New hope for the world

Walking into the dimly-lit room of the Pachamama Alliance's 'Awakening the Dream' symposium at Fullerton College, a row of candles burned as if representing the faint flicker of hope shining through the bleakness of our current situation.

A group of 80 students sat to watch a video that painted a somber picture: decertified land and cleared forests resulting in drought, famine and air that has become so polluted that children find it hard to breathe, watching more species becoming extinct because humans are making it impossible for them to survive.

The picture was meant to provoke a sense of awareness and guilt, especially with college students, typically putting over 200,000 miles on their cars, buying shoes that are only worn once, leaving electronic devices running all-day long and more.

The Pachamama Alliance intends to stir this kind of reaction among audience members in order for them to feel responsible for actions that have hurt other people, plants, animals, the air, the sea and the land.

The Achuar, indigenous people in Ecuador, believe that we have been under the reign of the Eagle for the past 500 years, a materialistic society focused on benefiting humans.

The Condor is the polar opposite of the Eagle, representing a spiritual ideology that is sensitive to nature. The Achuar predict that the domination of the consumerist society is about to end, ushering in a fusion of the two parallel ideologies, one that balanced and interconnected with the entire week of life that exists on earth.

One reasoning is that the loneliness and unhappiness people experience causes a greedy grapple for stuff, an easy way to fill the void in our lives.

A spiritual connection with the earth and with each other will satisfy this need in our hearts.

As this happens, the need for material things will no longer have precedence. As activist Julia Buttefly Hill pointed out during one of the video segments, "We cannot have peace on the earth unless we have peace with the earth."

The assumption that humans are separate from the earth and each other, living as units of one, propels us a lifestyle that is self-gratifying at the expense of other people, the environment, and all other life forms.

This ideology encourages a disregard for our actions and what affect they might be having on the planet. This is why the gap continues to widen between the standard of living in America and the standard of living in a third-world country in West Africa.

The four-hour symposium concluded by stating the important connection that lies between the environment, social justice and spiritual fulfillment.

Only if we feel responsible will we actually try to do something about it. The discussion was centered around influencing change by moving us, by imparting a sense of responsibility. In making small modifications in our way of life and ideology, our actions can follow.

This is the ultimate goal of the Pachamama Alliance, not just to awaken us, but to "change the dream," itself.