LIVING HERO

Oh Say, Why Can We Not See?

Fated for failure “from the get-go,” “a nation of hustlers” blinded from birth by mercenary ambition; from its title to its last words Morris Berman’s new book, Why America Failed: The Roots of Imperial Decline, depicts a country finished.

The whole social order was structured on false premises, he argues; premises that say happiness and virtue can be had through industry, business and money, hustling for advancement. It was about making a financial killing and the pervasive denial of consequences. The America celebrated every 4th of July was about its own tenuous and soul-destroying identity, akin to Moby Dick’s captain Ahab, hell-bent on hunting to the death.

It was about cut-throat competing to be first to market with novel tech-devices sold to a public slavering for them with every new ping and ding, like Pavlovian dogs, conditioned by a media machine brought to you by primo hustlers.

Drawing on the words and careers of Lewis Mumford, Thoreau, John Ruskin, Jimmy Carter, Neil Postman and many others who have opposed the amoral life of hustle, Berman documents the ever-presence of these powerful voices of wisdom published time and again; and lays bare the fact that the American masses never could muster any interest in wisdom or reality, the heart of America was not concerned, as it were.

While most of those who Berman cites would (perhaps with modest expectancy of actually selling books to Americans) tend to end their books on notes of hope and faith in their fellow Americans (though their brethren did not read them or, if they did, merely yawned and hit psychological snooze buttons again), Berman, an expatriate living in Mexico, proclaims that there is no such hope and there never was; that “we’ll carry on hustling until we literally collapse from it (2008 being only a mild preview).”

And “progress,” he makes clear, has actually been a colossal tragedy fraught with irony; the American model of empire gave us an information glut and an ignorant populace, convenience culture with less free time than ever, and all the while, technocratic toys claim your earnings and let you multitask the deep sea of life into a puddle, rewiring your brain so that you “can’t think deeply or creatively” and therefore will no longer be equipped to even sense what you’re missing. “The world of creativity, of imagination, of depth of the self, is closing down,” Berman writes, giving us “a nation of buffoons” with dull sensibilities, who “want slogans not nuance and sophistication.” Most Americans are psychologically equipped now only for a pseudo-bliss of denial and ignorance about themselves and everything else, especially their own history and its meaning.

A full chapter is devoted to making clear that the Civil War was actually far less about slavery than we’ve been led to believe, that it was, instead, an epic clash of social ideologies concerning what constitutes “the good life;” two irreconcilable economic models and modes of existence, industrial/modern/dynamic versus agricultural/traditional/steady-state, “two expansionist systems,” capitalist and neofeudal.

These two modes could not coexist in a Union of states. And the South simply had to be plowed under, incompatible as it was with Yankee industrial hustle and the march of “progress.” Slavery was used as a catch-all justification for eliminating the Southern way of life, because, in essence, it was antithetical to centralized control, mechanization, unmitigated greed, and growth unto death à la globalization.

He explains that the South’s formidable attempt to secede from the Union to preserve its way of life, rather than to “succeed” via the encroaching inroads of the North, was in honor of a gentile worldview in which slavery was but one factor (albeit, admittedly, a morally abhorrent one).

Berman cites the work of Raimondo Luraghi, remarking that the conflict of North and South was the “American version of the globalization process through industrial colonialism.” The North was characterized as “wired,” “competitive,” “impersonal,” “bureaucratic,” “commercial,” “rootless,” and all about “capital accumulation,” and the South was “leisurely,” “local,” “organic,” “rural,” “folk,” “hierarchical,” “traditional” and reliant upon a strong honor code.

Here Berman seems to suggest that the agrarian way of the South was more civilized because it offered a pastoral and rural life of leisure and honor. But the argument loses power and validity as one reflects upon the many concessions we must make about the South’s dark side, it’s anti-intellectualism and white supremacy, its punitive nature: tarring and feathering, lynching, duels, and the use of physical force on slaves.

If this gentile leisure was afforded by enforced slave labor, it was an immoral leisure; it belonged only to “gentlemen” slave owners and their heirs (and what is gentle about men with slaves?) — playing lords of the manor just like European aristocrats.

While Berman certainly presents and acknowledges this dark side of the South, he does so while maintaining that the South has been the only counterculture holding forth with any muscle against the hustling life since the nation’s birth. Other movements and alternative communities had no real countervailing power, zealous as their proponents may have been.

While all these considerations are fruitful in seeking the roots of wrong, Berman does not go far enough to reach those roots. What has transpired in America has its roots sunk much deeper than the Revolutionary War, which was not so long ago, and which did only its small part in withering the psychological dendrites of empire. What was absent from Berman’s account of “why” America is a failed enterprise is that North and South both represent dominator models; in a word (shhhh . . . ): patriarchy.

Stating that the South was “bent to the social good” and tradition, as if a tradition of patriarchy of any kind could be a good thing, is to miss the opportunity to make a vital point about where we stand now, crucial to the understanding of all imperial pasts and would-be futures, North, South, East and West.

Berman quotes The Unabomber’s manifesto and points to fundamentalist Islam as examples of those vehemently and violently opposed to the American way of life. Yet all of these also fall under the rubric of the dominator model of existence.

At the meta-level we can see the whole planet steeping in the toxic build-up of domination, the residues of patriarchy and its 5000+-year legacy, systemically perpetuated by both males and females. Monocultures, monarchies, monotheists, dynasties, lords, captains, chieftains—none of these can serve the human family or the human psyche. What is failing? the ideals of industrial hustle or the underlying ignorance and approaches to life? Is it America or a mind-set that migrated to America to flower into prime exemplar status here for a time?

Berman’s examples of opposition to industrialization cannot rightly focus our minds at the requisite level of reexamination and reckoning. To establish holistic, nurturing and fulfilling societies that truly meet the needs of the living will require a complete transcendence of patriarchal values and modes of operation.

In looking back on the limited record, we see only Neolithic goddess cultures, hunter-gatherer societies and some native cultures as ones presenting viable alternative models, countercultures that lead us to closely examine the roots of where societies go wrong.

But even more so, we have the ever-fertile imagination, the cultivation of free minds, healthy bodies and joyful hearts as means to understanding that human beings have not always been crippled by oppression and repression and need not be in the future. The arc of time is eons long and the old and dying roots of empire and patriarchy have been exhaling rotten breath for centuries already, long before the white man set foot on American soil.

So Berman comes close to the heart of the matter when he points out that the Europeans decimated the native peoples of the Americas. The tribal peoples of this land and their ways of life were surely those that have always held up the greatest contrast to European imperialism, exceptionalism, militarism, materialism and narcissism; and yet even they were, in many aspects, patriarchal.

Why America Failed is a well-curated weave of compelling quotations and references, culled to present Berman’s views, which, as a long-time fan of Berman I attest do extend to the hunter-gatherers and do radiate to a greater scope.

Yet, I could not help noticing that his sources for Why America Failed are predominantly privileged white males and their privileged white male predecessors, contemporaries, and heirs. Thus, the entirety here, both the social problems and the social criticism springs from masculine logic and method, which has, in its imbalanced state, hurt boys and girls, men and women.

It is not traditions and manners, but making obsolete accepted views of realty that counterculture is all about. And it is our nascent understandings of a potential holistic meta-view that have time on their side. We are in a dying age; the masculine age is nearly exhausted in terms of history’s long arc; exhausted everywhere on Earth. And yet, for the present, it is not nearly extinguished and likely will not go gentle.

Why America Failed concludes with a discussion of post-collapse scenarios and coping strategies. These deserve your consideration, as your understanding and participation could save your life in the coming decades. “Character is destiny,” Berman states, and “there is such a thing as karma.” Reality comes with comeuppance.

