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GLOBALISATION: OLD WINE IN A NEW BOTTLE AND HOW TO GET OUT OF THE BOTTLE BEFORE WE DROWN |
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INTRODUCTIONGlobalisation has become the contemporary "buzz word" for a process that is a lot older. It is a process that as Maggie Thatcher used to say "There is No Alternative", that is considered to effect everybody, that is inevitable, and which people cannot resist, except at their own peril. In the 1970s and 80s the same term was called "Development", and some countries were considered less or more developed than others. In the 1950s and 60s the term was called "Modernisation". Modernisation too was a process that was considered "inevitable" and "desirable". In the 1940s and 50s the term was called "Progress" and people who "resist progress" were considered "backward". When we look behind the concept, however, we see that something else is at work. In every case, such terms have been used to force a group who has less power, to accept the conceptions of the future determined by those who are more powerful. These words do violence, by forcing someone else’s future into the strait-jacket you have designed for them. It literally is a process of disempowerment. THE COLLAPSE OF TIME <r>Under globalisation, "time" becomes a "money" commodity. One doesn’t purchase a labourer, or a worker (such as one used to do in conditions of commodity slavery – one only purchases their "labour time". Workers are expected to look after themselves and the asset that their employer purchases. Because time is money, those that use time most effectively are those that work the fastest. Time begins to collapse, everything goes faster and faster in order to maximise the profits. In this situation people lose track of the future. People cannot think beyond one generation, politicians cannot think beyond the next election, businessmen cannot think beyond the next planning period (usually reducing inventories to work "just in time"), and the past seems to be irrelevant. Rates of change exceed the capacity of ecosystems to adapt, mega-extinction of life starts reducing biodiversity as to go faster everything needs to be standardised. Everything collapses into "Now", and the future becomes increasingly bleak and apocalyptic. Apocalypse also becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. People today are historically ignorant of the past and fearful of the future. But those who don’t learn from the lessons of the past are doomed to repeat them, the first time as farce, the second time as tragedy. Seen from this point of view, much of what we currently see as "new" is in fact very old. Thus, 1. THE PRIVATISATION AGENDA: <r>Globalizers tell us private ownership is by definition more efficient than any other form of ownership such as public ownership or community ownership. It is claimed that because of the "bottom line" of "profitability" is a discipline that other forms of ownership may not need to confront, they will not be as efficient in their use of scarce resources (eg. money) than are private firms. CRITIQUEBut private ownership redistributes access to goods and services proportionally to a person, or a firm’s "purchasing power". In this way, those who have the money are in a position of making more money, while those that have less, to get access to the goods and services that are privatised, need to work on a "user pays" principle of a "fee for service". Paying for goods previously free (eg. museums, public libraries, education or public health), reduces the income and thereby the standards of living of the poor even further. HISTORICAL CASES1760s: Historically the first Privatisation was the enclosure of the Commons, that destroyed the self-reliant communities of the early modern period, and with the destruction of these communities drove the workers into the industrial slums to work in the factors and mines of the early Industrial era. 1850s: Since then we have seen further privatisations of mineral rights beneath the surface of the ground (1850s) which enabled miners to peg claims on land owned by others. This led to the Californian and Australian Gold Rushes, and the destruction of Aboriginal and Indian culture and land ownership by what are today "ghost towns" once the minerals have run out. Ghost towns continue to develop. Anyone travelled to Koolyanobbing, Run Jungle or Whitenoom lately? 1950s: Privatisation of broadcast rights to media companies which have grown into some of the largest multinational corporations. Such privatisation continues with the granting of broad-band and narrow cast spectrums to private interests for a fraction of their worth. 1980s: Privatisations in the UK of public transport, public utilities of all kinds, saw profitable enterprises owned by governments being sold to private businesses at knock-down prices. In every case the service has offered higher costs, reduced service and less access to the needy than before privatisation occurred. In Australia, privatisation of water resources has placed the water that our life depends upon into the hands of a wealthy few. 1990s: Privatisation is under way of the living genome of life itself. Already corporations "own" parts of the genome of living human beings, and moves have been made to purchase the genome of everyone living in Iceland. This "ownership" of genetic material is already having huge and negative effects upon agriculture in various parts of the world, as corporations like Monsanto struggle to gain ownership of the seeds on which modern agriculture depends. 