I - an individual human being -
no longer Consent
(changing the World, one human being at a time)
First, ... Understanding the World
The world is interconnected, and interdependent, in certain Ways. One dominant Way is modern social media. We can know, almost instantaneously, when something we care about happens somewhere else in the world.
Another dominant Way grows and festers in the fields where wealth and power thrive. So, for example, the Nation State, the United States of America, having a certain amount of wealth and power appears to dominate wide regions of the world. Keep in mind this next fact however, which is true everywhere in the world: That a sitting government is easily distinguishable from the People that live in that same geographic region. What Washington D. C., and Wall Street in New York City, in America, do to the rest of the world is not approved of by the majority of the American People. There is no true "consent", but rather "manufactured consent", driven by the corruption of government and businesses by the selfish values of that oligarchy we today call: the 1% of the 1%.
How, in a particular place, a small number of people have come to dominate the majority of the people living there, varies, but the same is effectively true all over the world. The great truism, from the American Declaration of Independence that "the only just powers come from the consent of the governed", remains, for the most part, mostly only an hopeful idea of the heart, nearly everywhere in the world.
Right now there is a grave war going on, which is far different from the recent mostly violent wars in Iraq and elsewhere. This is the war between the multinational corporations, and Nation States. Using their powers of wealth to corrupt the legislatures and other legal processes in various governments all over the world, multinational corporations have been for decades forcing upon the world Trade Agreements, in the form of treaties. They mean for these trade agreements be seen, legally, as able to dominate the wishes of local peoples as to what is or is not legal where they live. It is a grasp for power far in excess of anything the world has ever before historically seen. Corporations are becoming, by funding private armies and creating personal agendas for foreign policy, more and more free to act outside the reality of the laws of any Nation State.
The curious fact, however, is what was understood by the Founders of America, which is that the "rule of law" is a social contract (not a treaty), to which all people must consent/agree to obey. There is no viable social contract unless everyone consents, in their actions, to play by the same rules. A true social contract is not enforced, but arises from conscious participation and agreement. Laws, to which we do not consent, then have to be enforced by powers that eventually can only be called: tyrannical - unjust powers, to which a People have not consented. Trade Agreements, in the form of treaties, are not that to which we consent - they are "arranged" by corrupt politicians, who frequently lie about what is involved, make promises about them which are not true, and seek in the United States to "fast track" them, which means to get the Senate and the Congress to commit in advance to not debating the content of the treaty. How can such an approach ever mean the People have consented to the content of the treaty.
For the most scary modern example, go here: WikiLeaks info on the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement.
The most common way today which this unjust power is made effective is through fear - fear of the "other" - the one who has a different religion, or a different color or a different language. After that, comes physical intimidation. An American President once said that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. That may have been true for Americans, but for those living in Hitler's Germany, or Stalin's Russia, physical intimidation was the norm. What is the norm where you, dear reader, live? Who gains when something like ISIS, clearly an agent of chaos, is allowed to run amok in the world.
Wisdom appears in the world in the oddest places, often where we least expect it. In an animated film, called "Antz", a certain social fact is noted, understood, and then acted upon. With the respect to the bullies, that try to physically dominate us, there are more of us then there are of them. Far, far, far, more of us. Our - the more of us than there are of them - difficulty is to learn how to act together, and yet remain individually free. We need to be able to obey our own individual conscience, and not get swept away by rage, and the social pressure to become an unthinking mob.
We see this happening all over the world: this tension between powers that want to dominate a people, and the people struggling to not consent anymore, yet without becoming an out of control mob, such as happened in Ferguson, Missouri, in America recently. People are taking to the streets to fight against the bullies and oppression everywhere, such as the earlier events we called: the Arab Spring, and the current events in Greece. A force of spirit and soul is emerging all over the world, refusing to consent anymore to being dominated. Yet, how do we avoid the seemingly necessary violence? Is standing in front of the tanks enough? How do you stand in front of a bank?
