War, Militarism, Nuclear Policy
War, Militarism, Nuclear Policy
247. The Study of War as a Contribution to Peace (by Wolf Mendl; 1983)
About the Author—Born in Berlin, 1926, Wolf Mendl arrive in England at the age of 9. He graduated from Cambridge, taught school for 3 years, and later worked for the American Friends Service Committee in Japan and Paris. He read for a doctorate at King’s College, London, where he now teaches in the Department of War Studies. The present essay was given as a lecture at Guilford College, North Carolina, on September 3, 1981.
Foreword—Guilford College is delighted to have “The Study of War as a Contribution to Peace” become a Pendle Hill Pamphlet. Wolf Mendl was the 1981 [or 10th] Distinguished Quaker Visitor at Guilford. This visitor spends 2 weeks in public lectures, classroom visits, and conversations. We encourage all those in the wider Quaker fellowship to share and strengthen common beliefs and aspirations.
[I believe that one of the great weaknesses of so many pacifists is that they do not take enough trouble to learn to know and understand those with whom they disagree … I want to nudge the world on a little bit toward the abandonment of war as a method of settling dispute. Wolf Mendl]
I—I am asked, “How come a Quaker like you studies war? [2 assumptions result]: the study of war can’t be value-free; anyone in the business of war studies must be predisposed in favor of war. No one would accuse a medical scientist studying a plague to favor spreading it. The study of war may have practical consequences or none at all. Sooner or later, the student of war comes up against relating one’s values & attitudes to the subject. War is a real social phenomenon of our species and has been with us since the beginning of history; most consider it something inevitable though regrettable. My association with the Society of Friends immediately marks me as a “pacifist,” [and in the eyes of many, part of] an impotent minority.
The war student’s 1st paradox is that almost everyone professes to abhor war & expresses the desire to get rid of it. [This is illustrated] in governments feeling obliged to profess in favor of disarmament but do very little about it beyond negotiations [they don’t expect to succeed]. Often disarmament & arms control policies are no more than a part of political warfare. Samuel Huntington found that war is more likely to occur in the early phases of an arms race but that an arms race going on for a longer time is more likely to have a peaceful ending. He said: “An arms race reflects disagreement between 2 states as to the proper balance of power between them.”
[There is] need for a study of the various aspects of war, if only as a necessary pre-condition for the study of remedial action. Other forms might include the search for those measures which would increase the opportunity to avoid war and lessen the impact if it should break out. Various approaches to the study of war include: describing the phenomenon; [focusing] on the causes of war; looking at war as a state policy instrument.
More than 2,000 years ago, Sun Tzu wrote his study of war as an instrument in the ruler’s service. According to him, the good general “loves mankind, sympathizes with others, & appreciates their industry & toil … To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill … The worst policy is to attack cities. Attack cities only when there is no alternative.” Seeing war as a policy instrument is an attempt to bridge the gap between those who see war as [pure] evil & reject it, & those who believe that war is the inescapable destiny of humankind.
II—Quincy Wright sees war as “a violent contact of distinct entities.” War is primarily concerned with the planning, organization, and use of armed force. War has reflected both technological and social change. [Ancients argued which came 1st, military organization & activity [Aristotle], or social and political structure [Plato]; an element of truth is in both points of view. Wars have been conducted by armed masses of all the able-bodied men, or been the function of a specialized group in society.
Clauswitz (1780-1831), the father of modern strategic thinking, straddled the age of limited warfare in the 18th century and the age of mass warfare in the 19th century. The more simple-minded [war practitioners] picked and chose from his celebrated study On War, to suit their purposes and conditions. They were inclined to forget his observation that: “Subordinating the political point of view to the military would be absurd; policy creates war. Policy is the guiding intelligence and war only the instrument.” [He also said]: “To introduce the principle of moderation into the theory of war itself would always lead to logical absurdity … War is an act of force, and there is no logical limit to the application of that force.” Clausewitz was undoubtedly influenced by Napoleon’s devastating use of military power; his ideas emerged at the same time as the modern European nation state. It is the mixture of Clausewitz’s teaching about the conduct, nature, and purpose of war with the new national ideology that has dominated thinking about international relations ever since.
In this new philosophy, national goals are the highest values & among them the survival of the nation state is preeminent. [Since bending the other party’s will] can’t always be achieved through negotiations, it follows that war is a normal though spasmodic phase of inter-state relations. Technology played a central role in the transformation of war. The mobilization of the whole nation for war raised question about the distinction between soldiers & civilians. War became once more an instrument for [bringing an end to the old]. In an age of total war fought for total objectives there also had to be total victory [i.e. the unconditional surrender which ended WWII].
III—In the nuclear bomb age, & all the latest marvels of technology, humankind has reached the road’s end, which began with the 1st form of organized warfare. Everywhere today, thoughtful people are asking whether another orgy of worldwide destruction could be followed by revival. War’s development wasn’t the result of inborn aggressive instincts but of an adaptation to a particular survival problem: the need to demarcate & protect one’s land & pastures or arable land. The values of power & status emerged, which also became causes of war.
Sun Tzu’s rules, the doctrine of Just War, codes of chivalry, 18th century warfare ritual, Hague & Geneva Conventions are examples of the effort to tame the dogs of war. Just War has governed the attitudes of the great majority of Christians towards the armed conflict problem. Before Emperor Constantine’s conversion, Christians were a persecuted minority. Christ’s teachings & belief in the 2nd Coming were the reasons for their “pacifism.” After conversion, the State had to reconcile Christian doctrine with Christian behavior in an imperfect world.
The Just War doctrine has jus ad bellum (right to wage war) & jus in bello (right conduct in war). Only legitimate authorities can decide to wage war or not for a just cause. Now, both Catholic & Protestant churches are moving towards the view that nuclear deterrence & war are incompatible with Just War. We face 2 challenges: a short-term means with which we can keep the instrument of war under control; long-term challenge to diminish & eliminate war as a means of resolution.
Military strength is regarded as the ultimate measure of a state’s power and influence. Karl Deutsch has concluded that the nation state will be the world’s main center of power as long as it remains the “foremost practical instrument” for getting things done.” Kissinger wrote: “Henceforth the major nuclear powers would be able to devastate one another. They would also have great difficulty in bringing their power to bear … Military strategy is now as much concerned with influencing potential enemies as with defeating them in combat.” Where the major powers have not been in direct confrontation, there have been innumerable armed conflicts.
In the 3rd World, the traditional instrument of war is widely used & the Great Powers are at the old game of extending control & influence [by supplying surrogates]. Nuclear deterrence is in danger of being replaced by the traditional concept of military deterrence based on the idea [of overwhelming superiority of one’s side over the enemy]. The world has become too small & too dangerous for the traditional methods of resolving our quarrels. The insistence of Kissinger and others that there is no real alternative to the balance of power is an example of resistance to change. Notable minds are convinced that we can no longer afford to adjust the balance by war.
IV—Can we use our knowledge and understanding of war to promote a more peaceful world? Know your enemy as someone to be taken seriously, [with strengths and weaknesses]. Apply this rule to the study of war. War has been an important part of inter-societal relations since the dawn of history. [It is not] an aberration caused by warmongers, militarists, military-industrial complexes, conspiracies, or evil ideologies. [There is acceptance across the political spectrum that war is necessary at some point].
We who think war is wrong don’t have a monopoly of morality. Our task is to confront the moral issues raised by war & not to evade them by condemnation of war. Kissinger said: “The root dilemma of our time is that if the quest for peace turns into the sole objective of policy, the fear of war becomes a weapon in the hands of the most ruthless.” The statesman’s responsibility to ensure national [security and] survival tempts one into seeing an adversary of equal or greater strength in the worst possible light as a ruthless enemy.
Arnold Wolfers writes: “Security in an objective sense measures the absence of threats to acquired values, in a subjective sense the absence of fear that such values may be attacked.” Some useful arms control agreements have been reached [recently], mostly limiting the capacity for destruction. Where disarmament negotiations aim at reducing incentives for war, they have foundered on the various parties’ perceived security requirements. [Failed attempts at] multilateral disarmament and the qualitative change brought about by nuclear weapons have led to new methods like unilateral initiatives. They seem to point to a kind of judo in international relations, in which one’s own weakness is turned to advantages against the opponent.
One of the less attractive characteristics of “pacifists” is their tendency to shut themselves up in an intellectual and emotional ghetto, and to glory in self-righteousness. Instead, we must accept the validity of the premise that there are such things as threats, aggression, and problems of security, even if they are based on perceptions rather than facts. Old, established categories of thinking are breaking down. The great questions of peace and war have become just as much the business of economists, scientists, psychologists, educators, and moralists, who are introducing new ideas to the study of age-old problems. The growing interpenetration of the civilian and military spheres, is an example of the transformation of military institutions.
The development of unorthodox approaches to security, whether in civilian defense or defensive strategies & [re-interpretation of “Just War”] are 2 more examples of a changing outlook. Let us be optimistic realists & not pessimistic realists. The optimist believes that self-preservation will lead to the discovery that cooperation is potentially more effective than competition in furthering human enterprise, & that wars are not inevitable.
25. Militarism for America (by Grover L. Hartman; 1945)
Prefatory Notes [About the Author]—Grover L. Hartman was a teacher of history at Sidwell Friends School for 3 years. He served as Director of the War Services Committee of the Washington Federation of Churches. Militarism for America was written in response to an award offered by the Pendle Hill Publications Committee to members of the Civilian Public Service.
The Issue Defined/ Historical Perspective—The American people face the momentous issue presented by the proposal for compulsory military training after the war. [There needs to be careful consideration of the implications it has for American democracy]. Confusion has existed on proposed peacetime national service legislation. The May bill [explicitly excludes any alternatives to military service], as do Secretaries Stimson & Forrestal, Assistant Secretary John J. McCoy, George Marshall, and the American Legion. It is conscription of youth for military training in time of peace.
Cardinal Gasparri declared nearly 30 years ago, "For more than a century conscription has been the real cause of a multitude of evils afflicting society." Universal compulsory military service was established by French revolutionists to protect their new [democratic] order from a reactionary world, but it was speedily seized upon by Napoleon to forward his imperial dreams. [It supplied him with 30,000 men a month]. [Treating those men as expendable] is characteristic of modern warfare, made possible by the compulsory service principle.
Prussia utilized conscription to free herself from Napoleon; [they retained it to become the core of military despotism for Bismarck, the Kaiser and Hitler. The Japanese copied the Prussian system; Russian czars used it, as did Mussolini. Conscription was used by the US in the Civil War and Great Britain used it in WWI. 50 to 60 million men were conscripted in WWI; at least 10 million were killed and double that wounded. Already the conscripted masses of WWII have dwarfed those of WWI. The US adopted conscription in 1940. Now we are asked to adopt it as a permanent feature of national policy. The US can't afford to consign its people and those of the world to the insatiable maw of the conscription machine.
Conscription Incompatible with Democracy—Advocates of conscription in peacetime stress that the equality of its application and certain democratizing influences would stimulate our democracy. Russia, Japan, and Germany, having adopted the allegedly democratic system of conscription, embarked on policies of authoritarianism. Switzerland uses their conscripted army as a strike-breaking device. The program the US is being asked to undertake [can't be effectively compared with those in Sweden and Switzerland, because of] differences in size, industrial development and world leadership.
The US is now asked to adopt a plan which falls upon the very young who cannot vote and whose lack of maturity [affords them] only slight resistance to the philosophy and practice of military regimentation. Youth has spoken its opposition, but there is danger that its voice may not be heard. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People condemns the "Jim-crow" features of the present training system and opposes perpetuation of discrimination [through continuing] current practices. [The inflexible military hierarchy of rank can hardly be seen as a democratizing influence]. And by the very nature of conscription the minority must conform or be punished, [which is antithetical to democracy giving minorities a voice].
Stunts Qualities Essential in Democracy/ Democratic Processes Should Decide—An Italian said, "Democracy is a moral heritage of 'freedom under God,' the dignity of the common man to do what he ought and not be compelled by any tyrannical, autocratic legalism." The blind obedience of military discipline has nothing in common with [democracy's] inner discipline, individual initiative, & independent thought. People under conscription develop servile attitudes, rationalize their acceptance of the situation, and grow insensitive to their lack of freedom. Ordered to do things which are to him insignificant, he is likely to develop cynical attitudes toward work and habits of mental laziness which can be overcome only with great difficulty.
Immediate enactment of postwar conscription can't be reconciled with proper functioning of democratic process. If we believe in democracy, we must acknowledge people's capacity to consider an important issue [like this one]. Winston Churchill said: "Great decisions can't be taken, for the transition period, without far closer, calmer, more searching discussions than can be held amid the clash of arms ... Hasty work ... may lead to penalties out of proportion to the issues immediately involved." [Both sides of this issue point to polls or studies showing a strong majority supporting their opposing positions in the public at large, & among troops in the field].
The National Health Argument—How sound is the argument that conscripted post-war service is good for young men's health? It is hard to see how [those not physically & mentally fit] would benefit from compulsory military service, since they are rejected from such programs; there is no evidence that the Army wishes to help them. [Besides that, such help would] come too late for improving youth. The only benefactors of its alleged health advantages are [those who have little need of it]. Colonel Herman J. Koehler says, "I deny absolutely that military drill contains 1 worthy feature that can't be duplicated in every well-regulated gymnasium in the country today." A comprehensive public health program beginning with children [would make more sense].
Character Effects—A thoughtful Christian layman and soldier wrote: "The average soldier is pretty much the same as he was in civilian life except that his morals are lower, his conversation coarser and his religious outlook more casual except in a few rare instances. Senator Ed C. Johnson (CO) wrote : "Military discipline is an imposed discipline, and therefore not character building ... The present military service has ruined many." Does the US wish to foster hatred in its soldiers? An Army private observes that 18-year olds from good homes, quickly outdo the worst of the older men in coarse language and habits [in an effort to fit into] the new group. Another concern is that at perhaps the most critical time of their lives they would be denied the moral and spiritual environment of school and church and family. The conscription octopus, if set loose in the land, will seize upon the nation's young women and men. A college student declared that it is illogical to suppose that we can take up the infected weapons of totalitarianism and from them gain invigoration of our national life.
National Security—Maintaining national security looms largest in the minds of Americans as a reason for conscription. US Establishment of the ROTC in the 1920s led to the Japanese establishing something similar in 1926, which became a major argument for the increase in our armaments in response. In the long run it would be a tragic mistake for the US to make military strength the basis of its relations with China and Russia; [reconciliation is the wiser course]. There is no conclusive evidence that a permanent conscription produces the best national defense. One British [military expert] declared that smaller armies, "quality will replace the quantity theory of the present cannon fodder masses. [Conscription is a reaction to] aggressors who have been allowed to accumulate vast military resources; responsible UN officials are committed to preventing that.
Hanson W. Baldwin, a military expert, and Paul Mallon, a Washington columnist, predict a type of war in which conscription would be a hindrance or of little value. Mallon writes: "Armies today are built on technicians ... communications, engineering, bridge construction ... for war your 17-year old graduates would have to be trained all over again." Obsolescence of weapons is swifter than it has ever been. [Collective security and police action for the prevention of war is the only adequate national defense].
Conscription and World Order—The Federal Council of Churches, the Cleveland Study Conference on "The Churches and a Just and Durable Peace," Catholic bishops and archbishops, and the Rabbinical Assembly of America call for the postponement of action on post-war conscription. The Rabbis recorded: "[Conscription] action at the present time would prejudice and weaken efforts to remove the basic causes of war and to provide security and justice for all people through international organization ... brotherhood, and righteousness."
Proponents of compulsory military service [offer the argument that it shows our resolve] to fulfill our obligations. [Those opposing it offer the] alternative American leadership in abolishing conscription throughout the world. Senator Joseph Ball (MN) wrote: "We should see what kind of peace we can make before adopting [post-war conscription] ... The alternative to the best kind of collective security we can achieve is increasing militarization of this nation, universal conscription, ever mounting taxes ... and governmental control of industry ... and almost certain war ... It is suicide." Senator Claude A. Pepper writes: "Militarism breeds militarism, and I am sure we can obtain through volunteers, a force adequate to our needs."
President Woodrow Wilson had consistently pursued abolishing conscription in every nation. Several of our present allies have in the past or present supported abolishing conscription. Conscription is by its very nature hostile to world order, because it indoctrinates the nation's youth with a militaristic patriotism, & it deepens the reliance on armed force solutions to international problems. Embarking on a post-war conscription plan is to declare our lack of faith in our allies [& in the possibility of just & lawful world order]. There would be a competitive arms race such as the world has never seen. Far from being a step toward vigorous American support of a world government, conscription will foster isolation, distrust, & [fierce] nationalistic spirit [in other countries].
Labor and Agriculture Measure Conscription—Leaders of labor and agriculture find conscription a source of danger to their welfare. Victor Reuther described peacetime conscription as "undemocratic and un-American, a direct contradiction of our tradition of freedom ... One of its unstated purposes is to regiment our youth on a mass basis for use as a military strike-breaking, union-busting force." The Railroad Brotherhoods state: "Conscription of men for military purposes has been the surest weapon of tyrants who wished to wage war ... Now that we have autocracy flat on its back, we should shun the things that made autocracy possible." While a few feel that compulsory military training and a large army would ease the post-war labor market glut, the vast majority of labor see no real solution in a program which sacrifices basic freedoms.
Independent farmers contend that the call for expanded agricultural production is in effect countermanded by reduction in farm manpower. Since proposed legislation provides no occupational deferments, it seems logical to assume that the present problems would continue under a peacetime program. The National Farmers Union 1944 convention said: "We oppose any attempt to establish permanent peacetime conscription while plans are being formulated for a decent peace that will make nationalistic militarism unnecessary."
Educators Object—Advocates of conscription have effectively spiked the hopes of some educators that the proposed year of national service might have educational value, and be connected to college campuses. Other educators would consider such a step to be a move toward federalizing education and extending government control over the instruction of youth and they would fight this. [Various educational organizations expressed opposition] to a year of universal military service and conscription. Spokesmen for American colleges, the director of the House Committee on Education, and Catholic leaders [have also shown opposition].
Liberal arts colleges have stood as bulwarks of educational liberty and unhampered academic expression. Those colleges that secured military units during the war to keep their schools open admit they cannot speak out as clearly as they otherwise would for fear these units will be withdrawn. Post-war conscription [could] get so tied into American colleges that free expression could be curtailed. Charles Seymour, President of Yale University has spoken in favor of the conscription program. He characterized undergraduate Yale in 1943-44 as an "almost complete transformation into a military and naval training school." American education cannot afford to develop such a tremendous stake in the military program of the state.
A Religious Concern—Dean Lynn Hough of Drew Theological Seminary, in comparing Christianity with democracy writes: "Christianity does not reduce men to a commonplace uniformity to make them equal ... Christianity comes to every man as enfrancisement and complete personal fulfillment." Personality, the true self, is sacred and inviolable. Conscription brings the state into direct opposition to this Christian conception.
Conscription theory is that society & the state are the source of rights [and their revoker as well]. The Christian concept holds that government exists to serve persons. In countries utilizing conscription religious independency has virtually ceased. The church could not accept state domination of human personalities and remain the church of Christ; the church protested. [The dominating conscription state] has no patience with religious dissent. Conscription led to the disintegration of the early continental groups of Quakers. Democratic France under conscription repeatedly imprisoned independent religious leaders.
Conscription will eliminate any religious tenet which conflicts with its control. The Baptist paper The Watchman Examiner cites: "The churches lose far too many [serviceable] young men because of the world's seducements. They will lose incalculably more if we have universal military training." The missionary W. Carl Nugent expressed the conviction that it is impossible to teach the principles of Jesus in competition with the influence of a military training system geared to killing. Father Hugo writes: "On the plane of ethics, conscription must be condemned as opposed to democratic principles ... [Conscription] is destructive of that international union of peoples which is demanded by Christian charity & implied in the mystical body of Christ's doctrine.
