Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?‘
As citizens of the USA with a presidential election approaching you have a wonderful opportunity to ponder whether to participate in this election or to participate in the ongoing American Revolution.
Your first revolution might have overthrown the authority of the British monarchy and aristocracy but the one in progress must remove the US elite which has executed a political coup against your government. And you cannot remove elite coupmakers in a fraudulently conducted election in which the ‘choice’ is essentially between two violently insane individuals, each of whom represents the violently insane US elite. See ‘The Global Elite is Insane’https://www.transcend.org/tms/2014/02/the-global-elite-is-insane/ and ‘Why Violence?’ http://tinyurl.com/whyviolence
The real value of this second revolution, which moves along steadily with routine outbreaks over a multitude of peace, environmental and social justice issues and occasional ‘uprisings’, such as the Occupy Movement in 2011 which spawned a range of new and visionary initiatives, is that it could give citizens of your country the chance to finally reclaim the Republic for those people who genuinely care about ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’. And, just as importantly, have sufficient vision to regard these aspirations as something to be shared with the entire US population, starting with Native Americans, and even those of us in the rest of the world including those countries that are currently victims of US elite violence, whether it be wars, drone strikes, coups, economic exploitation or ecological destruction.
Such a revolution might rewrite your constitution and replace the second amendment ‘right of the people to keep and bear arms’ with the right to live free of the fear of gun violence. It might result in a form of social organization that distributes wealth equitably (perhaps by actually taxing the wealthy and outlawing the use of offshore tax havens) while reallocating the annual military (killing) budget to life-enhancing projects such as poverty alleviation, affordable housing, free education, free healthcare, clean water, renewable energy technologies, and a substantial budget for compensation to those countries that the US elite has systematically exploited or simply destroyed during the past 200 years. This would allow the 50 million US citizens who live in poverty, and another billion people around the world who also live in poverty, the chance to live a decent life.
Now, you might ask, ‘How are we, the ordinary citizens of the United States, even with our handguns, rifles and assault weapons, going to take on the US military and police to remove elite control of our government?’ Well, the answer is that you do not need even one weapon for this ongoing revolution and, in fact, you are vastly better off without them. Weapons have only one use – to kill people – and any revolution worth the name has a more profoundly ambitious aim than this.
What you need is intelligence, commitment, courage and a sound nonviolent strategy. The US elite controls your government and has crippled your republic because, over successive generations, you have let them. Every time you cooperate with the elite, because you are scared, by paying your taxes (more than 50% of which finances US wars and other military violence), putting your money into their corporate banks, shopping at their corporate shopping malls, buying and consuming the ‘news’ presented by their corporate media, rationalizing their policies as reasonable, participating in their unjust and violent legal system, fighting (as an enlisted person or as a mercenary) in their military forces, working in their prison system, accepting exploited employment of any kind, eating their poisoned and genetically mutilated foods (GMOs), going along with their endless attempts to divide you along racial, class, religious and other lines, you simply consent to their control. Why?
You have a simple alternative. Consciously and systematically participate in the ongoing nonviolent revolution that is already taking place and give it added life by your presence. Remake the US republic as you want it by withdrawing your cooperation with elite structures and processes while creating alternatives that meet your needs and the needs of those around you.
Join those US visionaries who are creating cooperatives where people are both managers and valued workers, take your money out of elite banks and put it into financial organizations that exist or which you create to serve the interests of their members (or, if you prefer, use LETSystems), refuse to participate in or pay for (with your taxes) US imperialism (and win friends all over the world), grow or buy healthy locally-grown organic/biodynamic (and, if you are concerned about the climate catastrophe as well, vegetarian) food, read progressive news outlets so that you know what is really going on in the USA and the world, read literature that deepens your understanding and concern for humanity and doesn’t just offer you a distraction from the horror in which you live, and support or even become one of those many fine nonviolent activists in your country who take personal risks in the struggle to create a better world.
If you want more of what you have, then you should vote and/or buy a gun. They have an equivalent outcome: they both legitimize elite violence and exploitation directed at you and those you love.
If you want to participate in this second and ongoing American revolution, then spend your time participating in the wholesome activities that many grassroots organizations already offer and in creating its next manifestations in your own neighborhood. It is the powerful conscience-based choices that you make as an individual that define your Self. And it is these choices that will have most impact on your family, neighborhood, community organization, trade union, religious organization and elsewhere and that will help decide the future of the USA and its role in the world.