Real Social Change takes place over Time
The True American Revolution is not over. It is born in a basic human impulse that lives in all of us, and has only begun. The effort, within Western Civilization, to separate processes of governing from the aristocracies of blood, and form more democratic institutions, was a social-evolutionary process that could not happen all at once. Without our really noticing this, the aristocracies of blood were actually replaced with aristocracies of wealth. A hidden oligarchy of wealth, often still joined by family ties of blood in some cases (but no longer "royal" blood), rules from within and behind the appearance of the social democracies in the West; and, in such places as the middle-East, the "royal" families still find purchase (propped up by the English, American and French oligarchies, in order to control energy in the form of oil resources). As Bob Marley sang: Everywhere is War.
Efforts such as the Arab Spring, are the social equivalents to the early stages of the American Revolution, although taking place in fundamentally differing cultural contexts. Yet, some of the same questions arise: How to become free of State and Corporate oppression? The rule of all, by the 1% of the 1% (or less), is shameful, and everywhere hopes and dreams arise to overcome these tyrannies.
Yet, the world is a Whole, in spite of appearing to be made up of differing cultures, languages, religions and so forth. It is a Whole because at the core of Earth Existence are individual human beings, all of whom share many of the same general characteristics, needs, wants, hopes and dreams. The overly analytic habits of natural science (looking at parts, instead of contexts and wholes), as applied to our reasoning about races, cultures, nation states, corporations and religions, fails to give us a true picture of social reality.
For example, a more holistic thinking would realize that the American People are the adolescent children of the world. Americans are the People of Peoples, for every race, culture, religion, language has sent to these shores representatives. Americans are not like the French, or the Chinese or any more ancient or older culture. Americans are freshly born, made of what is part melting pot and part mosaic. Each immigrating group, by its third generation, has not just lost its prior cultural traditions, but has for the most part edited those gifts, and re-gifted the remaining wonders to the whole. This is a process nowhere near complete, yet living right now and full of promise. What is that promise?
What happens in American Politics belongs to the whole world to determine.
We have habits of conception that divides the world into pieces, and sees them as often in conflict. This is not the true state of the world, which is more orderly and integrated than we often realize. For example, while we can talk about local conditions of climate, or local conditions of the economy, there is actually only one climate and one economy for the whole world. The atmospheric processes and the financial processes are too vast, too complex, and too interdependent, to be seen only as if in pieces.
Religions share more than they care to admit. Our cultures exchange and share, via music and film, all manner of artistic qualities. Natural science seeks a universal knowledge. Languages borrow words from each other; and, one language, English, is recognized as the language of money. The servants of the 1% of the 1% travel to nearly look-alike airports and hotels that offer the same services everywhere, and carry out their conferences and agreements often in English, simply because that is more practical. Social media touches us all, and while we can argue about how well Twitter, or Facebook, or Youtube actually function, they do in point of fact unite us more than they divide us.
In reality, it is only the politicians, in the overt or covert service of the multinational corporations, that consciously seek to keep us divided against each other. To further their ambitions, they promote hate and confusion, while in the social commons - in the shared spaces of the electronic connections - ordinary people refuse to go along. Many of us do not consent to being urged to hate the "other", or the Thou.
At the same time, while there is some truth to thinking of America as the only remaining "global power", the truest fact of America is that it is the home of the first place in the history of the world where oppression and dominance was overthrown, at least for a time. The American People - this People of Peoples - has, as a result, more freedoms than even they recognize. In a very real sense, if just a small portion of the world's peoples were to turn their attention to American Politics, and realize they cannot be stopped from participating in America's public life, the battle between the corporations - the 1% of the 1% who want to dominate, and all other such influences, can be set within new and more healthy limits. Don't fancy we can have a perfect world, but we can have a more socially and politically healthy world. How?
The Real Dynamic Nature of Public Life
The central aspect of Public Life is the conversation over the meaning of the relationship between a government and the people it ought to serve. Before, during, and after the American Revolution, there had been a huge ongoing conversation, rooted in that period of Western Civilization, that was in Europe called the Enlightenment. This was originally mostly a conversation among elites in philosophy, law, political economy and other thinkers. The holders of aristocratic blood-power tried to avoid it, for such ideas/conversation was not in their self interest.
This Enlightenment conversation was the intellectual food which nourished the Founders of America, and out of this soul and spiritual food, one such thinker did something rather remarkable - that became a kind of special enlivening spice for the whole American revolution. From Wikipedia:
Common Sense[1] is a pamphlet written by Thomas Paine in 1775–76 that inspired people in the Thirteen Colonies to declare and fight for independence from Great Britain in the summer of 1776. The pamphlet explained the advantages of and the need for immediate independence in clear, simple language. It was published anonymously on January 10, 1776, at the beginning of the American Revolution and became an immediate sensation. It was sold and distributed widely and read aloud at taverns and meeting places.
