These are in Previous Comments posted in PILGER FILM, “Palestine is Still the Issue,” VINDICATED BY INDEPENDENT TELEVISION COMMISSION

From: Yvonne Garcia [yvonneg@tampabay.rr.com]

Media Lens is wonderful…thank you…I subscribed.

I read an article o­n their site, HAPPINESS IS DISSENT – THE TRUTH ABOUT 'LOOKING AFTER NUMBER 1,' and here are two paragraphs that grabbed me:

Unrestrained hedonism, relentless consumption, “greed is good”, “the 'me' culture” – all of it has failed, horribly. It doesn't necessarily feel like it has failed. Facts and figures, and even personal misery aside, it is in the nature of greed that it blinds us to the negative consequences of our selfishness – the advertisers and political servants of corporate society are forever o­n hand to give any doubters a persuasive leg-up.

We can choose to continue to be deceived if we like, but it won't make any difference – we will not find happiness in self-obsession. Meanwhile we will continue generating the global environmental conditions that will quickly increase our suffering to a point where denial will no longer be possible. The choice is ours: we can either begin seriously experimenting with the benefits of working for the well being of others, or continue trudging the neon-lit boulevard to personal and global disaster. It looks pretty, but as buddhists also tell us, it is merely “honey o­n the razor's edge”.

You know, Suzanne, so much of my life I always put the needs of others before mine, and I had come to believe after years of therapy and all kinds of consciousness paths I have taken that I was just not loving myself. I think this is true, but that impulse I have had since very young was not wrong — and, when I look back, no matter how difficult it might have been or even if I got “burnt,” I was happiest when following that impulse. Now, I think I have come to love myself as well, and have mercy o­n myself as well, and so I found this article very good.

Suzanne to Yvonne:

The world has become so threatening that any instincts toward hedonism seem infantile now, and those of us who always have been serving hardly have to wrestle with issues about whether we're corrupt in so doing. But also we have to lead the examined life, and to understand what makes us tick, so that we earn our comfort with ourselves. I went to college near where W.H. Auden used to live, and o­n his old residence there was a couplet of his carved in stone o­n a plaque. It has remained meaningful to me:

“If equal affection cannot be,Let the more loving o­ne be me.” 

From: David Edwards [editor@medialens.org] [David is o­ne of the co-editors of Media Lens] 

Thanks so much for your positive response to our Media Alerts and for posting them o­n to other people – it's very encouraging. Keep going!

Suzanne to David

Seeing as you've written a Buddhist book, look at these pieces o­n my old site:

A Public Talk by Thich Nhat Hanh at the Riverside Church, New York, New Holy War Against Evil? by David R. Loy, What I Would Say to Osama bin Laden — Interview with Thich Nhat Hanh by Anne A. Simpkinson

Where are you?

David to Suzanne

I'm based in Bournemouth (UK) and my co-editor Dave Cromwell is up the road at Southampton University. Where are you? How many people do you reach?

Suzanne to David

I have about 250 people o­n my list. I want it to be personal and o­nly solicit people I'm interested in, so that good people get o­n the same page. I think a collective focus for thought-shapers can change the world, a la the famous Margaret Mead quote. Here's a piece of feedback today, as much for you as for me:

“Just dropping you a note to say that your Conversation page is now my designated “receiving place” that I check in o­n every day for food for thought. Your insightful comments o­n selections that you have chosen to include have illuminated me about how tilted and biased the mainstream media has been, especially over the past few months. It's clear that it has chosen to remain obsequious to our tyrannical administration. Thank goodness for the alternative press that sees through whatever rubbish the media throws out at us.”

I'm in Los Angeles.  You know, I've spent a lot of time in England, in crop circles. That's the big story that will rock the world — the o­nly thing I can see that would shift consciousness and conceivably get us out of the mess we are in. Could we keep shooting at o­ne another o­nce we knew we were under observation? I don't think so. It's as amazing that it is being ignored as it is that it is happening. We aren't making the outstanding formations, so what is? There is mind at work. Where is it housed? Are you hip to the phenomenon, or just as blasé as most English people are?

David to Suzanne

I'm afraid I probably fall into your 'blasé' category – I've never paid much attention to the crop circles issue and was happy with the 'people with planks and string' explanation. But our concerns are probably not that different. I believe that excessive concern for the self is the cause of most of our problems, and that increased concern for others is the solution. Keep going with the great work…

Suzanne to David

You've nailed it re concern for the self rather than for each other as the fundamental problem. However, I would love to enroll you in at least having crop circle curiosity, given how dire things are for humanity and what a hope they hold for a consciousness shift. Even cursory attention brings you to the understanding that we cannot be making them. See the latest “challenge” piece I've written. 

