Ten years after the fall of the
Twin Towers, and we are on the brink.
Walking a tightrope, we precariously teeter above a deep chasm that lay
between the modern, 20th century and an increasingly machinated, new
era. The brilliance of this now is
the balance that we can endeavor to walk – with one foot sinking into a moist,
dank Earth, we can also dance with our neighbors across thousands of miles of
invisible frequencies with the other.
It is an exciting moment, rife with potent opportunities. However, this balancing act requires a
great awareness, for there is a silent war being waged.
Just days after 9/11, moved by fear
and propaganda, the American public willingly gave up its constitutional right
to “Habeas Corpus.” Literally
meaning to “Present the Body,” the Patriot Act eradicated hundreds of years of
democracy in one swift motion. It
was no longer necessary for anyone,
including American citizens, either remotely accused or even wrongly associated
with terrorism to be granted due process of law. Rather, our presence before a body of government was
rendered obsolete.
Then, in 2010, the U.S. Supreme
Court rejected our Bill of Rights by granting personhood to corporations. Corporate entities, fictional in nature
and lacking a physical body, were given a disembodied voice with which to vote
in presidential elections. In just
one, short decade, life as we have known it was overturned. And, now, our access to fresh, healthy
foods grown and raised on local, family farms is under attack. Forced to stop by new FDA regulations[1],
and even sometimes violently acted upon by misguided government bureaucracies,
thousands of dollars as well as gallons of raw products – such as milk and
produce – have been thrown down the drain. In a time period when we have reached socially alarming
rates of physical and emotional dis-ease - cancer affects 1 in 4 Americans;
heart disease is our nation’s leading killer; obesity and diabetes are chronic
illnesses for children and teens; and we’re popping pills like they’re candy in
our prescriptions for depression and anxiety - can we really afford to further
diminish our relationship with the very real Earth under our feet?
Stemming from a millennium-old,
left-brained approach to life, this is not by any means a recent campaign. Although our analytical thinking has
led to continual leaps and bounds in our technological advancement, what we
have not realized is that, like our human population, these evolutions are
exponential in growth. What is
different about this now, however, is that our level of distraction has reached
such a fervent pitch that we no longer hear the army’s trumpeting call. Like sheep to the slaughter, we
absent-mindedly chase after the dangling carrots leading us to the shimmering
mirages of iPads, breast implants and Genetically Modified Organisms[2]. Unfortunately, what the horse really
craves – true, tactile connection in real
time – it cannot be forced to drink, especially if it does not recognize
its own deep desire.
Almost 400-years ago, Rene
Descartes penned his now famous words.
In his Discourse of Method (1637), he wrote – in French, not
Latin - "Je pense donc je suis,”
and, ever since, our western institutions have been ruled by Cartesian Thought
- by a worshipping of the mind over the
body. Centuries later, we - as
a people - have forgotten how to listen to the stirrings of our heart
song. We have willingly accepted
mindless work that does not feed our Spirits as par for course. And, we can no longer sense the ancient
wisdom of the Earth nor intuit the deep psyche of our collective
consciousness. What’s more is that
we do not know how to be in stillness and silence. Daily, we negate the immense power and deep well of
meditative thinking. We have
become numb, the walking dead - Zombies pulled towards the external call of
media and mayhem.
Today, it is our dire responsibility to remember - for we must
rebuild this great nation by relying, once again, on our own
Self-Empowerment. It is we who must create sustainable, innovative
industry and, thus, supply the everyday human with a true, inalienable right -
self-sustaining and soul-feeding work. In our cities, we must create a
community of people that holds, at its core, a fundamental belief in the
necessity of: connection, collaboration and communication; our soul's meeting in real time and fluid space; the strength of vulnerability in our mutual surrender; and in the sweet taste of sensuality.
We also need to pool our
resources, share our strengths, and honor our weaknesses. We
have to re-teach our youth common sense as well as critical and outside-the-box
thinking. We must call upon our solution-oriented artists to draw on
past models, like FDR's Civilian Conservation Corps, for the time is now to
recreate a flourishing garden where our real, human toes dig into a replenished
soil. There is no other recourse. This is a rallying cry for it is
these human bodies that are at stake in the future that is soon to come.
It is up to us to remember, to teach and to pass on our human legacy. Join US!
