With great anticipation for nothing more than a fun and fascinating romp, I saw Avatar in 3-D last night. As much as I enjoyed the visual experience--and I did enjoy it--my experience was marred by a profound sense of a missed opportunity.

This feeling may have been inspired by the film's hit-you-over-the-head-with-a-hammer moral message: that white people destroy nature and indigenous people have learned how to live within its bounds and are all the happier for it.

The Nav'i people were portrayed as an idealized Native American race perfectly in harmony with a breathtakingly beautiful and somewhat perilous natural world. Cameron adequately developed an idealized Native American spirituality that, he strongly suggested, we'd all do well to adopt.

But James Cameron missed a much more significant (and timely) moral message in the second half of the film. Faced with impending extinction at the hands of the evil corporate greedmaster and the evil military grunt, and wildly out-gunned, the Nav'i adopt the ex-marine (who has been hanging about with them with decidedly mixed motives) to lead them in a violent battle to protect their territory. What ensues is ugly in the extreme but, of course, good triumphs over evil in the end...

Except that now the Nav'i people have been ruined by their violence. (At this point, of course, I am going beyond the fairy tale into my own commentary.) The white man/Nav'i impersonator has acculturated them to the ways of warfare and much of the planet has been laid to waste.

As long as we are writing a fairy tale, why not write something new, something adequate to our particular circumstance, one that might inspire a fresh approach to an old problem? Why rehearse the ancient and clearly flawed approach that we must meet violence with greater (or at least more cunning) violence?

Cameron has re-enacted Custer's Last Stand, where the white man is thoroughly defeated. But we all know how that ends. It isn't hard to see how a similar fate might await the Nav'i. The corporate monolith that wants that unobtainium, and the market demand for it, hasn't gone anywhere. Surely a fresh battle awaits. How many battles before the planet is thoroughly ruined, its indigenous people totally ravaged, and the unobtainium finally obtained?

Cameron missed a colossal opportunity to write a new ending, one driven by Nav'i spirituality which might have taught that violence only begets violence, and that there is no way to peace, only just peace. The vast neural net of all the living beings on Pandora (the unfortunately named planet of the film) might have out-thought the white invaders, not in terms of cunning in combat, but in terms of the real forces at play--as Gandhi might have called them, the moral forces at play, satyagraha.

I invite the reader to explore for herself what fascinating ways this movie might have been brought to a peaceful and truly hopeful close. In the past twelve hours I have come up with several scenarios. Check your movie listings this time next year for Avatar 2.0...it'll blow your mind!

How unfortunate. Just War was developed by the Catholic Church in order to justify violence that, almost without exception, directly violates the teachings of Jesus. Since then, this doctrine has been appropriated by states to justify wars of every kind.

The reason we are so committed to "bringing democracy" to Afghanistan/Pakistan as opposed to any number of other hotspots around the planet (including, say, much of the African continent) is the oil there. This is a war of greed, not national security--as everyone well knows.

If Obama were truly committed to transforming energy policy, addressing global climate change, reducing terrorism, and bringing peace to the world, he would focus his energies and dollars on a green revolution in the U.S. energy sector and a transformation of the consumption patterns of U.S. consumers. Until those two objectives are met--as a minimum--the U.S. will forever be involved in Unjust War.

The DSM tries to be the definitive diagnostic tool for any kind of mental health problem. Perhaps more importantly, health insurers will not cover mental health services that are not coded according to DSM criteria. As a result, every clinician who accepts insurance must interact with the DSM whether they agree with its criteria or underlying philosophy or not.

The research agenda that undergirds the DSM assumes that all mental health disorders have a distinct biolgical basis, and distinct and unique symptomatic traces. Part of the process of identifying specific disorders involves a normative evaluation of collections of symptoms. When certain collections of symptoms appear with some measurable frequency, researchers assume they have identified a specific disorder.

