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This is where we come from and what we are doing. It’s not nice, it is mindboggingly stupid. Maybe it all just boils down to brain chemistry, one insanely little microscopic flaw that prevents us from really seeing anything at all…

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A Change Is Gonna Come #OccupyEverywhere

This is an image making the rounds on Facebook called The Evolution of Stupidity.

It would appear that humanity has already passed Peak Intelligence when we can’t figure out why we allow less than 1% of the world’s population to have all the wealth and encourage the remaining 99% to walk blindly into our own self destruction, a process that could only be accomplished by the Universe’s dumbest species. And why? Because that 1% wants more, hell, feels entitled to it, the rest of us be damned!

Turns out not all of us are that dumb, at least not all the time. Enough, as they say, is enough, something has broken the camel’s back, and it’s called logic, that oldest of human learning tools.

There is a Revolution brewing, and it is thinking globally and acting locally, and it is coming to  a town near you. It has no name, no charismatic leaders or hidden agendas. It is future generations asking you to do something now so that they may have a chance to have peaceful and productive lives too. It is the end of  Tyranny, but most of all, it is the end of Stupidity.

Occupy Wall Street: The Most Important Thing in the World Now

by Naomi Klein

(I was honored to be invited to speak at Occupy Wall Street on Thursday night. Since amplification is (disgracefully) banned, and everything I say will have to be repeated by hundreds of people so others can hear (a.k.a. “the human microphone”), what I actually say at Liberty Plaza will have to be very short. With that in mind, here is the longer, uncut version of the speech.)

I love you.

And I didn’t just say that so that hundreds of you would shout “I love you” back, though that is obviously a bonus feature of the human microphone. Say unto others what you would have them say unto you, only way louder.

Yesterday, one of the speakers at the labor rally said: “We found each other.” That sentiment captures the beauty of what is being created here. A wide-open space (as well as an idea so big it can’t be contained by any space) for all the people who want a better world to find each other. We are so grateful.

If there is one thing I know, it is that the 1 percent loves a crisis. When people are panicked and desperate and no one seems to know what to do, that is the ideal time to push through their wish list of pro-corporate policies: privatizing education and social security, slashing public services, getting rid of the last constraints on corporate power. Amidst the economic crisis, this is happening the world over.

And there is only one thing that can block this tactic, and fortunately, it’s a very big thing: the 99 percent. And that 99 percent is taking to the streets from Madison to Madrid to say “No. We will not pay for your crisis.”

That slogan began in Italy in 2008. It ricocheted to Greece and France and Ireland and finally it has made its way to the square mile where the crisis began.

“Why are they protesting?” ask the baffled pundits on TV. Meanwhile, the rest of the world asks: “What took you so long?” “We’ve been wondering when you were going to show up.” And most of all: “Welcome.”

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