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Peace will not be the end, unless...
War is the full expression of human confusion. If there is ever to be an age without war, it will begin when one powerful nation does not turn to war. If such a time is to come, it will be preceded by a moment when the people of that nation realize there is strength in nonviolence. This is the cause of a renewed movement for peace in the United States, a movement that does not seek to isolate and radicalize, but to unite the widest variety of people around a core of common values.
More of the American people oppose the wars abroad now then since the wars began. There is an opportunity inherent in this trend to forge new alliances between disparate groups. Fringe movements comprised of radicalized individuals have demonstrated themselves to be ineffective, counterproductive and dangerous for the individuals who participate. Overcoming the fear and resentment that is often the source of radicalism is critical to effecting real change in the world.
Individuals have never been so interconnected and never has there been such capacity for communication, yet we retain the qualities and so the limitations of the individual. There is however the opportunity to awaken from these limitations, and entirely reorganize our communities, if only we are willing to overcome ourselves. This is the difficulty of a renewed movement for peace.
Culture defines us and culture divides us, it is time to overcome culture. To transcend national boundaries and personal loyalties and learn to trust one another, this is the challenge we are faced with. If we see that we are the product of an evolutionary process, and that our culture too is a product of this evolution, do we acquire the capacity to escape them both and create ourselves anew as we imagine ourselves to be? In the beginning God created man in his own image, it is time humanity was remade in an image born of its own imagination.
I do not think that the Reverend Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi selected nonviolence only because it was morally right. They chose nonviolence because they had no power to force change. Choosing violence would have resulted in their destruction and the failure of their movement. One does not choose nonviolence out of strength, but one acquires strength by choosing nonviolence.
The adversarial relationships that have defined street protests over the years are counterproductive and increasingly dangerous. If the confrontations continue, increasing violence is inevitable. It is extremely easy for a community to degrade into violence, and extremely difficult for it to emerge out of it. The alternatives to confrontation are not without risk, they in fact require courage in excess of what is needed to maintain the adversarial position. However, it is in earning the respect of a rival, not in securing his defeat that we end rivalry. It is time for the rivalries to end.
The individual limits the potential of any movement; personal wounds compel us to endorse violence and intimidation as a broader tactic. Resentment is the source of our desire for conflict. Until we can overcome our own resentment, our desire for conflict will persist. Until we overcome our own desire for conflict, wider conflict will remain. Until we replace reactionary activism with creative action our highest goals will be out of reach. Reconciliation, not resentment is the way to peace.
The nature of the evolutionary process is inequity; fairness is a human invention. The capacity to imagine an ideal world is a gift, until we demand that the world exist within the confines of our ideals. If we are very lucky, we are in the process of creating a better world. What we can achieve entirely of our own volition is only to improve ourselves.
We become adept at that which we practice; if we seek peace in the world we will practice peacemaking. If one practices deception, one becomes deceitful. As an example: if I only steal things from corporations I still become a thief. This condition is not limited to the time I spend stealing from corporations, it instead accompanies me into my daily life. Eventually we become what we cultivate in ourselves. It is critical that we cultivate peace in ourselves, our communities and the wider world.
It is not for the benefit of those who make war that we practice peace, but for ours’. It is not for the cause of those who oppress us that we remain non violent, but for ours’. It is not on behalf of the elite property owners that we refrain from destructive practices, it is on ours’. If we are to succeed at bringing peace it will be because we have perfected ourselves and not because we have conquered our adversaries.
Peace will not be the end, unless peace is the means to that end.
- epjmcginley's blog
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a more complete response
Peace and Nonviolence
EPJ, thank you for this thought provoking article. It reminds me of arguments I was involved in about a couple years ago regarding nonviolence and protest.
It's a difficult subject, because people are angry with very good cause.
Powerful business interests are tightly fastened with each other, and with our government, and they are taking this society over the brink - causing all sorts of violence and destruction: from workplace abuse, to global warming and the extinction of species, to all sorts of other very serious environmental degradation. The current system is oppressive on a very fundamental level.
