Making it Real

by David Hazen
(519 words)

This commentary is unpublished.

The cascading crises of global warming, peak oil and suicidal terrorism are making it obvious that we are all on one lifeboat together. In the midst of this crisis, we cast about for pieces of floatation, and there are many within reach when we look beneath the surface chaos.

How we think about, how we frame, what we are doing is so much more important than what we are doing. The issue before us is not personal survival, it is how we think about our survival, our strategies of survival, and the real meaning of our survival. Global warming is not just inconvenient weather patterns, it's a mass extinction event, and our interdependence has marked homo sapiens as an endangered species....

....When we reframe global warming or peak oil as our opportunity to cooperate in expanding our access to resources that have been until now unavailable to us, we open a vision of new possibilities, and so it is with building the peace. Terrorism is our opportunity to access communication skills that have been previously unused. Real strength, real self-esteem, comes from relating to people instead of dominating them....

(for exclusive consideration of the full text, email: PeaceVoiceDirector@gmail.com)

David Hazen is Oregon State Coordinator of the Peace Alliance Campaign for a Department of Peace.