THE EJO PROJECT

The 199th Method

2006-05-31T13:06:00.000+01:00

I feel like, as MLK and Malcolm's b-days and End Days have passed us, that it is fitting to place here the CONTEXT in which Martin located himself in order to move forward with a campaign of nonviolence centered around the act in the best tradition of divine principle; here is the Reverend Doctor, on my son's birthday, but in 1967:

You see, what happened is that some of our philosophers got off base. And one of the great problems of history is that the concepts of love and power have usually been contrasted as opposites, polar opposites, so that love is identified with a resignation of power, and power with a denial of love. It was this misinterpretation that caused the philosopher Nietzsche, who was a philosopher of the will to power, to reject the Christian concept of love. It was this same misinterpretation which induced Christian theologians to reject Nietzsche's philosophy of the will to power in the name of the Christian idea of love.
Now, we got to get this thing right. What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and that love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best, power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love. And this is what we must see as we move on...

...I want to say to you as I move to my conclusion, as we talk about "Where do we go from here?" that we must honestly face the fact that the movement must address itself to the question of restructuring the whole of American society. There are forty million poor people here, and one day we must ask the question, "Why are there forty million poor people in America?" And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising a question about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I'm simply saying that more and more, we've got to begin to ask questions about the whole society. We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life's marketplace. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. It means that questions must be raised. And you see, my friends, when you deal with this you begin to ask the question, "Who owns the oil?" You begin to ask the question, "Who owns the iron ore?" You begin to ask the question, "Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that's two-thirds water?" These are words that must be said.Now, don't think you have me in a bind today. I'm not talking about communism. What I'm talking about is far beyond communism. My inspiration didn't come from Karl Marx; my inspiration didn't come from Engels; my inspiration didn't come from Trotsky; my inspiration didn't come from Lenin. Yes, I read Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital a long time ago, and I saw that maybe Marx didn't follow Hegel enough. He took his dialectics, but he left out his idealism and his spiritualism. And he went over to a German philosopher by the name of Feuerbach, and took his materialism and made it into a system that he called "dialectical materialism." I have to reject that. What I'm saying to you this morning is communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social. And the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism, but in a higher synthesis. It is found in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both. Now, when I say questioning the whole society, it means ultimately coming to see that the problem of racism, the problem of economic exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together. These are the triple evils that are interrelated...

I agree. Do you?

198 Methods of Nonviolent Action

2005-11-10T12:42:00.000Z

the following 198 methods of nonviolent action need to be REALLY considered in terms of daily employment by that which the New york Times called "the second superpower," world opinion and the humanity reflected in it, as it stands fast against inhumanity in whatever form.

These methods were compiled by Dr. Gene Sharp and first published in his 1973 book, The Politics of Nonviolent Action, Vol. 2: The Methods of Nonviolent Action. (Boston: Porter Sargent Publishers, 1973). The book outlines each method and gives information about its historical use. You may also download this list of methods.

THE METHODS OF NONVIOLENT PROTEST AND PERSUASION

Formal Statements
1. Public Speeches
2. Letters of opposition or support
3. Declarations by organizations and institutions
4. Signed public statements
5. Declarations of indictment and intention
6. Group or mass petitions

Communications with a Wider Audience
7. Slogans, caricatures, and symbols
8. Banners, posters, and displayed communications
9. Leaflets, pamphlets, and books
10. Newspapers and journals
11. Records, radio, and television
12. Skywriting and earthwriting

Group Representations
13. Deputations
14. Mock awards
15. Group lobbying
16. Picketing
17. Mock elections

Symbolic Public Acts
18. Displays of flags and symbolic colors
19. Wearing of symbols
20. Prayer and worship
21. Delivering symbolic objects
22. Protest disrobings
23. Destruction of own property
24. Symbolic lights
25. Displays of portraits
26. Paint as protest
27. New signs and names
28. Symbolic sounds
29. Symbolic reclamations
30. Rude gestures

Pressures on Individuals
31. "Haunting" officials
32. Taunting officials
33. Fraternization
34. Vigils

Drama and Music
35. Humorous skits and pranks
36. Performances of plays and music
37. Singing

Processions
38. Marches
39. Parades
40. Religious processions
41. Pilgrimages
42. Motorcades

Honoring the Dead
43. Political mourning
44. Mock funerals
45. Demonstrative funerals
46. Homage at burial places

Public Assemblies
47. Assemblies of protest or support
48. Protest meetings
49. Camouflaged meetings of protest
50. Teach-ins

Withdrawal and Renunciation
51. Walk-outs
52. Silence
53. Renouncing honors
54. Turning one's back

THE METHODS OF SOCIAL NONCOOPERATION

Ostracism of Persons
55. Social boycott
56. Selective social boycott
57. Lysistratic nonaction
58. Excommunication
59. Interdict

Noncooperation with Social Events, Customs, and Institutions
60. Suspension of social and sports activities
61. Boycott of social affairs
62. Student strike
63. Social disobedience
64. Withdrawal from social institutions

Withdrawal from the Social System
65. Stay-at-home
66. Total personal noncooperation
67. "Flight" of workers
68. Sanctuary
69. Collective disappearance
70. Protest emigration (hijrat)

THE METHODS OF ECONOMIC NONCOOPERATION: (1) ECONOMIC BOYCOTTS

Actions by Consumers
71. Consumers' boycott
72. Nonconsumption of boycotted goods
73. Policy of austerity
74. Rent withholding
75. Refusal to rent
76. National consumers' boycott
77. International consumers' boycott

Action by Workers and Producers
78. Workmen's boycott
79. Producers' boycott

Action by Middlemen
80. Suppliers' and handlers' boycott

Action by Owners and Management
81. Traders' boycott
82. Refusal to let or sell property
83. Lockout
84. Refusal of industrial assistance
85. Merchants' "general strike"

Action by Holders of Financial Resources
86. Withdrawal of bank deposits
87. Refusal to pay fees, dues, and assessments
88. Refusal to pay debts or interest
89. Severance of funds and credit
90. Revenue refusal
91. Refusal of a government's money

