http://generationinstantgratification.com

The question that is the GIANT elephant in the room...

Why have there been so few human beings at peace in history or now?

http://www.portraitgallerystore.com.au/product.asp?pID=3982

Genius and Heroin: The Illustrated Catalogue of Creativity, Obsession, and Reckless Abandon Through the Ages

http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/44/1/7

Depression #1 Contributor To Global Disease

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26044935/

Shock Therapy Makes a Quiet Comeback

http://www.adhdnews.com/blog/archives/2007/03/adhd_medication.html

Global Use of ADHD Drugs Nearly Triples

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20327132/

Prescription Painkiller Use Rising At Alarming Rate

http://www.switched.com/2007/12/17/man-selling-his-soul-on-ebay/

Man Selling His Soul on eBay

Did you know that the United States of America is now #1 in the world for mental illness, for illegal and legal drug use, and that anti-depressants and behavioral medications are the most commonly prescribed drugs? What is really going on? We are living in this Thomas Hobbesian-Brave New World mentality that has come to define the state of our culture, and the system is now blinking red.

This project asks what might just be the most imperative question of all time: why are there so few human beings at peace? Why have all of our models for being awake and at peace been ascetic or monastic, (as well as primarily male)? And why has sexuality never been substantively addressed as a part of this equation? Even Buddha was stumped by this! The answer is not in renouncing the world, it is being able to live within it, fully awake and alive. Sex most definitely included. The 21st century is a new time that requires new solutions. And this project is introducing a modern message of peace that has never really existed before in our world.

The fact that the very word 'peace' has become so maligned, extorted, and hi-jacked must also be urgently addressed, (and it definitely will be in this project). Political leaders give speeches about peace and then drop bombs. Activists speak of peace and then spew venom. Songs are sung about peace, and then as soon as the concert ends, people go back to getting high and flipping each other off as they drive out of the parking lot. Yoga students chant 'om' then 20 minutes later, get on the phone and engage in mythic levels of drama with their circle of friends or, politely and sweetly demean the person at the front desk for screwing up their class package. We can talk about peace all day long, but the truth is we have no functional idea what the application of peace looks like in a modern context.

Take a peace activist and drop them off in the locker room at the Superbowl or in the front row of a GOP convention and see how they fare.

We all love the idea of peace but there is a big, blank unknown space when it comes down to how to inject it into our lives and the state of our culture. The proof of this statement glaringly exists in the raw tumultuousness and volatility of our world. The simple fact is: if anyone had been able to yet figure this out before now, we most certainly would not be in our current predicament. Our top global markets exist around weapons of war, drugs and sex; and one of the largest industries in the United States, to the tune of $40 billion dollars a year is... the pet industry. (Adoring an animal is one thing, using it as a substitution for love and connection because you have given up on human beings, is something else entirely.) Peace is largely elusive in contemporary society; we know what it looks like on people: a t-shirt, a button, a bumper sticker (or my all time fave: the diamond encrusted peace pendant). However, we have no idea of what peace looks like in them. Cue the parade of beauty pageant contestants giving their erudite summations on the need for world peace, as no one seems to have the slightest clue. All we know is the word sure does look and sound pretty.

Ultimately, perhaps the most egregious example of the distortion of peace occurs in the mouths and lives of religious leaders, who speak of peace and govern of power. And so the words were said that have rung true for all of time: when Tacitus said of Rome, "They made a desert and called it peace." 

The truth of peace must be illumined, finally. It is not the exclusive domain of any group, faith, religion, or culture. It is the gift and inherent latent resource that lay, awaiting the catalyst for awakening, within the entirety of humankind.

It must be said: all of the peace rallies in the world will never create tangible and actual change unless this topic is splayed open, at long last.

