Marilyn Ferguson: Power

“A leaderless but powerful network is working to bring about radical change in the United States. Its members have broken with certain key elements of Western thought, and they may even have broken continuity with history. This network is the Aquarian Conspiracy. It is a conspiracy without a political doctrine. Without a manifesto. With conspirators who seek power only to disperse it, and whose strategies are pragmatic, even scientific, but whose perspective sounds so mystical that they hesitate to discuss it. Activists asking different kinds of questions, challenging the establishment from within.”

Marilyn Ferguson

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter One, The Conspiracy

Change , History , Question

“The spirit of our age is fraught with paradox. It is at the same time pragmatic and transcendental. It values both enlightenment and mystery… power and humility … interdependence and individuality. It is simultaneously political and apolitical. Its movers and shakers include individuals who are impeccably Establishment allied with one-time sign-carrying radicals.”

Marilyn Ferguson

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Introduction

Time , Age

“Although I am unacquainted with astrological lore, I was drawn to the symbolic power of the pervasive dream in our popular culture: that after a dark, violent age, the Piscean, we are entering a millennium of love and light—in the words of the popular song, "The Age of Aquarius," the time of "the mind's true liberation."”

Marilyn Ferguson

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Introduction

Time , Light , Dreams , Age

“There also must be an internal critique of injustices, of the management of material and human resources, and of abuses of political power. Above all, there must be criticism of the culture itself: its morality, religion, customs, and arts. And there must be demand for respect of the individual's uniqueness, with the society regarded as the medium for individual development and for brotherhood.”

Marilyn Ferguson

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Five, The American Matrix for Transformation

Religion , Art

“The Original Dream. We have forgotten how radical that original dream was—how bold the founders of the democracy really were. They knew that they were framing a form of government that challenged all the aristocratic assumptions and top-heavy power structures of Western history. The Revolutionaries exploited every available means of communication. They linked their networks by energetic letter writing. Jefferson designed an instrument with five yoked pens for writing multiple copies of his letters. The new ideas were spread through pamphlets, weekly newspapers, broadsides, almanacs, and sermons.”

Marilyn Ferguson

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Five, The American Matrix for Transformation

Democracy , History , Dreams , Communication

“The worldwide quest for community typified by the networks of the Aquarian Conspiracy is an attempt to boost that attenuated power. To cohere. To kindle wider consciousness.”

Marilyn Ferguson

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Twelve, Human Connections: Relationships Changing

Communication

“We are in the early morning of understanding our place in the universe and our spectacular latent powers, the flexibility and transcendence of which we are capable.”

Marilyn Ferguson

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Nine, Flying and Seeing: New Ways to Learn

Universe , Understanding

“The new political awareness has little to do with parties or ideologies. Its constituents don't come in blocs. Power that is never surrendered by the individual cannot be brokered. Not by revolution or protest but by autonomy, the old slogan becomes a surprising fact: Power to the people. One by one by one.”

Marilyn Ferguson

Source: The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Seven, Right Power, p. 240

People

“Transformation is no longer lightning but electricity. We have captured a force more powerful than the atom, a worthy keeper of all our other powers.”

Marilyn Ferguson

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Thirteen, The Whole- Earth Conspiracy

“Because human choice remains sacrosanct and mysterious, none of us can guarantee a transformation of society. Yet there is reason to trust the process. Transformation is powerful, rewarding, natural. It promises what most people want...The new world is the old—transformed.”

Marilyn Ferguson

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Thirteen, The Whole- Earth Conspiracy

World , People , Nature

“We can begin anywhere—everywhere. "Let there be peace," says a bumper sticker, "and let it begin with me." Let there be health, learning, relationship, right uses of power, meaningful work.... Let there be transformation, and let it begin with me.”

Marilyn Ferguson

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Thirteen, The Whole- Earth Conspiracy

Peace , Learning , Health

“The discovery of freedom, for instance, means little if we are not empowered to act, to be free for something, not just from something. As fear falls away, we are less afraid of power's Siamese twin, responsibility.”

Marilyn Ferguson

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Seven, Right Power

Fear , Freedom

“Just so, our natural power is sapped by the parasites of the centuries: fear, superstition, a view of reality that reduces life's wonders to creaking machinery. If we starve these parasitic beliefs they will die.”

Marilyn Ferguson

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Seven, Right Power

Fear , Life , Reality , Nature

“In the spirit of the Eightfold Path of Buddha, with its injunctions about Right Livelihood, Right Speech, and so on, we might also think in terms of Right Power—power used not as a battering ram or to glorify the ego but in service to life. Appropriate power.”

Marilyn Ferguson

Source: The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Seven, Right Power, p.190

Life , Thinking