Action by Governments
92. Domestic embargo
93. Blacklisting of traders
94. International sellers' embargo
95. International buyers' embargo
96. International trade embargo

THE METHODS OF ECONOMIC NONCOOPERATION: (2)THE STRIKE

Symbolic Strikes
97. Protest strike
98. Quickie walkout (lightning strike)

Agricultural Strikes
99. Peasant strike
100. Farm Workers' strike

Strikes by Special Groups
101. Refusal of impressed labor
102. Prisoners' strike
103. Craft strike
104. Professional strike

Ordinary Industrial Strikes
105. Establishment strike
106. Industry strike
107. Sympathetic strike

Restricted Strikes
108. Detailed strike
109. Bumper strike
110. Slowdown strike
111. Working-to-rule strike
112. Reporting "sick" (sick-in)
113. Strike by resignation
114. Limited strike
115. Selective strike

Multi-Industry Strikes
116. Generalized strike
117. General strike

Combination of Strikes and Economic Closures
118. Hartal
119. Economic shutdown

THE METHODS OF POLITICAL NONCOOPERATION

Rejection of Authority
120. Withholding or withdrawal of allegiance
121. Refusal of public support
122. Literature and speeches advocating resistance

Citizens' Noncooperation with Government
123. Boycott of legislative bodies
124. Boycott of elections
125. Boycott of government employment and positions
126. Boycott of government depts., agencies, and other bodies
127. Withdrawal from government educational institutions
128. Boycott of government-supported organizations
129. Refusal of assistance to enforcement agents
130. Removal of own signs and placemarks
131. Refusal to accept appointed officials
132. Refusal to dissolve existing institutions

Citizens' Alternatives to Obedience
133. Reluctant and slow compliance
134. Nonobedience in absence of direct supervision
135. Popular nonobedience
136. Disguised disobedience
137. Refusal of an assemblage or meeting to disperse
138. Sitdown
139. Noncooperation with conscription and deportation
140. Hiding, escape, and false identities
141. Civil disobedience of "illegitimate" laws

Action by Government Personnel
142. Selective refusal of assistance by government aides
143. Blocking of lines of command and information
144. Stalling and obstruction
145. General administrative noncooperation
146. Judicial noncooperation
147. Deliberate inefficiency and selective noncooperation by enforcement agents
148. Mutiny

Domestic Governmental Action
149. Quasi-legal evasions and delays
150. Noncooperation by constituent governmental units

International Governmental Action
151. Changes in diplomatic and other representations
152. Delay and cancellation of diplomatic events
153. Withholding of diplomatic recognition
154. Severance of diplomatic relations
155. Withdrawal from international organizations
156. Refusal of membership in international bodies
157. Expulsion from international organizations

THE METHODS OF NONVIOLENT INTERVENTION

Psychological Intervention
158. Self-exposure to the elements
159. The fast
a) Fast of moral pressure
b) Hunger strike
c) Satyagrahic fast
160. Reverse trial
161. Nonviolent harassment

Physical Intervention
162. Sit-in
163. Stand-in
164. Ride-in
165. Wade-in
166. Mill-in
167. Pray-in
168. Nonviolent raids
169. Nonviolent air raids
170. Nonviolent invasion
171. Nonviolent interjection
172. Nonviolent obstruction
173. Nonviolent occupation

Social Intervention
174. Establishing new social patterns
175. Overloading of facilities
176. Stall-in
177. Speak-in
178. Guerrilla theater
179. Alternative social institutions
180. Alternative communication system

Economic Intervention
181. Reverse strike
182. Stay-in strike
183. Nonviolent land seizure
184. Defiance of blockades
185. Politically motivated counterfeiting
186. Preclusive purchasing
187. Seizure of assets
188. Dumping
189. Selective patronage
190. Alternative markets
191. Alternative transportation systems
192. Alternative economic institutions

Political Intervention
193. Overloading of administrative systems
194. Disclosing identities of secret agents
195. Seeking imprisonment
196. Civil disobedience of "neutral" laws
197. Work-on without collaboration
198. Dual sovereignty and parallel government

Source: Gene Sharp, The Politics of Nonviolent Action, Vol. 2: The Methods of Nonviolent Action (Boston: Porter Sargent Publishers, 1973).

Download PDF (thanks to the Albert Einstein Institution, which hosts the PDF, and from which the above was taken).

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It can be argued that most if not all our conflicts come from being out of touch, from not being in harmony, with the fundamental nature of such reality...of the universe. Coming into right relationship one to another (the humans) may allow for a awareness of how to come into right relationship with everything else, "alive" or not. This, to me, begins with offering ways of resistance that reflect the interdependent nature of our reality. They are found in the methods outlined above.

Can you imagine a movement characterised by the daily, worldwide implementation of these methods?

I can.

Iraq : Can we just leave?

2005-11-01T15:52:00.000Z

No.
But can we lead? Can we loot? Can we leverage?

1 November 2005

The living room floor of my wife’s parents historic home, once vacuumed and pristine, is now very often a chaotic mess.

Soccer balls, video games and ancient action figures; a hodgepodge uniquely representative of my mother-in-law’s powerful ability to keep the best of earlier generations and the combine it with the worthiest content of my own...but a chaotic mess nonetheless.

As a result, even though I was personally happy to see the soccer ball in among the mess, I go on a little manhunt.

I find the little man upstairs and reiterate one of life’s clearest truths: you don’t make a mess and walk away from it; you stay and clean up the mess.

For my son - not unlike his government - the discussion seems to center around first acknowledging and internalizing the truth of the mess; I come to terms with the fact that he may not define the floor downstairs as "a mess." He comes to terms with the fact that he (and his sister, learning from his every move and decision) is not the only consideration; that there are all kinds of other people to think about.

For the Bush and Blair administrations, and for the citizens ostensibly represented by their decisions and actions, the prolonged misadventure and accompanying unpleasantness in Iraq, is, without doubt, a mess. But not a mess from which we can just walk away, a sentiment many progressive compatriots have advocated. No, there’s no doubt in my mind that the United States cannot just leave Iraq in the murderous mess we’ve participated, created, and set into motion.

