New Year's Resolutions and Other Pipe Dreams

By Carl Golden

As the New Year approaches, less than two hours away, I think on the return of light and life and the passage of the old, making way for the new. There is much that has elapsed in the last year, as well as the last few years, that is happily laid to rest, such as the recent Republican Congress, which was the most criminally neglectful congress in American history. But not all that has passed is happily relinquished. There are regrets. Love has been lost and the heart diminished. So be it. It is time to rededicate the heart, mind, body and soul to the return of the light and new life. It is time for New Year resolutions.

Resolution #1: Impeachment. I'm glad that the Democrats did well in the recent election and that Rumsfeld got the boot, which was long overdue. Now that the Democrats have regained the majority of the House and Senate, Bush and Cheney need to be impeached. They are criminals and need to be dealt with as such, especially Cheney, who is one of the many dark lords of empire parading around as patriotic citizens while undermining the very fabric of free society. Cheney and his kind are fascists.

Resolution #2: Spank Nancy Pelosi for declaring that impeachment was not on the table.

Resolution #3: Continue urging Congress and the Senate to develop diplomatic agreements with Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey to help stabilize Iraq so we can pull our troops out because the war is not going to get better as long as we are there. The longer we are there, the deeper and wider the civil war and hatred of America will grow. Some people think that the solution is to send more American troops into the region. This would only escalate the scale of the disaster because more troops would attract more insurgents and so on in a vicious cycle that will only succeed to further destabilize the Middle East, possibly igniting a third world war, while draining America of needed tax dollars, increasing the national debt, driving unemployment up, as well as furthering the risks that our bonehead president will suspend and/or deny and/or ignore more of our constitutional rights. The fact is that no non-Arab nation has ever been able to successfully subdue any of the Arab nations, and every nation that has tried has met the same fate: economic exhaustion and geo-political diminishment.

Resolution #4: Continue to work against the neo-conservative's New World Order, in other words - Global Empire. American leadership should focus less on world domination (globalization) and focus more on strengthening Americans by establishing universal health care, increasing funding for education, preventing illegal aliens from siphoning jobs and depressing wages, reigning in the hyper-inflated costs of housing, stemming the out-sourcing of American jobs, retraining the American workforce with a focus on production of real goods and services that pay real salaries and/or wages that make it possible for one parent to earn a living for a family, and last (but not least) re-instituting the constitutional rights that were abridged under the Bush/Cheney Reich.

Resolution #5: Get my own life in order, which is no small task. I need to lose twenty-five pounds, get out of debt, fall in love (again), get married, buy a house, have some kids, get a dog and cat (perhaps some Zebra finches too), make some wine, drink some wine, and be happy. (Not that I am unhappy, but I could be much happier.)

I wish you a merry Yuletide! Take care, be well, and may your Yuletide be bright with fire, dance and mead, as well as love, laughter, and dreams of rosy breasted women.

Mount Baker

Mount Shuksan

Finding Home

By Carl Golden

Many people dream of escaping their hometown in order to see the world. They want an adventure elsewhere that will challenge, entertain, and perhaps even educate and transform. I wanted all of that, so I took up such an adventure twenty-seven years ago, leaving my hometown of Clinton, Maryland, in 1980 to travel to and live in Iceland for a year. It was an amazingly challenging and rewarding journey that also lead me to the Faeroe Islands, Scotland, and England. I was away for fourteen months, during which I met many wonderful people who became friends and/or lovers. I worked hard, learning a new language and new ways of thinking and seeing. I overcame personal challenges and the boy I was grew into a man. I returned to Clinton in 1981 to visit my mother, but I didn't stay long to my mother's disappointment. Clinton was no longer my home. Not that Clinton had changed; rather, I had changed, and my hometown just didn't feel like home anymore.

Looking back over the years, it seems that I have been on that journey ever since, and I am tired of it. I have been tired of it for many years now. I want to find my home and rest in it. Finally, I believe that I have found it in Bellingham, WA, after a long sojourn.

I first discovered Bellingham back in 1993, when I moved out here to enroll in a graduate program at Western Washington University. I fell in love with it back then because the town is built upon and between shoulders of the Chuckanut Mountains and the shores of Lake Whatcom, Lake Samish, Lake Padden, and beautiful Bellingham Bay. I love the confluence of mountains and water that characterize the area, and the magnificent Northern Cascade range, where Mount Baker and Mount Shuksan can be found, is approximately thirty miles east of town. This is heaven for an outdoorsman like myself.

