I have therefore come to the opinion that the most reasonable recourse for the humanization of society and its institutions is to abandon them and begin again to build a society with a just, equitable and compassionate economy with justice, equality, and reverence for all life insured by the goals and forms of all its institutions.
-Manitonquat

MANIFESTO
For a Humane Society and a Healthy Planet

Human beings have a genetic heritage of aggression, a lust for power over other beings, and a greed that motivates that domination. The basis of all oppression is economic, the means for acquiring and perpetuating that domination. The dominant economic system in the world today is capitalism. No doubt the principles of capitalism, principles of trade and funding enterprises, could be used to further the other aspects of true humanity, cooperation, caring, love of the earth, of life, of plants, animals and other human beings.

The enemy is not us, not human beings, not Osama Bin Laden, George Bush, or anyone else. The enemy is that strain and the economic system of domination created by it and which fuels it. Our history shows that we as a species have been evolving and growing away from our savage past of constant warfare and domination, concentrating our attention on the inherent other part of our nature which is caring and cooperative.

In the past, at least in North America, whose first people’s stories I know most intimately, when tribes have settled and become stable, they began to seek safety from the aggressions of others, either by environment or by agreement. As a result that continent was, on the whole with some exceptions, the most peaceful of all the continents at the time of the European invasion, which pitched the tribes onto their neighbors and again stimulated aggression.

Today it seems that most human beings prefer peace to war, harmony to discord, gentleness to violence, and cooperation to domination. War is now seen to have no human benefit and is disastrous for all sides. But the capitalist system uses war and the threat of war for its profit and with its control of governments and media is still able to convince many people that it is noble, heroic, and patriotic, that it is God’s will, that the enemy is evil, and that war is our duty to save ourselves and our freedoms.

Most of our North American tribes had become so peaceful, so trusting, and so used to hospitality and negotiation that they welcomed the invaders from Europe before they learned their intentions. When the true intentions of the invaders to conquer and exterminate or convert the native people became clear, they fought back fiercely. Only when they were driven back onto the territories of others did many tribes which had achieved working cooperation with their neighbors become again aggressive with each other. The continuing oppression, racism, and genocide directed even today against America’s first nations results in much internalized oppression, anger, and violence against each other, as well as against the colonizing nations.

Still it is clear that humankind is evolving slowly away from its violent past and seeks to embrace the cooperative side of its heritage. Today more people desire peace and believe in its possibility than ever before in human history. The current war in Iraqis the first one ever protested by tens of millions of people around the planet before it began, and many nations allied to the U.S. refused to support that action.

In my personal contacts with many elders of the some three of four hundred million people around the globe who identify themselves as being of continuing indigenous cultures, in listening to their own stories of their past, I am convinced that at one time most of the settled tribal peoples had achieved peace among themselves and mutually agreed cooperation with their neighbors. Although their settlements became more organized, roles became diverse and specialized, and religion more ritualized, there is evidence that a spirit of equality was maintained and a worship of life, of fruitfulness and fecundity, a view of the sacred in all things, in plants and animals, in story and song, and no honor given to killing, to warfare or violence. But at some later point inequality of power and wealth began to supplant the cooperative balance that the tribes had managed to create, even within some larger civilized cultures. At that point the depiction of celebrations of life turn into celebrations of death, of violence and killing. Then we see warlords and kings, chariots and spears and warriors, and the subjugation of slaves painted on palace walls. Not long after this the first inventions of writing occurred, and from that point all we know of written history depicts violence, conquest, domination and subjugation of the human race.

A peaceful people cannot withstand conquest by a violent people trained and equipped for war. They must either submit or die. After submission they become part of the culture of oppression, either joining or internalizing the oppression against themselves and others. Of course the creative and cooperative impulses of human nature continue to resurface and grow with difficulty inside the destructive culture of domination. People are still good and thoughtful, still struggle for freedom and self-expression and to connect with each other. It does make the struggle much harder, and for many it is overwhelming. Their humanity is completely engulfed.

