A Small Cadre of Rammed-Earth Pillars

Rammed-Earth Columns – The 7 Pillars?

The 11 rammed-earth columns here are recycled images from past builds. Across the 10 or so video’s we’ve made there are some spectacular examples but of course all this is representative. Representative of what, you ask?

Representative, if I may be so bold as to say, of what’s in yer noggin, yer imagination. It’s all about how you use materials both physical and mental. If you can't conceive it, it ain’t gonna happen, right?

Which brings me back to where we are on matters geo-political, or should we say empathic human versus psychopathic-nihilist and just downright evil.

Y’know, euphemisms are really for children, the mentally fragile and the ‘princess programmed’, who reserve for themselves the comforts of the world whilst being oblivious to the pain and suffering of others.

Growing up in England I was privy to many amendments, social prescriptions and otherwise unwritten laws. I heard how Britain had won WWII, conquered and civilised the world and were pretty much the best at everything. Occasionally we sung ‘Rule Brittania’. Much like Roger Waters observes in ‘The Wall’, ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’, ‘Wish You Were Here’ and ‘Amused to Death’, there is much too much irony, hypocrisy and deceit to unravel if one were to begin, and besides, where would I start?

I am listening to the Ballad of Bill Hubbard as I write this – [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIzgTL5NDT8], that’s a world long gone, where honour had meaning and a persons word counted for so much that people could conclude a consequential deal with but a handshake. So you can see, I remember the good and the bad.

I think it’s because ‘we’ get this message pounded into our heads early that we sort of give up. After that - it’s just distraction, impulse, temptation and counting the days – it’s no wonder we turn to drink, drugs and... whatevva self-medicatin’ poisonous soul-numbing cocktails ya fancy.

Truth is I have rarely felt at peace with the systems that have been cruelly and meticulously engineered around us; the system of (chaos) governance, the legal system, the social system, the medical system, the political system. Just one push past the glossy veneer reveals a world of pain, confusion, injustice and barbarism which came sharply into focus at school, on the street and in their criminal ‘in’justice 'theatrics of the absurd'.

The first half of my life I was oft told that I think too much, (really, they meant felt and perhaps, know too much). The second half it seems no one really cares about that, however, it does seem well thought out ideas can have some little ripples of effect every now and then – thus, I am of course, as careful as I can be about what I think – but I won’t be wearing a mental and moral muzzle anytime soon – to hell with that!

In that emergent teen world, I soon realised that people who show no pain, no signs of distress and, ‘just get on with things’...are highly favoured over sensitive conscionable types. Society was not made for the Wilfred Owens, and Siegfried Sassoon’s (conscientious objector- war poets), of this world, and god forbid those who are different in a non sanctioned way.

The likes of Dickens and Chaplin were good for entertainment and permitted compartmentalised outpourings, but the day to day was built on entirely different foundations.

By way of contrast in a somewhat different 3D realm, rammed-earth columns are ‘permanent’ structures that support and link the foundation of a build to the protective sheltering canopy of the roof and reinforce the dividing walls that create a living envelope within it, a place of safety securing one from the outside elements and an otherwise hostile world. Conventional columns are made of a variety of materials and in many builds contain a cocktail of plastics, chemicals and synthetics, some even deemed to be ecological. The mind boggles. The simple stone used in rammed-earth columns is about as natural as it gets, and its strong, durable and beautiful even.

If only we could claim that of the internal structures that support our mind, body and spirit – now that would be a different equation – right.

Well, time to get real – they’re not. They're made of the stuff and nonsense that the social engineers, mind-governers and indoctrination gulags have forced onto and into us. Oh yes, many have gone willingly because they have no sense of self, no sense of truth, no understanding of honour, right action and fair-play, but that ain’t us now is it – because if it were I wouldn’t be writing this stuff an’ you wouldn’t be reading it : )

1st Amendment?

Well, as Ghandi said when he was asked what he thought about western civilisation he said, “It’s a good idea”.

