Religious communities have historically been designed to counteract the forces of alienation. That's why so many successful social movements have relied upon the strength of spiritual communities and a large base of their organizing has been through them.

What one person can do is to plant the seeds of love and outrage in the hearts of a movement. And if those hearts are fertile ground, those seeds of love and outrage will grow into a revolution.

If we're constantly suppressing our strong, heavy emotions - like fear and anger and outrage and sadness - it weakens us. But when we're not afraid to confront the hard emotions - when we don't turn away from the pain and the suffering of the world - it builds the confidence that we can do whatever we need to do.

Excess consumption doesn't make people happy. We can continue to provide for our needs, but we can't continue the endless pursuit of ever more consumer goods. There is no energy source that can provide enough consumer goods to meet our human and emotional needs; there never has been, and that's why it's been such a fruitless pursuit.

We think we have no power when in fact we have more than enough power.

Going through intense change with an ignorant and apathetic citizenry, driven by a corporate agenda, is a really, really scary proposition. But going into it with an educated and empowered citizenry that feels it can determine the course of its society and can hold its corporations and governments accountable has a lot of power and potential to it. To me, that's what makes activism so important.

Alienation is perhaps the most effective tool of control in America, and every reminder of our real connectedness weakens that tool.