A Bit About This Strange Little Project Of Mine
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Caitlin Johnstone):
Every so often I like to write out a basic explanation of who I am and what I’m trying to do here. As an entirely reader-funded writer I think it’s important to periodically lay out exactly what I’m about so that any patrons or would-be patrons can assess if this weird little project here is something they want to support.
For starters, everything “I” write here under the name of Caitlin Johnstone is actually the work of two people: myself and my American husband Tim Foley. Many of you might know Tim as the male voice who does the readings for all of our articles. While it’s my vision and I’m in charge of the editorial direction these works take, Tim co-authors and co-signs everything I publish. Most of the stuff you read here arises from conversations he and I have while nerding out about war, philosophy, humanity, and how to save the world.
Tim and I met in an online discussion group about spiritual enlightenment. He moved out here to Australia to be with me in 2016, and a few months later we found ourselves writing political essays which at the time focused on the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign. After a long series of miracles, mishaps and embarrassments, we somehow wound up doing crowd-funded commentary as a full-time gig.
It was strange and scary suddenly amassing a large following before we’d really had time to learn and grow in our understanding of the world. We’d both spent many years mostly unplugged from politics focused entirely on spirituality and healing, and then all of a sudden we were seized with this powerful impulse to begin writing about the world’s problems and had to do so with thousands of people watching us while we were still total neophytes to the political scene. Most people who do things in front of an audience get to spend a long time practicing before they step onstage, but we had to learn on the fly and feel our way into it, and it was frequently both terrifying and humiliating. Eventually we got the hang of it, but we continue to learn and grow.
The basic premise of everything you read here is fairly simple and straightforward: we live in a tyrannical dystopia that’s driving humanity to its doom, and we need to wake up from the propaganda indoctrination and egoic delusions which keep us complying with the status quo so that we can use the power of our numbers to overthrow our oppressors and create a healthy world. We come at it from countless angles using all different approaches, but that’s the basic message and the idea underpinning it all.
Ideologically we’re about as far on the left end of the political spectrum as it gets. Tim was a bit of a US-model libertarian when we first met, but I tricked him into becoming a commie using my feminine wiles. Because we see all of humanity as deeply deluded at this point in history we’re reluctant to identify with any particular political faction or group up with any particular clique, but it seems pretty clear that a healthy world where the environment is protected and people’s basic needs are met will necessarily entail the complete dismantling of capitalism. We’re going to have to transition from competition-based systems to collaboration-based ones where we all work together for the good of every living being.
Our business model is one of the most interesting and unique things about our project. Everything we publish is free to read, and anyone who wants to is encouraged to republish, repurpose and re-use anything we create free of charge. All our income consists of donations from people who support what we’re doing and want to help us continue doing it, without expecting anything in return; there are no special perks offered for donating besides our gratitude and your knowledge that you’re supporting something you believe in. We try to shape our lives like the kind of world we want to see emerge in the future, and this miniature collaborative unconditional gift economy is one of our efforts at doing that.
For some strange and miraculous reason this peculiar model seems to actually work, and we’ve been able to dedicate our lives to making ourselves as useful as possible in the best way we know how. It has been a thrilling adventure and a great privilege to do this for a living, and we are so unspeakably grateful to everyone who makes it possible.
Our hope of course is that one day this job becomes unnecessary because the wars, tyranny and abuse have ended and a healthy society has been created. Nothing would make us happier than to become obsolete and unnecessary so that we can hang up the gloves and move on to the next project. That is part of the future we are working toward.
Until then, we’ll be here. Writing every day, taking as few days off as possible, and doing everything we can to open eyes and throw sand in the gears of the machine.
Thank you so much for traveling with us, in whatever way you travel.
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My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to find video versions of my articles. If you’d prefer to listen to audio of these articles, you can subscribe to them on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud or YouTube. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
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