Cause of Peace

“If you can heal the symptoms but not affect the cause, it’s quite a bit like trying to heal a gunshot wound with gauze.” - Anastasio/Marshall

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If we knew of a way to live which resulted in world peace, would we live it? Who thinks that it is up to governments to bring about world peace? Does anyone think that it is up to individuals?
If so, how many individuals?

Can we, as hundreds of thousands of individuals form living peace networks? And dedicate our lives to living in such a manner which results in world peace?

Source:
Villainy: An Analysis of the Nature of Evil (Part 5 of 5)
by Andrew Bernstein (November 5, 2005)

This brings us to the third suspect in the philosophical lineup: the collectivists.

Collectivism is the political theory that states that the will of the people is omnipotent, an individual must obey; that society as a whole, not the individual, is the unit of moral value.

Altruism demands that an individual serve others, but doesn’t stipulate whether those others should be one’s family, or the homeless, or society as a whole. Collectivism states that, in politics, society comes first and the individual must obey. Collectivism is the application of the altruist ethics to politics.

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Source:
President Bush’s Inaugural Address: A Betrayal of the Concept of Freedom
by Harry Binswanger (February 1, 2005)

This may be old news by now, but the President’s inaugural address was essentially a betrayal of the concept of freedom. The speech re-confirmed Ayn Rand’s analysis of conservatives–that they are bankrupt and fated to lose, because they base their position on the appeal to faith, tradition, and man’s depravity. Each of these appeals was on view in the speech. But the new betrayal was Bush’s acceptance of the leftist concept of the very thing the speech was all about: freedom.

“In America’s ideal of freedom, citizens find the dignity and security of economic independence, instead of laboring on the edge of subsistence.”

That by itself is sloppy, but still interpretable as saying: freedom brings prosperity. But note that the phrase “economic independence” implies that those lacking a certain level of wealth are not independent–does this mean employment is dependence?. At any rate, “freedom brings prosperity” is not the intended meaning, because the next sentence is:

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[audio:knees.mp3]

We kill at every step, not only in wars, riots, and executions. We kill when we close our eyes to poverty, suffering, and shame. In the same way all disrespect for life, all hard-heartedness, all indifference, all contempt is nothing else than killing. With just a little witty skepticism we can kill a good deal of the future in a young person. Life is waiting everywhere, the future is flowering everywhere, but we only see a small part of it and step on much of it with our feet.” : - Hermann Hesse, German poet and novelist.

Source

PEACE is the health of the spirit. When the body is healthy, every organ, every function in it, is obeying orders. Every part of the body is attending to its own business and doing its own work as well as it can be done.

To keep the body healthy, a man must obey steadily all the laws of health, must have enough fresh air, enough and the right kind of nourishment, enough rest and no strain. In so far as all the conditions are fulfilled, a body stays strong and well, and one very happy thing about it is that in so far as the body is healthy and we are able to forget it altogether, it does its own work faithfully day after day, hour after hour, minute after minute, and we need not think anything about it, but just guide it as a good and delicate instrument for all the uses of our lives.

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Hi folks
I have just decided this morning to wind up the ‘Abundant Delights’ site upand have integrated the posts and links in with this blog, ‘Cause of Peace’. the 400 links from ‘abundant delights’ are on the very end of the ‘1 links’ page.

Are we too ignorant, arrogant and stupid to act and be in such a manner to result in world peace?

I like what Martin from Bolad’s Kitchen has to say ….

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Source: Science, Surveillance, and the Culture of Control by Derrick Jensen and George Draffan

Science and technology constitute two major oppressions of our time. Yet, if one goes by the literature, not only are science and technology seen as liberators (either from superstition, fear or material deprivation and want), those who control and direct them (technocrats, industrialists, statists) are seen as liberators too. – Claude Alvares

Of course our culture today is not secular, but just as religious (in the pejorative sense of superstitious, unconscious, assumed) as ever. Only today, science is the religion, experts are the priests, bureaucrats are the gatekeepers, and research and development institutions are the cathedrals.

Right now, military researchers at MIT and elsewhere are working hard to fabricate technologies that will—and we have to stress that we’re not making this up—allow soldiers to leap buildings, deflect bullets, and even become invisible. Shoes containing power packs will store energy when soldiers—or state police, or corporate security guards, insofar as there’s a difference—walk, then release this energy in bursts to allow them to jump over walls. Soldiers—cops, corporate goons—will be given exoskeletons, like insects, to deflect bullets. These exoskeletons will have the capacity to turn into offensive weapons as well. These exoskeletons will also deflect light so that those wearing them will be as invisible as the man at the center of the Panopticon, as invisible as God. Ned Thomas, director of the Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies at MIT, explains why he wants to try to create these übersoldiers—and I picture him laughing like all the mad scientists in all the bad science fiction movies as he speaks—“Imagine the psychological impact upon a foe when encountering squads of seemingly invincible warriors, protected by armour and endowed with superhuman capabilities, such as the ability to leap over 20-foot walls.”

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Source: Open Meeting on Moneyless Society

A report back from a WSM open meeting in Dublin on moneyless society.
Anarchists want a non-market socialist economy, with free access
to goods and services. Is this just a nice but impossible idea? Is an
efficient economy possible without money, trade or barter? Terry reports
from the discussion at an anarchist meeting in Dublin on this topic.
This was an interesting discussion largely because it got those
present thinking about how we would go about trying to reach this
goal and presaude others the desireability of it.
In the discussion afterwards it was agreed that money has grown
beyond it’s initial function and has become almost a means to itself
and it is integral to capitalism and has co-opted the language and
even the very thought processes of how we view things and our
whole culture. Money was also seen by many of those present as a
means of introducing scarity and be part of the mechanism that
enables hoarding of resources or at least allocation to resources to a
few individuals and therefore was inherently un-democratic in it’s
effects.

