Spirituality has to play an important role, particularly in resistance movements. The institutions we are fighting against - corporations and governments - use alienation as one of their primary weapons. A big part of their messaging is intended to make people feel separated from each other, which disempowers them, which makes them ever easier to exploit. This is really a spiritual weapon they are using. It isolates people and breaks their spirit.

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.

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.

Part of the reason I embrace nonviolence is that it's the most effective thing we can do. It's a more advanced tactic than violence. If people who engage in violence want to escalate their tactics, they would escalate to nonviolence.

It's really hard to change the world when your first priority is making sure that the little world around yourself doesn't change.

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