"Hostile to war?" #1

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Subject:  [postpsylab list] Re: Hostile to war?       Date:  Fri, 23 Apr 1999


Viktoriya (George Kononchuk) [Russia] wrote:

The Person capable to control many their own conditions. To learn this,  must be an internal desire. But begins all from the answer to the simple  question to itself: "Wherefore I come on this Planet?". All discords under  this corner vision look otherwise. And war including. Asked rule: I have a  right to change only that can restore. Stop for small - in arising an  internal desire:

I seem, on each stage lifes a person decides different problems: physical  growing and collection information (shaping a personality), extension of  sort and activity in the external world. Last occurs either on the  background of enourmous internal work, or without it. In the first event  does not occur encroachments on the someone else territory, give God with
its direction! In second - insufficiency internal spaces pushes on the  seizure of place under the sun in the external space. Probably, exists  subconscious knowledge on posession enourmous than-that needed have:             Sorry for English.



Thank you for providing a translation.   I mention first that there is no need to apologize for the "english".    The process of conveying "enormous internal work" holds just as true for language exchange as for the whole experiences you were deeply referring to. Minds trained to expect "one event : one meaning" (typical in science ... (one) cause results in (one) effect) have to unchain
themselves to remember that the world is more interconnected than that, in practical ways. If you have the skill to find words "sufficiently close enough" to the few limited words someone else may be most used to, then they have the responsibility to open their mind to take in exactly what you mean ... and be flexible enough to adapt to the situations and idea spaces possible.

When you play a game of catching a ball with someone, the catcher must be prepared to move, run, jump, bend, stretch, not just stand there like a demanding ego and expect the ball to arrive perfectly into the hands held fixed and passive in one available location.

You have done more than I could Viktoriya... I know only english. So the responsibility is on me to make as much effort to grasp your ideas that you have given so much effort to throw my way..... um, 'our way' on PPL.

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reflecting on your ideas ...

You have conveyed several important ideas that look right into the human heart as well as the nature of existence in the universe. I now can understand why Valery reacted so strongly .. your words hint at such a strong determinism built into the very fibers of our bodies/minds so deeply that someone can account for territorial wars as a 'natural' or acceptable part of life.

Living things 'eat' not because they think about it and then 'decide' to ingest a piece of the world around them, but firstly because the sensations of hunger (or some bodily discomfort or strain) produce (re)actions ... some of which reduce the first sensations of stress.

Deep in the core of how the world is fundamentally built, entities have a self-behavior, that includes having to deal with the rest of the world and other existing things.

After this, every moment and every place is constant considerations of all that 1) could be done (what are all the possibilities?), 2) can be done (what am I capable of?), 3) should be done (what is necessary ... in the short term, or long term?)....just as you say. Massive, hidden, subliminal. In elaborate ways, these indeed contribute to "shaping a personality" ... be it of an animal, person or society.

I struggled for a long time to cope with understanding how violence can be justified.   It exists, it is real, it can contribute to an organism surviving, but in some situations it is badly destructive and we must suddenly look to realize that other behaviors are more correct. The universe displays all its
wonderous events because ego is a necessary part. But it is the scope and extent of the egoes that make actions right or wrong .... appropriate or inappropriate.

The history of life on our planet reflects the competitions between lifeforms with their individual priorities and agendas. Professor Howard Odum (University of Florida, USA; environmental biology and fauna) has discovered a systems model of what is going on with all these many interactive competitions. He has observed 2 companion wave functions which appear in all manner of living systems. They indicate a consistent pattern of growth/decline processes as work, and indicate alternative ways for living systems to go through these fluctuations and still survive .... possibly. (There are no guarantees.)

The overview situation is that some common behavior pattern exists in simple ecologies and more elaborate ones. How far down into the elemental processes this goes is anyone's guess ... though I myself have suggested deep possibilities. I am not egoistic about my own human sentience. I feel that
anthropocentrism is not the reference frame for 'consciousness' in the universe. I am therefore comfortable speaking about the 'sentience' of atoms as they interact with their level of universal organization and process.

But we elaborate life forms are not limited or restricted to knee-jerk reactions and limited behaviors the way that mechanistic simple levels of existence may be. Our option space of activity is that much grander. Our ability to retain the traces of past exeriences - memory - gives us a constant and ever increasing reference space on which to evaluate and choose new actions, and build models of consideration about ourselves, our world, our companions.

