September 17, 2004
We would like to provide a picture of what John Mack was doing a week before his passing. On September 17th, six weeks before the American Presidential election, he was in Manchester New Hampshire.
He shared this email (composed originally as a letter to his sons) with several of his close friends, so we would like to present it here so that it may in some way make John’s passion for a better future more real to people:
September 13, 2004
Senator John Edwards and many other Americans believe that Vice President Cheney “crossed the line” when he said that if we chose John Kerry instead of George Bush “we’ll be hit again and we’ll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States.” But I believe that line was crossed many months ago when President Bush and his administration chose to manipulate the minds of our people by relentlessly threatening us with the danger of terrorist attacks. Because the terrorist danger is real, it is especially important that our capacity to assess the risk we face not be distorted for political gain.
MANY NATIONAL leaders understand that it is not difficult to rally the populace and stifle criticism while a war is going on. A leader has only to emphasize a threat to national security and the need to “support the troops.” Even doubt and searching analysis may be called unpatriotic while the conflict rages.
ABSTRACT – “Without understanding what breeds these acts and drives the terrorists to do what they do … we have little chance of preventing further such actions, let alone of ‘eradicating terrorism.’” Harvard psychiatrist John Mack identifies three levels of causes: immediate, proximate, and deeper. Focusing on deeper causes, he shows how they are rooted in the nature of our minds, of consciousness itself.
Some years ago as I began my clinical work with people who have experienced what many describe as “alien encounters,” I did not imagine that a central part of what I would learn would be how cultures lose opportunities to develop when the testimony of those whose experiences lie outside of what is generally endorsed is dismissed. In my thirteen years of study, I have seen personally both the loss for the culture and the emotional and spiritual damage done to the witnesses themselves when their observations and insights are not valued or are altogether denied.
The New York Times | Op-Ed
November 30, 2000
In his remarkable new book, Trickster Makes This World, Lewis Hyde shows us that many cultures know — by different names — a rebellious, god-like figure that brings about fundamental change. He is called Hermes in ancient Greece, Coyote among the Indians of the American plains and Monkey in the Buddhist world.
Trickster is providence’s representative — a kind of savior sent when a society is in crisis and no longer serving the needs of its people.
This paper was prepared in advance of a conference that was cosponsored by The Marion Foundation, The Center for Process Studies, and John Mack’s organization. See endnote for details.
The planet is facing the likelihood of environmental degradation and collapse in the near future unless humanity undertakes a radical shift in direction. Yet we conduct our individual and collective lives as if we were helpless to change course, or, worse yet, as if this impending catastrophe was not real.
There is a vast range of reported human experiences that cannot be understood by the laws and mechanisms of Western science
If we do not speak for earth, who will? If we are not committed to our own survival, who will be?
—Carl Sagan
In his December 7th, 1988 address to the United Nations General Assembly, Mikhail Gorbachev projected a vision of power different from the military and political expressions we have become accustomed to hearing from world leaders. “All of us,” he said, “and primarily the stronger of us, must exercise self-restraint and totally rule out any outward-oriented use of force.” Nuclear weapons, Gorbachev said, have symbolized “absolute military power,” but at the same time have “revealed the absolute limits of that power.”
When we consider the fame of T. E. Lawrence and what has drawn people, including myself, to the man and his legend, we look to his achievements as a military strategist during the Arab Revolt in World War I and his influence in shaping the boundaries of the Middle East in the post-war period. But it is his vision of possibilities for the region’s future which has, above all, accounted for Lawrence’s enduring interest for many people. In this talk I will look at this vision and relate it to the present circumstances in the Near East. I will also offer suggestions about what might be done to bring the reality closer to the possibilities that Lawrence foresaw.