Economic Significance—The May 1945 [conscription] Bill seeks to inaugurate the training system "to utilize material resources & training experience which will otherwise soon be dissipated." The simple desire to use camps & equipment into which money has been poured, isn't a sound argument for conscription. Harold Fey of Christian Century points out: At the end of the war ... most people will consider continuation of conscription reasonable & necessary, even if regrettable ... Our economy now makes the man in the army a bigger & more stable consumer ... than he would be if he were in civilian life; powerful interests stand to profit [from soldier/consumers]." Military conscription brings no real solution to unemployment; it is at best temporary. If a military establishment become a major support of our economic order, then the stake in war will dwarf any interest in peace. Surely the best thinking & planning in America can [offer a better solution than conscription].
Constitutionality—Daniel Webster declared: "If the Secretary of War has proved the right of Congress to enact ... a draft of men out of the militia into regular army ... [then] Congress has the power to create a dictator. The arguments which helped him in one case will equally aid him in the other ... [such as a] possible state necessity ... The people have too fresh & strong a feeling of the blessings of civil liberty to be willing thus to surrender it." In the Constitutional Convention debates of 1787, & other state debates there was a definite intention to li-mit strictly military forces controlled by the Federal Government; [there would be no "Presidential militia"]. State militias may be called into national service only on definitely specified, occasions. The Convention was very specific in defining Congressional power "to provide for organizing, arming, & disciplining the militia. The actual training under the discipline prescribed by Congress is reserved to the States. Some try to justify conscription based on the Preamble's "provide for the common defense," but the Preamble didn't create power. The framers were unwilling to give Federal Government control of the general man-power (the militia) in time of peace.
The civil liberties provisions established by constitutional law cast doubts upon the legality of peacetime conscription. Dean Roscoe Pound of Harvard Law lists "subordination of the military to the civil power" as one of the "5 characteristics of Anglo-American law." The States emphasized the subordination of the military. Courts exercised the right to review military decisions. The Supreme Court has been careful to caution against extending it decisions regarding wartime military powers to peacetime. The Supreme Court attitude and the basic Constitutional limitations on the military bring constitutionality of peace time conscription into serious question.
The Un-American Way—Senator Johnson (CO) branded compulsory peacetime military training "un-American & unpatriotic." Daniel Webster saw in the adoption of conscription evidence "that government exercises over us a power more tyrannical, more arbitrary, more dangerous, more allied to blood & murder ... than has been exercised by any civilized government with a single exception (Napoleon's) in modern times.
The military envisages a force of 3,300,000 men. $10,000,000,000 annually would probably not support such a military organization and its civilian support. This figure represents nearly 4 times the annual expenditure for US education. Is this truly the emphasis we wish to use in the pattern of post-war America. If conscription is to be tied to [a grand expansionist program envisioned by some Senators, involving acquisitions] from enemy and ally alike, then Americans ought to know it and decide the issue in the light of facts, not imagined reasons.
It is often argued that conscription here would differ from that imposed by dictators. Conscription is by its nature a compulsory appropriation by the state of the services & persons of its citizens. The Selective Service suggested that the program be administered by the Army & Navy [as a military bureaucracy] to keep it out of politics. What could be more dangerous to American freedom than military bureaucracy administering a program "necessary for national security?" [The longer democratic process might be skipped over for expediency's sake]. It is scarcely to be supposed that military men would be more tractable than civilian bureaucrats.
We are told that this compulsory military training is only for a year & purely [to prepare for an emergency]. How long before a one year training program becomes 2 or 3 years? [Considering the military's dim view of the masses ability to govern themselves without mobocracy, demagogism, agitation, & anarchy, & their dim view of internationalism], it is difficult to envisage how compulsory training under such auspices can foster a democratic generation favorably inclined toward world cooperation. There is no conclusive evidence that the traditional system of volunteer recruitment [or the number of those who want to stay in after the war] wouldn't be adequate for the country's needs. How could compulsory military training of young men be a 1st step in a much greater program of state control? There are those who envision drafting young women, labor, [& across the age spectrum]. How do we know that in voting a military draft we are not taking a 1st step toward a far broader program of state control of our lives and property? Thoughtful Americans will hesitate to launch a system of conscription foreign to American tradition and a potential threat to the structure of democratic society.
I—I am asked, “How come a Quaker like you studies war? [2 assumptions result]: the study of war can’t be value-free; anyone in the business of war studies must be predisposed in favor of war. No one would accuse a medical scientist studying a plague to favor spreading it. The study of war may have practical consequences or none at all. Sooner or later, the student of war comes up against relating one’s values & attitudes to the subject. War is a real social phenomenon of our species and has been with us since the beginning of history; most consider it something inevitable though regrettable. My association with the Society of Friends immediately marks me as a “pacifist,” [and in the eyes of many, part of] an impotent minority.
The war student’s 1st paradox is that almost everyone professes to abhor war & expresses the desire to get rid of it. [This is illustrated] in governments feeling obliged to profess in favor of disarmament but do very little about it beyond negotiations [they don’t expect to succeed]. Often disarmament & arms control policies are no more than a part of political warfare. Samuel Huntington found that war is more likely to occur in the early phases of an arms race but that an arms race going on for a longer time is more likely to have a peaceful ending. He said: “An arms race reflects disagreement between 2 states as to the proper balance of power between them.”
[There is] need for a study of the various aspects of war, if only as a necessary pre-condition for the study of remedial action. Other forms might include the search for those measures which would increase the opportunity to avoid war and lessen the impact if it should break out. Various approaches to the study of war include: describing the phenomenon; [focusing] on the causes of war; looking at war as a state policy instrument.
More than 2,000 years ago, Sun Tzu wrote his study of war as an instrument in the ruler’s service. According to him, the good general “loves mankind, sympathizes with others, & appreciates their industry & toil … To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill … The worst policy is to attack cities. Attack cities only when there is no alternative.” Seeing war as a policy instrument is an attempt to bridge the gap between those who see war as [pure] evil & reject it, & those who believe that war is the inescapable destiny of humankind.
II—Quincy Wright sees war as “a violent contact of distinct entities.” War is primarily concerned with the planning, organization, and use of armed force. War has reflected both technological and social change. [Ancients argued which came 1st, military organization & activity [Aristotle], or social and political structure [Plato]; an element of truth is in both points of view. Wars have been conducted by armed masses of all the able-bodied men, or been the function of a specialized group in society.
Clauswitz (1780-1831), the father of modern strategic thinking, straddled the age of limited warfare in the 18th century and the age of mass warfare in the 19th century. The more simple-minded [war practitioners] picked and chose from his celebrated study On War, to suit their purposes and conditions. They were inclined to forget his observation that: “Subordinating the political point of view to the military would be absurd; policy creates war. Policy is the guiding intelligence and war only the instrument.” [He also said]: “To introduce the principle of moderation into the theory of war itself would always lead to logical absurdity … War is an act of force, and there is no logical limit to the application of that force.” Clausewitz was undoubtedly influenced by Napoleon’s devastating use of military power; his ideas emerged at the same time as the modern European nation state. It is the mixture of Clausewitz’s teaching about the conduct, nature, and purpose of war with the new national ideology that has dominated thinking about international relations ever since.
In this new philosophy, national goals are the highest values & among them the survival of the nation state is preeminent. [Since bending the other party’s will] can’t always be achieved through negotiations, it follows that war is a normal though spasmodic phase of inter-state relations. Technology played a central role in the transformation of war. The mobilization of the whole nation for war raised question about the distinction between soldiers & civilians. War became once more an instrument for [bringing an end to the old]. In an age of total war fought for total objectives there also had to be total victory [i.e. the unconditional surrender which ended WWII].
III—In the nuclear bomb age, & all the latest marvels of technology, humankind has reached the road’s end, which began with the 1st form of organized warfare. Everywhere today, thoughtful people are asking whether another orgy of worldwide destruction could be followed by revival. War’s development wasn’t the result of inborn aggressive instincts but of an adaptation to a particular survival problem: the need to demarcate & protect one’s land & pastures or arable land. The values of power & status emerged, which also became causes of war.
Sun Tzu’s rules, the doctrine of Just War, codes of chivalry, 18th century warfare ritual, Hague & Geneva Conventions are examples of the effort to tame the dogs of war. Just War has governed the attitudes of the great majority of Christians towards the armed conflict problem. Before Emperor Constantine’s conversion, Christians were a persecuted minority. Christ’s teachings & belief in the 2nd Coming were the reasons for their “pacifism.” After conversion, the State had to reconcile Christian doctrine with Christian behavior in an imperfect world.
The Just War doctrine has jus ad bellum (right to wage war) & jus in bello (right conduct in war). Only legitimate authorities can decide to wage war or not for a just cause. Now, both Catholic & Protestant churches are moving towards the view that nuclear deterrence & war are incompatible with Just War. We face 2 challenges: a short-term means with which we can keep the instrument of war under control; long-term challenge to diminish & eliminate war as a means of resolution.
Military strength is regarded as the ultimate measure of a state’s power and influence. Karl Deutsch has concluded that the nation state will be the world’s main center of power as long as it remains the “foremost practical instrument” for getting things done.” Kissinger wrote: “Henceforth the major nuclear powers would be able to devastate one another. They would also have great difficulty in bringing their power to bear … Military strategy is now as much concerned with influencing potential enemies as with defeating them in combat.” Where the major powers have not been in direct confrontation, there have been innumerable armed conflicts.
In the 3rd World, the traditional instrument of war is widely used & the Great Powers are at the old game of extending control & influence [by supplying surrogates]. Nuclear deterrence is in danger of being replaced by the traditional concept of military deterrence based on the idea [of overwhelming superiority of one’s side over the enemy]. The world has become too small & too dangerous for the traditional methods of resolving our quarrels. The insistence of Kissinger and others that there is no real alternative to the balance of power is an example of resistance to change. Notable minds are convinced that we can no longer afford to adjust the balance by war.
IV—Can we use our knowledge and understanding of war to promote a more peaceful world? Know your enemy as someone to be taken seriously, [with strengths and weaknesses]. Apply this rule to the study of war. War has been an important part of inter-societal relations since the dawn of history. [It is not] an aberration caused by warmongers, militarists, military-industrial complexes, conspiracies, or evil ideologies. [There is acceptance across the political spectrum that war is necessary at some point].
We who think war is wrong don’t have a monopoly of morality. Our task is to confront the moral issues raised by war & not to evade them by condemnation of war. Kissinger said: “The root dilemma of our time is that if the quest for peace turns into the sole objective of policy, the fear of war becomes a weapon in the hands of the most ruthless.” The statesman’s responsibility to ensure national [security and] survival tempts one into seeing an adversary of equal or greater strength in the worst possible light as a ruthless enemy.
Arnold Wolfers writes: “Security in an objective sense measures the absence of threats to acquired values, in a subjective sense the absence of fear that such values may be attacked.” Some useful arms control agreements have been reached [recently], mostly limiting the capacity for destruction. Where disarmament negotiations aim at reducing incentives for war, they have foundered on the various parties’ perceived security requirements. [Failed attempts at] multilateral disarmament and the qualitative change brought about by nuclear weapons have led to new methods like unilateral initiatives. They seem to point to a kind of judo in international relations, in which one’s own weakness is turned to advantages against the opponent.
One of the less attractive characteristics of “pacifists” is their tendency to shut themselves up in an intellectual and emotional ghetto, and to glory in self-righteousness. Instead, we must accept the validity of the premise that there are such things as threats, aggression, and problems of security, even if they are based on perceptions rather than facts. Old, established categories of thinking are breaking down. The great questions of peace and war have become just as much the business of economists, scientists, psychologists, educators, and moralists, who are introducing new ideas to the study of age-old problems. The growing interpenetration of the civilian and military spheres, is an example of the transformation of military institutions.
The development of unorthodox approaches to security, whether in civilian defense or defensive strategies & [re-interpretation of “Just War”] are 2 more examples of a changing outlook. Let us be optimistic realists & not pessimistic realists. The optimist believes that self-preservation will lead to the discovery that cooperation is potentially more effective than competition in furthering human enterprise, & that wars are not inevitable.
http://www.pendlehill.org/product-category/pamphlets
Prefatory Notes [About the Author]—Grover L. Hartman was a teacher of history at Sidwell Friends School for 3 years. He served as Director of the War Services Committee of the Washington Federation of Churches. Militarism for America was written in response to an award offered by the Pendle Hill Publications Committee to members of the Civilian Public Service.
The Issue Defined/ Historical Perspective—The American people face the momentous issue presented by the proposal for compulsory military training after the war. [There needs to be careful consideration of the implications it has for American democracy]. Confusion has existed on proposed peacetime national service legislation. The May bill [explicitly excludes any alternatives to military service], as do Secretaries Stimson & Forrestal, Assistant Secretary John J. McCoy, George Marshall, and the American Legion. It is conscription of youth for military training in time of peace.
Cardinal Gasparri declared nearly 30 years ago, "For more than a century conscription has been the real cause of a multitude of evils afflicting society." Universal compulsory military service was established by French revolutionists to protect their new [democratic] order from a reactionary world, but it was speedily seized upon by Napoleon to forward his imperial dreams. [It supplied him with 30,000 men a month]. [Treating those men as expendable] is characteristic of modern warfare, made possible by the compulsory service principle.
Prussia utilized conscription to free herself from Napoleon; [they retained it to become the core of military despotism for Bismarck, the Kaiser and Hitler. The Japanese copied the Prussian system; Russian czars used it, as did Mussolini. Conscription was used by the US in the Civil War and Great Britain used it in WWI. 50 to 60 million men were conscripted in WWI; at least 10 million were killed and double that wounded. Already the conscripted masses of WWII have dwarfed those of WWI. The US adopted conscription in 1940. Now we are asked to adopt it as a permanent feature of national policy. The US can't afford to consign its people and those of the world to the insatiable maw of the conscription machine.
Conscription Incompatible with Democracy—Advocates of conscription in peacetime stress that the equality of its application and certain democratizing influences would stimulate our democracy. Russia, Japan, and Germany, having adopted the allegedly democratic system of conscription, embarked on policies of authoritarianism. Switzerland uses their conscripted army as a strike-breaking device. The program the US is being asked to undertake [can't be effectively compared with those in Sweden and Switzerland, because of] differences in size, industrial development and world leadership.
The US is now asked to adopt a plan which falls upon the very young who cannot vote and whose lack of maturity [affords them] only slight resistance to the philosophy and practice of military regimentation. Youth has spoken its opposition, but there is danger that its voice may not be heard. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People condemns the "Jim-crow" features of the present training system and opposes perpetuation of discrimination [through continuing] current practices. [The inflexible military hierarchy of rank can hardly be seen as a democratizing influence]. And by the very nature of conscription the minority must conform or be punished, [which is antithetical to democracy giving minorities a voice].
Stunts Qualities Essential in Democracy/ Democratic Processes Should Decide—An Italian said, "Democracy is a moral heritage of 'freedom under God,' the dignity of the common man to do what he ought and not be compelled by any tyrannical, autocratic legalism." The blind obedience of military discipline has nothing in common with [democracy's] inner discipline, individual initiative, & independent thought. People under conscription develop servile attitudes, rationalize their acceptance of the situation, and grow insensitive to their lack of freedom. Ordered to do things which are to him insignificant, he is likely to develop cynical attitudes toward work and habits of mental laziness which can be overcome only with great difficulty.
Immediate enactment of postwar conscription can't be reconciled with proper functioning of democratic process. If we believe in democracy, we must acknowledge people's capacity to consider an important issue [like this one]. Winston Churchill said: "Great decisions can't be taken, for the transition period, without far closer, calmer, more searching discussions than can be held amid the clash of arms ... Hasty work ... may lead to penalties out of proportion to the issues immediately involved." [Both sides of this issue point to polls or studies showing a strong majority supporting their opposing positions in the public at large, & among troops in the field].
The National Health Argument—How sound is the argument that conscripted post-war service is good for young men's health? It is hard to see how [those not physically & mentally fit] would benefit from compulsory military service, since they are rejected from such programs; there is no evidence that the Army wishes to help them. [Besides that, such help would] come too late for improving youth. The only benefactors of its alleged health advantages are [those who have little need of it]. Colonel Herman J. Koehler says, "I deny absolutely that military drill contains 1 worthy feature that can't be duplicated in every well-regulated gymnasium in the country today." A comprehensive public health program beginning with children [would make more sense].
Character Effects—A thoughtful Christian layman and soldier wrote: "The average soldier is pretty much the same as he was in civilian life except that his morals are lower, his conversation coarser and his religious outlook more casual except in a few rare instances. Senator Ed C. Johnson (CO) wrote : "Military discipline is an imposed discipline, and therefore not character building ... The present military service has ruined many." Does the US wish to foster hatred in its soldiers? An Army private observes that 18-year olds from good homes, quickly outdo the worst of the older men in coarse language and habits [in an effort to fit into] the new group. Another concern is that at perhaps the most critical time of their lives they would be denied the moral and spiritual environment of school and church and family. The conscription octopus, if set loose in the land, will seize upon the nation's young women and men. A college student declared that it is illogical to suppose that we can take up the infected weapons of totalitarianism and from them gain invigoration of our national life.
National Security—Maintaining national security looms largest in the minds of Americans as a reason for conscription. US Establishment of the ROTC in the 1920s led to the Japanese establishing something similar in 1926, which became a major argument for the increase in our armaments in response. In the long run it would be a tragic mistake for the US to make military strength the basis of its relations with China and Russia; [reconciliation is the wiser course]. There is no conclusive evidence that a permanent conscription produces the best national defense. One British [military expert] declared that smaller armies, "quality will replace the quantity theory of the present cannon fodder masses. [Conscription is a reaction to] aggressors who have been allowed to accumulate vast military resources; responsible UN officials are committed to preventing that.
Hanson W. Baldwin, a military expert, and Paul Mallon, a Washington columnist, predict a type of war in which conscription would be a hindrance or of little value. Mallon writes: "Armies today are built on technicians ... communications, engineering, bridge construction ... for war your 17-year old graduates would have to be trained all over again." Obsolescence of weapons is swifter than it has ever been. [Collective security and police action for the prevention of war is the only adequate national defense].
Conscription and World Order—The Federal Council of Churches, the Cleveland Study Conference on "The Churches and a Just and Durable Peace," Catholic bishops and archbishops, and the Rabbinical Assembly of America call for the postponement of action on post-war conscription. The Rabbis recorded: "[Conscription] action at the present time would prejudice and weaken efforts to remove the basic causes of war and to provide security and justice for all people through international organization ... brotherhood, and righteousness."
Proponents of compulsory military service [offer the argument that it shows our resolve] to fulfill our obligations. [Those opposing it offer the] alternative American leadership in abolishing conscription throughout the world. Senator Joseph Ball (MN) wrote: "We should see what kind of peace we can make before adopting [post-war conscription] ... The alternative to the best kind of collective security we can achieve is increasing militarization of this nation, universal conscription, ever mounting taxes ... and governmental control of industry ... and almost certain war ... It is suicide." Senator Claude A. Pepper writes: "Militarism breeds militarism, and I am sure we can obtain through volunteers, a force adequate to our needs."
President Woodrow Wilson had consistently pursued abolishing conscription in every nation. Several of our present allies have in the past or present supported abolishing conscription. Conscription is by its very nature hostile to world order, because it indoctrinates the nation's youth with a militaristic patriotism, & it deepens the reliance on armed force solutions to international problems. Embarking on a post-war conscription plan is to declare our lack of faith in our allies [& in the possibility of just & lawful world order]. There would be a competitive arms race such as the world has never seen. Far from being a step toward vigorous American support of a world government, conscription will foster isolation, distrust, & [fierce] nationalistic spirit [in other countries].
