Life In Rebellion to the Corporate State

Act-of-ResistanceAt a certain point, you realize you must live in utter rebellion to the totalitarian oligarchic-corporate state that controls our government, legal system, police and military, the media, education, entertainment, arts and culture. You start to make daily acts of resistance to their domination of so many aspects of our world.

You don’t watch their movies or read their books or magazines. You reject their values of profit and greed, and their ideologies of “survival of the fittest” and “might makes right” and “what’s good for business is good for everyone”. You lift your middle finger to the box stores and go out of your way to support small and local businesses. You become allergic to name brands. You don’t go shopping on the national holidays coopted by their marketing schemes. You start to say things like, “there’s more to life than being a consumer”.

You live a life of quiet (or bold) rebellion, feeling at odds with their dominant culture, wondering just how long it will be before your fellow human beings realize they’re being treated like peons or cattle in this massive oligarchic-corporate system. You watch cynical and distant as yet another person spends his or her life working for corporate overlords, buying from corporate overlords, subscribing to their mass-marketing indoctrination of beliefs, obeying the laws they buy from their lapdog politicians, and even dying slowly for them as they milk your body and lifeblood for profit in their horrific corporatized so-called healthcare system where they literally squeeze you for every last penny and breath of life you’ve got.

It’s a bizarre experience, living in rebellion to a corporatized culture while nearly everyone else blindly obeys and conforms. You’re constantly standing to the side of your friends and neighbors, wondering what the hell they’re doing. You want to shake people, scream, search desperately for the words to articulate the living hell they call normal.

Aloneness strikes up an enduring friendship as you wonder just how long it will take for humanity to rise up for its own heart and soul. You wonder if you will see change happen in your lifetime, or whether you will close these eyes on the world without seeing humanity shake off the shackles of corporate domination of their culture, thoughts, beliefs, activities, recreation, life, and values.

And you search for other rebels. You look for people in the margins and eddies of the world, carving out niches beyond the corporations’ control, building oasis of real people, real food, real heart and hope. You embark on expeditions to find them. You pilgrimage to places and communities where they have come together to build a different way of life. You learn their songs and dances. Then you go back into the belly of the beast, singing to those who will listen.

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ARivera New Hatuthor/Activist Rivera Sun, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is the author of The Dandelion Insurrection, Billionaire Buddha and Steam Drills, Treadmills, and Shooting Stars, the cohost of Love (and Revolution) Radio, and the co-initiator of Live Share Grow: A Movement for the 100%. She is a trainer and social media coordinator for Campaign Nonviolence and Pace e Bene. Sun attended the James Lawson Institute on Strategic Nonviolent Resistance in 2014 and her essays on social justice movements appear in Counterpunch, Truthout and Popular Resistance. www.riverasun.com

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