And so violence engulfed the whole world as the conquerors spread across the planet driven mainly by the greed of the leaders, by national pride and arrogance, or in a few cases by religious faith or the desire for freedom from tyranny. Naturally not all the tribal peoples who succumbed to this invasion had managed to grow out of their violent past, but while warfare may have continued to preoccupy some, none had developed this occupation as did the nations with their vast armies and superior technologies against which swept away all defenses. It is noteworthy that in no case were the beliefs and life-styles of the invaders welcomed by the conquered. The time of the invasion the vast majority offerings of the conquerors were always rejected and resisted fiercely and bravely until forced to submit.

The histories, written by the conquerors, assume from that resistance (and greatly overstate) the warlike nature of their opponents. I am convinced from the stories of the many indigenous peoples in North America that by the time of the invasion the vast majorities of them had achieved stable and cooperative relations with their neighbors and were evolving into a peaceful race. From my talks with people of many other indigenous groups around the world, I suspect this may have been the case for many on every continent that was colonized.

I believe the egalitarian nature of all our elder societies helped to further their intelligence and develop the cooperative aspect of their interaction. The more the evolving human beings cooperated, for their own survival and safety, the more they learned to communicate, and the development of language, the distinguishing characteristic of the species, the more intelligence increased and evolved. The smarter they got, the more they talked, and the more they talked the smarter they got. That’s the kind of feedback loop that accelerates evolution.

It was essential to that evolution of language and intelligence that people be close to each other and be able to trust one another, which is how the hominids could develop their social groups from families to clans to tribes. Most of the tribal groups that moved from Africa to spread across the earth maintained their basically egalitarian values until conquered by dominating hierarchical societies. These hierarchies of unbalanced power and inequality alienated and isolated people from each other, making them subordinate and controllable. As these dominating ways were imposed throughout the world people were forced to be competitors, to treat others as potential enemies instead of family, as clans and tribes had become. So a backlash, a reverse wave of violence, mistrust, isolation and fear impeded the progress of human evolution towards peace and cooperation and the relaxed enjoyment of life and affectionate connection with others.

The few people at the top of the hierarchies of wealth and power have the means to maintain that system at the expense of everyone else. So today only a few people own and control the recourses of the earth and extravagantly continue to amass wealth while impoverishing and oppressing the rest and ravaging the earth’s stable environment.

It is not useful to blame those people for the destructive effects of the system which trained them to be dominators of others and of the natural world and conditioned them to believe the system to be the best possible and their roles in it to be worthy and honorable. If they had been raised in another class and culture they would have other roles and hold very different views.

I have often written and spoken against the systems that have been imposed upon us be conquest, and I have stated that capitalism, driven only by profit, creates the divisiveness of class, the enrichment of the few at the expense of the rest who are thereby impoverished, subverts government and the arts as well as science and technology, to its own benefit, encourages nationalist ward and profits from the vast military-industrial complex and also from the prison-industrial complex and the misnamed justice system, benefits from promoting legal addictions like alcohol, nicotine, over-the-counter medicines and prescription drugs, from over-priced medical care, from sex industries that stimulate and exploit human weakness, and from the destruction of animals and the natural world, to name only a few of its abuses.

I am not convinced capitalism is the right term, however, to label the creator of those ills. I could envision a benign and humane capitalism designed to improve the quality of all life, to assure the basic needs of all people for food, shelter, fuel, medical care, safety, and education. Certainly we see that profit, as the main motive, does not increase the liberty, equality, and supportive closeness of human beings, but rather has enchained, subjugated and isolated most of humankind.

