On Being Shown a Way to a Peaceful Global Civilisation

The great religious and philosophical influence in my life is the teachings and life of Baha’u’llah. Taking for himself the appellation, Manifestation of God, the fulfilment of the promise, Baha’u’llah’s life and teachings are of a consistent high-mindedness and ethic, that convinced me of the truth of the matter of His declaration and His mission.

His mission is expounded in over 100 volumes of letters, treatises and books, and include a book of laws (Kitab-i-Agdas), treatises on practical mysticism such as the Seven Valleys, and practical spirituality such as the Hidden Word, and a full exploration of His station in relation to the teachings and prophecies in Judaism, Christianity and Islam (Kitab-i-Iqan).

As a number of hotspots of conflict around the world are uprooting millions of people, Baha’u’llah’s declared future and mission to the people might best be encapsulated by these exhortations:

“It is incumbent upon every man, in this Day, to hold fast unto whatsoever will promote the interests, and exalt the station, of all nations and just governments. Through each and every one of the verses which the Pen of the Most High hath revealed, the doors of love and unity have been unlocked and flung open to the face of men. We have erewhile declared — and Our Word is the truth — Consort with the followers of all religions in a spirit of friendliness and fellowship. Whatsoever hath led the children of men to shun one another, and hath caused dissensions and divisions amongst them, hath, through the revelation of these words, been nullified and abolished…

Of old it hath been revealed: “Love of one’s country is an element of the Faith of God.” The Tongue of Grandeur hath, however, in the day of His manifestation proclaimed: “It is not his to boast who loveth his country, but it is his who loveth the world.” Through the power released by these exalted words He hath lent a fresh impulse, and set a new direction, to the birds of men’s hearts, and hath obliterated every trace of restriction and limitation from God’s holy Book.

” O people of Justice! Be as brilliant as the light, and as splendid as the fire that blazed in the Burning Bush. The brightness of the fire of your love will no doubt fuse and unify the contending peoples and kindreds of the earth, whilst the fierceness of the flame of enmity and hatred cannot but result in strife and ruin.” (Bahá’u’lláh, “Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh”, Passage XLIII)

An important aspect of Baha’u’llahs exhortation is in the realm of our Being. One of his tablets is dedicated to a list of how we are to be to realise the greater mission of the unity of humanity. He is a part of what He writes:

“Be generous in prosperity, and thankful in adversity. Be worthy of the trust of thy neighbor, and look upon him with a bright and friendly face. Be a treasure to the poor, an admonisher to the rich, an answerer of the cry of the needy, a preserver of the sanctity of thy pledge. Be fair in thy judgment, and guarded in thy speech. Be unjust to no man, and show all meekness to all men….” (Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, Passage CXXX)

On a personal note, I found over the course of a few decades of my adult life, that I seemed to have certain limitations to my development of the practical application of such virtues. I felt that I had, apart from the occasional outright failing, “hit a ceiling’. I felt that I had explorations in life and contributions that i could be making but which in some way I seemed lacking.

Nonetheless, in picking up the yoke of those contributions, especially in creativity, the arts, and theatre, I found an access, a gateway, to another world of human development – ontological coaching. This particular gateway lead me to the thinker, Werner Erhard and the offshoot of his work, the company now called Landmark Worldwide. The work I have participated in through Landmark including the Being a Leader Course in which I met and interacted with an ageing Werner, himself, has had a number of impacts:

i) a breakdown in regard to what i was unable to see regarding my own lack of integrity in the world;

ii) an simple, appreciative, caring acceptance of myself as cause in the matter of my lack of integrity and inauthenticity; and the real limitations of my mind that are a function of my genetical personality and a considerable number of physical and psychic assault events over the course of my upbringing; and

iii) An equally appreciative and exciting recognition of my capabilities and skills that were developed over many decades, including the lessons I learnt from what I failed or did not so well. From this recognition I could aspire to something bigger then who I wound up being that gave me a safer, more controlled, push through life, to participating more fully in the global landscape.

