Patriotism – Page 4 – Engaging Peace

Buddhist Social Democracy, Part 1

Posted on September 9, 2017 by kathiemm

by Stefan Schindler

All things pass; life is brief; seek freedom; be kind. Siddhartha Gautama, Gangamala Jataka

“A Buddha arises for the welfare of the multitude.”

This is a common refrain in Buddhist sutras. On Buddha’s Eightfold Path to the common good, a spoke in the Dharmachakra – Siddhartha’s “Teaching Wheel” – is “right vocation.” Right vocation is ethical employment guided by the medical maxim, “Do no harm.”

Buddha’s politics aim for moral-egalitarian economics, informed by the main Buddhist issue: suffering and freedom from suffering (the first and third of Siddhartha’s Four Noble Truths).

A just society is peaceloving and peaceful. Violence opposes that. Violence and poverty go together. But if poverty is the breeding ground of crime, so too is wealth. Indeed, the primary cause of poverty is wealth itself. Excess wealth among the few creates insecurity, fear, desperation and despair among the many. This is a crime against humanity.

Buddhist social democracy offers economic balance, making space for personal and communal creative evolution. Heart-centered pedagogy is its path, where all the institutions of society support lifelong educational opportunity. Giving peace a chance through voluntary simplicity and the joy of learning.

A psychiatrist for the criminally insane once noted that her clients’ crimes were mere drops of blood in the sea of pain inflicted by the captains of industry and their political, military and media puppets.

Locally and globally, economic apartheid is capitalism run amok; a collective Faustian bargain. The delicate balance of freedom and authority tilts toward fascism.

Benito Mussolini said: “Fascism ought rightly to be called Corporatism, since it embodies the fusion of state and corporate power.”

American Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis declared: “We can have democracy, or we can have vast wealth in the hands of a few. We cannot have both.” Howard Zinn observed: “While the jails are full of petty thieves, the grand thieves are running the country.”

Thirsting for distraction after long hours of competitive work, citizens become historically and politically illiterate; ignorant of their actual past, present and trajectory. Trapped by “chains of illusion,” in a high-tech version of Plato’s cave. Worldview warped by a blizzard of epistemological confetti. Unable to cope with the power elite’s weapons of mass dysfunction. This is important.

An informed citizenry is the prerequisite for a functioning democracy, gifted with the leisure, skills and desire to comprehend, critique and oppose plutocratic ruptures in domestic and global harmony. George Santayana elaborates: “Those who don’t learn from history are condemned to repeat it.”

The more a government serves capital profiteering instead of the welfare of the multitude, the more fractured a society becomes.

Martin Luther King offers a diagnosis: “Wealth, poverty, racism and war always go together; and we cannot solve one without solving the others.”

H. G. Wells warned: “History is now a race between education and catastrophe.” Accordingly, a just society does not empower a news media which critiques peacemakers in the name of patriotism.

Nagarjuna says to a sophist: “When you cast your faults onto me, you are like a man riding a horse who has forgotten where his horse is.”

Mark Twain says, with an exasperated sigh: “The lie is half-way around the world before truth has its boots on.”

Chogyam Trungpa – twentieth century Tibetan Buddhist in the West – shows Buddha’s teachings to be therapeutic: “Buddhism is all about returning to the sanity we were born with.”

CHILD’S PLAY?

Posted on August 4, 2017September 7, 2017 by kathiemm

Children play with an electronically-driven Gatling gun aboard USS Makin Island Oct. 9, 2010. This image or file is in the public domain. Author: Marines from Arlington, VA, United States.

by Kathie MM

While my younger siblings and I were growing up, my mom wrote regular letters to her mom down in Florida about our adventures, mishaps, squabbles, reconciliations, etc.

The letter below, written by my mom on February 6, 1948, just a few years after WWII ended, strikes me as an odd harbinger of my later life as a peace activist. I am hoping for your comments.

At the time Mom wrote this letter, I was 7 and my brother Teddy was 5.

“At bath time tonight, as I collected clean clothes for the next day, I could hear Kathie and her brother playing a new game. Teddy, at one end of the tub, was America; Kathie was England at the other. A large pan was a boat that sailed back and forth carrying toys from America to the poor children in England.