Unfortunately, my stay in Bellingham was cut short when I learned that my graduate program was retired along with the retirement of its two head professors. So, I left Bellingham to pursue studies in New Hampshire, but unbeknownst to me, an intention to return had lodged itself deep within my heart and soul.

The influence of that subconscious intention has worked it's way with me through many years of traveling and much heart-ache. I am reminded of the line, "And if you can't be with the one you love, it's alright. Go ahead and love the one, love the one, love the one your with," which were written by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. Well, I have never been very good at just settling for the one you're with or for the place you're at for that matter. I have moved around America and the world to accommodate the needs of my educational and vocational interests, and more recently I have lived here and there to accommodate the dreams of some women I have known and loved, believing each time that marriage, home, and family would soon follow. Instead, there was only disappointment for a variety of reasons, but a theme did arise: I could never make my peace with this woman's or that woman's choice of a place to settle down and call home. I kept trying to convince them to move to Bellingham. Well, after the last heartbreak in Decatur, Alabama, of all places, I decided that I needed to make my own home, and I knew exactly where that would be.

I moved back to Bellingham a couple of months ago, and am attempting to settle in for a long while, hopefully the rest of my life with any luck. There are some hurdles, though. The job market here is not robust, and I may end up having to commute to Seattle, which is 85 miles away. (Not a happy prospect.) It is quite gloomy during the winter season and rather soggy, which is a bummer. There have been days when I woke up thinking that I was trapped in a very bad remake of the horror film, Dark Water. Thirty-five days of unceasing rain, with the prospect of five more months of the same, can sour even the cheeriest of dispositions. I look at some of the faces of people walking down the streets and wonder when they last smiled, and then I think, "Am I going to look like that in ten years?" Then, there are the days when I miss my family and friends who are thousands of miles away. What was I thinking? Right?

Well, I love this place enough to do what I must to make a life here. I have faith that love and fulfillment will come in time because my soul is at peace amongst the mountains and the sea. The gloom of winter gray is offset by the evergreen forests that help to keep my spirit bright, and the town folk are warm in Pacific Northerner's sort of way. The locals definitely are not like Southerners with thier effusive, "y' all come back now y' hear" type of friendliness, but they are congenial and good natured nonetheless in a more reserved manner with a sprinkling of the Canadian "ya sure, y' betcha" attitude. Also, when the glum, gray days of winter get me down a little, then I head out for some great skiing at the Mt. Baker ski area. I have always found that adrenaline will counter the winter blues, especially if chased with a cold micro-brewed beer. And if that isn't enough, then Seattle and Vancouver, BC, are near enough for an evening or weekend cultural get-away. Of course, once the winter monsoon season passes, Bellingham and the local region transform into simply one of the most gorgeous places to live in America.

Anyway, I feel like I have come home, and I want to lay down roots -- deep roots. It has been a long time since I planted a garden. I want to plant grapevines and stay around to tend the vines so they grow strong enough to bear great bunches of grapes for the wine barrel. I want to eat vegetables grown in soil that I have tilled and drink my own wine. I want a home with a roaring fireplace, a hearth, and many heartbeats. I want to marry and get tied down with kids. I want moss to grow between my toes. I want a life -- my life. With some luck, effort, and grace, maybe my rambling days are behind me, and the adventure of becoming a householder and homemaker begins. It could happen. Ya know?

Kick Them Out, Lock Them Up, and Throw Away the Key!