Werner Erhard’s most fabulous work since the 1970’s and the widespread impact of that work on millions of people, was influenced by his vast reading of philosophical and religious thought, a powerful epiphany, and conversations with other modern influencers of thought. In all that Erhard took on the philosopher of Martin Heidegger, a mid 20th century German existentialist, and member and sympathiser of the anti-jewish views of the Nazi Party during WWII and to the end of his life in 1976. Heidegger’s philosophical work and teaching at the University of Marburg in Germany in the 1920’s, inspired many students and fellow philosophers including Hannah Arendt, and the French existentialists such as Satre . By the 1960’s and 70’s Heidegger’s work was presented face value to the world without more than a nod to his Nazi history. The post mortem release of Heidegger’s diaries, showing his dedication to German National Socialism, has certainly un-nerved many who have come to appreciate his works on Being. As might be expected, the philosophical camp falls into those who reckon that Heideggers work can be separated from his Nazi attitudes, and those who reckon they must be entwined. One of the most recent explorations of Werner Erhards early mass coaching practice, “The Forum”, is Bruce Hyde and Steve Kopp’s book, “Speaking Being” ¹ that has an analysis of how Erhard’s work can be seen as a practice of the linguistic and existential philosophy of Heidegger,

I am personally of a kind who can sit with the work of another, regardless of their ideology, and see whether there is something I might find interesting, of wonder, or even true. For example could it be true that, as Heidegger says, there is a ‘throwness’ to human existence, a facticity, such that how existence show up to us is already informed (by ourselves) and is disclosed through our moods. In practice, from this type of view, it is only a short step to asking of anything we have an opinion and as such have an emotion or mood that comes along, “is (xxx) true”? However, developing my capacity for sitting with the diverse view has been also under Baha’u’llah’s encouragement, “Warn the beloved of the one true God, not to view with too critical an eye the sayings and writings of men. Let them rather approach such sayings and writings in a spirit of open-mindedness and loving sympathy.”² without which I may have maintained many of the cultural attitudes I was raised within, some of which are harmful in social practice to others.

While this can seem like a vicious circle of questioning the answer and never coming to a conclusion, indeed my experience is that there is a capacity for humans to holding the inquiry while also standing in an immediate working conclusion. This does require some deft cognitive ability and is not a strength of many people. For those of us for whom it is a strength, there is also an ethical response to also sit with other’s less complex opinions for as long as it requires. Under the practice of ‘consorting’, we might think of the action as providing a clearing or space of listening for anyone to express themselves fully and being ‘gotten’. While consorting is a moral exhortation of Baha’u’llah, “being gotten’ is new language designed by Erhard to express being able to authentically reflect a person’s expression back to them so they can see that indeed you ‘get’ what they are saying. Yet in asking why we do that, the existentialist would say, “in order to (achieve, consequence, avoid)” while Baha’u’llah would also say “for God”. Rather than “God” Erhard simply states, that “to be a leader (consequence) you will need to be given being by something bigger than yourself”. And the placeholder “God” if defined as what is ever unknown and unknowable, the fundamental essence of pre-existence, is as big as it gets.

On the other hand, in the world of action, Baha’u’llah is emphatic about the role of justice both as a personal response and attitude and a social and political response. “Justice and equity”, He writes, “are twin Guardians that watch over men. From them are revealed such blessed and perspicuous words as are the cause of the well-being of the world and the protection of the nations.” (Bahá’u’lláh, Epistle to the Son of the Wolf, P23)

This brings me to Hannah Arendt, student and lover of Martin Heidegger, who fled to Paris in 1933 after arrest by the Ghestapo. Arendt was Heidegger’s friend to the end. In an interview about her book, “We can Change the World.”, Lyndsey Stonebridge, says Arendt understood that friendship was not transactional. Arendt laid out in a paper called “The Banality of Evil” that it takes a mass of a population to sign up to a progrom like the holocaust. And the people are not evil, they are just making ‘banal’ / ordinary choices given the sweep of a cultural message, and do not believe or see they are comitting a crime. She spoke of the holocaust as a crime against humanity on the body of the jewish people, not just one more anti-semitic progrom. Arendt was also influenced by Husserl who was fired by Heidegger because he was a jew. Yet fully from Husserl and Heiddeger we find a philosophy that can be a practical pathway to a greater human being, regardless that Heidegger himself fell into a narrow superstitious rut of it, perhaps in part to assuage himself of the existential nihilism he experienced as a lapsed catholic and an existentialist.

