Author's posts
May 13 2010
Utopia 21: The Red God Speaks
“In one way or another, this is the oldest story in America: the struggle to determine whether “we, the people” is a spiritual idea embedded in a political reality — one nation, indivisible — or merely a charade masquerading as piety and manipulated by the powerful and privileged to sustain their own way of life at the expense of others.”–Bill Moyers
Apr 25 2010
Dystopia 20: Tendo
“It turns out, money is power…”–Tim Garrett discussing his revolutionary equation linking GDP growth to global warming.
Apr 19 2010
Dystopia 19: Capture
“The state calls its own violence law, & that of the individual, crime.”- Max Stirner
Apr 04 2010
Utopia 20: The Hospital
The commitment I seek is not to outworn views but to old values that will never wear out. Programs may sometimes become obsolete, but the ideal of fairness always endures. Circumstances may change, but the work of compassion must continue.
What we have in the United States is not so much a health-care system as a disease-care system.
The more our feelings diverge, the more deeply felt they are, the greater is our obligation to grant the sincerity and essential decency of our fellow citizens on the other side.–Sen Ted Kennedy
Mar 15 2010
Utopia 19: A Long Way Home
Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside
And it is ragin’
It’ll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’.
—Bob Dylan, “The Times They Are A-Changin'”
Feb 28 2010
Dystopia 18: Greek Revival
A world divided by nationalist struggles and vain fantasies of dominating the earth’s resources is a world that grows increasingly insane and self-destructive. Yet many decent and moral people accept the current construction of politics as a ” given.” They end up participating in this insanity and calling it “realistic.”
Today, what people call realistic or common sense, is nothing more than “inside-the-beltway” assumptions created and maintained by corporate-dominated media. Only by throwing off those assumptions and thinking outside the box, can people see the Strategy of Generosity for what it is – a method to stop insane people who have power from continuing their disastrous path of destruction.
It is a delusion to imagine that only one political party or set of candidates frames our foreign policy in terms of narrowly conceived American interests. Instead, we must realize that this behavior is a shared insanity that must be challenged in every part of our political thinking. It is just as likely to be articulated by people with whom we agree, as by people who are overtly reactionary or ultra-nationalistic.–Rabbi Michael Lerner Tikkun Magazine Speaking about the Global Marshal Plan
Feb 02 2010
Utopia 18: The Long Now
Death comes to all, but great achievements build a monument which shall endure until the sun grows cold.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Jan 28 2010
Utopia 18: The Long Now
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Dec 22 2009
Dystopia 17: The Spy
Nov 28 2009
Utopia 17: Whent the Red Wind Blows
“Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
J. Robert Oppenheimer quoting the Bhagavad Gita as he watched his creation, the first atomic bomb, successfully detonate.
Actual quote from the Bhagavad Gita:
sri-bhagavan uvaca:
kalo ‘smi loka-ksaya-krt pravrddho
lokan samahartum iha pravrttah /
rte ‘pi tvam na bhavisyanti sarve
ye ‘vasthitah pratyanikesu yodhah //
The Lord said: “Time [death] I am, the destroyer of the worlds, who has come to annihilate everyone. Even without your taking part all those arrayed in the [two] opposing ranks will be slain!”
(Gita vs. 11.32
trans. after Swami Tripurari)
Nov 03 2009
Utopia 16: Student Driver
Oct 24 2009
Dystopia 16: A Place of Her Own
The World Turned Upside Down (One version of the Digger’s Song)
In 1649 to St. George’s Hill
A ragged band they called the Diggers
Came to show the people’s will.
They defied the landlord, they defied the laws,
They were the dispossessed reclaiming what was theirs.
“We come in peace,” they said, “To dig and sow,
We come to work the lands in common
And to make the waste ground grow.
This earth divided we will make whole
So it will be a common treasury for all!
The sin of property we do disdain,
No man has any right to buy and sell the earth for private gain.
By theft and murder they took the land,
Now everywhere the walls spring up at their command.
They make the laws to chain us well,
The clergy dazzle us with heaven or they damn us into hell.
We will not worship the god they serve:
The god of greed who feeds the rich while poor folk starve.
We work, we eat together, we need no swords;
We will not bow to the masters or pay rent to the lords.
Still we are free, tho’ we are poor,
You Diggers all stand up for glory, stand up now!
From the men of property the orders came:
They sent the hired men and troopers to wipe out the Diggers’ claim.
Tear down their cottages, destroy their corn,
They were dispersed, but still the Vision lingers on!
“You poor, take courage, you rich take care,
This earth was made a common treasury for everyone to share.
All things in common, all people one, We come in peace…”
– The order came to cut them down.