There is a deeply uncomfortable but clearly structural explanation for the pattern of historic U.S. war-making that continues to this very moment. US Americans, people like you and me, are addicted to insatiable consumption that makes the American Way Of Life totally dependent upon massive exploitation of others and their resources, and the earth herself.
The political-economic market system we have grown up with and support with our tax dollars and voting patterns is a significant contributor to the problem.
Part of the revolutionary antidote, if it occurs, will be in radically changed choices each of us makes as to how we travel, what we eat, what we consume or don’t consume, etc. Take travel, for example. Air and private auto travel not only emit massive amounts of carbon molecules, accumulating as particles of mass destruction in our biosphere, they also consume inordinate amount of petroleum for each passenger mile traveled.
If we are not committed to taking radical leaps in our own consciousness that manifests in corresponding radical changes in our lifestyles, then we choose complicity in business as usual, i.e., continuing to live as we have been conditioned and to which we are now addicted – comfortable materialism. It is absolutely and totally unsustainable. We now have an evolutionary opportunity for a leap in consciousness to integrate ourselves into a cosmological reality of living in mutual respect with all other life. So, we are the antidote, not the government or the market. As we become conscious, each daily choice we make from eating, traveling, and consuming, or not, is a revolutionary act.
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And as we become more conscious of our choices, we become more integrated into a social movement with others that tends toward a revolutionary wave empowering people to resist the status quo while re-constructing local sufficient food and tool cultures from below. The sooner industrial capitalism collapses, the better chance we have of a new epistemology toward eco-centric, regionally autonomous communities.
Thanks in part to your inspiration, Brian, Bike4Peace continues. This year Cynthia McKinney is leading a group of bicyclists from San Francisco to Washington, DC, where we will converge with riders from all over the continent for World Car-Free Day, 22-Sept. Hope to see you there! http://b4p.bbnow.org/
http://vernonhuffman.blogspot.com/2007/02/my-heroes_02.html#links
The point you pose is one that has troubled me for a long time. I feel even more conflicted as time goes by, because my life as an activist lawyer so often conflicts with living a simpler, less consumptive life. For instance, I fly a few times a year for courts-martial to defend war resisters. (I drive when possible, but sometimes it is just not practical) I think its the right thing to do, but boy I still feel like I’m contributing to the evils I want to fight against (both from pollution and from the wars caused by petroleum consumption)
I am totally on-board with Brian’s commentary. I feel so good about being virtually CAR-FREE here in Oakland (even though it can be frustrating riding in the rain & losing my cell phone the other week) and I only bank at local banks, shop 98 percent of the time w/ local, independent stores/co-ops, and am very conscious about where my money goes and how much material resources I use on a daily basis. Being conscious is the KEY to destablizing the corporate take-over and domination of our society. THANKS BRIAN…YOU ARE MY HERO!!