Why Activism Needs The Sacred, By Carolyn Baker

Why Activism Needs The Sacred, By Carolyn Baker

Cherishing the sacred in our activism and in our visions of revolutionized communities and cultures increases the likelihood that we will resist from our hearts and not simply from our heads. As a result, the new paradigms out of which our visions are realized will engender authentic transformations with more enduring resilience as opposed to reinventions of formerly oppressive systems. As we integrate the sacred with activism, we ally with all aspects of our being beyond merely the mental and physical, thereby opening to an expanse of possibilities that we had previously excluded. In sacred activism, the mystic, the artist, and the activist become one integral person who realizes that both great works of art and social change derive from a source within, yet also beyond the bounds, of their own skin, to embrace the body of the world.

A New Declaration, By Derrick Jensen

A New Declaration, By Derrick Jensen

We hold these truths to be self-evident: That the real, physical world is the source of our own lives, and the lives of others. A weakened planet is less capable of supporting life, human or otherwise. Thus the health of the real world is primary, more important than any social or economic system, because all social or economic systems are dependent upon a living planet.

We Come From The Future, By Ian MacKenzie

We Come From The Future, By Ian MacKenzie

APOCALYPTICISM is an actual word. According to Wikipedia, it is “the religious belief that there will be an apocalypse, a term which originally referred to a revelation of God’s will, but now usually refers to belief that the world will come to an end time very soon, even within one’s own lifetime.” The idea that “the world will end” is not limited to fire and brimstone. Various New Agers believe that 2012 will result in an alignment of the galactic something or other, fulfilling the Hopi prophecy of the Blue Kachina and the reversal of the Earth’s magnetic poles…and stuff…then we will enter a golden age. Sound familiar?

Occupy Vs. Nihilism: All Or Nothing At All, By Michael Meade

Occupy Vs. Nihilism: All Or Nothing At All, By Michael Meade

The Occupy movement may be an instinctive response, not just to the greatest disparity of wealth and power in the history of America, but also to the emptying out of institutions and loss of meaning at all levels of life. An underlying instinct to inhabit life more fully may be arising and taking root in different places for different reasons. The message of Occupy may be “all over the place” because the underlying message is about “place,” about reclaiming and more fully inhabiting public places, about being more present to the critical issues in each place, and about taking one’s own place in life more fully.