©2012 Jari Chevalier

Why America Failed: The Roots of Imperial Decline Morris Berman ISBN: 978-1-1180-6181-7 Hardcover 256 pages November 2011

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What’s Left? Reflections on the 2011 Left Forum

Four thousand people attended the largest annual conference of left and progressive intellectuals in the world over the weekend of March 18-20, 2011. It was the 7th annual Left Forum, at Pace University in lower Manhattan. A thousand speakers, 300 workshops, panels and dialogues on international politics, class war, social justice issues, corporate abuse of power and the ravages of financial deregulation attracted academics, anti-capitalists, socialists, artists, journalists, activists and anarchists to forge bonds of solidarity for social change. They had their choice of up to 45 panel discussions per seven program periods, plus two stellar plenary presentations covering the conference theme “Towards a Politics of Solidarity”.

Internationally known presenters such as Richard Wolff, Stanley Aronowitz, Cornel West, Laura Flanders, Barbara Ehrenreich, Francis Fox Piven, Benjamin Barber, John Nichols and The Yes Men, keen-sighted and eloquent in their analyses and reportage of problems, activists working for change, graced the conference mainstage.

So why were only a few presentations really strong on inspiration and insight for how to foster growing unity among progressives, how to build consensus on outlook and method to bring unity of action to fruition?

For the most part, I heard the need for solidarity answered with a call for solidarity, a need for a new paradigm with a call for a new paradigm. In the face of mounting world catastrophes and collapses, this is just a little like singing, “100 bottles of beer on the wall” together.

I suspect even right-wing spies who no doubt sat among us were underwhelmed by such tautologies. What could they report back that the leftists were planning to do? Top secret: They say they’re going to get together and take down power systems, make demands for multiracial, multicultural harmonious living, end top-down ersatz democracy, rid societies of oppression and exploitation, create equal opportunity and abundance for all . . . .

But there we all were, “together” at the conference, and if there were any coherent plans for how this vast harmonious concert of united humanity is to subsume current power structures and create a better world, I didn’t catch wind of them. Maybe I just went to the wrong rooms.

Because, in fact, I witnessed several quite bristly moments of disharmony, one among panelists on stage and one among audience members, the latter threatened physical aggression, with me shouting “stop!”

And throughout the weekend, there was more accord on explicating societal ills and defining authoritarian power structures than on fresh orientations or practical strategies for building a just and fair society.

Also, to my chagrin, I did not hear discussed what is actually the most significant divide among progressives, the rift between secular atheists and spiritually-oriented progressives. The latter were tellingly under-represented in the Left Forum programming. It appears the two groups do not break bread together, nor smoke the peace pipe around the same campfires.

And, of course, there are those progressives who wouldn't be caught dead or alive at either the Left Forum or at a gathering of, say, the Institute of Noetic Scientists, whose conference attracts the “conscious evolutionary” progressives.

And so the palpable spiritual desertification of our culture, if we could even be said to have a culture at all here in the US, was not considered a key part of the discussion of political, economic or social problems at either of the two Left Forums I’ve attended (2010 and 2011).

But I wonder if spiritual poverty and spiritual heartbreak is of central and essential relevance to our movement and to the urgent global problems so eloquently elucidated and enumerated at the Left Forum.

There were only a couple of classroom panels focusing on spiritual topics. One featured three Christian ministers speaking to a relatively small audience about the radical nature of their congregational work. Another panel, which I did not attend, featured Gary Null, et. al., who may have approached some of the issues I am pointing to here.

The very fact that the spiritual left and the academic left do not, for the most part, speak to each other in public (and that this fact was not deliberately brought forth in the widely attended plenary talks at this year’s Left Forum) speaks volumes about just how intractable a problem achieving solidarity really is among progressives.

How can we speak about solidarity or lack thereof without coming to grips with this glaring dissonance? Not only was this, our biggest rift, left unaddressed as a central topic in any panels I attended, I heard no direct conversation about any of the perennial divisions among progressives—all the little fractures and slices of worldview from Marxists to progressive democrats, to Green Anarchists—and so, where could be the insightful analyses of what human needs give rise to strong ideological identifications and encampments or how such divisions might be transcended? And without such understanding, how are we to begin to approach a more global vision for connecting with those who are not the least bit progressive at this time?

Instead, the need for solidarity was addressed through kudos for Egyptian and Wisconsin demonstrators, through applauding these truly heroic examples and models of solidarity for social justice and regime change, but at a time when neither of these groups have lasting victory to show for their efforts, the kind of social progress that can deal with human greed, aggression, power, supremacy . . . .

There were accolades and strong applause for the solidarity represented by pizza orders called in to feed Madison, WI demonstrators, from unknown ideological comrades watching Madison protests via internet and TV around the US and the world.

Yes! hot pizza pies are significant and meaningful gestures of solidarity, and yet eerily disappointed was I that radicals at the Left Forum did not dig up and chew on the roots of what lasting solidarity really is, the metaphysical elements of brotherhood and sisterhood and what gives rise to them beyond the common enemy, those intangibles that provide persistent courage and energy to power through and prevail in the face of destructive forces that oppose the best in us.

In my experience of the conference only Cornel West went there and so it thrilled me when he said, in speaking of the people of Iraq and Afghanistan: “We actually love those brothers and sisters. And isn’t it something that to believe that is to be radical.” That’s it; that’s right! He actually used the L-word, the seemingly forbidden word that represents a force that knows no bounds or divisions and no obstacles, a force more powerful than all the evils in our way. Bravo, Cornel West! The audience exploded with applause for him.

Why not speak of this in depth and more often? Why the separation of intellect and soul? Can't we get over this?

Is it because this is what gets you good and killed if you start talking about it as an unmediated birthright (Lennon, MLK, Jesus . . .) and start speaking of its lack as the root cause of social injustice?

Other than West’s statements, the general disengagement from the L-word and its meaning as the clarifying, fundamental aspect of life that we must exercise, strengthen and engage in ourselves and each other to full capacity, is the daunting fact that left me bereft, because only by addressing the lack of love amongst progressives and others will we be set to balance and transform our stagnation and galvanize a metaphysics of solidarity. This is how to arrive at a resolute set of actions, with strong and flexible bonds of brotherhood, with loving care and tenderness as our foundation; this is what's necessary for us to overcome rampant toxicity at every level—all of this was crystalized for me by what was lacking at the conference, an understanding of just why progressives are in their perennial underdog position in the struggle for justice.

Are we embarrassed or afraid to love big, bold and colorful? Are we ashamed to speak of abiding love as the energy of our bonds? Are we all just too depressed, anxious and desiccated inside? Can we wholeheartedly live up to taking care of ourselves and each other? Are we too heartbroken by life experience to let love flow and overspill, to beam love in the direction of the future where we will pioneer into 21st Century and excite all those around us to do the same? Are we paralyzed by the evil we have witnessed and continue to witness every day around us? All I can say is that if love is flowing in our hearts and nervous systems, let it not be confined, disguised, or kept too private now; we need it now more than ever.

I am listening for it, looking for it (the L), and yet I hear rampant cynicism, depression and despair. Love is lively, confident and bright. I appreciated the moment when Joel Kovel said in his presentation that “you need faith if you’re going to transform the world.” This is correct. But what is faith?

Faith is not religion, emotion or belief. Faith is a basic trust in life and the forces of existence, a trust in one’s organic sense of what is real and correct, and a trust in the underlying forces and processes of a universe of implicate law and intelligence, exceeding our feeble comprehension. We have to reawaken our capacities to listen, intuit and trust in life's true essentials.

Investigative journalism, accurate assessments and indictments, as well as multiple forms of resistance are surely needed, but we also need more time to be quiet, to be outdoors in wild places, to welcome our own changes, to be creative and make mistakes, to refresh ourselves and to get over our pasts, so that we’re not projecting personal rage from offenses of long ago onto current outrageous situations. Because all that makes for is conflagration, not skillful, creative and radical means that can show the way to the unwise.

