The cat-a-lyst Book

THE PROBLEM IS NOT WAR
THE PROBLEM IS WAR!

This manual assumes that you, like most people around the globe, know the urgency of our situation--that we humans need to make a drastic change in the apparent course of the future. We must abandon all the deathward paths in favor of sustainability and the prosperity of all beings.

Throughout history progress has always come through challenge and response, and our own time is no different in this regard. Today great challenges face us like doorways to tremendous opportunities. The Catalyst Project exists to help us grasp these challenges as opportunities and to help us use them for the advancement of culture and civilization.

Rather than continue our unbounded plundering of natural resources, we humans must learn to fit wholly into nature. And we must begin practicing moderation not only in our management of the Earth and its systems but also with each other, since peace is the bond which joins us all, and without peace there can be no true unity.

The world over, we are now over-exploiting our planet's natural resources. As we know, this plundering approach can readily exhaust what's available, and the resulting scarcities can easily lead to war between nations. When resources disappear, people who a little while before had been squabbling over diminishing returns find themselves grieving over fragile landscapes turning into deserts, disappearing animals and plants, and huge water-tables tapped nearly dry--or worse, fighting and killing one another over the remnants of once abundant resources. Clearly the war on nature must cease and responsible management must replace it.

Centered in peacefulness and commited to our unity, we can end the wars we have been waging against nature and each other. Peaceful co-existence with the Earth and one another is the only lasting way to live.

Problems which threaten us include global warming, the loss of soil for food production, the loss of forests for watershed and airshed, pollution of the seas, pollution of the soils, pollution of the water we drink, and pollution of the air we breathe. These problems are due to human violence in a wider sense. Alienated from nature, we humans resemble at present a sort of violent alien invasion of our planetary home. As we stop pretending to be aliens in nature we will stop being this way.

The Catalyst Project vision affirms that we can and will face and solve our problems. The Catalyst Project`conference/festivals inform us, strengthen our courage, and generate a deeper experience of unity within the community. Many conference/festivals--"a community at a time, and all at once"--will help us find the lifeward path for our species and our planet.

The required changes demand that we treat our globe as if it were a living thing made up of living things, all of them valuable, indeed, priceless. All of us are decision makers whose collective decision in this matter will seal the fate or open the possibility of a high destiny of our species and our planet. Globalism with heart is a possibility we are called upon to actualize.

Many CEOs will have to learn new criteria for decision making in step with nature, and the same holds true for heads of state. As we are seeing, huge profits can mean terrible losses--which gives a new perspective on the profit and loss statement. What does it profit us to build tremendous industries and investment portfolios while losing (read: killing) the Earth? When a Parliament, a Congress or a Company Board is in session, we too often see starving people with huge eyes standing in the background, dying forests, dead lakes, polluted skies, severely wounded oceans.

CHANGES STEP BY STEP--BEING THE CATALYST IN YOUR WORLD!

Our life as a Catalyst begins up close and intimate--in our own minds and hearts, in the apartment, house, or dormitory we live in, in our own yard, in our own neighborhood, town, or township--and expands from there in service to the whole globe. YOU are the Catalyst, the change maker--and practice makes you powerful.

If you've not seen yourself as a Catalyst before, you may have to begin with small projects and gradually build to larger ones. If you are in this situation, small projects, and small successes, can prove very important in building strength, confidence and background. Many small steps make up a tremendous journey, as many small stars make up a mighty sky.

Positive thinking is crucially important. Critical and hopeless thoughts will stop you. Replace them with positive thoughts. Keep recognizing that you are the possibility of this project happening. Keep saying to yourself: I choose to do this--and then DO it. Mastery of this kind is a source of real joy.

It is very important to begin generating changes that you can sense, see, experience. These may involve only you, or they may involve other people as well. When you decide to get involved in a group, go to some meetings, listen well, find out what is needed, and decide what part you want to play. Share your ideas. Determine the amount of time you want to spend, and take on a job or part of a job that fits your time determination. Since integrity is everything, don't promise more than you will deliver. And don't take on more than you are committing to do. Be extremely clear, first of all with yourself, secondly with the others in your group. You may wish to tell your group how long you intend to stay active with them. When that time-point is reached, you may choose to renew your commitment to the original job, change hats with someone else in the group, offer to serve in a new job of your own design, or quit that group and go on to something new. But don't let the excitement of new projects tempt you into becoming an "incompleter."

As soon as you are ready, consider generating a Catalyst Project conference/festival in your community. The times are calling for community unifying conference/festivals. We need them as never before, because they are such powerful vehicles for personal and community change. Conference/festivals deliver empowerment and open up future possibilities. The people making up your own community deserve empowerment events that can help them see, choose, and become a future in which everyone wins.

Action at the local level can spark comparatively rapid, easily perceptible changes. And watching these changes happen will encourage us to aspire to other goals, such as electing mayors and city council members who understand the needs of both business and the environment. We can insist that conflict resolution be taught in our schools. We can spend our tax dollars on libraries, public health, and other programs that help the many rather than propping up economic ventures that benefit the privileged few.

In addition, we can monitor the people elected or appointed in our communities. And if they fail to perform as instructed by the voters, we can replace them. Here in the good ol' USA we call it participatory democracy.

While The Catalyst Project has no political agenda, it is clear that conference/festivals strengthen and deepen participatory democracy.

The Catalyst Project methodology outlines an event (a community unifying conference/peace festival) that will:

Draw individuals and groups from the community
Introduce issues crucial to our lives and our future
Provide information and updates on problems of local and global concern
Offer solutions in the form of actions we can take
Coalesce us into working groups in numbers large enough to have a significant and
immediate effect on the community

In short, the purpose is to invite people into a festive community event, inform them of problems requiring their attention, and share with them solutions to those problems. In that setting, people will be inspired to take on challenges at the local level, where they can make the most rapid and noticeable changes. Once community members enjoy success locally, their confidence will soar, and they will feel empowered to make changes at the county, state, regional, national, and international levels.

Our political and economic world leaders will move in the direction that we, the people, want them to go, as our communities are strengthened and revitalized. The Catalyst Project community empowerment events, repeated again and again, will help individuals and groups generate, out of their own resources, the clarity, self-awareness, vision, and practical energy needed to steer civilization in the direction of a dream that includes us all.