Weeds in the Pavement

We look out from our windows to see cracks in the pavement - small green shoots emerging from shallow dust. On the weekend, we spray them with weedkiller, wait for them to wilt and dry, then uproot them. Structural damage is prevented. Order is restored.

Colonizers and colonized

We - the middle class, the privileged, the managers - are colonizers and colonized. By the same system that creates and empowers billionaires, banks, corporations, politicians and the state institutions they run. By our very own ancestors and the culture that evolved around them.

We are indoctrinated, enculturated from birth. We are formed into compliant, productive collaborators through formal education, through pop-cultural immersion, through daily interactions.

We seek personal success - defined by educational achievement, jobs and careers with titles and salaries, homes with modern conveniences and technological toys. We aspire to the same or more for our children.

We are led to believe that this is the natural order of human life, that it should - must - be exported and enforced on those who live and dream otherwise.

We work, day in and day out, to colonize people and planet, most of us indirectly just by doing our jobs in service to billionaires, banks, and the investor class. Many of us feel we have no choice.

Many of us carry the weight of centuries, lineages of relative freedom and comfort in a system that destroys and oppresses as it delivers wealth and power to the very few.

Imagine better

Now is the time to liberate our imaginations, see and dream better worlds, better futures.

Nurture those shoots that grow through the cracks, those seeds taking root where the pavement prefers they don’t.

Dare to dream beyond the narrow view that the way things are is just the way things are and the way things must be.

Beyond the insatiable demand for disposable consumer pleasure and fleeting experiences. Beyond the daily routine of work for pay, beyond debt and retirement.

As the rebels and the dreamers say: another world is possible. Many worlds already exist, sometimes in shadow and sometimes in plain sight. Now is the time to seek them out, learn with them.

Now is the time to open our eyes, our ears, our hearts with humility, and acknowledge that the paradigm of dominance and control - which we uphold - is a particularly dysfunctional world view among many more beautiful alternatives.

Now is the time to see that the growth we pursue comes at great expense - unrepayable debts to the exploited and marginalized, the living planet, and future generations.

Now is the time to begin to heal ourselves and build new, better, more loving relationships with people and the living planet.