By Carl Golden

The results of the mid-term elections and the consequential dismissal of Secretary Rumsfeld have begun to restore my faith in our brand of democracy, but there is much yet to be done before my faith in our government is restored and I can join the chorus that lauds how great America is. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and others are guilty of war crimes that cry out for impeachment and imprisonment. It is enough to know that they orchestrated a concert of lies and half-truths while banging the drums of war in order to drive America into an illegal, oil-mongering invasion of a sovereign nation that never attacked us, resulting in the destruction of one of the world's most ancient cultural cities, the senseless loss of 151,000 innocent Iraqi civilian lives (and counting), the deaths of over 2,844 US troops (and counting), over 22,000 US troops wounded (and counting), and Iraq's hellish collapse into civil war. Add to this immense devastation the federally supported atrocities of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo (as well as the federally unsanctioned atrocities committed in Mahmudiya and Haditha), the export of wholesale torture, the war profiteering of Halliburton and its subsidiaries, the flagrant disregard of the Geneva Conventions, and the use of National Guard troops and mercenaries as regular military, and you have a laundry list of high crimes and misdemeanors that should be enough to kick these brigands out of the White House and send them up river for the balance of their days on Earth. This is the least that America -- the most powerful nation in the history of the world -- and Americans should do to attempt to save face and restore good faith amongst our neighbors. Great power must embrace undaunted responsibility, otherwise tyranny is inevitable. We must face our crimes as a nation by bringing the criminals to justice, then can we reclaim our place in history as America the Beautiful. Right now, we are America the Ugly.

Technology and the Specter of Death

By Carl Golden
(Originally written: December 5, 1995)

Death comes to us all despite our technological sophistication. This is common wisdom that any person could grasp regardless of cultural and educational background. Another idea is not so common: all life on Earth as we know it may cease to exist because of sophisticated technology. Although many people do not wish to think about their own mortality, no one can reasonably deny it. We live with it every day subconsciously if not consciously -- before we cross the street we look both ways. However, to consider global extinction of life as we know it not only seems unreasonable, it is offensively absurd. It undermines everything -- personal aspiration, family, parenthood and culture. In a word, it undermines hope. Yet, we ignore it at our certain peril. Any reasonable hopes of a viable future must be rooted in serious contemplation of many of the possible (if not inevitable) scenarios of serious degradation of the biosphere.

Many deadly specters haunt humanity and life in general today: the possibility of nuclear holocaust, global warming, widespread toxic waste, increasing loss of diverse ecosystems, over population, and biological immune systems breakdown to mention a few. Each of these is global in scope, each cuts across the human/non-human animal divide, and each arises from human technological progress. Although it would be fruitful to reflect upon these specters and their respective relationships to technology, this approach would go beyond the scope of this work. Instead, let us consider the hallowed ground of these various specters: the technological manifesto itself.

David Rothenburg, an environmental writer, argues that technology is "extension". The inherent limits of our hands, eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and mind are extended by material technologies. The jackhammer tears through asphalt that is impervious to our hands. The telescope reveals Mars to our relatively shortsighted eyes. Amplifiers enable the expecting mother to hear the heartbeat of her unborn child that would otherwise be lost to her naked ear. Chemically synthesized perfumes that mimic rare essential oils enable us to concoct outrageous cocktails for our olfactory sense. Chemical additives in foods enable us to taste subtle flavors that would otherwise go unnoticed. The computer enables us to access and store greater amounts of knowledge than could our unaided minds. These extensions have proven powerful, so much so that the prowess of Western cultures, especially American culture, is measured by our technological performance. We get the job done, whether it is moving a mountain, finding a medical cure, going to the moon and beyond, or launching a war. Like the popular Niki slogan, the technological manifesto is, "Just do it."

This manifesto, however, implies something deeper than Rothenburg's extension, which correlates technology with effect rather than cause. This is not a radical enough understanding, because prior to extension is will. Technology's extension of our physical limits is the reification of the will to power. Technology does not extend our will; rather, it embodies our will -- it is Aladdin's magic lamp.

However, herein lies the problem: There is a genie in the lamp, and it is dedicated to serving the will that released it. What if we have willed the wrong thing? The developer of a bomb can change his agenda -- both Oppenheimer and Einstein came to regret their participation in the development of the atom bomb -- but the bomb and the vast infrastructure devoted to building, selling, disseminating, and maintaining the bomb remain dedicated to the original agenda. Our technologies and their vast infrastructures take on a life of their own, serving anyone who shares the same dedicated will.

There is an even more serious concern than this narrow commitment to fulfilling our various technological manifestos. Having dedicated ourselves to this course of power and technology, we now find that no exits exist short of cultural revolution. We can discuss ethical concerns, but we cannot really do something about those concerns, because we are dedicated to a culture premised upon the will to power. We are caught in a Catch 22 positive feedback loop because the will to power designs technologies that embody a powerful will, which then feeds the will to power, and so the loop spins on and on profoundly incapable of radically changing its direction, even if that direction is a literal dead end.

