Open your front door and walk outside.  What do you see?  If you're like the huge majority of Americans, you'll see a street, parking lot, or other area designed specifically for the use of automobiles.  Although there may be a sidewalk between you and the street, it is likely that you'll see more cars than pedestrians.  Go back inside; turn on your TV.  What do you see?  Some "reality" show?  A so-called news program covering the latest celebrity breakdown?  The latest political inanity?  Family Guy?  Quite possibly the first thing you'll see is commercials, and they are virtually all for consumer goods or drugs of one sort or another.  Go into your kitchen and open the cabinets and fridge.  What's there?  Do you have any idea where it came from originally or how it was produced, or, more frighteningly, manufactured?  If you're like most Americans, what food you see is thousands of miles away from its source and is full of chemicals that have nothing to do with food.  Look around your kitchen and check out all the appliances and lights that run on electricity.  Turn on the faucet and observe the water that results.  What do you know about the way these resources are produced and used?  Walk out to your car and start the engine.  What you hear is the sound of an internal combustion engine burning gasoline or diesel fuel.  Do you know or think about how this fuel is acquired, processed, and used?  The list of things to look at and really think about is virtually endless.  It can very easily be overwhelming; it is often easier for us to simply not think about it all.  After all, much of this may seem harmless at first glance.  Why does it matter, and why should it matter to us individually?

At Wheels Of Change, we believe that not only do the things and processes around us matter, we believe that they should matter to us as individuals.  We believe that the way that these things and processes affect us in our modern world - and the way we affect them - is less than ideal, and we could stand to examine them a little more closely.  Furthermore, we believe that these things and processes are part of one huge whole, and that you can't begin to tug on any one of them without disturbing another one, or several.  We believe very strongly in the interconnectedness of all things, a belief that flies somewhat in the face of our culture's general western reductionist thought patterns, but a belief that makes much sense once you begin to think about it.  Most importantly, we believe that this system, our culture, the entire enchilada, is fundamentally flawed.  Houston, we have a big problem, and it isn't just a few little things here and there.  Those little things here and there all have roots which grow in the same soil, and that soil is poisoned (literally as well as metaphorically).

Just in case you are skeptical, take, for example, your food.  If indeed you are like most Americans, your food was grown or raised in a chemically-intensive manner thousands of miles away from your home, shipped in a highly energy-intensive manner to your local grocery, and bought at a huge markup from the farmer's share by you.  It's likely you dragged three or four thousand pounds of gasoline-powered metal, machinery, and upholstery along with you to the grocery, just to transport 10 pounds of groceries back to your home.  There are several easily accessible causal chains to follow here; the chemicals that are used to grow your food are degenerative to your health, which, along with our propensity to drive everywhere, may cause health problems down the road, leading you to "need" some of those drugs they are advertising more and more frequently on your TV.  The chemical-laden soil the food is grown in can no longer support plant life on its own, so more and more chemicals are added, raising costs to the farmer and to the environment.  The fuel-intensive growing methods and transportation involved, not to mention your drive to the grocery, increase our need for crude oil, thereby increasing air pollution, thereby increasing health and environmental problems.  This demand for more oil also leads us as a country to go to war with oil-producing nations to assure us of a stable source of an inherently unstable and finite fuel, diminishing our status throughout the world and weakening our military for cases in which it actually might be needed.  The more fuel costs, the more prices will rise for the end consumer - you - and profits will drop for the producer - the farmer, who already has to be heavily subsidized or deeply into gigantic factory-style farming to actually turn even a small profit.  Due in large part to the mind-numbing programming that reaches millions during the evening TV hours, our leaders are able to easily mislead us into unethical conflicts over fuel that cost hundreds of thousands of lives, just because what they say seems serious and official compared to the sickening fluff we fill the rest of our media with.  Once again, you could go on and on with just this one example.  However, it should serve to show that things are not always as simple as they seem.  Each little chain in this tiny example has its own host of causal chains attached to it, and so on and so on in everything around us.  There is nothing we do that does not in turn affect a thousand other things.

Even if you're tempted, don't dismiss this as "liberal, hippie drivel"; try to look past the words and see what the point is.  That, simply, is that we have some major, tangled-up problems in our modern world, and that they are all connected by varying degrees.  There are some other important points that follow this one. 

First, one of our biggest problems, one that affects absolutely every other problem we have, is that Americans (as a culture) have extremely low awareness of the problems before us.  We simply do not see things as they really are; sure, we feel, the world has its troubles, but things are generally okay.  After all, we hear about global warming on the nightly news, but the neighbor has a Prius, so things are looking up!  Nothing could be further from the truth.  The scope of problems before us, and the immense depth of each one, and the huge number of ties from one problem to all others, is simply not recognized in our culture as a whole.  This should be evident after one takes into account how much media attention is given to, say, Britney's latest breakdown, as opposed to anything that actually matters even a little bit.  How, then, are we supposed to begin solving problems if we're not even meaningfully aware they exist?  This our first objective at Wheels Of Change - to raise awareness of the problems we face to a meaningful level, through factual and philosophical means.

