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I Just Don’t Get It

I just don’t get it.

I just don’t understand.  Take police. Or any other armed forces.  I am sure that when police or soldiers are with their own families and close friends, they are as tolerant, kind, self-effacing, and lovingly tender as the next person.  I am sure they are not only not reproachful, but probably soft-spoken and overly indulgent of their offspring.

What happens to them, then, when they don the costume and take up the badge and bludgeon?  What is the transformational catalyst of the kindly and peaceful individual into the savage master of violent injustices?

Is it the strain of trying to act the part of the power-created illusions?  Is it the fear of causing people to hate them?  Is it the fear of having their families learn of the evils they are taught to do while in the uniform of the “law enforcer” when they had brought with them to their employment and training their lofty dreams of being “peace officers?”  What causes this monstrous transformation?

I just don’t get it.

Are they trained in some training exercise in such ways that they come to love the sport of inflicting pain and punishment?  Are they trained to ignore their own humanity, and to see others as “enemy” rather than as other humans?  Are they trained to follow orders without question, and to inflict injury at every opportunity?  Are they taught that the proper response to their own fear is to cause more fear in others, or to harm or kill others?  Are they trained to think that such actions are normal, healthy, and human?  Are they trained to abandon their own conscience and thinking?

I would find it a tragic difficulty, indeed, to put on a costume and be forced by the expectations of those who ordered me about with so much cruelty of purpose.  I would consider it a tragic difficulty, indeed, should I need to find such desperate means to earn enough daily bread for me and my loved ones.  Better a dustman, or a maid, than to be forced by economic necessity to be paid to learn to kill other innocents, because some power-damaged insane person ordered me to do so to earn my survival, and I do not see any other way to survive.

I should find it a tragic difficulty to even need to think of myself becoming a part-time orc, of working spiritless and mindless violence against the innocent.  Yet, if this is my assigned job, in my financial desperation, how would I find an escape?  How would I come to be aware enough to realize that if I stayed, I was going to slowly transform into one of the full-time orcs, and perhaps descend to being a politician or other of the law-makers and the law-givers.  I would be fearful that I might come to eat happily at the feet of my cruel and power-damaged masters.  I would fear becoming a cruel and power-damaged person, myself.

I just don’t get it.

How do people who must perform heinous acts against other humans reconcile their uniformed behavior with their loving treatment of their wives and children, all of whom might soon be carrying on similar activities, such as peacefully demonstrating, carrying a placard, or handing out peace-promoting literature?  How do “law enforcement” employees reconcile their treatment toward the children and spouses of others with how they treat their own families?  Does it bother those in uniform that they are using such violence against the peaceful children and spouses of others, such treatments as they would not want visited on their own families?

I just don’t get it.

How does one reconcile being a costumed brutal monster, ordered and controlled by others to perform heinous acts, with being a loving parent and spouse when out of costume?  What is the rate of mental illness among such people, whose conscience must be in conflict?

I would find it a tragic difficulty to look at myself in the mirror.

I would find it a tragic difficulty if my children have any inkling of what I was doing at the orders of my masters.

I wonder if those who don the uniform, and take up the badge and bludgeon, have these difficulties.  I wonder if they are looking for other work, or if the heady sense of power of life and death, of mastery over other humans, of the license to sue force to create suffering, pain and fear, become addictive to them, and cloud their visions with blood lust and power hunger. Have they become fully as power-damaged as their masters?

How do they hide it from their families, and go on?

I just don’t get it.

Knowing the horrible evils perpetrated by such employment, would not an honest person choose to work two other jobs where they are not ordered to inflict pain, or death?  Is money so dear, and a new vehicle so necessary, is a new big screen, and a fancy vacation so important, that people will sell their humanity for a few coins?

I just don’t get it.

iloilo

1 July, 2010

Women of the Earth, Time to Step Up for Peace

I am a Woman, Mother, and Grandmother.  I teach Peace.  I ask you to teach Peace.

There is no reason I can think of why every woman on Earth should not be making a difference in the one place we can certainly make a difference: in our own families. We carry the culture, celebrate the milestones, and nourish and comfort.  How much easier our obligations will be when we have successfully taught our families Peace.

Teach Peace, do not celebrate war.  Teach your menfolks the truth of life: evolved humans find other ways to settle disputes than through warfare.  I am not speaking of passive acceptance of death here, for I believe every human has the fundamental human right to protect their life and the lives of those they love, as well as the fruits of their labours.

I am speaking of teaching our menfolk the folly of going to war for some leader, king, politician, dictator, or prime minister.  I am speaking here of teaching the refusal to kill anyone who is not directly threatening you or your family.  Begin now, to teach our menfolk that we need them as doctors, artists, builders, farmers, creators, space explorers: that we do not approve of any action they take on behalf of any leader, state, clan, tribe, religion, or government that enforces its edicts through violence, either at home or in other peoples’ lands.

Teach your menfolk that they must be keen shots and able to defend themselves and their loved ones–and learn to defend yourself, too.  Teach them to defend their homes, fields, farms, and children. Teach them that going to war on behalf of any institution that initiates force—whether through taxation, forced obedience to edicts, or through war industry and warfare—is an abomination to the entire concept of human rights and human intelligence.

We can each do this as individual women; daily, hourly, singing songs of brilliant men who are heroes because they refuse to take up arms for kings, politicians, or any other “leaders” who would send them off to kill people they do not know.  Teach your menfolk to be their own leader, for truly, their minds are as capable of right thinking, and perhaps more capable, than anyone who would call them to war as a means to settle a dispute or enforce some “law.”  Those who make calls to war are the power-damaged ones, the ones who lust for power over other humans.