21st Century: "Privatisation" it is argued by Garret Hardin, is necessary to prevent pollution, as if the air we breath is privately owned, and there is a market for good quality air, then it can be bought and sold, and people will have a financial interest in maintaining its quality. Such "privatisation" of the air we breath is occurring with the beginnings of "Tradeable Carbon Credits" 2. THE COMPETITION AGENDA: <r>Globalisers tell us that because "competition" creates efficiency, a "competition policy" is required. Markets should be "free" of all government or community intervention. Government support for failing enterprises (eg. Ansett, HIH insurance etc) for companies that fail is considered to be a "market distortion", and governments should not intervene in such cases because they produce results defined as inefficient. CRITIQUEBut competition always creates "winners" and "losers" and in a free market, winners take all. Competition becomes self-limiting, with monopolies arising. Thus for example corner stores and local delicatessens are considered a thing of the past by comparison to supermarkets and mega-malls. The costs of competition are born always by either the community, the non-human environment or future generations, and by definition these are considered to be "external to the market place". What happens, for instance, to the losers from a process of competition is not considered by the globalisers. HISTORICAL CASES1780s: David Ricardo argued that "competitive comparative advantage" enabled Portugal to specialise in the production of wine, the West Indies to specialise in the production of Sugar and Britain to specialise in the production of manufactures. He argued that all benefited from specialising in what they were competitively best at producing. But West Indian sugar depended upon the exploitation of slaves, Portugese wine locked that country into a feudal land-owning system of indentured labourers working on landed estates, and the industrial manufactures of Britain depended upon children working in the mines. Returns on sugar and wine fell, those on manufactures grew. British workers wages and conditions rose while those in Portugal and the West Indies stagnated. 1929: Government intervention in the economy was prevented by Treasury officials in the USA and Britain who argued that the 1929 stock-market and banking crashes were "necessary corrections of the market". Remember Keating’s famous words on "the recession we had to have"? 1944: Bretton Woods Agreement of 1944 establishes the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in order to attempt to prevent the economic instability that characterised the pre-war situation. Attempts to create an international currency were prevented by the USA which effectively became the standard against all other currencies were pegged. Voting in the World Bank was determined by the number of shares held by each country, and the USA had more than twice the number of shares of anyone else. The results were that the rules of the new international system tended to favour the rich rather than serve the interests of the poor. 1960s: the gap between richest and poorest countries in the world during the 1960s was 30:1. It would take a tonne of sugar cane to produce the money to purchase one tractor. Permanent positive balances of trade for the rich countries ensured living standards continued to improve. Negative balances of trade for the poorer agrarian countries were paid for by International Aid (grants) and Loans, which kept the system working. 1974: The OPEC countries force the world to revalue the price of oil. The petro-dollars generated were invested in European and North American banks and loaned to Third World Countries reeling under the increased fuel prices. With the debt servicing created, more money begins to flow out of rather than to flow in to the majority world. When the wealth ratio exceeded 1:45 the only way this extreme measure can be maintained, is by coercion and force. International "terrorism" seen by many of the most oppressed as the only means of redressing an unfair system of international wealth and power. 1990: More than 10 tonnes of sugar is not sufficient to buy a tractor, and the ratio between the world’s poorest and richest countries has grown by 1990 to 60:1. America prides itself on its democracy, yet there is no economic democracy in that nation, or the world, where power in the world is increasingly removed from the communities most affected by the decisions that get taken in board rooms and in CEOs offices. We are told there are 354 billionaires on the planet who between them have a wealth equal to over 50% of the world’s population. We are further told that just 4% of their wealth would be sufficient to eliminate hunger for the one billion people who earn less than $1US per day, it would be enough to teach every illiterate person on the planet to read and write, it would be sufficient to give all who are drinking unsanitary polluted water, clean drinking water, and it would be enough to inoculate all children of the third world against the 6 greatest infectious childhood diseases. 2001: Today we are told the difference between the wealthy nations and the poorest nations of the world ranks at more than 60:1 and is getting worse. Such a distribution cannot be maintained in any democratic set-up. Our situation is one which is alarmingly like Apartheit South Africa, where the rich (white) community has a liberal democracy and the poor (non-white) majority are confined to various forms of authoritarianism. Violence is the automatic result of such a situation. Locked as perpetual losers in a vicious economic struggle, people trapped in this situation quickly find themselves in a situation where they have no loyalty or allegiance to any system that depresses and oppresses them. Sabotage and suicide in such circumstances become thinkable options. 