Washington had it read to all his troops, which at the time had surrounded the British army in Boston. In proportion to the population of the colonies at that time (2.5 million), it had the largest sale and circulation of any book published in American history.[2] As of 2006, it remains the all-time best selling American title.[3]
A single book changed the whole conversation. In our time we need a film to do the same thing - to change the conversation. Here is a synopsis of such a proposed film:
synopsis of what is to live in the film: the Grandmother War
(the whole screen treatment can be read here)
The Plot: A clash between student-debt protesters and Oakland police, leads to the death of the one of the protesters. His grandmother, living in a lower class retirement home in Oakland, is drawn into action as a consequence of a confrontation between herself, along with a couple of her friends from the home, and some of the protesters at her grandson’s wake, following the funeral. It turns out this elderly woman was a former Black Panther, and her two friends from the home had been political radicals from the 1960‘s, particularly effected by the 1968 Chicago Democrat Convention police riot.
The students, and the old and now retired former radicals, form a partnership seeking a way to remind the American People of the fundamental reasons and means that led to the creation of the American Experiment. The students have heart, but not wisdom. The oldsters have wisdom but not the forces of youth. One of their main ideas is that, as the Declaration insists: the only just laws come from the consent of the governed.
Guided by the thoughtfulness of one of the former radicals, the two groups, students and elders, create a new Confederation, and include homeless people and unemployed people, to do an new style “occupation”. The radicals also discern that the student protest group has already been penetrated by a spy from the Oakland police, which is likely being aided by Homeland Security. A somewhat elaborate sting is woven, which causes the police and Homeland Security to over-reach their authority, which, however, results in tragedy.
The radicals, expecting trouble, but not the intensity by which it arrives, arranged to have the whole illegal and immoral (from the side of the police) confrontation to be captured on digital video, which was live-streamed all over the social networks, as well as video-taped by a local News crew from an Oakland TV station. This tragic event is presented in the opening scenes of the third act of the film
In the aftermath, as the Oakland Police and Homeland Security try to cover up their over-reaching, the Ideas of the Confederation of elders, young students, homeless and unemployed (those least protected by our ostensible government) are able to occupy the moral high ground, with the result that all over America, in the days following that live-streamed illegal police action and tragedy, people start to wear buttons which say such as: “I no longer consent”, or "the grandmother war". A powerful political movement is born where regular people relearn what the Founders understood over 200 years ago, by asking these questions: How does a free people govern itself? What is the nature of the social contract? What is the meaning of the rule of law? What is the difference between law and morality? How does money actually work? And, ... that We the People, in creating the Constitution, only gave a limited grant of power to a central government, reserving all manner of powers for ourselves (see the 10th Amendment), including the power to rewrite the social contract from the ground up, whenever we want or need. A lesson in Civics is given in this film a dramatic form.
America, as Franklin knew, is an Idea. Those human impulses which want to dominate people, through wealth and power, want to kill that Idea. But an Idea can’t be killed. This Idea (in plain speech: “work hard, play by the rules, and mind your own business”) lives, in fact, in the hearts of the American People, although others try to claim it and use it, falsely, for their own selfish purposes.
Lincoln stated it most simply in the last words of the Gettysburg Address: “ ... that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
We’ve nearly lost this Idea, but this film can show how, with the most simple acts of courage, this Idea can once more live in the actions of ordinary people. We get a second Declaration, a second Revolution, and a second Confederation, with small deeds of sacrifice, through the most simple acts of unity of purpose (E pluribus unum: out of many, one).
Out of this struggle the embryo of a second Constitution is being generated, one in which the laws, that have been forced upon us by manufactured (fake) consent, are undone (such as that Corporations are people etc.).
The Very Flawed Present Nature of the Public Conversation
From the film, a voice over during the credits:
“There is a lot of lying, and if not lying just plain stupidity in our public life. If a public official says we live in a democracy, or or talking head on TV says the same, ... they are lying, or they are seriously stupid. There is no in between. We live in an oligarchy, which is a system of government controlled by an elite class, mostly rich. They control the corporations, the media and they effectively own most of our politicians.
