Wednesday, June 28, 2006 | The Matrix I JUST saw The Matrix for the first time, last weekend. What a cool movie. On that note, Ruth writes: "I started writing this email saying your questions historically provoked thoughts of Nazi Germany for me and I wondered what, in retrospect, someone would suggest an average person do...?" Hmm, now or then? I guess the answer is the same: Wake up. To say "wake up" is to presume someone is sleeping; when we're sleeping, we don't usually know it till we wake up, and figure out what we slept through. The other thing is about sleeping is, usually, you know how you slept, so you have some awareness of the sleep while not being aware of sleeping itself. Then you wake up. When you're sleeping and somebody wakes you up, usually, that's annoying. My usual answer to the question, and what I wrote to Ruth, is: Be aware. Very aware. I've chosen to be a journalist and publisher, so my thinking may be biased and I'd like to be aware of that, but I think that, particularly in Western society (that would range, say, from Germany west to California, but mostly the United States) our biggest problem is this thing called The Media. The ads are a problem, and the content is a problem. Neither are true; you don't need what's being advertised, and the stuff between the ads is filler disguised as news (on a really good day) and blatant mind control (average to bad day). We need to be aware of that, and aware that it can be rather discouraging. The result is that we go deeper into this kind of violent, hazy sleep, and dream we have no power. The lies keep coming. It takes a lot of work to keep track of them. Not so many people care. One reason I became a horoscope writer, after many years as a news reporter, was that I felt I could make a bigger difference in people's lives on the horoscope page. Plenty of people accuse me of lying, because horoscopes are not true. One problem is you don't usually get clear that you're being lied to until you see some gross example of what you notice as the truth, remembering you were told something else by someone who claimed to know. Usually there are so many layers of denial that basically it ain't happenin'. You can have a whole neighborhood full of kids getting sick and being born with birth defects and dogs dying of nose cancer and old chemical barrels popping up in backyards...with everyone knowing that the neighborhood was built on a toxic waste dump (to wit, Love Canal near Niagara Falls, NY) and people will still slam doors on community organizers, and need to be forced out of the place by the government, once the authorities finally get around to doing something (and in the case of Love Canal, they had to be forced). And this is one example of something that really affects people in their community and is blatantly obvious. There are many examples. They are very annoying and depressing. This is to say, the fact that people and their kids could be directly affected by something, or are being directly affected by it, may not mean anything at all, and often, it does not. So in reality, we cannot worry about "them" or waking them up or saving them. Of course, we do have a little problem: all the people who do not wake up can, by their negligence, kill the rest of us. So, as you ask, Ruth, what can the average person do? Through the years, there have been a variety of approaches. Political movement is one of them, but most people find activism boring and unsatisfying, and frustrating because the results take nearly forever and are easily squashed. However, well-placed political action, if it's creative and engages the imagination and moves some power, can be extremely helpful. This is pretty unusual. Political movement tends to be extremely depleting for those who are involved, and on the leadership level, the way we do politics (including internal movement politics) today, it often requires taking part in a lot of conflict. An approach that has worked has been to develop what used to be called human potential, through various methods of therapy, group process, teaching and learning. All through the 1960s and 1970s, somewhat beneath the surface but still feeding the ethos of the era, were a variety of human potential projects that helped shape the way we think about ourselves. This is helpful for individuals in the short term and the only thing that will help us, collectively, in the long run. The entire human potential movement is based on this one little fact, verb, concept, or whatever you like to call it: awareness. Right now there are so many methods of building awareness available you could not count them all. But as the poet Adrienne Rich said in the 70s, "There are methods but we do not use them." On some level, this is true enough for all of us. So when you look out at the injustice in the world, including some really big injustice and you just know that it could stop, eventually, if enough people spoke up; but then you wonder where, or how, they might do that, and what might make them willing to do so; and you realize that it ain't happenin'; then you're looking at something that is often called the "human condition." And what do you do in the face of that? Pay attention, and find other people who are paying attention. Have fun. Follow your calling, and feed it a little every day. Do these things sound trite? Well, I don't know, but I have to remind myself every day. But tomorrow I'll tell the story of a little place in Quebec that was created because people saw an opportunity to do something creative; they were willing to work out their conflicts enough to let it happen; and as it turns out, they made a very big difference in their own lives and those of many people around them. {{W}} Wiki on Love Canal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Canal