2025: By then, if current trends continue, there will be 7 million millionaires world wide who control more than 90% of the world’s wealth. 700 million people will be employed producing the goods and services needed to generate this wealth, and 7 billion people will be living in poverty, attempting to make a living as best they can. Given such a situation, the wealthy will live in armed and fortified ghettos of wealth, aimed at keeping the poor excluded and in their place. Extremes of violence and vicious reprisals, including use of nuclear weapons will characterise a world system that is falling over the edge of collapse. 3. THE DE-REGULATION AGENDA: <r>Globalisers tell us that industry should be "de-regulated" and freed from "government red-tape". It is considered that the most efficient industries are those that are "self-regulated". Thus in 1983 Australian Banking was de-regulated. Government regulation of any kind is considered to be a "distorting factor" to the market place, which prevents efficiency and is a cost to the community. But government regulations are to impose "universal service obligations" and ensure that the needs of the "less powerful". Abolishing these regulations will always reduce the rights of consumers, eliminate health or safety regulations, reduce the rights of workers, or eliminate those factors that protect the environment. HIISTORICAL CASES1790s: Abolition of slavery. It was argued by the slave traders that they should be self-regulating, as if they killed too many slaves their profits would go down. Abolition of slavery was considered to be an un-necessary government regulation of the markets, that would, under the laws of the economy, have a huge negative effect upon the quality of life of the slaves. Economists argued for "Laiseez Faire" (leave well alone). 1840s: Irish potato famine. It was argued that Britain should not purchase corn for the relief of poverty in Ireland as it would interfere with the "Law of Supply and Demand". As a result 6 million Irish were left in a famine that killed 2 million people within 6 years, and which forced a further 2 million to emigrate. 1929: Opposition to the New Deal in the USA was led by politicians and economists who argued against government intervention in the market-place. As a result "oakies" (farmers from Oaklahoma) were forced off their land and forced to work as fruit pickers in California, as dust-bowls spread across the USA reducing the fertility of the soil and increasing erosion and desertification of these areas. 1980s: "Structural Adjustment Policies" forced on Third World Countries by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund has caused the closure of government run education and health care and welfare policies in the Third World as "market distortions". Tim Fisher, former Minister for Trade, would not allow Australia to forbid goods made by Third World child slavery from entering into Australia as it would "distort the market". 1983: The "de-regulation" of the financial sector, achieved under the 1983 Keating "reforms" and under the 1996 Wallis Commission of the Howard Government have led to the closure of Bank Branches, mass sackings and transferred mega profits out of the pockets of the poorest Australians into the banks. The Financial Institutions Act which promotes deregulation prevents the establishment of any new Credit Unions and Building Societies in Australia. 21st Century: In a world of competing nation states, the requirements of conventional corporate "resource extraction development" are such as to lead to a "bidding downwards" amongst states in order to attract economic "growth". Thus governments give "tax holidays", and "exemption status" to "special trade zones" excluding them from having to abide by health and safety standards or environmental protection legislation. WHERE TO FROM HERE? <r>But these concerns and the globalizers agendas are not new. They have been applied, over and over again, under different names in different periods, with always drastic consequences. In every case they see a separation between those who have the power and make the decisions and those who pay the costs and suffer the consequences in the local communities affected. Marxist Globalizers in the Soviet Union, for example, led to an elite of Aparatchiks who organised and ran the Centralised 5 year Gosplan, separate from those forced to work to meet the targets set in state owned factories and farms. Not only did this produce the worst environmental disasters, but when "privatised, corporatised, de-regulated and competitivised" has resulted in a major and long-term collapse of living standards of all but for a tiny minority of mafia-like "kleptocrats". We think of trans-national corporations as something new, but they are not. They have been around for a long time. The first trans-national corporations in Western History were 1. the Dutch East India Company, which transferred wealth from the East Indies to Holland. When this trade started the Javanese and the Dutch were roughly equal in size. By the end of the period the size of the average Dutchman had grown, whilst the size of the average Javanese had fallen. 2. the British East India Company, which transferred wealth from India to Britain. When the British East India Company started, 60% of Indians were peasants, 35% were artisans and craftsmen and 5% were "upper class" landowners and nobility. After two centuries of British Rule, 90% were peasants, 7% were artisans, workers and craftsmen, and 3% were "upper class". The Lancashire Cotton Industry only developed once the East India Company had destroyed the Indian Cotton Industry, forcing them to export their raw materials and import the finished products. 