“A democracy would mean there is a relationship of some kind between our voting, and the results - the results being the actions taken by Congress and the Senate. Anyone not entirely asleep knows that the Congress and the Senate mostly take care of the needs of the 1% of the 1%, not ours.
“Now this is not some kind of nut job conspiracy theory bullshit. There is no conspiracy. Its a fact of our political life that came about because people refused to use honest language in public affairs. They used this dishonest language for so long that some people came to believe it, although many do not ... many know what is said in politics is a lie, whether it is said by politicians or by News people.
“For the News people the problem is actually fear, for if they started to ask good questions, or speak the truth, the liars wouldn’t give them interviews anymore. Sad, but true.
“At its best the political conversations between the media and elected officials is badly performed theater, - performed by both sides for their own personal interest. It some instances, it is also conscious cowardice and treason. Many presidents have violated their oaths of office, and many others have committed crimes, for it is a crime to lie to the public. I don’t know if it is a crime to report a lie, which you know is a lie, but perhaps it should be.
“And we, if we continue to tolerate this, if we fail to put on that simple button that says “I no longer consent”, then we’ve joined the liars and the stupid. That’s the choice. Put on the button and stand for the truth, or be a liar or seriously politically stupid.
“This is especially the case if you’ve stopped voting, because you know your vote doesn’t mean anything. If you know that, then you know about the lying and the stupidity, and all you are doing, besides not voting, is putting on the button and saying ... I don’t consent to the lying and more, and (if you want), I’m not going to vote because no real choices exist in the act of voting.
“Almost all political parties are corrupt - certainly the major ones, the Democrats and the Republicans - our Founders didn’t even want them to exist. When I don’t vote, I’m voting for none of the above, because I know already they won’t represent me. If they wanted to represent me, they wouldn’t join a party and they’d wear a button too.
“Imagine a Congress and a Senate made up entirely of independents. With term limits, and having to run for office without any special interest money at all. Chaos? I don’t think so. Sanity, and service and nobody becoming a career politician and getting rich for doing their duty as a citizen.
Right now the public conversation is dominated by the political parties and by corporate money. This domination is furthered by television, especially television News. But that domination is a two ended pen (you know that pen, the one that is mightier than the sword). They write with one end, using mostly money, and we write with the other end, using some simple buttons and a willingness to talk to other people about the basic questions that need to be understood in order to have a real conversation about government. They want to dominate through promoting fears of each other via sound-bites of emotional and divisive "issues", while what is needed instead is sound thinking about fundamentals. Once more from the synopsis, the crucial questions, that we need to ask of each other at the level of the social commons, and we need to start to demand that the politicians and the News people also speak concerning:
A powerful political movement is born where regular people relearn what the Founders understood over 200 years ago, by asking these questions: How does a free people govern itself? What is the nature of the social contract? What is the meaning of the rule of law? What is the difference between law and morality? How does money actually work? And, ... that We the People, in creating the Constitution, only gave a limited grant of power to a central government, reserving all manner of powers for ourselves (see the 10th Amendment), including the power to rewrite the social contract from the ground up, whenever we want or need.
The United States Constitution begins: "We the People ... do ordain and establish ... ", which clearly reveals that the authority of the Central Government is fully dependent upon the People, who are now - in our present - announcing that "We no longer Consent". The President and all other elected officials work for us, not the other way around. The Revolution that founded the American Experiment is not yet finished, in large part because the further evolution of this revolution had to wait for a time when it was recognized that the Whole World had a right to have an interest (converse about) public life in America.
The Conversation itself is capable of bearing a lot of changes in language, in the process of moving away from its habits of falseness toward greater truth. For example, in America this distinction can (and should be made): There is a difference between the ostensible government and the real government. The ostensible government is elected officials and their cronies among the 1% of the 1%. The real government is the People. One of the necessary tasks is to remind the ostensible government that the real government is the People, whose needs are to come first, rather than the needs of the cronies.