The super-communicators of this year’s Forum were Cornel West and John Nichols. The old adage that “it’s not what you say, it’s the way you say it,” reasserted itself fully in the delivery of these orators. They activated bonding forces of solidarity, speaking emphatically with grace, rousing emotion, tempered to below the boiling point.

And yetl, did we not still long for gifts of real imagination at this conference? The cutting-edge is dull, getting perennially stuck at a horizon all too familiar, with too many conflicting views and goals, too much in-fighting. What will cut through to a higher order, to overcome dysfunction in our world.

Lip service is often given to the role of artists and creatives, but were there any artists on the Left Forum plenary panels? No!

At the scale of global society, with nearly seven billion people on the planet now, and with enormous challenges and forces in play, why are all these brilliant thinkers not entirely engaged with just how human beings will function, seven billion strong, as the current imperialist and plutocratic structures are disabled and dismantled, as we would like them to be?

The most clearly desirable practical ideas mentioned were worker cooperatives and relocalization, breaking up of multinational conglomerate financial systems, such as the IMF and the World Bank, reregulating investment banks, decentralizing governments into smaller regional entities and a global redistribution of wealth and power.

These are all ideas in common currency on the left. For those of us not invited to the table at progressive think tanks, it would be galvanizing to us to get feasible pictures of how the society we ideologically want would actually work, how things would be different in our daily lives and how those differences would make dangers we now face shrink back and resolve, how the redistribution of wealth and power would actually be achieved.

And if the answer is that nobody really has such things worked out, even in in their own minds, then how smart is it, really, to convene at this time, to have all these people burning all this fossil fuel to come together just to criticize the yellow brick road and the men behind the curtain? Shouldn’t we all be working locally and personally to open up our visionary capacities so we can see the way forward and then get together to share views and arrive at plans?

The word revolution was certainly in the air at the Forum, but it takes a whole lot more than a word to convince significant numbers of people to revolt. Combat revolutions require sacrifices of lives and materials; and history has shown that even successful people's revolutions can be followed on by regression to old ways.

This is exactly why “the spiritual left” calls for inner revolution, for psychological change, for freedom from addiction, for personal authority and integrity, so that social progress springs from authentic habits of holistic thinking and living, from the resolution of inner conflicts, and freedom from the irritation, discontent and wanting of the immature human spirit.

Everywhere on the Left we are inundated with daunting facts rather than energizing tactics. Facts about the toxicity of what we breathe, drink and eat, stats on the alarming rate of wealth being sucked up the ladder, rallying calls for the redistribution of wealth – So where is the unified, coordinated redistribution-of-wealth strategy? "Tax the rich"? Is this it?

Did anyone at the Left Forum say international general strike? I didn’t hear it. How much personal and moral authority would it take for, say, 25% of people around the world to shut down the global economy and governments and take charge of every aspect of their own lives, as a group, in solidarity? We could do this, just as soon as we are actually ready to handle it.

But how do unemployed people living on government checks strike? Are they going to refuse to pick up their government checks? Are they really interested in bringing down the government that is the teat they’re attached to for food and drink? And what about employed people or entrepreneurs, up to their eyeballs in debt, kids, cars . . . what would get them to step out of line to bring down the system and build a new world? What do you think? That going to happen if we have no solidarity or plan that encourages these people to drop out of this way of life and stand together?

In which rooms at the conference were they talking about all this?

There were many details given about corporate abuses of power and how Citizens United will effect elections and bring even more corporate power to lawmaking and military authority, more evidence that we are being strangled and poisoned notch by notch, that while we hem, haw, dilly and dally, Fascism is taking hold and tightening its grip.

We were also privy to many specifics and particulars of the escalating environmental devastation of our biosphere and the denial of corporate/governmental power to recognize the urgency and respond. To be environmentally responsible means abandoning a legacy of exploitation and greed with biblical underpinnings, as well as high-stakes investments in growth and expansion of businesses based on extraction, domination and exploitation of natural ecosystems. To be truly environmentally responsible would mean that predatory capitalist system would be finished and the elite standards of living that everyone in the Left Forum audience is used to would be cut way, way back. Ready to rally for that? Just how many people would be put out of work in that scenario? Even if workers were to take over those businesses as coops, how would they run such businesses if they weren’t going to exploit land or other people?

We want to end the wars, close nuclear power plants, stop hydrofracking and tar sands operations, stop offshore drilling. Are you ready to live without fossil fuels? Ever gone hiking and camping? Ever live like a monk or a nun? No? Do these things now and then let's have a radical conversation.

We were told that Fox News is the most watched television news program and that the Wall Street Journal is the most read newspaper; that the messengers on the Right are ever-so-disciplined, consistent and pervasive in their backward messaging.

But isn’t it also true that Republicans are divided on many issues? We were told that half of Republicans identify as Tea Party supporters and the other half poll more like Democrats on the subject of social programs. So, the truth is that they don’t know what to do either and they don’t agree with each other or stand together on a lot of issues. There are pro-choice, pro gay marriage, fiscal Republicans, for example.

So why were there not concentrated analyses of just what our central messages are and why we are so unclear, undisciplined, inconsistent and ineffectual? Why were we not looking judiciously at ways to create lasting solidarity across platforms, across aisles, across all the blurred and shifting lines of the masses of suffering humanity? Why can’t we think bigger and more holistically than we do?

Artists, spiritual elders, and futurists are the visionary systems thinkers with big-picture capacity, long-range vision, and inner resources of satisfaction, but there were no artists or futurists on the plenary stage. Why not?!

Ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, prodigious minds of erudition and passion, where was the much-needed attention to remedying ideological territorialism, which so afflicts the movement for justice and for sanity? Are we to remain defined primarily by what we are not, by what we oppose, by our anti-corporate and anti-capitalist rage, slogans and declarations?

Must it be our destiny to be in the role of yelping underdogs, fighting with our softie-hearted kid gloves in a class war that is totally rigged, where nothing can be done without capital and where we are perennially undercapitalized and forced to fight a losing battle, when in fact we are lovers not fighters? Why was there not more talk along these lines?

I say we've got to change the game in our own lives and who wants to hear that?! Let us no longer recognize the value of paper currency! Let us be defined by our creative vision and leadership, making obsolete, in both word and deed, the shackles of unwholesome societal projects! Disengage! Pull out! Disobey! Divest yourself of everything you've got sunk into the toxic, unreal world. Occupy the land. Leave the cities and get with the land to learn from and work with those who know how to live in harmony with the land.

Laura Flanders said something very important at the conference. She said, “Reality is what we need to grapple with.” This is truly of the essence. And it’s the same reality for progressives, as it is for those on the right. Dissociation from reality is the most pervasive human problem we are called to overcome now, in every social class, at every age, and in every culture and country on Earth.

Our true unity is actually found in our ignorance and weaknesses, in the pain of our confusion, ineptitude, psychological immaturity and disengagement from the Earth, in our not knowing what to do. The energetic network for mass solidarity is actually the shared experience of modernity and industrial civilization and its discontents, its craziness, its falsities, and our shared struggles of being neither here nor there.

Meanwhile everyone is pretending to know more than they do know and to be stubbornly right in that! We are together in our hidden existential pain. We will be strong when we can present a viable structuring of society that gives everyone the time and resources to address their dissociation from reality, to deal with hurt and the possibility of deep healing for future generations, to approach reality afresh, as ones who have learned a great deal since the start of the industrial era, with only perhaps a few elements of it worth keeping. Let us be eclectic about what we have learned; let's keep gems of wisdom and abolish all our many errors of ways and means.

