Sustaining All Life, Ending Classism, Ending War
Thank you, John, for writing and for the work you are doing to change the world.1 You are making a significant contribution to meeting what I see as the three most important challenges facing humanity:
• Sustaining all life. If we don’t meet this challenge (and the threat is a real one), all the other good work we do (liberation work, family work, improving our relationships, reclaiming our minds, and so on) will be meaningless.
• Ending classism. As long as there is a class society, humans’ fears for their survival will push them into exploiting the environment (and other people) in an effort to survive and, for many, to make a profit.
• Ending war. War destroys human lives and the environment and enables the owning class to make huge profits. War also hurts and confuses young people and installs distress recordings of discouragement.
We can all contribute to meeting these challenges, in big ways and small. Here are some suggestions:
• We can discharge on discouragement.
• We can discharge on the RC commitment to reclaim power: “From now on I will see to it that everything I am in contact with works well, and I will not limit or pull back on my contacts. This will mean _____________.”
• We can discharge on the RC commitment to unity of all human aspirations: “From now on I will inspire, lead, and organize all people to eliminate every form of humans harming humans. This will mean _____________.”
• We can get involved in progressive movements (and there are many of them all over the world) that are working for policies and laws that are respectful of the environment.
• We can inform ourselves about and back2 Dan Nickerson’s3 recent initiative on ending classism (see “A New Initiative on Ending Classism,” on page 8 of the July 2014 Present Time).
• We can discharge on how our families have been affected by the long history of war and get involved in progressive movements that are committed to ending war. As most of you know, I have been leading and discharging on healing from war for over a decade. I was led to do this after I took the job of International Commonality Reference Person for Wide World Change. When I held out my vision of a world in which resources were shared equally and preserved forever, people started discharging on war and political violence. I discovered that in most families there was silence about the history of war and little or no attention for young people’s feelings about it, and that its effect on people was profound.
Julian Weissglass
International Commonality Reference
Person for Wide World Change
Santa Barbara, California, USA
Reprinted from the RC e-mail discussion
list for leaders of wide world change
1 See previous article.
2 “Back” means support.
3 Dan Nickerson is the International Liberation Reference Person for Working-Class People.