New Clear Vision

What’s the Big Deal About Snowmaking?

by Mary Sojourner

This is not the first time I’ve traveled up this mountain.  My once-lover Dark Cloud and I hiked, camped and made love in these old Ponderosa and Fir forests.  My road buddy Everett and I crawled into a little cave in this mountain to drink water from an icy spring that tastes of volcanic rock.  I’ve danced on the thick mat of pine needles under a New Moon and followed my son up Bear Jaw trail until I had no more breath.

I would tell you that this mountain that the settlers named the San Francisco Peaks is tethered to my heart if I didn’t worry that you would then dismiss my words as those of a wannabe flake. (more…)

A Gandhian Answer to Financial Collapse

by Michael N. Nagler

Last Monday the Dow Jones industrial average fell 634.76 points; the sixth-worst point decline for the Dow in the last 112 years and the worst drop since December 2008. Every stock in the S&P 500 index declined.

It is easy to blame bipartisan bickering for the impasse that led to Standard & Poor’s downgrading of the American debt, and in turn the vertiginous fall of the Dow. This bickering — this substitution of ideology for reason, of egotism for compassion and responsibility on the part of lawmakers — is a national disgrace; but while it failed to fix the problem, we must realize that it did not cause it. The cause — and potential for a significant renewal — lies much deeper. (more…)

A New Series for New Clear Vision

by Tina Lynn Evans

(Editor’s Note: In this monthly series for NCV, Tina Evans explores some of the most pressing challenges of our time. She proposes ways of comprehending these challenges and taking positive actions, and offers a voice of reason and empathy amidst the cacophony of blame triggered by converging crises in areas such as the economy, energy, climate, and more. Evans helps us consider more sustainable and socially just analyses of and answers to our problems than those offered by the prominent players of the blame game. Along with her students, her community, and her readers, she aims to help create empowering alternatives that can benefit people and the places they call home…)

It’s so easy to be lured into the blame game. We don’t have to learn much to join in, and our participation provides an immediate outlet for our anger and frustration. And yes, many of us should be angry as we chart our futures on a playing field that is too often tilted — and not in our favor. In the U.S., many of us feel the American Dream slipping right through our fingertips despite our best intentions, our intelligence, our training, and our willingness to work endless hours. We’re left to wonder what went wrong, and there are many easy answers offered. (more…)

Articulating a New Narrative in the Shell of the Old

by Randall Amster

It goes without saying … that we take the greater portion of this world as we find it, not as we might like it to be. In this sense, we primarily play the roles of resigned participant or cynical observer where conscience exists, and where it does not the outcome is often manifested in terms of either willful neglect or conspicuous consumption. A relative though not insignificant few in every era will take up the thankless and unscripted task of confronting the status quo in an attempt to turn harsh realities into humane alternatives. Still, despite such efforts, it goes without saying that the impetus for positive change is seemingly outstripped by the rate of ongoing decay. (more…)

What is to be Done?

by Peter Bergel

Recently my email brought two items on the same day which, when I put them together, seemed like a strong message for Independence Day — and beyond.

The first was a New York Times article (reprinted in The PeaceWorker on June 16) about how a British firm is preparing to bring appropriate technology to the U.S. to “do well by doing good” in the area of conserving energy. The second was the graph showing the one area where the U.S. really is number one.

I Have a Dream…

What if — I thought — after 9/11 we had decided to revenge ourselves not on Afghans and Iraqis who had done us no harm, but on Saudi Arabia, from which country the 9/11 attackers actually hailed? What if — assuming you don’t buy the “capture the terrorists” justification for the U.S. attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq — we had decided to choose a different tool than war to defend our energy supply?

We could have spent some portion of the difference between the 2001 military budget of approximately $350 billion annually and today’s military budget of $700+ billion on developing a domestic green energy supply. (more…)

Truth, Power, and the Ultimate Ground of Being

by Kent Shifferd

Treaties, non-aggression pacts, techniques of conflict resolution (e.g., nonviolent communication, reflective listening, mutual gains bargaining), institutional structures for the control of interstate violence (e.g., UN, ICC), disarmament schemes, peace studies curricula — all are necessary to creating a lasting peace; but they are just the mechanics, the tools of peace. They can lie there on the bench or they can be picked up and put to use.

But they are useless without the Spirit, that difficult-to-describe-in-words something which, when you see or hear it, you instantly recognize its presence. It’s the difference between me droning on in a classroom about the second START Treaty and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s voice ringing out, “I have a dream today!” Close your eyes for a moment and recall the sound of that to your mind… (more…)

Finding Peace and Sustainability from the Front Row Seats

by Jan Hart

“To live now as human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.” — Howard Zinn

We live in fearful times. Parker Palmer, a Quaker educator says:

“Fear is the air we breathe. We subscribe to religions that exploit our dread of death. We do business in an economy of fear driven by consumer worries about keeping up with the neighbors. And we practice a politics of fear in which candidates are elected by playing on voter’s anxieties about race and class. And we continue to ‘collaborate with these structures because they promise to protect us against one of the deepest fears at the heart of being human — the fear of … a win-lose conflict in which we could lose something of ourselves.” (more…)