And I no longer believe that hierarchy is the culprit. Again, that depends on the motivations of those setting up the structure and form of a hierarchy. People have been able to devise organizational structures which operate efficiently with a hierarchy of leadership responsibilities which are nevertheless fully egalitarian. I have known many and been part of a few such organizations. My own tribe, and others, to start with, in which there are chiefs and sub-chiefs and clan chiefs and clan mothers, where everyone is completely equal and respected, That equality and shared power depends on a closeness among the people and between the leaders and their constituents. If the shared common attitude is one of respect and mutual support, the leader will be sensitive to and listening to the people and the people will help guide and support the leadership.

I appreciate everyone trying in any way to make this world a better place, society more human and just, and the environment healthier, more viable and stable. Most people seek to do that within the existing systems and organizations, and I have complete respect and admiration for them and rejoice in every little success that limits the exploitations and oppressions of the domination systems.

People working to change the world in that way generally are trying to maintain a balance between effecting change and holding a secure and comfortable life-style for themselves and their families. We have seen the destructive folly of all revolutions, which only replace one set of oppressors with another and visit needless tragedy and hardship on the people. There are many, too, who believe in and are waiting for the system’s inevitable collapse.

I have to say all of that is too slow for me. I try to nurture my patience, but I am soon to pass the mark of four score years and I would like to see more positive results and a real feeling of humanity creating the conditions for its own survival and evolution into higher consciousness, closeness and compassion, released energy, excitement and joy in living.

It is clear to me that the dominant culture and its institutions are so powerful and so entrenched they have the ability to counter and resist all efforts for fundamental change practically indefinitely. It is not clear to me that that system will collapse ultimately under its own inner contradictions. I see that our human genius for survival is so immense that we will adapt to all changes until and unless we are met with sudden and total extinction, as were the dinosaurs.

The fundamental basis of all oppression is economic. It is the power of wealth that stimulates, motivates, and holds it in place. The wealth of the world is so concentrated in so few people that their institutions can exert inordinate control of just about all the institutions of the world. That includes the governments of all the nations that make the laws for their states, and for the United Nations. It includes all the dispensing off information and opinion through education, through the media of radio, television, film, and the publishing of newspapers, journals and books. It affects religion and charitable enterprises, it dispenses weapons for profit around the world and incites nations to use military force to preserve economic control and eliminate opposition and protest.

I have therefore come to the opinion that the most reasonable recourse for the humanization of society and its institutions is to abandon them and begin again to build a society with a just, equitable and compassionate economy with justice, equality, and reverence for all life insured by the goals and forms of all its institutions.

This is the essence of the Gandhian philosophy, of course, and of Gandhian economy, which few people in the world took seriously in his time. I am convinced, however, that his basic analysis and proposal for Indian liberation was both correct and practical, as are all truly spiritual proposals for human relationship. I believe it remains our best hope for a peaceful and just society that fosters human evolution in the direction most profoundly longed for in the human soul.

And as Gandhi, through the broad final scope of his spiritual visions, understood, this liberation for all people must begin with the essential first step of the elimination of all violence in human interaction. We must educate ourselves and each other with the clear but obscured truth that, as Lao Tzu observed 2500 years ago, the use of force always creates a counter-force, that violence always creates more violence. Violence is never a good thing and always produces unexpected and unpredictable results. We recognize it can be the only recourse for self-preservation in extreme cases, but we need to see that even in self-defense, while it achieves the necessary goal of survival, there will also be negative repercussions.

The introduction of force and violence in our quest for justice and equality always stimulates counter forcers that compromise that quest. Whenever that quest has made an apparent victory using violence using violence, a wider appraisal shows the negative consequences that also arose to negate that victory in the overall struggle. Both Gandhi and M.L. King showed that a much greater, broader, more substantial victory may be obtained non-violently.

The wars of the past few centuries can be seen to bear out this proposition. Every victory scatters the seeds of rage and resentment to be cultivated in desperation and spring forth again in endless conflagrations. War is not the way to peace. As Gandhi said, “There is no way to peace, peace is the way.”