Werner Erhard, in noting this nihilistic quality in existentialism, discovered, and asks us all to discover, that nihilism is not to be battled, yet an inverse solution lies in moving through the nihilistic awareness of existensialism. To understand this, we must understand that nihilism is the idea that the world that humans understand is based in language, and particularly language that contextualised everything. If we take away the context, e.g. ‘a tree provides shade to humans’, we are left with ‘a tree’. It is the thing “tree” that exists, not any such meaning or context or purpose, we might apply. The existential provocation means that everything is meaningless. Werner Erhards, genius insight was that it is all empty and meaningless including empty and meaningless. Erhard in being able to express this, created a practice for building a ‘dasein’, a being as a clearing in which anything could show up, or could be created. In ‘getting’ that empty and meaningless is empty and meaningless, dasien (I-Me) can be a future that is really relationship(s) of my own choosing. Simultaneously, Erhard saw that all of our relationships were already of our own choosing. So instead of feeling we are choiceless or driven at times, of any of those choices we are driven by habit or upbringing, we can also move into the created future as our choices. In the clearing of empty and meaningless is empty and meaningless, all choices can be divested especially when they take on the complete attribute of meaninglessness. This is not to be mistaken with anything paranormal or super human. This is not about wishful thinking or fantasy. All invitations into a clearing can only be given as allowed by current states i.e relationships including those with ourselves e.g. our bodies and embodied states. In such clearing we can create a future for justice for the whole world, and see that future fully expressed in the world. Baha’u’llahs writings are replete with the created future of a global civilisation and the characteristics of humans and communities and governments required to see that future fully expressed.

In the life of Baha’u’llah and his son and successor, Abdu’l-Baha, certain religious and political authorities murdered many of their followers in Persia. While chastising these persons, they always invited said persons to correction of their moral behaviour. Indeed one such person, on accidentally meeting Abdul-Baha, did implore forgiveness and was accepted caringly and forgiven. This was an extraordinary act, overwhelming to witnesses who knew the suffering and who couldn’t quite grasp the response.

In this day of so many millions dispossessed by conflict, by so many who perform assault because they are provided political and even corporate approval, we must continue to chastise the bad players and the banal supporters, to step down, to reflect on their moral compromise, and to ask forgiveness. Some in the current conflict, like the Nazi leaders, will face war crimes tribunals. The rest like Heidegger will face a lifetime of tolerance. My hope is that the vast majority will face reconciliation and shame and be offered radical forgiveness. That is the only way to a peacful, just world. To those currently in authority I implore you take it.

1Speaking being, Bruce Hyde, Steve Kopp, Wiley 2019

2 Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, CLIV

World Peace will Give Us the Universe

I have no answer for the future except in peace and human collaboration and deep consultation. I do have a sense of the great possibility that emerges from such a future. .

There are signs from philosophy, psychology and brain sciences that the collective de-traumatised human experience, that might take several generations after complete peace breaks out, could create inventive power that itself is infinite or shall we say very very large.

This inventive power is based in the possibility of a state of human designated by the idea that, when we think of ‘who I am’, could it be that who I am is the showing / presence of everything and everyone in my experience. This leads to an idea of as complete reception of the world as it is, and, as all humans becoming competent and some masters of such receptivity, a ‘shared brain’. I intuit through this ability for collaborative engagement, the human future is infinite far beyond the sense that we think of as resource infiniteness.

I intuit that it is only under these conditions that certain breakthroughs will occur e.g. efficient and effective space flight and exploration. Such a breakthrough will establish access to a virtually unlimited resource, some of which aren’t even discovered.

On this planet however, the many necessary competent characteristics for every human being required to achieve a peaceful planet, will also provide the necessary applications to ecosystem details and flourishing while perfecting new more subtle energy technologies and resource farming. Going by the economic growth formula, this may also show a declining growth. The real question then is, if there is a flourishing ecosystem with a flourishing human planetary society but a declining economic growth, then maybe the whole model is transformed and we are not even using those measures to determine how we are doing.

There is in that future, a feedback loop between the new human way of thinking about ourselves and the ecosystem, even the solar or galactic ecosystem, and our exploration and population of the galaxy. Will we meet new friends? Will we finally determine whether we are already under observation. Will we be enrolled into a larger galactic civilisation with it’s own magical technologies. This is the stuff of science fiction but only so long as seems impossible. As breakthroughs in peace and global civilisation come about, we will notice something about ourselves as humans that will be magical to our current selves.