I agree that nonviolence is the answer - but it must be an assertive and active sort of nonviolence. And I think there needs to be an acceptance of peoples anger, and real place for people to express their anger and sadness for being hurt so much by this dirty rotten system that we live under.
part of the oppressive system
It is part of the oppressive system, and a conundrum really, that says we can't express our sadness, anger and rage about being hurt, and about the way things are.
I don't think it makes it any easier, or less adversarial, when people act out and speak in anger. So I tend to think it is worthwhile to find constructive and creative outlets to express that very real and legitimate anger over the stinking way our system is. Not all protest environments are the best places for some expressions of that anger or resentment.
I don't know what the answer is, but I think expressing the anger in a safe place, amongst allies, is probably a better way to go - because for real reconciliation to take place, we need to be open, loving, and capable of listening and interacting in the most respectful ways possible.
Anger is, and indeed, all real acts of violence are, part of - they are by-products - of living in an oppressive and unjust society.
So, to work toward the development of a truly peaceful and nonviolent world - where kindness, closeness, community and partnership are the ideal, (rather than conquest, domination, and having power over others,) it makes sense to model that behavior as much as possible. I think.
But at the same time, people shouldn't be discouraged from feeling angry, or sad, or whatever emotion being hurt causes. People shouldn't be discouraged from expressing those feelings. People need to express the very real emotional frustrations over the way our lives are, and the way the system operates.
People also shouldn't be discouraged away from sticking up for themselves, or for what is right, in the face of bullying, or state violence.
I have a few ideas, and I'm open to suggestions.
first thoughts
i do not see a dirty rotten system. i see the culture we are all participating in. there are elements of it that are oppressive, and there are elements of it that offer opportunity very few have enjoyed. we likely live in the most democratic and free society that has ever existed. it is up to us how we see it. if we are strong enough to overcome ourselves and our feelings of grievance, there are incredible opportunities to exceed our expectations and achieve exceptional outcomes.
in broader terms, holding "the world that is", up to the world we imagine is always going to result in disappointment and sadness and for some anger. if we have unrealistic expectations of the world we will always see deficiencies. if we instead become good students of the world as it is, we are offered endless opportunities to improve it.
this is the essence of the problem, if as individuals we cannot overcome our own unrealistic expectations and feelings of resentment then we will accomplish very little.
give up grievance. give up anger. overcome the petty emotions of the oppressed, and participate in the joyfulness of existence.
second thoughts
i have been thinking and writing a lot on these topics, and I have an incredible capacity to piss people off with my ideas. that said, the critical element is overcoming expectations. regardless of the scenario we enter into, expectations always result in disadvantage. strength is found in astute observation, creative interpretation and graceful action, and not in forcefully demanding the world abide by the ideology we have decided to be the most deserving of rigid adherence.
a further attempt to elucidate the idea...
Violence Out Of Fear
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it." - Karl Marx
I have struggled with this statement since the first time I encountered it, whether it is nobler to ponder, or nobler to act. Whether in the face of uncertainty one can invest anything at all. Whether we can ever know what propels us. Yes, the one who is silent sounds wisest, but what nightmares come in the end to those living silhouettes? How far can the camel take us then? Do we not eventually need to set our feet on firm earth and resist? How does one arrive at such a moment from calm observation?
Science and theology speak of single events. The first day of creation, the big bang, moments in which a universe is born. These are all meaningless to us. We exist on the far side of an event that obstructs our observation of everything that came before it, the terrible moment of our own creation, when the newly mindful beast laid eyes upon itself.
The ground must have been littered with their corpses in the days after, bodies torn and disfigured by the hands that had found them sustenance. Flesh of friend and loved one devoured by rage, rage born of the terrible fear that must have run overflowing out of the pitiable beasts. Terror struck into the hearts of those good animals, a terror that would come to define them. Violence is as deep and old in us as consciousness itself, violence out of fear, fear born of consciousness.
