The North Coast times-eagle., January 01, 2003, Page 12, Image 12

PAGE 12
FROM PAGE 11
suggestion. Whether we acknowledge it, we will war to happen.
Yet, if the human species can gear itself for war, it can do
likewise for peace. Contrary to the assumed inevitability of war,
a world without war is inevitable by substituting the inevitability
of peace. This notion may seem oversimplified, but its logic
compels me to make a committed effort to go beyond merely
protesting a war here and there into the realm of total pacifism.
In a sense my life as a handicapped individual (I have
cerebral palsy) and its physical limitations have shown me two
truths which are somewhat analogous to the dynamics of peace
and war. The first is that no matter how things appear, there are
always different options available. The second truth is that if
one is not prepared or ready for a course of action, one is likely
to back down from pursuit of it in favor of another option. For
example, I do not speak very clearly so if I wish to communicate
my ideas with any degree of cogency I turn to writing Of course
there is the possibility I might be a writer anyway, but I strongly
suspect that whatever artistic skills and inclinations I possess
would be expressed in woodworking and the like if I had manual
dexterity. In possession of a computer I am nearly mute in favor
of expressing myself writing. Not only do I have options, I am
forced to utilize whatever creativity I have to be anything other
than unsuccessful This is of course no less and no more than
the argument conservatives use when they advocate slashing
the various budgets to lifegiving humanitarian programs.
To establish the relevancy of this line of thought to the
topic of world peace, perhaps the most valuable step we could
take to put a halt in our involvement in warfare would be to
dismantle all military arms. Naturally, we would be more vulner­
able to armed assault and military conquest, but not only would
our national position as a power threat be drastically reduced, if
not eliminated, we would also be forced to negotiate peace just
to survive — because of being prepared for peace, not war.
Our way of thinking and acting would be the attitude and mien
of getting along and avoiding trouble with each other. The occur­
rence of violent conflict would probably be minimal and warfare
would be a detestable obscurity, if not nonexistent, instead of
the glorious necessity we presently believe it to be.
Were we not prepared for war our heroes and idols
would be peacemakers. Deserters would be rewarded for pursuit
of life instead of death Under such conditions the label coward
might apply to those who do have the fortitude to keep peace
rather those who have the common sense to avoid the position
of having to kill or be killed. The value of valor would be affixed
the premium of courage in the face of life and its enrichment,
not in the way one dies or how many people one kills.
cated, responsible and highly sensitive disciples who recognize
the inherent weakness in a status quo ruled and protected by
military order and strength, tyranny and other manifestations of
oppression and violence, all of which constitute war.
I am reluctant but willing to risk ridicule by historians and
the like to espouse the doctrine of global peace which is crucial
to the whole issue of arriving at an eventual and viable state of
nonwarfare on earth and has been advocated throughout the
ages by truly enlightened and inspiring individuals. I reiterate I
am not a Christian and do not pretend to accept or understand
the notion of a 'savior,' yet even though his followers have
committed nearly every conceivable act of violence and atrocity
in his name, I have to acknowledge the peace message of Jesus
to be extremely effective in promulgating brotherly (and surely
sisterly) love and peace on earth as an ideal. The problem is
that once the executed rabble-rouser attained the status of son
of God peace took a silent and holy trip to Heaven where it has
since remained apparently indifferent to devout armed crusaders
faithfully awaiting the final resurrection so they could cease their
eternally senseless killing.
My lack of scholarliness prevents me from knowing of
the existence of any records of a promoter of world peace in
either East or West prior to Jesus. However, in India where
some biblical scholars conjecture Jesus garnered much of his
spiritual learning, Buddha and his disciples had long taught the
notion that one finds peace within oneself with the result one
pursues a peaceful life. Because Eastern religion, mythology
and thought developed and remains steeped in organic myth
and symbol and also polytheism (and never developed the
Hebraic monotheistic view of existence which elevates humanity
to a superior plain in its self-image and thereby achieves defacto
segregation from the rest of existence), the Orient, notwithstand­
ing its own set of problems, did not lose its umbilical connection
to the extent that the Occident has. The result is a more accept­
ing and placid view, a less aggressive and zealous approach,
and a not so compelling desire for immediate conquest or rash
decisions or results of any kind: all things happen in their own
time.
During my youth the greatest peaceful resister of them
all dazzled the world with his nonviolent liberation of India from
British colonial rule. Mahatma Gandhi's actions should have
taught our leaders something about nonviolent behavior,
especially if their motives are as moral as they claim. Although
most of the world’s leaders appear to not have learned a thing,
many global citizens have successfully implemented those
tactics in a variety of protests. The slow but ultimately success­
ful halt of the Vietnam War as well as the civil rights impact on
American consciousness are only two examples. As if to speed
up the passage of time between acts of civil disobedience on a
massive level, Gandhi's tactics were emulated by Martin Luther
King Jr., and contrary to what I and thousands of street radicals
believed at the time, ultimately proved more effective achieving
racial desegregation than the violent acts of retaliation against
whites by the militant factions of the American black community.
