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Friday, March 19, 2004
Friday, March 19, 2004
"Like a traveler on a train we can put down our bags.
We can relax our grip and trust in the unfolding of life.
Do not worry.
There is a web of life into which we are born,
from which we can never fall.
We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality,
tied in a single garment of destiny."
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Thursday, March 18, 2004
"Americans might be ready to demand not just more tinkering, more reform laws, another reshuffling of the same deck, another New Deal, but radical change. Let us be utopian for a moment so that when we get realistic again it is not that 'realism' so useful to the Establishment in its discouragement of action, that 'realism' anchored to a certain kind of history empty of surprise. Let us 'imagine' what radical change would require of us all."
Howard Zinn, "A People's History of the United States"
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Tuesday, March 16, 2004
Wednesday, March 17, 2004
Happy St. Patrick's Day. Hope it's a lucky day for you. The following piece of wisdom comes from a little book I have called "Don't Squat With Yer Spurs On! - A Cowboy's Guide to Life," by someone named Texas Bix Binder:
"No matter who says what, don't believe it if it don't make sense."
I find this profound in a lot of situations where some expert has just confused me with a lot of bullshit. Now there are a lot of experts who tell you that we could never reduce the defense budget by $50 billion in a single year, or by $100 billion over three or four years, and funnel all the savings into social compassion and social development around the world. They don't tell you why. They just expect you to believe them because they're experts. Remember that it was experts that got us all into the mess in which the world currently finds itself, on almost every front.
To me, the idea that we couldn't reduce the defense budget by large proportions just don't make sense. Consequently, I don't believe it.
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Tuesday, March 16, 2004
Did you ever read "Illusions," by Richard Bach? It's just the coolest book. I've read it probably five or six times in my life and I think I'll read it again maybe tonight. It reminds me that there is magic in abundance in the universe - that miracles absolutely occur - great big ones. It also reminds us of the supernatural inside of each of us. You leave the book with a profound knowing, and with a great sense of unlimited possibility. In other words, the book leaves you feeling the way human beings are supposed to feel naturally, as opposed to the beaten down, despairing, anxious state in which the world typically leaves us.
I bring this up because someone on the list told me to visit this cool website by a guy named Mike Dooley called totally unique thoughts - the address is www.tut.com. They send you these really great e-mails every day that remind you that you created this whole story in the first place, and that amazing things are coming your way if you'll open yourself to receiving them. The way I look at it, we can't get enough positive reinforcement like that.
Now don't go abandoning me for that site. (Yes, I'm insecure. It's the flip side of healthy ego-mania).
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Monday, March 15, 2004
I sent out a little supportive message on Sunday night to the folks on the mailing list. I got back so many responses from people who said, "Thanks, I really needed that." This is one of the reasons the internet is so wonderful - it offers us the opportunity to support one another in ways that were not so possible ten years ago. And the best way for us to keep the dream inside of us alive is to support one another - to lift one another back up when one is down. It doesn't naturally occur to the idealist, for some reason, that we don't have to keep our idealism alive all by ourselves. There are other idealists and dreamers out there - millions of them - and we can seek help from one another when our spirits are low. This is a great blessing in the design of the universe!
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Sunday, March 14, 2004
Sunday, March 14, 2004
The problem with the Presidential choices we will have this fall is that the differences between John Kerrry and George Bush exists largely in the margins. This will sound radical to many who believe the two are like night and day. Within a limited context the two are night and day, but within a broader context the differences fade. It is the broader context in which I am interested and toward which humanity must travel.
For instance, President Bush wants a defense budget in the area of $425 billion, excluding the resources needed for Iraq. If you visit the Kerry website, it is very difficult to see what his position is on the defense budget - there are no numbers to be found. We know generally that one of the attacks against he has to defend himself is that he will be weak on defense. So while he may not call for a $425 billion defense budget, we can be sure he will call for a defense budget in excess of $400 billion as well. In the broader context, both of these candidates believe in the validity of the military solution. They both believe in the threat of violence as the deterrent to violence.
What we need is a Presidential candidate who says, "I don't believe in that system. That system has not worked. If it had worked we would not need to continue spending more and more money to defend the nation. The fact that we do serves only to prove that it has failed." Because the truth is the world is getting more dangerous, and people are getting more frightened. We think we won the Cold War, but now we see the Russians displaying their military might once again - resentful of the humiliation they endured during the 1980s. We have this new enemy called terror that we can't see and we can't fight. These are not new enemies. These appear to be "new" threats. They are not new. They are the same threats in different form. A system that is designed to defend against the threat of violence will continue to generate threats of violence to perpetuate a need for itself. It is a dysfunctional system in much the same way paranoia is a psychological dysfunction - it creates self-fulfilling prophecy.
We need a candidate who is willing to say that they want to reduce the Defense budget by 50% over a very short period of time, and funnel the savings in to massive humanitarian projects at home and abroad. We need a candidate who will say that in year one we will reduce the military budget by $50 billion and we will use those funds to do three things - 1) undertake a massive field effort to distribute medication enough to save the lives of the 3 million people who die of AIDS every year, 2) undertake a second massive field effort to end starvation and malnutrition around the world - in the first year - to provide emergency relief to stop the deaths of millions of children from things like diarrhea, whooping cough, diphtheria, and starvation, and 3) begin the re-building of the American education system from top to bottom including an overwhelming initiative in the inner cities of America. All those people that lose their jobs as a result of the elimination of $50 billion in military spending can be moved into these massive social improvement efforts. These efforts are so much more in the real interest of our nation defense and preservation than the efforts that we currently fund.
In the second, third and fourth years, as we reduce defense spending by another $150 billion, we could undertake projects that provide free health care to all Americans, and others to build state-of-the art schools around the world, and to create five and ten-year initiatives to find cures for AIDS, diabetes, cancer, multiple sclerosis, and Parkinson's disease. We could fund unbelievable initiatives that would inspire the children of the world - and the adults too - to get us to Mars and beyond - not in 30 years, but in ten. We could populate the world with hybrid-electric vehicles and fully electric vehicles - these technologies already exist. I know. I own a fully electric vehicle that plugs into a 110 outlet and can get me to work and back (and go as fast as 75 miles an hour) on a single charge for less than seventy-five cents a day. All the world needs is to get the production levels of these vehicles into the tens of thousands and they would be more affordable than current combustion engine vehicles.
And guess what all of this would do for the American and global economies? A tank doesn't produce anything. It is a huge piece of expensive capital equipment that does nothing but produce anxiety. The same thing with a ballistic missile, and a gun, and an aircraft carrier. They are great hunks of metal that do nothing to produce goods or services - unlike the big hunks of metal inside the factories of the world, which actually do produce things - like cars and refrigerators and medicines and other things that help to improve the quality of life. But a child who's not going to die of AIDS and is well educated can produce amazing things in the world. A move to electric vehicles can produce a whole new manufacturing economy. State-of-the-art schools around the world produce the need for state-of-the-art textbooks and computers and for well-trained teachers, which in turn produce bright students who in turn produce new ideas for building the global economy.
We could live in such a vital, vibrant and exciting world. We could be so productive. We could be so fulfilled. The world could be absolutely fantastic, marvelous, and inspiring in every way. The choice we have between these two candidates offers us none of this right now. Both claim to be positive and both claim to have an upbeat feeling about America, yet both of them so woefully underestimate the potential of this nation and of this world - both so woefully limit what they think can be achieved - that they are doing nothing more than continuing the slow methodical suffocation of the American spirit and the hopes of all the world. This is not choice. We are being given a distinction between boring and a little less boring. It is not what we want.
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