Now you might say, I do some or even all of the sorts of things you mentioned above, so why not vote too? My answer is simply this: Voting is an act of disempowerment. It’s essential message is ‘I appoint you to govern for me’. I prefer to govern myself (both meanings intended). And you?
So what of those who present the ‘lesser evil’ argument: one candidate is so bad that it is better to have the other. This ‘argument’ is not worthy of scrutiny. If you are deceived by this argument, you will vote forever in the delusional hope that you will one day get a choice to vote for someone genuinely decent. In 2008, Barack Obama was supposed to be the candidate of hope and change. Did you get that hope and change? Are you going to get it with Clinton or Trump? Of course not. Elites simply ensure that change via the electoral system cannot happen; its function is to absorb and dissipate our dissent.
If you vote you are saying that you endorse this system of electoral exploitation. The tragedy is that even third-party candidates, who may be people of genuine principle, have no chance. Even worse, they add a veneer of legitimacy to your corrupt electoral system.
In essence, if you vote for the ‘lesser evil’ you are still voting for an ‘evil’ and, more importantly, you have participated in and endorsed an ‘evil’ system: one which denies you a genuine ‘free and fair’ choice to vote for a candidate who actually represents your interests and views and has a reasonable chance of winning. And, having won, is then able to actually implement their policies (rather than be stymied by a power structure that has no intention of letting this happen). Given your circumstances, ‘the only winning move is not to play’ their corrupt game and to put your energy into a genuinely winning move: working for the regeneration of American society.
Look at it this way. If there are two rotten eggs, would you choose the one that is less rotten and eat it? Presumably you would seek another option and only after you have identified and fixed what is causing the problem in the first place. The point is this: Unless you spend your time deeply contemplating the nature of the society in which you want to live and then devoting your time and energy into creating that society, you will never have it. And you have betrayed yourself.
The reality is that either Clinton or Trump is going to be president of the USA for the next four years and a lot of people (both in the US but particularly in foreign countries) are going to die because of it (through US military violence and corporate exploitation). What we can do is to invest our political energy into creating a United States in which, at some point in the future, the likes of Clinton and Trump, and those they represent, no longer drive outcomes in our world.
To reiterate: I am not saying ‘Don’t vote and do nothing’ (as so many people do already). I am suggesting that you ponder the dysfunctionality of your society, do some research into the secretive ‘deep state’ (or military-industrial complex or power elite or the 1% or however you wish to describe it) that controls your ‘republic’ with its electoral system designed to delude you into believing that you have a say in governing your nation, and then consider how you want to engage politically and act in accord with your conscience in doing so. It is only by doing this that we will have any chance of getting the society and the world that we want, even if it is beyond our lifetimes (and assuming we can avert extinction at our own hand in the meantime).
In summary, profound change only occurs from the ‘bottom up’ when enough ordinary people take the initiative to remake their own society. And if you are really interested in doing this, one important place to start is by reviewing the way in which you nurture children. See ‘My Promise to Children’. https://nonviolentstrategy.wordpress.com/strategywheel/constructive-program/my-promise-to-children/
My suggestion is reforming the calendars for non violent existence. Using lunar calendar by USA America is a good way to evolve our society into non violence.
Hari Malla
This is both a correct analysis of the situation with a healthy dose of nonsense in the “strategy” for dealing with it.
“If you vote you are saying that you endorse this system of electoral exploitation.”
No, you aren’t. You are simply using one small power you have to nudge things in one direction or the other. That isn’t going to change the course of history, but it does have real immediate consequences. Of course is you live in an abstract world where you are immune to those real consequences that is not your problem. You can safely use your vote to make an intellectual fashion statement.
“Look at it this way. If there are two rotten eggs, would you choose the one that is less rotten and eat it?”
Yes, if the consequence of not choosing was that I was left to eat the more rotten egg.
Another well-meaning initiative.We should hope that it makes a difference, but on the record, it does not give peace a chance if one advocates defencelessness.
It is all very well to quote Gandhi, but Gandhi went with the flow of historical developments.Is India the better for his efforts?We should presume it is, but I note that India has a system of self-defence using weaponry.Without means of defence in a violent world one cannot last as an organisation, movement or people, never mind as a nation-state.As an individual, only a few are able to head for the hills to escape being enslaved by society and its controllers.Even in the hills and mountains one is not certain of being able to live out one’s natural life unmolested.If it is not bandits and robbers, it is big brother catching up with you by means of satelite photography.