Why Put the United States of America in the Center of World Events
Everywhere in the world there are a great many open sores of social chaos. Syria, Greece, where ISIS is, and the Ukraine, to name just a few. Even amidst that chaos, ordinary people survive - through extraordinary acts of will. Right now, one of the places with the least amount of social chaos, and the most political freedom, is the United States of America. Sadly, the People of Peoples have been put somewhat to sleep, in part by having economic conditions far more favorable than elsewhere in the world. The Roman Emperors ruled by providing Bread and Circuses - barely adequate means of living and major distractions. It is the same in the USA. Grocery stores full of food, often stolen from elsewhere in the world, cheap gas, more cars than God, and television, and computer games, and drugs - an upper and middle class grown fat on the wealth of others, and satiated of mind through infotainments galore.
These infotainments are empty calories for the soul. Like all Peoples everywhere, Americans recognize that something is missing. The middle-class is being destroyed - the numbers in the lower class steadily increasing. The veterans of our many wars come home to physical and social poverty. Unemployment is huge. Over 30 million able bodied people no longer even look for work. The government fills up our jails by prosecuting minorities for minor drug offenses, while the government's cronies in the finance industry can come near to destroying the world's economy and never be touched by the law at all.
The America People are also great of heart. Who volunteered by millions to help Europe in two great wars? Who resisted the previous (Putin's back at it) over-reaching of Russian czarism and contributed to the winning of the cold war that followed. Every troubled people in the world ask: Where is America on our problems? When will America act? They know Americans have something to give, and Americans know that too, but something is making that impossible and/or complicated beyond what makes any rational sense.
Yes, something is lacking, and this which is lacking is a true understanding of the American Experiment and what now is at risk.
As Assange and Snowden revealed, the dark underbelly of American politics, in the form of the CIA, the NSA, and do nothing political parties, causes great harm everywhere. Yet, the American People - the People of Peoples - are slowly waking up. Centuries ago, Archimedes used to say: “Give me a place to stand and with a lever I will move the whole world.”
This, politically, is where we are today. Help remind the America People that they are a part of the whole world, and that this world has a right to ask of them a duty. Not demand, ask. Not by divisive rhetoric, but by Art. The "I no longer Consent", and the possibility of "the grandmother war", impulses lives everywhere; and, were it to come fully awake among the extraordinary ordinary American People, that "lever" may well start to move the whole world, because just here, in America, is a main battlefield where that ongoing the war between multinational corporations and Nation States can still be fought.
The barbarians are inside the gates in America, and the refusal of the political parties to give proper attention to the People's needs are obvious. The only missing element is a modern "Common Sense", so that the America People can be reminded of who and what they are, and what is at stake.
There are multiple Ways to contribute to this Conversation
The movie "the grandmother war" can be a modern "Common Sense" - a world-wide means to frame the fundamental questions that need to live in the public dialogue (conversation). Part of what this means is that ordinary people anywhere can contribute to cloud-source funding for the film. More than one cloud-source funding venue can be used. This is about individual actions, not mass actions. In terms of the film, the more demand, the more likelihood someone will green-light an actual film, following the screen-treatment from which certain quotes have been offered above (again, the whole screen treatment is found here).
People can also make their own "buttons", which are some version of "I no longer consent" or "the grandmother war", and with wearing will naturally lead to conversations among ordinary people. Social media can be used, whether Twitter (#Inolongerconsent, #thegrandmotherwar etc.), to individual voices on YouTube or Facebook, but the crucial matter is that the discussions be about the fundamentals, and not the divisive issues. As more and more people take up this dialogue, the politicians and the media in America will have to begin to include themselves, otherwise the "evolving conversation" will pass them right by, as if they were standing still. Which is, in point of fact, what the 1% of the 1% and their cronies are doing: standing still, while the rest of us evolve.
This last point is worth more emphasis. Politicians, in America, use pollsters and others (such as focus groups) to seek to find the words by which to frame their divisive issues. They want to reach into our emotional life, not our conscious cognitive life, and trick us into the world view, from which they wish to manufacture the appearance of consent. As the conversation at the social commons changes - the conversations of ordinary people, as the idea of "I no longer consent" and/or "the grandmother war" spreads, then the polls and the focus groups will change and thereby force the politicians to adjust their efforts, following our direction, not their efforts to abuse us with the whips of offensive and divisive ideologies. Most people don't want to be divided against each other. Their "common sense" sees how abhorrent is that approach.