This is cause for despair, and there is much despair in America, as well as denial. Unfortunately, many Americans have gone beyond despair and denial. They have embraced the dead end as a self-fulfilling prophecy of "just punishment". Popular evangelical Christian religion illustrates this point very well. One of the main teachings of this tradition is the myth of Armageddon, which is a great battle that destroys the world of non-believers so that Christ may return and rule over the earth for a thousand years. In their view, helping to bring about Armageddon is a good thing. Take for example the hymn that Sister Royce Elms sings at the First United Pentecostal Church of Amarillo, Texas, whose congregation is employed by the Plantex factory, where all U.S. nuclear warheads are finished: "Could it be that this will be the day that starts eternity! The day that we've been waiting for so long?" Indeed. These people are trapped into depending upon making bombs that can obliterate human civilizations for their own livelihood. This is madness, and America is sick to our core with this kind of madness.

So, what are we to do? Join the Christian millennium madness and embrace Armageddon? Or do we engage the difficult business of a cultural revolution dedicated to riegning in the modern lust for power and transforming our culture as we know it, while avoiding a global dead end?

Revolution is scary. What if it fails? Then, where are we? Good questions. We don't know the answers, but we do know where our headlong pursuit of the technological will to power will end. In this case, the devil we don't know may be the preferable choice.

Revolution. How do we do this? Consider the following: The will to power must be guided, if not totally supplanted, by the will to be, which recognizes no greater value than the health and prosperity of all life. Its ethic is one of radical restraint. Its manifesto would be, "Consider the seventh generation." The place to begin this work of change is by deeply contemplating the dead end scenarios of the technological manifesto. In the inevitable anger that such contemplation would bring about, we can find energy to set out a new direction.

We must create a new story with heroes of a different stripe. (I suspect that these heroes would not look like Arnold Shwartzenager in The Terminator.) In this story, the will to be is paramount, and the hero finds the courage to do what must be done in himself for those whom he loves and for what is loved. When the hero is called upon to fight, he or she fights to protect the Way to Life not the Way to Emperial Technocracy. Once technology and culture were to embody the will to be, then this life saving genie would promote itself in the same kind of positive feedback loop as does our present technocracy, based on the will to power. The edifices of human culture, given their tendency to "self-promote", would ensure the success of the will to be.

So, we must choose. Death or Life? Power or Grace? We don't have long to ponder. As for me, I choose Life. I choose Grace. I have dedicated myself to work toward this end.

Elk As Teacher

By Carl Golden
(Originally written: March 26, 1996)

Once upon a snow-covered mount in the front range of the Rockies (just outside of Boulder, Colorado), I followed the tracks of an Elk buck for half a day, and then lost them in the thickets of a wide ravine. I scoured the area for half an hour, peering into bush clumps and listening for any unusual “twiggy” snaps. Nothing. I knew he was close because his tracks were very fresh, perhaps 15 minutes, but, without further sign, the buck might as well have been on Mars. I decided to head home along the creek bed of the ravine. Walking a hundred yards (or so), I noticed a tree stump move out of the corner of my eye. I stopped to look more closely. It took me a full minute to see the stump for what it was – the head and racks of an immense Elk peering at me over an abandoned fence of fieldstones. Slowly, I moved up the hill to a position just ten feet to the right of the buck. I was amazed that I was able to get so close to the animal without spooking him, and I was surprised to discover that he was sitting on his haunches with his legs tucked under. His head rose so high above the fence that I had assumed he was standing. I found a place to sit, as well. So, there we sat within spitting distance of each other for 45 minutes without a flinch.

It was quiet, and the air was still. I could hear him breathing. I tried to match the rhythm of his breaths – long draws followed by short, intense exhalations. His chest would slowly rise then effortlessly collapse. It was like watching a tree breathe. I meditated upon our breathing, as if I was back in the Zen dojo. I don’t know what he meditated upon, although I suspect it was my unusual presence.