All of the disorders within DSM are defined as involving clinically significant "distress or impairment" of the individual, and/or, in some cases, others. (For example, individuals with antisocial personality disorder rarely feel distressed or impaired, but those off of whom they prey often do.)

All of the DSM's criteria are ultimately normative: that is, what is considered abnormal distress or abnormal impairment defines a disorder--there is no absolutely objective scale.

If it were not for the enormous investment of research energies, dollars, and infrastructure that supports the ongoing institution of the DSM, I think it would be perfectly clear to all that its research agenda has failed miserably. The definition of disorder in general has come under repeated attack for all sorts of good reasons; whole sections of the DSM are questionable and quite controversial (not least of which are the sexual disorders discussed in the aforementioned magazine article); and all the disorders are beset by staggering patterns of comorbidity (which means multiple diagnoses in the same person).

One can catch of glimpse of these difficulties from this short passage from the cited article:

One criterion Brotto advocates adding is a dim or missing sense of excitement during sex itself. This is one of her ways of including Basson’s thinking — that desire often arises during, not before. But it leads to a troubling question. What if the lack of excitement is due to a partner’s ineptitude? What if it’s caused by a lover’s emotional disconnection? Suddenly the realm of mental disorder, which is supposed to be delineated, as the introduction to the D.S.M. puts it, by “dysfunction in the individual,” is being distorted by the role of others. Is it the patient who has the condition, or the partner, or the couple? In building on Basson’s “responsive desire,” Brotto’s criteria run repeatedly into this fundamental problem. A partner’s involvement is more or less inescapable.

Brotto stares squarely at this conundrum, knowing, she told me, that it can’t be resolved, knowing that the best she can do is acknowledge it in some sort of introductory passage and continue on the path she thinks right. Meanwhile, the usual waning of erotic urgency over the course of long relationships, a decline that, according to many clinicians and one study, may beset women more steeply than men, could mean that proposed criteria like “absent/reduced sexual excitement/pleasure during sexual activity” are met by nearly everyone — another muddle of diagnostic logic. To address this problem, the disorder’s current language encouraging clinicians to take the context of their patients’ lives into account may need more emphasis in the D.S.M.-V.

Brotto knows too that there are sexologists who maintain that desire by any definition — whether the sheer lust Basson minimizes or the responsive variety she trumpets — is almost entirely a cultural invention rather than a biological reality; that it has been made to seem essential by the sex scenes in movies and the advice columns in magazines; and that it is best deleted from the D.S.M. Leonore Tiefer, a professor in the psychiatry department at New York University and the author of a collection of essays titled “Sex Is Not a Natural Act,” argues that the contrivance is compounded by the pharmaceutical industry, which offers research money to sexologists who find ways, no matter if unconsciously, to inflate hugely the numbers of women suffering from an already-fictive condition — a disorder that the drug companies intend to cure. High numbers help to increase awareness, which stokes demand. To what extent this theory represents truth, as opposed to being merely plausible, is hard to sort out. When I spoke recently with officials at Boehringer-Ingelheim, which just announced the auspicious, if not overwhelming, results of large-scale trials of its desire-enhancing medication, Flibanserin, the officials were careful to cite only conservative figures on the women who might want such a pill. (Though the exact mechanisms of the drug are unclear, it seems to act on the brain’s serotonin and dopamine receptors.) Brotto, like all the specialists in all areas working on the new D.S.M., is allowed to receive no more than $10,000 per year from any source connected to the pharmaceutical industry. This is an A.P.A. rule. But Tiefer’s is hardly the only voice warning that, despite A.P.A. protections, drug-company influence can shape, indirectly as well as directly, the decisions of D.S.M. panelists.

Brotto is surrounded by skepticism. And she herself told me that it might take till the publication of the D.S.M.-VI, probably two decades from now, for science to establish sound norms for women’s desire.

In fact, Brotto may be far too optimistic in this estimate. So far, no clear biological basis has been found for any mental health disorder whatsoever.

