I'd like to believe that the juggernaut of ignorance, greed and fear can be turned around. As individuals and communities our cumulative effect upon the rudder of our 'ship of state', even a ship of state gone stark-raving mad, can be profound--provided we begin now with all the courage and creativity we can muster.

What prompted me to think about this is not just the recent tsunami and the paltry aid we as a nation are contributing to ease the suffering in Indonesia, though the nightmarish plight of the Acehnese is certainly a factor. No, what has made it impossible for me to continue as a silent US consumer statistic is the profoundly limiting worldview of those who declare that the "American way of life is not negotiable".

Webster's Dictionary defines 'negotiable' as "capable of being traversed, dealt with, or accomplished".

Our amazing capacity for denial and extravagant selfishness is wreaking havoc on the world's poor and fouling the nest of even the most privileged and heavily fortified among us. It is time for us to grow up and to truthfully assess where we are and what sort of future we are leaving to the next generation. This is the time in winter when we can utilize the dark time of the year to reflect on our intentions for the year ahead. Unless we are in an incurable state of denial and unable to think for ourselves, it is quite clear that the war in Iraq is a misguided attempt to buy time as far as oil and natural gas depletion is concerned.

As individuals there is plenty we can do. We can boycott the products that use sweatshop labor or dismiss environmental standards or human rights in their labor practices and educate ourselves about 'globalization' and where the resources we take for granted come from. We can conserve energy and look into ways in which we can help transform our local communities to be more self-sustaining and leave a less gargantuan ecological footprint in our part of the world.

This can be accomplished by planting seeds, getting together with neighbors to start a community garden, recycling, researching alternative energy and getting out our bicycles and putting away our cars. We can be proactive by not sitting in a trance in front of the advertising, fluff and fearmongering of mainstream media. We can write letters and make phone calls and show up at the offices of those responsible for informing the public and insist that meaningful truths be told. The real dialogue occurs between the movers and shakers of the World Economic Forum and the disenfranchised represented by the World Social Forum and the many voices that have deliberately been silenced by adherents to unsustainable and violently self-serving policies.

Those of us who still have bank accounts can send generous checks to nonprofits like Doctors Without Borders or UNICEF or Amnesty International or Common Dreams or any of thousands of worthy organizations trying to tip the scale in favor of compassion and truth on this planet. Let's turn our swords into ploughshares while we still can.

I do not normally memorize poetry, but for reasons obvious to anyone who has been paying attention, it's been easy to be haunted by and to memorize this excerpt from Canadian Leonard Cohen's poem, titled, simply,

"Democracy":

It's coming from a hole in the air
From those nights on Tiennamen Square
It's coming from the feel that it ain't exactly real
or it's real, but it ain't exactly there...

From the wars against disorder
From the sirens night and day
From the fires of the homeless
From the ashes of the gay,
Democracy is coming to the USA...

It's coming to America first
Cradle of the best
And of the worst
It's here we've got the range and the machinery of change
And it's here we've got the spiritual thirst...

It's here the family's broken
And it's here the lonely say
That the heart has got to open
In a fundamental way...
Democracy is comin' to the USA...

I'm sentimental, if you know what I mean
I love the country but I can't stand the scene
And I'm neither left nor right,
I'm just stayin' home tonight
Getting lost in that hopeless little screen...

But I'm stubborn as those trashbags that time cannot decay
I'm junk, but I'm still holdin' up my little wild bouquet...
Democracy is comin' to the USA...

Sail on, sail on, oh mighty ship of state
To the shores of need
Past the reefs of greed
Through the squalls of hate...
Sail on....sail on...
Sail on.

Lynn Farquhar, an educator, bodyworker and artist currently residing off-grid in the Southwestern US, is trying to learn all she can about living in intentional community focused on alternative energies and permaculture gardening as well as Satyagraha, the Ghandian philosophy of nonviolence. She can be reached at zoahimsa@hotmail.com.

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