As the writer of this screen-treatment, I have decided to reveal the whole thing right here. But we also have to respect the Ways the real world works, and if someone is going to green-light such a film as Consent, they will have to be able to freely acquire the rights in a manner consistent with modern intellectual property rights laws. For this reason the screen treatment reveals that it is freely given to all. Anyone can do what they want with any part. That's for the film. For other activity, using the "button" (or other) ideas, everyone everywhere can do what they individually want, from making buttons, to making videos, to making songs, to writing poetry, to going via Tor to the Darknet, to going to Reddit ... whatever approach works for you, and the particular community to which you individually belong. You don't even need to support the film to be a part of the conversation, and you certainly don't need to live in the USA either.
Remember:
I - an individual human being -Economic and Social Rebellion: a money debt owed bankers is only a number ... while what lives in the hearts of a People is a spiritual currency of infinitely greater value.
no longer Consent
(changing the world, one human being at a time)
There is more ...
"Them", the 1% of the 1%, and "us". What or who are they? Do they belong in the story? Would the world be a better place if "they" did not exist?
Somebody is driving that tank in the above picture. Someone puts the breaks on. And, behind that "someone" is a whole hierarchy of "others", leading to some kind of top-level decision maker. There are people in Washington D.C., working on "K" street. There are people in New York working on Wall Street. Where do they "fit into" the picture of the whole?
The world is decidedly not fair. There is no perfect justice in this world - that is reserved for the Afterlife. There is the hope for fairness and justice - that hope exists. Lincoln also said: "You can fool some of the people all of the time; and, all of the people some of the time; but, you can't fool all of the people all of the time."
There is faith that sometimes there will be instances of fairness and justice. Even those who wear a button that says: "I no longer Consent" are not perfect. We human beings are all flawed.
There is a moral teaching-story out of Africa. It goes something like this. Two tribes are at war with each other. One is more aggressive, while the other less so. The wise-ones in the less aggressive tribe tell their People that the best Way to peace (not the certain Way, just the "best" Way), is for those who seem to be the victims of the aggression to go to the aggressors and ask them: What do you want? What do you need? Then, when that want and that need is known, the less aggressive tribe is to give to the more aggressive tribe, as a free gift, what is wanted and needed. If that is possible, and done, the aggression may cease, and peace will reign. Peace at a price, it would seem.
Years ago I wrote a little story, as part of an essay, about a time in the future where the world was divided into two basic groups: A majority - those who had very little, and a tiny minority - those who had a lot and always wanted more.
the War Against the Grey MenLike many human beings, Adam labored in the House of the Grey Men. Each morning he awoke, and after breakfast said good-bye to his two children, and with his wife, and the others whose time of sacrifice it also was, Adam went to the station there to wait for and then to ride the Machine Beast into the bowels of the House of the Grey Men. The lower levels of the House were a terrible place to labor. No one was allowed to care for the work place except in the most minimal way. Soot, oil, garbage, foul air and water, and worse yet, colorless ideas, ... the lower level of the House was a place of little light and much darkness. But Adam understood; were it not for the Peace, the whole world would be like the House of the Grey Men. The Peace had made it possible for human beings to have the Home, but only for a Price. The Grey Men always had to have a Price. Yet Adam and the others were glad to pay their share of the Price, for in this way they could, perhaps, keep themselves and those they loved from becoming Grey as well. How else to save one's Soul then to pay the Price.
As always the Labor made Adam tired. But he knew that when he came Home the tiredness could be made to go away. So, as he always did, Adam gave his Labor with a good heart. In this way Adam kept the colors in his soul and his spirit alive. On this particular day, at the end of his shift, one of the Grey Men came to Adam and told him to come into the Office. Once there, the Grey man gave a pink envelope to Adam, and, with it, a very Grey smile. Adam's heart leapt into his throat, and he struggled to contain his excitement. It would not do to let the Grey man know what he truly felt. Carefully Adam opened the envelope and saw the Magic Words inside: "your Fired!" it said. As he had been taught Adam looked at his feet and slumped in his chair, even though his mind was racing with all the changes that were now possible. After a few minutes of silence the Grey man dismissed Adam. Carefully Adam put the pink envelope into the pocket of his work clothes and returned to his place of Labor. It took all the discipline he could muster to keep from jumping for joy.
