Day 25 - Continuing from MLK being a Yogi without knowing it...
During today's cycle, which happily saw us cross the 1000 km mark, I was really trying to zone in and focus again on how peace and wealth are inextricably linked but not in a good way.
I certainly felt like there was more to think about and process after the flow of thoughts about western yoga being mainly for the 1℅ and potentially missing a great opportunity to use the yoga yamas to challenge the same 1% about how they come to wealth and what guidance might they take from true yoga philosophy.
Why are we so often guided to focus on the connections between poverty and peace or lack of, rather than looking at wealth and its unequal and unethical distribution as one of the primary obstacles to peace?
Are we being deceived, manipulated, and told to look away from the 1% that hold most of the economic wealth, and look to the so-called poorest places and people who suffer from a lack of stability and peace, for answers?
I believe so anyway, and I believe the equation or question is a lot simpler, really. Look at how the 1% have acquired their wealth for the most part, and there lies the real answer.
I think that we need to discover how we can challenge and demand more accountability, culpability, and responsibility, whether they are entwined and in bed with the elite global leadership or not. A lot of the time, they are the actual global elite who are in these positions of power and influence, telling us to look elsewhere while disgusting and even criminal profits continue to flow in from Big Oil, Pharma, Weaponry, Media, and Tech.
I'm told daily to zone in on the high levels of corruption in leadership in the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, Asia, and Russia, of course. Are there corrupt governments and leadership in all these places? I would say, absolutely, but what about the World Championship leaders of corruption and horrifically unethical colonial theft of wealth and natural resources going back centuries in Europe and its apprentice across the Atlantic Ocean, with the neo-colonial misappropriation of wealth and resources?
Do economics affect peace? Of course, it's only when a more equitable and sustainable redistribution of wealth and resources happens that we will stand a chance of having genuine peace in our time or our children's.
Now, how do we get there? A plea of encouragement for more ethical, compassionate, empathic, honest leadership, stemming from our younger generations upwards.
Maintaining the same current direction with the same immoral compass for our guide is no longer an option.
Grassroots, local empowerment, and Perma models that spread their message and momentum in the greatest move of interdependence and interconnectedness ever seen are what is required.
Community success stories, embedded with reignited indigenous wisdom and relocated practices to challenge the dislocation, isolation, and competitive models that currently exist, and bit by bit, village by village and town by town, sharing our journeys with the effective and moral use of technologies and media in a whole new light.
Peace can not only be an aspiration, but it can be a reality, beyond manmade, colonial borders and the psychological, trauma-induced borders that have suppressed freedoms and prevailed for hundreds of years in my land and no doubt in yours too.
This is what MLK was demanding before he was assassinated for speaking truth to power so many years ago. He was a true Peace Activist and Leader who was not afraid to speak out and face the consequences. It's what I, and many of my fellow parents, educators, and people of conscientious objection to how our nations and societies are being misled and abused, call for today.
Shane O'Connor
