This is the house that defiance built.

The random key to my current front door reminded me...

... of a phrase I saw in a dream: "This is the house that defiance built." 

I was studying permaculture and earthen-building at the time, because I wanted to flee the city, head to a dense, mossy forest, and live in monastic peace.

So I listened to Jack Spirko's Survival Podcasts. Got my certifications. And took very seriously the idea of self-responsibility.

I was gonna be a new kind of pioneer woman, and everyone knew about my intended hand-sculpted, solar-powered, earthen dome home... designed with genius regenerative properties. And edible landscaping. And fields of cannabis!

And all those things may still come to pass, but I realize now my dream wasn't really about home-ownership, but self-ownership. And for that, defiance is needed.

Owning yourself requires defiance.

Defiance is the only appropriate response to oppression, enslavement or tyranny.
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To defy is to refuse to obey, or to resist.

Unless you are harming another, no one has a right to force their will upon you. Yet we have come to EXPECT constant interference. Instead of *objecting* to the creeping intrusion of the State, we *normalized* it. 

And that is why defiance is needed.

To reverse the routine trampling of your will. To revive, rather than regulate, your relationship with plants, rainwater and the sun. To cease the theft of your taxes, which  fund deep and wide investments in death, via authorized assassins, weapons, wars and prisons.

We are encouraged to fear each other, and keep distance. Please, don't. Defy division. Defy the temptation to exaggerate the menacing qualities of "them," and the admirable qualities of "us." 

From behind that green door, guarded by wild Bouganville and Birds of Paradise, I'll have more to say about personal liberation, and the plants that help us get out of our own cognitive way. In the meantime, Google "self-ownership." Let the ideas sink in deeply. Within you, they'll start the right kind of peaceable fire.