For me the question is not "Should we stay?" Of course we should stay. The question is "What does that mean?" How should we stay? What should our remaining in Iraq look like, signify and accomplish?

First, while we should stay, we cannot lead. Both the US and UK dissolved their moral credibility to lead when, upon the dissipation of the so-called "WMD argument" (and any other prior argument - despite the best efforts of what can only be called a mostly absent and mostly pliant mainstream media to affirm, without investigation, such claims), both Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair began to submit along the lines of "Well, reasonable people can disagree about how we got into Iraq, but no one can say the world isn’t better off with Saddam out of power."

The moral problem with this approach and the leadership problem that emerges, especially for men and administrations that claim to author moral leadership, is that the above paraphrase of the two men who produced this mess is in fact ends-justifies-the-means thinking. The end - Saddam out of power - justifies the means: deception and incompetence on the reasons governments supposedly representative of their citizens in ways democratic started an unprovoked war.

The problem with that?

One, this reasoning is in fact the same reasoning that terror-mongers use. The ends - an Islamic Caliphate or the destruction of an "illegal Israel " or an "immoral West" - justify the means: the killing and harming of all kinds of constituents with any relationship to the ends, be it an innocent one, or not.

Two, for democracies - or even representative systems claiming democratic sensibilities and heritage, like the US and UK - the means have to matter. Means are the primary things that differentiate such governments and their citizens from systems of terror, be they centralized and praxis-reaching, like the USSR under Stalin and Nazi Germany, or diffuse and fundamentalist, like the current various Islamists who work toward terror.

Sickeningly, we find Bush and Blair - and, as a result of our systems of governance, ourselves, because they represent us - alongside Bin Laden and al-Zarqawi in terms of that ends-justifies-the-means thinking. That means, quite simply, that there are one or several flaws in the moral reasoning that has led us to manifest this murderous mess in Iraq. When we find ourselves emerging from the same justification framework as our enemy in the "War on Terror," we’d best re-examine our place in, and support for, such a "war." Especially when it results in the murderous mess we made happen in Iraq .

So we can’t leave. But we can’t lead, either. As hard as it is for US and UK citizens to hear it, we lack the moral credibility in this sad set of circumstances to lead anyone on this issue. We must humble ourselves (not the false humility found in the pseudo-apology we got from that mostly absent and mostly pliant media on their failed Iraq investigative coverage - I’m talking authentic, Shakespearean humbling, post- hubris), and admit to the world community that we made a series of horrible errors, produced a mess, and need some help in cleaning it up, in the right way. That, and only that, is the single way to regain credibility on this matter.

Secondly, we cannot leave Iraq, but we cannot loot Iraq , either. The process of acknowledging the mess we’ve made, of really beginning the process of cleaning it up, includes not only looking at Halliburton and at Bechtel (and at companies our mostly absent and mostly pliant media doesn’t investigate, like Aegis, BearingPoint, BKSH & Associates, CACI and Titan, Qualcomm, Loral Satellite, Custer Battles - what a name! - and others), but looking at how they got to where they are in Iraq, and saying what we know to be the undeniable and inescapable truth about them to them:

You are war profiteers, making money off of the murderous mess we’ve set into motion. It’s sick, and it’s got to stop. Now.

The only way to reflect America in best practice today is to truly internationalize the rebuilding of Iraq , remove US and UK companies, and set a sooner-rather-than-later timeline to ensure that Iraqi businesses that are Iraqi-based and wholly Iraqi-owned are launched, developed and empowered to complete the rebuilding in ways that Iraqis see fit. We can’t leave, but the nature of our staying cannot be for profit. It must be for authentic assistance to others, for others, that reflects a public admittance of the humbling truth that we’ve mistakenly set this mess into motion.

We can’t leave, but we can’t leverage this mess either. The Bush and Blair Administrations, employing the mess in Iraq in ways that allow them to tie complex and disparate Muslim groups, aims and intents together in the easily-packaged (and easily endorsed by our mostly absent and mostly pliant media) "War on Terror," have used this mess they’ve created in the names of their citizens in Iraq as a tool to foist upon the international community some creatures that emerge from their mold, who promote the flawed morality and sad sickness of ends-justifies-the-means thinking.

From Ann Veneman, corporate creature of Big Business Agriculture, becoming head of UNICEF (implementing failed "No Child Left Behind" thinking on children around the globe), to Paul Wolfowitz fulfilling John Perkins’ "Economic Hitman" approach to banking, debt and exploitation at the World Bank, to John Bolton violating the very hope, spirit and intent of the United Nations by his presence - all these appointments - from both process and personality standpoints - spring from a silent consensus and an open affirmation of the leverage ceded the US in terms of its muscular, murderous and messy response to the "War on Terror." We lack the moral framework, the non-profiteering framework, to be empowered thus.

The lessons my son and daughter are internalizing after 200 messes made on the floor are the lesson citizens must demand be internalized and reflected in nations claiming the democratic tradition for 200 or more years.

Can we just up and leave Iraq? Of course not. The question is, having committed to stay, what is the nature of that remaining? Is it to profit? To leverage the wages of such failed morality against fear and terror?

Or is it to authentically and effectively clean up the mess we’ve made, while reflecting America and Britain in best practice, demonstrative of our best traditions?

My kids seem to know the answer, even if they don’t reflect that knowing all the time; I find it hard to believe that Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair - along with that mostly absent and mostly pliant media - do not.

The Bane of "False Balance"...

2005-06-07T16:13:00.000+01:00

First, read this:

http://www.fair.org/activism/false-balance.html

Then listen/watch this:

http://play.rbn.com/?url=demnow/demnow/demand/2004/dec/video/dnB20041231a.rm&proto=rtsp&start=00:17

Now consider that (for those who give an authentic damn about the process of becoming fully human) the positioning of oneself in "the center" of the current (pretty much global, in terms of the institutions) debate, and how it gives LEGITIMACY to a wholly anti-human, anti-Christ (for those that claim Christ) way of being in the world.