Some must have sat in a stupor, even starved to death in the pose they happened to strike in the seconds before the realization came. I can see them now, gazing into the sky as day passed into night, so puzzled that even a single step could not pass from contemplation. A pitiable woe must have befallen many of them. Not only had the abyss stared back, but they themselves had become the abyss.
It may have been those who were able to forget the event quickly who eventually found themselves back at the bushes naively picking berries.
city of quartz
Mike Davis expresses stuff like what you are mentioning in his City of Quartz/Fortress LA material. Thanks for sharing.
Importance of Kindness and Compassion
I think the following is relevant to the subject material in this post, something I just posted on my blog, In the Course of Events:
The Force of Kindness
We must realize, if tomorrow is going to look any better than today, that the currency for compassion isn’t what someone else does, right or wrong—it is the very fact that that person exists. Commitment to the possibility of kindness cannot be discarded as foolish or irrelevant, even in troubling times when we often can’t find easy answers. If we abandon the force of kindness as we confront cruelty, we won’t learn anything to take into tomorrow—not from history, not from one another, not from life.
- Sharon Salzberg, The Force of Kindness
www.tricycle.com/possibility-kindness
kindness
Kindness
I have been spending many hours of late diligently tapping away at these glyph coded keys, seeking to understand myself more thoroughly. It is with a reverence and respect for the words and the images they conjure that I undertake this practice. That reverence reaches beyond the words that I choose and the ideas that I attempt to seduce, to the readers who encounter my work.
I have recently made an effort to better understand the path that extends from consciousness to kindness. I have struggled with the idea that compassion might be a quality that has been breathed into this splendid universe, a quality that may even guide us into the future.
Not long ago a friend was suggesting that his belief in intelligent life living in other worlds was more certain than his belief in God. I suggested that if compassion was an ideal evolutionary trait, finding success and preserving itself in the rarified air of many different worlds, then it could be that evolution would eventually and inevitably lead to a species of benevolent gods. He quite liked this notion, and seemed to even increase his opinion of me once I had uttered it.
The savageness of humanity I have concluded is only to be expected, we are beasts after all. The natural fear and feeling of vulnerability that reasonably accompanies such a fragile and tentative existence is sure to stimulate such things. How else are we expected to live in this merciless world if we are not prepared to defend what is ours?
Beyond this mercilessness though, the idea that our mammalian nature predisposes us to seek comfort in the warmth of another fascinates me. If you were lost with a stranger or even someone you despised in the deserts of northernNevada
It is as though the sensation of warmth in a world that can coldly isolate provides us a unique bit of relief. I have watched a mother goat or dog share the warmth of her body with her babies in a way that very much resembles human love. Is there any difference really between the emotion she is sharing with them and the emotion we call love?
Is it in our self interest to be kind? Does it increase our power? Does it satisfy our drive to live? Or, is our biology an inhospitable climate for kindness? It could be that a desire to be kind is in fact an act of defiance.
Maybe the human animal has evolved through an age of internal revolution. That is to say, it could be that our biological will has been overthrown. Is there a parliament of reason in place where violent forces of nature once reigned? Has a civil society developed in a country that had been wild? Is being kind a product of this revolution of reason? Or does it emerge from a more primitive place in us?
Another question occurs to me: Is our desire to be kind comparable to other competing inclinations, or is kindness the default position? Meaning, absent any difficulty in one’s life, would there be a natural inclination to kindness? Is this the concept ofEden
These are questions without answers, I understand that at least, but asking them leads me to draw several conclusions. First among them, being at all is a splendid thing, and being human is made all the more so by the complex miracle of reflection. In other words, thinking is a lovely thing indeed.
In addition to this satisfying bit of wisdom, I am further willing to conclude that love is a thing of warm blood and live birth. Love precedes reason. We did not learn to love, but love has cradled our learning.
I think that the warmth of the other, and the affection that accompanies it, is the origin of kindness. We seek to be recaptured by the care and comfort of those early moments of life, when faced with the harsh conditions of the cold world we were warmed by the kindness which began as the milk of our mothers.