I felt to be in the presence of greatness itself – a Buddha. In this communion, there was no separation of man and beast. I did not feel his better; in truth, I did not feel his equal. He was the master and I was the neophyte – a young buck sitting at the feet of a wise, great, and hoary elder. Nothing escaped his attention. When I first climbed up to my seat next to him, I thought that I had managed to trick him into believing that I did not see him, but I realized that he knew that I knew. It was he that allowed me to get close.

Sitting on that mountain, I meditated upon the buck and clearly saw the beauty and magnificence of what is wildness. Contrary to the popular notion, it is not chaotic and mindless; in fact, it is the penultimate expression of order and mindfulness in exquisite harmony with itself and its environs. Wildness is a divine order. God was no less present in this splendid Elk than in Jesus the Christ, Buddha, Krishna, or any other holy man or woman. Every part of this Elk attended to its environs – nothing taken for granted. I was reminded of the Northwest Coast Indian totem poles, where the animals carved into the poles are painted with eyes on their paws, wings and torsos, signifying the pervasive quality of awareness – radical attention.

This quality of attention is not found in modern society in general, nor is it found in most "civilized” cultures, both eastern and western. I suspect the reasons for the lack of radical attention in modern civilizations are many – social, economic, and political stress, meaningless employment, urbanization, etceteras. In short, those many things that contrive to distract us from the Now. The root of it all, though, is the denial or avoidance of suffering.

At the time of this extraordinary encounter with the Elk, my life had become miserably clouded by a recent break of a marital engagement that had occurred months prior to my sojourn into the mountains. My fiancée’s departure from my life was like the loss of my brother, Chris, in death years before. I had been absorbed in pain, not knowing day from night. I knew that I needed to move on, but I didn’t know where to go. I couldn’t see.

As I meditated upon that wintry mountain, I considered my extraordinary companion’s life – the yearly cycles of feast and famine, the uncertainty of daily existence, the need to attend to everything. It struck me that the threat of death and pain was ever present for this Elk, and he knew it. Death and pain rooted him in attention to life, rather than becoming reasons to seek distractions from life. Living so had conferred greatness upon his presence. Whereas, I reflected, the "death" of a relationship and the concomitant pain I had experienced had become reasons for distraction – I had lost months of vital living to distracted self-absorption in the avoidance of suffering. The practical importance of this insight struck me like a thunderbolt. In that moment, I embraced my pain and found the clarity and courage to start living again.

Without ritual or circumstance – as if on queue – my teacher stood, turned and slowly walked away. The grace of his departure surprised me as much as seeing a tree stump move. I had expected the effort of raising his immense torso and head to be somewhat awkward, but it was no more awkward than raising one’s arm.

I was (and remain) in awe of this teacher, to whom I am the ignorant beast in comparison. I had drained my cup to drink his tea, and once I had drunk deeply, he left.

Ecological Regime

By Carl Golden
(Originally written: July 31, 2006)

Biospheric degradation has become the rule, so much so that outcries about ozone holes, global decline in amphibian populations, greenhouse effects, human overpopulation, habitat loss, species extinction, etc., have been reduced to environ­mental patter--clichés. Nothing is easier to forget than that which everybody knows, especially in America where fascination with what is new has taken on pathological dimensions. Recycling and contributions to various environmental organizations have become general acts of contrition in the industrialized world, granting us pardon from the need to know and get involved. People everywhere are sick of hearing about the environ­ment. News of various global crises meets with indifference, incredulity, denial, or despair. Who can blame them? Life, after all, must go on. Right? There are mountains to climb, rivers to fish, and horses to ride. There are classes to attend, career responsi­bilities, mortgages to pay, children to raise, dinners to cook, lovers to love, weddings to plan, marriages to nurture (as well as marriages to dissolve). There are deadlines to meet and dead relations to bury. There are, in fact, ten thousand things to do--things to which one can relate, understand, and reasonably expect to effect some desired change within the lifetime of one's children if not within one's own lifetime.

The irony, of course, is that as we endeavor to meet our respective agendas for fulfilling the ten thousand things we invariably promote the "doom and gloom" that has sickened our souls and stopped our ears. So, the litany goes on. We are caught in a positive feedback loop that portends one certain end–system wide breakdown of the biosphere, as well as human societies.

