This doesn’t happen if people turn up their iPods and refuse to get involved. In that case, yeah, greed and war are inevitable. But I can’t take the cynical view that we’ve come so far just to throw up our hands and say “too hard, too confusing, I want my MTV.” I’ve been places where that way of thinking just doesn’t enter in to the picture, and I’ve been places where it IS the picture. Which category does this country fall into?

Conflict is boring. I want to see what people can do when they pool resources. That’s the real rush – not competition.

[sentenced edited due to explicit language] As long as people focus on money as the source of “happiness,” they’ll discard the larger resources of tradition, volunteering, community…

We’ve got to move beyond the acute narcissism we’re living under, turn off the TV and TALK to one another. Not via the ‘net, not via texting: eyes-open, roll-up-your-sleeves, hands-on “What-ails-thee-brother.”

I’m not talking about hippies and communists, and we’ll never progress if we keep reverting to those icons. They’re extinct. We need a new table to work from.

I’ve seen it work and I’ve seen it fail – and the traveler’s laments are always the same: “Why don’t we have that back home?” joined with “Why can’t these people have what we do back home?” But I promise it’ll never happen if people wait to have it sold to them.

It may never be paradise but it doesn’t have to be hell, either.