No one can do this while they are on a rat-wheel “workin’ for the man,” when they are caught up in competition, envy and fear. And “the man” can’t do it either, not when he’s in domination mode, waging war, exploiting underlings, setting policies that don’t serve the universal needs of people, scarring the land and pillaging seas for profit. These are people sadly out of touch.

All too few of us can approach and stay engaged with reality if we are living within today’s world structures, which are so very damaging to the spirit. This is why monks and nuns are given protection to be reclusive; they are doing the work of inner alignment with reality. More and more of us could disengage from academia and all forms of institutional and establish work and turn inward to contact reality, living very simply and without fanfare. As we do, we need less and less of what the techno-monopoly world has to offer, seeing it as a sorrowful waste of the gift of life. All people might be touched by reality and therein find rest, peace.

Are we willing to lay down our careers, positions and possessions if that’s what needs to be done to reach our most cherished goals?

Imagine if 85% of the world’s population were highly educated and psychospiritually mature. Anarchy might work. It would not be such a chaotic situation. But if 85% of the world’s population is ignorant, dependent and immature, anarchy is completely untenable, because people cannot self-manage and they will not be trustworthy to look after each other and other forms of life.

A favorite slogan of the Situationists during the European social upheavals in 1968 was "Be Realistic. Demand the impossible.”

Reality itself is demanding that we transcend, create, surpass former limits and that is the natural way of the universe anyway, with or without us. What seems “impossible,” out of reach, is so because our psychospiritual development and its conditions are too undeveloped to live up the moral sense or the creative potential that is ours, but which is very intimate. This demand for alignment with intimate reality is knocking inside all of us but the most severely crippled souls, those very people who so often find their way into positions of power. When are we going to answer to the intimate truth instead of to the magnetic psychopaths who dominate and manipulate through ignorance and lies?

The growth humanity needs now has nothing to do with the growth of an economy or the provision of “creature comforts,” nor with rallies and the fall of governments. It is about deepening and strengthening of our capacity to meet reality and be wholeheartedly aligned with it, to be realized people, working with natural law as our law.

Can we imagine that the basis of our entire global culture is to achieve what is generally considered “the state of enlightenment,” but which is simply alignment with reality?

Will the academic left get with this? If so, you might just be out of a job, professors. How would you like to build a cob house with a bunch of us and put in some gardens and greenhouses?

And, will “the spiritual left” please leave off with the UFOs and aliens, crystals and runes, drug trips, crop circles, reptilian humans, astrology, mystery cults, power of attraction workbooks, drum circles, fortune tellers, pagan rites . . . and meet with intellectuals and just folks around the campfire for some practical architecture?

Now, will the evangelists and the rednecks, addicts, doctors, pharmacists, lawyers, gangsters, secret agents and casino owners turn away from false doctrines, false flags, guns and poisons? What? No? Will you be ransacking our brand new mud and straw villages? Really?

Don’t you want to admit that the native peoples were the advanced minds, the wisdom figures, and that the Europeans were the neurotic, puerile savages?

Can we get a wee bit smarter and more radical now?

Making our demand Life’s demand, taking this upon ourselves as a species, across all borders, boundaries and divisions, is deeply political in nature and also deeply spiritual: these go together. Once you’re fully involved in reality, you won’t have time anymore for consumer business or celebrities, nor will you harbor a shred of interest in the circus of electoral politics.

Bio-psycho-social-spiritual integration and development, dynamic growth, holistic health and clear mind-sight into and through the old and the present has the potential to bring not only the fractured left together, but humanity as a whole.

The imperative for reality changes the human project entirely. We simply cannot go back to sing Jack and Jill, play musical chairs and Ring around the Rosy now. We simply cannot sing anthems, run marathon rat races or have the fruits of our love and work go to war and waste.

The whole stage-set will be dismantled when we are over the silly stories of this theater! All of us, together, over it, over it now! Dull, ditzy, dusty old stories!

Victor Hugo famously said "Greater than the tread of mighty armies is an idea whose time has come." And the time as come, fellow human beings, to acknowledge that when enough of the human race grows up and perceives reality, the seemingly endless cycles of invasion, exploitation and domination of peoples and planet will be obsolete.

There are not enough jails, money or uniformed men to contain, hold back and push down an idea whose time has come.

It is the whole construct of reality that is crumbling and dying around us. Goodbye. Good night. Good luck. Awaken.

©2011 Jari Chevalier

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Why Progressives See So Little Progress

There is tremendous hypocrisy among people who claim they want fundamental change. If able people who consider themselves progressive would use the time they currently spend on complaining or entertaining themselves or drinking or smoking pot and doing other drugs; if they would work diligently to get themselves healthy in body and mind; if they would refuse all but simple, wholesome, unprocessed foods they cook at home; if they exercised hard; and if they would have nothing to do with banks and investment firms, which are the very torsos of the behemoths they claim to abhor; we’d be off to a pretty good start.

If people who claim they want fundamental change would clear the smoke and mirrors of their own minds and lives and look reality squarely in the eye, would stop buying products that come in packages, which are hyped through advertising (you’re paying for that hype!), would put all their TVs into their cars and drive their cars to their nearest state house or public square, lock them up and walk away, never to return for them; we’d be getting somewhere.

If people would put the energy they put into raging against the machine into ridding themselves of their bad habits of consumption; for example, consuming ridiculous quantities of sugar, which is poison for the human body . . . and would stop buying the next gadget, stop exposing themselves to advertisements, stop consuming all non-durable, disposable, mass-market items, in fact, stop all their self-destructive activities; we’d see marvelous moves in the right direction. In short, if people would give up their own bullshit, we’d have a very different picture before us.

Look, real progress now requires a healthy integration of intellectual, creative, psychological and spiritual progress, not mechanistic, technological progress, fueled by ignorance, narcissism and greed.

When people make it their jobs to break their own addictions and bad habits, and rid themselves of hypocrisy; when they strengthen and mature, when their minds are no longer puerile, we’ll be looking at progress. Because from that kind of personal authority, there is really no end to what can be overcome and achieved in changing the macro level. As J. Krishnamurti said, you are the world.

©2011 Jari Chevalier

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Review of Morris Berman’s A Question of Values

Recently I said to someone, “People self-confront to the level they’re able.”

Well, get ready, because A Question of Values is a confrontational book—question is, can you handle it?

Dr. Berman is a shrink/shaman diagnosing contemporary societies. And just as the most damaged individuals will not likely admit they have a problem, the most atrocious societies aren’t exactly lining up to get themselves deconstructed and straightened out.

Page one of Berman’s Preface portrays the home of the brave as “a callous place with a death instinct hanging over it like a dark cloud.”

Through this worldview, shaped by vast erudition and a rare integration of intellect, embodied life, and sage consideration, we see the United States in the process of dying stupid, irritated and depressed. It is seen as a social organization that has nowhere to go but to crumble on down, because it lacks, and has lacked from its early days, societal value structures that foster cohesive communities engaged in their own genuine welfare.

“Our contemporary political life of hysteria plus inertia,” as Berman puts it, is the inevitable outcome of underlying structural values governing the country since Jeffersonian democracy was adopted as a way of life, values that favor individual “success” and competition, at the expense of the common good.

“From Milton Friedman to Condoleezza Rice, drowning in crap is regarded as 'freedom,' with virtually no dissent on the subject from the American people,” he tells us. You sense that Berman has exhaustively researched the terrain of how we’ve gone wrong, pointing to whatever and whomever can help make his case, share his vision. For instance, he excised a quote from Richard Easterlin’s Growth Triumphant, “In the end, the triumph of economic growth is not a triumph of humanity over material wants; rather, it is the triumph of material wants over humanity.”

