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The Art of Doing the Impossible – Václav Havel
“Let us teach both ourselves and others that politics ought to be a reflection of the aspiration to contribute to the happiness of the community and not of the need to deceive and pillage for political purposes. Let us teach both ourselves and others that politics does not have to be the art of the possible, especially if this means the art of speculating, calculating, secret agreements, and cynical maneuvering, but that it also can be the art of the impossible, that is the art of making both ourselves and the world better.”
“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” -Einstein
This weblog began on March 26, 2003 with the beginning of my commitment to working full time for social change. I’ve since traveled to the Middle East and walked the olive groves of Palestine and the streets of old Jerusalem, biked across the country learning about food security and later worked to support the Green Party. Lovers came and went, many new friends came into my life, and I’ve lost some old friends.
As I walked my path I grew and changed. Although I’ve seen friends get brutalized by the police and murdered by the brutality of the occupation, I also discovered that the solutions we seek are often all quite simple. As one of my teachers, Bill Mollison, says “Though the problems are increasingly complex, the solutions are embarrassingly simple.”
This post marks the turn of this blog towards looking at those solutions. The problems we face are no doubt staggering — global warming, dramatic extinction, massive political corruption resulting from the perfect storm combination of the corporate military-prison-industrial complex, and the list goes on.
And yet the solutions are stunningly simple. After all, global warming is a direct result of deforestation; obviously we can plant trees. Apathy is a direct result of disempowerment, and addressing the causes of that disempowerment has become my life’s work. After all, leadership is about empowering others to lead.
The fact is that most problems we face are nothing more but a massive failure of imagination. The suicidal path we’ve chosen has thus far been the best we could imagine. We could do better. Imagination begins here.
“We are the ones we have been waiting for”
“Upon suffering beyond suffering, the Red Nation shall rise again and it shall be a blessing for a sick world. A world filled with broken promises, selfishness and separations. A world longing for light again.
I see a time of Seven Generations when all the colors of mankind will gather under the Sacred Tree of Life and the whole Earth will become one circle again. In that day, there will be those among the Lakota who will carry knowledge and understanding of unity among all living things and the young white ones will come to those of my people and ask for this wisdom.
I salute the light within your eyes where the whole Universe dwells. For when you are at that center within you and I am that place within me, we shall be one.”
- Chief Crazy Horse, Oglala Sioux
Giving thanks for a genocide eh?
“Well, here in the US it’s the holiday known as Thanksgiving. It got started when the governor of Massachusetts wanted to celebrate the massacre of 700 Pequot women, children and old men by English and Dutch religious zealots, racists, mercenaries and other assorted scum. The governor wanted to give thanks for this massacre. And now, without ever having recognized the origins of this holiday as a society, with our schools still teaching about the “meeting of two cultures,” the televisions, radios and newspapers are full of stories about how thankful we Americans are about one thing or the other.
No one on CNN or NPR will be speaking about the elephant in the living room. No one will be uttering the words, thank you, Native America, for your stolen land. Thank you for this great commons which we have privatized and sold. Thanks for your forests which we are decimating. Thanks for these mountains which we are mining. Thanks for these prairies which we are drowning in pesticides. Thanks for these coastlines and deserts and river valleys which we are covering with highways, malls and nuclear reactors. Thanks for these blue skies which we have turned gray. So yes, happy Thanksgiving, all. Happy Iraq War. Happy climate change.” – David Rovics (www.davidrovics.com)