Resistance powered by fear and anger is often futile and always its own hindrance. Because it feeds more negative energy - and projects a falsely inflated phantom - onto the negativity being opposed.

Yet there are times when we must individually and collectively say a firm “No!” to actions that threaten our freedoms, rights and well-being. Just as we erect a fence to keep out dangerous predators, without wishing such creatures ill, we set boundaries for humans as unconscious as politicians appointed by powerful political and corporate interests, who become enthralled by microchip-generated numbers masquerading as “money” and forget the public who actually pays them to serve.

No longer relating to their roles as “public servants” - nor to the very real damage their abstractions perpetrate among intertwined ecologies of human and wild lives - “corporatized” political managers become as indifferent to pleas and outcries, suffering and even deaths as the misleadingly programmed balance sheets they allow to dictate their decisions.

You say you don't care? That you can or will do nothing to thwart thieves who pass laws allowing them to break into your home?

Those who insist that the rise of corporatized governments as fascistic as Mussolini's self-defined invention do not affect them might take a moment to recall the fate of other nations whose people chose denial. And consider deeper connections that affect us all.

Corporatized health care seeking to profit from pain and illness… the consolidation of vital information networks into a few truth-excluding corporate hands… addictively feeding corn to cars… the commodification of life-giving water… these and other computer-dictated nightmares require vigorous public action if we and our children's grandchildren and generations of creatures yet unborn are not to become disregarded “externalities” in some soulless silicon on a planet barren of life.

These are frightening prospects. Can we let go of our fear?

Confronting so many relentless assaults on our freedoms and dignity, can we retain our passion without fueling the reactive circular response to our outrage?

Yes, if we remain conscious ourselves.

Yes, if our resistance extends an invitation to reconciliation.

Avoiding the perpetration of the very negativity we oppose, can we confront such outmoded follies as brute force and overarching hierarchies with a spirit of Oneness arising from a deep awareness, love and respect for the interconnectedness of all life?

Choosing such “respons-able” responses will create opportunities not just to stop unthinking, machine-like injustices, but to transform conflicting perceptions and priorities into the essence of good governance and good citizenship: To serve the public good. And sanction those who earn our trust.

William Thomas