These prevailing narratives of militarism revolve around the powerful archetype of good and evil, order vs. chaos; but they can be overcome by an even more powerful myth, if you will (I taught mythology for many years at U.C. Berkeley), which is the struggle for life itself against death.

The movement has empowered youth (and others) in their hundreds of thousands to demonstrate in some 1,500 locations in 82 countries, creating in the process a beautiful culture of consensus decision making. But that was the easy part. Now it is time to overturn and replace the obnoxious institutions and behaviors that have (at last) brought us together

As the Occupy movements grow in remarkably inspiring ways, they have a unique opportunity to raise the human image from the slander and propaganda of the corporate media—where our capacity for consumption defines us and our desire for wealth drives us—to a more promising, and far more accurate conception of what makes us truly human: our capacity for nonviolence, motivated by our most precious desire for freedom.

There is no limit to how small movements can start if they stay true to their cause, if it is just; and to their vision, if it is sufficiently inspiring, for if those conditions were met they would inevitably grow.

Military intervention is designed to kill, not to save life. We are see the futility of training, arming, and ordering men and women to kill and expecting them to stay within agreed upon rules—not to mention go on to build stable regimes. At some point we need to recognize that there is a terrible simplicity about life: destructive energy is destructive, positive energy is positive.

The entire system of war and militarism will have to be replaced by nonviolent equivalents—and they do exist—if we want our democracy to be real.

It is a struggle to liberate all of us from the humiliating image of the human being—one that’s sustained by the endless propaganda of our powerful mass media—and replace it with something more beautiful and much more true, something that will help us accomplish the “great turning” from revenge to reconciliation, from fear to generosity and compassion.

In the penetrating light of Gandhi’s vision, passivity and violence are really two sides of the same coin. On the spiritual plane, they emerge respectively from fear and anger—both drives of the private, separate self. The only really different coin is that of nonviolence, or selfless love in action (to paraphrase Martin Luther King). The only meaningful choice, then, is not between intervening (with blind force) or not intervening, but between violence and nonviolence as a guiding principle.

Hope is still there, but we’ve been looking in the wrong place. It’s not to be found in a politician elected to high office, for however good a person he (or she—God forbid!) may be. That person will be constrained by an extremely corrupt and even vicious system. It is hidden inside the box of human potentials where we have not been able to see it through the crowd of troubles fluttering around the lid.

There is a way out of this dehumanizing dilemma, and that is to rise up and say, “No!” War is not a necessary evil, nor indispensable activity. It is a horror and a travesty on human nature.

This country is famous for one of the most organized and inspiring nonviolent movements in modern history. It unfolded sixty years ago in the aftermath of the Holocaust in Europe and focused on the racism that was an unresolved legacy of the Civil War. It was brilliant, but sadly, not enough.

The real purpose of an economic system is to guarantee to every person in its circle the fundamentals of physical existence (food, clothing, shelter) and the tools of meaningful work so that they can get on with the business of living together and working out our common destiny.

Terrorism, as basically an extreme form of violence, follows the dynamics of violence anywhere: if you fight it with your own violence it gets worse (thought there might be some “successes” in the short run); if you respond to it with nonviolence not only do you keep from falling into the debilitating mindset of fear and anger yourself, history shows that you also tend to inhibit the repetition of such disasters.

Why aren’t we asking, “Who or what is creating an atmosphere of egotism and hate in our culture?” Unfortunately, because we already know the answer, and do not want to hear it.

Some praise the likes of Manning and Julian Assange for their courage, while others hate and fear them. Both reactions are understandable. But if, as a society, we scapegoat them, we are only trying to shift our own burden of guilt onto their shoulders, and to think we can get away with that for very long is a dangerous delusion.

We are faced with not a neighborhood but a stricken world.  We cannot go on simply rebuilding cities or factories after every setback; we are at a limit.  There is no such thing as a ‘clean’ war with no collateral damage (all damage damages all, on some level); there’s no such thing as a ‘well-built’ nuclear reactor that won’t turn into an environmental monster in the next quake or leave behind unspeakable poisons that endure ten thousand years.

The nonviolent revolution in Egypt has spread across the Mideast, but in Libya, unfortunately, the “revolution” was picked up without the “nonviolent.”

A nation that dedicates itself to the use of violence for its foreign policy (and its entertainment forms, and its criminal justice system) can never expect to live free from violence in its own social fabric.

Deeply concerned individuals are doing very cogent work on environmental issues, yet somehow the same energies are not as clearly brought to bear on the war system, which we note does as much as or more than any other single human activity to destroy the environment.

Today we are reaching a similar crisis with the institution of war; despite appearances, people are becoming more aware that we cannot solve problems by waging war on them.  If you are not aware that this is happening, you are not alone; watch any news or “entertainment” program and you’ll see that competition, violence, and war are still considered “normal.” It’s rare to spot nonviolent alternative methods, since they are so rarely featured in mainstream media.