Find the "center," the "balance" between the effort to transcend these "ism" in their ENTIRETY, and the global totalitarian fascist-capitalist frame on events that produces the world in all its facets we see today...why, exactly?

Sometimes balance makes no sense; it only gives hope to those that operate as hateful warmongers and, as Perkins illuminates in the second link, above, totalitarian empire-builders that normal people hoping to fully become human will continue to value that perspective in order to promote soem self-harming sense of fairness, some absurd notion of balance.

Would you look to strike balance between the peace-seeking nun (like Sister Ortiz: http://ia108609.us.archive.org/2/items/ortiz/ortizdisdnapr05snowshoefilms.wmv ) and the person trying to violently murder your family member? Why not?

Because one position is wholly outside any reasonable notion of trying to become a better human.

Book Recommendation...

2005-06-07T16:08:00.000+01:00

Remember : The Journey to School Integration
by Toni Morrison ( who provided written commentary beside these meaningful, poignant pics) comments on this memorial children's book:

"...what was interesting to me about this period, in addition to everything else - the Supreme Court, the lawyers, the NAACP, all of these families filing suit, the marches, et cetera - [was that at] the center, at the forefront, on the front line...were children.

Little...children. Who were led into school, with guns, perhaps, and parents, but had to go in that building.

And stay there all day.

Alone; sometimes two or three [of them], and they did it, obviously, because they were told, but what they knew -- and this is what is extraordinary to me, was that they were doing it for something bigger than they were.

These people were eight years old, nine years old, ten years old. Just teen-agers, you know, in their little dresses and their little suits and going in these places, and then having grown people - you know what it’s like to be an eight year-old and having adults screaming at you, spitting at you? All right, when you got home, you were in your mother's arms and your father was there, you knew you had that support, but at the moment -- these were strangers. White women who were mothers could actually do that to another child? It really boggles the mind.

So, I was thinking how - not just the courage of that gesture, but it's unique. They were out front. And I wanted young people who were also eight and nine to feel the connection..."

In recalling how far we've come, Remember celebrates us all.

What is "Peak Oil"?

2005-04-18T13:48:00.000+01:00

A general introduction to the notion of peak oil is found here:

http://www.guerrillanews.com/articles/article.php?id=864

Permaculture

2005-04-18T13:45:00.000+01:00

I discovered this notion of establishing / re-discovering aspects of culture that can be timeless, and of what they are constituted (aka "permaculture"), from this speech given by Patricia Allison at a Peak-Oil (what's that? See the next post) Community Solutions Conference.

She talks at the link (streamed, RealPlayer) below about how the principles of permaculture are vital in the transition to a sustainable post-oil society.

Emulating nature, permaculture is a system of ethics and principles for designing and creating sustainable culture.

Link: http://media.globalpublicmedia.com/RAM/other/ug231-hour1mix.ram

Alternatives to Current Conceptions of Transport

2005-04-18T13:38:00.000+01:00

Even if you accept as "right" the current conception of transport that includes the paving of the earth and the same amount of losses American troops suffered in Vietnam, which I don't, maybe we can consider cars that run on air.

http://www.theaircar.com/

Naysayers say that aircars simply move the point of pollution from the vehicle to the power plant; but, if we, for example, reconsider not only the car but the plant (wave energy, or power produced by the moon's "work," and wind energy, and the new effcicient solar energy), we can make real reductions in those things that are degrading the biosphere every moment.

I'm not really interested...BUT...

2005-04-18T13:27:00.000+01:00

I'm not really interested in coming back to the States, but my wife is...she misses family.

If we DO come back though, I'm coming back as a pretty aggressive antagonist of the state of the nation:

Among the things we might want to reconsider is both the take on the Numinous, AND the cross-platform propagation of such, represented by this and pronouncements like it:

http://www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary/ed01162003.cfm

In terms of the Numinous as expressed through Christianity, the truth as reflected in approaches like the above reflect the simple truth that the dogmatic takes on what being right with Jesus means have little to do with what Jesus said.

I never say "non-dogmatic"; rather, I argue that "Christian" seems for many - not all, as I'll elucidate about later - to be about a "for my own soul's sake" embrace of a litany of facts, in primacy, and not about the primacy of the Great Commandments...which is what Christ said HAD primacy, what he said were his "Prime Directives."

If you disagree, fine; I'm quoting your book, and engaging the issue on your terms (the terms of those who think that "Christian" means to actually be in right relationship with Christ).

You tell me where, for example, what I've said is wrong in terms of what Christ said was fundmental and foundational and most important.

You can't. Christ says, specifically, that for us to love God and love our neighbour are the two things upon which all law and prophecy (i.e. the Bible, not ot mention works outside it as currently configured) hang; that we can succeed at nothing else unless it is underpinned with manifest love, love front and center and open and honest, for the Uncaused Cause and for our neighbour.

Tell me where Christ does or says something else that refutes his attaching, specifically, the notion of mercy as the WAY to love others, and "my neighbor is everyone I come across, everyone who comes into my awareness," in the parable of the Good Samaritan, itself an answer to the question "Who is my neighbor?"

You can't.

Tell me, then, where Christ does or says something else that refutes his specifically tying loving action using mercy as the form of agency into an absolute nonviolent mode as he does with the Sermon on the Mount.

You can't.

So, to review, Christ has made the loving acts, not belief, paramount; he's cut off any hope of escape from the duty of love by making our neighours everyone we come across (as well as going further to say, specifically, "love your enemies); he's made mercy the agent through which love ought to be expressed; he's made the mode of our going about the world offering love and mercy one of nonviolence.

These are all Commands, the ones of Love being paramount. That is, when Christ says to the lawyer to whom he told the parable of the Good Samaritan "gos and do likewise," that's a command. When Christ says, specifically, "You have heard it said, 'an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' But I say to you, do not resist him who is evil, but whoever slaps you on the right cheek turn to him the other also," Christ, in beginning that passage with an acknowledgement of the justified violence of the past, specifically refutes that past and offes a new future through nonviolence (alot of folks like to say that there's an opportunity here to historically obfuscate along the lines of "left cheek/right cheek" and thus get us all distracted, but NO...Christ starts that passage talking about the background of justified violence for a REASON: he's about to refute it, and set down a new way of being in the world) as a COMMAND..."I say to you, do not..."; it's all commands.

