Values and Attitude

Watching thievery and the consequential social collapse unfold, I keep coming back to values and attitude. As a cultural hippie, the solution seems obvious.

It’s odd, but I was thinking of a guy I knew forty years ago who inherited a small fortune from his family that publishes the Seattle Times. It was just two years after Woodstock, and the communal spirit was still alive, so he bought a three story brick building in a neighborhood commercial zone and turned it into a hive of hippie enterprise.

We had a cooperative grocery, flour mill, pottery studio, alternative media, stringed instrument repair, and community garden. The apartment on the top floor was mine for free, as he wanted someone to live in the building, but didn’t want any rent. Every day was a festival.

Today, there are many inheritors of unearned wealth in our society. Some even seem to care about what is happening. Putting their wealth to work for public good would not be that hard to do.

All you need is love.

Wavy Gravy

The man.

The myth.

The movie.

Confronting the Warmonger

Veterans for Peace announces its mobilization against the Obama White House on December 16.

A Threat to the Police State

As Food Not Bombs approaches its thirty year anniversary of distributing food to economic refugees and disaster victims, Stephen Lendman looks at the ongoing harassment of the organization by the FBI and local police. As providers of meals to protestors at the RNC and DNC conventions, Food Not Bombs members have been targeted by the Joint Terrorism Task Force, giving a green light to local police departments to imprison them for voicing opposition to the American empire while ladeling bowls of soup.

Internal government documents obtained by ACLU suggest high-level concern that they’re turning Americans away from militarism, instead advocating social justice, including quality education, universal health care, and good living wage/essential benefits jobs – the direct opposite of current US policy under either dominant party.

Supported by Amnesty International in its efforts to feed the poor and educate the homeless, Food Not Bombs activists have been arrested over 1,000 times by San Francisco police alone.

The Promise of Pot

Peter Coyote narrates this trailer from the new film about the therapeutic uses of cannabis, including cancer prevention.

Trapped in Truculence

The purpose of putting down hippies by both conservative and liberal pundits is to undermine the values of conservation, cooperation and reciprocity. If hippies are against war, then peace is bad. If hippies are against profit, then cooperatives, community clinics and credit unions are bad. If hippies are against nuclear power, then alternative energies are bad. Hippie values existed before hippie lifestyles, and they — not fads — are what the culture war is all about.

If we’re battling against fraudulent values and inauthentic ways of life, then it’s best to attack them directly. Since yuppie values are explicitly anti-democratic, that would seem a more valid target than hippies who succumbed to a yuppie lifestyle. Authentic hippies made important contributions to our society; adding to the mainstream confusion and prejudice on the topic does no one any good.

Using an analogous situation might be helpful.

When New Agers began usurping traditional trappings, rituals and ceremonies of indigenous peoples, liberal pundits began berating aboriginal spirituality as unworthy of respect. As the intellectual property of tribal peoples, such things as shamanism were wrongly appropriated and misused, but deriding the cosmologies of original nations was equally wrong.

The same might be said when progressives excoriate Christianity as a whole, when many Christians play vital roles in fighting the same evils we seek to eviscerate.

Out of the Silence

The decaying totems of Haida Gwaii, documented in William Reid and Adelaide de Menil’s 1971 book Out of the Silence, were living monuments to a form of communication about the values of a civilization in decline. The 2007 formation of the United League of Indigenous Nations, as well as the Coast Salish Gathering, are testimonials to the resurgence of Haida Gwaii and related autochthonous civilizations.

As the rest of us struggle to survive the decline of our own civilizations, perhaps we will likewise find our voices and create our own forms of communication. By discussing the values we wish to protect, we might even find ways of freeing ourselves by uniting with the indigenous resurgence.

At the very least, hosting discussions free of market exclusion, government censure, and media influence, will allow us opportunities to also come out of the silence.

The Meaning of Place

In his talk Indigenous Resurgence and Traditional Ways of Being, University of Victoria Professor Gerald Taiaiake Alfred examines the fundamental challenges facing indigenous peoples and their friends in confronting the nation-state and the corporations that fund it. Foundational to his vision of decolonization is the restoration of community through overcoming individual fear of confronting the colonialism within ourselves, part of which is comprehending how institutional power has patterned indigenous peoples.

In his distillation of the collective wisdom of indigenous communities, Taiaiake emphasizes that strengthening connection to a place is crucial to fortifying emerging coalitions, connections and networks devoted to universal justice. As a person who is committed to living in a respectful way, Professor Alfred implores us to engage in this spiritual battle with an awareness of the meaning of place in our own cultural heritage.

With all the forces amassed to pull us in other directions, staying on the pathway of peace and righteousness, says Taiaiake, requires re-rooting ourselves in order to mentor others for the long struggle. As he reminds us, “The struggle’s not over”.

Peace Poodle Ebony

Peace Poodle Ebony

In early 2003, Ebony joined dogs worldwide in opposing the US invasion of Central Asia and the Middle East. Superdog Cosmo now continues her work in creating harmony and world peace.

Misplaced Trust

I just watched The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, coming to PBS in October. As the Obama Administration goes after Julian Assange and WikiLeaks for revealing the official lies about the war in Afghanistan, it’s time for Americans to remember what happens when our trust is misplaced.