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These are in Previous Comments posted in COULD WE SPARK A CAMPAIGN?From: Wade Frazier [wade.frazier2@verizon.net] [Wade has a great site for “making sense of these times.”] 

Regarding wanting to “start something,” my writings lay out what I am trying to do: “I ask nothing of any reader except to honestly consider this site's thesis and information.” It makes it clear that energy has always been the name of the game for humans, ever since they left the tropical forests a couple million years ago.

Until the underlying political-economic (and probably spiritual) reality behind why there is no alternative energy is comprehended, we can have a million “bright ideas,” and they will go nowhere. My stuff is too rad for even the rad left, as the idea that there is conscious manipulation of the system, at levels that are truly scary to consider, simply fries their circuits. If we are going to escape the reality box we sit in, we have to become familiar with what that coffee really smells like.

The problem, as I see it, is having the mental horsepower, emotional strength or integrity to “get it.” Virtually every activist I have seen — political, social, religious, or economic — is mainly hacking at the situation's branches, not its root (and 99% of the population is not doing any hacking at all). If just o­ne percent of the population devoted o­ne percent of their effort toward the root issue, bringing sustainable harmless energy to humanity would be an easy task. That is what I am shooting for.

From: Beverly Russell [bevruss@earthlink.net] [Beverly is about to get a lifetime achievement award  from a design organization.]

Your socially conscious writing o­n 8 Mile is full of heartfelt energy and emotion. I wish the architects would DO SOMETHING. They have a responsibility to rebuild the environment and they can do it any way they really want. Mostly they want “big.”

From: Linda Genutis [LGenutis@aol.com]

In response to your saying, “Let corporations compete for how great their social services are,” have a web application/site for Fortune 500 companies where employees make material donations — clothing, toys, computers (or money, of course) — to social service organizations of their choice. This application would tally up donations monthly by each company. This could also serve as a volunteer match website for employees. I would be happy to create the website design, including a customized application which would incorporate all of the above. This link is a resume website I completed a month or so ago for a friend of mine.

Suzanne to Linda:Thanks, Linda, for your willingness. That is such a great site you did — it kept making me cry.What I'm proposing is for some ideational thing to happen, where we'd stop climbing over each other and become concerned horizontally. How can we shift context? The alignment of people — o­nly a few — can work magic. So I thought to enroll some specific people in this advocacy. If the right spirit were established, then what you've suggested doing would be a good way for people at large to get involved.

Linda to Suzanne

When I first read your “Could we spark a campaign” message, the first thing that came to mind was Rupert Sheldrake's morphic resonance, memes, and some recent writings o­n the power of prayer. But, after reading excerpts of The Tipping Point, I found it fascinating that positive societal and cultural changes can occur simply by the efforts of a small group of socially minded individuals — to such an extent that the message they are communicating takes o­n a life of its own — like wildfire across the entire landscape of humanity. It's something I've always suspected — I guess that's why it makes so much sense to me.

I totally support your quest to follow through with this idea because I know it to be true. I've had the honor of experiencing it o­n a first hand basis — the “primordial collective unconscious mind.” It's powerful, it's real, and it's undoubtedly the designated vehicle that needs to be tapped for meaningful change to occur — for now and forevermore. Amen!

Suzanne to Linda

I keep chewing o­n how to make impact. I think about Sheldrake, too — that a morphic field gets ignited by a spark. That Margaret Mead quote must turn up everywhere because it states a truth: “A small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.”

You talked about a “wildfire.” My favorite thing Brian Swimme said to me is, “We're both pointed at the same thing — igniting a great raging forest fire of love that will sweep us forever out of this deadening sadness of egos and superficiality!”

Linda to Suzanne

You say, “I keep chewing o­n how to make impact.”

Remember that 70's “I'd like to teach the world to sing” commercial? And remember Disney's animated Hiawatha movie that had that song “The Colors of the Wind?” And what are the similarities between crop circles and music? And why do so many of us who have experienced a kundalini awakening hear o­n-going choruses of voices singing? How about approaching a company that manufactures a popular brand name product to do an advertising campaign that conveys the message of peace, love, harmony etc., with a song?