Labor and Agriculture Measure Conscription—Leaders of labor and agriculture find conscription a source of danger to their welfare. Victor Reuther described peacetime conscription as "undemocratic and un-American, a direct contradiction of our tradition of freedom ... One of its unstated purposes is to regiment our youth on a mass basis for use as a military strike-breaking, union-busting force." The Railroad Brotherhoods state: "Conscription of men for military purposes has been the surest weapon of tyrants who wished to wage war ... Now that we have autocracy flat on its back, we should shun the things that made autocracy possible." While a few feel that compulsory military training and a large army would ease the post-war labor market glut, the vast majority of labor see no real solution in a program which sacrifices basic freedoms.
Independent farmers contend that the call for expanded agricultural production is in effect countermanded by reduction in farm manpower. Since proposed legislation provides no occupational deferments, it seems logical to assume that the present problems would continue under a peacetime program. The National Farmers Union 1944 convention said: "We oppose any attempt to establish permanent peacetime conscription while plans are being formulated for a decent peace that will make nationalistic militarism unnecessary."
Educators Object—Advocates of conscription have effectively spiked the hopes of some educators that the proposed year of national service might have educational value, and be connected to college campuses. Other educators would consider such a step to be a move toward federalizing education and extending government control over the instruction of youth and they would fight this. [Various educational organizations expressed opposition] to a year of universal military service and conscription. Spokesmen for American colleges, the director of the House Committee on Education, and Catholic leaders [have also shown opposition].
Liberal arts colleges have stood as bulwarks of educational liberty and unhampered academic expression. Those colleges that secured military units during the war to keep their schools open admit they cannot speak out as clearly as they otherwise would for fear these units will be withdrawn. Post-war conscription [could] get so tied into American colleges that free expression could be curtailed. Charles Seymour, President of Yale University has spoken in favor of the conscription program. He characterized undergraduate Yale in 1943-44 as an "almost complete transformation into a military and naval training school." American education cannot afford to develop such a tremendous stake in the military program of the state.
A Religious Concern—Dean Lynn Hough of Drew Theological Seminary, in comparing Christianity with democracy writes: "Christianity does not reduce men to a commonplace uniformity to make them equal ... Christianity comes to every man as enfrancisement and complete personal fulfillment." Personality, the true self, is sacred and inviolable. Conscription brings the state into direct opposition to this Christian conception.
Conscription theory is that society & the state are the source of rights [and their revoker as well]. The Christian concept holds that government exists to serve persons. In countries utilizing conscription religious independency has virtually ceased. The church could not accept state domination of human personalities and remain the church of Christ; the church protested. [The dominating conscription state] has no patience with religious dissent. Conscription led to the disintegration of the early continental groups of Quakers. Democratic France under conscription repeatedly imprisoned independent religious leaders.
Conscription will eliminate any religious tenet which conflicts with its control. The Baptist paper The Watchman Examiner cites: "The churches lose far too many [serviceable] young men because of the world's seducements. They will lose incalculably more if we have universal military training." The missionary W. Carl Nugent expressed the conviction that it is impossible to teach the principles of Jesus in competition with the influence of a military training system geared to killing. Father Hugo writes: "On the plane of ethics, conscription must be condemned as opposed to democratic principles ... [Conscription] is destructive of that international union of peoples which is demanded by Christian charity & implied in the mystical body of Christ's doctrine.
Economic Significance—The May 1945 [conscription] Bill seeks to inaugurate the training system "to utilize material resources & training experience which will otherwise soon be dissipated." The simple desire to use camps & equipment into which money has been poured, isn't a sound argument for conscription. Harold Fey of Christian Century points out: At the end of the war ... most people will consider continuation of conscription reasonable & necessary, even if regrettable ... Our economy now makes the man in the army a bigger & more stable consumer ... than he would be if he were in civilian life; powerful interests stand to profit [from soldier/consumers]." Military conscription brings no real solution to unemployment; it is at best temporary. If a military establishment become a major support of our economic order, then the stake in war will dwarf any interest in peace. Surely the best thinking & planning in America can [offer a better solution than conscription].
Constitutionality—Daniel Webster declared: "If the Secretary of War has proved the right of Congress to enact ... a draft of men out of the militia into regular army ... [then] Congress has the power to create a dictator. The arguments which helped him in one case will equally aid him in the other ... [such as a] possible state necessity ... The people have too fresh & strong a feeling of the blessings of civil liberty to be willing thus to surrender it." In the Constitutional Convention debates of 1787, & other state debates there was a definite intention to li-mit strictly military forces controlled by the Federal Government; [there would be no "Presidential militia"]. State militias may be called into national service only on definitely specified, occasions. The Convention was very specific in defining Congressional power "to provide for organizing, arming, & disciplining the militia. The actual training under the discipline prescribed by Congress is reserved to the States. Some try to justify conscription based on the Preamble's "provide for the common defense," but the Preamble didn't create power. The framers were unwilling to give Federal Government control of the general man-power (the militia) in time of peace.
The civil liberties provisions established by constitutional law cast doubts upon the legality of peacetime conscription. Dean Roscoe Pound of Harvard Law lists "subordination of the military to the civil power" as one of the "5 characteristics of Anglo-American law." The States emphasized the subordination of the military. Courts exercised the right to review military decisions. The Supreme Court has been careful to caution against extending it decisions regarding wartime military powers to peacetime. The Supreme Court attitude and the basic Constitutional limitations on the military bring constitutionality of peace time conscription into serious question.
The Un-American Way—Senator Johnson (CO) branded compulsory peacetime military training "un-American & unpatriotic." Daniel Webster saw in the adoption of conscription evidence "that government exercises over us a power more tyrannical, more arbitrary, more dangerous, more allied to blood & murder ... than has been exercised by any civilized government with a single exception (Napoleon's) in modern times.
The military envisages a force of 3,300,000 men. $10,000,000,000 annually would probably not support such a military organization and its civilian support. This figure represents nearly 4 times the annual expenditure for US education. Is this truly the emphasis we wish to use in the pattern of post-war America. If conscription is to be tied to [a grand expansionist program envisioned by some Senators, involving acquisitions] from enemy and ally alike, then Americans ought to know it and decide the issue in the light of facts, not imagined reasons.
It is often argued that conscription here would differ from that imposed by dictators. Conscription is by its nature a compulsory appropriation by the state of the services & persons of its citizens. The Selective Service suggested that the program be administered by the Army & Navy [as a military bureaucracy] to keep it out of politics. What could be more dangerous to American freedom than military bureaucracy administering a program "necessary for national security?" [The longer democratic process might be skipped over for expediency's sake]. It is scarcely to be supposed that military men would be more tractable than civilian bureaucrats.
We are told that this compulsory military training is only for a year & purely [to prepare for an emergency]. How long before a one year training program becomes 2 or 3 years? [Considering the military's dim view of the masses ability to govern themselves without mobocracy, demagogism, agitation, & anarchy, & their dim view of internationalism], it is difficult to envisage how compulsory training under such auspices can foster a democratic generation favorably inclined toward world cooperation. There is no conclusive evidence that the traditional system of volunteer recruitment [or the number of those who want to stay in after the war] wouldn't be adequate for the country's needs. How could compulsory military training of young men be a 1st step in a much greater program of state control? There are those who envision drafting young women, labor, [& across the age spectrum]. How do we know that in voting a military draft we are not taking a 1st step toward a far broader program of state control of our lives and property? Thoughtful Americans will hesitate to launch a system of conscription foreign to American tradition and a potential threat to the structure of democratic society.
263. Replacing the Warrior: Cultural Ideals and Militarism (by William A. Myers; 1985)
About the Author—William A. Myers has worked as journalist, auto mechanic, hospital orderly, & teacher. He received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University NM. He is a member of Albuquerque MM. This pamphlet grew from an invitation by a student committee to give a lecture. He chose John Woolman, of whom virtually no one had heard. [The interest in the subject prompted him to write a revised & expanded essay].
“I walked about … thinking on the innumberable affliction which the proud, fierce [warrior] spirit produceth in the world … the toils and fatigue … their miseries and distresses when wounded, … and of their restless, unquiet state of mind who live in this spirit … During these meditations the desire to cherish the spirit of love and peace amongst these people arose very fresh in me.” John Woolman
INTRODUCTION—Born in 1944, I grew up knowing that my country was squared off against a belligerent rival. Each country was able and quite possibly willing to do untold damage without warning. The values inherent in nuclear deterrence show that we need a new cultural ideal. We can see what a new ideal might look life by confronting militarism itself in its ancient and modern glorification of the warrior, and then by studying a remarkable 18th century alternative, the Quaker John Woolman.
I. The Ancient Hero—For young Greeks of Plato’s time, stories about Achilles in Homer’s Iliad were a way of transmitting cultural values. Plato was against using most traditional Greek literature in educating the military elite. [Even though regarded as indispensable to the siege of Troy by both sides, Achilles is sulking in his tent because King Agamemnon took away his war prize. He only rejoins the siege when the king returns his war prize and his best friend dies fighting in his place].
His independence and his treasonous prayer that the Greeks keep losing as long as he stays out, makes him unsuitable as a warrior in Plato’s eyes. For Plato, self-interested striving for glory has to be replaced by a willingness to set aside personal desires for the good of the whole community (i.e. replaced by the new Greek idea of citizenship). Another problem Plato has is that Achilles loses control at the news of his friend’s death. The problem for Plato seems to be that Achilles is all too human, and hence not a good ideal.
His ideal was openly modeled on the Spartan militarist society, which ruthlessly submerged personal interest & individual differences to the needs of the state. He wants the new warrior to be less self-centered, and he wants the rulers of the state to come from the ranks of the guardian warriors. [So the new warrior must] be capable of intellectual pursuits far beyond the needs of military prowess, [capable of being] philosopher-kings.
II. The Modern Warrior—How do the military virtues fit the culture & time we live in? [The example I use in answer] is “The Red Baron.” He was a fighter pilot during WW I; he flew bright red airplanes [and shot down 80 enemy pilots]. Manfred Freiherr von Richtofen, wrote a memoir which was published during the war in which he fought. Von Richtofen shares with Achilles a number of characteristics. He is proud of his ability, and clearly seeks glory in shooting down more Englishmen. The Red Baron fought at a time when aerial combat was still “personal, [quite unlike the impersonal slaughter going on in the fields below him].”
[Most of his memoir reflects] a curious and extremely significant detachment, like the detachment of the bomber from the explosion. The people below were thought of as incidental parts of “targets.” The detachment I discuss here avoids value commitments and the knowledge of the effects of one’s acts. What the Red Baron flew was really only a vehicle for carrying machine guns. The technology of warfare affects the appropriateness of particular ideals to a culture. History changes the character of what we ought to find admirable.
The Battle of the Somme wiped out virtually an entire generation of men in a matter of hours. Individual hero-warriors like the Red Baron became an anachronism. If we look at the future of warfare we can see the new “ideal” emerging of which the machine-gunner is an early representation. Many new warriors operate & repair complex machinery of a technological civilization; they are machine-minders. The expression “pushing the but-ton” is eloquent in showing the extent the warrior’s detachment has reached since Homeric times. The detachment of the long-distance warrior makes it difficult for an agent of human destruction to recognize responsibility for events. We do still value personal courage, strength, & technical skills; we must also value thoughtfulness.
Adolph Eichmann organized the details of the mass deportations of Jews from Germany & Austria, their shipment to concentration camps, & later their mass murder. While his deeds were monstrous, he himself seemed not to be a malicious man. [Rather], self-deception & fantastic willingness to conform to the official system, even one of mass murder, blotted out for Eichmann any sense of objective factuality. [The history of human suffering] simply did not exist for him; he was thoughtless, unable to think through the full meaning of his actions. Detachment thus afflicts those who are, in no ordinary sense of the term, warriors. Those designing, constructing, placing, and maintaining strategic missiles are also detached from the end product of their labors. They show an inability to imagine in moral terms the true final result of the system they serve.
The antidote to detachment is a thoughtfulness which imaginatively considers probable consequences of actions & of participation in systems, & evaluates those consequences within a distinct framework of values. I want to examine an example of a life lived that thoughtfully. I have chosen an obscure figure because he deserves to be better known & because he exemplifies the thoughtfulness I think is necessary for our time.
III. A New Cultural Ideal—His name was John Woolman. He was born in 1720 in New Jersey and lived nearly all his life in the town of Mt. Holly, about 20 miles from Philadelphia. Woolman describes walking and riding up and down the colonies as a Quaker minister, meeting with all sorts of people and carefully and humbly explaining that slaveholding was deeply evil not only to slaves but also to the slaveholders who were themselves brutalized by the institution. He once wrote a bill of sale for a slave woman, but after that he carefully explained and then refused to write any more documents involving disposition of slaves. In all these stories Woolman shows up as a humble, considerate, and careful man. He knew his own limits, but he was unwilling to press his views on others. He would pay for any services he received as a guest in a household with slaves.
[While in Pennsylvania], Woolman felt a leading to visit the Indians. He wrote: “I walked about … thinking on the innumberable affliction which the proud, fierce [warrior] spirit produceth in the world … the toils & fatigue … their miseries & distresses when wounded, … & of their restless, unquiet state of mind who live in this spirit … During these meditations the desire to cherish the spirit of love & peace amongst these people arose very fresh in me.” Later, staying as an Indian settlement, Woolman peacefully confronted a man with a tomahawk. “I went forward, & spoke to him in a friendly way... I believe he had no other intent than to be in readiness in case any violence was offered to him.” John Woolman is to me an ideal because of his thoughtful consideration of the consequences of his actions & choices. The most recent editor of Woolman’s Journal commented: “The significance of Woolman is that he saw & took into account the long-range effects overlooked by many.”
IV. Individual & Community: The Paradox—[The paradox is that while] learning what is appropriate behavior from the traditions of our community, we remain individuals & sometimes have different perspectives from our community. What is our warrant or authority, for maintaining a different moral position from our community? It worried Woolman as a young man to have conclusions contrary to those of older & more experienced members of his religious society. He recognized that in the face of widespread social evils individuals must lead; a community will only come to understand the good if it is demonstrated as a viable way of ordering affairs.
Woolman chose to be an example, a witness to his principles, rather than a mere preacher. He tells us: “Deeply rooted customs, though wrong, are not easily altered, but it is the duty of everyone to be firm in that which they know is right for them.” “To refuse the active payment of a tax which our Society generally paid was exceedingly disagreeable, but to do a thing contrary to my conscience appeared yet more dreadful.” Woolman’s whole life was a recommendation of radical trust in the divine. His achievement of that state that will not do violence to another for any provocation sets him apart from the majority of humankind, and yet makes his example even more valuable to us; the alternative is the pathology of detachment. [Detachment can lead to the erosion of moral principles]. Thoughtful attention to the traits of character we value in others and in ourselves might help us avoid the absurdities systems of power generate.
V. Virtues for our Time—I would single out 3 key virtues in Woolman’s character that are especially applicable today: consistency; compassion; moral imagination. When he discovered that the dyes in clothing involved slave labor he stopped buying dyed clothing, but continued wearing what he had until it wore out. He also said: “I have seen many entangled in the spirit oppression… I could not find peace in joying in anything which I saw was against that wisdom which is pure.”
Woolman’s compassion, literally a “feeling with,” goes beyond benevolence in cultivating sensitivity to suffering of others. His sensitivity empowered Woolman to recognize particulars of injustice in the remote effects of systems, aspects which escaped the notice of his less perceptive contemporaries. He recoiled from practices & traditions which, even in small ways, helped wounds to fester. Woolman’s moral imagination stands as an effective antidote to detachment which besets us. Through its exercise, we find out how the things we do affect others, & we are connected to humanity as we are shown our essential unity in the web of relationships. These 3 virtues all clearly express the one guiding motivation of his life, to act always out of love toward absolutely everyone.
VI. Our Predicament/Conclusion—American society suffers from maintenance of an obsolete militaristic ideal, one which seriously perverted by certain metaphors. We are invited by one perverse & dangerous metaphor to think of the whole nation as a hero. Protecting national “interests” through belligerence & threats of revenge, while pretending that the ultimate weapons are never to be used, requires duplicity of thinking or utterly thoughtless detachment from reality. The unthinking acquiescence in the bizarre system which justifies raining down nuclear weapons on almost 300,000,000 human beings constitutes the pathology of detachment. We can’t responsibly wall ourselves off from the future we create in the present. Thoughtfulness will breach that wall.
We can study the web of relationships, [our ideals], and come to understand its workings and our place in it. Ideals [used to shape a unique individual life] show us human possibilities in confronting what is universal in the human condition. While Plato’s Republic firmly counters an egocentric perspective, he replaces it with a rationalistic ideal of state control. Plato’s glorification of rational control is false to the facts of human fallibility. John Woolman shows us that giving up the illusion of egocentric rational control does not make one a pawn of external circumstances, but is the source of tremendous strength of moral character.
Surely putting aside the ego-centered will is the hardest practice of the religious life. Yet only by recourse to something universal, beyond the self, can we transcend the limitation of individual knowledge and of individual power. We can choose to apply in our intentions and purposes John Woolman’s virtues in the ways we shape our understanding of life well-lived. I think the solution to the potentially disastrous effects of detachment is thoughtful choice of a new ideal to replace the warrior. We need the new societal consciousness of human connection in the web of life that study of the life of John Woolman can provide.
147. Walls (by Robert E. Reuman; 1966)
About the Author—Robert Everett Reuman (1923-1997), was born in 1923 in Foochow, China. He received a: B.A., Middlebury College, 1945; M.A., University PA, 1946; Ph. D. University PA, 1949. He worked in the Friends' Ambulance Service Unit, China, 1949-1951. He taught philosophy 4 years, & served on the faculty at Colby College in Maine for 35 years. This pamphlet is about barriers that separate people everywhere, set in the perspective of a world view.
Introduction—One of the most curious features of contemporary times is to be found in the walls that exist. We are familiar with Germany’s wall; that isn't the only wall or the most formidable. Near China there are 3; between North & South Korea; between mainland China and Taiwan; and between North and South Vietnam. The Korean wall is a moving military wall. The wall between the mainland and KMT is made up of American ships. A stone wall may be a better wall than a moving military wall; there may be more hope of solutions.
[It may seem like there is one wall with local variations between Communists & non-Communists]. There are religious & racial walls between Pakistan & India, and between Arabs and Israelis. [Americans tend to focus attention away from their own wall between Whites and Negroes]. The problem we are discussing is neither new nor unique, but is difficult to understand. The significance lies not in the physical wall, but in the psychological attitudes in individuals that give it meaning. The “wall problem” is [a result] of the “wall mentality.”
What Makes the Wall Mentality—I find 5 elements present in a typical case of “wall mentality”:
1. The division into two antagonistic sides is both rather recent in origin and arbitrary in nature.
2. The existence of a sharply defined and limited self-identification.
3. The presence of intense emotional factors, based on the basic identity distinction.
4. The collapse in communication between the inside and the outside [i.e. the “other side.”]
5. Our behavior becomes “institutionalized” [i.e. formal, rigid, corresponding to and limited by the wall]
1. The wall by itself strikes us as unnatural. The divisions of Viet Nam, Germany, Korea, and Palestine seem to cut unnaturally across a genuine or assumed unity. [The similar split between different countries is no less tragic]. [The unwilling part of the change or split sees it as] strange, unfamiliar, and contrary to the way things should be. Often, the initiator of change is charged with belonging to some other and larger “conspiracy.” Neither Korea nor Vietnam had a natural or durable Communist north and non-Communist south; the East-West conflict was imposed upon the situation without regard to local needs.
2. The wall-minded person decisively draws a line around, one’s interests, one’s concerns, one’s needs and wants, and views the satisfaction of these interests and needs as good. My group being called, or chosen [to receive satisfaction of needs and wants], presumes another group is rejected. The history of Christendom pro-vides unfortunately many examples of the exclusive mentality.
Viewing myself as a member of one class automatically entails my rejecting another class viewed as antagonistic. At its simplest this characteristic is found in the person who defines his identity with one’s physical body or possessions. More frequent is the limited identification with a group larger than the individual but smaller than all humankind. It has the advantages of locating an external visible enemy where all the mistakes are seen to have been made and upon whom all hate can be focused in an unavoidable and irreconcilable antagonism. [If the assertions are believed vigorously enough by either side, it becomes true, even where it was not true before].
