 |
||
 |
||
----PO BOX 5588, Santa Fe, NM 87502-5588------(505-745-0589)-----www.TheSun-News.com |
||
          |
Vol.4. NO.11 ......................................................Pages 10 and 11
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Change Comes From Within George
Monbiot’s article on climate change gives expression
to a wonderfully broad sense of reality. His
initial premise—that “our existence is governed
by material realities”—brings forth, with
faultless logic, his conclusion that, to deal with the
looming environmental catastrophe he predicts, we will
need “draconian regulation, rationing, and
prohibition.” If, indeed, this environmental
threat is purely material in nature, material
power—i.e., regulation, rationing, and prohibition,
enforced, of course, by the guys with guns who interfere
with your freedom materially (imprisonment or death) when
you violate that draconian law—is the only answer!
Materialists—consciously or not—will always end
up proposing solutions involving armed men (and, more
recently in history, women.) We
suggest that the threat is not a material one, that its
roots are to be found in man’s spirit, and that,
therefore, its solution lies there, as well. If
this is so, what is actually needed, and would alone be
effective in a way that would not
continue the endless cycle of power-mongering by
left-wing proponents of “regulation and
prohibition” and their right-wing counterparts,
proponents of economic license at all costs, is a
movement that could awaken individuals from the dream
state Monbiot so correctly describes, not, as he
proposes, by “usurp[ing] it with our rational and
predictive [read: materialistic] minds,” but
by penetrating to the reason
(a spiritual thing) humanity is in that dream state, in
the first place: People, in general, want to be
happy, and part of happiness is trusting others,
including those in power, to do the right thing and to
tell the truth. The
dream that governing powers can be trusted is an ideal
(also a spiritual thing) that needs to be made a reality;
and the path to that reality lies in reviving the
consciousness, formerly universal among the
spiritually-minded, that money is the
root of all evil. Money buys
all exploitation and most duplicity; there
is nothing that can be accomplished with it that could
not better and more virtuously be accomplished without
it. (Yes, I said
“virtuously.”) We in America are the
inventors of the oxymoron, recognizable as such in
Europe, of the “Christian businessman.” Of
course, there have always been merchants in Christendom,
but the idea of overtly linking one’s faith in
Christ to one’s service to Mammon could only arise
in a culture that puts God’s name on its currency. As
long as government, whether of the left or of the right,
sees the application of monetary power (which also pays
for the military and police enforcers—the ones with
the weapons, remember) as the way to get things done, the
misuse of the environment, and thus the end, as Monbiot
says, of life as we know it, will remain as inevitable as
night following day. For if we cannot overcome the
tendency to use force against our fellow human beings,
how in the name of anything holy can we honestly imagine
having the capacity to deal with the environment in ways
that do justice to one another? Without this
justice, war will continue, and with war, the decimation
of the environment. One
could ask, then, what is the more dangerous dream state:
to have a naive and thus foolish hope in the goodness of
humanity and the good will of the universe towards us, or
cynically to believe that “regulation” will do
anything but perpetuate a state of armed conflict with
others, to the continued detriment of the environment it
is supposed to “protect”? A truly awake
person would suggest, I think, that we mediate between
our ideal—that humanity can
become good—and the reality—we do
live in a world where money rules (almost)
everybody—by grasping the initiative to think in the
following way, or one like it: “I commit
myself to non-violence, and, rather than enforce my good
will upon others by legislation backed by guns (thus
turning it bad), I will freely share my own spiritual and
material resources with others of like mind and heart, so
that our common goodness, unadulterated by the use of
material power, may overwhelm the dark forces of
ignorance that continue to becloud the consciousness of
others.” To
doubt that this is possible is to keep the door wide open
to the kind of never-ending tit-for-tat we see, as just
one example, between Israel and Palestine; but cannot we
who bear the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. and
Mahatma Gandhi carry it forward, now that the great
tit-for-tat of the Cold War has been over for twelve
years, and before the potentially greater one our
President has felt it necessary to engage us in with the
terrorists goes much farther? In
the name of all that is holy, John
Stirling Walker Venkah
Gjermundsen Peña
Blanca UNIQUE BOOKS AWARD
HELP Oct. 8, 2003
— More than 100 Santa Fe Community College students
will receive textbooks this year thanks to two unique
book award programs that provide approximately $10,000 a
year to help SFCC students pay for books. The
programs, Buy a Book – Build a Dream and SFCC Book
Endowments, help students face the rising cost of
textbooks and prevent them from having to withdraw from
college simply because they cannot afford their books,
said Joy Wohl, executive director of the Foundation for
the Santa Fe Community College. Donors to
the Foundation have contributed approximately $30,000 to
the Buy a Book – Build a Dream and more than
$150,000 for the book endowment program since 1999. By
year’s end, the Foundation hopes to raise a combined
$65,000 toward both programs. “We
believe that deserving students should not have to give
up their dream of a college education simply because they
cannot afford the required books and instructional
materials,” said Russ Osterman, president of the
Foundation for the Santa Fe Community College. The cost of
college textbooks and materials typically exceeds
SFCC’s low tuition. While a full-time in-district
student at SFCC will pay $359 in tuition and mandatory
fees for one semester, he or she will pay between $300
and $500 for books and supplies. Books for first-semester
nursing students can cost up to $700. “Because
of the book award I received through the Foundation for
Santa Fe Community College, I’m financially
covered,” said Daisy Quiñones, a nursing student at
SFCC. “I’m one step closer to reaching my goal
— to help my family and myself, and whenever
possible, others.” The average
cost of a textbook is approximately $50 and some
textbooks cost more than $150, according to SFCC
bookstore data. At $26.50, the cost of a credit hour at
SFCC is less than half the cost of most books. “The
cost of books continues to rise and to be one of the most
serious barriers needy student face. Without texts, the
possibility of success is drastically reduced. The
Foundation for the Santa Fe Community College wants to
help every student succeed,” Wohl said. When a donor
contributes $1,000 toward the SFCC Book Endowments
program, a book award is endowed in perpetuity. This
means that the scholarship will cover the cost of a $50
book for a student each semester — year after year.
Book endowments may be named according to the
donor’s request. Gifts of $50
or multiples of $50 to Buy-a-Book – Build-a-Dream
are gratefully received by the foundation and are awarded
directly to students. To find out
more about the book award programs, call (505) 428-1232.
|
Inside This Issue (not available) |