Whether or not King’s movement would have achieved such far
reaching success had the violence not terrorized whites (as most
historians, including me until recently, might claim), the point is
that when push came to pull it was not the burning of Watts or
the looting of Detroit that produced the impact on the powers
that be (who would have allowed the insurgents to suffer the
miserable consequences) to initiate the necessary legislation
so essential to social change; rather it was the highly publicized
drama of a proud people peacefully marching toward an army of
brutal clubs and the image of that people being beaten by those
clubs and falling passively to the ground and being chained or
handcuffed then hauled to jail — it was that image that captured
the hearts, minds and souls of the American status quo and
planted the seeds of racial equality a century after the Emanci­
pation Proclamation * The success of King’s passive desegre­
gation tactics and the withdrawal of American troops from
Vietnam, largely in response to pressure exerted by “peaceniks”
and/or antiwar protesters, is conclusive of nothing but does
provide us with a ray of hope, albeit only a flickering one, for it
reveals what humanity can do to achieve a state of global non­
warfare through power of the will.
I believe that Switzerland has maintained its status
of national independence and neutrality since the 16th or 17th
century — no mean feat for a political and economic entity
smack-dab in the middle of a regularly warring Europe. If indeed
my memory is correct about the dynamics of a nation I have
regrettably found of little interest, it seems the Swiss have
cannily maintained a militia just large enough to police inside
their nation’s borders but small enough to avoid the glories of
war. Switzerland is the largest country in Europe not a member
of the United Nations, and maintains one of the world’s health­
iest and most stable economies.
Military weakness or unpreparedness would provide us
with opportunities to attain the status of a peaceful coexistence
in a world society, a global setting, by means of utilizing our
always available natural tools of peace instead of depleting the
planet’s material resources to force peace by means of demon­
strating our powers of destruction, powers so developed they
possess the potential to annihilate life as we know it.
If the relatively new optimistic viewpoint in me is correct
in its assumption that evolved humanity has only to combine its
original and not entirely forgotten or ignored instinctive aware­
ness of its relationship to the awesome core of existence and
everything that emerges therein with its ability to wrought a
more rapid change in the ongoing and endless dynamics of
evolutionary process toward an ever improving state, then my
former bleak view of human endeavor as an inevitably dead-
ended route of destruction and ultimate obliteration has been
replaced with the still barely flickering ray of hope that the
present brink of annihilation toward which the human species
is rushingly dragging terrestrial vitality will be avoided for the
duration of time. The inevitability of peace is inextricably linked
to the ray of hope, for without the condition of hope the will
power for peace will perish and so will peace itself. This is
because peace is not peace unless it is lasting, unless it is
forever.
One of the reasons why the scourge of war is easier
than the road of peace (as a result more socially acceptable)
is that, however bloody it is, it is only temporary and does not
challenge our minuscule imaginations or expand our limits of will
power. It is often said that nobody wants war but that it is some­
times necessary. And by the same token the people who make
that claim also intimate that peace is blessed but not for the real
world. But what seems absolutely absurd to me is the supreme
sacrifices most people make for war or in behalf of war or
because of war, but not in behalf of the peace they claim to
long for. I believe that the hope for peace lies in persuading the
populace that peace is available and that its price is much less
than that of war. Even if one dies as a result of nonviolent
struggle, its price is less than that of dying in armed conflict. For
example (to clarify my position here), I may or may not possess
the courage to follow through with this line of thinking but since
I know I must die sometime, I cannot imagine a nobler way of
doing so than by peacefully protesting an atrocity of some kind
(like war), and such a death would be infinitely more preferable
than dying while engaged in snuffing out life.
In my view, war is legalized mass murder and as such,
should and can be peacefully banished from the face of the
earth forever. Words are more easily said than the act can be
done, but the task is possible and its problems are surmount­
able. No doubt historians and other experientalists will disavow
the possibility of such a banishment based on the fact that all
previous attempts have failed. They will probably declare that
military force is the only means of guaranteeing peace on earth
and even that is open to extreme doubt. But force is not the road
to peace; it has always failed. Love and the value of love is the
only road to peace Only love of all existence and the act of
existing will enable us to make the commitment necessary to
take the abuse that one must peacefully accept and confront in
working for global peace
'January 1, 2003 is the 140th anniversary of the
Emancipation Proclamation of 1863
Far from being a new idea, the struggle for peace has
been advocated and tried for thousands of years with a certain
amount of temporary success by strongwilled leaders and dedi­
UNIONTOWN
Fith/fy Chcpy
IntyGvt&LBew ovvTap
#1 orv 2 nd/ Stv&et
Aitovia/* 325 0033
218 WEST MARINE DRIVE
ASTORIA, OREGON 97103
(503) 325-8708
i
t
t