Comrade Moonbeam's Spiritual Liberation Tour Has Been Rerouted: The Copper Mines of Kazakhstan Say Hello
Photo: Uncredited authorship., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Labor Assignment Dispatches | Actuallifeundercommunism.com
Destiny Ravenwood — known to her 340,000 followers as @MoonbeamDecolonizes — spent the better part of three years explaining, in very serious fifteen-second increments, that the Western chakra system represented a form of spiritual imperialism and that true liberation required dismantling the energetic hierarchies embedded in your root chakra. She sold a $97 guided meditation for this. She sold a $249 course for the deeper work. She had a Substack.
The Bureau of Ideological Alignment has now reviewed all of it. Every video. Every caption. Every pinned comment in which she explained that healing was, in fact, a form of resistance.
The Bureau agrees. It just has a different mine in mind.
The Notice Arrived on a Tuesday
Destiny was in the middle of filming her 'Decolonizing the Solar Plexus: A Somatic Journey' series when the certified letter landed. She assumed it was a brand deal confirmation. She had recently been in talks with a crystal subscription box.
It was not a brand deal confirmation.
Dear Comrade Ravenwood, the letter began, in the flat, unhurried prose of an institution that has never once worried about open rates. The Bureau of Ideological Alignment has completed its review of your digital content archive (4,847 videos, 312 Substack entries, and one unfinished manuscript titled 'Unearth Yourself: A Decolonial Guide to Your Inner Mineral Wealth'). The Bureau notes with interest your repeated use of the word 'unearth' and considers this an expression of latent vocational aptitude.
You are hereby assigned to Copper Processing Facility 7, Eastern Operations Division. Reporting date: the 14th. Bring boots. The ones with the steel toes, not the ones with the crystals.
What 'Decolonization' Means to Different Stakeholders
To Destiny, decolonization meant a careful, trauma-informed dismantling of the spiritual frameworks imposed on non-Western traditions by colonial knowledge systems. It meant breathwork. It meant community circles. It meant, at minimum, a sound bath.
To the Bureau, decolonization means removing copper ore from the earth at a rate of approximately 800 tons per shift using equipment that has not been described as 'healing' by any credible source.
These are not, the Bureau acknowledges, identical definitions. The Bureau is comfortable with that.
When we reached Destiny by phone — she was still in the parking lot of the facility on her first day, sitting in her car — she described the experience as 'a lot to process.'
'I've done a lot of somatic work,' she told us. 'I know how to sit with discomfort. I know how to breathe into resistance.' She paused. 'I did not know that resistance could weigh four hundred pounds and need to be moved with a vehicle.'
A Brief Content Audit, Annotated
The Bureau's review letter helpfully flagged specific videos that informed Destiny's assignment. We obtained a partial list:
Video #112: 'Your Root Chakra Is Colonized — Here's How to Ground Into Liberation' Bureau note: Comrade Ravenwood demonstrates grounding exercises on a yoga mat. The Bureau has identified a more efficient grounding method. It involves the actual ground. Specifically, 200 meters below it.
Video #289: 'Excavating Your Ancestral Trauma: A Deep Dig Into Your Energetic Lineage' Bureau note: The Bureau appreciates Comrade Ravenwood's enthusiasm for excavation as a metaphor. We are prepared to make it literal.
Video #401: 'Why Crystal Healing Is an Act of Resistance' Bureau note: Crystals do not mine themselves, Comrade.
Substack Entry #88: 'Rest Is Radical, Labor Is the Tool of Your Oppressor' Bureau note: This entry has been forwarded to the Night Shift Scheduling Division.
The Adjustment Period
By week two, Destiny had stopped filming content. This was partly because the facility's wifi situation was 'not ideal' and partly because her phone screen had acquired a texture that her followers would have found inconsistent with her brand.
She did attempt one video from the locker room on day four — a shaky, sixty-second clip in which she described the mine as 'an incredibly grounding space, actually' and tried to explain that the copper dust settling on her skin was 'a form of mineral contact that I'm choosing to approach with curiosity.' The video got 4,000 views. The comments were not kind.
Her roommate in the worker dormitory — a woman named Galina who had been processing copper for eleven years and had opinions about people who describe copper dust with curiosity — told her, in the gentle but direct way of someone who has no remaining patience for nonsense, that she might want to focus on not dropping things for a while before she started finding meaning in them.
Destiny has described Galina as 'the most grounded person I've ever met.' She means this sincerely. Galina takes it as a workplace compliment.
What the Bureau Would Like You to Take Away From This
The Bureau is not, it wants to be clear, unsympathetic to the desire for liberation. Liberation is, in fact, the stated goal of the entire enterprise. It's simply that the Bureau has noticed a persistent gap between the liberation people describe in their content and the liberation they are willing to perform in their bodies, on a schedule, underground.
Destiny Ravenwood wanted to help people dismantle oppressive systems. The Bureau has assigned her to a system. It is large, it runs on shifts, and it produces something tangible at the end of every day. This, the Bureau suggests, is more than can be said for a guided meditation about your root chakra.
She's three months in now. She has not reactivated her Substack. She has, however, developed what Galina describes as 'acceptable shovel technique,' which is the closest thing to a performance review anyone gets around here.
Her crystal subscription box partnership fell through. The crystals, it turned out, were not going to mine themselves.
They never were.
Destiny Ravenwood's TikTok account is currently on indefinite hiatus. Her $249 course has been nationalized and is now available free of charge as part of the Bureau's 'Things That Were Always Free If You Thought About It' initiative.