This is an end that is evident already in many countries and areas around the globe. Ethiopia, Brazil, the Four Corners region of the American Southwest (as with most ghettoized tribal populations the world over), Jakarta, and a host of other regions are suffering the ravages of ecosystem breakdown and the concomitant disintegration of the social fabric. The fisheries of both the northern Pacific and Atlantic oceans have been terribly depleted by the fishing industries' enormous disregard for the recuperative capacities of fish populations; consequentially, the coastal fishing cultures are deteriorating. The rainforests of South and North America, Thailand, and the rest of the world are close to coming to an irretrievable end as are the indigenous cultures nestled within these rich arboreal havens. Even the remote Arctic and Antarctic have not escaped the effects of our activities as they are flooded with dangerously high levels of ultra-violate radiation passing through the massive ozone holes located over these regions – holes caused by Chloro Flouro Carbon (CFC) production and use. The threat is ubiquitous. Those of us fortunate enough not to have suffered the rampant poverty of the Sudan surely have not escaped the insidious threats, presently or potentially, of climbing cancer rates, AIDS, or various other wasting illnesses, such as Systemic Candidiasis, which is a fungal based disease giving rise to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Environmental Illness. There is no place that has not been touched by the crippling effect of our pursuits for the ten thousand things.

These pursuits are trivial compared to the enormity of the crisis of biospheric degradation; nevertheless, we are engaged in them, because the rewards of security, family, love, community, as well as wealth, power, vainglory and pleasure play out according to millennia of human design. The ten thousand things are meaningful, even the most vulgar and vain; whereas, global warming is a monstrous conundrum in the minds of the majority of humankind. The problem is too big for most of us to appreciate and effectively address. So, we choose to ignore it.

Of course, biospheric degradation is not the problem; rather, it is the consequence of human imagination, desires, and endeavors grown beyond both human and ecological scale. Unbridled and ignorant humanity is the problem. To save the whales, we must save ourselves, because to focus the bulk of our resources on saving specific species and ecosystems while ignoring the institutions and attitudes that give rise to the threat is like treating the symptoms of an ailing person while ignoring the causes of the illness - the patient will die anyway and the doctors will bill the next of kin.

Addressing the problem is no small matter. Every sector of contemporary technological society needs reform along human and ecological parameters, and developing countries need to reorient along these same lines in order to avoid recapitulating the same mistakes that the industrialized North has made and continues to make. Of the many institutions that shape our attitudes and enact our intents, there are seven that are seminal – science, technology, mass media, religion, education, politics, and economics. Although I am very interested in the role of each of these institutions in both the problem and it's solution, the scope of this essay is limited to the role politics and economics can play in resolving biospheric degradation and creating societies worthy of our participation.

The way politics and economics are done today are inflated beyond the ken of most people. Trends in urbanization, political centralization, corporate globalization, and multi-national banking and credit institutions reflect the interests of roughly 40% of the world's people, while the remainder of the world’s human population is increasingly alienated by varying degrees. This is an extremely dangerous state of affairs for several reasons: first, when people are alienated from the means to effect control and change over their lives, they are disenfranchised and marginalized – a condition that fosters distrust, disillusionment, civil unrest, lawlessness, and violence. Examples of such alienation and their consequences are the recent popularity of militias throughout the United States and the associated Oklahoma City bombing, or the increasing hatred of America amongst the Muslim world and Al Qaeda’s attack on the World Trade Towers. Second, insofar as political institu­tions are dependent upon the cooperation of the governed, they are liable to become unstable when the governed are significantly alienated. Third, when political institu­tions become unstable, they tend to resort to militant, often violent, policing of the governed to protect the status quo. Fourth, when political institutions have to resort to extreme measures to ensure cooperation of the governed, then civil war is on the horizon. Fifth, and last, environmental and social degradation will only increase in such conditions.

The trends of centralization, globalization, etceteras inevitably lead to this chain of conditions, because these trends are born of attitudes oriented towards ends that are beyond human and ecological scale and design – ends that can only alienate. The enormity of the environmental crisis is born of the enormous messes that are the leviathans of centralized governments and globalized economies. Not only are people in a stupor about biospheric degradation, they are equally stupefied by the political and economic trends. It's all just too damn big!

