LOVE - NOT WAR
[Updated JANUARY 2012]
2010-2020 - THE DECADE WHICH WILL MAKE OR BREAK THE PLANET :TWO YEARS DOWN - EIGHT TO GO
2012 promises to be a tough year for most people. The good thing about it is that we have now entered a period of such rapid change that nobody can afford to cling to the past. Change is no longer optional; it is being forced on us. Look at some of the key factors:
Right across North Africa and the Middle East, millions of ordinary people have seen their supposedly safely entrenched leaders off, but recent horrific sectarian bombings in Iraq and Lebanon must have made people trying to get on with their lives in such places very wary of freedom and democracy delivered by bullets and bombs; continuing brutality by the Assad regime in Syria and the old military establishment in Egypt have fostered anger and despair; the Russian establishment has been threatened by popular street protests; Britain has tried to contract out of Europe's troubles. only to find itself alarmingly isolated; America, India and China have resisted regulation of carbon emissions and now face mounting pressure to confront the likely planetary consequences of their tardiness. These are just some of the bigger straws in the wind.
That there will be huge, momentous changes ahead is not in doubt. What those changes will be and what kind of outcome will result is up to us, ordinary people who demand the rule of law, the end of bloodshed and the enthronement of fair play. It is totally useless to rely on "strong leaders"; we simply have to stop sitting on the fence.
OUR PREDICAMENT
As a result of global economic collapse, most governments around the world are crippled by debt, having had to borrow so heavily they continue to add huge amounts of interest to their debts. They are forced to make savage cuts in their budgets which impact most on those who are already struggling to make ends meet.
Contrast with this the fact that global spending on arms worldwide grew 5.9% between 2008 and 2009 to reach a staggering total of $1.500,000,000,000. The biggest spender by far was the USA, followed by China and France. Sheer economic necessity forced sales down somewhat in 2010.
As if this were not grim enough, recent record-breaking climatic catastrophes have made our global predicament more acute than it has ever been.
Governments around the world keep saying they must cut back on all unnecessary expenditure. Sheer necessity has forced them to reduce their 'defence' budgets - but they refuse to recognise that ALL arms expenditure is not only non-essential but is actually deleterious. The military hardware the wealthy nations have spent a mint of money developing, manufacturing and marketing will either never be used (in which case it will rot into obsolescence and need to be replaced at still greater cost) or, even worse, it WILL be used, thus adding to the horrendous toll of death and destruction for which we humans, throughout our history, have been responsible, never more horribly than in the last century, the century of mass education and scientific enlightenment - and nuclear warheads.
As a result, we are now trapped in a global economy in which defence budgets play a huge role. We have become so used to this that we take it for granted as one of the unalterable facts of life - just as we did with slavery until Wilberforce and company jolted us into a realisation of the enormity of what our blindness was costing the millions of human beings sacrificed.
But underlying our complacency there is a conspiracy we mostly prefer to remain ignorant about. Wendela de Vries is one of Europe's foremost peace campaigners and he puts it like this: "War profiteering is one of the main pillars that support war. The military-industrial complex has a long record of pushing for the development of a war industry and of battlefields to test its products. War profiteering has many forms and a wide range of impacts. The most notorious forms of war profiteering are the arms industry and the arms trade, but there are also many other forms, such as companies involved in war “reconstruction”, companies to which military functions are outsourced, financial institutions backing warfare, companies profiting from the extraction of resources in conflict areas and many more." [de Vries, email to the ENAAT group, 28 June 2011]
If national politicians were prepared to change this, they would have to find alternative employment for millions of people so this is a task they find it very convenient to shelve, particularly at a time when 'defence' seems the biggest and most stable element in the national budget.
But isn't it unbelievably cynical that millions should have to earn their living by dealing out death for others? What sort of livelihood is this?
The simple truth is that our tribal ideas about 'security' and 'defence' are a relic of the past. The only way in which we can have a world without war is by jointly setting up a strong global authority which will have sole command of all armed force, none of which will be used except to rid the world of illegally held arms or in order to protect the human rights of every citizen. Another function of the global authority will be the rapid and efficient aiding of populations stricken by natural disasters or human blunders.
A SUGGESTED UN INITIATIVE:
If delegates to the UN are in favour of putting an end to even the possibility of war - and why should they not be? - they should jointly propose that every political party in every country be invited to join an international league of anti-war parties, committed to setting up, as a high priority:
[1] A global force which will be the sole legitimate owner of military weapons and the sole commander of all existing military force.
[2] This force will replace the existing UN peacekeeping force.
[3] This force will exist solely to establish peace, to remove all illegitimately held weaponry, and to react quickly to all reported human rights abuses.
[4] This force will be commanded by a multi-national global authority but will have local subsidiary centres scattered across the globe.
[5] This force will be recruited and trained in its new tasks by globally administered colleges spread across the globe.
[6] This force will be monitored by an independent multi-national body to check for any abuses of its power, which will be promptly and impartially dealt with.
Of course the detail needs to be worked out but once such an international league is in existence, any political party in any country will be able to join it and voters will know that only a vote for such a party will be a vote for a war-free world.
"The question is not one of "surrendering" national sovereignty. The problem is not negative and does not involve giving something up we already have. The problem is positive, creating something we lack, but imperatively need: the extension of law and order into another field of human association which heretofore has remained unregulated and in anarchy." [ Emery Reves, The Anatomy of Peace]
In 1945, when The Anatomy of Peace was first published, we thought we knew better than Reves. We created the United Nations with a Security Council having, as its permanent members, the main powers who had defeated Hitler. These core members each had the power to veto proposals they disliked but surely, after what they had just emerged from, they could be relied on to see us right?
