Activism

It is what you do, not what you say.

Just look around. Then look again and pay really close attention. There is a local guru of certified organic, and I swear he does nothing that doesn’t involve getting someone else’s money and putting some cut of it into his own pocket. He’s always got a new scheme, and usually he’s both coordinating it and being a beneficiary. There is another person who protests logging, gets paid to do so, then uses Georgia Pacific lumber instead of her own 50 acre wood. It’s easier. It is also easier for her to turn up the propane heat than to build a fire in her kitchen woodstove. It is easier to demand government regulation of MPG but too hard to keep the kids at home and not commute, daily, to jobs in climate controlled buildings, jobs that just coordinate and intervene and facilitate some more. The peace education center, which is at least volunteer, hides its meetings and online discussion groups, afraid of dialog with those who might differ.

Look at the Free 8 concerts; they were there to change the world but they couldn’t even pick up the trash in a 3 square foot area around where they were standing. That changing the world thing must be a lot easier and involve a lot less effort and a lot more selfishness than I thought.

Heck, if anyone were really serious about ending poverty, they would not end poverty but wealth. Hmmm, hard for rich superstars to bankroll that. Doing that wouldn’t get them trips around the world and column space in People magazine. Hard for the interfering do-gooders to get behind that with no government grants available for it. Hard to get youth to come out for concerts against the delusion of daddy’s wealth.

But why would it be important to end wealth? Because wealth more than what one man (or family unit) can actually produce in *real*goods*themselves* is always and inevitably built upon exploitation. If you have more than you yourself actually produce, you are an exploiter. Bourgeoisie.

Yes, end wealth by not participating in wealth, and even more by ending the perception of wealth. Martha Stewart made it an admirable thing to be a home-maker again. In that same way, by means of changing our own perspective, we can choose to quit valuing and envying and emulating and patronizing hoarding/exploitive/money-based wealth.

We could also quit participating in the larceny of government by not accepting employment or grants or handouts from the government. Make so little money (and that on the underground economy) that the government can’t take any of it to redistribute to someone else.

End wealth by perceiving wealth as the health (of the earth, of the grower, of the eater) of the food we eat; perceiving wealth as the productivity of the work we do; perceiving wealth as the transformation of the work of our muscles into the means of our sustenance.

It is that Gandhi quote, Be the change you wish to see. Be it. For real.

I was talking with someone who made the observation that it was easier for her to be a conservationist because she was could see the results of her choices directly in her life: if she consumed stuff that brings in lots of trash, she has to take it to the dump more often; that if she put chemicals on her garden, she would drink them the next day from her well, those sorts of connections. Which is really another thing about ending wealth: Wealth insulates us, distances us, from the world we live in; makes things philosophical concepts rather than meaningful choices. It produces envy, covetousness, jealousy. One writer has said that money is the measure of our lack of love. Another writer has pointed out that money isn't and never was real.

If just 15% of us chose not to participate in the culture of wealth, it would collapse. And poverty would be ended. It cannot be ended by governments or concerts or protests or coordinators or interveners or indoctrinators or advertising campaigns or star power or aliens or the Gods.