(550 words)
by David Hazen
The media is focused on the drama and fear of power struggles. The revolution of which I speak is not a power struggle, it has no single leader, and it’s occurring in small group conversations. The ship of fear and control is slowly being abandoned. We are about to witness a cultural leap into fearlessness, and the media will soon lose its influence.
We are no longer victims. We have been empowered to take responsibility for our role in shaping the culture in which we live. We have been gifted with the opportunity to subvert the domination system with the power of imagination. When we imagine ourselves being fearless in genuine relationships with other people, when we escape from the fantasies about how dangerous other people might be --how they need to be controlled, dominated, or even eliminated --there is no struggle, there is only surrender to a wonderful sense of belonging.
When we share our vision of peace in detail with others, we change history so that peace is no longer impossible, it becomes inevitable. In 1982 Milton Friedman said “Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.” It is like building a birdhouse. When the space is ready, the dove of peace arrives.
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David Hazen (innercom@peak.org) is Oregon State Coordinator for The Peace Alliance Campaign for a Department of Peace.
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