We aspire to a consciousness, which we have not yet fully reached. We know with certainty what that is. A loving and compassionate response to all sentient beings that is unruffled and undisturbed under duress, serene and at peace through calamity and misfortune, helpful and cooperative in any situation, aware of and overjoyed by each passing moment. Sometimes it seems we are almost there, and we are inspired by others who seem perhaps to be there already.

But the human brain is a delicate instrument that has been at work hand in hand with its environment to grow, to learn, to heal itself, and evolve for a hundred thousand years. It has come a long way, but it still breaks down very easily under too much pressure and too many assaults, Violence, abuse, neglect, abandonment, treachery, cruelty, both mental and emotional, repeated enough can make us crazy. We see examples every day in the news. People shooting people in schools and restaurants, killing their own families, wars, ethnic and racial oppression, suicide bombers, sports fans rioting, road-rage – every instance of violence seems to set us back, knock us off the track for a while, confuse and compromise our universal will to peace with freedom, justice and an equitable sharing of the earth for all.

Whichever part of that dream we decide to direct our time and energy upon, whatever area of freedom, justice and equity concerns us most, the one ingredient essential to every struggle is peace. Without peace the lurking embers of violence in every one of us will always be ready to jump into flame.

But we need more than only to refrain from violence. We must refuse to be enemies. We need to understand and see each other as good people with a common goal to live in peace, to enhance life on earth, to make the lives of all people as good as we are able. We need to listen and learn what we can do to create our dreams together.

It is for all these reasons that I have devoted the last 40 years of my life to bringing people together in circles, to listen to them and create forms for us all to listen to each other. At first through humanistic psychology and the human potential movement, and through spiritual classes, through conference and workshops and gatherings, like the Rainbow Gatherings, through new schooling for all ages, building a living community and networking with other communities.

For the past 12 years my wife and I have been organizing international camps in Europe to provide the experience of living tribally, of living in circles where people cooperate on work and play and caring for all the children, where they open their hearts and listen to one another and support and come closer to each other every day until they know they are family and that they want to live together with the human family in this way, that no other way is worthy of their love and dreams for the precious hours of their lives.

Only by being together with others who listen and care for and support each other can we create the truly human system and institutions that will allow the peace, the freedom, the justice, the equity and the warmth of affection we all deserve. And as we come together and learn to rely on ourselves for our basic needs, for our food and shelter and medical care and education, for our cultural expressions, our arts and entertainment, to make our own tools and clothes and our own renewable energy, and withdraw from our dependence on governments and industries.

This has been happening for many years now. The explosion of communes and communities of the 60s and 70s imploded again because the people had no experience of tribal living and brought along all the distress patterns society had ingrained in them. But some, with strong spiritual or philosophic values and will, survived, learned, and grew stronger. Since the 90s the number of new communities has continued to grow, with ecology a common interest, and under the label of ecovillages the world network of communities grows larger and stronger.

Although there is a great variance among these ecovillage communities, there are those among them who see their network as a global movement to become an alternative economy and social system which will provide the world peace, freedom, justice and equity that no movement or revolution has yet been able to provide.

My wish is to further that concept and that movement, and to begin to create other villages based upon what we have learned and achieved together in our Circle Way camps. And I also want to continue to visit other communities, at their invitation, to show them the ways we have discovered to bring people so quickly so closely together, to make all our relationships deep and intimate and supportive, to heal one another and enhance our own creativity and joy together, and to provide the most caring and inspiring life for our children that we can conceive.

To that end I have put down my vision of a Circle Way Village of the future, providing all I could think of that a reasonable person might want for her life together with a network of millions of such villages crating a cooperative, ecological and equitable economy for the earth. The initial version of that vision is published in a book called Changing the World, now available through the order page of this web site.

I intend to keep working on it and produce bigger and better versions as I do, and I look for feedback and ideas from all of you. Write to me about your own work to change the world.

Have you begun creating your own dream? If not, are you ready yet – to start building a dream?

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