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An elective peace
The presidential primaries are on in the U.S. and are making news. This has to be the longest presidential election cycle ever. I have a preference for who I’d like to see win the nominations, and I’m not going to tell you who.
What I’m going to do instead is ask a question.
Why aren’t any of the candidates talking about peace?
Sure, some of them are talking about getting our troops out of Iraq, and I’m totally for that, but no one is talking about peace, not even as a value to be pursued.
I’m beginning to think that until our elected officials start to treat peace as a priority, it’s not going to be in the consciousness of We, The People. And that’s where peace needs to be. In fact, even better, in I The Person.
There is a growing movement afoot in the United States to create a cabinet-level Department of Peace. Check it out at www.thepeacealliance.org. Their work is stellar, and this is a good thing. The trouble with it, though, is that it makes peace seem far away and something that needs to be taken care of by government.
I say it ain’t so. No, the peace we want is only going to be created by individuals who value peace.
When I was in college, the courses that weren’t a part of my major course of study were called electives. Who’s up for taking an elective on peace?
P. S. And don’t forget to elect peace when you vote!
I am the Oregon state coordinator for The Peace Alliance campaign for the U.S. Department of Peace of which you speak, and I can tell you from my personal experience of the other people in this campaign that for us peace is not far away, and not the responsibility of the government nor anyone else other than ourselves, which is what you are looking for, people who are being the change, not wishing for others to be the change.
I find myself constantly reminding others that what the presidential candidates say or do is of minor importance compared to who gets elected to the Senate and House, and of even less importance compared to what the electorate is saying or doing. "The current crisis in our democracy has less to do with Congressional failure to express the will of the people and more to do with failure of people to express their will in a meaningful way." --- Rep. John Conyers, D-MI.
I read so many comments that seem to typically contain the hidden assumption that it takes some external force, person, situation, to change things, usually something despairingly powerless in the current state of affairs. I hear the despair.
I have become convinced that I have the power to transform the world into one that is free of domination. I believe that all it takes to transform the world is for me to transform myself into a more mature, responsible, and loving person. That’s all I have to do, nothing more than that, nothing less than that, and nothing is more important than that transformation. When I change my inner world, my external behavior shifts to match, and I become a creative source of systemic change.
Moreover, if I can do it, with my history of dysfunction and wounding, certainly anyone can do it. The ripple effect from this transformation is immeasurable, and it has the power to stimulate the largest institutions of repressive domination to implode. This turns conventional thought on its head, and would appear to be insane to most people, a kind of megalomania, which it is not, it is the exact opposite of megalomania. It is acknowledging our critical participation in energetic systems far larger than ourselves.
I do not accept that I am the victim of the military-media-corporate-government conspiracy. I am 100% responsible for it, another apparently “insane” idea, and yet what I mean is that I am 100% able to respond to it. I have an answer. I have more than one answer. Having a better idea is far more effective for producing social transformation than recrimination and revolt. Very soon the world will be ready to hear hundreds of thousands of people who have transformed themselves internally to be the change, and not demand the change from some external source.
The wave of transformation is happening all around us if we are open to perceiving it, and it is time to paddle like hell to match speeds with the wave so that when it breaks we are moving forward and not left behind. Those who ascribe to the “Left Behind” series of fictions, those who cling to blaming others and feeling superior, who refuse to accept that we are all in this together, are in for a big surprise.
posted by Davoid on 5/29/2008 10:14 am