What is the answer?As long as people pay their taxes and rates, and pay for what they need to live, they are allowed some leeway in their opinions and perchance be allowed to refuse service in the military without being put to slave labour for an indefinite period of time.Being idealistic is not the answer.One has to be realistic in order to be the change you want the world to be.
As for voting, I have not voted for fifty years, never in fact, but if a large minority is awake to what is happening it is possible to become a peaceful force in politics in a few democratic countries, but generally a challenge to the status quo, even if peaceful, is simply not tolerated due to the vast political, economic, commercial, financial and cultural-psychological egoic interests involved in keeping the status quo on top and in control.There is only one answer that I can see to the problem of violence, other than the principles enumerated by Gautama.To wit: Individuation prior to setting off on the road to self-Enlightenment and sharing your insights as you go along.A global movement on the path to Enlightenment would be unstoppable, is indeed unstoppable.It has been happening for ages.It only takes more people to set it off anew in a global context.Study the wisdom of the sages of the ages.
great thinking , great words ; Weapons have only one use – to kill people – and any revolution worth the name has a more profoundly ambitious aim than this.
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He has been a radio producer (Earthstar Radio, San Francisco), organized and worked with the homeless, and is an advocate/activist in the nonviolent protest movement for safe energy, human rights, and peaceful solutions.
He is USA Vice President of the World Constitution and Parliament Association whose mission is to build a parallel world body to the United Nations, an emerging Earth Federation with a Provisional World Parliament under the Earth Constitution.
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First published at:
">Roger Kotila PhD Dr Gary G Kohls MD[/caption]
is a retired physician who practiced holistic, non-drug, mental health care for the last decade of his forty year family practice career. He is a contributor to and an endorser of the efforts of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights and was a member of MindFreedom International, the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology, and the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies.
While running his independent clinic, he published over 400 issues of his Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter, which was emailed to a variety of subscribers. (They have not been archived at any website.) In the early 2000s, Dr Kohls taught a graduate level psychology course at the University of Minnesota Duluth. It was titled “The Science and Psychology of the Mind-Body Connection”.
Since his retirement, Dr Kohls has been writing a weekly column (titled “Duty to Warn”) for the Duluth Reader, an alternative newsweekly published in Duluth, Minnesota. He offers teaching seminars to the public and to healthcare professionals.
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">Gary G Kohls George Monbiot[/caption]
Studied in Oxford University, columnist with The Guardian newspaper, also the author of the bestselling books The Age of Consent: A Manifesto for a New World Order and Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain, as well as the investigative travel books Poisoned Arrows, Amazon Watershed, No Man’s Land, How Did We Get into This Mess? Politics, Equality, Nature and other.
Prof Johan Galtung was born in Oslo. He earned the PhD degree in mathematics at the University of Oslo in 1956, and in 1957 a year later completed the PhD degree in sociology at the same university.
Prof Johan Galtung received nine honorary doctorates in the fields of Peace studies, Future studies, Social sciences, Buddhism, Sociology of law, Philosophy, Sociology and Law.
State Councilor of St. Petersburg, Russia. Founding President, Global Harmony Association (GHA) since 2005. Honorary President, GHA since 2016. Director: Tetrasociology Public Institute, Russia. Philosopher, Sociologist and Peacemaker from Harmony. Author of more than 400 scientific publications, including 18 books in 1-12 languages. Author of Tetrism as the unity of Tetraphilosophy and Tetrasociology – science of social harmony, global peace and harmonious civilisation. Director, GHA Web portal “Peace from Harmony”. Initiator, Manager, Coauthor and Editor in Chief of the book project “Global Peace Science” (GPS).
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First published at :
">Leo M Semashko Robert C Koehler[/caption]
writes for the Huffington Post, Common Dreams, OpEd News and TruthOut. He considers himself a “peace journalist.” He has been an editor at Tribune Media Services and a reporter, columnist and copy desk chief at Lerner Newspapers, Chicago. Koehler launched his column in 1999. Robert Koehler has received numerous writing and journalism awards over a 30-year career in USA. He writes about values and meaning with reverence for life. He is praised as “blatantly relevant” and “a hero of democracy”.
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First published at :
">Robert C KoehlerRobert J Burrowes PhD[/caption]
has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?‘
[/themify_box]
">Robert J BurrowesProf Richard Falk[/caption]
an international relations scholar, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, author, co-author or editor of 40 books, and a speaker and activist on world affairs.