Within approved group all the satisfaction of positive emotions can be lavished. Against the enemy one can pour the negative emotions, and receive the sanction of one’s group for doing so. Destructiveness, latent in all of us, thrives under these circumstances. We sympathize and empathize with each other within the group. We resent the enemy when a group member is hurt or when the enemy feels joy, and rejoice when the enemy is hurt.
4. The Collapse in Communication—In the wall situation, certain kinds of mistakes & ignorance aren't only permitted but are demanded. We are no longer permitted to hear, even if we want to, the message from the other side that might correct our ignorance. We build a stereotype which is only partially true. Few of the American books about Communist China gave a balanced picture, for what they left out, or explained away, was just as important as what they chose to include. Western “censorship,” though it is more diffused, more voluntary, & less obvious than Communist censorship, has an impact only slightly less effective on the masses of people.
The communications breakdown offers 2 very interesting psychological phenomena: projection of blame and responsibility; perceptual selectivity. If we are disturbed and uncomfortable, we do not see the responsibility or the cause as lying within us; we project them outside of us. In perceptual selectivity, our seeing is determined by what we expect or want. We learn to not perceive things that are unexpected or distasteful.
Different words used to describe the same situation can have emotional content from extreme disapproval to approval. Certain words are frequently used in almost exclusively emotional ways, with little or no definite content: “democratic,” “peaceful,” “good,” “beautiful,” “God,” “Christian.” Another important element is our thought systems, ideologies, & utopias. It is easy to become prisoner to ideology, so that one can't see what the ideology is missing. Over-simplification can easily become the imprisoning walls of dead or rigid thinking.
5. Institutionalization—Having accepted the presence of a certain wall, we organize our lives this side of the wall, ignoring as much as possible what happens on the other side; gradually behavior becomes formal, and rigid. [Institutions] are supposed to help us solve our problems, but they always have inertia of their own which limits flexibility. To overcome the wall mentality, old habits must be weakened, and new ones must be developed and brought into durable operation by institutions. Overcoming the walls of discrimination between Whites and Negroes will not be complete until radical changes in attitudes, habits, and institutions are accomplished. Significant changes in any wall are only possible when attitudes, ideologies, and institutions are modified.
The Use of Walls—Every last one of us has, & to some degree must have walls within us & around us. We need them for convenience, psychological & physical defense, for currency control, for economic organization. [Because of imperfections] I throw up a “Persona,” behind which I can tolerate them. A Mahatma (Great Soul) can expose their failures so as to purify themselves of traits of which they should be ashamed, & absorb the consequences. This demands great insight, enormous sympathy, self discipline, & great personal courage.
In the present, we don't know how to produce, exchange, educate, communicate, & share so that all creatures are equally within whatever walls and fences we might build. What is true for individuals is even truer for racial, social, political and economic groups and countries. Every country can list past injuries and has elaborate techniques for keeping the memories of these injuries alive. The more unfriendly pressure that is put on a wall, the higher and deeper that wall will be built. We must admit that some walls are necessary [and attempt to build only those walls] for psychological protection, convenience, for economic and psychological organization.
An Outworn Means—We cannot be content with building walls and counter walls, or with retaliation raids. It may satisfy primitive instincts for defense or revenge, but it neither defends nor revenges adequately; it often threatens annihilation instead. Traditional wall and defense mentality locates the problem in the wrong place. It sees the other’s mistakes and its own [but rarely]. It sees a troublemaker, but not what bothers the troublemaker; it attacks the symptom, not the disease, and aggravates [not alleviates] the underlying ailment.
The root problem is the underdeveloped maturity of people and systems in a world of insufficiency. A more inclusive sense of equity is needed because people and systems are endowed differently, inherit different resources, and face different problems, and yet are increasingly interdependent with each other. It is the immaturity of all who have not learned to critically respect me and mine on this side of the wall, you and yours on that side, and all creatures everywhere.
The Double Obligation—Albert Schweitzer suggests that we should feel reverence for all life, and be able to respect one’s own life, another’s life, and societies that are less inclusive than the whole. I cannot fulfill both of these obligations perfectly, but I am required to try. All living things must be viewed as members of the kingdom of ends. Every being is a center of worth, one who should respect all other centers of worth, and should seek continuously [if imperfectly] to generate that community of lives where ever more can live in harmony. I can express sympathy only for some creatures, therefore I should exercise my critical faculties in the effort to reduce the avoidable disharmonies that exist between us. The first commandment is universal love, the second is parochial love, and the third is critical reconstruction.
The Tension within Love and Truth—There are two attitudes [sought in seeking to live more closely in the universal community]: love and truth. [Any actions I take] require an attitude toward truth, based on the most accurate and inclusive knowledge I can achieve. Although I must love and know in a limited way, I must also be aware of unlimited loving and knowing, and know that they too lay claims upon me.
The young child gradually develops an awareness of himself [and then of others]. One develops a limited social self as well as a personal self. Usually one’s sympathies expand from family and a few friends to include a teacher, classmate, a club, one’s city, one’s country, one’s race. When conflicts of loyalties arise one either reduces one’s loyalties or tries to maintain those loyalties, while reconciling the conflicts.
Usually the process of ego-expansion stops at some point; one’s sympathies become limited and bordered. One stops growing, stops looking for more inclusive loyalties. For functional purposes these limits may be unavoidable and desirable; for purposes of defining the highest human loyalties and sympathies they are inadequate. We can never serve the whole in its entirety, until we are able to find social, political and economic organizations where we can serve any part and the whole as well. The obligation to [serve all of humanity] remains a test for the adequacy of any less inclusive loyalties or set of sympathies, or the organizing of human efforts.
Guidelines for the Future—I have developed the concept of an attitude, because attitudes are more within our individual control; programs are equally important with the attitude. Each economic, political, social, educational, or religious institution is suspended between the ideal of universal loyalty, and the local conditions of its origin and history. The adequacy of such institutions must be measured against the needs and interest of the whole of that population, and not some privileged few. [Elites in an institution must be answerable to the people outside of that institution]. The capacity for leadership must be developed as widely as possible.
Institutions should not be against the interests of members of other institutions. We have an obligation to be critical of the institutions under which we live, [even] when the consequences of this are unpleasant. [There needs to be] thoughtful analysis of the origins of totalitarian systems, the sources of their strength, and the methods by which they may be constructively restrained. [How can] supranational structures control and limit totalitarianism without in turn becoming a new and more terrifying totalitarian structure?
Wall Mentality is the Enemy—The causes which led to [the wall between East & West Germany] started with a Hitler-German aggression. The polarization of Germany [that followed its defeat] was an expression of the polarization of the victorious powers. Political democracy & material well-being developed in favor of West Germany. East Germany had either to give in to the West, change her system of administration, rapidly improve her economic position, or fight back with restrictive measures; she chose the last in the form of a physical wall.
The use of military force by either side is unthinkable under present political and technological conditions. Even if the East German government were less popular with it citizens than other governments, there is a real power structure there that cannot be wished away, and probably will not be blasted away. The “enemy” is an exclusive way of thinking and feeling, [focused only on the satisfaction of a small group].
The goal then is the gaining of an attitude of [a wider] community. I am convinced that German won’t be able to reunite with German until they are able to reunite with non-Germans. [There must be a sympathetic, critical element involved in developing a wider community], with which we must criticize the groups on both sides of the wall. I would suggest to Marxists that there is a sense of dialectic, [of dialogue] that provides a frame- work for genuine co-existence, & offers friendly challenge even while it offers mutual respect & toleration.
Aims into Action—We should seek ways of being loyal to our side without requiring disloyalty to the other side. We should save our negative attitudes for criticizing the thinking & actions that are antithetical to the larger community. We should shun words that avoid thinking, & think constructively about problems to which we as well as others can make contributions. Quaker & German churches can develop dialogue opportunities & encourage problem-solving discussion of existing conflicts. Professors & artists have been able to open significant lines of communication [in their chosen fields]. West Germany could reduce the causes of Eastern fears.
Develop positive connections with East Europe in the form of trade, cultural exchanges, and even political relations. The healing of the German division and the European division must proceed conjointly. Objective presentation of both good and bad aspects of the situation in East Germany is vitally needed, instead of moralistic condemnation & ostracism. The ground could be prepared for a peace treaty conference at which at least the 4 occupation powers & both Germanies would be represented. East & West Germany need to seek consensus through mutual negotiation on border questions. We need to learn to be patient with what we can achieve, & to take limited satisfaction in limited progress. We must learn to forgive others & ourselves in comparable degrees.
Like a High Mountain—[To date] we have not been able to escape the [wall mindset] in our ideological framework of categories, borders, and groups. Perhaps it would be well to replace or supplement our root-metaphor of walls with one drawn from India. There, reality is like a high mountain, with many different routes to the summit. Each has its own special problems and joys, its unique history and future. Each has only a suspicion, if that, of other sides of the mountain, and of the mountain as a whole. Large and difficult mountains can only be ascended by team effort, teams within teams, and base parties that support several teams climbing higher on the slope. Given this approach, reunification of Germany may be possible, although, once accomplished it may turn out to be less important. The approach itself is the real achievement.
17. New Nations for Old (by Kenneth Boulding; 1942)
About the Author—Kenneth Boulding(1910-1993) was born in Liverpool, England. Raised a Methodist, he joined the Religious Society of Friends as an Oxford undergraduate. He was 1st a chemist, then an economist, beginning at the University of Chicago in 1932. He became a US citizen in 1937. In 1941 he married Elise Biorn Hansen; From the beginning, Kenneth & Elise were central to peace research & active in many Friends organizations. Kenneth Boulding taught in many universities, published 35 books & served as president of the American Economics Association, & International Peace Studies Assoc. He was also a noted Quaker poet. He wrote poetry until his last days; Pendle Hill published his most recent poems in the Sonnets from Later Life: 1981-1993.
1. The Ripeness of Time—It may seem like lunatic optimism, at a time when nations are engaged in worldwide battle, to propose war's abolition. But great changes sometimes come unexpectedly, at a moment when the old order seems eternal, immutable. [Dawn & seeds begin in dark, seemingly lifeless times]. It may be that we shall detect in our day's deadly violence not only death, but birth; the birth of a new order, one without the peculiar institution of war. [Other evils] we shall have for many a long generation. But the evil of war we may root out, just as we rooted out slavery's evil. We are tempted to believe that it can't be destroyed until all men are perfect. There are strong reasons for believing that today the conditions which give it life & power no longer exist.
2. The Conditions of Drastic Change—Evil institutions of human society are most likely to be reformed when the institution is economically unprofitable and morally intolerable. Where humankind's moral sense conflicts with its material advantage, moral sense will not prevail unless it is unusually strong; moral sense reinforced by material advantage is likely to be successful. Historically, material advantage is often heroically sacrificed individually or nationally. Institutions linger on in society long after they have become unprofitable. The sharp sword of moral condemnation must prune away dead branches.
It is doubtful that slavery was ever more profitable than free labor; the superior efficiency of free labor has more than compensated for the cost of wages. Yet slavery persisted until it aroused the moral condemnation of sensitive spirits. Moral and economic pressure drove it from a world it had persisted in from earliest times in almost one generation. Before the children of 1800 had passed to the grave, the great revolution was accomplished. The forces that destroyed slavery are at work [even] in this world war year. Vast changes in war have increased both its unprofitability and moral foulness to where it is ripe for destruction.
3. Economic Unprofitability of War—War is now unprofitable to victor & vanquished. The wars of the powerful over the weak, by which Great Powers have gained overseas empires, have cost less than the victors' gains, which were often limited to certain classes in the victor nations. Peace advocates then have an uphill task. Now, the cheap victory has gone. The system of empire, alliance, & spheres of influence & interest is drawn so tightly over the globe that no easy prey is left for the would-be conqueror. Hitler's easy Polish victory turns out to be the opening campaign of a long and costly war from which Germany must emerge poor and disorganized, whatever the outcome. In a war between equals, victor and vanquished share a common impoverishment.
Nations dividing into 2 political factions is one reason for war's unprofitability. There is also a change in warfare technique in the direction of increasingly costly methods. With the growth of democracy, patriotism, and conscription, war has become an enterprise of the whole people, a "total war"; total war results in total poverty. The spectacular drama of war makes us forget the more important toll of war that goes on behind the battlefront. Agricultural production falls off dramatically, and not just near the battlefield. Farmers go off to war; Cattle and horses are requisitioned; fertilizer is diverted into munitions or sunk at sea; factories make war machines instead of agricultural ones. When peasants no longer send scarce food to the cities, foundations of empires crack and revolution sweeps in. In mine and factory the same story is repeated; workers are diverted to preparation of implements of death. Food, cloth, houses, roads are not grown, made, built, or repaired.
After the war, there are great gaps in the ranks of young men and strong who will never take on any of society's burdens. In almost every great war the drop in births is so great that the numbers of children unborn outnumber the men who are killed. It also takes time to restore a field's fertility. The destruction of productive power was great behind the line as in the devastated areas. A huge "war construction industry" is built up, which is too big for times of peace. It is in large part responsible for the boom and depression which universally follow war. It seems that an economic system must carry excess capacity in the shape of idle workers and machines in time of peace, in order to take care of the "peak load" of war. In addition, war brings inflation and deflation, intense nationalism, import and export quotas and tariffs, and an impoverishing game of "beggar my neighbor."
4. The Moral Intolerability of War—War persists in spite of its proved unprofitability. The majority of humankind still think that there are worse things than war, or least there are no practicable alternatives. Human-kind also thought there was no good alternative to slavery. The opinion of the majority is not necessarily a safe guide to the truth. Opposition to war is now found in a broader range of Christian Churches, and the theory and practice of non-violence has aroused wide interest in the West.
The strength of the institution of war lies in its appeal to the moral & the poetic in man: desires for glory, displays of courage & suffering. These are potent movers of man's being. The stories of individual valor had the stuff of poetry in them. Now, the dashing campaigns of the professional soldier have given way to the drab, deadly embrace of grey millions. [Tank, machine gun, & bomber have replaced war's gallantry]; it has become a vast machine. It is no longer possible, except in the case of those having vast oceans as a defense, to protect the civilian population by sending armies out to stave off the enemy. In these circumstances, the soldier's courage is of no more consequence than the civilian's. The smaller nations' armed forces might just as well not exist.
5. The Dilemma of Nationalism—A nation can't survive unless it commands a deep affection & unity in the minds of its citizens. The success of a people in war is dependent to an enormous degree upon their morale, their willingness to endure hardship, danger, & possibly death without losing the will to fight. A nation that does not lose its heart can survive anything. The Jews have had a love of "country," of their people & customs, based on a compelling sense of purpose & religious mission greater than that of any other people who have ever lived.
Modern war saps a nation's heart. The virus of shame over certain deeds done in the name of country can spread, unknown & unrealized, through a nation's life until the love sustaining this life turns to indifference or even hatred. [Unresolved shame infected] the victorious Allies with a great apathy & weakness in the 20 years of armistice. Germany's shame was exorcised by the harsh treatment she received. Instead of shame they developed a sense of injury, making them strong as a household, but dangerous, powerful, & destructive as neighbors.
6. The Prime Cause of War—Although the case against war as an abstract institution is unanswerable, war still threatens to grow until it absorbs our whole attention. Given its undeniable drawbacks, unprofitability, and immortality, how does war still survive? This question opens us up to a flood of opinions and ideas on the Causes of War. Some regard war as an expression of a "fighting instinct," an original sin. Marxists assert economic conflict as a cause. Others attribute war to subtle psychological diseases [e.g. suppressed sexual forces]. Some blame a small coterie of evil financiers and politicians, while others point to the growth of armaments. All these would-be authoritative voices speak some truth.
The key proposition is that war results from political organization of the world into separate, sovereign, & irresponsible countries. A great deal of thinking confuses war, a special, limited evil, with conflict, which is general, unlimited, & ineradicable, or universal, intractable sin. Given this thinking, we often argue that it can't be abolished till the world has been purified from conflict & sin; [it seems we must drain an ocean with a pail]. It is not an ocean we have to drain, but a foul lake, whose foulness is a sign that the springs which fed it are dry.
7. Independence as a Cause of War—We have war because there are independent countries, people organized for the essential purpose of maintaining their national independence by war. Within countries there are acute conflicts between different social groups and geographical regions. Conflicts, especially economic ones, are no respecters of international boundaries. Always the acts of government benefit some of its citizens and some foreigners, and injure others of its citizens and foreigners. A tariff on goods would benefit producers for a time, but injure consumers. Overseas, it would benefit consumers and hurt producers.
The disappearance of English/ Scottish wars after 1603 was not from less wickedness, a disappearance of conflicts, or a sudden change of attitude between Englishmen and Scotsmen. The miracle of peace was accomplished by a simple union of crowns, and a union of parliaments a century later. Independent countries with relatively inferior positions are more openly militaristic. In richer countries, it is possible for the well-meaning and ill-informed to believe that their countries could continue to exist indefinitely without war. It is evident that the "mythology" and ritual of national life is centered around the events and heroes of war. National holidays, heroes, and rituals are related to war. Even religion, where it subordinates itself to national emotion, becomes entangled more and more in military trappings. Prayers for victory replace the gospel of universal love.
8. The Dilemma of Men of Goodwill—From mother, teachers, preachers, and well-respected men, we have heard the praises of love of country. Flag-raising ceremonies have brought a sense of community with many millions of our fellow citizens, and a sense of "belonging" to something greater than ourselves. Sir Walter Scott writes: "Breathes there a man with soul so dead/ Who never to himself haths said,/ This is my own, my native land." Even as we retreat from the world of "outsiders" whose ways are strange into the domestic kingdom of our family and friends, so too in national life we return from sojourn among foreigners, to sink back into the comfort of familiar things and affection for the homeland.
The man of peace and goodwill is impelled by reason to conclude that the existence of the independent national state is the root of war, and yet his heart impels him to a true and honorable love of country. [The solution to this dilemma]l lies in the reform of the national state. The existence of a large number of diverse countries can be reconciled with the preservation of world peace. A centralized world state could establish world peace, but on what would it be based. If we purchased world peace at the price of world uniformity our descendants might well pine for the diversity and rhythm of our own.
9. The Redemption of Nationalism—[Since nations and differences need to be preserved], our problem is to destroy the spirit within a nation that gives rise to war. Wars are fought to gain or preserve an irresponsible national independence [that ignores the adverse effects of national policy] on the welfare of foreigners. On the national level a politician is judged on the very localized benefits one can provide for one's small group at the expense of one's fellow citizens. The irresponsibility of legislatures destroys democracy internally. This same irresponsibility of national government is destroying our system.
In its present form, the nation state is an intolerable nuisance, a constant source of war, a hindrance to establishing a rational economic system. It is an ugly and dangerous anachronism which will destroy us or be destroyed by a superstate if it is not transformed. The following steps: [Declaration of Dependence; restitution; "Third House" of representatives of foreign governments], are possible ways in which a new spirit of responsible government might find expression, on both the national and international plane.
The Declaration would be the national government recognizing its dependence on and responsibility for, people who live outside its immediate jurisdiction. Next, restitution would be offered to rectify the effects of past acts inconsistent with the Declaration's principles. A striking act of restitution, even if it was primarily symbolic, would have an important effect on the minds of people and governments in the desired direction. Each nation must judge [for itself what restitution it needs to offer others].
In matters economically affecting Commonwealth countries, the British government confers and deliberates with Dominion representatives, and comes to an agreed policy. There is no reason this "decent behavior" tradition should not be immediately applied to all countries. Any formal organization, if necessary, could grow out of informal conferences. [It could evolve into] a "Third House" of representatives of all foreign governments, to advise and even legislate on matters affecting foreign interests. A nation adopting such a course would become a "Moral Empire" of peoples bound by a common love and loyalty rather than by force of arms.