The real issue here is that the DSM lacks a coherent and articulated philosophical basis. No amount of science can save it; indeed, such science can only further expose the DSM's deficiencies. In this blog post I can hardly clear things up very much: such would be (may be) the task of a second book. But I would like to float two extremely important components of what could prove a more coherent approach.

The first involves making a clear distinction between medical and psychological realms of concern. Modern psychology, after all, was begun by a medical doctor, Freud, who clearly regarded mental health as a medical domain. Most of the subsequent course of the field has been in the hands of psychiatrists, also medical doctors. It's no coincidence that the DSM is published by the American Psychiatric Association.

I believe this has all been an enormous and disastrous philosophical mistake. The field as a whole (though certainly not all of its participants) continues to conflate medical and psychological concerns. I would propose, instead, that we have in fact two distinct fields of interest here that overlap, to be sure, but must be regarded distinctly.

In this post I can only suggest the distinction (I will try at some later date to flesh it out adequately), but hopefully it will be enough to give you a sense of where I am going with this. The domain of the psyche (which in the original Greek means soul) involves the mind; the domain of medicine involves the body (including its most complex organ, the brain). I am not a dualist; I know perfectly well that the mind is a function of the body. But I believe that psychological issues arise in the experience of the person and reflect the experience of the person in ways that are certainly represented in the biochemistry of the brain, and are causally dependent upon the brain, but that are most directly approached through experience, not biology. (For a fuller, but quite accessible, philosophical discussion of this orientation toward the mind/body problem, see John Searle's Mind: A Brief Introduction.)

Among the DSM's disorders we may construct a spectrum from the medical to the psychological. On the medical extreme we find conditions that may be defined entirely by biological factors, such as Down syndrome, which can be attributed wholly to a chromosomal anomaly. On the psychological extreme we may find conditions that are defined entirely by experiential factors, such as Post Traumatic Stress disorder.

Now, let us be clear: a person with Downs will likely experience unique difficulties as a result of his chromosomal irregularity, and these would count as psychological difficulties; and a person with PTSD likely has some kind of biological pre-disposition toward a disabling response to stress. So, the biological and psychological intermingle complexly--probably in every case. But the relevant question concerns treatment: at one end of the spectrum a medical treatment (if any be available) is indicated; at the other, a psychological treatment. Medicine intervenes in the biological function of the person. Psychological therapy intervenes in the experience of the person. Medicine treats the body; psychotherapy treats the mind.

As we move toward the middle of the spectrum, a mixture of approaches may be indicated: some medical treatment in addition to psychotherapy. In fact, it may be that most conditions referenced by the DSM call for such a mixture. Even so, it behooves us, I think, to remain clear on the extent and limits of each treatment modality.

Secondly, now that we can set to one side the medical aspects of various mental health conditions, a close reading of the DSM suggests that there is, in fact, only one properly psychological diagnosis. Further, a philosophical interpretation of the DSM leads one to the very same conclusion. I will begin with the philosophical argument.

Every diagnosis in the DSM makes some reference to clinically significant "distress or impairment." In most cases, these concerns are initiated and reported by the complainant. To be clear: in order to be diagnosed for the vast majority of DSM disorders, a person must report severe distress or impairment. (The exceptions involve a minority of cases, like antisocial personality disorder, where the patient is unaware of, or unconcerned with, such matters.) Any number of factors may contribute to a person's distress, and a sense of being impaired is one of them. Impairment, then, is privileged by the DSM as a special case of distress.

Cynically, one can see the rationale for the privilege of impairment. If a person is missing work, or unable to attend to family obligations, that is a kind of impairment that is recognized by our culture as requiring treatment. Implicit in impairment is a plea to insurance companies to provide relief for a major disability that affects the person's productivity in society. Simultaneously, and along similar lines, severe distress implies impairment: that is, a person who is severely distressed will (by definition?) be impaired in her ability to function productively. Here we see the ominous undercarriage of the whole (mental) health system, as a means to re-instate economic units into active production.