Our greatest minds and creative talents-- and here are but a few examples: Kierkegaard, Hendrix, Nietzsche, Tolstoy, Michelangelo, Poe, Van Gogh, Schopenhauer, and now recently, the sad demise of David Foster Wallace... have all been brilliant and tortured. Why is that? Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, took cocaine and had more sexual issues that you could count. And why is it that the people who choose to become therapists are quite often those that are the most lost? Even our most pious and religious accept suffering as normal in this life. Why is it that peace is so unknown? Why are we so afraid of life, of intimacy, and of death? Something is seriously wrong with this picture that suffering, hatred, depression, and self/mutual destruction have become so universally normalized and omnipresent. Ultimately it is not about intellectual theories, it is about living solutions. Our world, now more than ever, needs practical applications to illuminate and solve our most intractable challenges. No more postulating and soundbites, we need tangible results and we need them now.

It is (via Paul Strathern) what Fyodor Dostoyevsky had expressed through his incandescent and penetrating works: that someone can be filled with ideas about the world and our place in it, yet remain fatally unaware of what it means to be a human being.

The economy, natural disasters, the presence of terrorist threats... how we respond to all of these things reveals where we truly are in ourselves.

Call Out: Very few people realize that the man who said “Be the change you want to see in the world,” Mohandas Gandhi, was also depressed at the end of his life because he could not translate non-violence on the individual level, into a practical universal lifestyle. He could not stem the rising tide of Hindu and Muslim violence and the worse it became, the more he despaired. This content now being introduced in this project is the next step, and a very necessary step, in the evolution of that legacy. It must be said: if a legacy is mythologized, then it is rendered immobile and stagnant, enclosed in a shiny glass case high up on a shelf; and that is essentially what has happened.

The primary assertion of this project is that the battleground for non-violence is no longer at sit-ins and marches. The 21st century battleground for non-violence is in our jobs, our schools, our homes, our relationships... it is in us.

This project is focused on evolving the legacy of non-violence and peace into a modern template. Upon historical examination, it is clear that previous political leaders of peace (King, Mandela, Gandhi) have focused primarily on one country (ex: United States, South Africa, India), with one primary issue (civil rights/racism, dissolution of apartheid, liberation of British rule), and utilized one religious platform (Christianity or Hinduism) vs. this project = All nations. All topics. (including sexuality!) All faiths. All people. Everywhere.

The legacy must be taken down off the shelf; it is time to remove the hollowed shrines which so many people have created around these men. This legacy must be evolved. Deifying these men does not move our world forward; it only further atrophies what must now be awakened. We need to understand their greatness, as well as the places where they struggled and lived outside of peace (such as the fractious relationship that both Gandhi and King had with sexuality), because those struggles show the roadmap to where non-violence and peace must conceptually develop forward into the 21st century. Sexuality must be put out onto the table and dealt with as never before; rape/sexual slavery are the fastest growing crimes on the planet, and HIV is now the fastest spreading disease. (United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime and World Health Organization.)

This is a global conversation. In truth, there are no third world countries and no first world countries. Our worldwide spectrum of nations can currently be categorized into two groups, based upon the emphasis of which aspect is most urgent for immediate growth and stability: nations that are externally developing (structurally) and nations that are internally developing (culturally). And as anyone can observe: all nations need the tools and templates for practical, modern peace.

Generation IG is showing how we got to this place as a world, and is introducing new paradigms for how we can wake up the future, starting today.

This project will be lighting a match to introduce:

This project will be expanding in-depth on everything in this post (and all other 13 posts here). And yes, I know it is a lot. But people, the scope of the solution must match the scope of the problem. We need to go big right now because the alternative is too unspeakably catastrophic. The future of humanity is sort of counting on us to figure this out before things slip any further down the hole. It is one thing that for thousands of years, millions upon millions of lives have already been lost and taken because we have never been able to figure this out. But these solutions, these equations which deconstruct human suffering and violence and destruction, DO exist and are critically needed, now more than ever. I do not dare to ask why I am the one little life that has accidentally cracked this code wide open due to being so on fire from the moment I came into this world. But crack it wide open I did. And these paradigms work. We CAN break the cycle. And what is more, we must. As you read every word here, may you see and feel how profoundly important both these times, and your life, truly is. Stand with me.

Talk About it: Why do you think it is that the great majority of humankind, both today and historically in our world, have known suffering as the rule, and peace only as the rare exception?