What idiots we were! In no time the former allies were at each other's throats and we had a cold war. The resulting nuclear arms race still threatens to be our undoing. If it prevented WW3 - just - it did nothing to prevent the disgusting trade in arms which, ever since, has fuelled endless little wars, which have slaughtered endless little people. It has also empowered tyrants, terrorists, pirates and other undesirables.
Turning the UN into a genuine global authority is obviously going to be a massive task and one which involves a huge shift in our thinking. Old style patriotism (which was often simply tribalism writ large) needs to give place to a fervent globalism, a real love of the planet without the health and support of which none of us can survive for a minute. Isn't it ironic that we inhabit the only planet in the whole of the known cosmos which is favourable to life, yet we, the pinnacle of life's achievement to date, are the biggest threat to life on our planet in the whole of its history?
A crusading drive to save and enhance the planet
is the only banner under which every man jack of us can proudly march. If our national armies can be handed over to global control, all legal military forces prevented from engaging in warfare but dedicated to peacekeeping and the protecting of the inalienable rights of every human being, won't that be something?It is worth noticing that NATO signatories account for 70% of all current arms expenditure worldwide. NATO wields formidable force which is currently deployed under joint US-European command. It needs to be set free from partisan political control, made into a GLOBAL SECURITY FORCE, subject to non-political global command, including big players like Russia, China, India and as much of the rest of the world as can be recruited. Hopefully there will be no absentees.
BASIC INSTINCTS
Sigmund Freud, in almost his last published work, wrote:
"After long doubts and vacillations we have decided to assume the existence of only two basic instincts, Eros and the destructive instinct ...the aim of the first of these basic instincts is to establish ever greater unities and to preserve them thus - in short, to bind together; the aim of the second, on the contrary, is to undo connections and so destroy things" [Sigmund Freud, An Outline of Psychoanalysis, Hogarth/Institute of Psychoanalysis, 1949, pp5f.]
The ethos we have cultivated over recent centuries has done a great deal to devalue love and creativity whilst glorifying hatred and destruction. Look at the way our Western tradition (amongst others) has viewed maleness: men who fight are heroes - "real men"; men who love each other warmly and physically are pathetic - "queers".
Freud often used the Greek word for death (thanatos) to denote the destructive instinct. As we all know, thanatos is unstoppable; it comes to all of us sooner or later. The last thing we need is all the war games and nuclear warheads which threaten to give thanatos the final victory.
Our creativity, our love, our constant striving to improve our lot, are an unending struggle against the pull of the primal chaos. We may be tempted to ask if it is worth trying to fight the tide. It might seem simpler just to go with the flow and eat, drink and be merry. But this is not an option if we mean it when we say we love our children. We have reached the crucial moment for decision in the whole history of our species. If we persist in making wrong choices, we shall very soon have reached the point of no return. We have created a huge machine with our technology and ingenuity but at present the machine has no driver; unless it gets one in a hurry, the machine will surely run amok.
SEX
This website advocates not only the renunciation of war but also the positive affirmation of our bisexuality, since this is the best possible antidote to violence. It was again Freud who insisted that the basic constitution of every human individual is bisexual. In spite of this, bisexuality is often regarded as a problem area, more of a liability than an asset. In fact, an informed, responsible approach to this central issue of our sexuality may well be the most hopeful pointer to the future for our species since it will enable men to become much keener to love one another than to disembowel each other. It would also provide the most creative way of curbing population growth. David Attenborough has recently noted that the global population has increased threefold in his lifetime. As he quietly observes, the planet is finite and simply cannot support ever-growing armies of humans. World population has reached 7 billion during 2011; this represents a 40% growth over the past 20 years. We need to do some hard thinking about how to harness our sexual energy, most of which is surplus to reproductive requirements, in order to enrich human life and human relationships.
You will be in good company if you read or download* the following book:
COMING CLEAN ABOUT BISEXUALITY: A MALE PERSPECTIVE
* To download, open a Word or Works doc on your computer, click FILE (top toolbar), select destination folder, enter NAME at bottom and click SAVE. Then simply click on the link above and when the book opens up, click EDIT then SELECT ALL then right click COPY. Now go to the Word or Works document you have just created, point cursor in centre of empty page and right click PASTE. You now have the book.
(visitors from Holland will find a Dutch translation of Coming Clean about Bisexuality at http://www.bikring.nl This can also be freely downloaded)
INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGES
Music, like sex, is also an international language because it does not depend on words but does arise from something deeply implanted in all human beings. Hence music can achieve what few other things can. Just five examples from many we could give: the Simon Bolivar Orchestra and what it is doing for the youth of Venezuela and now the world; The East-West Divan Orchestra, enabling Jews and Arabs to make magnificent music together; an inspired young man in the UK becoming known through TV because of what he can do for macho schools and run-down towns by getting them singing; a fabulous pianist called Ling Ling whose repertoire spans the globe and who is now the role model for literally millions of Chinese youngsters who are learning to play an instrument; "Buskaid", a string ensemble in Soweto which is changing life for many youngsters.
Sport and athletics comprise another international language since balls (I am thinking now of the leather ones!) and swimming pools know no linguistic barriers. Bodies around the world yearn to do the same things - hence great international festivals like the Olympics.
Maths is yet another international language since numbers behave the same wherever you happen to live. Much the same is true of all the sciences since they use terms and tables which are international in scope and are dealing with universal phenomena.
Painting and sculpture, dance and the appreciation of natural beauty again are untroubled by language.
Even religion, that cauldron of fierce enmities, once it gets free of words, has elements within it which speak to all of us.
Is it not time we began to feel terribly ashamed for the way we have abused our human intelligence and to realise at last our enormous potential for corporately creating an exciting and sustainable future for our children?
If you want to get up to date with plans to halt planet abuse go to
http://www.earthpolicy.org/index.php?/plan_b_updates/2009/update83
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