The experience of distress, including the particular case of distress about being impaired, is called anxiety. Accordingly, all conditions referenced in the DSM are definitionally anxiety conditions (with the possible exception of conditions where distress or impairment are reported by third parties). So goes, in brief, the philosophical argument for anxiety as the one over-arching psychological concern.

A close reading of the DSM, and particularly the pattern of comorbidity that has been established among DSM diagnoses, supports the notion that all psychological concerns are rooted in anxiety. Depression and anxiety are closely linked, suggesting a theory that anxiety expresses itself in two contrasting forms: hyper-arousal (such as panic, or manic phases), and hypo-arousal (such as major depression, or dissociation).

Without fleshing out this theory any further, allow me to suggest how this approach might grossly simplify the research project of Ms. Brotto who, as you remember, was concerned particularly with female hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD). She uses mindfulness techniques to work with "undersexed" women, with some success--which makes sense if what she is dealing with is essentially an anxiety issue. The patriarchal problem here--the cultural assumption that women should be sexually active and available to their (presumably) male partners throughout all phases of adult life--poses no difficulty if we see a person's anxious concern as being, in part, about reconciling her sexual rhythms with cultural expectations. Brotto has a fundamental problem at least in part because low libido is culturally forbidden, and yet this has nothing to do with science or biology. Nevertheless, it produces an experience of anxiety that psychotherapy can fruitfully address.

So, now in microcosm, we can see the rub. If a woman seeks therapy because of anxiety about a low libido, insurers will not cover her without some biological argument, and a concrete "impairment." So, well-intentioned researchers such as Brotto spend a career trying to ferret out such a rationale. Undoubtedly, this frenzy of research will find nuggets of truth that we might not have discovered otherwise. But, at the same time, it works to obscure an obvious and painful truth that keeps people--in this case women--in a kind of anxious prison in which they are either defined as "disordered" or their complaints are seen as trivial and their treatment indulgent.

The obvious and painful truth to which I refer is this: in some cases--and perhaps in many--psychological distress is a function of a disordered society. If my analysis is anywhere near the truth, we can begin to see that the DSM itself is what is "disordered," and that many of the people it has put into its various pigeon-holes are made anxious, at least in part, by the conundrum of how to live joyfully in a profoundly dysfunctional world.

In a sense, I think I must agree with Freud, but it seems to me that he leaves out something quite essential that I have argued (in Our Tragic Flaw) must be taken into account if we are to understand the ultimate sources of internal conflict.

Freud's theory posits the following (and please forgive me for any errors here, I am hardly an expert on Freud). We are born all id--that is, we are packets of needs demanding fulfillment; and where fulfillment doesn't come immediately, these unmet needs give rise to fantasies of fulfillment. As we discover that the world is not perfectly compliant with our needs/wishes, and that we must modify our engagement with the world to fulfill them, we develop the ego (called by Freud the reality principle). The ego, therefore, is an internalization of the social world into the personality of the infant. In a later stage (in Freud, as a result of the Oedipal conflict), the child internalizes the moral injunctions (and its associated guilt or shame) of the same-gendered parent, which becomes active in the psyche in the form of the super-ego.

One can see a similar unfolding in Our Tragic Flaw (pp. 62-78), though you will find no reference to the terms id, ego, or super-ego. In this account (which is, in this respect, by no means original to me), the Oedipal conflict makes no appearance, nor is it necessary, to explain the introjection of morals, shame, or guilt into the personality. Rather, recent research suggests that parents actively train their children in social mores and basic survival skills and, in so doing, very often inadvertently introduce paralyzing shame into the character of their children. This explanation does not require the extravagance of the Oedipal complex. (See Freud, pp. 180-185, for Lear's clear but necessarily tortured account of the super-ego.)

