Therefore lasting change does require addressing both the parts and the structure of the whole.

I’m not sure I agree, though, with the idea that the means determine the end. Can a difficulty and violent birth process not create a peace-loving child? Surely it happens all the time.

I’m finding that most things in life are both/and rather than the either/or I was conditioned to take the world in when I was a kid. I struggle with the same things, especially since my class position in this mess-of-a-society affords me a very very small canvas despite the fact that I know internally I could use a much bigger one. The class barriers in the U.S. are simply monstrous and as much as I’ve tried to climb over them, dig under them or go around them, they’re pretty much a limiting obstacle I’m unable to get past unless I win the lottery or something. So I’m focused on the canvas I do have as much as the lack of a proper sized one vexes and/or depresses me.

Locally, I help out the city political candidate and issue campaigns I can dig into. I participate in creative projects and progressive education efforts in my kids’ schools. I walk my talk as best I can and try to keep talking enough to get others to do the same.

At 43, I’m realizing my dreams/visions of various “big canvas” projects like trying to help my friends who happen to have come from Pine Ridge, Santa Ynez and the like by creating a N-P project to build sustainable, indigenously/culturally appropriate housing/water/energy infrastructure on reservations, or going into other countries where neo-liberalism is clobbering local folks to give them total control over their own infrastructure (and defending it against any powers-that-be who want to prevent that), etc.–they won’t likely happen, at least not by me. I can only work in my local watershed and do what I can to subvert, resist and foster the ideas of empowering us little folks in terms of participatory democracy, consensus, NVC, etc. (although I am still looking for more training in NVC at a cost I can actually pay–the empathy thing Miki’s always talking about is still just too conceptual for me). Anyway, great stuff, man!

I share your grandfather’s pacifism. I saw it work in the civil rights struggle. People then were willing to be beaten up and jailed unjustly rather than either accept domination or respond in kind. But such saintliness is rare and soon gave way to ambition. When I once shared publicly my personal transformation after meeting MLK for the first time, one of my companions disclosed that he was part of the violence in Memphis prior to MLK’s assassination. We were both in a rehab program at the time; different routes to the same condition.

I share your father’s unbelief in saintliness as a survival strategy. The 60s “Drop out and turn on” was a path of saintliness that failed. It left the public realm to the exploiters. The vote that put Nixon in the presidency has had repercussions we continue to suffer from. I worked hard in my community for the poverty program only to see it totally dismantled by Cheney under Nixon’s direction. They did not want to see government funds used to promote progressive (i.e., Democratic Party) programs.

The only alternative is education, and it has survived until now because of the misconception that education leads to a better income. With all the college grads either unemployed or flipping burgers, the disillusion in education has begun to set in. As our public education system unravels, we sink deeper into vicious self-seeking.

This is a critical moment. We need a religious revival. All that is developing is the futile pursuit of churches promoting the prosperity gospel or rapture. We have lost all vision of a future of peace and justice. Where is John the Baptist when we need him?