Since 2002 he has lived in Santa Barbara, California, and taught at the local campus of the University of California in Global and International Studies, and since 2005 chaired the Board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. His most recent book is Achieving Human Rights (2009).
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First published at :
">Richard FalkDr Gray Corseri, PhD[/caption]
is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment. He has published and posted articles, fiction and poems at hundreds of venues, including, TMS, The New York Times, Village Voice, Redbook Magazine and Counterpunch.
He has published 2 novels and 2 collections of poetry, and his dramas have been produced on PBS-Atlanta and elsewhere. He has performed his poems at the Carter Presidential Library and Museum and has taught in universities in the US and Japan, and in US public schools and prisons.
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First published at :
">Gary CorseriAntonio Carlos Silva Rosa, Editor, TMS[/caption]
born 1946, is the editor of the pioneering Peace Journalism website, TRANSCEND Media Service-TMS, an assistant to Prof. Johan Galtung, and Secretary of the International Board of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment.
He completed the required coursework for a Ph.D. in Political Science-Peace Studies (1994), has a Masters in Political Science-International Relations (1990), and a B.A. in Communication (1988) from the University of Hawai’i.
Originally from Brazil, he lives presently in Porto, Portugal. Antonio was educated in the USA where he lived for 20 years; in Europe/India since 1994.
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First published at :
">Antonio Carlos Silva Rosa
John Scales Avery is a theoretical chemist, Associate Professor Emeritus, at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He is noted for his books and research publications in quantum chemistry, thermodynamics, evolution, and history of science. His 2003 book Information Theory and Evolution set forth the view that the phenomenon of life, including its origin, evolution, as well as human cultural evolution, has its background situated in the fields of thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, and information theory.
He is an Indian citizen & permanent resident of Australia and a scholar, an author, a social-policy critic, a frequent social wayfarer, a social entrepreneur and a journalist;He has been exploring, understanding and implementing the ideas of social-economy, participatory local governance, education, citizen-media, ground-journalism, rural-journalism, freedom of expression, bureaucratic accountability, tribal development, village development, reliefs & rehabilitation, village revival and other.
For Ground Report India editions, Vivek had been organising national or semi-national tours for exploring ground realities covering 5000 to 15000 kilometres in one or two months to establish Ground Report India, a constructive ground journalism platform with social accountability.
He has written a book “मानसिक, सामाजिक, आर्थिक स्वराज्य की ओर”on various social issues, development community practices, water, agriculture, his ground works & efforts and conditioning of thoughts & mind. Reviewers say it is a practical book which answers “What” “Why” “How” practically for the development and social solution in India.
worked as a mediator for the church in Belfast; as faculty at The School of Peace Studies, University of Bradford, and as Executive Director, the Right Livelihood Award Foundation. He has founded several Indian NGOs, is an Officer of the Order of Canada, and a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment.
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First published at -
">Vithal RajanRene Wadlow[/caption]
is the President of the Association of World Citizens, an international peace organization with consultative status with ECOSOC, the United Nations organ facilitating international cooperation on and problem-solving in economic and social issues.
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">Rene WadlowBaher Kamal[/caption]
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Baher Kamal
Egyptian-born, Spanish-national secular journalist. He is founder and publisher of Human Wrongs Watch. Kamal is a pro-peace, non-violence, human rights, coexistence defender, with more than 45 years of professional experience. With these issues in sight, he covered practically all professional posts, from correspondent to chief editor of dailies and international news agencies.
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Credits :
">Baher KamalRosa Dalmiglio with Lama Mongolia[/caption]
She is a member of the China Council Disabled People’s Performing Art Troupe (special art, culture and humanity), which touches the hearts of all people and portrays the strong willpower so encouraging to 60 million Chinese disabled persons.
Ms. Dalmiglio is Intermediary Agent of CICE, Centre International Cultural Exchange, a direct subsidiary of the Ministry of Culture, People’s Republic of China. CICE is a comprehensive institution engaged in cultural exchange programs, professional publication and presentation of cultural art works such as exhibits, receiving foreign art troupes and artists, holding international cultural research programs, and producing intercultural and interreligious documentary films.
She is a member of China Disabled Person’s Federation, CDPF. She is also a member of the International Women Federation, which is concerned with the financial ethics of women s enterprises in underdeveloped areas.
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credits:
">Rosa Dalmiglio
Director, Guru Arjan Dev Institute of Development Studies.
