Spirit and Conscience

Many people are interested in living peaceful lifestyles. Actually, it’s not like people don't already practice peaceful lifestyles. On a practical level, peaceful folks stay out of jail, make an honest living and keep their homes respectable-looking. On a spiritual level, peaceful folks admit when they’re wrong, listen to the other person's point of view and care about their neighbors. But for those who want to examine peace on a deeper, more intentional level, there's no telling what could happen if they could all find each other, talk about their dreams and formulate a plan of action. At least that’s what Phil Steger and Jesse Williams
are thinking.

Phil Steger is the executive director of Friends for a Non-Violent World. He is educated and articulate about the values that would lead to peaceful personal relationships and peaceful official policies. And, he possesses an extensive knowledge of the history of nonviolent resistance to injustice.

Jesse Williams is a recent college graduate with a degree in political science. He almost finished another major, in economics, but was disillusioned with the subject being taught as “the science of allocating scarce resources to unlimited wants.” He admires what was begun during the hippie revolution and would like to help revive some of those values. Reminding me of those values is the film “Commune” made in the ’70s by our publisher, Ed Felien, which I happened to see last week. Unfortunately the sound is messed up but you can see the brave, young souls forging a new, ideal society. Their labor intensive lifestyle connected them intimately with the sources of their food, clothing and shelter. Living and working in groups countered the isolation and alienation produced by the industrial revolution.

In September Jonathan Schell, an educator, thinker and writer, whose major theme is world peace, spoke at an FNVW-sponsored event in St.Paul. Although I felt his lecture “preached to the choir,” he did offer concrete information helpful to those of us who lean toward peace but can't defend our position so well with words and facts. And, evidently, he inspired at least one young man to try to
effect change.

Williams was one of the people who signed up afterwards to “get involved.” As a child of the '80s me generation, he has hope for the future, that is, he's not dying of consumption, even though, and maybe because, he grew up privileged, in the lap of luxury. He says the ruling class needs to enlighten itself. He wants to do more than consume stuff and be comfortable.

Through FNVW, Williams has started a kind of a “think tank” on peaceful lifestyles. Of the people he invited from those who had signed up at the Schell lecture, five of us met for the first time on a Sunday evening in October. Our task was to discern what might contribute to peaceful lifestyles, and how those lifestyles, one by one, might contribute to world peace. Also, perhaps prematurely, we tried to figure out what was do-able. At the moment a proposed plan of action is on the table.

Besides Williams, myself and Steger, who couldn't stay for the whole meeting, three other people were present: a young woman named Emily, Alex Eaton and Paula Bramante.

Eaton lives in the Longfellow Neighborhood, runs a small business and was one of the organizers of Peace in the Precincts, a grassroots group that generated a foreign policy peace platform. Four of the platform's five points passed at the state DFL convention and all five passed at the state Green Party convention.
Bramante, from Blaine, holds progressive meetings in her home. In October Joel Albers, from the Universal Healthcare Action Network, Minnesota spoke. In November she will show the film "WAL-MART: The High Cost of Low Price," and in December will probably organize a meeting with Tony Skolgard about Instant Run-Off Voting (plans aren't finalized yet).

As for myself, another Longfellow resident, I am a trained facilitator in the Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP).through which teams of facilitators do intensive weekend workshops both in the community and in prisons. (We train ourselves to make conscious nonviolent choices—in our personal and our collective lives—by way of the fascinating exercises developed over the organization’s 30-year history.)

It was apparent from the beginning that everyone easily made the connection between war and our society’s excessive use of resources. This awareness comes out of a spiritual/religious reverence for the earth (we don't want to violate the earth) and a spiritual commitment to “live simply so that others may simply live,” coupled with an ability to read the handwriting on the wall. Williams told me one of the reasons he got interested was that he realized his generation was the first one in this country’s history that wouldn't make as much money as their parents—current and future wars will be fought over resources. So, the use of sustainable, renewable energy was suggested as an essential ingredient of a peaceful lifestyle.

I had to bring up the fact that sustainable, renewable energy is really not an option; only conservation is an option. I got that from my scientist brother-in-law Orvin. He's been saying for years that any energy source we might choose uses more energy to produce than it gives off—or than it saves—so basically we’re screwed. We simply have acquired a “need” for too much energy and there's no way to acquire it, so we must figure out how to need less. Orvin says we are “addicted” to our consumptive lifestyle. As someone who works in an oil refinery he feels like an enabler because the refinery’s product feeds our “addiction.”
Group conversations are funny. By way of a mystifying (to me) discussion of outer space, the solar system, atrophy and entropy, chaos and order, we started talking about conservation—something none of us practice much. There was a feeling that at this point we would be the only ones doing it, so it would be ineffective.

Also, like everyone else on the block, we think it would be pretty hard. A neighbor of mine, during the 1991 Gulf War, who also made the connection between war and energy, told me outright she would rather go to war to protect our standard of living than take the difficult step of cutting back on our consumption.

What would it take to get a critical mass of people practicing conservation? We recognized that most people are overwhelmed, too busy making ends meet, to go to the trouble to try to live sustainably. Furthermore, there is a huge base of low-income people relying on Walmart prices, for example. It looks like the impetus for conservation will be gas at $5 a gallon.

We talked about nonviolent resistance to oppression. Steger described in riveting detail how India boycotted British textiles and fought subjugation. Bramante suggested that corporations (and their ability to subjugate us through our addictions) are our British empire.

While the discussion centered around energy use and fair distribution of resources, we also talked about happiness. We talked about apathy and isolation, byproducts of a consumer society. Bramante brought up the Buddhist concept of “interbeing,” that all things are connected. What affects one affects all. Williams wondered why the Gross Domestic Product is used as a measure of how well the country is doing. That has nothing to do with happiness, he said.

Although Williams has his own peaceful lifestyle ideas, he wants to let the group define itself and become whatever it might become. His summary of the first meeting went like this: “We came up with an idea of what a peaceful world would look like vaguely in its many aspects, including but not limited to 1) Energy would be produced locally to meet a greatly reduced demand; 2) The full cycle of business, including its externalities and exploitations, would be understood; 3) We would engage in the many different communities we identify with; 4) Selfless/egoless habits would have some positive reinforcement; 5) We would all be members of a co-op (a synthesis, example of 2 & 3); 6) Corporations would seek reasonable rather than maximized profit; and 7) Social goods (basic shelter, food, education and health care) would not be produced for profit.”
The next meeting will be Sunday, Dec. 6 at 6 p.m. at 1050 Selby Ave., St. Paul,
(FNVW headquarters).

Contact 651-917-0383 or peacefulchoices@gmail.com with questions and for more information.