Willie Nelson

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Eric Faw and Douglas Kelvin Payne worked together to give us another “A Peaceful Solution” music video. Here two long time peace activists join forces to further the cause of peace.

This wonderful example of working together is something we can all take to heart. It is something we will all have to practice if we are to survive.

Once one accepts the simple fact that no system based upon burning oil can ever become sustainable one can sense the fog of confusion begin to lift. Industrialized civilization has never been anything more than a temporary situation.

Our challenge lies in managing the transition away from burning oil. Given the current mood I wonder if there is to be any transition at all because oil consumption seems to be picking up speed as we approach the wall.

Without a doubt if we continue in our violent and conspicuously affluent ways the end will come violently and be conspicuously expensive. Those with the least investment in the status quo will weather the transition with the fewest difficulties.

Cooperation is becoming much more useful than competition. For one thing, cooperation allows everyone to survive.

Competition only favors the winner with all the rest forced to face failure and an uncertain future. Some have even begun to question the victory in winning when the victory parade becomes a death march through a desolate broken landscape.

We now have the very clear choice of partnering up and cooperating with other people or continuing in destructive and personally winning ways. This comes down to the option of building an alternative lifestyle now in the falling detritus of a collapsing empire.

Seeking an alternative lifestyle is no longer the exclusive domain of musicians, artists and daydream believers. Soon the ranks of such seekers will swell as the status quo provides more and more proof as to its own self extinction.

Mr. Obama in many ways represents the last hope of the status quo to redeem itself. A promise of sweeping change now must stand up to the light.

Of course, this is the same Mr. Obama that helped push through the $700 billion bailout despite the opposition of 80+% of United States’ citizens. Now we can all watch as Mr. Obama brings in cronies and insiders rather than fresh faces and new ideas.

It would be difficult to find two individuals who better represent the breed of cronies and insiders than Rahm Emanuel and John Podesta as Chief of Staff and transition leader. Former Clinton Treasury Secretaries Larry Summers and Robert Rubin were both instrumental in dismantling banking and trading safeguards created during the first Great Depression.

These are the people Mr. Obama is surrounding himself with. I’m sorry but it’s hard to see any meaningful change here.

That is why we all have to get together like Eric Faw and Douglas Kelvin Payne have done. Those who stand together for peace will build a peaceful world while those who embrace the suicide pact of industrialized civilization will meet the end they seek.

In fact, the collapse of industrialized civilization may be the best chance the rest of us have. We will be left a world only fit for musicians, artists and daydream believers.

The longer it takes to collapse, as it inevitably must, the harder it will be to survive the aftermath. The trade off comes in that now even more people have time for the opportunity to meet up and embrace an alternative lifestyle.

What will you do with the time you have left? Will you continue to put your bets on the status quo or will you bet on yourself?

We did not see Mr. Obama get behind a $700 billion plan to save the Earth, mitigate against Global Warming, stop the slaughter of other species, prepare for the downside of Peak Oil or anything of a similar nature. He has made it very clear that he works for continuation of business as usual.

So be glad that Mr. Obama won out over the other guy. Perhaps we will have a more peaceful and gentler space in which to meet like minded individuals and work out our mutual transition plans.

But please do not think that Mr. Obama will save you and industrialized civilization as you have grown to know it. You and your children’s salvation will only be in an alternative lifestyle and that is as certain as the end of non-renewable oil.

Please watch these Eric Faw videos:
Apology To Iraq

Save The Earth Medley

* * * * * Artist’s Statement * * * * *

by Eric Faw
I was born and raised in the ‘60’s in a family dedicated to peace. When I was a toddler, my father worked with gangs in Chicago and L.A. in an effort to establish peace in the violent neighborhoods. I remember watching my parents get beat up by gang members, and then trying to help those same gang members soon after.

My father marched and protested along with blacks in the Civil Rights Movement, eager to see peace between all races. He later marched alongside blacks to the Chicago City Hall the night Martin Luther King, Jr., was murdered.

My parents instilled a deep passion for peace from the very beginning.

Positive memories from my childhood include many protest marches, rallies, and such for peace in Washington and other places. The theme had changed more to peace versus nuclear war with the USSR, but the concepts were the same. I learned the lessons regarding the equality of all men and women, no matter their race, religion, etc. I was taught about turning the other cheek, though I didn’t always follow that lesson so well.

I am utterly convinced that the downfall of this planet, if it comes, will be due to greed, pride, and fear of people different than us. Fear that their beliefs, customs, etc. will supplant ours. Greed and pride will always be a human condition. So will prejudice and fear – but the more we seek out peace with the entire human race, the better the odds of this planet surviving this pestilence called mankind.

I’ve chosen the path of Art for Peace because peace is like a healthy marriage – it’s not simply an absence of strife, but a sense of security brought about through ongoing, conscious effort. Peace doesn’t just happen on its own accord.

Movements like Art for Peace are the nutrients for peace.

And peace has to start locally before it can go national, and then international. If there’s not peace in my own mind, I won’t relate peacefully with my neighbor. If I can’t relate peacefully with my neighbor, I won’t relate peacefully with others even more different, and I certainly won’t live in peace with the planet/environment.

I believe in the axiom:

Think globally, act locally.

When I make videos about peace or love, I’m not seeking to change the world. I’m seeking to express my beliefs and possibly encourage even one other person to consider peace and love as options. The quickest way to peace, in my experience, is a sincere desire to understand the other person, party, or country’s point of view.

Hatred breeds hate – but love also breeds love.

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