Riding Home in the Beast, Adam could not contain himself. Standing next to his wife, he had her peek into his pocket. When she saw the envelope a smile lit up her face and she leaned against his shoulder and took his hand in hers. That night in the quiet of their apartment they and their friends had a party. Adam would now be able to stay Home all day, he had been freed of his duty to sacrifice to the House of the Grey Men, and now his Labor could be kept in the community. Various guardians of the community came to Adam that night asking where he would like to give his Labor, while others came to his wife to help manage the change. No longer would they live in the apartment that belonged to the Grey Men, but now they could live at Home. As the evening wore down, one of the guardians spoke the words of the Peace makers, reminding them all of their true power in the war against the Grey Men.
" They think they've fired me, but I am human, and this means I am free to give my own meaning to all things. Not so, say I, that pink means to be fired, but rather to be set free. They think they get my Labor for their Price, but I give it of myself. Sad it is that they choose to lose their colors, but I have kept mine and with my freedom to declare what it all means, I ride the rainbow of life in the company of others, sharing the same destiny. "
A wise teacher once said: "the poor shall be with you always."
To imagine a perfect world is to imagine an impossibility. There will come a kind of collapse of present day world order. Such cannot be stopped - the old institutional Ways of doing many things have become rigid and fragile. Melting ice floods the world. Climate change is real. The ocean fisheries are being depopulated. Water is everywhere more and more scarce. As social order seems to fall apart under these pressures of fatal seeming change, there arises in the chaos an opportunity for the many to create new culture. To create a new shared meaning, and not to consider poverty and an absence of plenty to be a wrongness. Let the Grey Men have their too much of everything, as long as they give us peace to find our own Ways. This will not be easy, but the struggle to do so will be worth a great deal. A poem I wrote years ago, its latest version:
I have too much.
If I am not careful,
things will possess me.
Their weight I carry everywhere.
If I lose them I may feel lost.
It makes no difference
be these things, or ideas.
They can all be stones.
So, I will choose to have nothing.
Thus free, I become.
Who has more of himself? The order giver ruling the tank, or the human being standing valiantly in the way. Yet, how do individuals on all the multiple sides of all the thousands of questions, work together? E pluribus unum: Out of many, one.
This next was from a television work of art ... a series which dared to have a five year story arc, something seldom done before that time (1990's). It was called Babylon Five, and the words below were from a statement of principles to be held by all members of an interstellar alliance. If we read the spirit of these words, we just might see how much they apply to us:
"The Universe speaks in many languages, but only one voice. The language is not Narn, or human or Centari or Gayam or Mimbari. It speaks in the language of hope. It speaks in the language of trust. It speaks in the language of strength and the language of compassion, which is the language of the heart, and the language of the soul. But always it is the same voice. It is the voice of our ancestors speaking through us, and the voice of our inheritors waiting to be born. It is the small still voice that says: We are one, no matter the blood, no matter the skin, no matter the world, no matter the star. We are one, no matter the pain, no matter the darkness, no matter the loss, no matter the fear. We are one. Here, gathered together in common cause we agree to recognize this singular truth and this singular rule: That we must be kind to one another. Because each voice enriches us and ennobles us. And each voice lost diminishes us. We are the voice of the Universe, the soul of Creation, the fire that will light the way to a better future. We are one."
We - as individual human beings -
no longer Consent
(changing the world, by as many as are willing, more or less all at the same time)
Keep in mind this fact. Right now the American People do not believe they can be players in the Game. They believe the lies that divide them and marginalize them. They believe their only power is the vote, and that that power is severely restricted by voter ID laws, and the gerrymandering of voting districts. This is not true, and they have been drinking that Kool-aid for a long long time. They buy the meme that they should be afraid of their government, in the form of the IRS, Homeland Security, the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, and the TSA, while the movie "V for Vengeance" correctly points out this: People shouldn't be afraid of their governments. The governments should be afraid of their people. Help the American People remember who they are. Don't consent anymore to the false memes regarding the relationship between a People and their central government.
Politics is about who shows up. Are you going to show up?
Uncommon Sense: the degeneration, and the redemption, of political life in America: why play by the rules, when the game is already fixed
On the Nature of Public Life - The Soul of a People, the Spirit of a Nation, and the Sacrifices of its Leaders.
the screen treatment for: "the grandmother war"