Mickey Z

Cool Observer

Sunday, November 09, 2008

Creating Change 101

Walt Whitman sez: “This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men—go freely with powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and with the mothers or families—re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem.”

To that, I’ll add: Embrace not the corporate sanctioned standard American diet; go vegan, organic, and local. Be warned: what you own ends up owning you; say no to conspicuous consumption. Opt for two wheels, not four; bid a fond farewell to your internal combustion engine. Under no circumstances should you cast a vote for either a Democrat or a Republican; these are but two wings on one corporate party. Never, ever, ever trust a liberal (on anything). Reject both war and its warriors; offer not your support to those who volunteer to wage war. Reach out for your television remote and boldly press “off.” 6.6 billion miracles are more than enough; cease breeding immediately.

If even 25% of America made these basic, entirely doable cultural adjustments, it would essentially qualify as a revolution…by today’s diluted standards.

(More cartoons here)

As John Muir sez: “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.”

Captain Paul Watson sez: “We are conditioned to respond in socially acceptable ways, i.e. protests, petitions, boycotts, etc. We also have the problem that nature and other species are an abstraction to us. Humans fight for property, for immediate self defense, and for religion. Hominids are a self-centered species. When people ask how I can risk human life to protect a whale, I cite the fact that we do not think it is unnatural or unethical to risk our lives and to kill over property like land and oil. And we accept dying and killing for ridiculous religious beliefs. I think fighting for endangered species and threatened habitats to be much nobler.”

Malcolm X sez: “I read once, passingly, about a man named Shakespeare ... but I remember one thing he wrote that kind of moved me. He put it in the mouth of Hamlet ... who said, ‘To be or not to be.’ He was in doubt about something - whether it was nobler in the mind of man to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune - moderation - or to take up arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them. And I go for that. If you take up arms, you’ll end it, but if you sit around and wait for the one who’s in power to make up his mind that he should end it, you’ll be waiting a long time. And in my opinion, the young generation of whites, blacks, browns, whatever else there is, you’re living at a time of extremism, a time of revolution, a time when there’s got to be a change. People in power have misused it and now there has to be a change and a better world has to be built and the only way it’s going to be built is with extreme methods. And I, for one, will join in with anyone - I don’t care what color you are - as long as you want to change this miserable condition that exists on this earth.”

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Poem for Obama