Message from Art Kunkin This alternative newspaper is dedicated to the idea that a new cooperative society of freedomloving individuals is being born within an old society dominated by competition and fear. This new society is a real birth, as real (and as invisible) as any child growing inside the body of a woman.   To further this metaphor, if are sensitive, we can even feel the little feet of the new society trying to get out of the constraints of the older body in which it is growing. And if we are not sensitive to the everyday process of that birth, we will only experience the pain of the status quo that ordinary newspapers and television report.   As I see it, it is the specific function of the alternative press to go beyond the pain involved in the birth of a new society to report upon and emphasize the cellular process - the new ideas - making that birth possible. Is this new society only a dream, an impossible utopia or structure that might take a discouraging period of time, perhaps longer than our individual lifetimes to accomplish? These are weighty considerations to take up in the limited space of this page, but I'll write, rather personally, about what gives me hope in future issues. For now, one vision statement of this newspaper, "Information To Improve The World", says nothing less than that our aim is to be a midwife to the new society.   Another of our vision statements "Every Reader Is A Reporter," is a call to each you to take a part in making history, in changing consciousness. For me, the new society is not imaginary. It is not an impossible utopia. It exists. Those who can see this reality growing are hopeful for the future, hopeful that the new birth will be beautiful and not defective, joyful even if there is pain and blood. So where is this new society growing? Inside your head, in your nervous system, and in that invisible part of you that is popularly called your soul. Each time you feel compassion for storm victims in Louisiana, for children starving in Africa, for unemployed workers -- that is the new society expressing itself. Each time you express disgust for political corruption in Washington, D.C. or Moscow, or India, that is the new society speaking inside of you. Each time you express opposition to the horrors of war, to damage being done to the environment, to the secondclass citizenship of women and children and blacks and browns, you are expressing a desire for the new society. Each time you object to the growing gap between rich and poor, each time you say that it is wrong for ordinary citizen voters to be powerless while corporations use their obscene profits to control the politicians in Washington, each time you express love for yourself and love for another human being, that is the new society "kicking" inside of you. The reality that clouds our ability to clearly feel and see the new society, the new consciousness, is that it exists within the aging symptoms of the old society. The old society is very visible as it is already mature (and even stinking in places!). However, there are also visible aspects of the new society in the painfully won legislation and struggles that have given the vote to women and blacks, in social security and welfare laws that feed the aged and the hungry and unemployed, in low-cost housing included in new construction projects, in the General Assembly of the United Nations giving a new voice to small nations. The struggle between the new and the old is also taking place inside of us, inside of our heads, your head, my head, inside the head of the stranger in the restaurant. Side by side with the wonderful thoughts about freedom, compassion and love that have evolved inside of our individual nervous systems, and may compel you to be a participant in struggles for a better world, are feelings of fear and isolation and lack of confidence and shyness and anger, etc. As a matter of fact, there is actually an organ - the old amygdala - inside of our brains, inside of your brain and inside my brain, that is so sensitive to negative experiences and thoughts and emotions that it issues the adrenaline and other chemicals that promote the violent behavior that protects us in the face of danger. Just as there are politicians in Washington and elsewhere that promote the warlike behavior of the old society. Unfortunately, the amygdala does its thing even when there is only imagined behavior. And, fortunately, there are other organs that emit other chemicals letting us be conscious humans who feel good. (See my Tools for Success and Life Expansion on how to increase their flow. It’s a natural high!) The new society does not exist exclusively in the minds of workers, as Marx seems to have declared in his pioneering attempt to see the new society. Perhaps a hundred years ago it could be said that the desire for freedom was best expressed by the struggles of the labor movement, but we have moved beyond that time. Now we see that the desire for a new society is not only being expressed by the labor movement but by women, blacks, students, soldiers and, as a matter of fact, to some degree, by just about everyone -- including a proportion of the people who voted for Bush and who are now in the process of realizing that they made a mistake.   This consciousness of compassion, of freedom is so much a part of ourselves that we can not imagine a time when this consciousness did not exist. It is only when we look at the historical record, at the real pains of the American Revolution of 1776 and the French Revolution of 1789 and what happened previously, that we can understand that the human nervous system was not always the home of conscious notions of freedom and compassion. There certainly was no consciousness of freedom in those ancient societies where pharaohs and kings and priests and tribal leaders ruled for hundreds and thousands of years without substantial opposition. It’s hard to imagine this, but in those centuries in which a more primitive human consciousness existed, people could not and did not develop comprehensive notions of freedom. They could be motivated by a desire to escape pain -- and the historical records shows that this is what happened when those primitive minds would occasionally be mobilized by the promises made by a leader with a more advanced notion of governance. But that is all. The widespread notion of the possibility of freedom that exists today, that exists in your own head, was not a powerful historical force thousands and even hundreds of years ago. What gives me hope is that ideas of freedom and love nor compassion developed as a logical response to the relationship problems of humans who were also in the process of technologically achieving sufficient food and amenities to live a better life. In other words, before the new society fully expresses itself in good government and good laws, it exists in the minds and nervous systems of human beings. Thought precedes manifestation. George Washington and Tom Paine and Jefferson individually in 1776 had thoughts of freedom under a republican form of government and, therefore, it came about. However, King George could have won if the French had not helped the revolutionists. Then the achievement of a more democratic government in the American colonies would have been postponed for many years. However, as long it was evolutionary inevitable that ideas of freedom would develop in other individuals, American independence of some kind was also inevitable. Therefore, a new society of free individuals is inevitable in the not-so-distant future -- unless the old leaders blow us up (and that’s why they must go!). Do you accept my thesis that the new society is to be found first inside of our heads? That ideas of social justice and freedom and health and responsibility for the environment grow inside of our nervous systems as logical answers to the problems involved in the three big areas of 1) self-preservation, 2) relations with other people and, 3) relations to the planet on which we live? Do you recognize the impulse toward an improved society in your own being? This newspaper has, once again, taken on the task of reporting the invisible and actual growth of a new society. It IS, once again, awakening the freedom impulse in all those who see it. Please do what you can to keep this newspaper alive and widely distributed - purchase a subscription for you, for your friends and, especially, for those who should (but probably won’t) purchase a subscription. Please see the special offers below. I thank you for all that you have already done for the new society and, in advance, for all that you will do. ----------------------------------------- Thank you for reading this far. And thank you for looking at our new web site: Art Kunkin Founding Editor and Publisher of the LA Free Press