New Choices
Many of us are embracing this new year in a spirit of deep reflection. We realize that these are dangerous and uncertain times. We are facing stark choices about the kind of futures we will have.
One of the most hopeful signs of the possibilities of more human, responsible futures is being forged by those who are challenging the uses of violence and force to solve differences. These efforts to move from violence to peace, from warfare to negotiation, from protection of property to protection of people and the planet are taking many forms.
More and more they are rooted in key ideas that were seared into the public consciousness by Dr. Martin Luther King’s challenge to the country as he spoke out against the Vietnam war. King emphasized that the violence infusing our country came from a “malady with the American spirit” shaped by choices over centuries, putting us on the wrong side of world revolutions as we constructed ways of living based on injustice. He called for a “significant and profound change in American life and policy,” a “radical revolution in values.”
He said, “We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”
He warned us, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
Today we see how much those in power have refused to consider Dr. King’s call. This year the US military budget, already the largest in the world, is $858 billion. Yet we struggle to provide basic education, housing, health care, food, and transportation to people.
We see a similar pattern on the local level. Millions are given away to corporations in Detroit, yet we cannot provide affordable water. This month 60,000 people are again facing water shut offs.
King was raising something more than a shift in spending priorities. He is calling on us to rethink the very basis on which we have constructed our ways of living.
In the nearly 60 years since that call, many people have been working to create caring, people-centered ways of life. Most recently we have seen the creation of mutual aid and communities of care emerge as people take responsibility for protecting one another. We have witnessed dramatic efforts to protect the planet and reverse centuries of devastation created by extractive, capitalist production. And we have seen the largest social movement in history demand that we move toward transformative justice and new ways of relating to one another.
Over the last few years these ideas have been given a new depth by those who have recognized that we are living in a culture of violence. Our only hope of survival is to shift to a culture of peace, rooted in justice. This shift requires a radical, deep rethinking of almost everything. Our language, our practices, our ways of understanding ourselves and our world are all intimately connected with the perpetuation of violence.
Peace is more than the absence of war. It requires conscious intent to live in ways of mutual respect, compassion, and joy. It requires creating economic and political relationships that place people above profit, the health of the earth above the greed of individuals.
This new year, let us resolve to move toward this new culture. We create the world anew, every day, with every choice we make.