History, psychology, literature, personal experience, and pop culture weave in and out of these essays, in service to his teaching, that indicts all that is ugly, shallow, false and narcissistic, whether he’s looking at foreign policy, film, the Seinfeld show, or domestic trends. The book is sprinkled and laced with warnings about how close we are to ruin, telling us that “Tocqueville made it clear that democracy ultimately wouldn’t work if the population wasn’t too bright” and after Hobbes, after Shakespeare, warns that “hell is truth seen too late.” And yet his very last words hold out that it is perhaps not quite too late.

In spite of the secular nature of this book with its photo of pillars, like those before our state houses and courts, on the cover, the court we enter when opening A Question of Values is a court of heart, soul and conscience, a moral and spiritual court, if you will.

Berman’s eloquent voice is booming and echoing in there, as he argues against ignorance, immaturity and hubris, suggesting that we, the people, are getting away with murder. But, I’m afraid that the courtroom is scantily attended. A few people are out in the halls, filing their nails, ordering fast-food take-out and playing games on their cell phones. The judge is you, whoever you are. The case is you too and even if you close the book, the case is not closed, just as when someone elects not to enter or stay with therapy for their ills, that does not cure them.

About our endless expansionism, Berman says, “We don’t get it, that when you fight the ecology of a system, you lose, especially when you ‘win’.” You lose when you win, people: now that’s one tough double-bind to confront and unravel.

©2011 Jari Chevalier

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Answer to Morris Berman on Ted Rall and Violent Revolution in America

Liberal/progressive uprising is a fantasy. I've written a response here to Living Hero Morris Berman’s November 23 blog article "Taking It Up a Notch." Berman speaks truth about American cluelessness, but there’s even deeper cluelessness to consider.

I heard Ted Rall speak about his new book, The Anti-American Manifesto, at Revolution Books the other night. I was just walking by after an art gallery opening and stepped up to the bookstore and saw there was an event in progress. Rall’s talk was well underway by that point.

During the Q & A I asked/commented, “So, we’re talking about a shootin’ revolution here? I have wanted to see revolutionary change in the world since I was 14 years old, but, seriously, how are we going to change things? How? We are well-educated, yoga-meditation-latte types.” (Rall had said something to this effect about himself, being someone who lives in a nice place and drinks lattes). I said, “I am a peace-loving person. You won't see me picking up a gun to shoot anybody.”

Rall said, with a bit of a laugh, that he’s actually been doing target practice and that maybe we should be taking up arms now. The bookstore owner, who was also up there on the dais, said I should come around more often to talk about this. Meanwhile, this tiny independent book shop is trying to raise enough money via donations to stay in business. You see the paper thermometer chart on the wall by the cash register showing how much they’ve raised so far and what the stay-alive goal is and I can tell you there was a long way to go.

What do we think the gouging of the middle class is all about? Nighty night!

Since that night I have actually inquired about a bullet-proof vest, helmet with face shield, hand-held body shield. What do you mean the best offense isn’t a good defense? Where are my comrades anyway? We gots to get a hold of some police and military equipment without joining any forces or spending time or money to learn how to use them--but maybe after some yoga and deep breathing we can meet up in a community room somewhere to learn how to twirl a police stick and administer CPR? Who’s bringing the cappuccino machine and the organic milk?

"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of happy." (Ted Zatlyn, my dear friend and editor of the L.A. Free Press in its heyday.)

Well, it certainly has been a lot of talk, talk, talk, hasn’t it? -- panel discussions, books, blogs, conferences, articles, interviews, speeches, media opps, videos, drafting and crafting new manifestos, charters and constitutions, articulating where it hurts, naming names and identifying the slew of betrayals, shackles and daggers of man's inhumanity, most of which never touch the radical underlying causes in child-rearing practices and false human concepts of what life's all about.

Not to mention we actually seek some cashola to pay the bills (and from each other?!—right?) for all this valuable research and cultivated eloquence. Ivy grads with a personal brand who likely had their own rooms as teenagers and never knew hunger or got their hands roughened by any heave-ho work, who smoked their share of weed and kicked back to songs of resistance, are real good with the insights and outrage. But aren’t we also highly sensitive people who would not hold up too well to enhanced interrogation techniques in military detention centers nor keep a steady hand on the trigger to shoot molded, pointed chunks of metal into those we call idiot and asshole and who, in truth, are just confused and bullied children who know not what they do?

Speaking here is one who takes a spider out of the house rather than crush it and one who doesn’t smack mosquitoes between her palms. I could not become a psychologist because I could not stand to read about rat and monkey experiments. This one is not in the habit of eating animals or dairy products. These are all creatures that look around, smell and feel the rain, bristle, fly, fight or freeze at danger, tuck their tails, feel life energy, feel fear, peace, pain and satisfaction; they are expressions of the great all and deserve our reverence, gentleness and respect.

Well, count on both the predicable and the improbable. What is going on here is what we can’t think about because we don’t have the capacity.

It’s really the ecological collapse that is the big-picture game-changer. We are becoming collectively overwhelmed, dazed, dismayed and daunted globally, as a species. The end of the American way is exactly what is required for species survival and it must not only come down or have its foundations dug out from under it: it needs revolutionary realizations, you know, as when we realize something, as in we had it all wrong, we were clueless.

This is the real common ground of the real WE to which we need to pay credence. Right here is the truth we share and have shared all along, one and all: we exist without knowing why we exist. And if one retreats into saying “we exist for the glory of god” or “there is no why about it,” then one needs to explain why is it we even think in terms of why. Who is up to the task of meeting existence on its own terms?

We vigilantly protect our existence without understanding what we are. Bring me someone who really knows the first thing about what the basic elements like chromium, calcium, selenium, iron actually are, what matter is, what energy is, how they flow one to another, how electrons got to spinning around protons, and how things blink in and out of existence.

We tremble. We hunger. We must obey our bodies and their endless demands. Opinions, philosophies, theories, speculations, fall-back positions, self-concepts--and nobody knows!

The great, obvious leveling fact is that we are all just exactly as mortal and clueless about the big things to which we are all, also, reverently or irreverently bound. And so we busy and bolster ourselves with mutable details.

The best shot that I see for peace, love, freedom and happiness is not a bullet-shot between the eyes of our enemies. It’s not enumerating superficial truths of who’s done what to whom and who is situated where on the arc of history or the IQ bell curve. It’s not proving who’s got the stoniest heart of hearts.

The only real threat to “power” is revelatory truth, the tree of the mind with its synaptic branches suddenly lights up a whole new shape and the old, in that brain, is thereby fried, obsolete, over: a more compelling set of pathways has been forged.

We, the big collective we; we, as in the presently living human beings, could at any time experience and witness a profound change in view. May or may not happen.

The mind is a fertile place, when we can be made expectant of the unexpected. This is the perennial attitude of the creative artist and the contemplative. It doesn’t take more than one mind, really, to experience a new synaptic tree of lightning, to electrify and exemplify fresh perception.

And yet, if the whole living humanity cannot outgrow our toxicities, it’s really okay, you know.

Sad for those who perceive and feel what could and might be, but essentially it is all right if our species is just not up to the task of self-actualizing en masse before self-destructing—

—all right because the universe has forever and we, as mere temporary conglomerations of waves and particles fluxing in the immortal transmutations of matter and energy, combining and recombining, membering and remembering—we come and go as this and that. And we are that endless process. We have forever too and chance after chance.

As I see it, there may very well be a tumbling out of new integrations in the short time ahead, neuro-bio-psycho-social-cosmological-aesthetic . . . integrations that will be startlingly revelatory, that will bring holistic vision that makes obsolete a great deal of what we have taken for reality and spoken of as the ground of our shared existence.

