gnomes in the treehouse

Well I really don’t know what to write about. I’ve been holed up in my hermitage, my mystic cabin in the woods listening to music and imagining a better world. One where we don’t have to kill everything to have a prosperous life. Imagining might be a crucial part of building it. “Un mundo quepan muchos mundos” like it says in the current issue of Deceleration (a world in which many worlds fit). Their Summer 2026 Creative Review Issue. I’m immersing myself in great music and beautiful ideas until something breaks loose and floats to the surface like Gnomes in the Treehouse, then start writing. Contribute to the world-wide awakening we so desperately need. Another model of how to be, way more for real, more gentle, kinder, and a way of living that enhances all ways of life, excludes none, breathes into the hot coals of our collective heart embers and enlivens the flame of love. That’s the world we need to live in. I don’t think that’s too much to ask for. I do that in my rohn report, somebody else does it in the Deceleration newsletter - highlighting all the things other people are doing, connecting the dots. We live in the land of opportunity - remember that? Our country may be a mess, tragic, politically dysfunctional, outrageous, unrighteous, a disaster but . . . and I do mean but, we’ve got the heart and soul of a brave courageous pioneer. This is the land of creativity and opportunity. Am I wrong? That’s who we are. We’ve brought the world here (despite all our sins and shortcomings) and showed them amazing things. I could dissertate. TV was invented by Filo Farnsworth, born in a log cabin near the town of Beaver, Utah in 1906. Beaver, Utah was not exactly a hub of electronic innovation back then. If you look on Google maps even now you will find that Beaver, Utah is a tiny little town in the middle of nowhere. Filo T. Farnsworth. Then we invented spaceships to the moon and Flash Gordon to fly there. We made movies, we made great movies, we invented great movie making: Star Wars and Blade Runner and Ferris Beuller’s Day Off. We made exciting new things like TVs and cotton gins and nuclear bombs. We’ve brought the world along alrighty. Give ourselves credit, we should. Deliver us from evil and be the change you want to see, to quote some luminous platitudes from the current media culture we are immersed in. When the bass line hits you have to let it all rain down. Find a platitude and stick with it. Like U-2 says in Elevation “I've got no self-control. Been living like a mole. Now going down, excavation. I and I in the sky. You make me feel like I can fly so high, elevation”. Bono. Ok, I know he’s Irish. Like Compared to What? Les McCann & Eddie Harris playing jazz at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland. They’re Americans. We invented Jazz and then we spread it all over the world. Heck, we invented Madonna. See I told you I’ve been listening to alot of music. The best option I can find, better than being discarded and dismissed and misused, neglected and dejected and rejected. Way better. Put away your thesaurus and your brontosaurus and your tyrannosaurus, Rex, and get on with the Anthropocene, our own epic. Humans have their own epoch. As of 2005 humans have built so damn many dams on their rivers that the dams now hold six times as much water as all the water that flows down to the ocean, down to the sea, to the vast heaving sea. See this is what I do: browse, skip around the internet and flow with it, where it goes I follow. It’s an ocean of knowledge. Like the most awesome library ever. Even though we looted Alexandria, burned down Nalanda in Bihar State (nine million books), destroyed all the Mayan Codices (except 4), somehow, by sheer luck, we ended up with open access to the largest, most magnificent collection of human knowledge, ever, anywhere. Did I already say that? More knowledge than has ever flowed down the river of time to be lost in the void. But is this the real knowledge or is there something more than information? The self-knowledge that we all look for, that all civilizations need to prosper and be strong, that ancient scholars at Nalanda studied a thousand years ago? That’s the question I ask in my book. Ha. Back to what we were trying to talk about. How we started out. We’re just a bunch of gnomes in treehouses trying to live together among each other and ourselves like we did so many ancient centuries ago. Even among the droids and cyborgs that we have built and with the ability of our hands we have built the cities and live in them. We’re still trying to escape the danger and find a human to talk to, just like our ancient tribal ancestors did who lived so many ancient centuries ago. We’re still trying to learn what we already know. music and photos for this groovy post is from this groovy playlist :: You can support my work by becoming a free or paid subscriber or by leaving a tip. All my posts are free, and paid subscribers (thank you!) allow me to keep it this way. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rohn.substack.com/subscribe