Case in point: the American Empire – a very big problem, indeed. The government of the United States of America and its corporate affiliates have an insatiable need to control and exploit natural, social, technological, and intellectual resources in order to exist because the overhead incurred in maintaining the complex infrastructure of our national and imperial necessities and ambitions is exhaustive. The fact that Americans represent 5 percent of the world’s population, yet use 80 percent of the world’s resources dramatically speaks to the point. The lifestyle of Americans – an imperial lifestyle – is completely unsustainable. We generate 45 percent of the world’s carbon-dioxide and drive 30 percent of the world’s automobiles. Yet, most Americans struggle to make ends meet. If our lifestyles are so imperial, then why aren’t most of us living like kings?

The answer is found in following the trail of resources consumed by the Military Industrial Complex. The United States' comprehensive military budget, including unbudgeted expenses arising from the invasion of Iraq and previous military debt related expenses, is 1.1 trillion dollars, which is a little less than half of the US budget, which is 2.57 trillion dollars. The following list is a breakdown of the current comprehensive military budget according to analysis of the Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2007:

BUDGETTED: Current Military, $563 billion:

Military Personnel, $110 billion

Operation & Maintenance, $162 billion

Procurement, $90 billion

Research & Development, $72 billion

Construction, $8 billion

Family Housing, $4 billion

Department of Defense (DoD) misc., $4 billion

Retired Pay, $49 billion

Department of Energy nuclear weapons, $17 billion

NASA (50%), $8 billion

International Security, $8 billion

Homeland Security (military), $27 billion

Executive Office of President, $2 billion

other military (non-DoD) $2 billion

UNBUDGETTED: Iraq & Afghanistan Wars

$100 billion (est.): Most of the spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is not included in the President’s Budget but the Administration will seek supplemental appropriations later this year as it has in the past three years. This is likely an underestimate.

PAST MILITARY ACCRUED FISCAL RESPONSIBILITIES, $439 billion:

Veterans’ Benefits $76 billion

Interest on national debt $353 billion (80% est. to be created by military spending)

This is a monstrous budget, and it continues to grow while the majority of Americans pay outrageous costs for housing, higher education, and medical attention! Now, in order to gain an even greater perspective on this monster, consider the following international observations based on research done by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI):

The comprehensive US military budget is more than the rest of the world's military budgets combined.

The comprehensive US military budget is more than 75 times larger than the Chinese defense budget and almost 25 times more than Japan’s defense budget, the world’s second largest defense spender.

The comprehensive US military budget is more than 76 times as large as the combined spending of the seven “rogue” states (Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria) that spent $14.4 billion combined last year.

The seven potential “enemies,” Russia, and China together spend $116.2 billion, which is 27.6% of the U.S. military budget.

Got the picture? The US Military Industrial Complex is sapping the financial strength of the American people and, consequentially, generating a great deal of stress both in America and abroad.

Now, what could happen if our military budget was reduced by one third, which would still leave us way ahead of the rest of the world in terms of military spending, and that reserved amount, which would be approximately $366,500,000.00, were seeded into the US economy responsibly? It could translate into affordable housing and universal healthcare. Of course, in order to do this, American leadership would have to abandon its ambitions for worldwide economic hegemony, and re-embrace the vision of our founding fathers to create a democratic republic – a republic that has no place for the Military Industrial Complex.

The design of imperialism is fundamentally flawed. In order to exist, empires must forever grow because they are locked into a cycle of ever shrinking returns in real wealth, all the while subjugating both the human and non-human communities for their labor and resources. Obviously, such a condition is offensive and injurious to the subjugated, creating great disparities in wealth between the centralized political and economic hubs and their colonized rims. Furthermore, it is totally unrealistic in terms of natural limits - carrying capacities and the like. The imperial regime is unsustainable, as history has born out time and again. The former USSR is an excellent example of the fate of all empires. The US will follow suit unless fundamental reforms occur.

The world needs the discipline, humility and wisdom of­ communities premised upon a human – humane – scale and design that is ecological as well. True human sensibilities are rooted in an organic history – a natural history – that evolved within the context of complex, interrelated communities of similar and dissimilar species. This history has endowed us all with ecological sensibilities – sensibilities that know when a thing is fit and when it is not. Scale and design that is sensible, fits both human and ecological sensibilities and necessities. Such communities might be regarded as ecological regimes born of politics and economics pursued on a human and ecological scale and according to sustainable designs.