The chief deficiency of Freud's explanation of internal conflict, both from the point of view of individual therapy and radical social change, is that it would seem to foreclose the possibility of a person becoming integrated and whole, largely resolving her internal conflict. Of course, to paraphrase Richard Dawkins (who said, "The universe does not owe us meaning"), the universe does not owe us the resolution of our internal conflicts. We have no reason to assume that such resolution is possible. In fact, one could look to many different facts to confirm its futility--namely, the rather poor outcomes we see from research into theraperutic methods of all stripes, in the form of unresolved neuroses and relapses into disordered mental life.

At the same time, we have no reason to conclude that resolution of internal conflict is not possible, either. And by this I do not mean that we can achieve a point where no internal conflict ever occurs, but rather we can achieve a level of mental health where internal conflict, whenever it arises, can--for the most part--be worked through, integrated, and channeled toward a joyful life and a just society.

Moreover, I would argue that we have little choice but to strive tirelessly to find such a form of resolution--if we hope to avert the worst possible outcomes of present trends (such as WMD proliferation and global climate change). In our historical moment, we have a new moral imperative (even greater than we have always had) to figure out how to live joyfully, sustainably, and equitably among all the other creatures with whom we share this dear, fragile planet.

Absent from Freud's account of the origins of internal conflict is any reference to our inherently conflictory existential situation. Or, I should say, that conflict is only implicit in his formulation of the id and the ego. In Our Tragic Flaw (pp. 59-62), I develop the concept of the paradox of existence. This paradox consists of two equally true but conflictory descriptions of our relation to the world around us:

1. (the more common, or secular, understanding) that we are alone in a vast and threatening universe and must fend for ourselves to survive;
2. (the more religious or spiritual understanding) that we are part of a larger whole with which we are densely interconnected, and which supports us in innumerable ways.

As a scientific matter, both of these descriptions are absolutely factual. Psychologically, we continually experience both: for example, when we cry out into the wilderness in hunger, and then we are supplied a warm breast and mother's scent and touch and soothing intonations.

Perhaps the id, the seat of narcissism, represents descriptor (1). But the ego and super-ego fail to represent descriptor (2) in any kind of adequate way. Implicitly, we can see the struggle of the child to balance her aloneness and her interconnectedness through both the ego and super-ego, but neither of these structures acknowledges a factual reality of (2). In short, Freud--like the rest of us in the scientific age--has over-represented (1) and under-represented (2). This, in a nutshell, is my critique of Freud's theory of the origins of internal conflict.

The ultimate origins of internal conflict find form in the antithesis of autonomy and interconnectedness, which is simply an objective fact about our existential situation. In this sense, maturity may be seen (through an endless reiteration of merging and individuation) as synthesis--not by making the two extremes disappear, but by finding a dynamic equilibrium that is continually adjusted and refined as circumstances evolve.

The age of reason, and the scientific revolution to which it has given rise, has had the peculiar effect of blinding modern humankind from the real dynamics of our existential situation. The resulting massive and fraught imbalance threatens to destroy humankind as a whole (if not life itself), just as it has systematically left generations of women and men psychically bereft. If we can restore a proper, truer perspective then synthesis again becomes possible. And then, perhaps, our future as individuals and as a species will acquire a lightness of being for which all of us now yearn.

Very likely, this blog will soon begin to reflect my specific interest in that aspect of social change work more than it has in the past.

 I take myself to be in good company: Freud, Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault, and Slavoj Žižek--to name a few--all combined a deep interest in human psychology with social commentary.

I take the field of psychology, and specifically psychotherapy, to be on the cutting edge of social change work toward a nonviolent society. The reason for this is simple: nonviolence demands more of us psychologically more than most of us are currently able to give. In this sense, we all need therapy. It is precisely to speak more informatively to this need, and to provide the service itself to clients, that I have undertaken this shift in my focus.

I welcome comments from interested readers. Does therapy represent a significant avenue for social change? Is it too bourgeois? Is it irrelvant? Will it never work? Obviously, I have a certain perspective on these questions. I challenge the reader to formulate your own views and bring them forward. (If enough comments are offered, I may create a forum on this site for further discussion. I hope that happens!)