No one should be so sure of himself/herself. The worldview that people take for reality now certainly does not make the Earth spin on its axis and that worldview has already been superceded in many of us; it’s already over, gone, finished, vanquished.

So, let’s see what oozes and seeps from the interstices as things crack open, as the pressure continues. The public eye is useless. Give mind a place to rest and challenging leaps to make in silence. The fragmented, dissociated mind may yet come together, in some few, and that is no small endeavor.

Neuro-bio-psycho-social-political-cosmological-aesthetic . . .

it’s all in the hyphens above.

©2010 Jari Chevalier

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Gabor Maté on Democracy Now

Living Hero Gabor Maté, MD appeared today on Democracy Now with Amy Goodman. This conversation focuses on the explosion of ADD and ADHD in children within the past ten years.

Follow this link to the interview.

And here, again, is the interview we conducted for the Living Hero program earlier this year and the article we published about Dr. Maté's live appearance in New York at The Rubin Museum of Art in July.

He delivers a crucial message to all of us about how the structures of contemporary Western society are doing damage to the developing brains of children, injuring our humanity and causing rampant mental/emotional disturbances.

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Interview with Dr. Martha Stout

" . . . understanding this problem [sociopathy] creates an entire paradigm shift in the way we view human nature." --Dr. Martha Stout

This episode of our program brings you an interview with Dr. Martha Stout, clinical psychologist and bestselling, award-winning author on the subject of sociopathy. For twenty-six years, she served as a Psychology Instructor in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and also taught at the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology, Wellesley College, The New School for Social Research, and the National Institute of Mental Health. Dr. Stout has worked at Massachusetts General Hospital and McLean Psychiatric Hospital. She is author of The Mask of Sanity, The Paranoia Switch, and The Sociopath Next Door: The Ruthless Versus the Rest of Us, a National Bestseller and winner of a Books for a Better Life Award.

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Gabor Maté at The Rubin Museum in New York

Living Hero Gabor Maté, M.D. appeared on July 7th at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City to kick off a seven-part series of live events related to The Tibetan Book of the Dead.

Dr. Ramon Prats, curator of the contemporaneous Bardo exhibition, conversed with Dr. Maté on stage and then invited questions from the audience.

Dr. Maté is author of In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction. He explained that the hungry ghost realm is a symbol for a state of being, part of the Wheel of Life, described in The Tibetan Book of the Dead. This is a state of unquenchable longing and craving, a state well-known to the addicts Dr. Maté treats in Vancouver, British Columbia’s downtown eastside.

Maté began by stating that 2500 years ago Buddhism presaged almost every discovery of contemporary neuroscience. For example, it has been scientifically corroborated that neurologically there is no abiding self to be found in body or brain. This is one of the central teachings of the Buddha. What we perceive as a continuity of self is but a stream of micro-second mind-states, which can be remembered; electrical information that follows patterns conditioned by former mind-states.

These brain circuits were fundamentally conditioned by our earliest experiences. Maté says that the “anti-infant North American ethic,” which permits a parent to just let their infant cry and cry to exhaustion, conditions that infant to become a human being resigned to a world that “just doesn’t give a damn.”

The addicts he works with have all been severely abused, and without exception all the women have been sexually abused. These people’s minds and brains have been deeply conditioned to expect to live in a hostile, dangerous, uncaring world.

Gabor Maté says there are two fallacies currently operating in the treatment of addicts in our society and that both of these fallacies erroneously take society off the hook of responsibility. The first one is the fallacy of choice, the idea that addicts choose to be addicts. They don't, he says, and the whole legal structure, the systems that punish them would have to come apart if you correct this fallacy.

And the second fallacy is the genetic disease fallacy. Addiction is not a result of genetic potentiality, but of the combination of nature and nurture, of genetic potential and the conditioning forces of the environment.

All of Dr. Maté’s various books underscore the importance of early attachment relationships in the formation of human lives. A healthy attachment in early life brings about a self-regulated, satisfied, and socially connected adult. In the abused child, these circuits don’t form properly and the person is then likely to replace those necessary healthy attachments with self-destructive ones.

The Buddha taught that habit energies wrestle the untrained mind. And so, strengthening the mind with the training of concentration, of self-observation, gives people an opportunity to perceive their own thinking-and-feeling processes and thereby realize that there’s more to us than our conditioning.

The consistent observation of one’s own mind can have the power to create new neural circuits that can override the conditioned patterns established in early experience. Based upon actual self-awareness, such mindfulness helps to create emotional balance, spiritual ease, and an increased capacity for self-regulation.

Dr. Maté reminded the audience that Christ had said: you can do everything I can do; and that Buddha nature and Christ nature are actually human potentials. What makes these potentials realizable is getting the conditioned mind and false attachments out of the way.

One of the questions posed by an audience member was about free will. “Freedom of choice is relative and it’s conditioned,” Maté said. What promotes free will? What liberates people? When it comes to individuals working on their own, what promotes choice is awareness; among people it is compassion. Stress hormones, on the other hand, interfere with our power of choice.

In the spirit of compassion, Dr. Maté acknowledged the difficulties people, especially Westerners, have in cultivating mindfulness. He confessed that he, himself, has not sustained a meditation practice and admitted that he is actually terrified of his own mind because of the traumas he endured as an infant.

Speaking further of Western culture, he referenced Sogyal Rinpoche, who wrote The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, based on the traditional Tibetan Book of the Dead. Sogyal Rinpoche says that Westerners, in general, have an active form of laziness, one in which they cram their minds so full of stimuli that there’s no time at all to confront their relationships.

Maté turned things around a bit and asked the audience a question, “What would you think if someone in your life kept on boasting: ‘I’m the greatest; I’m the most creative; everyone wants to be like me’? You’d think this person is really insecure! At the heart of the American dream there’s a terrible insecurity.”

Can we get over our vain insecurity? Both Dr. Prats and Dr. Maté spoke of how the term “rebirth,” found in Buddhist literature, refers to a process of recreating ourselves (our patterns of thought and perception) moment by moment. The Buddha taught humanity how to not rebirth that same pattern of self; how to free our minds; how to die without dying, to let the painful conditioning of our minds die back as our bodies live on, so that we may realize a liberated state and live out of our deeper nature.

How common it is to live without living. But to die without dying is rare.

©Jari Chevalier

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Interview with Ellen Bryson

Ellen Bryson is the author of The Transformation of Bartholomew Fortuno, a novel about being different, being human, and finding redemption. She holds a BA in English from Columbia University and an MA in creative writing from Johns Hopkins in Washington DC.

Ellen Bryson began as a professional modern dancer, working in Cleveland Ohio and Boston Massachusetts during the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, then shifted her focus to the philanthropic field where she worked for over a decade in both private and community foundations, culminating in national work for the Council on Foundations in Washington DC. A world traveler, she has lived in the middle eastern country of Bahrain and in Argentina South America, where being an outsider both in language and culture, helped inform the message of this, her first novel. She currently lives in San Diego, CA with her husband and is considering a move to France.

We talked about:

The world's thinnest man, Bartholomew Fortuno ● Working back from the ending ● The dream that prompted the book ● The perception of beauty ● Freedom or captivity ● Maternal impression ● Iell Adams, the mysterious bearded woman ● P.T. Barnum's Fiji Mermaid ● The symbolic birds ● What art does for us ● The will to change ● The comic layer of a strange, dark world ● The author's future plans

Enjoy the show! You may download the mp3 file, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and other media players or you may listen to it right here by clicking on the purple media player below. (The interview is about 28 minutes.)

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Visit: Ellen Bryson's website.

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Interview with Anne Wilson Schaef

Know anyone who keeps doing things everybody knows aren’t good for them, others, or the environment? Our guest for February, Anne Wilson Schaef, is an expert facilitator in overcoming multiple addictions. Anne takes an unconventional, whole systems approach to awakening and healing people in light of their familial heritage and societal context.

