You’ve probably seen the latest issue of New Statesman, where Russell Brand took over as guest editor. The theme he chose was 'Revolution of Consciousness', and his high-profile presence has already guaranteed that the issue got noticed and splashed on prime time British TV.

Brand’s argument is that there’s no good reforming what we have or giving the job to the ‘hot, clammy, grasping palms of Cameronn and Osborne’ (the current British prime minister and chancellor of the exchequer, respectively).

You’ve probably seen the latest issue of New Statesman, where Russell Brand took over as guest editor. The theme he chose was 'Revolution of Consciousness', and his high-profile presence has already guaranteed that the issue got noticed and splashed on prime time British TV.

Brand’s argument is that there’s no good reforming what we have or giving the job to the ‘hot, clammy, grasping palms of Cameronn and Osborne’ (the current British prime minister and chancellor of the exchequer, respectively).

‘David Cameron said in his conference speech that profit is “not a dirty word”,’ says Brand. ‘Profit is the most profane word we have. In its pursuit we have forgotten that while individual interests are being met, we as a whole are being annihilated.”

Elsewhere he writes: ‘Atheism and materialism atomize us and anchor us to one frequency of consciousness and inhibit necessary cooperation. . .’ A man after my own heart.

Brand and the many other contributors in this issue – Alec Baldwin, Naomi Klein, David Lynch and many others – essentially argue what Albert Einstein argued a century ago: we cannot reform a world with the same mindset that created it. And we can’t heal the current paradigm with any sort of Band-aid.

As Jamie Kelsey-Fry says, quoting Howard Zinn: ‘Civil Disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience.’ 

And Brand:  ‘We require a change that is beyond the narrow, prescriptive parameters of the current debate, outside the fortress of our current system.’

Brand says that we need to create a new revolutionary movement and revitalize the traditions of civil disobedience: ‘Our young people need to know there is a culture, a strong, broad union, that they can belong to, that is potent, virile and alive. . . .Take to the streets together with the understanding that the feeling that you aren't being heard or seen or represented isn't psychosis; it's government policy.'

I applaud Brand, Baldwin and all the celebrities in this issue for putting this issue front and center as a talking point on the international stage. But what’s missing in the magazine (and in most discussions of evolution) is a map for how all of us can participate, individually and as a group, in an organized system of evolutionary change.

The biggest problem we face is our false sense of powerlessness. We are the most powerful generation, ever. We have a free and simple means, via the internet, to organize the entire planet in a system beyond the scope of any political party.

Here are a few preliminary thoughts of my own about what's really necessary:

• Making a revolutionary change of heart in each one of us, which truly recognizes on some visceral level, that we– friend and foe alike – are ultimately connected and that nature has designed us to cooperate, not compete.
• Rejecting the mental hard drive we’ve all been programmed with that applauds and encourages the ‘I win/you lose’ mentality – competitive individualism at another’ as expense.
• Learning to see holism and to relate in holism.
• Learning to organize in small and large groups.
• Organizing all those yearning for change over the internet as one vast consumer body, which will do the following 
  • Get political. Identify and vote out any politician supportive of the corrupt economic system that is killing the planet and denying you access to life-supportive foods and natural medicines.
  • Vote with your purse. Stop buying and supporting any product that is harming the planet or other living things, including dangerous or ineffective prescription and non-prescription drugs, processed or GM foods, refined sugar, tobacco products and various toxic chemicals
  • Get the true story.  Stop believing the lies of the corporate media.  They’re in the pocket of industry. Create a new one.
  • Join together all t
    he ‘dots’ – all the many hundreds of thousands of smaller groups wedded to evolutionary change but presently small and powerless
  • Create a unified, highly organized non-violent movement over the internet that empowers everyone with the tools for peaceful rejection of the current system and peaceful evolution to a safer, fairer, healthier and more inclusive society.
  • Ask celebrities like Russell Brand to help put up the cash to create what amounts to a kind of revolutionary LIVE AID.

Let me know your thoughts about this and any further ideas. If you are interested in such a movement, send me, via my Facebook page (www.facebook.com/LynneMcTaggart2011) what skill sets you have to assist in getting such a movement off the ground.