Scarcity, Energy, Climate Solutions, and a New Civilisation

Andrew Nikiforuk of The Tyee, writes, “So, if our current civilization is to survive in any shape or form it needs to fundamentally rethink all energy spending, from how we harness it to what we use it for. As Michaux concludes in his number-crunching report, “replacing the existing fossil fuel powered system (oil, gas and coal), using renewable technologies, such as solar panels or wind turbines, will not be possible for the entire global human population. There is simply just not enough time, nor resources to do this by the current target set by the world’s most influential nations. What may be required, therefore, is a significant reduction of societal demand for all resources, of all kinds.”

Erin Remblance responds, “How we make that transition to lowered demand should be the most prominent discussion in our media, classrooms and households. Why is it nearly invisible?”

She goes on to note, “Years ago the great psychologist Bruno Bettelheim wrote a book about what happens to people in dehumanizing environments. Having survived two Nazi concentration camps, Bettelheim knew the subject well. Near the end of The Informed Heart, he offered this prescient observation. Jews who accepted the status quo and believed in business as usual perished. Those who did not believe in business as usual left before the Germans arrived, sailed to Russia or America or joined the resistance. Many survived. “Thus in the deepest sense the walk to the gas chamber was only the last consequence of a philosophy of business as usual,” wrote Bettelheim. It was “a last step in no longer defying the death instinct, which might also be called the principle of inertia.”

Now a widespread inertia prevents us from seizing control of our fate. We must do all we can to overcome that torpor. The implications are plain. Those communities that reject business as usual and cut their energy spending and all the materialist values that go with it, just might survive the long emergency and write a different ending to this story.

I have two responses to Erin’s points. They are my elaboration on the two key notions in her comments: Business as usual, and scarcity of energy.

I open talking about business as usual because seeing this clearly is the foundation of any transformation of civilisation, and technological and energy paradigm shift is pivotal in sweeping civilisation transformation along. (See particularly the copious and optimistic works of Jeremy Rifkin). What some have called ‘spiritual malaise’ and others “tranquilised obviousness”, business rarely is as usual, and if, like the history of European Jews, you punish a group regularly in small to harsh ways, I reckon they might just think the next bit of noise is just more of the same.

It does take quite a bit of training to be able to get up in the morning and take a fresh look at what’s happening, and that requires even putting yesterday in the past. It also requires being fully cognizant of our biases and mindsets. Anyone who says they don’t have any are doomed to play them out. What then do we hold to that gives us some predictive viability? First is cultivating an independence of thought, a detachment from the tribe whether professional, national, sub-cultural, or party as usual. And that is not antipathy, even the opposite, what others have called “indifferent love”. This stance supports an ability to: follow the evidence from several fields of science; hold doubt without discarding anything until resolved in evidence; and reviewing fully any arguments against. This ability for independent thought supports the interdependence of all independent thinkers for it is only in the recognition of true independent inquiry (search for truth) that a collective of thinkers can divine a greater magic.

This situation we find ourselves is a call to be so much more than we have ever been, so much more than we wound up being, individually and collectively. We will either rise to the call or we will fall. And whatever happens will be what happens. As the WWII holocaust found traction, Lydia Zamenhoff chose to go back to Poland from the USA in the face of immanent danger, she chose to support the last moments of her community and die with them. We don’t know how many hands she held but we do know she died with them. Those of us in the frontline of transforming this civilisation may well find ourselves in a future of ‘holding hands’. We must accept that this is one possible future.

In terms of policy, economics, and human behaviour, the basic economic reality of scarcity does work. Many people living in rural Australia grew up looking after water usage. If you have to make a meagre annual rainfall and a watertank last a year, you have watch usage like a hawk. On the other hand, if old people can’t afford heating in winter, they could die. Well, that’s a time honoured tradition. Australia has ineptly allowed gas companies to sell much of its gas, internationally, leading to scarcity and high prices for energy as we enter winter. I’m expecting an unusual winter death rate among the elderly this year. Feeding into an inflationary boom, those on more basic incomes can be expected to suffer housing dislocation. This in, perhaps, the wealthiest per capita nation on the planet.