3. the Hudson Bay Company, which transferred the wealth from the North American Indians to Britain, eventually leading to the slaughter of their buffalo herds, and expropriation of their lands as well. Before the coming of Europeans to North America there were 100 million Indians. Today less than 1 million survive. But trans-nationals did not arise only in Western European history. A. In the Roman Empire – huge privately owned "latifundia" or grain farms, worked by slaves, produced grain to feed the cities of ancient Rome. Today the North African farms that were the "bread-basket" of the Roman World form part of the Sahara Desert. B. The Egigi Brothers was the first Multi-national Bank in the History of the World operating out of Babylon. By lending money at interest, they prospered, but the land suffered. Today Babylon is a pile of dried sun bricks standing alone in the salt deserts of Southern Iraq, a site which forms the epi-centre of the most overgrazed and environmentally destroyed place of the planet – with its deserts stretching from the Gobi Deserts of Northern China to the Atlantic. How many examples do we need? History tells us the answer. Every case in which privatisation of community assets has occurred within a "free market" system has led, historically to exceeding the limits of the natural environment. There is not a single case of a culture or civilisation that has exceeded what the natural environment can sustain that has survived. In every case they have collapsed, ushering in "Dark Ages" of unspeakable cruelty, misery and suffering. This is the future that the Globaliser offer us in the name of its inevitability, arguing that there is no alternative. There are alternatives. The Dark Ages that stares us in the face will only happen by our acquiescence, an acquiescence to the policies that the globalisers are trying, by every possible strategy, to force upon us. THE RESONSIBILITY OF INDIVIDUALS: <r>Faced with this situation what can we do? The consequences I have described above only occur because we, as individuals, through our inaction, allows them to occur. (A) NON VIOLENT DIRECT ACTIONIn 1540 Etienne de la Boetie, friend and colleague of Montesqieu, was interested in why people give their consent to despotism. In his "Discourse on Volutary Servitude", tyranny, he argued, always rests on the acquiescence of the people, and can only survive for as long as they continue, through their apathy or inaction, to permit the situation to continue. Should they withdraw their consent, tyranny falls. David Thoreau, Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King followed in his footsteps. It was the refusal of Rosa Parks to submit to the segregated seating on buses that began the US Civil Rights movement. When the East German people refused to obey the authorities, the Berlin Wall at last came down. The refusal of millions of people brought Apartheid to an end. Since Seattle, at Melbourne, and Genoa an international movement comprising environmentalists, church denominations, trade unions and people of all nations have begun to signal that they are not prepared to accept the Globalizers agenda. This action is important, it is necessary but it is not sufficient to overcome the problems described above. By slowing the pace of destruction of ecosystems and environments, however, it can by us time. This movement has to grow. (B) BUILDING ALTERNATIVE STRUCTURES AND INSTITUTIONSAt the moment our civilisation is totally dependent upon, and continued to become even more dependent upon fossil fuels. At the same time, historical lessons of the past show that cultures dependent upon complex systems have short historical life-spans. This is a short-sighted situation and is not sustainable even in the medium, let alone the long term. Without going into the environmental, medical and climatic effects of this dependence, it is clear that these resources, though vast, are being depleted at rates millions if not billions of times faster than their natural production. Already, such countries as the USA are dependent on imports of fuel for more than 50% of their requirements and the situation everywhere can only get worse as stocks are depleted. We urgently need sustainable, life affirming technologies and new non-competitive, cooperative institutions that can sustain us into the future. Our culture needs to mimic photosynthesis, where energy is obtained directly from sunlight, and stored in such a way that all its products are recycled endlessly. Fortunately these new social, political and technological solutions are being developed, but no where near fast enough. This movement too needs to grow. (C) SHIFTING CONSCIOUSNESSBoth of the two trends above are necessary, but not sufficient for our planetary situation. Globalisation ultimately grows out of an imperial, hegemonic agenda of power and control. It is a result of a certain kind of mind-set, a form of human consciousness that seems to be as old as the first historic civilisations. We humans tend to model our social structures and how we see ourselves in terms of how we see the world. Since the ancient Greeks we have tended to separate the physical, mental and spiritual realms of existence, attaching least importance to the former and most importance to the latter. Our bodies are also seen hierarchically with digestion and excretion functions less important than the circulation and endocrine systems, with the "highest functions" of the brain as most important. We view the world as an Aristotelian hierarchy of "non-life" (rocks, fire, minerals, air and waters), simple life, plants, wild and tame animals, pets, children and adult humans. Similarly our social systems have been similarly