Before Teddy went to bed, Kathie wanted to train him to be a soldier.

“Do all boys go to war?” she asked me.

“Most of them, if there is a war, and if there’s nothing wrong with them.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, if their eyes are all right and that sort of thing.”

“Gee, Teddy, “, Kathie said, “You’re lucky! You’ll be able to go to war. You’re not blind and you haven’t got a broken leg or anything.”

“I don’t want to go to war,” Teddy said. “With all those guns I might get killed.”

“Oh Teddy! You don’t understand,” Kathie replied. Then she said uncertainly to me, “Right, Mummy?”

Not understanding wars myself, my sympathies were with her brother.

We decided to make a sailor out of Teddy, so Kathie could train him whether there was a war or not.”

This interchange took place before television and computers, before the universalizing of violent images and ads for glorified weapons; yet there was “war,” apparently part of our everyday vocabulary, with all the deadly questions it raised.

Yet alongside the banality of war in our childish conversations, we played out our awareness of the “care packages” our parents sent to refugees in post-war Europe—including to Germany, which led, quite astonishingly, 20 years later, to a young German man coming to our home to thank us personally for the package we had sent to his family so long ago.

Somehow, out of this mix. my siblings and I all became anti-war advocates, but still, I fear for the future.

What did it do to our society to rear kids to take war for granted? What does it do to today’s children to have images of weapons flooding their TVs and computers? What does it do for humanity when refugees are portrayed as enemies? What does it do for survival when the poor and people of color become the new cannon fodder, and when the fruits of the earth become sacrificed to the greed of the most unscrupulous of the rich and powerful?

None of it seems like child’s play to me.

Celebrating Rebellion and Revolution (the Non-Violent Variety)

Posted on July 7, 2017July 30, 2017 by kathiemm

by Kathie MM

This week, citizens from all over the United States celebrated the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, “written by the rebelling fathers of the United States”. Symbolic of the long-ago battles, fireworks lit up the skies and enactments of various forms of resistance filled the parks.

I chose to celebrate the day by giving thanks to rebels and revolutionaries who resist violence non violently, adhering to the principles of non-killing advocated by Glenn Paige.

In particular, I honored a young girl who wrote one of history’s most important books, a book with the power to promote empathy and compassion and to energize readers to fight prejudice, cruelty, scapegoating, and passive obedience to unrighteous authority.

I am talking about the mesmerizing diary of Anne Frank, the young teen writing her story while hiding with her mother, father, sister and four other people in a neglected factory annex in Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands and genocidal pursuit of Jews.

Anne’s tale of coming of age in that annex under such dire circumstances is engrossing, inspiring–and heart-breaking because we know that shortly after her last entry, German and Dutch police stormed the annex and seized the eight inhabitants plus two of the Dutch men and women who made it possible for Anne and the others to avoid becoming victims of the Holocaust for more than two years.

Think of the risks faced by those stalwart supporters bringing food, beverages, clothing, medicines, books, magazines, newspapers, week after week, month after month.

Anne’s diary bears witness to the horrors of one of the not-to-be forgotten episodes of man’s inhumanity to man, a horrifying example of what people who feel angry and mistreated can be led to do by power hungry leaders with a skill for identifying scapegoats, promoting anger and hatred, and stirring up prejudice.

The diary is also a testimonial to goodness, a reminder that there are always good people who will risk everything to resist evil and rebel against cruel and unjust authority—as indeed did the patriots who turned to warfare to free themselves.

Perhaps the greatest achievement of Anne’s diary is that it memorializes not just Anne but also the brave souls who fought to protect them– Victor Kugler, Johannes Kleiman, Miep Gies, and Bep Voskuijl.

It seems likely that, in part, the loyalty of such friends was what made it possible for Anne to write, while hiding in the Annex:

“It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.”

Posted on July 4, 2017July 23, 2017 by kathiemm

by Anthony J. Marsella, July 4, 2017

Shakespeare’s oft quoted lines from Julius Caesar are well known. They are used often in conversations to remind us of the perils lurking among auspicious and inauspicious dates and places: “Beware the Ides of March.”

