Babylon has of course Biblical roots. The tower of Babylon was material worship, pride, power and close-mindedness. The tower toppled by the hand of God. Rainbow folklore dubs the greater society Babylon. In the woods, there is no money exchange but only trade, and always a sense of leaving no trace but in the spirit. There are many links that go into further detail on the web, look for Rainbow link page here or just search.
Bob and I do use the term babylon while Rainbowing, but I do not hold any illusions that we are not a part of the greater society. We're not apt to talk much about it in the woods "off the grid" but the fact is we have bills and jobs. Not that we talk about this in the woods, but this is the net so I'll share that secret. Life is about using resources, and look out the window or down from the mountain and that presently includes everything from the land to the communities to the cell phones. We have not abandoned the modern society like we hopefully would have the ancient one. We would like to prevent America from ever coming close to the depravity of that ancient society, but open your eyes and you'll see it's not only possible, but our collective nature has that tendency.
Again, our perspective on this may change. This trip may necessitate its change. But it's time to take the plunge and quit living like Weekend Warriors, going rainbow for "vacation".
We are going on our trip to build bridges from the Rainbow to Babylon. We want to spread our message of living lightly, sharing resources, and citizen responsibility for change.
One bridge business is distributing solar ovens. Whoever travels with us can add this to their skills (we're not specifically doing jewelry, clothes or busking but that happens when you're rainbowing) Perhaps we will even involve Walmart when we utilize their parking lot to park overnight! They are a good source of cardboard and tin foil.
While using the net on the road, and other electricity-operated things, much of the electrical strain will be alleviated by a solar panel attached to a deep cycle battery. And we'll dry our clothes in the sun :)
To the second end: we have ammassed a few great web-based resources that we could never have done without Babylon. Perhaps in this instance, Babylon has something to teach the Rainbow. There are internet networks across the USA now where people freely share books, used items, knowledge and carpool space. As we travel we will share this info with those we meet, as the in-person impact, in our opinion, is still more lasting than that of the internet.
To the third end: Building bridges will be so important politically. Bob's the big idea man on much of this, and his personal page will be updated continually as he composes his thoughts to share. I will update here, too, but for now I will just say a hugely underused resource in our last election was www.votepair.org's attempt to blur the red state/ blue state/ swing state divide and give all voters an equal shot. In the end, they only affected 20,000 voters who registered at their site. Hopefully by 2008 there will be more folks doing this, including conservatives as this specific website was really only geared toward liberal voters.
Rainbow and Babylon have much to teach each other. The only real way to do it is face-to-face, on the land. (Rainbows use on the land to mean in a National Forest, a true this land is your land this land is my land but I'll include parking lots too, because ours is a journey of much blacktop and green grass.)
Thanks for reading! If you want to support us, please at this time email an order for a solar oven or visit our Amazon store and buy a book or ten! ;-)