Meanwhile the environmental impact of windfarms is already been felt and the next phase of renewable energy farms will not be given such an easy ride. The real difficulty is that we aren’t learning fast enough because, here in Australia, for the last 20 years 80% of our intellectual energy has been spent on arguing climate change denialism with our government. In the end, the example of the holocaust goes to one characteristic of modern politics so far – we are often very slow to the table. Timing being the essence, and we can’t escape the clear timing the IPCC have provided, we will damage our way out of this catastrophe. The question is, which is the lesser poison or the better trade off? Presumably the one that improves the chances of the ecosystem and human civilisation. There’s not much chop in voting for the view that 1 or 2 or 3 billion people can just suffer and die. There’s not much chop in loosing much more of the world’s ecosystems and species than we already have, because that will inevitably lead to the billions of people suffering and dying. The inextricableness of human development and a narrow range of climate and a particular variety of ecosystems, is conclusive. I support the work of the Foundation for Climate Restoration, the third and often overlooked leg of climate solutions. The scalability of technologies of removing CO2 from the atmosphere over the next decade is likely to have less impact and perhaps even a very positive total impact on ecosystems, than any other climate change solution, namely renewable energy development and population adaptation. To solve this crisis, to transform global civilisation so the next phase of human development is of a higher order of workability for people and ecosystems, we’ve got to work urgently together on all fronts, even if it means government ordered rationing.

The UK in WWII proved that a people faced by a single existential threat can adhere to austere rationing policies for several years. Even in the 1930’s the mathematical and nutritional knowledge was ample so that there were no cases on malnutrition in the UK during WWII. Today, we certainly have the capacity to design sophisticated systems for the allocation of energy, the development of renewables, the weaning from fossil fuels, and the equitable establishment of systems worldwide, together with an food security systems. What is still required is for nationalistic governments to get to the table put aside their extreme patriotisms for the future of humanity and the planetary ecosystems that support us.

We have a political choice: the easy choice or the hard choice. The easy choice is for all national governments to come to the table with good will to design global systems that will create both equity in resource access and as rapid a transition from fossil fuel energy as possible. The hard choice is to continue to bicker and terrorize each other.

Either choice will lead to the new civilisation, will lead to the transition off fossil fuels and to equitable distributions of resources. Even if making the hard choice, once a billion people have died and billions of others have suffered through the defensive and aggressive attitudes of extreme patriots, the billions of people of good will remaining,will see those extremists off. Such has been the way of history to date. Will this be the moment we will be able to put our past in the past and take the easy way, or will we insist that the past dictates our actions and only massive numbers of deaths will convince us that another model of governance and social organization is viable.?

Why be generous towards rule breakers

where governments have been clear what those rules are and why, around the COVID 19 pandemic?

The short answer to this question is that open, free society requires it.

The long answer is a whole lot trickier for most people to get, especially those of us who tend to be obedient.

The problem lies in our primal nature in regards to authority.

Most people are obedient to authority and always have been across a million years.

Simultaneously, people have always exploit loopholes and bent the rules. And creative and imaginative people are better at it than others.

To understand these characteristics we must understand the evolutionary success of human clans and the advancement of human civilisation over the past 10,000 years.
The evolutionary success of human clans are based on primate hierarchical and social support behaviour. This behaviour hinges on an alpha male, a female harem, and progeny. The human alpha male is to a large extent what we now call psychopathic. Their (our) success, as against other primates that haven’t socially changed for millions of years, developed around the opening up of clan society to sycophant males who were allowed female relationships as reward for that submissive support. Their female harem also had a hierarchy. Kinship and successorship to the alpha (chief, king) developed according to the male children of the female hierarchy, although subordinated by the most psychopathic natures in the system.

The political tensions within clans were terrible, with death waiting around every corner, harnessing two types of proclivity: intelligent rebellion for domination; and shame provoked submissiveness. Intelligent rebellion for domination not only lead to successorship of the chief or king but also to the development of hierarchies of sycophancy. In other words, a way to dominate is not to hold the throne but to hold the highest positions in the hierarchy serving the throne. Shame-provoked submissiveness created a safety ‘red-flag’ in all social circumstances from the earliest ages. Children with shame would survive by immediate submissive responses in the face of any authority: parental, older sibling. This is very important in a social environment in which death by an irritated chief was immanent and uncurbed, even for a child.