It has been said ad nauseum, and correctly, that Obama hasn't done anything yet that could be regarded as especially--noteworthily--peaceful, except to emphatically NOT be George Bush. And even here, he has been a lot more like Bush than we had reason to believe based on the tone and content of his campaign.

A review of past laureates reveals, I think, three strategies variously used by the committee to choose the winner each year.

1. People who unambiguously represent peace or some related ideal, such as Martin Luther King (1964), Mother Teresa (1979), Desmond Tutu (1984), Elie Wiesel (1986), the Dalai Lama (1989), Aung San Suu Kyi (1991), Nelson Mandela (1993), and others.

2. People who had crossed over from the dark side to become associated with a good and peaceful outcome. These laureates are often coupled with people from the first category. Some examples of the second type from recent decades include Henry Kissinger (1973), Menachem Begin (1978), Mikhail Gorbachev (1990), Frederik Willem de Klerk (1993), Yasser Arafat (1994),  and others.

3. People who have the opportunity to become significant peacemakers in the future, usually an effort by the committee to steer that figure in a peaceful direction. Recent examples include Kim Dae Jung (2000), Kofi Annan (2001), and of course Barack Obama (2009).

Any list that includes Mother Teresa and Henry Kissinger is obviously ambiguous, to say the least. But the list, and especially the timing of the awards these various sorts of people received, shows one obvious pattern: political opportunism. The committee is trying to influence world affairs in a more peaceful direction. If one has an incrementalist (liberal) approach to social change, as the Nobel Peace committee clearly does, this strategy has obvious merit--even if it puts the committee in the awkward position of awarding something called a peace prize to someone so obviously devoid of peaceful intent as Henry Kissinger.

The real question here is whether this strategy actually works. I'm inclined to think that it doesn't, at least not very well. Consider the 1994 three-way prize to Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin, and Shimon Peres. Fifteen years and a couple of intifadas later and still no peace in Israel/Palestine. Not even close.

In my view--which admittedly takes a radical rather than liberal turn--the failure of the Nobel committee's strategy is the failure to distinguish between business-as-usual political processes aimed toward peaceful outcomes and nonviolent processes aimed toward a nonviolent society. To me, a vast gulf separates these two realms. They have almost nothing in common. And yet, in the modern world the word "peace" is thought to apply equally to either.

As long as this remains the case we will continue to have such ridiculous laureates as Barack Obama (not to mention Henry Kissinger), and the cause of peace will make only modest and fleeting gains.

If we really aim for peace, we must aim much, much higher. Then and only then do we stand the remotest chance of actually achieving it.

Wake Up, Freak Out - then Get a Grip from Leo Murray on Vimeo.

Any theory of nonviolence ultimately rests not only on the conviction that violence isn’t necessary but also that the universe is fundamentally— logically — nonviolent. Accordingly, violence causes misery precisely because it conflicts with the deep structure of a nonviolent universe; and, conversely, nonviolence optimizes our experience in the world because it functions in harmony with that structure. Of course, in conventional terms this view seems wildly idealistic; after all, we generally experience a world rife with violence, and we see in our history that violence has been consistently rewarded by conquest and power. As true as this may seem, I believe it is really a trick of perspective, a mirage.

Just as one might look at the two-dimensional rendering of the cube below and see two mutually exclusive interpretations in rapid alternation, so the universe can fl it back and forth rapidly between a violent and nonviolent perspective. If we look closely at the cube, we might notice that in one case the drawn lines don’t quite mesh with the perspective that our brain tries to impose on it, whereas the other provides less cognitive dissonance. In this sense, one view of the cube is logically superior to the other. The same may be said for the violent and nonviolent perspectives. While the violent perspective has been socially dominant throughout most of human history, I would suggest that the nonviolent view is logically dominant — which is to say, it’s more true.