There's no options here, for those following Christ. Love God, and love everyone ("neighbors," whom Christ has made clear are everyone we come across, and even, for good measure, he throws in, just to be SURE, those we perceive to be our enemies); do so mercifully, and do so nonviolently.

No options whatsoever; from Christ, for "Christians," these are Commands. These are the most important Commands in the history of history, if we are in fact paying attention to what Christ says.

In this light, then, how might faith be exhibited? By overcoming our fear to act in the way we've been commanded, and, regardless of what we fear might happen as a result, to leave the rest up to him.

How might belief be rewarded? Well, if I believe in you, I'm going to do what you ask me to do; if I believe that you are God (or if I believe that God is in your Message), I'm going to do what you Command me to do. In THIS light, "whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life" takes on a whole new meaning, an astonishing one in fact.

What if it is in fact the case that demonstrating "belief" in Christ is not believing, in some mental/emotional exercise, the litany of facts as offered by the creeds, but in wholesale, heartfelt ACTION...in actually going out into the world and DOING what we've been commanded to do in the way that we've been Commanded to do it? I can, honestly, see it now, in my mind's eye...

JOE PEW: I...I'm dead?

CHRIST: Indeed.

JOE PEW: Hey good to see you! Judgement day, huh? Well, I'm covered, as you know...I beleived in your birth and death and birth totally. I remember when that "SNATCH" movie, with that Del Toro guy, tried to say that Mary wasn't a Virgin, and I immediately truned the television off, b/c that was just the Devil trying to mess with my faith, like dinosaurs, right?

CHRIST: What did I tell you to do?

JOW PEW: Huh? Well, believe in you...

CHRIST: What did that mean?

JOE PEW: Well, to stay on the straight and narrow path of the APostle's Creed...you know...O h I get it, you want me to SAY it...okay:

I believe in God, the Father Almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth,

and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord:

Who was conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary,

suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into hell.

The third day He arose again from the dead.

He ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, whence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church,

the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins,

the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting.

(Smiles)...

CHRIST: That's all well and good, but where in that is what I TOLD you was most important? Joe...what did I tell you to do?

JOW PEW: (Panicking) I don't know!

CHRIST: I know. I know you don't know. And that's the problem.

You want to create a dogma that makes the guy God? Fine. But if he's God, then isn't what he said was paramount...well, paramount? Aren't the acts, the form of agency and the mode of action which he said were fundamental and thus Commanded you to do in fact missing from the commitment to most denomination's invitations to discipleship?

I know that for me, and for EVERY SINGLE ONE OF MY FRIENDS who came up in a "Christian" church, that there was no talk, AT ALL, about any commitment AT ALL, as a way of living/lifestyle, to the way of living that Christ Commanded and demonstrated. ALmost always, that way of being in the world was ceded to Christ alone as itself beyond human, and reflective itself of godlike powers.

Which fits in well with our current/recent worldview; of course, we think, one would have to BE God to love everyone, period, including one's enemies; thank GOD I have a framework that allows me to acknowledge before I even set out on what I've been Commanded to do (if I even have a faith leadership that acknowleges that that is in fact my duty in Christ) that I'm gonna fail, b/c I'm in a state of permanent failure, even with Christ on my side, and my only hope lies NOT in action, not even in action that I've been Commanded by God to do, but rather in just believing truly enough to get in by grace and mercy, if I'm lucky and my best beleiving efforts are good enough.

I think that Christ, in saying EXACTLY what he's been quoted as saying, as COMMANDING, was asking alot more of us than that.

I recognize that that is NOT what the dogma, for the most part (like I said, I've been PM'd and concomitantly educated by a few folks on the denominations out there, many of them calling themselves "orthodox," that DO in fact emphasize this take on Christ and being "Christ-like; indeed, I visited Rosslyn Chapel, and the denomination that holds services there offers a brochure that speaks specifically and directly and firstly to my above claims of what being in right relationship with Christ might be all about...but none of them that I've been made aware of are in the States, and none of them, certainly, are any of the big denominations that dominate the public religion scene at all) is about.

It is about the story; and the front and back-ends of the story at that. The facts surrounding the birth, and the facts surrounding the death...and that's pretty much it in terms of what most dogmatic takes deem to be essential.

What Christ said, what Christ Commanded/demonstrated, and the host of subversive and transformative things that might result if those Commands of Love, employed Mercifully and Nonviolently, were enacted by all who currently claim to be led by Christ...that's undoubtedly, undeniably, unquestionably missing from the notion of what is "essential" about being in right relationship with Christ.

I don't know anyone can say different. It's reflected in the ACTS of those that claim Christ, at every level, everyday; the war, WAR in general, is still on, propagated often by non-Christians, but, often as well, by Christians.

Societies like ours cling to state-sponsored murder, and look to Jesus to make that okay...to make killing okay, to make hoping and praying for others to go to hell okay...

Societies like ours place Christ at the FEBA to make our violence against others okay.

Does anyone REALLY - honestly - look at what we've been Commanded to do, and HOW we've been Commanded to do it, and find any of this okay? Is it in fact possible for anyone claiming to be in relationship with Jesus to accept any of that at any level?

Of course not.

And if the answer is in fact "of course not," then how do we explain the significant numbers of persons who claim to be in relationship with Christ, and the anti-warmaking, anti-glutton-society, anti-poverty global movement that is absolutely noticable by its absence?

Why isn't every single "Christian" dropping their weapon and walking away, wherever they are? Walking away from murderous shatterpoint in terms of interaction and towards an absolutley loving mode of being in the world that MAY IN FACT GET EACH AND EVERY PERSON WHO EMPLOYS IT THE SAME FATE AS JESUS, i.e. get them killed?