If we see that the degree of intelligent rebellion and shame wove (and weaves) a composite individual nature, then we can see how political hierarchies eventually developed, as powerful sycophants worked to increase the territories and subjection for their chief. We can also see, as a parallel process, the development of religious hierarchies both as alternative ways to dominate the society and the chief himself. I caution, here, to let go of any impression this is giving that these are simple transactional behaviours. From the earliest human times, dealing with the issues of death and our awareness of our relationship with others and other species, and our killing them for food and resources, has been an existential challenge that required a intelligently deft vision, a meta-story to comfort our burgeoning moral consciousness in the face of requirement for survival. Spiritual and religious visionaries command a space that submits to the right of kingship, while offering comfort to all subjects of their ‘rightness’ in subordinate life and death.

Spiritual and religious visionaries also set up their own hierarchies. Within those hierarchies, additional allowance was made for the freedom for a certain type of intelligence to become immersed in the metaphysical landscape through practices of the mind, language and reflection. As societies advanced, artisans (product makers) became artists. Some artists and religious visionaries shared the proclivities to divine the metaphysical and theological.

A particular form of intelligent rebellion was able to be fostered in larger societies. This took place in the form of a youthfulness that no longer needed deep shame to survive, and an artfulness, a creativity, to formulate new social constructs and ways to promote them. The promotion of new social constructs that mostly challenged the authority of the king, while developing a following in times of general social tribulation, tended to be visited by programs by the political and religious leadership. It is worthwhile pondering the ebb and flow of these tides, as, finally, every civilisation that enters a certain internal tribulation, falters, collapses, and then finds that once youthful vision rise in the populace with a more loos, open (not entirely new) social construct.

Fast-forward to the modern society. Dr Barth Hoogstraten who was a medical student in the Dutch resistance in WWII wrote in the foreword to his 2008 book, “Resistance Fighters: The Immense Struggle of Holland”, that throughout history, students and artists have been in the forefront of struggles against tyranny. In Nazi-occupied Holland, 1,671 Dutch men and women paid the ultimate price for their heroism. Hardship, terrifying suspense, and sacrifice that characterized their life were interspersed with the moments of humor, simple beauty, and love that persevered even in the darkest of days.

In their research on the behaviour of french resistance fighters of WWII, Andre and Alex L. Juliard noted that they found a new insight into the nature of human motivation and into our own psychological makeup may sometimes result from the observation of individuals living in unusual conditions such as people who joined the French “resistance” during World War Il. They had been participants with other young and middle-aged persons who belonged to a “maquis”’ in Southeast France. Their observations induced them to discern in human beings a larger variety of innate aptitudes, or inclinations, than those currently recognized in normal daily existence. Some of these overlooked inclinations, nevertheless, play an important part in the behavior of dedicated people.

And what of the masses of people who committed the atrocious acts of WWII, Stalin’s rule over the USSR, Pol Pot’s revolution in Cambodia, etc? “We may be genuinely puzzled as to how people could obey commands that seem both bloodthirsty and stupid. Puzzlement can vanish when we realize that in the eyes of their perpetrators the hideous crimes of history are not hideous crimes at all, but acts of loyalty, patriotism and duty. From the vantage point of the present we can see them as hideous crimes, but ordinarily from that same vantage point we cannot see the crimes of our own governments as hideous or even as crimes.” (Don Mixon, Obedience and Civilization)

Rebellious domination and religious vision has slowly and surely brought us to a place in the development of human society, when we no longer need a chief or a king. Yet we stand at a cross-road, and ebb in the tide of a kingless society. To a large extent, in times of difficulty, our behavioural responses are not so different from 10,000 or 100,000 years ago. Mostly we are looking for who to be submissive toward, who to be supportive of, who will give us security in return, even if with a sense of dread around each corner. And in turbulent times, alpha males will tend to come to the fore to provide that direction through their political hierarchies. Yet there are those, mostly young, mostly creative, mostly intelligent, who will take all kinds of risks in rebellion against the domination of authority and their sycophants. Theirs is not to have a far-reaching knowledge of all things worldly. That is for other, older heads. Theirs is to be the ‘resistance’ to the tendency for most of us to find a haven under an authoritarian rule.