10. International Political Organization—Any world organization is bound to break down unless there is a recognition on the part of national units of responsibility for the welfare of all, as was the case for the League of Nations. The 1st task of the lovers of peace is to [seek a sense of international responsibility] in national policies and in individual sentiments. There is no real division between a national and an international peace policy, for each is necessary to the other. A serious physical obstacle to the creation of homogeneous countries are the places like Eastern Europe, where a long and turbulent history has resulted in an unsortable mix of races, nations and tongues. Poland is devoid of clear natural frontiers and of clear racial or linguistic frontiers.
No "composite" state, made up of many nationalities, can be secure if across its borders some of the nationalities are organized into independent countries. If nations are to live together in peace, it is important to unite all people of one kind in one political unit, and to exclude from this unit people of another kind. It is easier for nations to be friends with their neighbors if they do not have to occupy a common ground.
The League of Nations organized a vast scheme of exchange of Greeks for Turks which left very few Turks in Greece and very few Greeks in Turkey. The scheme was undoubtedly successful in improving Greco-Turkish relations, but at an appalling cost in human suffering. [Doing the same with multiple exchanges of many nationalities would cause suffering] so great that we must [earnestly] seek for an alternative solution. It is impossible to divide Europe into homogenous nations. It is possible to divide it into homogeneous "Cantons," a political organization that has worked well in Switzerland. It might be possible to federate these small units [more easily than] larger units. Full autonomy could be granted in all matters of local government.
11. The Place of Military Coercion—The place of military coercion in such a system is inevitably a matter of dispute. An international "Police Force" [would suffer] struggles for control of it by the national groups until there was complete dominance by one group and the unification of the world into a centralized world state. The use of international force would likely lead to world empire, rather than world unity. The international authority should be, rather than a military force, a center of research & information, a statistical clearinghouse, administrator of practical problems (e.g. public health, trade, reconciliation of national laws, etc.).
The fundamental error of the League of Nation's collective security system was to assume that the threat of war that no one intended to carry out would be enough, or that war could be used as a subtle, delicate weapon to avoid greater wars. War is only a coarse, blundering bludgeon, which can be used only when the people are desperate, frightened, or angry enough. People wouldn't have gone to war in 1931, & probably never will go to war in similar situations, because they aren't psychologically ready for war at the physically most appropriate time. The military union or alliance likely to form at the end of this war is almost certain to fail, unless there should develop alongside it a spiritual growth, a transformation of the ideals of national policy. Lovers of peace should make this transformation their principal objective, and secondarily seek a "Positive League," separated from any system of military power, which may foster the slow but necessary process of nationalism's redemption.
74. Everyman’s Struggle for Peace (by Horace Gundry Alexander; 1953)
[About the Author]—Horace Alexander was born in 1889 at Croydon, England. His early schooling was at Bootham School in York. He graduated in history from King's College, Cambridge in 1912. During WWI, he served as secretary on various anti-war committees. In 1916, as a conscientious objector he was after 2 appeals exempted from any war service on condition of teaching, which he did in connection with Friends' Ambulance Unit (FAU). He joined the staff of Woodbrooke, a Quaker college in Birmingham, teaching international relations, from 1919 to 1944. His wife Olive died in 1942, In WWII, he served with the FAU in India. As a trusted fellow-worker of Mahatma Gandhi, he has been actively associated with many reconstruction projects in New India. He died in 1989 at Crosslands, a Quaker retirement community in Pennsylvania.
Preface—Unless we find a way of preventing another war, there is imminent danger of civilizations being wiped out of existence. We are entering a period in history when every war is likely to become a total war. What we need is a veritable revolution to change this world of armed nations to a cooperative community of responsible people. In this pamphlet Mr. Alexander seeks to awaken the conscience of [all] those with a devotion to truth & righteousness to work towards liberating all from fear & hate, oppression & war—E. P. Devanandan, YMCA
How to Abolish War—How can war be banished from the earth? A general decrease in armaments would certainly do much to banish fear. [If today's major protagonists knew their adversary] was greatly reducing its armaments, both might sleep more peacefully. [Disarmament isn't enough in itself, because] the tendency of [humans] to kill their neighbors out of jealousy, hatred, fear, or hunger, has been so common through the long centuries of evolution, that they have tolerated the restraining influence of government for its protection.
The peace of India is preserved, not because the States of India never disagree, not because they are unusually peaceable, but because there is 1 law & government for India. The States must settle quarrels through law & reason. [World government could abolish war]. How are people to be persuaded to accept the authority of world government and loyally accept world government decisions? Today, citizens will only tolerate a government that can command personal loyalty. If there were a world government, how would we deal with the widespread sense of "WE" within nations and the fear of being outvoted and overridden?
Another way to rid humankind of war is to cultivate world loyalty by abandoning narrow nationalisms & break down national barriers. For pacifists [what is called for is a pledge to never resort to violent force & to "resist insolent might" with the mighty weapons of truth & love, to overcome evil with good]. Most believe there is no other way of resisting aggregation, especially that of invasion, than by resort to arms. Most people think the only alternatives to arms are surrender, waiting for evil to defeat itself, & running away. Such thin-blooded pacifism [in response to evil], isn't the true pacifism inspired by the teachings of Jesus Christ, Gautama Buddha, or Mahatma Gandhi. A true pacifist won't stop until pacifists have built a world that knows war no more.
War is directed by a Government or group of Governments claiming authority over some territory, when that territory's Government is determined to resist. War goes on until one is in a position to impose its will. The seeds of war must be looked for far from the battle scene. [Wherever greed, hatred, jealousy are allowed to rule ones actions], there are the seeds of war being sown. Fortunately, these seeds don't always take root. Only those who can root out selfishness & greed can claim to be true pacifists. Perhaps no one is 100% pacifist, but all still need to strive after this apparently unattainable ideal. It is no more foolish than most adventures that people undertake.
Human Nature & War:[Humans at War with Self; Instruments of Divine Love]—Many "realists," think that [history &] the argument about the unchangeableness of human nature is the final argument that should silence the "pacifist dreamer" forever. The pacifist dreams of a world of harmony, where all help their neighbor to achieve a good life of spiritual understanding, [where the arts], drama & pursuit of knowledge could grow unhampered by brutal wealthy taskmasters & cunning, arrogant war-makers. The pacifist believes humans are often at war with themselves. But one isn't condemned to always be a sinner. Jesus Christ, Buddha & others practiced a way of salvation from dualism & inner conflict that enslaves most men. Some sophisticated, learned men treat these prophets' teachings as unpractical & foolish, whilst others turn revolutionary teachings into philosophies that distort the teachings out of all recognition. The revolutionary teachings of the New Testament, the Koran, the Gita, & the Buddha, if they could be accepted & practiced with the simplicity of an [innocent] child, might show that humans can behave differently from civilization's [dead-end course] called human history.
How is Christ's view of human nature & human destiny true? What evidence is there that humans can be perfect, the pure instrument of divine love, & selfless? The devoted men & women who spend their lives in service to the most needy, in hospitals, asylums, or in other work of exacting nature with little material reward are often among the happiest of [folks]. Peace, contentment, fulfillment are achieved most completely when one abandons all thought of self, & surrender themselves to a purpose where self can be absorbed. Darwin's [notion] that all life consists in fierce struggle, [survival of the fittest] is out of date. Kropotkin's examples of mutual aid in animal life have shown that struggle isn't all. Among animals & "primitive men," there are societies built upon the principle of the team, where the strong protect the weak & action is decided by team decision rather than a "dominant male." It isn't the action that matters so much as the spirit that inspires or motivates the action. "A person of false motives may go through identical "selfless" motions, but the result is always corrupt.
[Jesus Christ's Crucifixion & the True Way of Life]/ Forwarding a Cooperative Social Order—To the pacifist, Jesus Christ's Crucifixion is the essence of the true way of life. His outspoken teaching and goodness so threatened and maddened Church and State authorities, that they accused him of being the embodiment of evil. English men and women whose careers were in a rotten system, and whose vision was distorted by the prejudice of everyday life accused Gandhi of cunning, deceit, and violence. Jesus, even in the face of their hatred, could see deeper into their hearts, pity their self-deception, and say, "Father, forgive them. They know not what they do." It was a victory over evil, the Devil, and falsehood by love, understanding, and forgiveness.
Many socialists and communists believe that individual interest must be subordinated to the good of society. The pacifist is convinced this is good as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough. Communist society still practices capitalism's destructive tendency to exalt material success [and its companion and natural human tendency to seek a selfish amount of material success]. It promotes the violent destruction of "anti-social elements." It is better to set before yourself the goal of loving all, to so love the anti-social that they become selfless and socially valuable. What principle of life allows all to become essential parts of a cooperative whole by natural inclination, rather than by orders from above?
Gandhi did not oppose or despise the efforts of others to bring governments into fuller agreement. Action at the top political level was not enough. [Since almost all governments have violence or terror or oppression in the social structure, Gandhi sought a way of building from the grass roots that would at least minimize conflict. It was called "basic education." "Education is fundamentally a process of training in the art of living, so that every function, interest or activity which makes a contribution to the good life may find its appropriate place."
"Good work is the human's basic activity, the means by which material and spiritual needs are satisfied." The moment a person handles any raw material in order to give it a useful function, one becomes a creator, and develops an inward strength and reliance which spurs one on to greater fulfillment. "The key to world peace lies in the development of an economy which is peaceful by nature, which does not produce the stresses that lead to war." The highly mechanized Western life has increased wealth and raised the standard of living, but has not produced social harmony. The Western worker works only to earn money. They and communists are mere cogs in a machine. Those countries with high "standards of living" [ignore the fact] that by raising their standards, they will stimulate revolt and ideological upheavals in other parts of the world. Gandhi's "basic education" in life offers a way out from the vicious circle of material greed and cash value.
Teach a child how to make simple things & be self-reliant; help one learn the subtle wonder of inter-relationship of earth, crops, & garments; animals, birds, & humans. Teach self-discovery of life's mystic harmonies. Creative powers are renewed in rest, sleep, meditation, & religious devotion. Basic education communities are limited in size; industries are small-scale; use of power machinery is controlled so as not to enslave workers or make them "machine-minded." A region of small villages around a small country town can build a cultural center of great value. [Self-giving is central to basic education]. Self-giving opens hearts & hands everywhere, & gains spiritual treasure; self-seeking grasps dead things only & loses the pearl of great price. Through this education, self-reliance & community strength is developed, the strength on which alone true self-government can be built.
The Illusion of Self-defence—There are village communities in India where Gandhi's principles have begun to operate. It doesn't follow that all pacifists should become trainees in a basic education training course, or go off among the exploited, those doing near-slave labor; there is work to do in every land opposing military spirit. We must 1st free our minds of the most dangerous illusions. One illusion is that armaments are necessary as a defense against attack, [& its companion belief that pacifism involves meek submission to evil]. Overcoming evil with good means insisting on a right choice of weapons. A pacifist has seen that within 30 years, air-bombing has gone from being banned to being accepted as inevitable. Decade by decade the public mind has slipped from the acceptance of one barbarity to another. The survival of "our" nation is "necessary for the good of humankind," so we must use the latest & most fiendish weapon known to man against the wicked aggressor.
Russia and America are not the only protagonists that think the "other" is the archcriminal, unreasonable, and perhaps inhuman. The pacifist realizes that at totally different type of weapon must be used, one fit for humans, not the weapons of devils. What humane weapons can be used to meet and overcome evil? They are the invincible weapons of the spirit of humans: truth and love incarnate in strong action. During the Nazi occupation of many European countries, true non-violent resistance played very little part. The determination of Norwegian professionals to uphold truth and not to bend the knee, but to stand unarmed and serene, without fear or anger against insolent might, provides one of the grandest chapters in European history.
[Gandhi's Non-Violent Movement]—Gandhi was able to enroll simple peasants and shy women as soldiers in his non-violent campaigns. Although many of the soldiers of non-violence never understood or entirely shared his principles, [they proved effective]. Indians and Englishmen have become friendly overnight. It was a change of heart in the English people that Gandhi looked for; not their destruction or even their humiliation. [Some say] if he had tried his non-violent methods against a totalitarian government, he and his supporters would have been liquidated. If there had been widespread violence in India, it is to be feared that British morality might have evaporated. There are differences of degree in suppressive governments' behaviors, not any real difference in kind. If Gandhi and friends had been executed by a less moral alien authority, it would not prove that civil disobedience and non-violence was wrong. Half the heroes of national history are those who have led "forlorn hopes" and have perished in the battlefield or on the scaffold; they have inspired fresh courage and determination in their fellows. Why can't the "blood of martyrs" also be the seed of political victory?
When ends are achieved by violent means, it is not easy to get rid of the violence afterwards. [When violence and deceit was taught and used against the government of occupation in France, they became the highest duty and value. When the French government was restored they did not find it easy to persuade young people that suddenly truth and respect for law were the highest virtues. [And so far as the American Civil War is concerned], one must ask oneself whether the negroes would not today be happier, perhaps freer if patience could have allowed civilizing forces to work for a willing emancipation of the slaves a generation or 2 later.
The strike is a non-violent weapon used against employers who refuse to be reasonable in negotiation. Strikes involved suffering for the strikers, which Gandhi believed purified people and brings hidden forces of good into action. How strange it is that the duty of protecting women and children is used as a decisive argument for armed defense, when modern war actually leads to vast misery for the often displaced old, young, and weak. The "chivalrous" distinction between men and women is false. [The chivalrous Gandhi] placed as much reliance on women as on men in his campaigns.
In caring for "mental" patients, American Quakers, Mennonites, & others still use coercion with patients having fits of violence; such fits are less frequent when love replaces coercion as the main means of checking & healing the disordered mind. [The world at large today] suffers from violent mental disorder, [more than most realize]. The world can only be cured by [people] of courageous love, filled with the truth's power, ready to suffer [derision, deceit, & death], unwilling to commit violence. Truth & love are the only weapons that never fail.
The Choice Before Us—If war continues to be waged, it will be with greater and greater destruction & cruelty. Humankind today may follow the way of violence or the way of intelligence. If international war is to continue, then in democratic communities every man & woman may be expected to play a part in preparations for defense, [i.e. conscription]. A 1½ centuries of history seems to show conclusively that conscription destroys both peace & liberty. If [many or] all are taught to shoot or bayonet their fellow men, however unpleasant the training may be, the idea will prevail that these arts must be learnt by every man who claims to be a mature citizen; no one wants to be incompetent or a coward. What if community life and national States are only put in jeopardy by the practice of conscription? If Gandhi's method of defending good and attacking evil is the only one that guarantees preservation of the good life, then conscription and armed defense are a gross anachronism.
[If talk of unilateral disarmament comes up, the response is]: "We will do this, & we will do that. But to disarm in an armed world!—no please don't ask us to do just that." And so the vicious system goes on. How will any nation take the lead in crying halt to this arming madness? Gandhi would say, rather than be a soldier, "It is better ... to be so brave that you throw your armaments away & stand before the world as men, not pre-historic monsters coated in mail & hurling bombs at the dreaded foreigner. "[Be a man, not a beast]." Armed forces organizers put the agents of mass murder into attractive uniforms, with jaunty caps & brightly polished buttons. The world has admired battlefield heroism for too long. Gandhi beckons us along the new path called "Ahimsa" or Love. He said: "It is an attribute of the brave; in fact, it is their all. It doesn't come within reach of the coward. It's no wooden or lifeless dogma, but a living & life-giving force. It is the special attribute of the soul."
How can the change from an armed world to a disarmed & cooperative world be achieved? Each of us must begin with oneself. When enough are prepared to try Gandhi's way, governments will change policies, & a warless world will become possible. How can one make ones voice heard against the great government propaganda & the great newspaper combines? Gandhi started with no natural advantages, either physical or mental. His public life was as the leader of a poor, dispirited, divided racial minority. At best, he could hope that 50,000 would follow him to jail. He became a symbol of the simple man, the forgotten man in every part of the world. He was a common mortal using to the fullest the moral strength inherent in everyone's soul. If the resistor can follow the gleams of light & truth that one has seen oneself, if one can hold the faith that the God of truth is mightier than the devil of deceit & despair, though one may perish, others will be inspired by ones example. That example, to & for others is the mighty force that can liberate all from fear & hate, from oppression and war.
429. What We Stand On (by Paul Christiansen; 2014)
About the Author—Paul Christiansen began giving vocal ministry as a teenager; he has been compelled to give it ever since. He was raised in Eastside Friends Meeting in Bellevue, WA and attended Earlham College (2006 Class). He does educational work, writes and does Quaker work. He has been involved with Young Adult Friends. This essay was born out of an intersection of several books and [vocal ministry].
The Enemy—[It happens often at] the Khan Younis refugee camp in the Gaza strip [that Israelis drive up to the perimeter in armored trucks, pour out insults through a loud speaker, and when boys respond in fury with rocks, shoot them]. War is born of hatred, fear, and lies—and war breeds hatred, fear and lies. The smallest slight becomes justification for revenge and the act of vengeance is avenged, round and round and round.
The truth is that there are no sides. [We are killing] kin, a part of ourselves. We must try to understand a little of war. War cannot actually be described, only seen. And heard. And smelled. The most potent written word and the most searing images, are in fact only hints. [2 unpleasant tasks for Quakers is to study war closely] and look at war through the eyes of war's makers. Why would anyone choose war? Chris Hedges explains war in War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning. He is not alone in asserting that we go to war for what it gives us.
War is addicting and intoxicating. The power to wipe out life is highly seductive. William J. Broyle, Jr. writes: "The line between life and death is gossamer thin ... the step from the joy of being alive in death's presence to the joy of causing death is not a great step." The seduction of war is not limited to psychopaths or criminals, but potentially within us all. [War-writers] speak of the lust of battle and the more sexual lust that battle inspires, and of how war is an overwhelming experience, a heightened state, a drug. I have held a weapon in my hand; it filled me with such power, strength, potency, fascination, delight, alarm, and terror.
War also simplifies. Someone tells you what to do, or you just kill those things over there [that are] shaped like people, scream & weep & bleed like people, but aren't. They are bad guys, we are good guys; all uncertainty, and doubt of life are stripped away. It provides comradeship, patriotism, purpose, mission, drive, order. [A nation unifies in the face of a deadly enemy]. In 1982, the Argentine dictatorship lasted a few extra months, because they started and lost the Falkland Islands War; the people enthusiastically supported them briefly.
[We fear so many things]. So many conflicts are perpetuated for generations by people who fear to admit that their fathers were fools to keep fighting and who cannot bear to admit that their sons died for nothing. The fear of not enough is pervasive and all-consuming. [We come to giving and say] "if I give away that much, I won't have enough to ________. If we don't have enough, we'll wind up like them." And the false line that separates us from them is drawn again.
Wars and national policy are based on fear. The United States has backed dictators who violate every principle of freedom and democracy, and often the explanation is fear of communism. Fear has been the governing instinct of U.S foreign policy for centuries. Fear is at the heart of many things, and can grow to jealousy, greed, war. Fear keeps us from seeing the Other as human or as having the Divine in them at all.
War is the most terrible of all humanity's ills, for we choose it. Genocide is mostly a function of war, historically & because of degree. War is the worst disaster we have ever chosen to unleash. War has real lures. War gives meaning & unity, & so, out of our confusion & isolation we choose war. Quakers aren't entirely immune; there is satisfaction is drawing lines between people. We congratulate ourselves on being holier than them & more loving than them. Quakers are just as apt to build walls between human family members as any. Quakers are afraid. We have taken war off our list of options, but we haven't taken all the causes of war out of our hearts.
Morass: [Inconvenient Truth]—I'm rich. [The things that "Americans" expect out of life—graduations, healthcare, comfortable home—were never in doubt]. I am rich despite making less than $15,000/year. I am rich because my skin is poor in melanin, my body is poor in estrogen, parent- & government-paid diplomas, because I am an English-speaking US citizen. I am blessed with vast abundance that I simply never earned. It is a gift. (If you are one of the exceptions to this description, I am sorry for coming to this understanding so late. Please, have patience with me).
