here to change the world

I'm writing this on the night that Michael Jackson died. It's weird even to write a sentence like that, but there it is.

I won't dwell on his death, or even his life, but i thought it important to open with that.

On the way home i heard a song i'd long since banished from my library, Man in the Mirror. It was being played as a kind of homage. As i listened to the song, i momentarily stopped hearing it through the gauze of my adulthood, and suddenly found myself experiencing it with the same intense wonder it had inspired in my youth.

It was a plea for kindness and consideration by a man whose voice seemed to resonate with such earnestness and conviction that i couldn't help feeling compelled to his cause.

This was the moment of my definition. The culmination of all my thoughts about the world and what it meant to be a person. The joining together of disparate inspirations destined for the self-same goal of human salvation through belief in a cause greater than one's own gain.

Every song about those with less, every speech about equality and love, and every moment of comprehension immediately following every painful and hope-shattering event ... they all crystallized into a diamond of guilt and shame for all the things that every person had ever denied another out of greed or pride.

That diamond has rested under my skin - buried inside my soul. It irritates and frustrates me when i ignore it, and makes me feel complete when i obey its desire.

I am man. But what does that even mean? The goals of the masses could be one, but they flounder on the surface of possibility as dying fish will vainly struggle for breath in a fisherman's net.

What are we destined for? Does it matter? Time forces change, but who's to say what that change will be or why?

The firm belief that so many have that a coming apocalypse will forever modify the lives and ways of all of humanity is simply an excuse. They are looking for an external force to act upon the whole of creation in a way that they themselves are unwilling to do.

Give me your sick. Give me your poor. I will give them back to you and say "Do as thou wilt. I am no greater than you."

I want to change the world. I feel something is wrong with it - something that needs to be fixed. A broken bone under the surface of an otherwise normal looking joint. A bone which was never set properly, and aggravates through weakness and pain.

I've considered reaching out to the great minds of the world. Asking for their help and their influence. So many people want more for this world. I feel as if the challenge is not finding the threads, but weaving the tapestry. The question is not how to find those who would make the world a better place, but how to bring them together and give them a common mind.

Jung speaks of a collective unconscious. I posit its extension into the realm of the conscious mind. We are but reflections of our inner selves, and our inner selves are more alike than we could ever guess.

I've decided to spend some time away from my life - a month of silence and solitude. I can't tell you with any great certainty that anything will change in me. I know what i hope to achieve, but it is something that is hard to explain beyond its simplistic veneer. I'm looking to find myself, but that's really not a good way to put it. I guess you'll just have to believe that i think i know what i'm doing. And whether i'm right or wrong, I intend to find out for myself.

The details of my retreat will come out with time, I suppose. There are plenty of folks who already know them, so i'm not quite sure just why i would hide them here. Suffice it to say that's how i feel at the moment, and i'm just kind of going with the flow on this post.

I've become involved in a project of small magnitude but large aspiration. LuAnne and I and 4 others have decided to try to create a moderately sized urban community using existing real estate and resources. Greatly inspired by the considerations of Paolo Soleri, i only regret that I cannot convince him to secure funding for a urban center in Phoenix that might inspire the world.

Our community will grow organically, but we intend it to be a model for life in a manner which does not require the subjugation of one to provide the promotion of another. It will be a place for sharing and life, learning and growth. Edible landscapes, central gathering areas, geothermal resource generation, and consideration for others as part of consideration for self.

It's not here yet, so don't ask for too many details. The community will have a home soon, and will grow from there. The more interest and helpful intention we find around us the better - so please feel free to ask and suggest as you wish.

The butterfly effect may apply here ... who knows? Who knows.

We are here to change the world.

Return of the Dirty Hippie

It's not that I think I can change the world. I'm not that full of myself. What I think is that regardless of whether i can or not, I should damn well try.

About a week ago i was drunk. Now let's be clear - if you qualify all states of sobriety as a kind of continuum, with sober on one end, tipsy in the middle, and drunk on the end, i was somewhere off the continuum in what i like to call "WTF was i thinking" land.

Somewhere on the way home, as i was riding in the passenger seat and watching the world fly by, I had a thought that shook me pretty badly: "The world is the way it made itself." Trying to change the way the world works is as futile as trying to change the way a person thinks or acts. It doesn't work. The change needs to come from within.

Have you ever quit an addiction? Most people don't know this, but I used to smoke. Granted, it's not like I smoked my whole life, but I did smoke about a pack a day for almost 3 years. I say almost because I quit about 3 or four times in there - always for a week or even a month at the most.

One day I got sick. Not a real bad sick, mind you, but sick enough that I decided that since I could barely breathe as it was, I should maybe lay off the cigarettes until i got better.

