LOVE - NOT WAR

The Parable of the Old Man and the Young

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
And builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretched forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram, caught in the thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.

But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

This famous poem by Wilfred Owen is an indictment of the 'old men' of Europe, whose war killed him in action just a week before it ended. He had reached the ripe old age of 25!

This website comes from another 'old man' - 84 at the time of writing [28 May 2013] - who is determined to do what he can to ensure that history never repeats itself. He believes in mixing his drinks. Few would think sex had anything to do with the issue. I think it has a great deal to do with it

It's now over to you. What are you going to do about it? I'm not talking about the long term as there may not be a long term. Time is of the essence. If you scroll to the bottom of this page, you will find some suggestions for action.

OUR GENERAL PREDICAMENT

As a result of global economic collapse, most governments around the world are  crippled by debt, having 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.  What the forecasters call 'extreme weather events' are becoming all too common.

Governments around the world keep saying they must cut back on all unnecessary expenditure. Harsh necessity has even 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 spend 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 age of mass education and scientific enlightenment - and two world wars culminating in 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 many 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. This dilemma becomes still more acute now that so many nations are toppling back into recession.

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 and 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. It will be totally secular, having no religious or political affiliation but committed only to the declaration of human rights and the principle of social justice.

[3] This force will exist solely to establish peace, to remove all illegitimately held weaponry, to enforce a ban on researching, manufacturing and marketing new weapons and to react quickly to all reported human rights abuses in the territories for which it is responsible.

[4] This force will be commanded by a multi-national global authority, centrally located, but will operate through local subsidiary centres scattered across the globe.

[5] This force will be recruited and trained in its new tasks by globally administered colleges set up in each subsidiary centre.

[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 the blueprint for such an authority is in existence, voters in all countries will at last have the opportunity of placing their votes in favour of the creation of 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 has so far prevented WW3 - just - it has done nothing at all 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. Still existing nuclear warheads are an ever-present threat to all of us.

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. It can only happen if there is an irresistible surge of grass-roots conviction right across the globe; it cannot be imposed from above. 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 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 five billion  years of its history?

A crusading drive to save and enhance this unique planet of ours 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 force 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". If you don't believe this, take a look at some of the video games so many youngsters are hooked on.

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. Here is a quote from a novel first published in the year I was born - 84 years ago - and still one of the most important ever written. The writer, after three years of fighting, is wounded and is surrounded in hospital by many horrendous casualties:

“Everything must have been fraudulent and pointless if thousands of years of civilization weren’t even able to prevent this river of blood, couldn’t stop these torture chambers existing in their hundreds of thousands. Only a military hospital can really show you what war is.          I am young. I am twenty years of age; but I know nothing of life except despair, death, fear, and the combination of completely mindless superficiality with an abyss of suffering. I see people being driven against one another, and silently, uncomprehendingly, foolishly, obediently and innocently killing one another. I see the best brains in the world inventing weapons and words to make the whole process that much more sophisticated and long-lasting…….For years our occupation has been killing - that was the first experience we had. Our knowledge of life is limited to death. What will happen afterwards? And what can possibly become of us? [All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque, p.180 in Vintage Future Classics ET edition based on 1929 German edn]

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. It seems so much simpler to divide the global population into a 'straight' majority and a 'gay' minority. In fact this is a complete refusal to face facts: an informed, responsible approach to the 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, which has just been updated [April 2013]:

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 West-Eastern 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 Lang Lang whose repertoire spans the globe and who is now the role model for literally millions of Chinese youngsters who are inspired by him 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 linguistic barriers.

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 and for the animals which could and should inhabit this planet?

WHAT CAN I DO ABOUT ALL THIS?

The vital thing, obviously, is to decide whether or not you agree with what is said here. If you would like to express your view about any part of this site send me an email at jngjones@msn.com with FEEDBACK in the SUBJECT line. I will then put your contribution on the appropriate page in the link below. If you want to write to me privately, please put PRIVATE in the subject line.

Also, you can use the internet to spread this message either by referring others to this site or by setting up a site of your own.

You can also maybe get reactions from your political representative and alert the UN to your concerns.

The important thing is to do everything we can to get things moving. It is action not mere talk that will get things done and the pressure will have to come from the grass roots - People Power!

You can find comments already received at:

FEEDBACK