A recipient of Cultural Doctorate of Philosophy of Economics from USA. He is an active member of various professional bodies, namely -
He participated and presented papers in various International/national/regional seminars, conferences etc.. He remained member of the Academic Council of Punjab Technical University, Jalandhar. An unwearied researcher has about 200 research papers published in various international and national journals of repute and 15 research monographs to his kitty. Besides, he has authored/co-authored /edited 15 books which have been well received and highly acclaimed during his three decades of professional career. He was honoured by various national and international awards, namely, Guru Draunacharya Samman, Vijay Rattan Award and so on.
Dr Ron Paul served in U.S. House of Representatives three different periods: first from 1976 to 1977, after he won a special election, then from 1979 to 1985, and finally from 1997 to 2013.
During his first term as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Paul founded the Foundation for Rational Economics and Education (FREE), a non-profit think tank dedicated to promoting principles of limited government and free-market economics. In 1984, Paul became the first chairman of the Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE), a conservative political group founded by Charles Koch and David Koch 'to fight for less government, lower taxes, and less regulation.' CSE started a Tea Party protest against high taxes in 2002. In 2004, Citizens for a Sound Economy split into two new organizations, with Citizens for a Sound Economy being renamed as FreedomWorks, and Citizens for a Sound Economy Foundation becoming Americans for Prosperity. The two organizations would become key players in the Tea Party movement from 2009 onward.
Dr Paul proposed term-limit legislation multiple times, while himself serving a few terms in the House of Representatives. In 1984, he decided to retire from the House in order to run for the U.S. Senate, complaining in his House farewell address that 'Special interests have replaced the concern that the Founders had for general welfare.... It's difficult for one who loves true liberty and utterly detests the power of the state to come to Washington for a period of time and not leave a true cynic.'
He is known nationally and internationally as a pioneer figure in the study of culture and psychopathology who challenged the ethnocentrism and racial biases of many assumptions, theories, and practices in psychology and psychiatry.
In more recent years, he has been writing and lecturing on peace and social justice. He has published 15 edited books, and more than 250 articles, chapters, book reviews, and popular pieces.
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Credits:
">Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D.Jason Hickel[/caption]
He is international consultant of the UN – FAO and international consultant for sustainable development and sustainable future of humankind of Universal State of the Earth - USE.
On 8th October 2016 he was appointed as The Chairman of the Humanity, Nature, Space and Environment protection Committee of the USE, the Supreme Council of Humanity - SCH from Athens, Greece and London, UK.
He is researcher working on: Nature; the Nature, Space and Environment protection; the Climate change system; System thinking; Globalization and global studies; Networking, Complexity and Swarm research: Sustainable Development and Sustainable Future of Humankind. He was among the pioneers researchers (1986 – 1994) to apply nature, space, and environment protection in a local community by activities we call today Local Agenda 21 Processes – a holistic program for survival of our civilization under new challenges of the third millennium.“Commencing from Local Community Sustainable Future and moving towards Sustainable Future of the Global Community of Humankind”.
He is independent researchers with many domestic and international publications and talks. Together with many researchers in co-operation worldwide within philosophy, operational research, global studies, case studies and complex problem solving research, system thinking, requisitely holism, networking and complexity, swarm research, integration and disintegration of matter and energy and universal upbringing, education and lifelong learning. He is contributing a systemic, requisitely holistic and a better understanding of the present. His latest research within the system theory, system thinking, networking, complexity and swarm research may provide a possible answer enabling people to better understand our world of humans.
During 2014 he completed 50 years of research work (1964 - 2014). This year he completed 50 years of been Dr. Vet. Med. Since 1986 he worked on the protection of Humanity, Nature, Space and Environment and completed 30 years of research.
For research on the climate change system and the book “System Thinking and Climate Change System (Against a big “Tragedy of Commons” of all of us), Ecimovic, Mayur, Mulej and co-authors, 2002, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize 2003. His work on “The Information Theory of Nature” was his second nomination for The Nobel Prize during 2007 in Physics. His third nomination for The Nobel Prize in Physics 2010 was for “The Environment Theory of the Nature”, published in the book “Three Applications of the System Thinking”, Ecimovic, 2010. Within last 10 years he has contributed trilogies: “The Nature”, “The Sustainable Future of Mankind” and “The Life 2017” – please see at: www.institut-climatechange.si
I grew up in Chile, got my medical degree there, began an academic career in 1970, and left for the USA due to the military coup in early 1974. My first job in the USA was working as a public nutrition professor in the international programme of Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee.