The lines are notable for the 15^th day of Caesar’s death at the hands of those he trusted, even as he alienated their friendship. And who can forget the immortal lines: “Et tu, Brutus!” These the final mournful gasp of knowing in one’s final moments, a friend’s betrayal.

“Ides” refers to the fifteenth day of March, May, July, or October. The “Fifteenth” day was considered a day to pay off all financial debts owed. Perhaps, however, it was also a day for personal debts of gratitude and appreciation to be repaid, lest we forget obligations to those who cared for us. The “Thirteenth” day was used for similar purposes for the other months. “Ides” is much more complex. For my purposes, however, it is a poignant departure place for writing about “Cides,” the “Act of Killing.”

“Cides” (Root: “Cidium” refers to the act of killing), is a term joined with many nouns to describe the intentional, deliberate, extermination by killing, murder, and slaying. The tragedy is so many things are subject to killing. “Aye, that the rub!”

I began to think of the many “Cides” following various words; in the process, I became aware of how many terms there are preceding “Cide,” and what this means for us as we use the terms each day. Too, often perhaps, we use the terms without thought or their implication.

I decided to create a graphic display to call attention to the collection of terms, rather than writing a long prose article. It is coincidental, perhaps, I prepared this article on July 4, 2017, Independence Day, the USA celebration of its founding. Coincidence! How many have died for independence? How many have died because of the USA’s existence?

Chart 1 displays some terms associated with “Cides.” It is, in some ways, a lexicon of killing. “Killing, murder, death,” they have become commonplace across the world. Have we become habituated to killing?

CHART 1:

A LEXICON OF “CIDES”

Is there a method in this piece? “Yes!” The method is combining iconic literature, words and meanings (i.e., theoretical l lexicography), socio-political commentary, and graphic display. Is there a purpose in this piece? “Yes!” The purpose is to share an awareness of killing, and its omnipresence in our lives.

“Killing, murder, slaying” is committed by individuals, couples, groups, societies, nations, groups of nations (allies). It is an act done for a thousand reasons, often under the aegis of “justified.” The criminality of the act, the illegality of the act, and the immorality of the act, is too often subject to controversy and debate. In the end, something has died.

In a recent paper, entitled “Total War: Weaponizing and Exporting USA Popular Culture” (Marsella, A.J. [2017]. Transcend Media Service, March 27, 2017. https://www.transcend.org/…/2017/…total-war-weaponizing–and-exporting-usa-popular-culture-1/ I pointed out how many different ways there are to kill, many of the ways subtle and insidious. But the consequence and the motives are the same (e.g., wealth, power, position, hatred, envy, control).

A 50-year lifetime friend and colleague at the University of Hawaii, Professor Glenn Paige (1929-2017), devoted much of his life to promoting “non-killing.” In his books and talks, Professor Paige illuminated the consequences of killing, and the potential of embracing a ‘non-killing” philosophy and ideology. We spoke often and long. Here’s to you, Glenn! Here is to halting “killing, murder, slaying” everywhere.

Let us make July 4, more than a celebration of independence, let us also make it a day we pledge to stop killing in all its obvious and nuanced forms.

May our nation, on this important day, celebrate the “ideals” of our creation, and vow to halt the “violence, killing, and murder” now prevailing. Regardless of source, motive, or rationale, let us “Beware the “Cides” of July/. “ Let us do so for all days, months, years.

Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D. Emeritus Professor, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii 96822 ajmarsella@gmail.comtapestry. .

Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D., a member of the TRANSCEND Network, is a past president of Psychologists for Social Responsibility, emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Hawaii, and past director of the World Health Organization Psychiatric Research Center in Honolulu. He is known nationally and internationally as a pioneer figure in the study of culture and psychopathology who challenged the ethnocentrism and racial biases of many assumptions, theories, and practices in psychology and psychiatry. In more recent years, he has been writing and lecturing on peace and social justice. He has published 15 edited books, and more than 250 articles, chapters, book reviews, and popular pieces. He can be reached at marsella@hawaii.edu.