Sacramento Post-carbon Action Network (SPAN)

I continue to receive e-mail, every day, about the new depredations of the Bush Administration, the chaos in Europe, and environmental degradation. The following quotes come to mind:

Thoughts held in mind multiply after their kind. (New Thought)
Garbage in, garbage out. (Folk Wisdom)
Be the change you want to see in the world (Ghandi)

Yes, all this turmoil, intrique and deceit is interesting... but can anything (really) be done about it? I've been actively involved in peace action and progressive politics for the past three years--I know, it's not much--and frankly, I simply don't have the stomach for so much futility. I need to see results!

So, while it's important to be informed, to see connections, to be able to speak intelligently and persuasively to people who are blinded by their need to be comfortable...

I think the most important thing, the thing on which we should focus our attention and communications is: what is each of us doing to plan and prepare for a post-carbon, reduced-energy-consumption era? What is working? What is not? Why? What can we learn from our failures? How can we improve our methods?

Doing something positive in the face of the world's evil will certainly have a greater positive impact on our own lives than fighting the evil. Since so much of the evil being perpetrated today by the United States is supported by the ennui of the American people, we can rightly say that inertia and ignorance, even more than the evil of the Bush adminsitration, is "the enemy."

We can decline to give our energy to the existing sytem and choose to do something positive that will highlight the difference between right and wrong. It is more effective to light a match than to scream in the darkness about how wrong it is. By lighting the match, setting the example, laying the groundwork, we turn a greater force (the will of the people) against itself (currently an expression of fear, self-centeredness or disinterest). Right now, the will of the people to be comfortable is greater than their need to do right. We need to show as many as possible how doing right can also be so satisfying as to make it worth a little inconvenience. Thus, we build the infrastructures of right living so that people--as they wake up one by one and decide that they are no longer comfortable doing nothing--will have something to do.