I started to travel to Africa in 1975, and worked a year in Cameroun in 1980 helping to prepare their five-year nutrition plan. I then moved to New Orleans, to Tulane University’s School of Public Health, and taught in the department of nutrition for ten years, before moving to Nairobi where I was an advisor in the Ministry of Health. Seven years there got me into extensive consulting in Africa, often on nutritional issues. In 1995 moved to Vietnam where I worked for two and a half years in the Ministry of Health as a senior primary health care advisor.
Many years of touching the reality on the ground, in Latin America, then the USA, then Africa and Asia, has made me understand that the real challenge is in the social and political determinants of malnutrition. I have devoted my writings and teaching to that. Over the years, I have found an important shift in my colleagues’ attitude and understanding towards acknowledging the basic causes of malnutrition. But yet I see little happening as a result. I submit that it is our guild’s lack of experience in the political arena that explains this dichotomy. I devote much of my energy to bridge this gap, and am a fervent advocate of empowering claim holders to demand needed changes from duty bearers. Nutrition is a perfect port of entry for that. Equity, social justice and people’s empowerment in a human rights sense is what really will make a difference.
There is no alternative but to deal with nutrition problems as indivisibly linked to social, political and environmental problems. We need to address them as such. The question is: are we all prepared to do that? The answer, in my view, decides whether we are part of the solution or part of the problem. Travelling and living in different parts of the world has reinforced my conviction that we need to get down from our academic ivory towers, and need to change the curricula of our young and upcoming colleagues, to give them the tools to act in such a context. To me, public health nutrition cannot be anything but that.
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">Claudio Schuftan Dr MDProf. Ram Puniyani[/caption]
hari malla
September 28, 2016 @ 12:46 AM
My suggestion is reforming the calendars for non violent existence. Using lunar calendar by USA America is a good way to evolve our society into non violence.
Hari Malla
Ross Williams
September 28, 2016 @ 2:00 AM
This is both a correct analysis of the situation with a healthy dose of nonsense in the “strategy” for dealing with it.
“If you vote you are saying that you endorse this system of electoral exploitation.”
No, you aren’t. You are simply using one small power you have to nudge things in one direction or the other. That isn’t going to change the course of history, but it does have real immediate consequences. Of course is you live in an abstract world where you are immune to those real consequences that is not your problem. You can safely use your vote to make an intellectual fashion statement.
“Look at it this way. If there are two rotten eggs, would you choose the one that is less rotten and eat it?”
Yes, if the consequence of not choosing was that I was left to eat the more rotten egg.
Jacob Jonker
September 29, 2016 @ 7:21 PM
Another well-meaning initiative.We should hope that it makes a difference, but on the record, it does not give peace a chance if one advocates defencelessness.
It is all very well to quote Gandhi, but Gandhi went with the flow of historical developments.Is India the better for his efforts?We should presume it is, but I note that India has a system of self-defence using weaponry.Without means of defence in a violent world one cannot last as an organisation, movement or people, never mind as a nation-state.As an individual, only a few are able to head for the hills to escape being enslaved by society and its controllers.Even in the hills and mountains one is not certain of being able to live out one’s natural life unmolested.If it is not bandits and robbers, it is big brother catching up with you by means of satelite photography.
What is the answer?As long as people pay their taxes and rates, and pay for what they need to live, they are allowed some leeway in their opinions and perchance be allowed to refuse service in the military without being put to slave labour for an indefinite period of time.Being idealistic is not the answer.One has to be realistic in order to be the change you want the world to be.
As for voting, I have not voted for fifty years, never in fact, but if a large minority is awake to what is happening it is possible to become a peaceful force in politics in a few democratic countries, but generally a challenge to the status quo, even if peaceful, is simply not tolerated due to the vast political, economic, commercial, financial and cultural-psychological egoic interests involved in keeping the status quo on top and in control.There is only one answer that I can see to the problem of violence, other than the principles enumerated by Gautama.To wit: Individuation prior to setting off on the road to self-Enlightenment and sharing your insights as you go along.A global movement on the path to Enlightenment would be unstoppable, is indeed unstoppable.It has been happening for ages.It only takes more people to set it off anew in a global context.Study the wisdom of the sages of the ages.
Rohatas singh rana
September 29, 2016 @ 8:04 PM
great thinking , great words ; Weapons have only one use – to kill people – and any revolution worth the name has a more profoundly ambitious aim than this.