At this juncture, I feel that we needed to rethink our society, our politics, our spirituality, how we think of our very selves.

We are living in very challenging times - perhaps no less challenging than other times but certainly different. Without digressing into how these times are more or less different or more or less challenging, I want to point out that there is a unique set of political forces that influences our lives in ways - subtle and yet significant - that we have not seen before. In addition, the influence of institutions has permeated our societies to an extent where we spend most of our lives interacting with institutions or people representing institutions. It is in this context that we face a variety of issues that we would like to address, situations that we would like to change. Unfortunately, these issues are across a wide spectrum - war, weapons, environmental issues, corporation ethics, racism, marginalization of economic classes, gender issues, economic fundamentalism, media and communication, rights, and many more. Which ones do we begin to tackle? While we are worrying about one, there are new issues that have begun to demand our attention. How do we deal with these? And more importantly, do we deal with these in reacting to them? Do we know whether our reactions are any more appropriate than what we oppose? Do they marginalize? Oppress? Do we continue to run in circles - supporting one to-be-oppressor after another? Do we just join in with another strong voice that confidently leads? How is that different from supporting another 'dictator'? Do we just keep reacting? Will peace and justice come out of reaction?
These are questions that we need to answer - especially at a time when we feel beleaguered. I remember reading Emma Goldman's autobiography and I could identify with her pain when she realizes that the soviets were no more honorable, no more committed to peace, justice or humanity. I have had the same sense of loss with the violence perpetrated by the supposed 'left' - it does not provide any answers to me. Hence I was forced to reject that axis of left and right - it means nothing. I remember a discussion of scientists at my research lab speaking about using technology to build a more secure world. An older scientist got up to say why he thought that was so much bs - that security was actually a political problem and in a society where young men with middle eastern sounding names did not have jobs, technology had no solutions. The others looked at him and went back to their discussion. This man was a republican; the others mostly democrats. I had realized by then that the conservative-liberal divide provided me with no answers either.
At this juncture, I feel that we needed to rethink our society, our politics, our spirituality, how we think of our very selves. Reactionary measures are not taking us anywhere. If a plane keeps falling apart, at some point one has to stop changing wing spans arbitrarily and go back to the drawing board. I think it is the same for us. We have to rethink and begin new processes, learn anew, see the world and see each other in a different light, perhaps and find new ways to build our societies. It is not a revolution in the usual sense of the word - it is however a different challenge. It is easier to go attend a march or a rally - it has a closure and one knows how it went. It is perhaps more satisfying to organize, to flyer, to do research on exactly how Depleted Uranium affects our health - and all of that is important. However, I believe that we do not - cannot - fight this on a case-by-case basis, battle after battle. For one, we do not have such resources. More importantly, we are only providing band-aid to symptoms. There is something fundamentally wrong about how we live, how we see ourselves, how we see the world and how we act based on such knowledge. Unless we rethink this, the symptoms will only change. The DU may go away but other maladies will arise. We may build a more gender equal society; however, other forms of marginalization will crop up. Hence, I believe that we need to begin a process of relearning and creating new communities beginning with ourselves. It is a more difficult process, more open-ended, more intangible, with little in the way of precedence or guidelines. But it is perhaps more necessary today than ever before.
At this point I feel that one axis that captures a certain aspect of the thought spectrum is the human-institution axis. Those who believe that strengthening institutions and having better methods will solve everything for humans and those who believe in committing to human and our development as the basis of change. I personally am for the latter and it is with that basis that I think we need to focus on understanding our being, our roles and ourselves. This is also the reason why I think we need to recreate free of ideologies - create communities where we attempt to answer how we live, how we learn, how we interact with each other, how we make decisions, how we express ourselves, how we love, how we disagree and how we find ourselves. Hence it is important that all kinds of people are part of this community - children, activists, workers, thinkers, and people of various races or any other of the categories into which we have pigeonholed our world.
I suggest that there be only one constraint - that through this process we commit to recognizing the being (in and of everyone of us including our own selves) and accepting the truth of each of our beings even though we might disagree with them. This implies that we commit to non-violence at least within this exploration.
Is this just a talking group? No! For clearly, we cannot create these communities by just talking. We must participate in groups that are involved in issues that are important to ourselves and to neighbors in our communities or neighboring communities. These might include domestic violence, or violence in schools or the community, homelessness, energy and waste issues, issues of fair trade, problems faced by our neighbors who are farmers, immigrant issues, among others. Each of these issues will teach us much - from the people perspective of who it affects, to technologies and sciences that are current or that can be used to help with these problems, to policy as well as methods of campaign and media.
It is through such participation that we will reconnect with our communities. And we will learn with each other, irrespective of our current ideologies. If our society is about humans - not institutions, not economics, not some ism - we have to relearn how we see ourselves and each other and design projects for rebuilding communities based on interactions between people that are committed to recognizing the being and its truth.

- Sanat Mohanty