My declarations
We are the revolution taking place. We are responsible for the world in every sense – political, social, moral.
We are responsible for the planet. We are responsible for the unemployed.
Of course, we can blame the banks, the disaster that irresponsible people created in the financial system, the political repression, the inability of the Govts. to hear what people has to say.But this will not help the world to become a better place. We need to act, and we need to act now.
And we don’t need permission to act.
We are much more powerful than we think we are. Let’s use this power, use the strength that everyone has when he/she is following his/her real Bliss, Personal Legend, you name it.
We are the dreamers, but we are also the revolution.
Dreams are not negotiable.
I outlined my declaration of principles.... Do the same. And implement everything you think should be implemented.
- Paulo Coelho, We Are the Revolution
I generally like most of Coelho's declarations (with perhaps some clarification of what is meant by "God") and endorse them.
My motto for Occupy is "declarations, not demands". These are my own personal declarations. I don't know that I can go so far as to call them declarations of principles, but maybe "declarations of provisional truths". All truth is subject to revision by experience.
2) Time is not money. I could never pay attention or spend time, even as those constructs of language linger.
3) Death is the invention of invention. Without death we would not have the natural selection which evolved us. Without natural selection there would be no need for birth or sexual selection.
4) Extinction is a form of collective death and is the natural and necessary course for all species, just as death is the natural and necessary course for all organisms. Without the extinction of 99.9% of all past species, the .1% of us today wouldn't be.
5) Pain warns of death and is invaluable. Fear warns of pain and serious injury and is likewise invaluable.
6) Entropy sets the universe in motion. Fear, pain, death, extinction and entropy are all good and necessary for our existence.
7) I owe the earth a body. I am only borrowing some matter, energy, space and time.
8) I am an ecosystem that is more bacteria than human. I am only 10% human by cell count and 1% human by genome count. I am a superorganism and the ecosystems we inhabit are metaorganisms which contain us.
9) We are creating the world and don't have control over what we create. Interbeing and intercreation are our common condition. Radical emergence is another way to describe the paradox.
10) "Male" and "female" are not absolute identities because sex is not strictly binary at the physiological level. Neither genes nor genitals, apart or together, can adequately identify all individuals in an either/or scheme. Our gender identity is fundamentally self-determined. Infants incapable of consent should not be subjected to involuntary sex-assignment surgeries.
11) Behavior creates identity and identity creates behavior. In the end there is only behavior, and what we call our identity is imaginary.
12) Conspiracies are limited by the need for secrecy that can inhibit communication in favor of compartmentalization. Lying and withholding likewise compartmentalize the individual mind and inhibit the capacity for growth. Information is more powerful when it is shared and vetted than when it is withheld.
13) Anarchy doesn't mean no rules, it means no rulers. The corollary to this is by Edward Abbey: A leader leads from in front, by the power of example. A ruler pushes from behind, by means of the club, the whip, the power of fear.