About one week later I was feeling better, and I practically hopped and skipped (as much as one can do so while driving) to the gas station to buy my first pack of "post crud" cigarettes. Camel Lights. (yeah, get the laughs out now you Marlboro smokers)

I lit up my cigarette (not sure that doing it while at the pump was so genius) and took my first drag ... which turned into my first gag.

I don't know if it was a stale pack. I don't know if I was still a little sick. What i know is that i can't remember having ever tasted something so foul, and i threw the whole pack away. Now, all you smokers out there know what an effort it usually is to throw a whole pack of smokes away ... trust me - it's usually harder than cutting off a finger. (maybe your pinkie)

Somewhere within that last week, my body and/or my mind had done without my conscious interaction what I had been unable to do for 3 years. I had no reason to quit. No desire to quit. I had simply stopped wanting to smoke.

I think there are a lot of stories like that out there. People who didn't decide to change - they just did.

I think the world is like that. I think maybe all we need is an event, or a movement, or a single thought that gives us a chance to give up our current way of living for a better one.

More importantly, i think that we have the tools and technology to end our need for societal stratification. We have the resources to give everyone everything they want without them having to step on someone else to get it.

Bull, right? No way can i convince someone to work in a factory to make me my new iPod if they've got everything they need, right?

Well ... yeah. Absolutely right. But why does that person need to work in a factory at all? We have computers and robots that can do practically EVERYTHING in that factory.

Uh oh - we've hit the first stumbling points right there, haven't we? First off - computers and robots aren't free! Second, what will those unskilled laborers do instead?!

Free? Of course not! Not in terms of money. But what good does money do? All it does is provide a medium with which people can trade and barter on equal footing. What if it was taken for granted that you got out what you put in?

I actually heard your eyes rolling there, but bear with me. Just assume that it's possible for now, ok? We won't get anywhere if you're not willing to stretch your imagination! As i said fairly recently on a conference call "OK, i've heard all the reasons why we can't and shouldn't do this. Now let's re-focus and try to think of ways that it COULD work..."

So let's pretend that the world would keep turning without money. Who makes the computers and robots that produce the iPods instead of the workers? Well, more robots and computers! At first we'd have to build the builders, so to speak, but after that they keep running with maintenance and programming.

So who designs the robots? The computer systems? Who maintains all these things?

People who like doing those things, of course! There will always be people who like to tinker and fix, and people who like to program and design. In a system where everyone has what they want, everyone can do what they want. This of course raises the question of laziness. Why do anything if you don't need to? Let me ask you - after you've been on vacation for a week, or maybe two, do you want to keep doing nothing? Or do you wish you were doing something you loved? Maybe that something is your job - maybe it's a different job. But you want to do SOMETHING.

Humans aren't lazy, we fill the time we have with the things we want to do. When we're on vacation or the weekend, the last thing we want to do is work, but if all we had was weekends and vacation, all we would be able to think about would be to do SOMETHING. Preferably something we love to do!

So those robots and computers came from a place that made them. Simple as that. And yes, they were free. The were built using raw materials that were gathered by people who like working with their hands. Don't bother son, it's turtles all the way down.

I was going to answer the question about "unskilled" laborers, but I think I already have. They'll be busy doing something they love, and something they're "skilled" at. Because no one is unskilled.

This idea that everyone can have everything and no one needs to be hungry or poor may sound extreme, i know. But it's not ridiculous, and it's not unfathomable. It's not communism, and it's not insanity. It's what we're capable of.

It is what humanity is capable of.

I don't know if we'll ever get there. I don't know if anything i ever do could help us get there. What i do know is that i've thrown away the pack of BS beliefs, and if i can help start that change everywhere else, you can bet your bottom denomination that I'll try. If i can't? If it's hopeless? Nothing's hopeless. And at least I'll be able to say i tried.

The Hero Myth

I think we're all waiting for someone to show up and tell us that we're destined for greater things. According to Joseph Campbell, the basic hero myth starts off with the hero longing to do or be something else. But doesn't everyone reach an age or a point in their lives where they wish there were more? Or that they were living an almost entirely different life? Or maybe feel that there is something else they're destined for?
Maybe that's what the hero myth really does: provides us a story that we can relate to, and feel like we get sympathy, compassion, and self-motivation from it. In essence, it's telling us "You're not alone! This happened to someone else! This is that person's story ..."
So where do we find our mentor? Our change agent? Where is our Obi-Wan to lead us from Tatooine? Our Jack Sparrow to bungle us forward? Our coachman to show us death, poverty, and infermity? Our Morpheus to provide us with a red pill? Are we to provide our own impetus for change instead? What about the catalyst which occurs that jars the hero from the grooved path and throws him onto a path of trials and tribulations which will lead him to his destiny? Are we to create that as well? Is that what these stories are for? What happens when there is no mentor? No change? No trials? No destiny?
What happens when the hero has no story?