This thriving in "consideration-space" is mirrored in the physical world by wanting to expand into more places ... have more abilities ... be more 'in control'... of ourselves, and the rest of a world that may have a future (negative/positive) impact on ourselves.

Now, the history of life has been "life eats life" in order to continue. In humans, we may not eat the flesh of people, but we have a pattern of eating the flesh of the societies around us ... their resources, their territories. Wars are for the control of resources to maintain the body of the political group
... each with their own style of life ... thoughts, values, music, art, language. If your neighbor's life style annoys you, get rid of it, destroy it. Remove the discontinuity to your own chosen way of life.

It's an old pattern of behavior. Dragged along up through the billions of years of evolution. But something else was dragged along too ... mutual support .. symbiosis ... life's first model of "mutual non-aggression pact"... where together in (not perfect) cooperation we use the best of each other in
supprt of our differences. And when that happened before in evolution... rotolarial colonies, slime molds, primal jellyfish ... wow! Such an explosion of new abilities happened that the planet has never been the same since then.

Can you imagine what that means transposed to the level of human communities !?!?! When we offer one another opportunities, without posing or expecting threats and damage and death? We may not stay the same beings as we are used to living as. We may accomodate, morph, transform ... like mammalian insecta inside a chrysalis. We are Chrysalines. The body of our cultures are changing in ways that we can't even imagine yet. And it's damned uncomfortable. "Hey, you, leg ... you're going to be a wing as soon as we perform some major body-surgery on you." "Whoa!!! I'm very happy being a leg, I don't wan't to change."

But change we must ... and, we can leave on the changingroom floor all the old terrible habits and behaviors that won't be appropriate any more ... like wanting to be the only culture (society, political system, economy, language, religion, view point, philosophy, artist, musician, architecture, ...) left
alive.

Message to the inhabitants of a small planet:

The security of companions STARTS HERE AND NOW. War stops RIGHT HERE AND NOW. If you can't handle the diversity of life, then leave yourself. You, not them. No War-Lord despotic mentalities allowed anymore. No combatant intentions. No bullies. Want to stay, be a leader? That's fine. But the first order of business is everybody's welfare, not just a fewbody's.

The way to start achieving that is giving everybody a voice in their lives ... democracy, communism ... a VOTE AT THE BALLOT BOX OF SOCIAL DECISION MAKING.  (It doesn't matter what name you give the system)

There is more effective power in voting than in weapons. Outlaw weapons. Dismantle the industry that provides weapons. Find some other commodity on which to build the world's primary economy. Right now we're stuck in a rut that perpetuates violence and death. And everybody is confused over questions of whose moral selfrighteousness is superior to others. The struggle between philosophies and moral correctness are all smokescreens meant to confuse.  When children die EVERBODY IS WRONG. When the life of the future is butchered just so someone can claim authority or feed their own bellies or 'make a political statement', all such killers must be stopped.

The first to draw blood must have their own blood sacrificed, because there is no justification for brutality or hiding behind someone else's brutality. And the policers have to be Confucian ... must have nothing to gain by letting death continue. But neither should they lack the resolve to go in and stop the carnage and then withdraw.

I know .... I'm off on a tirade of words that are powerless against the people who hold and use guns without remorse. But I stand up shoulder to shoulder with VAK ... the world is in your own hands to form. Leaders of the old school must have their eyes opened. The greatest pleasure is not power and personal gratification. The greatest personal pleasure, secret of Greatness, rests in the profound pleasure of having the most beneficial effects on the most lives that you can touch. True power is not the ability to "deprive" life ... the way that selfish power is typically seen/used these days. True power is the ability to "enable" life.

The behaviors of life are rooted in the fabric of first-existence ... what we do with them is totally open.

I have no life without the presence of each one of you, none what so ever.  What can a life be if the rest of the world is gone? It is nothing. And as we each want to be 'something' and have a value in the flow of time and space and life, then as we protect one another we are protecting ourselves.

But most of the earth thinks the other way around ... save by destroying. That way works for a while but that's not the final truth. It's only the path to self-destruction. Trusting in 'peace', once you have lived as a war-maker, is not easy. It is learning to gain-control by giving-up-control. Strange logic. Stranger rewards ... all good (!).


I went further or differently than you might have meant, Viktoriya. Please write back your thoughts and show more of the light of your ideas.

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