Posted on March 23, 2008 by Nik

the great underground movement for life…

some excerpts from Paul Hawken’s percipient work on the “Largest Social Movement in History!” – Blessed Unrest

Inspiration is not garnered from the recitation of what is flawed; it resides, rather, in humanity’s willingness to restore, redress, reform, rebuild, recover, reimagine, and reconsider. “Consider” (con sidere) means “with the stars”; reconsider means to rejoin the movement and cycle of heaven and life.

Picture the collective presence of all human beings as an organism. Pervading that organism are intelligent activities, humanity’s immune response to resist and heal the effects of political corruption, economic disease, and ecological degradation…

[This movement constitutes] a sacred act. It is a massive enterprise undertaken by ordinary citizens everywhere, not by self-appointed governments or oligarchies.

[It is] an older quiescent history that is reemerging, what poet Gary Snyder calls the great underground,a current of humanity that dates back to the Paleolithic. Its lineage can be traced back to healers, priestesses, philosophers, monks, rabbis, poets, and artists “who speak for the planet, for other species, for interdependance, a life that courses under and through and around empires.”

A new complex web of relationships is emerging

The Internet and other communication technologies have revolutionized what is possible for small groups to accomplish and are accordingly changing the loci of power. There have always been networks of powerful people, but until recently it has never been possible for the entire world to be connected.

more coming when I get round to it …