“I think that a part of our work as human beings in this life is to bring as much as we can of our unconscious into consciousness so that we know what we're dealing with and we have the opportunity to heal it . . . ” says Anne Wilson Schaef in this interview.

We talked about:

Leaving psychotherapy behind ● Process addictions and substance addictions ● Surprise! Our society is an addict ● Addiction and schizophrenia ● A progressive and fatal disease ● Can we recover? ● The elements of a successful intervention ● Wisdom and native humility ● The way of science and technology ● The pseudopodic ego ● Escape from Intimacy ● Political dimensions of dysfunction ● The crucial question on the planet ● The trouble with dualism ● The twelve steps and power ● Can billions of people heal?

Enjoy the show! You may download the mp3 file, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and other media players or you may listen to it right here by clicking on the purple media player below. (The interview is about an hour and 7 minutes.)

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Visit: Anne's Boulder Hot Springs Inn & Spa at Boulder, MT And her website: LivingInProcess.com

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jari psychology, interviews, insight, feminine values, culture, wisdom, addiction, self-destructive, mental health, values, power, Native American, America, childhood development, science, societal health, radical, technology, patriarchy, abuse, control, dysfunction, recovery 3 Comments » | (5 ratings)

Interview with Suzi Gablik

She studied with Robert Motherwell, lived with the Magritte family, and hung out with Jasper Johns. In 1966, Suzi Gablik had a one-woman show of her collage paintings exhibited and catalogued in New York. She later brought a prodigious and caring voice to art criticism, as a respected reviewer of art in London for Art in America, and authored her engaging trilogy of scholarly writings on art and culture Has Modernism Failed?, The Reenchantment of Art, and Progress in Art. She also wrote Magritte, Conversations Before the End of Time, and her memoir Living the Magical Life. Currently, Suzi Gablik hosts a blog featuring her latest cultural and political essays at virgilspeaks.blogspot.com.

We talked about:

Is the human species fit to survive? ● The downside of technology ● The divided United States ● Obama's moral authority ● A burning house, a bus careening off a cliff ● 9/11 as political instigation ● The unbearable places we must go to heal ● Negative capability and extreme sports ● Suzi's magical life of receptivity ● The patriarchy and the black madonna ● The karmic thread of who you are ● How to face the darkness without despair ● Preciousness and unviability ● The artist as role model ● The paradigm of dead objects and the egocentric art world or an alternative: an aesthetic response to the cries of the world ● An alligator named Virgil Visit: virgilspeaks.com

Enjoy the show! You may download the mp3 file, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and other media players or you may listen to it right here by clicking on the purple media player below. (The interview is about 55 minutes.)

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Interview with Derrick Jensen

"We need to bring down civilization, because it's killing the planet," says our guest, author and activist Derrick Jensen.

Formerly a college professor and a commercial beekeeper, Jensen's prolific career as an author has given us A Language Older Than Words, The Culture of Make Believe, Endgame, Listening to the Land, Strangely Like War and Walking on Water. He also co-authored Railroads & Clearcuts and Welcome to the Machine: Science, Surveillance, and the Culture of Control. He has written for The New York Times magazine, The Sun, Audubon, and many other publications.

In 2008 Derrick Jensen was named one of Utne Reader's "50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World."

We talked about:

Preparation for truth-telling ● Above ground and below ground activism ● The only language destroyers understand ● The essence of Derrick's philosophy and passion ● Normalizing insane behavior ● Reform or revolution? ● What do we need to do? ● Living in the culture of make-believe ● The relationship between eroticism and violence ● Collapse and the shape of things to come ● Hypocrisy in the environmental movement ● Owning prejudices and shifting alliances ● Do we need to harden our hearts or to open them? ● Discernment, compassion, compliance and fierce love

Visit: derrickjensen.org

Enjoy the show! You may download the mp3 file, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and other media players or you may listen to it right here by clicking on the purple media player below. (The interview is about 52 minutes.)

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This podcast episode contains explicit language.

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Interview with John Taylor Gatto

State-run schools don't educate; they inculcate. They dumb people down! John Taylor Gatto gives us a stunning synopsis of his tireless scholarship and long-term experience as an award-winning guerilla educator in New York City public schools.

John Taylor Gatto resigned from school-teaching in the op-ed pages of The Wall Street Journal, the year he was named New York State Teacher of the Year. Since then, he has traveled three million miles lecturing on why we should abandon and subvert public schools, which deliberately ruin minds and mold lives of obedience to the system. Schools thwart imagination, self-reliance, and individuality and make good, dependent slaves of the industrial-consumer state.

Gatto is author of Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling; The Underground History of American Education and, most recently, Weapons of Mass Instruction.

We talked about:

The only thing anyone can teach ● The official outlook on human nature ● The chilling Western philosophical movements behind forced schooling ● Compulsory schooling and the University of Berlin ● Sacrificing justice and quality of life for predictable stability ● School, economics, and the social classes ● Overproduction and hyperdemocracy ● Power and the methods of power ● The crime of removing classics from the curricula ● How we will transform ● Superstar entrepreneurs who dropped out of college ● Liberty and the tyranny of measured time

Visit: johntaylorgatto.com

Enjoy the show! You may download the mp3 file, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and other media players or you may listen to it right here by clicking on the purple media player below. (The interview is about 51 minutes.)

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jari education, future, human potential, human development, books, global forces, values, freedom, power, reality, America, childhood development, human nature, policy, civic engagement, societal health Comments (0) » | (2 ratings)

Interview with Jim Merkel

Radical Simplicity! The Living Hero program presents an interview with author, educator, and activist Jim Merkel.

Jim began as a military engineer. Just after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989, Jim quit his job and took immediate personal responsibility for his own part in global problems. This meant taking radical actions to scale back consumption and deeply reconsider life in all its dimensions. He subsequently authored Radical Simplicity: Small Footprints on a Finite Earth. Merkel received an Earthwatch Gaia Fellowship to research sustainable living in Kerala, India and in regions of the Himalayas.

He founded the Global Living Project and was hired by Dartmouth College to serve as its first Sustainability Director.

Jim lives the life of radical simplicity—cycling hundreds of miles to give lectures and workshops at colleges , universities, and community centers. He is a homesteader, growing and preserving his own food, and living on about $5,000 a year. Jim has given hundreds of hours of his time as a volunteer to share his wealth of knowledge on the new good life of sustainable living.

• the present pulse of the sustainability movement • the real root of simplicity • engaging the heart • Jim's childhood and influences • the real challenge of society: the common good • how radical simplicity crosses party lines • Jim's revolutionary shift after Exxon-Valdez • what it means to exceed the carrying capacity of the Earth • what is an ecological footprint • Jim's view of the economic crisis • living on $5000 a year in America • the roots of violence and fear • population control, women, and wisdom • falling in love with the Earth

Enjoy the show and please add your comments! These interviews are presented in audio format only--sorry no transcripts at this time! You may download the mp3 file, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and other media players or listen to it right here by double clicking on the purple media player below. (The program is around 50 minutes)

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jari Uncategorized, interviews, education, human potential, feminine values, culture, wisdom, meaning, love, feeling, economy, values, money, freedom, reality, Native American, America, ecology, sustainability Comments (0) » | (2 ratings)

Interview with Allan Luks

The healing power of doing good! The Living Hero program is honored to present an interview with author, lawyer, non-profit executive and altruistic leader, Allan Luks.

Allan’s steadfast commitment to improving the lives of disadvantaged youth in New York City, and his extraordinary contributions to the success of Big Brothers and Big Sisters of NYC, established the agency as one of the country's most prominent mentoring organizations. Mr. Luks has received numerous awards, including Crain's New York Business magazine's "Public Service Leader of the Year," and the national Lewis Hine award.