Don't know; but Christ didn't ask us to worry about that; in fact, he didn't ASK us a damn thing.

He Commanded. Quite clearly. For America to be so overwhlemingly inhabited by folks of faith, and for such a high percentage of those folks of faith to claim that Christ is theri paradigm, there are whole swaths of society aspects of which are inconsistent at best, but I'm just asking for a full-fledged engagement of those things that are, that HAVE to be, anti-Christ on their face.

You can hate me for saying it if you want, but I'm sorry, I look, quite simply and obviously, at what Christ said was FUNDAMENTAL, and look at the Church, and look at our Wars, and look at our Leaders, and look at how Christ is Used, and I am forced to ask hard questions about why NOT that Message, but those COMMANDS, are so perfectly missing from the dogma so regularly, and why other things that OTHERS make specifically, undeniably paramount are front and center in terms of the faith.

IOW, if we agree that "Christian," as a word, is defined as "One who believes or professes the religion of Christ," and that religion, as a word, is defined as "A set of beliefs, values, and practices based on the teachings of a spiritual leader," I challenge the right of those dogmas and denominations to whom the above critique applies to call themselves "Christian."

And I'll continue to ask those questions until I get an answer that makes sense, and we'll all continue to believe what we believe, I guess.

Money, God, Democracy: Where are those last two pillars?

2005-04-11T02:27:00.000+01:00

Money, God, Democracy: Where are those last two pillars?

Meditate upon Thom Hartmann, here:

...Here are a couple of headlines for those who haven't had the time to study both economics and history:

1. There is no such thing as a "free market."

2. The "middle class" is the creation of government intervention in the marketplace, and won't exist without it (as millions of Americans and Europeans are discovering).

The conservative belief in "free markets" is a bit like the Catholic Church's insistence that the Earth was at the center of the Solar System in the Twelfth Century. It's widely believed by those in power, those who challenge it are branded heretics and ridiculed, and it is wrong.

In actual fact, there is no such thing as a "free market." Markets are the creation of government.

Governments provide a stable currency to make markets possible. They provide a legal infrastructure and court systems to enforce the contracts that make markets possible. They provide educated workforces through public education, and those workers show up at their places of business after traveling on public roads, rails, or airways provided by government. Businesses that use the "free market" are protected by police and fire departments provided by government, and send their communications - from phone to fax to internet - over lines that follow public rights-of-way maintained and protected by government.

And, most important, the rules of the game of business are defined by government. Any sports fan can tell you that football, baseball, or hockey without rules and referees would be a mess. Similarly, business without rules won't work.

Which explains why conservative economics wiped out the middle class during the period from 1880 to 1932, and why, when Reagan again began applying conservative economics, the middle class again began to vanish in America in the 1980s - a process that has dramatically picked up steam under George W. Bush.

The conservative mantra is "let the market decide." But there is no market independent of government, so what they're really saying is, "Stop corporations from defending workers and building a middle class, and let the corporations decide how much to pay for labor and how to trade." This is, at best, destructive to national and international economies, and, at worst, destructive to democracy itself.

Markets are a creation of government, just as corporations exist only by authorization of government. Governments set the rules of the market. And, since our government is of, by, and for We The People, those rules have historically been set to first maximize the public good resulting from people doing business.

If you want to play the game of business, we've said in the US since 1784 (when Tench Coxe got the first tariffs passed "to protect domestic industries") then you have to play in a way that both makes you money AND serves the public interest...

And Cornel West, here:

...what we have is an American empire with three basic pillars...[one pillar being]...free-market fundamentalism, and all forms of fundamentalism [are] for those who were engaged in Socratic activity, worthy of deep suspicion. All forms of fundamentalism reduce complexity, create Manichean views of the world, all good on one side, all evil on the other. Free-market fundamentalism says what? "The market is a fetish; it has magical powers. If you have a social problem, marketize, privatize, commodify, commercialize. And somehow, some way, things will be all right." Markets are legal constructions created by human beings to be used for good or for ill. There are sick markets like healthcare. There are highly competitive markets like supermarkets. Free-market fundamentalism says what? Privatize even those mechanisms that have to do with satisfying people’s most basic needs, like the Bush administration’s attempt to privatize Social Security. That’s just one instance among others. So that what happens, common good, public interest, wanes. And the market, that legal construction that requires some non-market values to operate, begins to run amok...

...Free-market fundamentalism will undermine the very condition for the possibility of democracy because a democracy is predicated on a vital public life. And you end it with a younger generation that believes, in fact, that the market way of life is the human way of life. To be human is to be stimulated, titillated, rather than nourished, rather than deeply empowered, believe that buying and selling and promoting and advertising are the fundamental ways of being in the world. Learn how to package yourself, go to school, high school and college, not in order to engage in paideia, in cultivation of self and soul, but to acquire a skill so you can gain access to some dynamite job and live in some vanilla suburb. What an impoverished way of being in the world...

This is the fundamental hypocrisy of NOT what America MIGHT be, and not even of what it has often been on track towards BECOMING, but what our nation currently IS. Why is it that everyone is told what happened in the marketplace (Dow Jones, S&P, etc.), but few know what how their representatives voted on any given day? How is it that we've come to terms with the idea that American lives stood first and foremost in front of, in defense of, oil refineries in the invasion of Iraq, but haven't yet addressed the idea of a "Christian" solider (i.e. a soldier engaged in the killing of people and the breaking ofthings who claims to be motivated and grounded by a nonviolent Christ, who, having lived nonviolently, went nonviolently to his death after preaching only love and nonviolence, particularly to one's enemies)?

We are missing the other two pillars, credible democracy and credible spirituality, and as long as we are, we will be lost yet leading, the worst kind of leadership.

So, if you agree that we are missing two of the three pillars needed to make the Experiment work, OR that we are missing ENOUGH of the other two pillars that America is not working, what's to be done about it, right now, today?

A sporting example of my "alternative" approach

2005-04-10T11:42:00.000+01:00

“The Clutch:” Five Books Illuminating America’s Other Twin Towers

Looking to define “clutch?”

