Paige Harbour is a university student who assists me as an editor and in social networking. She is also an astute observer of these times and a brilliant thinker and writer who has her hand on the pulse of the generation born around the beginning of this millennium. I've asked her to write a guest newsletter.  — John Perkins

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When COVID shut down my college campus my school bag was shoved deep into a closet. After more than a year of quarantine and confusion it is still filled with past assignments, printed worksheets ready for the recycling bin. It surprises me how far-away my pre-pandemic memory is situated – these assignments are now hardly recognizable to me. One of these papers was a ten-year plan, meant to be finished for a sociology class, still a blank page.

That semester had involved taking an environmental sciences course; an activity that can be summarized as three months of terrible news. News about all the ways in which humanity had profoundly damaged our only home, news about how all the wrong people were going to suffer immeasurably for these crimes against the planet. We sat listening, cycling through rapt attention and total dissociation. Massive extinction events, cataclysmic fires, rising tides. Threads of synthetic fabric and splintered plastic fragments are in the ground, the water, the food we eat. Did you know Iceland now holds funerals for melting glaciers? It felt as though the world was dying, yet I was expected to continue living. 

Now that I’d been vaccinated, I was back at my favorite bar. With disinterest, I glanced up at the game that was playing on the large TV suspended above the bar’s mirror. Through the long mirror I saw that there were a few people scattered around at the tables, but the bar was empty. 

My phone buzzed. I looked down at the message that had just arrived. It was a quotation from David Suzuki, the Canadian scientist, television commentator, and author who’s famous for his skills at helping audiences understand scientific and environmental issues. 

"The way we see the world shapes the way we treat it. If a mountain is a deity, not a pile of ore; if a river is one of the veins of the land, not potential irrigation water; if a forest is a sacred grove, not timber; if other species are biological kin, not resources. . . we will treat each other with greater respect. Thus, is the challenge, to look at the world from a different perspective."

I glanced back up, meeting my gaze in the mirror. The image that stared back at me raised his mug. “Here’s to looking at the world with new eyes, new perceptions.” He smiled. It was my oldest friend— Juan.

FADE IN
EXT. OUTDOOR RESTAURANT PATIO - DAY

Our protagonist is found sitting in the outdoor patio of a restaurant near his home, enjoying a beer. It has been more than a month since his second COVID vaccination. He feels liberated. The sun is out. Spring has arrived in the Great Northwest— at least for a day or two.

Two women sit at a nearby table, having a loud discussion that our man can’t help overhearing.

    WOMAN #1
My understanding is that these vaccinations can change our DNA. I took them because it was the only way I felt like I would get to see my aging mother and she had taken hers. Now I’m scared to death that my DNA has been altered.

    WOMAN #2
I’ve read quite a bit on this and understand that the two vaccines that alter our mRNA are simply sending messages to the DNA. They don’t actually change the DNA. And their impact is relatively short term, stimulating the body to boost its own process.

This art was created by Walter Spitzer, a Jewish artist who survived Nazi concentration camps by perceiving himself flying back to the idyllic Polish town where he grew up on the back of a pet goat. Spitzer changed his reality. Every night.

Human reality is molded by our perceptions. That is the basis of modern psychotherapy, quantum physics, literature and art, marketing, and just about everything else in our lives. There are no countries, no cultures, no religions, no corporations, no human institutions until we first perceive them. When enough people accept and act on a perception, reality changes. 

The author Jack London devoted an entire book, The Star Rover, to the factual-based story of a prisoner in San Quentin who survived torture and solitary confinement by creating the reality of life outside the prison through what London called “star roving” and Indigenous people know as “shamanic journeying.” 

Spitzer’s boy on his goat looks down at me from where he hangs on my office wall above the chair where my cat Jaggy and I do most of our work. He reminds me that writing is a means for altering perceptions that change reality.   

The title of my latest book, Touching the Jaguar, comes from an Amazonian shaman who told me, “‘Touching the jaguar’ means that you identify your fears and barriers, confront them, alter your perceptions about them, accept their energy, and take actions to change yourself and the world.” This is also the theme of my five-session March 2021 webinar Learning to Enjoy and Prosper from Uncertainty. 