The 1^st amendment of course offers the opportunity to be true to ones self, to verbally do right by ones conscience. An act, that should stand on its own merits and stand the test of time (according to context). In order to do this however, you have to have a mind of your own to start with, you have to have a sense of self – a relatively unconditioned self, a free self.

(Clare Torry in Floyd’s ‘Great Gig in the Sky’ comes to mind – as a spontaneous and free-spirited creative musical expression - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-Jjn0oBw0c).

I suspect I’m in good company when I tell you that I often wonder what kind of world we could have created if our innate creativity was encouraged and cultivated. In many ways that’s what rammed-earth homes, or indeed any ‘off the reservation’ creative endeavours are about. There are few limitations on what you can do with rammed-earth designs – It’s mainly down to will, imagination, funds, materials, skill and form-work. Form work is the wooden palette into which the stone materials and binders are compressed to make the walls and pillars. The more ambitious the form-work the more skilled the carpenter that makes it has to be. Kinda like life really.

I don’t have to tellya, right, that things can happen on a dime. It don’t always happen like that in really-real everyday life tho’, in fact, it’s usually the outside possibility, but that’s what being creative’s all about ain’it. Yeah, I know, the Hobbes in me will always say, “trust in god, but tie up yer camel.” Doubtless that’s a bit esoteric for the average bib an’ brace-Hobbes-er – it’s actually a Sufi saying.

Building is a creative act – an’ guess what, yer luck’s in if yer that way inclined, ‘cus everythin’ pretty much can be a creative act. It’s how you see it, and at a deeper level, at a conscious connected level that state of awareness has the possibility of seeping over the boundaries of conscious programmed mentation to take you beyond even the exotic shores of emotional intelligence. Yah – there’s a lot more ta the emotional cosmos than most are capable of perceiving – I believe I’m on solid ground when I tell you explicitly that we’re just at the gateway of authentic consciousness. So there’s the concept but doing it, feeling it, experiencing it, maybe bein’ it without drugs ‘n sich, is entirely another thing. The initial ramparts of the emotional intelligence terrain is beyond the apprehension, the experience and access on demand of most people – it’s the bridge to a whole other realm of consciousness, it’s barely if at all understood, and has what to our ‘normal’ ways of perceiving things is an entirely different language of thought. In a sense, shifting out of convention; whether its building a rammed-earth home and all that that implies, doing desktop design or scribbling a piece of poetry, “I got a little black book with my poems in,” has the potential to prise open the door(s) of our perceptual universe (Jim’d be proud).

So here we are, houses designed and built to last centuries set in a world of built-in obsolescence, such that we are reduced to a blip-vert reality, anything that takes more than 3 seconds attention span is of no interest to Blackrock and their ‘rules based’ ilk. ‘Why?’ Well, since the predator elites struggle to get a positive original thought between them it’s far easier for ‘them’ to prohibit ours, compress our range of expression and give us 3 second reel-frames which makes it easier and cheaper for ‘them’ to further brainwash us and sell us the crap they want us to buy.

If you think on it, this garbage has, like its brain-impaired overlords with their materialistic ambitions brought us to where we are now. Everything, quick, fast, shallow and fleeting aside from the consequences of taking their advice (like agreeing to a highly questionable medical intervention, for example). Everywhere the dumbing down of everything, all the time – and boy has it taken its toll. The beauty of it is that the human psyche isn’t really made that way, it’s designed to seek novelty, to seek knowledge, to pioneer, to create.

And this is where the student protests come in – all those young, tender and hungry psyches needed was the right information and the right cause – they rediscovered the spirit of youth, and many knew and learnt the lessons of Kent State and revolutionary consciousness – yeah, that’s right, alright, because consciousness is by nature revolutionary – an’ I don’t mean the hamster wheel version. Certain types of revolutions have a tendency to synchronise with the ‘cosmic mean’. This is a point at which one can make a non-linear leap to another point in space-time and even beyond that – depends.

So, ‘nuff o’ mi wild stream o’ consciousness rants mi harties, well, for at least a wee mo...

Hope you enjoyed the video, and don’ fergit, it’s our planet an’ we makes da rules!

Peace Out

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