We Are All On Flight 93: Bringing Spirit to R Evolution Derek Joe Tennant For my granddaughters, especially Panjarat (Thailand) and Dana (America) Thanks to Lora Zombie (www.lorazombie.com) for the painting on the cover 2 This book is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 license. That means you are free: to Share -- to copy, distribute and transmit the work, and to Remix -- to adapt the work Under these conditions: Attribution. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Noncommercial. You may not use this work for commercial purposes. Share Alike. If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one. If you reuse or distribute, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. The best way to do this is with this link: http://www.derekjoetennant.net/copyright Note: Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get my permission, through the above website. More info about this license is available here: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ As you may deduce from the above, my joy derives from the act of creation. I write to inspire you, to move your heart, and hopefully to amuse you all the while. We live in a sea of energy and consciousness. This energy is like water: its best work is when it is moving, vibrant and cleansing, alive with possibility. When it is trapped, captured, unable to flow it becomes stagnant and even toxic, a breeding site for dis-ease. I best serve when I allow energy to flow through me, when I am but a channel for consciousness to evolve. Moving my energy into the Universe allows room for energy to flow into me, nourishing and supporting me. I hope you are grateful for what I have created, that it has moved you in some way. You can thank me for my work in several ways: 3 bringing it into the awareness of others spreads the energy using any inspiration to take your own action or to embellish this work before passing it along feeds the flow or if you are so moved, showing your appreciation by passing some of your energy in the form of money back to me via my website also continues the flow that nourishes everyone. I welcome your comments and/or questions. Contact me at [email protected] 4 Table of Contents Introduction ................................................................................ 7 Foreword ................................................................................... 15 Before We Start… ...................................................................... 26 Where Did We Come From? .................................................... 45 Where Are We Now? .............................................................. 186 Secrecy And Truth .............................................................. 186 Race And Class .................................................................... 253 Bringing Spirit To Revolution ................................................ 301 R Evolution ............................................................................. 377 Stepping Out Of The Way ................................................... 416 Passive ................................................................................. 441 The Good Stuff: Active ........................................................ 459 Can Nonviolence Work? ..................................................... 473 Ultimately It Comes Down To This ....................................... 492 Inspiration ..............................................................................506 5 we used to know that Nature is in control. deep water, strong winds, sweet berries in spring. an always imperfect butterfly. when did you last see a bee? a violet-green swallow in open woods? a salamander calling its lover to attend to their business? how long since you touched any life around you not using silicon? how long since you celebrated any life around you not blood related? how long since you've been touched by the love of a many-splendored rose? how long will you wait? 6 Introduction On September 11, 2001, Flight 93 earned a place among the legends of America. According to the official story1, hijackers took over the plane and as some of the passengers realized the peril they were in, they arose and struck back at their attackers. The flight ended over the Pennsylvania skies that morning, and whether you believe the official telling of the tale or not, one truth stands out: we celebrate those who face certain death with resistance and ingenuity rather than surrender. We also see a common development of human character: asleep, awake to one problem, awake to many problems, awake to the interconnectedness of these problems, taking personal action to try to solve the problems, and finally, a realization that personal actions will never be enough, that something more is required of us. We look into the abyss of extinction, and know in our hearts that changing light bulbs and buying hybrid cars provide us no safe future. But should extinction be our biggest concern? Extinction happens. Nothing lasts forever, yet the Earth will survive whatever we do, even if we don’t. This doesn’t address the suffering between here and there; privilege enables our denial as we dodge the reality fast approaching rather than change our course. We say, “We’ll find solutions: tech will provide, we are creative at heart.” This belief in science is 1 I personally do not believe the government’s conspiracy theory, that 19 Arab hijackers flew planes into buildings because they hate our *freedom*. The official story of Flight 93 however, is iconic in many ways. I use it as a metaphor here in its mythic sense; not reflecting acceptance of the truth of it, but acknowledging that most Americans have imprinted this event in such a deep and profound way that it has changed our culture, for the worse. 7 fundamental, in many ways as much as any religion. It ignores the fact that every advance in technology brings with it some unintended consequences, often worse than the problem the tech is supposed to solve. Or we ignore what we know saying, “People can’t handle the truth.” Really, that means *I* can’t handle the truth, and others are just like me. The truth breaks our heart, our grief is too much to bear, and so we look away. Those of us who are awake experience the grief of profound loss; we viscerally empathize with a mother unable to feed her child and watching as her baby slowly starves to death, or with a dolphin trapped in a trawler’s net. Yet when we rise out of our grief we soon realize that our only viable response lies in resistance and ingenuity. The dominant culture wants us to *hope* that our lives will continue to improve into the far-distant future; that the problems we face will be solved by some new technology, when we elect a new President, by stricter laws or better enforcement, or by new and improved, family-sized, industrial-strength plastic products. But if you realize that hope is what the abuser offers to his victim: "Hope this is the last time I have to beat you!" then you clearly see that hope is predicated upon your own inability to affect your future. Leaving a rally full of hope is just another reason to not do anything to affect the outcome you know is inevitable. Until you understand what really happened, it is appalling to think of those passengers on Flight 93. They had no hope. And yet, it was exactly this lack of hope that gave them their opportunity to make a difference, to change the outcome of their *hopeless* situation. They were in uncharted waters, facing an unprecedented situation that likely none of them had ever seriously contemplated: hurtling through space on a path that seemed destined to end abruptly and badly, for anyone hoping to live another day. The usual responses of 8 everyone on that plane that arose from our cultural *don’t rock the boat* imperative would not, could not, work; new and novel responses were needed. How do we, as a culture and a society, embrace new and novel responses as our collective destiny, one that we have crafted through our choices and functional structures, fast approaches? There are paths available that do not lead to mutually assured species extinction; but to see them you have to look for *disconfirming* evidence. Our egos, trained since birth to filter the data input our senses bring us with the goal of surviving to fight another day, defend our past and the choices made before we were even aware of what we faced; choices that have placed us firmly on the path we walk today. It is natural that our egos confirm our beliefs rather than challenge them; but when these same beliefs serve only to further our descent into madness and chaos, the only way out is to question them, challenge them, and often to rebel against them and change them. We are all addicted to being right and to being accepted. Our *facts* fit our beliefs. What if we test, rigorously, our assumptions? Can we identify our own confirmation bias; meaning, can we see how our subconscious and our ego filters the massive amounts of incoming sensory data, presenting for our viewing and decision-making pleasure, only what we want to know? And for those of us who revel in being on the fringe, does our *pride* in going against the majority also get in our way? Why are we such herd animals? Is it because we know deep inside that we are interconnected with one another; a human group mind, and not just seven billion islands of consciousness in the universal sea? Certainty of belief leads to blindness. We don’t allow dissent, we don’t recognize facts contrary to our beliefs, and we don’t know what we don’t know. We crave certainty almost as much as we crave a group that 9 validates our certainty.