HUNGER STRIKE IN DC: 2022

As the specter of nuclear war looms, it seems to me now that the best decades of my life were only nested within the long shadow of doom cast by the act of humans splitting the atom. We are again sleepwalking toward the grave, while holding the worst possible weapons.

Those war gaming how to win such a scenario or navigate it as a real pathway for humanity, should immediately leave their positions of power. Peace isn’t a place you arrive at after you vanquish your enemy. It doesn’t exist at the end of a long chain of premises and conclusions as you’re figuring your problems out. It’s a precondition, a state of being, and a person should come to the table embodying it.

Anyone with a finger near the button should know this.

The flirtation with nuclear war is akin to acquiring a $0.99 trinket at the expense of burning down the house you could enjoy it in, the land that raised you, and the future of your own children. If you want the visceral experience, put a hot poker in your own eyes. That’s just a taste. It’s one of the worst conceivable sins a conscious species could exact on itself, and would inflict a mark on humanity so deep and ugly, it would take a thousand years to heal the trauma… if we even survive the blow.

Life on Earth is so abundant we have the pleasure of curating it and cutting it back as an inconvenience. I don’t know if ‘life’ is a separate force, or just something particles and atoms do, but I do know it's somewhat rare, and that we take it for granted on a profound level. Nuclear war would be a sin against the force of life itself; I’m not sure we’d deserve it. Imagine for a moment the birds around you going silent, the flowers going unpollinated, the carcasses of dead fish floating to the surface of water. Imagine a world where life begins to recede, where it has to be coaxed and coached and cradled along just to produce anything green.

It’s impossible to overstate this risk, and it needs to be trumpeted and people need to become hyperalert to its possibility, even if we have to use our imagination to surmise the horrors. With so much tension, it’s increasingly likely something goes bad, simply through human incompetence or error.

And we don’t just speak for ourselves.

As if our own fate wasn’t problem enough, remember we’re the ambassadors of this planet, and we speak for all living things we claim to care about. All of the animals, all of the trees and forests, the oceans of creatures, every puppy and kitten. They, too, the truly voiceless, are depending on us to make the right decisions.

So this is a call to all open and peaceful minds, to begin the long journey along the hardest possible road, to begin the work of forgiveness and tolerance, of putting ourselves right again, bit by bit. It’s a road of recognizing there is a murderer and slanderer in each of us. It’s the road of living deeper with less. The road of facing our sufferings, of taking a breath instead of striking out with a fist.

Let’s allow that there won’t ever be a state of clarity where we solve cultural issues and they’re settled and we can forget about those structures and move on to something else. It's going to require constant maintenance and cooperation to balance all the competing interests. We have to understand though, that much of what we disagree about is esthetic. It’s taste, preference, rather than deep, irreconcilable divisions.

We argue, for instance, over what clothes other people wear. We argue about what to do with our natural resources. There are no absolutes on these issues. They’ll change with time. I happen to think that, on the deeper issues, the ones that DON’T really change much over time, we have more in common.

We can reconcile the tug and pull of ideas, even as we experience being torn by their apparent incompatibility. I don’t always feel it, but I know this duality is an illusion. Let’s transcend it together. We can respect the individual while managing the emergent properties of populations. We can have images without worshiping them, we can sustain theory with no absolute truth. We aren’t held to any ideas or forms, only those that work and move us forward.

Yes, there’s a lot to argue about. Yes, there’s injustice. It makes one want to break something. But you know? The worst hasn’t happened yet. And a new day comes. And sometimes there’s a sun.

Let’s find what we share again as human beings, and begin repairing together the damage we’ve done. With EVERYONE in possession of a constructive voice having a seat at the table.

That’s going to take a good deal of patience, forgiveness, tolerance, and foresight. It means holding ourselves accountable first. It means cultivating virtue, not wearing virtue labels. It’s a place where not every accused is guilty, and everyone has a shot at redemption. Where the demons of your imagination exist in the self, before they manifest in the other. It’s a collective of menders, not meddlers, of global citizens, not political tokens.

MY PERSONAL PLAN:

We need these things now, and I aim to help get them, regardless of the heavy lifting involved. But I’m just a single man, on his own spiritual journey, and I feel I still have some cloudy judgement left. So I’m starting with myself, with a hunger strike and period of contemplation, with my arrow pointed inward. Until I’ve confronted the dark voices and their echoes within, I can’t have anything valuable to say, really, and I don’t want more noise in the world.

The idea is not new: to pit the artificial hatred and prejudices still clinging, against the physical body itself. By denying the 'self' any sustenance, my hope is, that which is false and unnecessary with be among the first things to die. Hatred and malice will no longer be a normal part of my condition. I take responsibility for everything within, for this entire piece of real estate I call the self.

Though I have no firm conclusions, I’m convinced this is the direction. Yes, its gimmicky and probably dangerous, but the alternatives for a man my age aren’t all that convincing or meaningful to me anymore. I’ve done the suffering thing, experienced it endlessly like a series of Russian nesting dolls. I've exhausted my search for knowledge and found only closed systems inside larger closed systems, the examination of which never reveals answers to the fundamental questions.

Is life some kind of joke?

Or is it paradise?

Hard to tell with all the noise.

I’m doing this hunger strike publicly as an invitation for like-minded people to participate if they like, either in person or spirit. We have to turn this ship around. As a species, we aren't babies anymore. It's time to grow up and move past the pettiness and nastiness. Work begins with the dark voices inside our own souls. If we can change that just a little bit, if we can move it a fraction of an inch, we might... just might, earn the right not to go extinct for another generation.

I think it's worth a shot.

I plan to be in DC this summer to help get the ball rolling. My target date is July 7. I'll be the guy holding the sign that says: TALK TO ME ABOUT PEACE. Although I won't be accepting food, I will accept water and flowers.

If this message resonates with you, please feel moved to act locally and create some peace in yourself. It’s a hard thing to dance on the blade, but not draw the sword. Unfortunately, I’m convinced this is the present pathway.

It must be.