Why are we rich? Violence and war. We live in an armed camp near the top of a hierarchy maintained by the US Marine Corps & the local police. We live on stolen land. Chris Hedges writes: "The message we send is: "We have everything and if you try to take it away from us we will kill you." What will Quakers do about being recipients of the plunder? While we may want to change things, we don't have to. Our backs are not against the wall. There are others who have no choice, who are the ones the system uses, starves, for whom simply existing is a battle and a half. We, the enriched, have the luxury to dabble.
But there is no testimony of dabbling. Are we not called to be patterns and examples? To live lives that speak? To seek the truth and then speak it to power? Some would say that token acts, however well meant, are what allow the injustices of the world to continue. Can we live lives that speak if our acts are small, everyday deeds? Can we be patterns and examples of a better world if we don't break the normal pattern? Donating the leftovers is not enough. We were given these gifts so that we could share them. All of them. we were given these gifts because the Light loves us so much, and because the Light loves everyone else so much. Can we be radically faithful to the way of the Spirit while also preserving our riches?
The wealth and comfort and status of middle- and upper-class Americans is a cause of war; the fear which motivate us to preserve it is a cause of war. We must choose between our treasures and peace, between life-comfort and the calling of Light. Friends of the 1st generation were often quite poor, because they stood apart from society and caused such a ruckus. Successful Quaker businessmen came from quieter and less disruptive later generations who were content not to rock the boat. If those who receive our generosity do a little better but still remain poor, and if injustices continue, is that good enough?
The world cannot afford for all humans to live as luxuriously as most American and Europeans live. If we keep on living this way, we grow the seeds of war in our homes and in our hearts. I had to be dragged [around] to this line of reasoning. Friends taught me that even in my most financially desperate moments, I, as a straight white male, was richer by far than many. I could give away money, but I could not give away my identity.
Morass: ["Go, Sell What you Own ...]—As I was reading the Bible, I quietly cheered whenever I saw a commandment for the rich to look after the poor. But slowly I realized the Bible was talking to me. It was no easy thing to realize that the way I have been living isn't good enough, that my points of pride are baby steps, praiseworthy only as beginnings, and terrifying to realize there's a gap between what I've said I believe and what I am really doing. Shall we stay on this side of the gap, not risk the leap [of radical faith and "sell all we own"]? Shall we lie again? We lie all the time, most of all to ourselves. Pay close attention: the Spirit has blessed us more than we want to know, and we are capable of far more than we want to admit, capable of true service to the Light and those the Light loves.
We must 1st admit we have not done enough. Too many are still poor. Can we still speak Truth to power when we are the power? We must admit that being truly Quaker and truly faithful is neither comfortable nor easy. We should be comforted, not comfortable. We were given the duty of leadership long ago, with all the panic and terror and confusion that goes with being out in front. The most crucial testimony of them all, is often overlooked: integrity. It means being whole in the sense of being one in the Spirit. It means having our deeds match our words. Why are we rich? Because we do not know how to part with our treasures or whom we should give them to instead. We are rich because we are served by the greatest war machine the world has ever known. We are afraid of what would happen if we resisted it, and we're afraid we don't know how. We are rich because we are resting on our laurels. Christ Hedges writes: "When we are asked to choose between truth and contentment, most of us choose contentment." Have you chosen truth?
What We Stand On—Chris Hedges and William Broyles, who know more about war than I, see no way out of it. I say Hedges and Broyles are right. To end war with the idea of "answering that of God in everyone—to appeal to a common humanity, when humanity must be the 1st casualty of every war—is impossible. And then I say, everything Quakers do is impossible.
In meeting for worship with attention to business, we are striving for discernment. We attempt to set aside all our own wants and plans and desires in order to find out what we are called to do. In the best and bravest meetings, we may come to a way that everyone dreads, yet is the way we need to go. [It is insane, impossible, yet] we manage. Not perfectly, not always well. From time to time, and not infrequently either, the Spirit moves us in unexpected ways, and the meeting sees its path.
[Consider the impossibility of] individuals attempting to find unity without for a moment surrendering their individuality. We are accepting and submitting to the highest authority on one hand, and rejecting every other form of authority on the other. We talk with God by becoming still and silent. We seek the Truth by sitting and waiting for it to arrive. It's as if we walk into a library, and patiently wait for the book we want, which may or may not exist, to check itself out and read itself to us. And sometimes, it works.
In 2012, I began a practice of daily meditation (or at least dailyish). [It grew from] 10 minutes, to 30, then for an hour or more. My roiling mind began to calm; my worship began to deepen. Messages I had been given before began to gather themselves together into a whole, which grew over the years into this essay & other works. Naturally this led to the Spirit's asking even more of me, & soon I found myself as scared as ever, now of being on my feet & speaking when I didn't want to, such as the 2013 plenary session of North Pacific YM. I rejoice in the memory of giving guidance by being [fearfully] led. [For all the scorn & wrath I have poured out], the Society that wavers between comfort & Truth is the same Society that hears the voice of God. [We know of gaining love by giving love, of coming as & remaining ourselves even as we join in something greater than ourselves, of raging, desiring, fearing while knowing we don't need to be ruled by it, nor anything else but love]. Despairing observers may say, "War is inevitable," but we can prove them wrong in our way of doing business and in our way of life. We are one peaceful voice in a growing nonviolent choir. We have a way that could help many, and even for those who cannot follow our path, it may be a great encouragement to know we exist.
My mind reels at changes we will need to make. It may require giving up homes, surrendering careers, laying down dreams long held. It may require walking into danger. It will require being profoundly, visibly different. I expect us to be pretty bad at it for a long time. The only way to be good at anything is to be bad at it for awhile. [There are all manner of things that we could do, that couldn't possibly make a difference or would take forever to work, that call for seemingly impossible changes in yourself; do them anyway]. What looks impossible is fact, underneath us all the time, more solid than anything, & holds us up. The impossible is what we stand on, for all the world to see.
If we choose to make ourselves patterns and examples, we are one day closer to the City of Light in the Peaceable Kingdom. Getting past the blocks [within us and around us] may be the 1st impossibility that we clamber up on. The world has seen many solitary peacemakers; we must show that humans can indeed live in peace and generosity as a group. If we stand fearfully but bravely and faithfully, we can show how fear can be overcome. Sometimes the Spirit will soothe us; sometimes the Spirit will lead us to something even scarier. The Spirit will never ask us to go alone. Be brave, seek the Truth, love the Light, and know the Light loves you. Trust beyond reason, and you will ultimately get results beyond hope."
Queries—What is your experience of war? How is fear an influence on your life? How have you sought release from those fears? How uncomfortable are you with choosing between your treasures and peace? How do you lie to others, to those who need your help, to yourself? In what ways do you think you may be too comfortable? How do you respond to the idea of "by standing on the impossible for all the world to see, we can reveal that whatever seems impossible [about ending war] is entirely real"? If you were to make a significant change to your life, what would it be? Are you inclined to dismiss the message of a young adult, [uninvolved with children or infirm parents or significant vulnerability]?
22. Relief and Reconstruction: Notes on Principles Involved in Quaker Relief Service (by Roger C. Wilson; 1943)
“I walked about … thinking on the innumberable affliction which the proud, fierce [warrior] spirit produceth in the world … the toils and fatigue … their miseries and distresses when wounded, … and of their restless, unquiet state of mind who live in this spirit … During these meditations the desire to cherish the spirit of love and peace amongst these people arose very fresh in me.” John Woolman
INTRODUCTION—Born in 1944, I grew up knowing that my country was squared off against a belligerent rival. Each country was able and quite possibly willing to do untold damage without warning. The values inherent in nuclear deterrence show that we need a new cultural ideal. We can see what a new ideal might look life by confronting militarism itself in its ancient and modern glorification of the warrior, and then by studying a remarkable 18th century alternative, the Quaker John Woolman.
I. The Ancient Hero—For young Greeks of Plato’s time, stories about Achilles in Homer’s Iliad were a way of transmitting cultural values. Plato was against using most traditional Greek literature in educating the military elite. [Even though regarded as indispensable to the siege of Troy by both sides, Achilles is sulking in his tent because King Agamemnon took away his war prize. He only rejoins the siege when the king returns his war prize and his best friend dies fighting in his place].
His independence and his treasonous prayer that the Greeks keep losing as long as he stays out, makes him unsuitable as a warrior in Plato’s eyes. For Plato, self-interested striving for glory has to be replaced by a willingness to set aside personal desires for the good of the whole community (i.e. replaced by the new Greek idea of citizenship). Another problem Plato has is that Achilles loses control at the news of his friend’s death. The problem for Plato seems to be that Achilles is all too human, and hence not a good ideal.
His ideal was openly modeled on the Spartan militarist society, which ruthlessly submerged personal interest & individual differences to the needs of the state. He wants the new warrior to be less self-centered, and he wants the rulers of the state to come from the ranks of the guardian warriors. [So the new warrior must] be capable of intellectual pursuits far beyond the needs of military prowess, [capable of being] philosopher-kings.
II. The Modern Warrior—How do the military virtues fit the culture & time we live in? [The example I use in answer] is “The Red Baron.” He was a fighter pilot during WW I; he flew bright red airplanes [and shot down 80 enemy pilots]. Manfred Freiherr von Richtofen, wrote a memoir which was published during the war in which he fought. Von Richtofen shares with Achilles a number of characteristics. He is proud of his ability, and clearly seeks glory in shooting down more Englishmen. The Red Baron fought at a time when aerial combat was still “personal, [quite unlike the impersonal slaughter going on in the fields below him].”
[Most of his memoir reflects] a curious and extremely significant detachment, like the detachment of the bomber from the explosion. The people below were thought of as incidental parts of “targets.” The detachment I discuss here avoids value commitments and the knowledge of the effects of one’s acts. What the Red Baron flew was really only a vehicle for carrying machine guns. The technology of warfare affects the appropriateness of particular ideals to a culture. History changes the character of what we ought to find admirable.
The Battle of the Somme wiped out virtually an entire generation of men in a matter of hours. Individual hero-warriors like the Red Baron became an anachronism. If we look at the future of warfare we can see the new “ideal” emerging of which the machine-gunner is an early representation. Many new warriors operate & repair complex machinery of a technological civilization; they are machine-minders. The expression “pushing the but-ton” is eloquent in showing the extent the warrior’s detachment has reached since Homeric times. The detachment of the long-distance warrior makes it difficult for an agent of human destruction to recognize responsibility for events. We do still value personal courage, strength, & technical skills; we must also value thoughtfulness.
Adolph Eichmann organized the details of the mass deportations of Jews from Germany & Austria, their shipment to concentration camps, & later their mass murder. While his deeds were monstrous, he himself seemed not to be a malicious man. [Rather], self-deception & fantastic willingness to conform to the official system, even one of mass murder, blotted out for Eichmann any sense of objective factuality. [The history of human suffering] simply did not exist for him; he was thoughtless, unable to think through the full meaning of his actions. Detachment thus afflicts those who are, in no ordinary sense of the term, warriors. Those designing, constructing, placing, and maintaining strategic missiles are also detached from the end product of their labors. They show an inability to imagine in moral terms the true final result of the system they serve.
The antidote to detachment is a thoughtfulness which imaginatively considers probable consequences of actions & of participation in systems, & evaluates those consequences within a distinct framework of values. I want to examine an example of a life lived that thoughtfully. I have chosen an obscure figure because he deserves to be better known & because he exemplifies the thoughtfulness I think is necessary for our time.
III. A New Cultural Ideal—His name was John Woolman. He was born in 1720 in New Jersey and lived nearly all his life in the town of Mt. Holly, about 20 miles from Philadelphia. Woolman describes walking and riding up and down the colonies as a Quaker minister, meeting with all sorts of people and carefully and humbly explaining that slaveholding was deeply evil not only to slaves but also to the slaveholders who were themselves brutalized by the institution. He once wrote a bill of sale for a slave woman, but after that he carefully explained and then refused to write any more documents involving disposition of slaves. In all these stories Woolman shows up as a humble, considerate, and careful man. He knew his own limits, but he was unwilling to press his views on others. He would pay for any services he received as a guest in a household with slaves.
[While in Pennsylvania], Woolman felt a leading to visit the Indians. He wrote: “I walked about … thinking on the innumberable affliction which the proud, fierce [warrior] spirit produceth in the world … the toils & fatigue … their miseries & distresses when wounded, … & of their restless, unquiet state of mind who live in this spirit … During these meditations the desire to cherish the spirit of love & peace amongst these people arose very fresh in me.” Later, staying as an Indian settlement, Woolman peacefully confronted a man with a tomahawk. “I went forward, & spoke to him in a friendly way... I believe he had no other intent than to be in readiness in case any violence was offered to him.” John Woolman is to me an ideal because of his thoughtful consideration of the consequences of his actions & choices. The most recent editor of Woolman’s Journal commented: “The significance of Woolman is that he saw & took into account the long-range effects overlooked by many.”
IV. Individual & Community: The Paradox—[The paradox is that while] learning what is appropriate behavior from the traditions of our community, we remain individuals & sometimes have different perspectives from our community. What is our warrant or authority, for maintaining a different moral position from our community? It worried Woolman as a young man to have conclusions contrary to those of older & more experienced members of his religious society. He recognized that in the face of widespread social evils individuals must lead; a community will only come to understand the good if it is demonstrated as a viable way of ordering affairs.
Woolman chose to be an example, a witness to his principles, rather than a mere preacher. He tells us: “Deeply rooted customs, though wrong, are not easily altered, but it is the duty of everyone to be firm in that which they know is right for them.” “To refuse the active payment of a tax which our Society generally paid was exceedingly disagreeable, but to do a thing contrary to my conscience appeared yet more dreadful.” Woolman’s whole life was a recommendation of radical trust in the divine. His achievement of that state that will not do violence to another for any provocation sets him apart from the majority of humankind, and yet makes his example even more valuable to us; the alternative is the pathology of detachment. [Detachment can lead to the erosion of moral principles]. Thoughtful attention to the traits of character we value in others and in ourselves might help us avoid the absurdities systems of power generate.
V. Virtues for our Time—I would single out 3 key virtues in Woolman’s character that are especially applicable today: consistency; compassion; moral imagination. When he discovered that the dyes in clothing involved slave labor he stopped buying dyed clothing, but continued wearing what he had until it wore out. He also said: “I have seen many entangled in the spirit oppression… I could not find peace in joying in anything which I saw was against that wisdom which is pure.”
Woolman’s compassion, literally a “feeling with,” goes beyond benevolence in cultivating sensitivity to suffering of others. His sensitivity empowered Woolman to recognize particulars of injustice in the remote effects of systems, aspects which escaped the notice of his less perceptive contemporaries. He recoiled from practices & traditions which, even in small ways, helped wounds to fester. Woolman’s moral imagination stands as an effective antidote to detachment which besets us. Through its exercise, we find out how the things we do affect others, & we are connected to humanity as we are shown our essential unity in the web of relationships. These 3 virtues all clearly express the one guiding motivation of his life, to act always out of love toward absolutely everyone.
VI. Our Predicament/Conclusion—American society suffers from maintenance of an obsolete militaristic ideal, one which seriously perverted by certain metaphors. We are invited by one perverse & dangerous metaphor to think of the whole nation as a hero. Protecting national “interests” through belligerence & threats of revenge, while pretending that the ultimate weapons are never to be used, requires duplicity of thinking or utterly thoughtless detachment from reality. The unthinking acquiescence in the bizarre system which justifies raining down nuclear weapons on almost 300,000,000 human beings constitutes the pathology of detachment. We can’t responsibly wall ourselves off from the future we create in the present. Thoughtfulness will breach that wall.
We can study the web of relationships, [our ideals], and come to understand its workings and our place in it. Ideals [used to shape a unique individual life] show us human possibilities in confronting what is universal in the human condition. While Plato’s Republic firmly counters an egocentric perspective, he replaces it with a rationalistic ideal of state control. Plato’s glorification of rational control is false to the facts of human fallibility. John Woolman shows us that giving up the illusion of egocentric rational control does not make one a pawn of external circumstances, but is the source of tremendous strength of moral character.
Surely putting aside the ego-centered will is the hardest practice of the religious life. Yet only by recourse to something universal, beyond the self, can we transcend the limitation of individual knowledge and of individual power. We can choose to apply in our intentions and purposes John Woolman’s virtues in the ways we shape our understanding of life well-lived. I think the solution to the potentially disastrous effects of detachment is thoughtful choice of a new ideal to replace the warrior. We need the new societal consciousness of human connection in the web of life that study of the life of John Woolman can provide.
http://www.pendlehill.org/product-category/pamphlets
147. Walls (by Robert E. Reuman; 1966)
About the Author—Robert Everett Reuman (1923-1997), was born in 1923 in Foochow, China. He received a: B.A., Middlebury College, 1945; M.A., University PA, 1946; Ph. D. University PA, 1949. He worked in the Friends' Ambulance Service Unit, China, 1949-1951. He taught philosophy 4 years, & served on the faculty at Colby College in Maine for 35 years. This pamphlet is about barriers that separate people everywhere, set in the perspective of a world view.
Introduction—One of the most curious features of contemporary times is to be found in the walls that exist. We are familiar with Germany’s wall; that isn't the only wall or the most formidable. Near China there are 3; between North & South Korea; between mainland China and Taiwan; and between North and South Vietnam. The Korean wall is a moving military wall. The wall between the mainland and KMT is made up of American ships. A stone wall may be a better wall than a moving military wall; there may be more hope of solutions.
[It may seem like there is one wall with local variations between Communists & non-Communists]. There are religious & racial walls between Pakistan & India, and between Arabs and Israelis. [Americans tend to focus attention away from their own wall between Whites and Negroes]. The problem we are discussing is neither new nor unique, but is difficult to understand. The significance lies not in the physical wall, but in the psychological attitudes in individuals that give it meaning. The “wall problem” is [a result] of the “wall mentality.”
What Makes the Wall Mentality—I find 5 elements present in a typical case of “wall mentality”:
1. The division into two antagonistic sides is both rather recent in origin and arbitrary in nature.
2. The existence of a sharply defined and limited self-identification.
3. The presence of intense emotional factors, based on the basic identity distinction.
4. The collapse in communication between the inside and the outside [i.e. the “other side.”]
5. Our behavior becomes “institutionalized” [i.e. formal, rigid, corresponding to and limited by the wall]
1. The wall by itself strikes us as unnatural. The divisions of Viet Nam, Germany, Korea, and Palestine seem to cut unnaturally across a genuine or assumed unity. [The similar split between different countries is no less tragic]. [The unwilling part of the change or split sees it as] strange, unfamiliar, and contrary to the way things should be. Often, the initiator of change is charged with belonging to some other and larger “conspiracy.” Neither Korea nor Vietnam had a natural or durable Communist north and non-Communist south; the East-West conflict was imposed upon the situation without regard to local needs.
2. The wall-minded person decisively draws a line around, one’s interests, one’s concerns, one’s needs and wants, and views the satisfaction of these interests and needs as good. My group being called, or chosen [to receive satisfaction of needs and wants], presumes another group is rejected. The history of Christendom pro-vides unfortunately many examples of the exclusive mentality.
Viewing myself as a member of one class automatically entails my rejecting another class viewed as antagonistic. At its simplest this characteristic is found in the person who defines his identity with one’s physical body or possessions. More frequent is the limited identification with a group larger than the individual but smaller than all humankind. It has the advantages of locating an external visible enemy where all the mistakes are seen to have been made and upon whom all hate can be focused in an unavoidable and irreconcilable antagonism. [If the assertions are believed vigorously enough by either side, it becomes true, even where it was not true before].
Within approved group all the satisfaction of positive emotions can be lavished. Against the enemy one can pour the negative emotions, and receive the sanction of one’s group for doing so. Destructiveness, latent in all of us, thrives under these circumstances. We sympathize and empathize with each other within the group. We resent the enemy when a group member is hurt or when the enemy feels joy, and rejoice when the enemy is hurt.