Well, one way is to look at the events of the night of 14 June 1998. In a game many talking heads will forever argue should have been his last, and with his beloved Bulls trailing by one in the closing seconds, Michael Jordan stole the ball from Utah’s Karl Malone, drove on Malone’s team-mate Byron Russell, stopped on a dime…

And did what he always does, pressure or no: he took the shot.
He hit the shot.
A game-winning shot.
A championship-winning shot.

Clutch: doing, when it’s hard, that which you do when it’s easy.

Be it Jordan, or Mia Hamm, or Emmitt Smith, or Serena Williams or Reggie Jackson, we embrace fully the concept of “coming through in the clutch,” of being everything you’ve claimed to be when it’s hardest to do, in our conception of American sport. In fact, we judge our sport leadership and participants by that clutch standard.

In what way does the U.S. citizen, the U.S. government exemplify such “clutchness" off the court, in the daily drumbeat of life and living, our current opportunities for global leadership?

One look at The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib, by Karen J. Greenberg, Joshua L. Dratel and Anthony Lewis begins to let us know.

Michael Ratner, of the Center for Constitutional Rights, says the work “…may well be the most important and damning set of documents exposing U.S. government lawlessness ever published,” and I may agree. I certainly agree with Brig. Gen. James Cullen when he submits that “The memos and other material collected in this book reveal how political lawyers in the Administration adopted an ‘ends justify the means’ policy, and tailored their advice to justify torture and avoidance of obligations under the Geneva Conventions.” For citizen-accountable governments like the U.S., the torture papers represents some bastardization or perversion of that process by both abidcation of best practice and endorsement of something else.

Something certainly not clutch.

We can all observe the employment of Executive “ends justify the means” rationale in the language Bush and Blair use to justify the invasion of Iraq. Both leaders have submitted a number of times along of the lines of Well, reasonable people may disagree as to how we got into Iraq, but no one can say that the world isn’t a better place with Saddam Hussein out of power.

Ends, justifying the means.

What Bush and Blair leave unsaid, and what must be said, is that this mode of being in the world is in fact the precise mode of operating employed by individuals and groups who look to wage terror. Innocent civilians die? “Who cares,” or “that’s not important,” terror-mongers might say: “the means serve a greater end.”

We might want to consider the extent to which US/UK foreign policy aligns with terrorist thought/action at any time, but particualrly at a time when we are claiming the opposite perspective in terms of a so-called "clash of civilizations." For the global observer, U.S. employment of "ends justifies the means" thought and action makes it harder, not easier, to distinguish between "civilizations."

Indeed, the more one looks at this way of being in the world, the more one realizes that “ends justifies the means” thinking can only end in terror, because it is predicated upon a "might makes right" mindset; it is only in extreme historical moments like that of 9/11 and its aftermath (extreme for Americans, one of a spectrum of horrors for much of the rest of the world) that this mode of engaging the world is even allowed consideration by rational human beings and societies.

Extremes; extremes in our own citizen-fear allow terror-aligned thinking to manifest as well. We have lost, in horror, the Twin Towers of our New York skyline and the souls who inhabited them at the moments of their fall; yet another set of Towers remain: the Twin Towers of the Future of America.

One Tower is built, layer upon layer, with different takes on the idea that America can claim notions such as “the greatest democracy in the world,” and “the hope for freedom of millions,” while reflecting diametrically opposed truths such as those disclosed in the memos of “Torture Papers.” It is a Tower built of words promoting the Idea of America while simultaneously undertaking the oft-horrific acts encompassing America-style globalization found in John Perkins’ “Confessions of an Economic Hitman."

In “Confessions,” Perkins describes in detail thirty-five years of American business and government collusion to facilitate the work of, as Perkins puts it, “highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars.”

This Tower is built upon a tragicomically faltering foundation of hypocrisy, one perfectly described by a comic - George Carlin - as “...the old American double standard of 'say one thing, do something different'...”; an America less interested in promoting ideals and the rule of law than promoting a system of wealth inequality only bested in the developing world by Mexico (and one that, wage/inflation-wise, has forced most citizens to make do with less and less since 1973), while settling for an infant mortality rate double that of Sweden and higher than Slovenia.
That’s one Tower; one layered, built-upon conception of ourselves and of America.

That Tower contests right now with another, wholly different one: an America in self-conception and in local-to-global action found in works like Howard Zinn’s “A People's History of the United States : 1492-Present," where, through giving a voice to voices outside the First Tower's conception of American self (and subsequent mainstream media shaping of who and what is historically important), Zinn allows a totally different America, one that’s always been there and always been crucial, to come into our awareness.

This Second Tower is built on knowing that the Constitution, the very foundation of America, was one damn unique document for its time, maybe for all time, even if it left out an equitable fulfilment of rights and an affirmation of humanity to anyone who failed to be a landed white, heterosexual male, yet it left many rights, for many people, specifically uncodified and generally unconfirmed.

It’s a Tower laden with sensibilities that differentiate between our set of decision-rules (Constituting a democratic republic) and our chosen economic system (capitalism), and, like Michael Albert, see an America beyond such choice. In his work “PARECON: Life After Capitalism," Albert offers up an America promoting ideals and values such as “… equity, solidarity, diversity, and participatory self management” as a way of life for Americans, and not just as campaign-ad rhetoric. To fulfill the promise of those values PARECON describes new institutions that will facilitate, among other things, “…remuneration according to effort and sacrifice, and participatory planning.”

It’s a Tower that, like Cornel West in his book “Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism," finds space beyond the dogma of Christianity, Judaism and Islam to embrace progressive, prophetic voices on all sides of the spirituality debate, and demands wholesale rejection of “ends justifies means” fundamentalism, on all sides.

Indeed, these works help us see that the central thrust of this Second Tower is of an America in the becoming, with law and love and sacrifice as the forms of agency through which America gives itself the best chance to become that which we claim it to be, at home and throughout the world.

Engaging the Ideas of this Second Tower of American-ness means acknowledging that the Great Experiment remains to be completed; that its completion is a process of possibility.