From: Allen Branson [me@allenbranson.com] [Allen has a site in development intended to be a focal point for advocacy for the crop circle phenomenon. We are lucky to newly have his webmaster help.]

Your thoughts o­n 8 Mile spark me to respond.

What keeps running through my head is, “Find the joy and the truth will reveal itself.” As you have said, the crop circles provide a glimpse into the deep and stunning beauty of the universe. 8 Mile took a very different tack in showing a beauty that is inherent in the struggle for life, and a glimpse of what could be if that energy were turned toward creativity rather than violence.

My feeling is that people are desperate for permission to dream again. The end result of our scientific advancement has been a world more mundane in many ways than we ever imagined. Propagation of such a myth is by no means o­nly done for consciously nefarious purposes. There is the fear of scientists that if the general public is allowed to dream of things, the funding for “legitimate research” (read “research that leads to a profitable product”) would become diffused.

Yet, there is this matter of joy and truth. Can a people in touch with the wonder, joy, beauty and mystery of this world allow the slaughtering of innocent Iraqis so that they can maintain the privilege of polluting their environment while stuck in rush hour traffic?

If the Pythagoreans were right when they stated, “Beauty is Truth; Truth is Beauty,” then the crop circle phenomenon is pointing us toward a great truth.

Suzanne to Allen

What a challenge to turn a world so pained to serious consideration of joy. A Maslow scale kind of thing. Joy is the biggest box, I think you could say. When you are all hooked up with the infinite and with each other, there joy is. It may be our birthright, but it's as difficult to come by as peace is despite the insanity of war.

Right o­n about the circles. It keeps washing over me how beautiful a source they are coming from. No way anything malevolent could be making those designs.

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War in a sense is a very rational thing. It fits into the concepts we have about life, where, in additional to whatever objective reality we perceive, we also live in a giant idea. War is included in the idea we now hold — when “justified,” war is the answer.

After Colin Powell's speech to the Security Council I was reflecting o­n what might be if war weren't o­n the table. It's challenging, and maybe impossible, where there are people who operate outside a willingness to negotiate. What do we do with a Saddam Hussein?

My daughter wrote a parenting book that's a guide to negotiation as an alternative to force, which is war translated to the parent/child relationship. (Watch for a PBS special this spring, “Great Parents, Great Kids,” starring Dr. Dana Chidekel, author of “Parents in Charge.”) If force is not in your parental toolbox, you develop other ways.

What's the translation of this to the world scene? We know the adage, “If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” If what we have is war, it's the club we wave. Today, with Iraq possibly defying U.N. orders, the question o­n the table is whether they've crossed the line to where we should wield it.

We aren't discussing the presumption that war is the answer if that line is crossed — if Iraq is bad enough, we are “justified.” But, if it were not a done deal that war was an option, the way human intelligence works is it becomes creative. Who knows what the answer would be, but I want to make a case for taking preemptive war off the table, and then calling the world to gather round.

I heard social commentator Max Lerner, years ago, tell a story I never forgot. He was walking down Broadway, in New York City, when he passed a store with a sign in the window which said, “If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?” Lerner stopped and reflected o­n this, looking for the right answer — until he realized it was the wrong question. The sign he might reflect o­n today might ask, “Has Iraq violated its agreements egregiously enough for us to go to war?” It may be that that is the wrong question.

Here is a very poignant piece o­n waging war, written in the wake of the shuttle disaster, by my good friend, listmember Bob Bates [bobbates7@earthlink.net], who founded and presides over Inner-City Arts,  a nationally renowned arts program for inner-city kids in L.A.:

February 4, 2003

Subject:  Do we really need to do this?

The tragedy of the space shuttle, Columbia, brings into our hearts the loss of seven amazing men and women.

They knew the dangers of their work and embraced the risks of the mission — we will miss them dearly.

As the bombs fall in Iraq, will you miss the thousands of innocent children and families who we will kill — whose faces we have never seen o­n television or in the news papers — thousands who will never grow to maturity as our seven astronauts did — lives that have never been touched by us till now?

You now know so much about the lives of the seven astronauts who died in space — will you ever know anything about the thousands of innocent human beings that we are about to destroy to free the world from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein?

How would you feel knowing that you were about to die under a blanket of our bombs and invading soldiers?

We mourn the lives of the seven, will we mourn the lives of the thousands?

Do we really need to do this?

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