Reading Charles Eisenstein’s recent post ‘Peace’ this morning has caused me to re-examine my life’s work for peace.
I reached out to my friend Jodie Evans, a founder of Code Pink with 55 years’ experience in peace activism. One thing I got from the conversation (and please understand that these aren’t Jodie’s words, but rather my possibly inaccurate interpretation after digesting them) is that we cannot stop this war. It was baked into the cake long ago. To declare now that we must stop it actually fosters an illusion that we can stop it; a misunderstanding of what we are dealing with. If this war were some kind of foolish aberration, maybe we could talk sense into the people in power. But it is not an aberration. It is how power itself operates. We do not have the power to stop it, not at this late hour, so let’s not pretend that we do. Let’s not pretend to a heroism beyond our capacities. We have to be realistic about how the world works.
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At present, the peace community is far from anything resembling a movement, and its own divisions prevent a peace narrative from taking hold. A huge contingent of the anti-war public abandoned the Democrats in 2024 because of their medical tyranny, disregard for civil liberties, and general complicity with the deep state agenda—which includes military imperialism. It is hard to work together with those who turned on you when you stood up to corporate-government power. Meanwhile, those who remained faithful to the Democratic Party blame us for electing Donald Trump. It is hard to work together with those who seem not to understand that peace is inconsistent with the dehumanizing treatment of migrants or truculent “America first” chauvinism.
Eisenstein’s article is challenging how we should be working for peace. It is difficult to find mentions of peace in these times of endless wars and the collapse of societies. The increasing violence of environmental devastation. And the arrival of authoritarianism.
To begin re-evaluating my own peace work, I used the NotebookLM research system, which organized my writings over the years in a number of different ways. That will organize years of things I’ve written which will give me the context to study Eisenstein’s article and other work related to peace I’m discovering.
This is the mind map that NotebookLM created from my writings. This map is interactive when viewed in the project. When you click on a branch, it displays the text from the sources that the information comes from.
Podcast
This autogenerated podcast was created by NotebookLM from my writings.
Briefing Document
The briefing document organizes all of the sources of information that you have loaded into the project and summarizes it. This is the briefing document from this NotebookLM project.
Timeline
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Study Guide
Writings on Peace, Non-Violence, and Justice
This is a detailed piece collating many of my writings on peace, non-violence, and Justice.
unflinching 