Why facing the truth matters…

2004-04-25

Richard Moore

     "The opportunity that is concealed within every crisis does not manifest
      until all the facts of any given situation are acknowledged and fully
      accepted. As long as you deny them, as long as you try to escape from
      them or wish that things were different, the window of opportunity does
      not open up, and you remain trapped inside of that situation, which will
      remain the same or deteriorate further."
      - Eckhart Tolle, "The Power of Now", p. 131
    
Friends,

We CAN change the world. Make no mistake about that. People have done it
before - gotten rid of regimes that seemed to all the world unassailable,
invincible, all powerful. It becomes possible when everyone decides
they've had enough and they decide to act together to do something about
it. Workers lay down their tools, soldiers lay down their weapons or
change sides, and people rejoice in the streets - that kind of thing.
The obstacle to transformation is not the regime; it is our inaction,
our perceived inability to act as a people. The regime in fact, with all
its excesses, creates the crisis in which this opportunity lies hidden -
the regime is ultimately our benefactor, the impetus for transformation,
a transformation that is centuries overdue.

Tolle writes above about crises in relationships, and our co-dependent
habit of denying the relationship's emotional elephants in the kitchen.
But his words apply equally to our co-dependent relationship with the
regime. As long as we pretend we live in a democracy, as long as we
pretend our "leaders" are not acting out a predatory script, as long as
we pretend that things will get better after the "next election" - then
we are ignoring the elephants in the kitchen. We are in denial and we
can do nothing about our problems. We are in fact a major part of the
problem. We are like the spouse who "doesn't see" their partner's 
alcoholism.

I don't write about 9/11 because I hope the "truth will come out" and
the perpetrators will be exposed and punished. I know that won't happen.
It cannot happen. I write in the hope that people will give up their
illusions - not everyone at once as a response to a media event that
will never happen - but as individuals who finally decide to take the
wool off their eyes. Only after the truth about our system is
"acknowledged and fully accepted" are we free to face the necessary task
before us - the task of social transformation. That task is ours, not
anyone else's.

If people really want to stay with the blue pill, and enjoy along with
Cypher the perceived benefits of living in a relatively well-off
situation, then I hope they do so consciously - accepting that they are
destroying the world that their children must live in. Such people are
at least proceeding honestly. They are no longer co-dependent but are
rather conscious allies of the regime, and they've washed their hands of
the world's future. After we all die off, they can hope another species
does better in its turn.

Whatever your course, I simply urge you to ACCEPT REALITY. That is the
only place from which transformation can emerge. How can you tell when
you are denying reality? The signs are not easy to notice - not by those
who are suffering from denial. Denial is enforced by defense mechanisms,
and those mechanisms hide the fact of denial from us. The way you can tell
is if you find yourself ignoring the evidence in front of you.  You'll have 
good reasons to ignore it - that's the nature of denial.  To uncover your
eyes, you need to learn to question your reasons, to become the observer
of your mind. 

best regards,
rkm

-- 

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    "Consensus does not mean agreement.  It means we create a
    forum where all voices can be heard and we can think
    creatively rather than dualistically about how to reconcile
    our different needs and visions."
        - Starhawk, "Lessons from Seattle and Washington D.C.", 
        in "Democratizing the Global Economy", Kevin Danaher, ed.,
        Common Courage Press, Monroe, Maine, 2001.

    "If the overall pie can grow, so be it, but when it
    can't then elites start taking a bigger piece of
    whatever pie there is.  The capitalist imperative
    is: 'Ruling elites must prosper'. Societies are
    managed so as to satisfy this imperative."
        - rkm

    A community will evolve only when
    the people control their means of communication.
            -- Frantz Fanon

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    Capitalism is the relentless accumulation of capital for the
    acquisition of profit.  Capitalism is a carnivore.  It
    cannot be made over into a herbivore without gutting it,
    i.e., abolishing it.
    - Warren Wagar,  Professor of History, State University 
      of New York at Binghamton

    "If the world is saved, it will be saved by people with
    changed minds, people with a new vision. It will not be
    saved by people with the old vision but new programs."
    --Daniel Quinn, "The Story of B"

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