by Stefan Schindler
William James, Mark Twain, I. F. Stone. Emma Goldman, Helen Keller, Molly Ivins. Jim Hightower, John Pilger, William Blum. Lewis Lapham, Michael Parenti, Victor Wallis. Vandana Shiva, Joan Baez, Naomi Klein. Ami Goodman, Abby Martin, Daniel Berrigan.
David Talbot, James Douglass, Thich Nhat Hanh. Oscar Romero, the Dalai Lama, Dan Ellsberg. And, of course, Chris Hedges, Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn. These are just a few of the torch-bearers of the spirit of Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King and John Lennon.
Peace is possible. Progress has been made. Meanwhile, the struggle continues.
A crisis can be ongoing and deepening for a very long time. This has been the case with the USA for forty years at least. 1968 might well be seen as the pivot point. The full and fatal swerve toward economic apartheid and the rollback of FDR’s New Deal began in earnest in 1981 with Reaganomics. The hammer-blows against social enlightenment have kept the war machine in full throttle and kept too many Americans in thrall to sloganeering and sophistry.
The earth groans, bees disappear, and in 2020 the wasteland grows.
But danger is also opportunity. Breakdown is often breakthrough.
Behind the news there is a global dance. A collective invitation to give peace a chance.
What is true for the individual is true for the whole. Fate is determined by the choices we make. Let us use our freedom wisely. What Kant said at the end of the 18th century is true now: “We live in an age of enlightenment; but we do not yet live in an enlightened age.”
Perhaps the essence of life really is learning and service. Siddhartha Gautama, Meister Eckhart and Thomas Merton thought so. I believe it too.
Keep the faith, my friend. We may yet be on the verge of something great. A turning of the civilizational wheel toward the wisdom of James and Twain and company. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.