“Man has continued to evolve by acts of disobedience. Not only was his spiritual development possible only because there were men who dared to say no to the powers that be in the name of their conscience or their faith, but also his intellectual development was dependent on the capacity for being disobedient, disobedient to authorities who tried to muzzle new thoughts and to the authority of long-established opinions which declared a change to be nonsense.” (Erich Fromm, On Disobedience and Other Essays)

A society is neither for the young or the old, the rich or the poor, the dominant or the non-dominant. It is for all of us, and, therefore, all of these. At this point in time, the advancement of civilisation requires that there are a number of primary agreements in place that support the strengthening of the collaborative and cooperative sovereignty. Under this form of sovereignty, the mass of us who are given to obedience, will avail ourselves of the servitude to the collaborative and the cooperative project. The psychopaths will become the true rebels, tending to strive to be dominant over everyone else in their sphere of influence, yet being held in check by their own drive towards self-interest that is held in the collaborative space. The youth, artists, activists, visionaries, disenfranchised, and children will enjoy the rewards of being in collaboration. The agreements include: we all hold equitable ownership of the land of our citizenship; we all hold equity in participation and servitude to the community; policing is in community servitude – violence physical force or coercion is forbidden except where an immanent threat to another is evident, and then only to mitigate that threat. While policing is sycophant to an authoritarian domination, while police officers are trained to hurt the common politic and those who rebel against that domination, so the rebellion will continue and broaden. It is not to say, the turbulent times are not the time for rebellion. The turbulent times are exactly the point when gains in equity and participation in the democratic advancement are being handed over by the submissive to the authoritarians. Turbulent times are exactly the the times of sacrifice for the next phase of freedom, peace, and the advancement of human society.

We, who would have this society, must stand for the agreement forbidding police force on peaceful citizens, regardless of the rules they have broken. We will then prevent police for using force on citizens of whom there may be a suspicion of but, in reality, haven’t broken rules. Police forces will be primarily negotiators of community upset, on rare occasions to prevent immanent violence against another, effecting physical intervention. On all but this very rare event, having accessible and cordial relation with community wherever they go.
We, who would have this society, must be generous in our attitude about youthful, creative, rebellion against authority. We must avoid our tendency to effect shame and submission, the bringing into line under authority just so we can have a sense of security as being a little higher on the hierarchy. We must recognise that in our own need for the advancement of civilisation lies a need for those who are devoted to working around authority and even sacrificing themselves against the true nature of authoritarianism.

When policing stops working for community.

Egg Boy & Dissonance

He’s not a hero. He’s 16. There’s a well-understood developmental trajectory he is on, part of which means his action are not particularly well thought out. That ‘getting into action’ that youth, especially certain young men, are known for, often leads into danger. Egg boy got punched twice by the politician  and then jumped on and choked by two or thee much larger men (white supremacist supporters of said politician). Well it happened in a public space so egg boy had some safety net in the form of observers and a couple of supporters.

Of course it is just that jumping into action that gives youth their impact. Double that with strong ethical training some youth, world-wide have made amazing contributions. And their contributions make it clear that almost all youth can reach that standard of peaceful action for social change – true heroes.

I am impressed that egg boy and his friends are not just off chillin’ with their mates and ignoring society altogether, as if tomorrow will give us the world ‘we deserve’. And sure, from his point of view, no-one was getting hurt, just a politican’s pride. But anyone being attacked from behind doesn’t knows that, and that can make it dangerous for egg boy. His actions for me are more a signifier, a flare of retaliation that peaceful people tend not to stoop but that more than enough of us ‘wish to do’, as many of my friends attest.

It signifies how many are feeling angry and hurt about these anti-social messages and our all too primate desire to obliterate what is painful to us, that is intruding onto our territory, albeit that territory is abstract ‘the territory of peace and harmony’. My advice is to sit with that dissonance between what we stand for as peace lovers and our actual attitudes and behaviours when confronted by haters. Reaching for an excuse for why even small acts of violence can be defended is a natural response to dissonance but not necessary. My authentic experience is that I delight in egg boys action while also realising, with some shame, that even this mild violence undermines the cause towards peace, and supports the messaging towards violence, just as Anning’s vocal violence supported the Christchurch mosque killings. I sit with this dissonance, accepting this is who I am, and that who I will Be, will be an authentic integration of my primal nature and my higher nature. While there are many other sources of learning around the heroic, adult, approach, so many of which are unknown to popular media, we would do well to review the activism of Martin Luther King in making social change, to see how powerful and heroic is the peaceful approach.