicity is gone. For instance, you have a culture filled with addiction. Have you ever heard anybody say well, when the child was born, when it was growing up, you kept feeding it sugar. You gave them cereal full of sugar every day. You made them into an addict! Because then, they had to have sugar. They had to have a stimulant. And they became addicted to other stimulants. But you started them, at birth.

I mean, you ever try to tell people that? They’ll look at you like, what are you talking about? Who cares about giving kids sugar? But that’s what’s important! In reality, how you get your children started on addiction with sugar, is actually important. It’s a simple thing, but it’s consequential.

*It’s violent actually. It’s like poison.*

It’s toxic! Try to tell them that. They give it to themselves. See, you can’t talk to people about this stuff.

*People do it every day without thinking about it. But it really is upside down, to take toxin instead of medicine.*

Right. So if you think of everything as medicine: how you move, how you think, everything that affects your stability, your environment — it can expand to include everything. It’s all medicine. And certain animals have medicine. To some Indigenous, what they call Native American people, like to some Plains tribes, the buffalo was not just another animal. The buffalo gave them their whole life. So to them, the buffalo has a medicine. It’s not a food. It has a medicine — it’s giving you life.

*The idea of taste must be very different from people in the city eating chocolate or potato chips. When you eat deer heart you’re not like oh this is great, it’s so tasty.* ** It doesn[']{dir=“rtl”}t have to be pleasing in terms of taste. It has to be satisfying on another level.

But you know, I’ll be honest with you, I’ve never talked to anybody about these things. Because how do you talk to people about what they consider to be so unimportant, or uninteresting?

*Maybe the problem is the context, like you said why can political people deal with politics, but not the universe? Maybe we don’t have the language, or not just language but we lack the social context for sharing these things.*

Or we have no sense of how vital and important it really is. 

*I think that’s true. The sense itself is distorted, you know, I think about taste, or about nutrients that I have to consume, rather than medicine. But it’s really impressive, this practice of not turning around. The idea that every second, you could live in this conscious way. For most people I think awareness is channeled.*
This culture has lost its senses. Nobody in this culture has the sense that the universe is here. You are in the universe, right here. It’s not out there waiting for a rocket ship. It’s here! You are in the universe! Wake up! The universe surrounds you.

How do you tell people that? I couldn’t tell anybody but you guys, because somehow we got close. But you know, people would look at you like *oh man they should lock this guy up. 
* *One last question: how about your relationship with minerals? Like you had relations with plants and animals, but how about mountains, rocks, all these things?
* I don’t know how to put it in words. But to me, everything is living. Rocks are living. I mean everything is living! They may even have consciousness — I don’t know the words. But Indigenous peoples understood certain rocks are living. Say Ayers Rock, in Australia. That was spiritually key to Aboriginal life. Have you seen it? It’s that huge rock that comes out of the ground, part of it is underground. To Aboriginal people this was spiritual, I mean it’s a living thing. Well that’s how I think, that everything is alive.

*You wouldn’t make a distinction between life and non-life.*
You could make a nominal distinction. But it’s not a real distinction. You could recognize that’s a rock: that’s a nominal distinction. But you can’t say it’s not alive.

There are things that don’t move on their own. That doesn’t make them lesser. They’re inanimate, they’re not moving. But they’re equally important. In some way, they’re more important. They’re key to spiritual health. Like the planet. The planet is alive! And we are part of that life.

In Japan, mountains and rocks are worshiped.

** That’s the same thing. It’s inanimate, it doesn’t move. But it is alive. It’s a medicine. And the correct way is to venerate it. It’s not unimportant, like oh it’s just a rock. That’s what’s wrong with Western culture, it doesn’t understand that.

So here you have Ayers Rock, listen to this. To Aboriginal people it’s a sacred rock. Well the Australian colonizer put spikes in the rock so that people could climb it easier, like for tourists. In the sacred rock! And around the bottom they have tables and umbrellas so they can sit and drink and be around the rock.

*That’s disgusting.*
Not only that, but do you know that in 40,000 years, Aboriginal people used a certain amount of water. That same amount of water is what the Australian colonizer now uses in one year. 40,000 years! And Aboriginal people are saying, these are reservoirs underground, what’s going to happen when they’re drained? We didn’t overuse them. We used them sparingly. Because once they’re gone, we’re gone!

That’s the difference in thinking between the colonizer and the Aboriginal, who the colonizer called savage. The whole thing is backwards.

It’s amazing to understand the connection, to see yourself as part of a people that lives for thousands of years.

That was the consciousness of Indigenous people everywhere. But to the colonizer, you know how low the Aboriginal is thought of, almost like they’re an animal. They’re not even human, I mean the way the colonizer thought.

Listen to this, this will blow your mind. There’s water underground, in Australia. That’s where the water is. In the outback there’s no surface water. It’s all underground. So in order to live out there, you have to know where to find the water. And Aboriginal people found a way, over 40,000 years they figured out, say I’m gonna go into the outback, which is thousands of miles of dryness, no water. As I start walking from here, I start singing a song. They developed these songs so that when you reach a certain point in the song, you reach a place where there’s water underground. They figured out how to track the water using song. They passed the songs on to their descendants. Could you imagine that intelligence?

**It’s beautiful. That’s art! And it’s a use of language that’s actually helpful. **

It’s everything! It’s everything you could want. And almost nobody knows about it. I mean some people know, but it’s not common knowledge. And the fact that nobody knows this stuff hides the brilliance of humanity. Instead, they think some banker on Wall Street is brilliant because he figured out how to make a lot of money.

People’s senses got so twisted. They think they need money, more than water. They want toxin more than medicine. It makes it very difficult to understand how to engage with the universe, or the reality, right?

Yeah I mean, when you think about the universe, the fact that you can make a lot of money means nothing! These people finding water: that’s universal.

And the Wall Street guys just take drugs and watch TV to avoid reality. Or they kill themselves. It’s almost like this civilization has lost its drive to live. Does that go back to the one problem that you were talking about?

Rather than solve a problem, this culture has in fact become a problem. It’s not that global warming is the problem. A virus isn’t the problem. We are the problem because we provoked those things to manifest. This culture is the problem. The culture, the way of life, whatever term you want to use. And until we recognize that, we’re not going to solve the real problem. Until we’re able to say, we have lost the ability to fit with nature, so that we have become in fact outside of nature, and so in fact we have become the problem. **

It’s like we’re alienated, we’re disconnected from that life force. Or how do you think about it?

Well, that’s who we are. We’re that life force. That’s what we are. We’re like the virus saying they got a vaccine to kill us, but we’re gonna fight it, we’re gonna find a way to survive. It’s the same with all life, throughout the universe. All living things strive to live.

*
So striving to live is a sort of resistance?*

Yes, it’s a resistance. Resisting the death that’s before it.

And that’s what our generation, our culture, our consciousness should be. The will to live.

**