4. The Collapse in Communication—In the wall situation, certain kinds of mistakes & ignorance aren't only permitted but are demanded. We are no longer permitted to hear, even if we want to, the message from the other side that might correct our ignorance. We build a stereotype which is only partially true. Few of the American books about Communist China gave a balanced picture, for what they left out, or explained away, was just as important as what they chose to include. Western “censorship,” though it is more diffused, more voluntary, & less obvious than Communist censorship, has an impact only slightly less effective on the masses of people.
The communications breakdown offers 2 very interesting psychological phenomena: projection of blame and responsibility; perceptual selectivity. If we are disturbed and uncomfortable, we do not see the responsibility or the cause as lying within us; we project them outside of us. In perceptual selectivity, our seeing is determined by what we expect or want. We learn to not perceive things that are unexpected or distasteful.
Different words used to describe the same situation can have emotional content from extreme disapproval to approval. Certain words are frequently used in almost exclusively emotional ways, with little or no definite content: “democratic,” “peaceful,” “good,” “beautiful,” “God,” “Christian.” Another important element is our thought systems, ideologies, & utopias. It is easy to become prisoner to ideology, so that one can't see what the ideology is missing. Over-simplification can easily become the imprisoning walls of dead or rigid thinking.
5. Institutionalization—Having accepted the presence of a certain wall, we organize our lives this side of the wall, ignoring as much as possible what happens on the other side; gradually behavior becomes formal, and rigid. [Institutions] are supposed to help us solve our problems, but they always have inertia of their own which limits flexibility. To overcome the wall mentality, old habits must be weakened, and new ones must be developed and brought into durable operation by institutions. Overcoming the walls of discrimination between Whites and Negroes will not be complete until radical changes in attitudes, habits, and institutions are accomplished. Significant changes in any wall are only possible when attitudes, ideologies, and institutions are modified.
The Use of Walls—Every last one of us has, & to some degree must have walls within us & around us. We need them for convenience, psychological & physical defense, for currency control, for economic organization. [Because of imperfections] I throw up a “Persona,” behind which I can tolerate them. A Mahatma (Great Soul) can expose their failures so as to purify themselves of traits of which they should be ashamed, & absorb the consequences. This demands great insight, enormous sympathy, self discipline, & great personal courage.
In the present, we don't know how to produce, exchange, educate, communicate, & share so that all creatures are equally within whatever walls and fences we might build. What is true for individuals is even truer for racial, social, political and economic groups and countries. Every country can list past injuries and has elaborate techniques for keeping the memories of these injuries alive. The more unfriendly pressure that is put on a wall, the higher and deeper that wall will be built. We must admit that some walls are necessary [and attempt to build only those walls] for psychological protection, convenience, for economic and psychological organization.
An Outworn Means—We cannot be content with building walls and counter walls, or with retaliation raids. It may satisfy primitive instincts for defense or revenge, but it neither defends nor revenges adequately; it often threatens annihilation instead. Traditional wall and defense mentality locates the problem in the wrong place. It sees the other’s mistakes and its own [but rarely]. It sees a troublemaker, but not what bothers the troublemaker; it attacks the symptom, not the disease, and aggravates [not alleviates] the underlying ailment.
The root problem is the underdeveloped maturity of people and systems in a world of insufficiency. A more inclusive sense of equity is needed because people and systems are endowed differently, inherit different resources, and face different problems, and yet are increasingly interdependent with each other. It is the immaturity of all who have not learned to critically respect me and mine on this side of the wall, you and yours on that side, and all creatures everywhere.
The Double Obligation—Albert Schweitzer suggests that we should feel reverence for all life, and be able to respect one’s own life, another’s life, and societies that are less inclusive than the whole. I cannot fulfill both of these obligations perfectly, but I am required to try. All living things must be viewed as members of the kingdom of ends. Every being is a center of worth, one who should respect all other centers of worth, and should seek continuously [if imperfectly] to generate that community of lives where ever more can live in harmony. I can express sympathy only for some creatures, therefore I should exercise my critical faculties in the effort to reduce the avoidable disharmonies that exist between us. The first commandment is universal love, the second is parochial love, and the third is critical reconstruction.
The Tension within Love and Truth—There are two attitudes [sought in seeking to live more closely in the universal community]: love and truth. [Any actions I take] require an attitude toward truth, based on the most accurate and inclusive knowledge I can achieve. Although I must love and know in a limited way, I must also be aware of unlimited loving and knowing, and know that they too lay claims upon me.
The young child gradually develops an awareness of himself [and then of others]. One develops a limited social self as well as a personal self. Usually one’s sympathies expand from family and a few friends to include a teacher, classmate, a club, one’s city, one’s country, one’s race. When conflicts of loyalties arise one either reduces one’s loyalties or tries to maintain those loyalties, while reconciling the conflicts.
Usually the process of ego-expansion stops at some point; one’s sympathies become limited and bordered. One stops growing, stops looking for more inclusive loyalties. For functional purposes these limits may be unavoidable and desirable; for purposes of defining the highest human loyalties and sympathies they are inadequate. We can never serve the whole in its entirety, until we are able to find social, political and economic organizations where we can serve any part and the whole as well. The obligation to [serve all of humanity] remains a test for the adequacy of any less inclusive loyalties or set of sympathies, or the organizing of human efforts.
Guidelines for the Future—I have developed the concept of an attitude, because attitudes are more within our individual control; programs are equally important with the attitude. Each economic, political, social, educational, or religious institution is suspended between the ideal of universal loyalty, and the local conditions of its origin and history. The adequacy of such institutions must be measured against the needs and interest of the whole of that population, and not some privileged few. [Elites in an institution must be answerable to the people outside of that institution]. The capacity for leadership must be developed as widely as possible.
Institutions should not be against the interests of members of other institutions. We have an obligation to be critical of the institutions under which we live, [even] when the consequences of this are unpleasant. [There needs to be] thoughtful analysis of the origins of totalitarian systems, the sources of their strength, and the methods by which they may be constructively restrained. [How can] supranational structures control and limit totalitarianism without in turn becoming a new and more terrifying totalitarian structure?
Wall Mentality is the Enemy—The causes which led to [the wall between East & West Germany] started with a Hitler-German aggression. The polarization of Germany [that followed its defeat] was an expression of the polarization of the victorious powers. Political democracy & material well-being developed in favor of West Germany. East Germany had either to give in to the West, change her system of administration, rapidly improve her economic position, or fight back with restrictive measures; she chose the last in the form of a physical wall.
The use of military force by either side is unthinkable under present political and technological conditions. Even if the East German government were less popular with it citizens than other governments, there is a real power structure there that cannot be wished away, and probably will not be blasted away. The “enemy” is an exclusive way of thinking and feeling, [focused only on the satisfaction of a small group].
The goal then is the gaining of an attitude of [a wider] community. I am convinced that German won’t be able to reunite with German until they are able to reunite with non-Germans. [There must be a sympathetic, critical element involved in developing a wider community], with which we must criticize the groups on both sides of the wall. I would suggest to Marxists that there is a sense of dialectic, [of dialogue] that provides a frame- work for genuine co-existence, & offers friendly challenge even while it offers mutual respect & toleration.
Aims into Action—We should seek ways of being loyal to our side without requiring disloyalty to the other side. We should save our negative attitudes for criticizing the thinking & actions that are antithetical to the larger community. We should shun words that avoid thinking, & think constructively about problems to which we as well as others can make contributions. Quaker & German churches can develop dialogue opportunities & encourage problem-solving discussion of existing conflicts. Professors & artists have been able to open significant lines of communication [in their chosen fields]. West Germany could reduce the causes of Eastern fears.
Develop positive connections with East Europe in the form of trade, cultural exchanges, and even political relations. The healing of the German division and the European division must proceed conjointly. Objective presentation of both good and bad aspects of the situation in East Germany is vitally needed, instead of moralistic condemnation & ostracism. The ground could be prepared for a peace treaty conference at which at least the 4 occupation powers & both Germanies would be represented. East & West Germany need to seek consensus through mutual negotiation on border questions. We need to learn to be patient with what we can achieve, & to take limited satisfaction in limited progress. We must learn to forgive others & ourselves in comparable degrees.
Like a High Mountain—[To date] we have not been able to escape the [wall mindset] in our ideological framework of categories, borders, and groups. Perhaps it would be well to replace or supplement our root-metaphor of walls with one drawn from India. There, reality is like a high mountain, with many different routes to the summit. Each has its own special problems and joys, its unique history and future. Each has only a suspicion, if that, of other sides of the mountain, and of the mountain as a whole. Large and difficult mountains can only be ascended by team effort, teams within teams, and base parties that support several teams climbing higher on the slope. Given this approach, reunification of Germany may be possible, although, once accomplished it may turn out to be less important. The approach itself is the real achievement.
http://www.pendlehill.org/product-category/pamphlets
17. New Nations for Old (by Kenneth Boulding; 1942)
About the Author—Kenneth Boulding(1910-1993) was born in Liverpool, England. Raised a Methodist, he joined the Religious Society of Friends as an Oxford undergraduate. He was 1st a chemist, then an economist, beginning at the University of Chicago in 1932. He became a US citizen in 1937. In 1941 he married Elise Biorn Hansen; From the beginning, Kenneth & Elise were central to peace research & active in many Friends organizations. Kenneth Boulding taught in many universities, published 35 books & served as president of the American Economics Association, & International Peace Studies Assoc. He was also a noted Quaker poet. He wrote poetry until his last days; Pendle Hill published his most recent poems in the Sonnets from Later Life: 1981-1993.
1. The Ripeness of Time—It may seem like lunatic optimism, at a time when nations are engaged in worldwide battle, to propose war's abolition. But great changes sometimes come unexpectedly, at a moment when the old order seems eternal, immutable. [Dawn & seeds begin in dark, seemingly lifeless times]. It may be that we shall detect in our day's deadly violence not only death, but birth; the birth of a new order, one without the peculiar institution of war. [Other evils] we shall have for many a long generation. But the evil of war we may root out, just as we rooted out slavery's evil. We are tempted to believe that it can't be destroyed until all men are perfect. There are strong reasons for believing that today the conditions which give it life & power no longer exist.
2. The Conditions of Drastic Change—Evil institutions of human society are most likely to be reformed when the institution is economically unprofitable and morally intolerable. Where humankind's moral sense conflicts with its material advantage, moral sense will not prevail unless it is unusually strong; moral sense reinforced by material advantage is likely to be successful. Historically, material advantage is often heroically sacrificed individually or nationally. Institutions linger on in society long after they have become unprofitable. The sharp sword of moral condemnation must prune away dead branches.
It is doubtful that slavery was ever more profitable than free labor; the superior efficiency of free labor has more than compensated for the cost of wages. Yet slavery persisted until it aroused the moral condemnation of sensitive spirits. Moral and economic pressure drove it from a world it had persisted in from earliest times in almost one generation. Before the children of 1800 had passed to the grave, the great revolution was accomplished. The forces that destroyed slavery are at work [even] in this world war year. Vast changes in war have increased both its unprofitability and moral foulness to where it is ripe for destruction.
3. Economic Unprofitability of War—War is now unprofitable to victor & vanquished. The wars of the powerful over the weak, by which Great Powers have gained overseas empires, have cost less than the victors' gains, which were often limited to certain classes in the victor nations. Peace advocates then have an uphill task. Now, the cheap victory has gone. The system of empire, alliance, & spheres of influence & interest is drawn so tightly over the globe that no easy prey is left for the would-be conqueror. Hitler's easy Polish victory turns out to be the opening campaign of a long and costly war from which Germany must emerge poor and disorganized, whatever the outcome. In a war between equals, victor and vanquished share a common impoverishment.
Nations dividing into 2 political factions is one reason for war's unprofitability. There is also a change in warfare technique in the direction of increasingly costly methods. With the growth of democracy, patriotism, and conscription, war has become an enterprise of the whole people, a "total war"; total war results in total poverty. The spectacular drama of war makes us forget the more important toll of war that goes on behind the battlefront. Agricultural production falls off dramatically, and not just near the battlefield. Farmers go off to war; Cattle and horses are requisitioned; fertilizer is diverted into munitions or sunk at sea; factories make war machines instead of agricultural ones. When peasants no longer send scarce food to the cities, foundations of empires crack and revolution sweeps in. In mine and factory the same story is repeated; workers are diverted to preparation of implements of death. Food, cloth, houses, roads are not grown, made, built, or repaired.
After the war, there are great gaps in the ranks of young men and strong who will never take on any of society's burdens. In almost every great war the drop in births is so great that the numbers of children unborn outnumber the men who are killed. It also takes time to restore a field's fertility. The destruction of productive power was great behind the line as in the devastated areas. A huge "war construction industry" is built up, which is too big for times of peace. It is in large part responsible for the boom and depression which universally follow war. It seems that an economic system must carry excess capacity in the shape of idle workers and machines in time of peace, in order to take care of the "peak load" of war. In addition, war brings inflation and deflation, intense nationalism, import and export quotas and tariffs, and an impoverishing game of "beggar my neighbor."
4. The Moral Intolerability of War—War persists in spite of its proved unprofitability. The majority of humankind still think that there are worse things than war, or least there are no practicable alternatives. Human-kind also thought there was no good alternative to slavery. The opinion of the majority is not necessarily a safe guide to the truth. Opposition to war is now found in a broader range of Christian Churches, and the theory and practice of non-violence has aroused wide interest in the West.
The strength of the institution of war lies in its appeal to the moral & the poetic in man: desires for glory, displays of courage & suffering. These are potent movers of man's being. The stories of individual valor had the stuff of poetry in them. Now, the dashing campaigns of the professional soldier have given way to the drab, deadly embrace of grey millions. [Tank, machine gun, & bomber have replaced war's gallantry]; it has become a vast machine. It is no longer possible, except in the case of those having vast oceans as a defense, to protect the civilian population by sending armies out to stave off the enemy. In these circumstances, the soldier's courage is of no more consequence than the civilian's. The smaller nations' armed forces might just as well not exist.
5. The Dilemma of Nationalism—A nation can't survive unless it commands a deep affection & unity in the minds of its citizens. The success of a people in war is dependent to an enormous degree upon their morale, their willingness to endure hardship, danger, & possibly death without losing the will to fight. A nation that does not lose its heart can survive anything. The Jews have had a love of "country," of their people & customs, based on a compelling sense of purpose & religious mission greater than that of any other people who have ever lived.
Modern war saps a nation's heart. The virus of shame over certain deeds done in the name of country can spread, unknown & unrealized, through a nation's life until the love sustaining this life turns to indifference or even hatred. [Unresolved shame infected] the victorious Allies with a great apathy & weakness in the 20 years of armistice. Germany's shame was exorcised by the harsh treatment she received. Instead of shame they developed a sense of injury, making them strong as a household, but dangerous, powerful, & destructive as neighbors.
6. The Prime Cause of War—Although the case against war as an abstract institution is unanswerable, war still threatens to grow until it absorbs our whole attention. Given its undeniable drawbacks, unprofitability, and immortality, how does war still survive? This question opens us up to a flood of opinions and ideas on the Causes of War. Some regard war as an expression of a "fighting instinct," an original sin. Marxists assert economic conflict as a cause. Others attribute war to subtle psychological diseases [e.g. suppressed sexual forces]. Some blame a small coterie of evil financiers and politicians, while others point to the growth of armaments. All these would-be authoritative voices speak some truth.
The key proposition is that war results from political organization of the world into separate, sovereign, & irresponsible countries. A great deal of thinking confuses war, a special, limited evil, with conflict, which is general, unlimited, & ineradicable, or universal, intractable sin. Given this thinking, we often argue that it can't be abolished till the world has been purified from conflict & sin; [it seems we must drain an ocean with a pail]. It is not an ocean we have to drain, but a foul lake, whose foulness is a sign that the springs which fed it are dry.
7. Independence as a Cause of War—We have war because there are independent countries, people organized for the essential purpose of maintaining their national independence by war. Within countries there are acute conflicts between different social groups and geographical regions. Conflicts, especially economic ones, are no respecters of international boundaries. Always the acts of government benefit some of its citizens and some foreigners, and injure others of its citizens and foreigners. A tariff on goods would benefit producers for a time, but injure consumers. Overseas, it would benefit consumers and hurt producers.
The disappearance of English/ Scottish wars after 1603 was not from less wickedness, a disappearance of conflicts, or a sudden change of attitude between Englishmen and Scotsmen. The miracle of peace was accomplished by a simple union of crowns, and a union of parliaments a century later. Independent countries with relatively inferior positions are more openly militaristic. In richer countries, it is possible for the well-meaning and ill-informed to believe that their countries could continue to exist indefinitely without war. It is evident that the "mythology" and ritual of national life is centered around the events and heroes of war. National holidays, heroes, and rituals are related to war. Even religion, where it subordinates itself to national emotion, becomes entangled more and more in military trappings. Prayers for victory replace the gospel of universal love.
8. The Dilemma of Men of Goodwill—From mother, teachers, preachers, and well-respected men, we have heard the praises of love of country. Flag-raising ceremonies have brought a sense of community with many millions of our fellow citizens, and a sense of "belonging" to something greater than ourselves. Sir Walter Scott writes: "Breathes there a man with soul so dead/ Who never to himself haths said,/ This is my own, my native land." Even as we retreat from the world of "outsiders" whose ways are strange into the domestic kingdom of our family and friends, so too in national life we return from sojourn among foreigners, to sink back into the comfort of familiar things and affection for the homeland.
The man of peace and goodwill is impelled by reason to conclude that the existence of the independent national state is the root of war, and yet his heart impels him to a true and honorable love of country. [The solution to this dilemma]l lies in the reform of the national state. The existence of a large number of diverse countries can be reconciled with the preservation of world peace. A centralized world state could establish world peace, but on what would it be based. If we purchased world peace at the price of world uniformity our descendants might well pine for the diversity and rhythm of our own.
9. The Redemption of Nationalism—[Since nations and differences need to be preserved], our problem is to destroy the spirit within a nation that gives rise to war. Wars are fought to gain or preserve an irresponsible national independence [that ignores the adverse effects of national policy] on the welfare of foreigners. On the national level a politician is judged on the very localized benefits one can provide for one's small group at the expense of one's fellow citizens. The irresponsibility of legislatures destroys democracy internally. This same irresponsibility of national government is destroying our system.
In its present form, the nation state is an intolerable nuisance, a constant source of war, a hindrance to establishing a rational economic system. It is an ugly and dangerous anachronism which will destroy us or be destroyed by a superstate if it is not transformed. The following steps: [Declaration of Dependence; restitution; "Third House" of representatives of foreign governments], are possible ways in which a new spirit of responsible government might find expression, on both the national and international plane.
The Declaration would be the national government recognizing its dependence on and responsibility for, people who live outside its immediate jurisdiction. Next, restitution would be offered to rectify the effects of past acts inconsistent with the Declaration's principles. A striking act of restitution, even if it was primarily symbolic, would have an important effect on the minds of people and governments in the desired direction. Each nation must judge [for itself what restitution it needs to offer others].
In matters economically affecting Commonwealth countries, the British government confers and deliberates with Dominion representatives, and comes to an agreed policy. There is no reason this "decent behavior" tradition should not be immediately applied to all countries. Any formal organization, if necessary, could grow out of informal conferences. [It could evolve into] a "Third House" of representatives of all foreign governments, to advise and even legislate on matters affecting foreign interests. A nation adopting such a course would become a "Moral Empire" of peoples bound by a common love and loyalty rather than by force of arms.
10. International Political Organization—Any world organization is bound to break down unless there is a recognition on the part of national units of responsibility for the welfare of all, as was the case for the League of Nations. The 1st task of the lovers of peace is to [seek a sense of international responsibility] in national policies and in individual sentiments. There is no real division between a national and an international peace policy, for each is necessary to the other. A serious physical obstacle to the creation of homogeneous countries are the places like Eastern Europe, where a long and turbulent history has resulted in an unsortable mix of races, nations and tongues. Poland is devoid of clear natural frontiers and of clear racial or linguistic frontiers.