Allan Luks has developed programs to meet the special needs of NYC youth, including those affected by 9/11, teen mothers, youth with disabilities, and youth with siblings and/or parents in prison. He has successfully lobbied the New York State Legislature to pass "The Safe Mentoring Act." Allan also created the BBBS Center for Training and Professional Development, in partnership with Fordham University's Graduate School of Social Service, to bring the successful BBBS of NYC model to other city mentoring agencies.

Mr. Luks authored The Healing Power of Doing Good, which outlines the emotional health benefits derived by volunteers. He coined the term helper's high," used everywhere now in popular literature on volunteering. Allan continues to serve as a senior adviser to BBBS.

We talked about:

• alcohol and drug abuse and the necessary 12th step in AA • wherein lies Doing Good's power to heal? • helping and its effects on stress • what is the underlying tension in the human, which needs relaxation? • the real challenge of society: the common good • finding the right kind of helping for you • the basic truth underlying our lives • the best ways to encourage helping • the creative process and getting your work done • the conception of Since I Became a Terrorist Target • what's next?

Enjoy the show and please add your comments! These interviews are presented in audio format only--sorry no transcripts at this time! You may download the mp3 file, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and other media players or listen to it right here by double clicking on the purple media player below. (The program is 40 minutes)

Listen at your convenience! Use this link for download, not the one below the player. Download this episode (right click and save)

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jari interviews, education, future, human potential, culture, creativity, stress, love, mind-body, tension, relaxation, addiction, economy, global forces, values, empathy, solidarity, power, health, America, human nature, volunteering 1 Comment » | (1 ratings)

Interview with Dr. Lauri Grossman

Integrative medicine as a creative force! The Living Hero program is delighted to present an interview with holistic health advocate, homeopathic practitioner, and healer, Dr. Lauri Grossman. Originally trained as a chiropractor, Dr. Grossman is an expert in integrative health care, specializing in homeopathic medicine.

She is a graduate of Cornell University, the New England School of Homeopathy and the prestigious Hahnemann College of Homeopathy in Berkeley, California, and is well-known and respected as a practitioner and educator. She has taught at Sloan Kettering-Memorial Hospital, the Hospital for Special Surgery and Columbia Presbyterian Hospital and at New York Medical College.

Lauri Grossman developed the curriculum in homeopathy and has taught in the holistic departments of the graduate schools at New York University, the College of New Rochelle and the New York Chiropractic College.

She will serve as Chair of the Department of Medicine and Humanistic Studies at the American Medical College of Homeopathy, expected to open in Arizona in 2009.

Her film, Natures, produced with the assistance of the National Geographic Film Archives, highlights the philosophy of homeopathy and its connection with the order found in nature.

Visit her website at homeopathycafe.com for more information.

We talked about:

• Lauri's life-defining emergency introduction to homeopathy • how homeopathy differs from other natural therapies • how a homeopath takes a case, makes a diagnosis and treats illness • how homeopathy heals • the scientific method and energy medicine • the politics and history of homeopathy in America • homeopathy on the rise • the disorders for which homeopathy is most effective • homeopathy, creativity and sensitivity

Enjoy the show and please add your comments! These interviews are presented in audio format only--sorry no transcripts at this time! You may download the mp3 file, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and other media players or listen to it right here by double clicking on the purple media player below. (The program is 54 minutes)

Listen at your convenience! Use this link for download, not the one below the player. Download this episode (right click and save)

Instructions for Windows Right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Click on “Save Target as”. The file will start downloading. A window will pop up and the name of the file will be filled in, as well as the file format. Just choose to save it to your desktop in the left bar.Then you will have an mp3 file sitting on your desktop. Right click on that and choose Open with: iTunes (or your chosen player). Or, alternatively, open iTunes and just drag the mp3 into iTunes.

Instructions for Mac Control click or right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Either “Open with iTunes” to listen now or “Download link file as” and save to your desktop. Open with iTunes later or just drag the file into iTunes and play it whenever you like.

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jari holistic health, interviews, future, wisdom, creativity, body, mind-body, values, health, America 2 Comments » | (3 ratings)

Interview with Dr. Marcy Axness

The Living Hero show is very proud to present an interview with Marcy Axness, Ph.D.

Dr. Axness is an early development specialist who writes and speaks internationally on parenting, society, and the needs of children. She is an authority in such wide-ranging fields as neurobiology (brain development), prenatal and developmental psychology, attachment theory, and consciousness research. Marcy’s particular specialization is in very early development--beginning even before conception--and she is one of the world’s few experts in prenatal / neonatal issues in adoption. She is a professor at Santa Barbara Graduate Institute and has a private practice in Los Angeles, counseling parents and prospective parents.

We talked about:

Visit Marcy's website at http://www.quantumparenting.com

Enjoy the show and please add your comments! These interviews are presented in audio format only--sorry no transcripts at this time!

You may download the mp3 file, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and other media players or listen to it right here by double clicking on the purple media player below. (The interview is about an hour.)

Listen at your convenience! Use this link for download, not the one below the player. Download this episode (right click and save)

Instructions for Windows Right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Click on “Save Target as”. The file will start downloading. A window will pop up and the name of the file will be filled in, as well as the file format. Just choose to save it to your desktop in the left bar.Then you will have an mp3 file sitting on your desktop. Right click on that and choose Open with: iTunes (or your chosen player). Or, alternatively, open iTunes and just drag the mp3 into iTunes.

Instructions for Mac Control click or right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Either “Open with iTunes” to listen now or “Download link file as” and save to your desktop. Open with iTunes later or just drag the file into iTunes and play it whenever you like.

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jari psychology, consciousness, interviews, education, future, maturity, human potential, human development, feminine values, wisdom, parenting, love, mind-body, mental health, values, empathy, vision, health, America, childhood development, early childhood, peace, neurobiology Comments (0) » | (1 ratings)

Interview with Scott Parsons

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At an old-fashioned soda-pop style lunch counter in Bowman, North Dakota, I met Scott Parsons. He was eating pie in black, white and pink spandex with a smattering of corporate logos across his chest. After he had learned that his friend's daughter Mikyla had been diagnosed with Rett syndrome, Scott quit his job as Western VP of Sales with Georgia Pacific to ride his bicycle from San Francisco to Boston to help raise money to fund medical research for Rett Syndrome.

Our conversation covers:

• Scott’s motivations to ride • Information on Rett syndrome and the hope of a cure • Highlights of the great American landscape • Impressions of the American people • The goals for the ride and beyond

Learn more about Scott, his trip, and the cause for which he’s riding at Mikyla-Cure.org

Enjoy the show and please add your comments! These interviews are presented in audio format only--sorry no transcripts at this time! You may download the mp3 file, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and other media players or listen to it right here by double clicking on the purple media player below. (The interview is about 25 minutes.)

Listen at your convenience! Use this link for download, not the one below the player. Download this episode (right click and save)

Instructions for Windows Right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Click on “Save Target as”. The file will start downloading. A window will pop up and the name of the file will be filled in, as well as the file format. Just choose to save it to your desktop in the left bar.Then you will have an mp3 file sitting on your desktop. Right click on that and choose Open with: iTunes (or your chosen player). Or, alternatively, open iTunes and just drag the mp3 into iTunes.

Instructions for Mac Control click or right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Either “Open with iTunes” to listen now or “Download link file as” and save to your desktop. Open with iTunes later or just drag the file into iTunes and play it whenever you like.

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jari interviews, future, human potential, culture, financial reward, creativity, meaning, body, environment, values, empathy, heroic, enthusiasm, money, solitude, solidarity, vision, freedom, Native American, America, fitness 1 Comment » | (1 ratings)