Teach the menfolk right now—today—that they can be brilliant, blazing with beauty, and bountiful in service when they renounce warfare.  This warfare is a mindset that men have been taught in many cultures to believe is the gateway to their dreams of glory and power.  Give them new dreams of glory and power: dreams that do not include the shedding of innocent blood.

This Peace-teaching is the role for we Women of Peace; on an Earth whose men are crazed with warfare, damaged by power cravings, insane with lust for control, and addicted to the initiation of force to “win” over other humans.  Refuse to applaud war.  Refuse to pretend pride, when your heart is mourning the carnage and evil of war. Refuse to justify any leader using force against innocent and harmless people, whether in warfare, or in confiscation of peoples’ grain, goods, or gold.

For when leaders use force, in any instance whatsoever, they are making war. Leaders who are addicted to using force have power-damaged minds, and must not be followed. Humans are meant to cooperate voluntarily, not to be coerced violently.

Refuse to give kind words or any praise to warfare.  Refuse to sanction warfare. Refuse to sanction the initiation of violence for any reason whatsoever.  Expose the lies of those “leaders” who justify initiation of force.  If we Women of Peace do not raise the cultural standard—if we do not set the ethical standard for humans as a higher standard than that of beasts—then we are not doing our job.  Teach your menfolk that there are peaceful alternatives to the initiation of violence.  Teach your menfolk that there are brilliant alternatives to warfare.  And shame them if need be, to show them the error of their power-damaged minds.

Teach Peace.  Set your table with Peace.  Light the dinner candles for Peace.  Serve the bread with Peace.  Learn to defend yourself and encourage others to be able to defend themselves as well, but only against the individual who comes to your farm or apartment, your condo or tent, with evil intentions.  You have a human right to defend yourself and your property, for this is a right of every human on this Earth.

Do not go seeking war.  Do not go off to fight in wars.  Teach the menfolk that their death in warfare serves no good purpose, because they were born for peace, just as much as you were born for peace.  Teach them to stay home, and build a better life.

We Women give life.  Let us now protect life by teaching Peace.

iloilo

Mother’s Day, 2010

I am one, too.

I sound like one, too.

Lovely, really lovely.  May add a bit to humankind’s present conversations against the initiation of force.

I’m more of an agorist than an anarchist, and I have been labeled as both.  Time will tell.  I am definitely in agreement with no initiation of force.


Time Banking in Free markets

Time Banking in Free Markets

I like this entire concept.  When my children were small, we belonged to a sitting cooperative, where you simply earned hours and spent hours of sitting with people who were in the cooperative.  Worked wonderfully. And the time bank could be used in other places with other cooperative time banks as well.  Points earned in Peoria could be used in Utica, if there were sitter cooperatives in both places.  Charming.  The time-keepers got a credit every month for doing all the time-keeping records, by the way: you lost about a quarter hour a month in fees, but it was well worth it.

I like that people are continuing this cooperative concept and extending it to hours of trade for all sorts of stuff from plumbing to particle acceleration (okay, so maybe we aren’t quite there yet) and trading on an hour-for-hour basis.  Or on any basis that is agreeable to both parties involved.

When we are trading the actual minutes and hours of our lives for what we want, with no symbolic medium of exchange such as fake paper money in the mix, priorities certainly become much more significant in making decisions of how to allocate one’s time.  I like this.  People are all free to trade their hours in any way they please, but the human hour of effort holds the same worth across the market.  And if people don’t want to trade straight across, I guess they will work out a bargaining system. Say, trade one hour of curative medical care, with all those years of medical training amortized over the hours to be traded, for maybe three hours of garden hoeing or lawyer work.

Trading hours means a much closer scrutiny of the actual worth of what one is getting in trade, for aren’t the hours of our lives the most valuable commodity we have to trade?  That being so, begin to ponder:

How many hours will you trade to the grower of your food?; to the bringer of your firewood to heat your house?; to the maker of the cloth for your clothes?; to the officer who gives you a ticket for going five miles over the posted speed limit on an empty road in dry daylight; to the politician who passes laws to limit your human rights?; to the dentist who fixes your broken tooth?; to the tax collector?; to the chap who plows away the snow?; to the county assessor?

Removing phony money made of paper from the equation reveals a reformation in how we prioritize where we spend our lives, doesn’t it?

I am going to think more about this.

iloilo

April 29, 2010

A Peaceful Response to War

I have been thinking about this:

If someone tells you that they are joining the armed forces, or are already engaged in the war industry, a peaceful response might be:

“I’m so sorry, so truly sorry that you are working for the war industry.  You were born to be a person of peace.  When you get out, if you need someone to help you to heal, please let me know.  I would like to help.”

I am thinking of how I might articulate the proper cultural cues so that people would easily recognize the horrible injury that war does to anyone involved in this enterprise of death and destruction.   I want to condemn the war, not the person.  The person needs help.

I cannot think how we can advance humanity and civilisation while we are continuing with the industry of war.  There are better ways to solve human disputes.  No one has the right to initiate force against anyone else.  And self-defense does not involve war: it is an individual matter, after all.  Neither is self-defense the initiation of force by the individual.

I will probably write more on this as I continue to think about it.  Meanwhile, teach your children that reason is more valuable that force, and cooperation more valuable than any form of government.  Government is the industry of war, after all.  Individual humans do not make war–they cannot, by design–only government can steal enough to construct war machines and force people to go off to places they have never been, to kill people they have never met.

I am so very sorry for anyone who is compelled, by conscription or economic desperation, to work for a war industry.  These people need to be healed.

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