hierarchical; labouring "hands" are not as important, or renumerated equally with management "heads". These systems of thought are ingrained into the human consciousness, and are the ultimate source of the Globalising tendency seen above. To prevent Globalisation in the absence of changing how we see our selves and the world will ultimately see our efforts collapse and be co-opted. Fortunately modern science can demonstrate that the hierarchies do not exist, but that matter, mind and spirit are not a hierarchy but part of a ceaselessly flowing network of material, energy and information, ecologically organised. Aristotles great chain of being does not exist in reality, instead we have an ecological system, holonically organised from the largest to the smallest and from the smallest to the largest. Our bodies, so the new science of socio-psycho-neuro-endocrino-immunology is showing us, is not hierarchically organised. There is no "master circuit" of our brain, it is organised as democratic, egalitarian networks, and there is no separation of the brain from the body or the mind; of thinking from living. Even our analogies of the immune system, locked into imperial thinking as "defence systems" is shown to be false. It rather seems that the immune system functions as a communication system, part of our thinking process, and disease results when communication breakdown happens. From this perspective, "controlling" or "managing" our world, our bodies or each other is seen as a hopeless, helpless and misleading task. What is required is that we learn to live harmoniously within the reality that the new sciences of Cosmology and Ecology are demonstrating for us. GETTING BEYOND DOUBLE POWER: <r>Living consistently within this new vision of the world is not easy, especially when our dominant cultural, educational, medical and political institutions are based upon the old model. But it is clear that these "old model institutions", whilst having all of the power, authority and legitimacy, currently have no capacity to resolve our current problems. In fact, by confusing us, these nineteenth and twentieth century approaches become part of the very twenty-first century problems we are trying to resolve. Still, we can, if we look carefully, recognise that the networked, cooperative, alternative institutions and technologies that can resolve our problems are arising. Whilst they have the capacity to solve problems, these approaches currently lack the power, authority and legitimacy of the old model. We are in a situation of what revolutionary theorists call "pouvoir double" or "double power"; where those institutions that have power and authority have no capacity to resolve problems, whilst those that can resolve problems have no power and legitimacy. This unsatisfactory, schizophrenic situation continues as a result of our own compartmentalised thinking. Psychologists refer to this as "cognitive dissonance" – when the values and beliefs we claim to be living by; of love, respect and caring, are in fact denied by the way in which we live our lives in a globalising corporatised, competitive and consumeristic world. How do we get out of this situation? The evidence of the collapse of civilisations of the past is clear. As Etienne de la Boetie shows we are not passive victims of the situation. We, all of us, every waking second help to create it. As we create it, so we can un-create, or re-create it. This is the source of genuine "re-creation". We first of all have to recognise our own ability to respond. This is our individual and collective "responsibility". Three things are here required
Doing these three will produce a good result whatever the outcome. But how can we liberate such creativity? Our evidence seems to show that the best way this can be done is through creating a personal project, in a team, with other people, that will make a difference. Such projects need to work to achieve three objectives. Firstly they need to be projects of personal growth, projects that show that you are more than who you think you are, and that you are not limited by your own self image. It has to be a project that stretches you beyond your comfort zone, that demonstrates that you have capacities, skills and learnings far greater than you ever thought you possessed. Secondly, as mentioned above, it would have to be a project of community building, of strengthening and healing the communities of which you are a part. Finally, it would need to be a project that worked in some way, in service to the Earth as a whole. We are not separate from the living earth, we cannot separate ourselves from it. We are part of it and will always be so. What we do to the body of the Earth we really do to our own bodies. CONCLUSION: REFLECTIONS ON THE DISASTER OF NEW YORK AND WASHINGTON <r>Finally it is interesting looking at our responses to the disaster that has recently occurred with our destruction of the World Trade Centre in New York. Witnessing the pain of the United States over the last last 24 hours brings many thoughts to mind. For instance I say "our destruction" deliberately because the terrorist lies within each one of us. The demands for vengence, "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" will just result in a never ending cycle of paybacks in which we all finish up as eyeless and toothless. As Einstein said, "To resolve a problem requires a separate consciousness than that which created it in the first place". This is our hegemonic, imperialist consciousness talking. The demands to destroy the terrorist will finish up destroying all of us, because the terrorist resides in every human heart. For anyone who doubts what I am saying I would invite you to read the childhood biography of Saddam Husein, orphaned