It was agreed that a reversion back to barter systems was certainly
NOT the way to go and this would be a step backwards. In the talk it
was pointed out that for any item, it is impossible to determine it’s
monetary value, because it is so difficult to factor in the
contributions of all the different people involved in the production of
any good or product, as you have to take account of not just the
labour, but the education, the science, the housing for the workers,
costs to the enviroment, the equipment, the makers of it, and indeed
the aggregrate effects of many other factors in society.

One attendent (me) pointed out that there are two basic elements to
be considered, physical objects and information. It is already
abundantly clear that all information can basically be made free,
since distribution costs are now almost nil and it can be reproduced
indefinitely. Not quite so though with physical goods and many of
the other attendents and the speaker agreed that it is likely that there
will always be scarity of some kind for some goods and the question
of how to deal with this was grappled. Some examples from previous
revolutions such as the Spainish revolution where these problems
arose and were usually decided upon collectively were pointed out.
Nevertheless agreeing to share and allocate resources is still better
than through the mechanism of who can afford it.

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Source: A Monster of Obscene & Grotesque Proportions by Harold Pinter

There’s an old story about Oliver Cromwell. After he had taken the Irish town of Drogheda the citizens were brought to the main square. Cromwell announced to his lieutenants: “Right! Kill all the women and rape all the men.” One of his aides said: “Excuse me, general. Isn’t it the other way around?” A voice from the crowd called out: “Mr Cromwell knows what he’s doing.”

That voice is the voice of Tony Blair–”Mr Bush knows what he’s doing.”

The fact is that Mr Bush and his gang do know what they’re doing and Blair, unless he really is the deluded idiot he often appears to be, also knows what they’re doing. Bush and company are determined, quite simply, to control the world and the world’s resources. And they don’t give a damn how many people they murder on the way. And Blair goes along with it.

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Source: Reclaiming Commons: Old and New

The law will jail the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
But leave the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from the goose

I was lying in bed the other morning, listening to the radio news. On came the soothing and comforting voice of our Prime Minister, John Howard. In amongst his posturing about some issue or another, he said “Nothing is ever free – and nor should it be.” It rolled off his tongue like a truism. Sure - nothing is ever free – and nor should it be. Actually, lots of things used to be free – and some things still are. Others should be. They’re called commons.

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Source: On the Transition to a Moneyless Economy

I hope to eventually write more on this key topic. As long as the economy operates on the basis of money or exchange of any kind (for example the exchange or trade of one kind of commodity for another, or the exchange of money/commodities/wages for labor) economic forces of immense power (almost irresistible–because no resistence is possible that does not lower the productivity of labor) will spontaneously lead to the concentration and accumulation of capital and, with this concentration, the development of a class (defined in terms of its ownership or control of this capital) that has material interests separate from and opposed to the rest of society. This class will strive to subjugate the entire life of society (all traditions, all culture, all education, all “public opinion” and all institutions) to its complete domination. Therefore, as long as the economy operates on the basis of money or exchange there will be a danger of bourgeois restoration.

Attempts to create an economy that does not rely on the market (such as in Russia, China, etc) by top-down centralized planning have similarly led to the creation of new ruling classes which, in order to preserve their own privileges, were compelled to suppress the political life of the working class. This suppression of the initiative of workers, however, crippled the development of the productivity of labor and led to these societies having lower productivity than the Western capitalist countries.

The key to a society which is not class-divided into rulers and the ruled is the creation of an economy that does not rely on money (or exchange) or any kind of central planning which concentrates power and authority to the extent that class divisions can be created.

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Source: The Tyrannicide Brief by Geoffrey Robertson

Much has been written about the 1649 trial of England’s king Charles I. Little has been made of John Cooke, the first man in legal history to conceive a charge of tyranny against a monarch. In The Tyrannicide Brief: The Story of the Man who sent Charles I to the Scaffold , Geoffrey Robertson argues that his fellow lawyer’s exclusion from the history books is to miss a vital moment in the development of modern democracy.

John Cooke was a pioneering legal thinker in proposing ideas such as the right to silence, the replacement of Latin with English in court proceedings, and the connection between poverty and crime – ideas that were at the time (and even in some quarters today) considered radical and dangerous.

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Source: The Ancient Chinese Libertarian Tradition by Murray N. Rothbard

The first libertarian intellectual was Lao-tzu, the founder of Taoism. Little is known about his life, but apparently he was a personal acquaintance of Confucius in the late sixth century BC and like the latter came from the state of Sung and was descended from the lower aristocracy of the Yin dynasty.

Unlike the notable apologist for the rule of philosopher-bureaucrats, however, Lao-tzu developed a radical libertarian creed. For Lao-tzu the individual and his happiness was the key unit and goal of society. If social institutions hampered the individual’s flowering and his happiness, then those institutions should be reduced or abolished altogether. To the individualist Lao-tzu, government, with its “laws and regulations more numerous than the hairs of an ox,” was a vicious oppressor of the individual, and “more to be feared than fierce tigers.”

Government, in sum, must be limited to the smallest possible minimum; “inaction” was the proper function of government, since only inaction can permit the individual to flourish and achieve happiness. Any intervention by government, Lao-tzu declared, would be counterproductive, and would lead to confusion and turmoil. After referring to the common experience of mankind with government, Lao-tzu came to this incisive conclusion: “The more artificial taboos and restrictions there are in the world, the more the people are impoverished…. The more that laws and regulations are given prominence, the more thieves and robbers there will be.”

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