A Vision for Revolution: Imagine This

image is from here

How will it come to pass that the Earth is no longer polluted and ravaged by corporate greed and military weapons? How will animals cease becoming extinct? How will people live in economic systems which are spiritually, psychologically healthy? How do we collectively get to the place and the time on Earth when rape is no more? When misogyny is no more? When white supremacy and racism is no more? When trafficking and enslaving humans is no more?

I envision such a world--of peace, of justice, of humane humanity living harmoniously with, not on, the Earth. But by what means do we arrive there? I carry into that question the dreams and battles of many across the globe, fighting for human rights, for land rights, for rights to unpolluted and unowned water. I know there are many others around the world, particularly and most especially the most oppressed, the lease privileged, the most silenced, the most marginalised, and the most threatened with violence and violation, who long for a world without systemic exploitation and systematic violence.

I have always imagined this:

One day something miraculous will occur. What will happen is that anyone who causes others harm will experience the harm they cause. If they have been cruel, their cruelty will be visited upon and within them, and it will remain unrelenting until their souls are transformed by the experience, into compassionate, empathic human beings who, from that moment on, will be incapable of callousness and cruelty.

I imagine that the rapists, sex traffickers and slavers, incest perpatrators, and child molesters will feel all of the painful emotions and self-injurious thoughts experienced by those raped, trafficked, enslaved, incested, and molested. And through that awareness they will be radically transformed into people incapable of such acts of horror, and violation of bodies, of beings, and of trust.

I imagine that the Earth will let the wealthiest perpetrators of pollution--not the factory workers but the factory owners, not those struggling to pay their rent or their mortgage monthly, not anyone who is homeless or without income, but those wealthy enough to never have to worry about being homeless, without health care, without resources. The Earth, its skies, seas, and land, will work together to transform the minds and spirits of those who think of the Earth as a thing to be exploited, not a Being to be honored and respected.

I imagine a time when all creatures, great and small, will not have to fear humans at all. Because humans will stop destroying their environments, and will stop slaughtering animals they don't need to eat. And I mean that the people killing the animals do not need to eat to survive. Specifically that. In this time there will be no "commmercial" industries of food production. There will be local and regional food production, and it won't involved cruelty to animals.

I imagine that the terror experienced by any and all creatures who are threatened by humans who seek to make money off of those deaths, will be visited in their minds and bones by that terror, and it will not cease until those humans who profit from mass slaughter of animals, or gross, unnecessary corporate-led destruction of environments and ecosystems, will be radically transformed by the experience of that terror, such that when it eases they would never think again of practicing ecocide, of participating in economic systems that require mass slaughter to thrive or endure.

In such a world, people live with other animals and with the Earth and they live inside ecosystems that the Earth approves of, that the plants approve of, that animals approve of. There is no society that is not approved of by the Earth and its many creatures and other Life. Humans no longer rule.

In this world, men no longer rule women, in any way. No humans rule others, in any way. There is, instead, great empathy, great compassion, and a sense in each living person that only a few possess currently: the ability to determine one's own actions based on what is best for the whole of Life, not just what is best for oneself. Greed, degradation, and abuse, disappear as human phenomena.

In this world, Indigenous people have their land and their pre-colonial cultures; they live as they once lived before being invaded, conquered, and before any European men committed genocide on Earth. Non-indigenous people have their pre-colonial cultures also. But they will not have mindsets, paradigms, values, and practices that lead them to mistakenly think they ought to rule or dominate people around the world. Whiteness and manhood will not be identities of domination.

In this world, non-heterosexual people will have exactly the same rights and responsibilities as heterosexuals. Gender will cease to be played out as a war against women, as an oppositional, hierarchical dualism in which those ways of being that are seen as "feminine" are valued and respected less than anything considered "masculine".

In this world, people will not need to be afraid of losing their homes, unless due to natural occurrences that have no cause in human abuse of the Earth. People need not be afraid of each other, because the capacities of every human to feel empathy and compassion for everyone else will be equally shared and will forge the structures of our collective survival.

If you thought this post would contain battle plans, you don't understand what I mean by "revolution". What I  am imagining is a revolution of spirit, and an expansive growth of Love that replaces anxiety with serenity, cruelty with care, depression with joy, and war with peace.

Let us bring this world into being. Together.