If this is so, then radical social change reduces simply to this one thing: a shift of perspective as chimerical, and ultimately as effortless, as the one we experience while gazing at the representation of the cube. Once experienced, the psychology of violence begins to evaporate, and a new way of being in the world becomes possible. Repairing psychological damage from childhood and subsequent trauma, and developing greater powers of awareness through meditation enhance the mind’s capacity to achieve this crucial shift of perspective. Indeed, such a shift will certainly occur (although no one can predict exactly when or how) if we maintain a sincerity and persistence of practice over time.

Interbeing is the word I have taken from Thich Nhat Hanh to identify the perspective we enjoy when we see the world in its deeply nonviolent aspect, a world that supports and nurtures us, and wherein we experience ourselves to be one with everything, as well as autonomous — as I have described earlier.

This chapter considers in detail some signal aspects of interbeing, especially those relevant to my general theme of nonviolence. In what follows, I can offer only a tentative description of the experience of interbeing based on my own limited experience, and the testimony of people I find credible who claim to have a greater maturity of practice than I. I consider only those features of interbeing that are most widely reported and that are most in accord with my own experience, and leave aside any claims that seem extravagant, unusual, or sectarian.

The sense of interbeing can be felt on many different levels and at many different intensities. I am not suggesting, even remotely, that social change depends on the achievement of Buddhist enlightenment or some kind of Judeo-Christian or Islamic rapture. Those summit experiences may actually occur, and may be enormously helpful to humankind, but they lie well outside the purview of this book. I am proposing, rather, that even a glimpse of interbeing, a first conscious apprehension of that shift of perspective, is sufficient to transform our relationship to the paradox of existence and, in turn, to enable us to begin to heal the world.

Usually, a first taste of interbeing — almost always spontaneous and unbidden — draws a person into the spiritual realm. We become curious about an otherwise inexplicable experience and want to better understand it. More importantly, we want to experience it again, and we want to be able to live our lives more continuously in the wholesome, gracious way that interbeing inherently recommends. But even as we waver back and forth between the usual individualistic perspective and that of interbeing, struggling toward virtue against all the biological, cultural, and personal impediments that pull us back to our fractured selves, a direct experience of interbeing has already transformed the mind and cannot help but promote healing in ourselves and those we touch. Specifically, interbeing raises the specter of nonviolence as an actual practice in the world: It becomes not only an intellectual possibility or a utopian dream, but a way of life.

Interbeing is something that is experienced both forcefully in peak moments of catharsis and continuously as a landscape upon which our lives gradually unfold. I think it likely that most everyone has encountered peak moments (of various heights and intensities) sometime in their lives. Probably more frequently than not, particularly in these secular times, we fail to recognize what has occurred, lacking a vocabulary or conceptual framework to hold it — and most especially when it occurs in childhood (which may be quite common). But these peak moments have no lasting impact on the moral quality of our lives if their revelations are not integrated into our general landscape, becoming the very ground of our actions. So we may say that the quality of our practice is not measured by the number or altitude of our peak experiences, but by the integration of the perspective of interbeing into our everyday thought, speech, and conduct. Though there appears to be a strong correlation between peak experiences and deep and lasting shift s in behavior, it is the behavior that matters in the end, not the peaks themselves.

The somewhat complicated relationship between peak experiences and a continuous sense of interbeing accounts for much of the confusion that has persisted for millennia about the nature of religious experience. I wish to clarify here, however, that interbeing encompasses both aspects of this experience: interbeing can happen all at once, when one senses a spontaneous fusion of Self and Other; and it can happen as a much less intense but lasting shift in worldview that continues to affect our behavior over time.

So the House passed the Waxman-Markey climate-change bill. In political terms, it was a remarkable achievement.

BUT

...212 representatives voted no. A handful of these no votes came from representatives who considered the bill too weak, but most rejected the bill because they rejected the whole notion that we have to do something about greenhouse gases.

And as I watched the deniers make their arguments, I couldn’t help thinking that I was watching a form of treason — treason against the planet.