An inherently fascinating and deeply personal story that is as informed and informative as it is thoughtful and thought-provoking, Touching the Jaguar: Transforming Fear into Action to Change Your Life and the World is an extraordinary contribution to our on-going national dialogue and an especially recommended addition to community and academic library collections. It should be noted for the personal reading lists of students, academia, environmentalists, social/political activists, governmental policy makers, and non-specialist general readers.
– Midwest Book Review

June 16, 2020 was the official publication day of Touching the Jaguar. Therefore, it seemed fitting to open this newsletter with that quote from a publication that is very influential among libraries, colleges, academics, and in other literary circles. I know I am boasting a bit – and yet I hope it is appropriate since today is a day to celebrate a book that includes the ideas and lives of many people and organizations. Although it is partly my story, it is far bigger than that. 

During this time of a virus pandemic, climatic cataclysms, racial tensions, species extinctions, terrorism, political upheavals, and countless other crises we ask ourselves: 

What can we do? What can I – each one of us – do?

A few facts about riots, wars, viruses, and economies:

• The recent riots around police brutality, racial inequities and injustice are the worst riots in the US since the 1960’s rebellion against the Vietnam war and racial discrimination.
• Black American COVID-19 mortality is more than 3 ½ times the white mortality rate.
• Real median Black household income is less than $40,000 while for Whites it is 50% higher, at about $60,000 (1);
• More Americans have been killed by the coronavirus in the past few months then were killed during the 15 plus years we fought in the Korean and Vietnam wars;
• The US spends as much money on the military as the next 10 countries combined;
• With just over 4% of the world’s population, the US has recorded nearly one-third of all coronavirus cases, averaging more than 1,100 deaths per day since March; 
• The US economy is by far the richest in the world – its gross domestic product is more than that of the next two countries combined; 
• Three Americans have as much wealth as half the rest of the US population.
• The US has been the leading proponent of a form of predatory corporate capitalism that has resulted in a failed global governmental-social-economic system that economists refer to as a Death Economy. It is the cause of many of our current problems, including the riots, the emergence and spread of the coronavirus, climate change, income inequality, species extinctions and so many others – all are symptoms of this failed system; 

As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr said: “A riot is the language of the unheard.” 

Wouldn’t ya know! The enemy isn’t Russian, Chinese, or even North Korean. It’s not an enemy that the Pentagon can shoot down with a missile. Not one the NRA can aim an AK-47 at, shouting “Make my day!” 
 

It’s just a tiny invisible thing that under the microscope resembles my grandmother’s pin cushion. 
 

But, it’s got us – Russians, Chinese, North Koreans, Americans, everyone – asking:
 

When will the Coronavirus crisis end and we return to normal? 
 

The simple and obvious answer, yet one that may seem difficult to accept, is: “Never.” 
 

Never?
 

Yup. The old normal is gone. Global catastrophes like wars and the Great Depression change the world forever and this pandemic will have similar impacts to those of a major war or depression. Except the enemy is invisible. We won’t be breaking any bent-knees-general’s sword or demanding surrender conditions from a bomb-vested terrorist.

The Prophecy of the Eagle and Condor probably began more than two thousand years ago. It says: “Back in the mists of history, human societies took two routes. The Eagle peoples flew the path of the mind, of science, technology, and industry. The Condor peoples flew the path of the heart, of passion, intuition, and spiritual connections with nature.” It goes on to explain that for centuries they would never meet. Then in the Fourth Pachacuti (in Quichua, the language of the Andes, a five hundred– year interval), which began in about 1500 AD on our calendar, their paths would cross; the Eagle would nearly drive the Condor into extinction. But not quite. The prophecy says that five hundred years later, at the beginning of the Fifth Pachacuti—now—the opportunity arises for the Eagle and the Condor to fly together, to mate, and to produce a new offspring, higher consciousness

History confirms the first prophecy. Columbus, 1492. The Eagle swept into Condor territory and almost wiped out the Indigenous peoples. But not quite. 

Now, five hundred years later the prophecy is being fulfilled again. The Eagle and Condor are coming together to create higher consciousness. It is happening! Indigenous teachers have invited us to learn their ways. There is a deep interest in traditional nature-based wisdom and shamanism among industrialized people around the world.