Second, if people are aware of some of the problems we face, they often feel as if there is nothing they can do to help change things.  Solutions to such large, far-reaching problems seem out of reach, and things that we can each do day to day to help out seem rather like throwing thimblefuls of water on a forest fire.  But there are things we can do everyday.  There are partial solutions that, when taken together with efforts from others, become more than the sum of the parts and begin to change things for the better.  The most important thing to realize here is that instead of trying to fix our broken system from within, keeping the foundation and framework intact, those of us that want to change things for the better are better off stepping outside the current system and beginning to build as best as possible from the ground up.  A bottom-up, grassroots movement often works better than a top-down movement, as grassroots movements are built around the people's will and top-down movements are often just attempts at legislating virtue, which has been widely proven impossible.  Although the beginnings of a grassroots movement may seem like the aforementioned thimblefuls of water, once it reaches a certain critical mass everything can change very quickly.  Admittedly it is impossible to some degree to step completely outside of our current system, as it is so ingrained in every daily interaction and state of being, but we can try and do our best to discard the old ideas while building the new.  This is our second objective at Wheels Of Change - to raise awareness of practical, everyday solutions or partial solutions to our problems, things that almost anyone can do every day to change the way they live and see the world, and the way that others see them.

Third, even if people have the first two things down - they're aware of both the problems and solutions to those problems - it is quite easy to become discouraged.  After all, throwing thimblefuls of water on a raging forest fire is not particularly exciting or heartening, given that your purpose is putting the forest fire out.  Once you start digging into the problems around us and the interconnectedness that makes them so insidious, it is easy to feel overwhelmed.  But given enough thimblefuls, eventually you start to tame the blaze - and the only way to get to a bucketful is to start one tiny bit at a time.  This is our third objective at Wheels Of Change - to encourage people to take action in their everyday lives, and to take satisfaction in action for the principle of it, even if there are no immediate results beyond their own lives.  We want our culture to be an engaged, responsible, happy one.  Without contentedness and joy there is no possibility of real change.

Our culture has become characterized by disconnectedness.  We're disconnected from our families, our communities, our food, even our own instincts.  We have increasingly fewer direct ties to that which sustains us - this planet we call Earth.  Our disconnectedness has reached a crescendo pitch, evidenced by facts like our continued appetites for large, gas-sucking modes of transportation in the face of increasingly scarce crude oil supplies.  Or that we will believe almost anything we are told about... well, anything.  Our way of life is no longer sustainable, and no matter how we wish it were, the facts will not change.  The truth never accommodates.  And the truth is that we are going to have to change.  If there are practices, ways of living, to which we have become accustomed that are no longer appropriate, we must change them.  And when our American lifestyle is doing nothing but ruining the planet - physically, culturally, diplomatically - for future generations, that lifestyle is no longer appropriate.  We are simply letting the future be the victim of our postponed suicide.  This is not to mention the injustices we currently perpetrate against various peoples around the globe.  That is not right by any ethical standard.  And not thinking about it does not absolve us of blame.

Our vision is of a culture that recognizes and values interconnectedness.  As such, this culture would encourage people to think for themselves, to have awareness of what they do daily and how it affects everything around them.  We envision a culture full of deep-seated contentedness, one where each person has fairly direct ties to the actualities of human life.  A culture in which we don't have to numb ourselves to double-speak and corruption.  A culture in which we don't have to kill other humans for resources.  Most of all, we envision a culture in which critical thought and debate are alive and well, so that we can continue to determine what is true and what path we should take based on that truth, instead of just relying on what a powerful, special-interested select few tell us.

The time is now.  That crescendo pitch is at an ear-splitting level, and there are two ways for this story to end.  One, we let ourselves run straight into the brick wall we're headed towards.  Two, we apply the brakes and turn the wheel.  You decide.  The word "sustainable" is more than just a current buzz-word - it is everything our culture is not right now, and it means that we cannot continue like this.

At Wheels Of Change, we believe that it is possible to change before it is too late.  We believe in the American ability to band together in times of great adversity.  We believe that as in times past, Americans can act responsibly, if only they see the need.  The current enemy we are facing is particularly insidious - it resides right here, in our homes, our workplaces, our lives.  It does not reside in the Middle East or have a face to pin crimes on.  It is within us, and the effort required to trump it is no less than that required to defeat the great forces against us in the Second World War.  Sure, it's idealistic.  But idealism is precisely what we need right now - someone has to step up, and we want to be on the front lines.

This is our call to action; please join us.  Help us make our world a better place, one that can be around for future generations to occupy and enjoy.