Last night my good friend Jeremy invited me to a talk he organized. John Dear (no affiliation with the tractor company) spoke on his life and his memoir, “A Persistent Peace.” Dear is Jesuit priest, Nobel Peace prize nominee, activist, and a man who often throws himself in harm’s way to stand up for the downtrodden, abused, tortured, exploited, and generally fucked in the world.
Even though Dear’s message was distinctly Christ-focused (insofar as Christ was an agent of peace) and even though his methodology was distinctly radical (doing things like trying to smash F-16 fighters with a hammer at an air force base), Dear really elucidated the scope of our global dysfunction. He reminded us how the often-automatic choices we make—the clothes we wear, the energy we consume, the tyrants we don’t actively dethrone—have global and human consequences. It might not be new news, but it’s the same bad news, gotten worse with time.
On a more secular note, I watched a Bill Moyer’s Youtube video this morning with his take of what happened and is happening in the Middle East.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDs57H3I6Oo]
I’ll spoil the ending: we’re there for oil, and in the beneficiaries are the select few cabal members with the skulls and the crossbones and the perpetually fresh haircuts.
What’s my point? We mustn’t get lazy. While this Obamamania is sweet, it’s merely a step. He’s unquestionably bright and, to my mind, likely to be one of our greatest presidents and leaders. But without our active and individual championship for truth, justice, urgent environmental responsibility, and above all else, peace, the efforts we might have exerted in the last year toward Obama’s election will be for naught. And this championship must be consistent and egalitarian: we must dilute the vitriol spouted about willy-nilly by many during the latter days of the election (stop picking on Palin…would you make fun of a little child for not knowing the capital of Uzbekistan?); we must demand Obama hold his modest resolutions regarding the environment (no, there is no such thing as “clean coal”) regardless of financial turmoil; and we must continually ask how all of our behavior affects the world: do my choices help or harm the welfare of others? Often, the calculus is not that difficult.
I started Lucid NYC to help the world. I wanted a place where people could get to know one another, to be informed by one another’s passions, to have a place where people could share what they’re doing, a place free from overbearing commerce, blaring music, and drunken escapism; a place where people can create and share conversations about things that matter to them. It’s my belief that when people are engaged by the things they do and with the people in their world, they’re more likely to take care of it. So I invite you to add to that conversation. Please come to the event on Nov 20th, submit something for this blog, email me, help someone out who needs it, and make the world a better place in whatever way you know best.
Until then.
Peace.
David