Hear, hear! At last someone in the mainstream is making this point directly! (Don't forget that you have heard this message here many times, for several years (I refer now to blog posts I wrote under other URLs going back at least as far as 2003.))

Krugman puts a further polish on it here:

But if you watched the debate on Friday, you didn’t see people who’ve thought hard about a crucial issue, and are trying to do the right thing. What you saw, instead, were people who show no sign of being interested in the truth. They don’t like the political and policy implications of climate change, so they’ve decided not to believe in it — and they’ll grab any argument, no matter how disreputable, that feeds their denial.

I wrote a whole book about this very phenomenon. It's called Our Tragic Flaw. You can order it here.

PARIS — “Freedom from fear.” These words, uttered by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in 1990, resound more than ever as a call for help at a time when the Burmese junta has initiated proceedings against her that are as absurd as they are unjustified. We are not fooled: This is a poor pretext to prevent her from participating in the upcoming elections.

“Freedom from fear.” How can one not cry out for freedom for this great lady, Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1991? I met her in Yangon at the end of 2002, just a few months before her endless enforced isolation began. Since her arrest on Thursday, May 14, the thoughts of all those who admire and support her are with the “Lady of Yangon,” a woman full of dignity and finesse, energy and calm, intelligence and compassion.

“Freedom from fear.” It was the living incarnation of these few words who appeared before an audience both mesmerized and awed by this living legend. Her every word was heard by a silent, respectful public, a public that did not dare to sit while she spoke. Simple, yet firm words. Innocent words. Calm and fearless words.

For over 20 years, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi has been struggling in silence and with unshakeable courage, supported by the conviction that “it is not power that corrupts, but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it, and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.” For over 20 years, her refusal of fear accompanies us, mobilizes us, forces us to defend her against a despicable regime.

How can one accept that a woman, whom some call the Gandhi of Burma, could be considered a criminal so dangerous that she must be kept away from all contact with the rest of humanity? For six years, this incredibly determined woman has been under house arrest. She lives in the sole company of two companions in misfortune. Six years of an enforced isolation, even crueler than prison. Six years with no outside contact other than sporadic medical visits, before the arrest of her doctor; or, even more rarely, a meeting with a diplomat.

Six years of isolation, but in reality 19 years of deprivation of freedom. Since the 1990 elections, which saw the victory of the opposition and which should have made her the leader of her country, the junta has deprived the Burmese people of their rights. Freedom has fled this country. For 19 years, the “Lady of Yangon” has known only brief moments of freedom. Her husband died before she could see him again.

This inhumane isolation could have ended on May 27, with the official end of her house arrest, if new proceedings had not been initiated against her under false pretenses. Once again, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi is being persecuted, even though her health is deteriorating and she risks being sentenced to five years of imprisonment, which she may not survive.

The Burmese regime cannot continue to turn a deaf ear to the appeals from all over Europe, America and Asia calling for her release and that of other political prisoners. It cannot ignore indefinitely the demand made with a single voice by the Asia-Europe Ministerial Meeting on May 26 in Hanoi, or the call for dialogue in Myanmar launched a few days earlier, in an unprecedented gesture, by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations — an organization of which Myanmar is a member.

I reiterate forcefully that the release of Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi is a matter of urgency, as Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Nicolas Sarkozy strongly reminded us at their joint press conference on Thursday. Only dialogue with the opposition will bestow legitimacy on the upcoming 2010 elections.

Twenty years after the elections that saw the victory of the National League for Democracy, these elections are vital for the future of this martyred country. Myanmar can no longer remain isolated from the rest of the world. On the contrary, it must rejoin the rest of the world, and the international community is ready to help.

As a start, the military junta should admit that no solution can be found without including Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi in the electoral process. Senior General Than Shwe must understand that she is his best asset to guarantee the unity, the stability and finally the prosperity of the country, and that she is not a threat to his power. If the generals were to listen to the Burmese people, they would in turn free themselves from the fear that their people instill in them.

Bernard Kouchner is the minister of foreign and European affairs of France.