A commitment to this Tower of American self-conception means coming to see that the extension of the Constitutional franchise - again, a document not specifically intended to encompass those different in gender, race and class fro the Founders - comes from everyday people getting in the streets and becoming willing to stand fast and sacrifice everything they are for the truth that the Constitution, that America, could and should represent everyone, especially when it’s hard to do.

It comes from “stepping up in the clutch,” for the nation, and for the world, in hope and expectation that a land which always celebrates and usuallly embraces the rule of law would eventually codify such sacrifice in laws extending rights and affirming humanity, for everyone.

From the Abolitionists, to the labor and child labor movements, to the suffrage movement, to the political rights and civil rights and Indian rights and women’s rights movements to the gay/lesbian rights movement: none of these are naturally provided for in either the letter or the interpretation of the Founding Document of the United States.

Rather, the Idea behind such movements was that with the Constitution as a basis, if we stood fast, stood courageous, in the streets for those rights and in the courtroom (and the jail, and in the morgue) for that change in the law, we would have a nation in practice like the one in the American Dream.

Thus, we stood, generationally, in each historical moment, in the clutch.
We took the shot.
And we made the shot.
Maybe not a game-winning shot, but the shot that keeps us in the game.

That’s what that Scond Tower is about. And it contends, everyday, with that first Tower, for the soul and substance of America.

The events of 9/11 reach out to this generation, to each American, as we contribute to the building and affirming of one Tower or the other, and each Tower rings back a substantively different response to those, or any, attacks.

One says “yes, ends do justify the means,” and keeps us duct-taped, terror-alerted and afraid while telling us that just being afraid is enough to justify anything to make us safe and make us win, whatever “safe” ends up meaning, whatever cost is incurred in the "winning." That Tower asks us to turn our backs on what we’ve claimed to be, in the light of a New Era in violence and destruction, and submits that in fact the only way TO survive on this New Earth is to become a New America. To, in the most important of moments, avoid taking the shot altogether. To take our ball and run home, and let our betters take whatever shot deemed necessary for us, while we watch through the filter of the media, glued, then return, rested, replete, to the court with a different ball, saying "the game has changed."

The Second Tower says that it’s only in moments when we are afraid, only when the right thing is difficult to do, that we can claim what we are. That our Ideals, like friendship, suffer no test when everything is hunky-dory, but rather when everything is going wrong. It’s then, and only then, that we discover that for which we are willing to stand.

In the clutch.

And, of course, we have to ask...

2005-04-10T11:18:00.000+01:00

What IS a "state?" A "nation?" A "nation-state?"

I know that we can simply offer up the definitions we've been taught, or the various Googlia we can search out on the 'net; that's not the question answered to the ejo level.

We need to break down those definitions in terms of the contexts, motivations and other reasons why those defintions might be the way THEY are...and whether on the "back side" of all of this there might be an entirely different way of being in the world that "gets no pub" because the "winners" wirte the history and the winners generate meaning (and, thus, the definitions for things that we use).

"Citizenship"

2005-04-10T11:15:00.000+01:00

I think many issues flow from this, our definng of ourselves in relationship to "the state," the local-to-global structures containing agreed-upon decision-rules through which we imagine the Commons and participate therein.

What does citizenship mean today? What has it ever meant?

To me, it's currently an embrace of all rights, and a regular rejection of most responsiblities. We see voting as an end in and of itself, rather than one culmination of a daily commitment to engage the institutions that represent us at various levels.

The fact that noone I know can name their representatives, local to global, or what they actually DO is symptomatic of this, I think. We have allowed for other things not related to participation in the government (consumerism, media culture) to prevent the fullest flowering of the idea that citizenship means taking the time out to hols representatives accountable, everyday.

This project, however, I think asks us to really imagine a blank slate, to really challenge the very idea of republic, or democracy, as the "best" form of society and governance, to compare, contrast, and otherwise concieve of other forms that might challenge those forms, expose their weaknesses, and maybe ultimately highlight their strengths.

Gotta go, but I'll be back to take this on more fully. Your thoughts?

LINKS...

2005-04-10T10:50:00.000+01:00

I've offered a few links, to the right, as examples of the process of re-conception, as examples of the ways in which it might manifest itself.

TOPIA.net, a website by Joel Federman, posits a framework of peace/global disarmament, human rights/global social justice, conflict transformation, diversity and much more. Many of these concepts we will, I hope, examine in much greater depth in terms of the historical foundation of their usage, and in what that foundation itself might be grounded.

AHIMSA, the Jain (and others') approach to "doing no harm," while living love and peace, offers us a non-typical framework to begin to break down not only ahimsa itself but all the major egagements with the Numinous to see of what they are constructed, and how we might reconsider them all.

KULA refers to the Kula Ring "discovered" by Malinowski and referred to by Mauss in the early decades of the 20th Century, kula is a system of exhange were status is conferred by the giving away of material goods, not through hording or consumption. Like the other links, I hope to use the very existence of kula as a shatterpoint which demands recognition of the fact that the individualized, commodified, unitized, commercialized mode of exchange we currently endure and promote is not the only way to do relationships of consideration, and, from there, break them ALL down, kula included, and build up a new idea of what this notion of business or exchange could be.

Welcome to Ejo...

2005-04-10T02:18:00.000+01:00

Imagine a national, continental, or even a global blank slate; let's call it Ejo (pronounced "E-JOE"), which is Esperanto for "place," and let's acknowledge it as topian in nature; topia, which Joel Federman defines as "the ideal made real."

Here, in Ejo, we can pursue real-world alternatives...to everything.
Every. Thing.

From the Social Contract, to God, to community, to birth, to death, to transport, to education, to medicine and media...let's discuss entirely different ways - that may or may not be in play somewhere on Earth, but are always descriptively doable - of thinking about, of conceiving and of implementing these concepts, and many, many more.

If you could begin again, right where you are, what might be done differently?

Alternatives, to everything. Let's employ this weblog to examine, critically, all those possibilities. As this will take some time, let's get started...