When young people ask me for advice today, I generally say, “Decide what is sacred to you, and put your best life energies at its service. Make that … - Starhawk

You don’t have to be a black-flag-waving anarchist to be outraged by this shortsightedness. Anyone who loves capitalism should be especially maddened — -because solutions and alternative sources of energy do exist that could enable us to transition swiftly from our fossil-fuel-based economy to one that runs on clean, renewable energy sources that don’t contribute to global warming.

On some deep cosmic level, we are all one, and within us we each contain the potential for good and for destruction, for compassion and hate, for generosity and greed. But even if I acknowledge the full range of impulses within myself, that doesn't erase the differences between a person acting from compassion and love, and another choosing to act from hate and greed. Moreover, it doesn't erase my responsibility to challenge a system which furthers hate and greed. If I don't resist such a system, I am complicit in what it does. I join the perpetrators in oppressing the victims.

That is exactly what nobody seems to grasp about this karma business. It’s not a simple matter of cause and effect, reward and punishment. It’s a question of what’s available. You see, as long as life for the majority of souls on this planet is just a long round of starvation, misery, torture, and early death — and believe me, outside this fortunate watershed that is an apt description of the state of affairs — as long as only a few live in comfort while the masses scrape along in want, then all us returning souls have to take our fair share of shifts among the hungry. You think this life you’ve lived was tough? Let me tell you, it was just R and R between the ones where you never get a solid meal two days running or you die before your first birthday from drinking bad water.