We, the people who live in the wealth-concentrating society, find ourselves daily "breathing the air" of a sort of "money consciousness." We feel cravings for more things, bigger houses, bigger cars, etc. We focus on getting more money as a way of filling our cravings.

I and some of my friends are finding that, when we carefully examine our cravings, what we actually want is deeper bonding with friends and family. But it's hard to notice this when we're surrounded with so much striving for money and things.

This is why I picked out getting closer with our already-friends and getting to know new friends, as an effective route to Peace on Earth. As we start to fill our desire for closer bonding, the craving for "more and more stuff" fades. This will make it easier to move away from the wealth-concentrating mentality which is so much the "engine of war."

-- Weaponry is made to be destroyed. Bombs are for blowing up. Billion-dollar planes and tanks are expected to be blown up, too.

-- The value of ordinary goods and resources cycles round and round through the economy as they are used. For example, a truck is used to carry boards to build a house, the house is a place to raise new human beings. But weapons are a dead-end item. They produce no further value by their use -- not to mention that they destroy lives and buildings.

We can decide whether we can afford the waste of resources -- the drain on our economy -- of building and using weaponry. Especially at this moment in history, when humans are pretty well using all that the Earth has to offer, it's a good time to ask "Is this how we want to use resources that, from now on, are going to be increasingly precious to us?"

And once that question is asked, THEN we finally can start to seriously look into other ways of getting along with the rest of the world. We live in an exciting time!

Any time we earn or spend money, there is a percentage that gets ripped-off. That is what "exploitation" means.

1) When we get paid for our work, the company pays us less than the actual value of our work. The part they don't pay us goes to make up part of the company's profit.

2) When we buy something, we pay for more than we actually get. The amount we over-pay makes up part of the producing company's profit.

3) When we borrow money (this includes using a credit card) to buy something, most of the interest we pay on the borrowed money is a profit to the bank.

4) When we buy food and other things that come from far away, not only does some of the price go to oil for transportation across continents and oceans -- the giant food and oil corporations make additional profits on that transportation.

We can divert resources over to an economy of peace, by being less involved in the money cycle. We can earn less, spend less, borrow less, and buy locally-grown-and-made. Every time we earn, spend, or borrow less money, we get to keep the part that would have been ripped-off and use that time and energy in other ways.

We can turn these "saved" resources towards building a peaceful, people-oriented world. We live in an exciting time!

Here are some examples of life goals that might turn out to be more fun than making lots of money. You can add your own ideas. I don't mean you should do all of them -- any one of them would be a great life-project, depending on your interests.

-- To re-design one's home and transportation for better fuel efficiency and to make it easy for people to enjoy one another.

-- To make our own music, art, and comedy, and in so doing, celebrate our family and neighbors.

-- To raise a lot of our own food (there are ways to do this even in the city) and support nearby farmers who use sustainable methods.

-- To get to know people who are "different" from us and gather everyone's ideas into local projects and celebrations.

-- To encourage small, local businesses that are owned and run by the people who actually work there. (This is different from communism, where businesses are owned by the government.)

-- To learn several languages, and to make friends among people who speak those languages.

Many of us are already headed in directions like these, but maybe haven't admitted it yet. These are roads into new territory -- beyond the war economy. We live in an exciting time!

The world's children are the ones who will be growing up to find solutions for the difficulties and unworkabilities that the war society has gotten us into. The whole world needs the children to be more inventive and more bonding-oriented than our generation has had a chance to be.

Some of the time and energy that we divert from the profit-oriented economy, when we earn and spend less money, can be allocated to increasing the inventiveness of children.

We can pay attention to a child while she or he learns about and explores the world in her or his own way. Children make excellent use of adults' attention, to learn about things they are interested in.

An eskimo grandmother once said to Robert Coles, who studies children of different cultures: "When you go to our children, try to become like a friendly tree that they will want to sit near." This is the approach that is so helpful to children when we can manage to be that way.

Any half-hour that you can focus on a child -- just being there quietly paying attention while she follows her own interests, and helping in whatever ways she asks for -- will be repaid to us all many times over, in the clearer thinking and greater inventiveness of that child when she grows up. You don't get better payback than that!

Eventually we will be able to give every child, every day, an hour or more of an adult's "friendly tree" attention. School will be really different! and we will begin to see how inventive humans can grow up to be, in ways we haven't even imagined yet. We live in an exciting time!

Those are some ways we can deliberately shift our personal resources and goals toward a more respectful and caring economy -- towards Peace on Earth. By earning less and spending less, we recoup some of our own time and energy that would have been ripped-off by the profit economy. We can turn some of that saved energy towards other kinds of goals.

You can set up a situation that will help you practice the part that is hardest for you to do.

I lived in a 24-foot travel trailer in an RV park for several years. It gave me a good reason to get rid of a lot of "stuff" that I didn't really need. If I wanted to buy something new, something else had to go to make room for it. I got a lot of practice in asking, "Do I really need this?" and "Is this more important to me than the thing that will have to go?"

Another time I needed practice in "knowing what I want." I would go for walks in the neighborhood, and at every street corner I would ask myself which way I wanted to turn. Sometimes I'd get halfway down the block, realize I'd made a "mistake," and go back and turn a different way!

Talk with your friends about a life-goal that might interest you, different from making a lot of money. Just get started in a small way. Once you start, you'll find out whether you enjoy the particular rewards of this path, and if so, you can divert more of your energy to the new goal.

If you and some friends start "diverting" together, you'll have each other to think with and can encourage each other through the challenges. We live in an exciting time!