as a child by the British in Iraq, brought up by a military uncle who hated the Westerners. Given the fact that the current death toll in Iraq from the Western imposed sanctions is over 750,000, I would ask "How many other Saddam Huseins, or Osama bin Ladens is the world breeding by these actions?" When the wealth ratio exceeds 1:45 the only way this extreme measure can be maintained, is by coercion and force. America prides itself on its democracy, yet there is no economic democracy in that nation, or the world, where power in the world is increasingly removed from the communities most affected by the decisions that get taken. Today our internationally and nationally unequal distributions of wealth cannot be maintained in any democratic set-up. Our situation is one which is alarmingly like Apartheit South Africa, where the rich (white) community has a liberal democracy and the poor (non-white) majority are confined to various forms of authoritarianism. Violence is the automatic result of such a situation. Locked as perpetual losers in a vicious economic struggle, people trapped in this situation quickly find themselves in a situation where they have no loyalty or allegiance to any system that depresses and oppresses them. Sabotage and suicide in such circumstances become thinkable options. Looking at the images coming out of New York it is strange to hear of the way in which they are functioning, in their sombre and thoughtful grief, as a true integrated community. New Yorkers, considered the most individuated and narrowly self-interested people on the planet are supporting each other in ways not dreamed of. Why is it that we can only be jerked out of our competitive narrow individualism by disaster and catastrophe. Major Guiliani has repeatedly praised the spirit of shop keepers who give free walking shoes to those stranded in lower Manhattan having to walk miles home, or those who have prepared refreshments which have been freely distributed. This is the way we humans were intended to live, designed this way through four billion years of biological evolution. And yet it is as if the modern world cannot face very much reality. Soon we will return to the narrow selfish lives we lived before, and those that remember will be left with an immense nostalgia for the crisis - remembering how they once were. How can we get the world not to seek enemies to blame in such disasters. How do we get people to examine their lives and look at those aspects where their complicity in injustice helps to foster and further the likelihood of such events. We need to include all people in the grief, and consider it proportionally to the grief of millions of others, Iraqis, Afghanis, Africans and Latin Americans who suffer from, and are the victims of terrorist violence. We need to be against all terrorism, whether that be state sponsored terrorism, like that promoted by the USA using the Contras against the democratically elected government of El Salvador, or the Basque terrorists of the Eta against the authorities and the people of Spain. But it needs to be us who considers how, by our hatreds we create such situations. A community where we can truly include all of our interpersonal differences is the community my heart yearns for... If only we could live there not just now but forever, this planet could be a paradise in six months. To slightly paraphrase what one friend wrote of the disaster Let's dance the Elm Dance today, a dance for healing our relationship with the world, sending our love and holding in our hearts all who are terrified, grieving, bewildered and in need of healing - including those who organised and implemented these attacks. Today is a time for active listening, for allowing and creating heart-space for conversations that open people to their interconnectedness and desire for a peaceful world...... We are all in the circle together. Let's dance Our leaders got confused.So we’re all leaders now. They told us there is nothing we can do. They were wrong. When we tell ourselves there’s nothing we can do, we are wrong. We never know how much and we never know how far it goes but we always have power. We’re all making the soup we’re all eating.We’re all weaving the cloth we’re all wearing. What we do can’t go away. We are all in the circle together. Anything we do randomly and frequently starts to make its own sense and changes the world into itself. Senseless violence makes more and more sense when vengeance and fear take us closer to a world where everyone is dead for no reason. But violence isn’t the only thing that is senseless until it makes its own sense. Anything you want there to be more of - don’t wait for reasons. We’re right on the edge of discovering millions of new ways of being together, millions of new dances we can do together, minute by minute. And we’re right on the edge of destroying ourselves and ‘out of life’ because we’re too scared to have that much delight. We’re right on the edge. The steps we take now decide what kind of Earth it will be. In every moment we live we have the choice to find the fight or make the delight. We have power. It’s a circle. Start the dance. from "Practice Random Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty",Ann Herbert/Margaret Parel, 1993
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CONTENTSCRITIQUEHISTORICAL CASES 1760s. 1850s. 1950s. 1980s 1990s 21st Century CRITIQUE HISTORICAL CASES 1780s 1929 1944 1960s 1974 1990 2001 2025 CRITIQUE THE RESPONSIBILITY OF INDIVIDUALS (A) NON VIOLENT DIRECT ACTION(B) BUILDING ALTERNATIVE STRUCTURES AND INSTITUTIONS (C) SHIFTING CONSCIOUSNESS CONCLUSION: REFLECTIONS ON THE DISASTER OF NEW YORK AND WASHINGTON |
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