No "composite" state, made up of many nationalities, can be secure if across its borders some of the nationalities are organized into independent countries. If nations are to live together in peace, it is important to unite all people of one kind in one political unit, and to exclude from this unit people of another kind. It is easier for nations to be friends with their neighbors if they do not have to occupy a common ground.
The League of Nations organized a vast scheme of exchange of Greeks for Turks which left very few Turks in Greece and very few Greeks in Turkey. The scheme was undoubtedly successful in improving Greco-Turkish relations, but at an appalling cost in human suffering. [Doing the same with multiple exchanges of many nationalities would cause suffering] so great that we must [earnestly] seek for an alternative solution. It is impossible to divide Europe into homogenous nations. It is possible to divide it into homogeneous "Cantons," a political organization that has worked well in Switzerland. It might be possible to federate these small units [more easily than] larger units. Full autonomy could be granted in all matters of local government.
11. The Place of Military Coercion—The place of military coercion in such a system is inevitably a matter of dispute. An international "Police Force" [would suffer] struggles for control of it by the national groups until there was complete dominance by one group and the unification of the world into a centralized world state. The use of international force would likely lead to world empire, rather than world unity. The international authority should be, rather than a military force, a center of research & information, a statistical clearinghouse, administrator of practical problems (e.g. public health, trade, reconciliation of national laws, etc.).
The fundamental error of the League of Nation's collective security system was to assume that the threat of war that no one intended to carry out would be enough, or that war could be used as a subtle, delicate weapon to avoid greater wars. War is only a coarse, blundering bludgeon, which can be used only when the people are desperate, frightened, or angry enough. People wouldn't have gone to war in 1931, & probably never will go to war in similar situations, because they aren't psychologically ready for war at the physically most appropriate time. The military union or alliance likely to form at the end of this war is almost certain to fail, unless there should develop alongside it a spiritual growth, a transformation of the ideals of national policy. Lovers of peace should make this transformation their principal objective, and secondarily seek a "Positive League," separated from any system of military power, which may foster the slow but necessary process of nationalism's redemption.
http://www.pendlehill.org/product-category/pamphlets
74. Everyman’s Struggle for Peace (by Horace Gundry Alexander; 1953)
[About the Author]—Horace Alexander was born in 1889 at Croydon, England. His early schooling was at Bootham School in York. He graduated in history from King's College, Cambridge in 1912. During WWI, he served as secretary on various anti-war committees. In 1916, as a conscientious objector he was after 2 appeals exempted from any war service on condition of teaching, which he did in connection with Friends' Ambulance Unit (FAU). He joined the staff of Woodbrooke, a Quaker college in Birmingham, teaching international relations, from 1919 to 1944. His wife Olive died in 1942, In WWII, he served with the FAU in India. As a trusted fellow-worker of Mahatma Gandhi, he has been actively associated with many reconstruction projects in New India. He died in 1989 at Crosslands, a Quaker retirement community in Pennsylvania.
Preface—Unless we find a way of preventing another war, there is imminent danger of civilizations being wiped out of existence. We are entering a period in history when every war is likely to become a total war. What we need is a veritable revolution to change this world of armed nations to a cooperative community of responsible people. In this pamphlet Mr. Alexander seeks to awaken the conscience of [all] those with a devotion to truth & righteousness to work towards liberating all from fear & hate, oppression & war—E. P. Devanandan, YMCA
How to Abolish War—How can war be banished from the earth? A general decrease in armaments would certainly do much to banish fear. [If today's major protagonists knew their adversary] was greatly reducing its armaments, both might sleep more peacefully. [Disarmament isn't enough in itself, because] the tendency of [humans] to kill their neighbors out of jealousy, hatred, fear, or hunger, has been so common through the long centuries of evolution, that they have tolerated the restraining influence of government for its protection.
The peace of India is preserved, not because the States of India never disagree, not because they are unusually peaceable, but because there is 1 law & government for India. The States must settle quarrels through law & reason. [World government could abolish war]. How are people to be persuaded to accept the authority of world government and loyally accept world government decisions? Today, citizens will only tolerate a government that can command personal loyalty. If there were a world government, how would we deal with the widespread sense of "WE" within nations and the fear of being outvoted and overridden?
Another way to rid humankind of war is to cultivate world loyalty by abandoning narrow nationalisms & break down national barriers. For pacifists [what is called for is a pledge to never resort to violent force & to "resist insolent might" with the mighty weapons of truth & love, to overcome evil with good]. Most believe there is no other way of resisting aggregation, especially that of invasion, than by resort to arms. Most people think the only alternatives to arms are surrender, waiting for evil to defeat itself, & running away. Such thin-blooded pacifism [in response to evil], isn't the true pacifism inspired by the teachings of Jesus Christ, Gautama Buddha, or Mahatma Gandhi. A true pacifist won't stop until pacifists have built a world that knows war no more.
War is directed by a Government or group of Governments claiming authority over some territory, when that territory's Government is determined to resist. War goes on until one is in a position to impose its will. The seeds of war must be looked for far from the battle scene. [Wherever greed, hatred, jealousy are allowed to rule ones actions], there are the seeds of war being sown. Fortunately, these seeds don't always take root. Only those who can root out selfishness & greed can claim to be true pacifists. Perhaps no one is 100% pacifist, but all still need to strive after this apparently unattainable ideal. It is no more foolish than most adventures that people undertake.
Human Nature & War:[Humans at War with Self; Instruments of Divine Love]—Many "realists," think that [history &] the argument about the unchangeableness of human nature is the final argument that should silence the "pacifist dreamer" forever. The pacifist dreams of a world of harmony, where all help their neighbor to achieve a good life of spiritual understanding, [where the arts], drama & pursuit of knowledge could grow unhampered by brutal wealthy taskmasters & cunning, arrogant war-makers. The pacifist believes humans are often at war with themselves. But one isn't condemned to always be a sinner. Jesus Christ, Buddha & others practiced a way of salvation from dualism & inner conflict that enslaves most men. Some sophisticated, learned men treat these prophets' teachings as unpractical & foolish, whilst others turn revolutionary teachings into philosophies that distort the teachings out of all recognition. The revolutionary teachings of the New Testament, the Koran, the Gita, & the Buddha, if they could be accepted & practiced with the simplicity of an [innocent] child, might show that humans can behave differently from civilization's [dead-end course] called human history.
How is Christ's view of human nature & human destiny true? What evidence is there that humans can be perfect, the pure instrument of divine love, & selfless? The devoted men & women who spend their lives in service to the most needy, in hospitals, asylums, or in other work of exacting nature with little material reward are often among the happiest of [folks]. Peace, contentment, fulfillment are achieved most completely when one abandons all thought of self, & surrender themselves to a purpose where self can be absorbed. Darwin's [notion] that all life consists in fierce struggle, [survival of the fittest] is out of date. Kropotkin's examples of mutual aid in animal life have shown that struggle isn't all. Among animals & "primitive men," there are societies built upon the principle of the team, where the strong protect the weak & action is decided by team decision rather than a "dominant male." It isn't the action that matters so much as the spirit that inspires or motivates the action. "A person of false motives may go through identical "selfless" motions, but the result is always corrupt.
[Jesus Christ's Crucifixion & the True Way of Life]/ Forwarding a Cooperative Social Order—To the pacifist, Jesus Christ's Crucifixion is the essence of the true way of life. His outspoken teaching and goodness so threatened and maddened Church and State authorities, that they accused him of being the embodiment of evil. English men and women whose careers were in a rotten system, and whose vision was distorted by the prejudice of everyday life accused Gandhi of cunning, deceit, and violence. Jesus, even in the face of their hatred, could see deeper into their hearts, pity their self-deception, and say, "Father, forgive them. They know not what they do." It was a victory over evil, the Devil, and falsehood by love, understanding, and forgiveness.
Many socialists and communists believe that individual interest must be subordinated to the good of society. The pacifist is convinced this is good as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough. Communist society still practices capitalism's destructive tendency to exalt material success [and its companion and natural human tendency to seek a selfish amount of material success]. It promotes the violent destruction of "anti-social elements." It is better to set before yourself the goal of loving all, to so love the anti-social that they become selfless and socially valuable. What principle of life allows all to become essential parts of a cooperative whole by natural inclination, rather than by orders from above?
Gandhi did not oppose or despise the efforts of others to bring governments into fuller agreement. Action at the top political level was not enough. [Since almost all governments have violence or terror or oppression in the social structure, Gandhi sought a way of building from the grass roots that would at least minimize conflict. It was called "basic education." "Education is fundamentally a process of training in the art of living, so that every function, interest or activity which makes a contribution to the good life may find its appropriate place."
"Good work is the human's basic activity, the means by which material and spiritual needs are satisfied." The moment a person handles any raw material in order to give it a useful function, one becomes a creator, and develops an inward strength and reliance which spurs one on to greater fulfillment. "The key to world peace lies in the development of an economy which is peaceful by nature, which does not produce the stresses that lead to war." The highly mechanized Western life has increased wealth and raised the standard of living, but has not produced social harmony. The Western worker works only to earn money. They and communists are mere cogs in a machine. Those countries with high "standards of living" [ignore the fact] that by raising their standards, they will stimulate revolt and ideological upheavals in other parts of the world. Gandhi's "basic education" in life offers a way out from the vicious circle of material greed and cash value.
Teach a child how to make simple things & be self-reliant; help one learn the subtle wonder of inter-relationship of earth, crops, & garments; animals, birds, & humans. Teach self-discovery of life's mystic harmonies. Creative powers are renewed in rest, sleep, meditation, & religious devotion. Basic education communities are limited in size; industries are small-scale; use of power machinery is controlled so as not to enslave workers or make them "machine-minded." A region of small villages around a small country town can build a cultural center of great value. [Self-giving is central to basic education]. Self-giving opens hearts & hands everywhere, & gains spiritual treasure; self-seeking grasps dead things only & loses the pearl of great price. Through this education, self-reliance & community strength is developed, the strength on which alone true self-government can be built.
The Illusion of Self-defence—There are village communities in India where Gandhi's principles have begun to operate. It doesn't follow that all pacifists should become trainees in a basic education training course, or go off among the exploited, those doing near-slave labor; there is work to do in every land opposing military spirit. We must 1st free our minds of the most dangerous illusions. One illusion is that armaments are necessary as a defense against attack, [& its companion belief that pacifism involves meek submission to evil]. Overcoming evil with good means insisting on a right choice of weapons. A pacifist has seen that within 30 years, air-bombing has gone from being banned to being accepted as inevitable. Decade by decade the public mind has slipped from the acceptance of one barbarity to another. The survival of "our" nation is "necessary for the good of humankind," so we must use the latest & most fiendish weapon known to man against the wicked aggressor.
Russia and America are not the only protagonists that think the "other" is the archcriminal, unreasonable, and perhaps inhuman. The pacifist realizes that at totally different type of weapon must be used, one fit for humans, not the weapons of devils. What humane weapons can be used to meet and overcome evil? They are the invincible weapons of the spirit of humans: truth and love incarnate in strong action. During the Nazi occupation of many European countries, true non-violent resistance played very little part. The determination of Norwegian professionals to uphold truth and not to bend the knee, but to stand unarmed and serene, without fear or anger against insolent might, provides one of the grandest chapters in European history.
[Gandhi's Non-Violent Movement]—Gandhi was able to enroll simple peasants and shy women as soldiers in his non-violent campaigns. Although many of the soldiers of non-violence never understood or entirely shared his principles, [they proved effective]. Indians and Englishmen have become friendly overnight. It was a change of heart in the English people that Gandhi looked for; not their destruction or even their humiliation. [Some say] if he had tried his non-violent methods against a totalitarian government, he and his supporters would have been liquidated. If there had been widespread violence in India, it is to be feared that British morality might have evaporated. There are differences of degree in suppressive governments' behaviors, not any real difference in kind. If Gandhi and friends had been executed by a less moral alien authority, it would not prove that civil disobedience and non-violence was wrong. Half the heroes of national history are those who have led "forlorn hopes" and have perished in the battlefield or on the scaffold; they have inspired fresh courage and determination in their fellows. Why can't the "blood of martyrs" also be the seed of political victory?
When ends are achieved by violent means, it is not easy to get rid of the violence afterwards. [When violence and deceit was taught and used against the government of occupation in France, they became the highest duty and value. When the French government was restored they did not find it easy to persuade young people that suddenly truth and respect for law were the highest virtues. [And so far as the American Civil War is concerned], one must ask oneself whether the negroes would not today be happier, perhaps freer if patience could have allowed civilizing forces to work for a willing emancipation of the slaves a generation or 2 later.
The strike is a non-violent weapon used against employers who refuse to be reasonable in negotiation. Strikes involved suffering for the strikers, which Gandhi believed purified people and brings hidden forces of good into action. How strange it is that the duty of protecting women and children is used as a decisive argument for armed defense, when modern war actually leads to vast misery for the often displaced old, young, and weak. The "chivalrous" distinction between men and women is false. [The chivalrous Gandhi] placed as much reliance on women as on men in his campaigns.
In caring for "mental" patients, American Quakers, Mennonites, & others still use coercion with patients having fits of violence; such fits are less frequent when love replaces coercion as the main means of checking & healing the disordered mind. [The world at large today] suffers from violent mental disorder, [more than most realize]. The world can only be cured by [people] of courageous love, filled with the truth's power, ready to suffer [derision, deceit, & death], unwilling to commit violence. Truth & love are the only weapons that never fail.
The Choice Before Us—If war continues to be waged, it will be with greater and greater destruction & cruelty. Humankind today may follow the way of violence or the way of intelligence. If international war is to continue, then in democratic communities every man & woman may be expected to play a part in preparations for defense, [i.e. conscription]. A 1½ centuries of history seems to show conclusively that conscription destroys both peace & liberty. If [many or] all are taught to shoot or bayonet their fellow men, however unpleasant the training may be, the idea will prevail that these arts must be learnt by every man who claims to be a mature citizen; no one wants to be incompetent or a coward. What if community life and national States are only put in jeopardy by the practice of conscription? If Gandhi's method of defending good and attacking evil is the only one that guarantees preservation of the good life, then conscription and armed defense are a gross anachronism.
[If talk of unilateral disarmament comes up, the response is]: "We will do this, & we will do that. But to disarm in an armed world!—no please don't ask us to do just that." And so the vicious system goes on. How will any nation take the lead in crying halt to this arming madness? Gandhi would say, rather than be a soldier, "It is better ... to be so brave that you throw your armaments away & stand before the world as men, not pre-historic monsters coated in mail & hurling bombs at the dreaded foreigner. "[Be a man, not a beast]." Armed forces organizers put the agents of mass murder into attractive uniforms, with jaunty caps & brightly polished buttons. The world has admired battlefield heroism for too long. Gandhi beckons us along the new path called "Ahimsa" or Love. He said: "It is an attribute of the brave; in fact, it is their all. It doesn't come within reach of the coward. It's no wooden or lifeless dogma, but a living & life-giving force. It is the special attribute of the soul."
How can the change from an armed world to a disarmed & cooperative world be achieved? Each of us must begin with oneself. When enough are prepared to try Gandhi's way, governments will change policies, & a warless world will become possible. How can one make ones voice heard against the great government propaganda & the great newspaper combines? Gandhi started with no natural advantages, either physical or mental. His public life was as the leader of a poor, dispirited, divided racial minority. At best, he could hope that 50,000 would follow him to jail. He became a symbol of the simple man, the forgotten man in every part of the world. He was a common mortal using to the fullest the moral strength inherent in everyone's soul. If the resistor can follow the gleams of light & truth that one has seen oneself, if one can hold the faith that the God of truth is mightier than the devil of deceit & despair, though one may perish, others will be inspired by ones example. That example, to & for others is the mighty force that can liberate all from fear & hate, from oppression and war.
About the Author—Paul Christiansen began giving vocal ministry as a teenager; he has been compelled to give it ever since. He was raised in Eastside Friends Meeting in Bellevue, WA and attended Earlham College (2006 Class). He does educational work, writes and does Quaker work. He has been involved with Young Adult Friends. This essay was born out of an intersection of several books and [vocal ministry].
The Enemy—[It happens often at] the Khan Younis refugee camp in the Gaza strip [that Israelis drive up to the perimeter in armored trucks, pour out insults through a loud speaker, and when boys respond in fury with rocks, shoot them]. War is born of hatred, fear, and lies—and war breeds hatred, fear and lies. The smallest slight becomes justification for revenge and the act of vengeance is avenged, round and round and round.
The truth is that there are no sides. [We are killing] kin, a part of ourselves. We must try to understand a little of war. War cannot actually be described, only seen. And heard. And smelled. The most potent written word and the most searing images, are in fact only hints. [2 unpleasant tasks for Quakers is to study war closely] and look at war through the eyes of war's makers. Why would anyone choose war? Chris Hedges explains war in War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning. He is not alone in asserting that we go to war for what it gives us.
War is addicting and intoxicating. The power to wipe out life is highly seductive. William J. Broyle, Jr. writes: "The line between life and death is gossamer thin ... the step from the joy of being alive in death's presence to the joy of causing death is not a great step." The seduction of war is not limited to psychopaths or criminals, but potentially within us all. [War-writers] speak of the lust of battle and the more sexual lust that battle inspires, and of how war is an overwhelming experience, a heightened state, a drug. I have held a weapon in my hand; it filled me with such power, strength, potency, fascination, delight, alarm, and terror.
War also simplifies. Someone tells you what to do, or you just kill those things over there [that are] shaped like people, scream & weep & bleed like people, but aren't. They are bad guys, we are good guys; all uncertainty, and doubt of life are stripped away. It provides comradeship, patriotism, purpose, mission, drive, order. [A nation unifies in the face of a deadly enemy]. In 1982, the Argentine dictatorship lasted a few extra months, because they started and lost the Falkland Islands War; the people enthusiastically supported them briefly.
[We fear so many things]. So many conflicts are perpetuated for generations by people who fear to admit that their fathers were fools to keep fighting and who cannot bear to admit that their sons died for nothing. The fear of not enough is pervasive and all-consuming. [We come to giving and say] "if I give away that much, I won't have enough to ________. If we don't have enough, we'll wind up like them." And the false line that separates us from them is drawn again.
Wars and national policy are based on fear. The United States has backed dictators who violate every principle of freedom and democracy, and often the explanation is fear of communism. Fear has been the governing instinct of U.S foreign policy for centuries. Fear is at the heart of many things, and can grow to jealousy, greed, war. Fear keeps us from seeing the Other as human or as having the Divine in them at all.
War is the most terrible of all humanity's ills, for we choose it. Genocide is mostly a function of war, historically & because of degree. War is the worst disaster we have ever chosen to unleash. War has real lures. War gives meaning & unity, & so, out of our confusion & isolation we choose war. Quakers aren't entirely immune; there is satisfaction is drawing lines between people. We congratulate ourselves on being holier than them & more loving than them. Quakers are just as apt to build walls between human family members as any. Quakers are afraid. We have taken war off our list of options, but we haven't taken all the causes of war out of our hearts.
Morass: [Inconvenient Truth]—I'm rich. [The things that "Americans" expect out of life—graduations, healthcare, comfortable home—were never in doubt]. I am rich despite making less than $15,000/year. I am rich because my skin is poor in melanin, my body is poor in estrogen, parent- & government-paid diplomas, because I am an English-speaking US citizen. I am blessed with vast abundance that I simply never earned. It is a gift. (If you are one of the exceptions to this description, I am sorry for coming to this understanding so late. Please, have patience with me).
Why are we rich? Violence and war. We live in an armed camp near the top of a hierarchy maintained by the US Marine Corps & the local police. We live on stolen land. Chris Hedges writes: "The message we send is: "We have everything and if you try to take it away from us we will kill you." What will Quakers do about being recipients of the plunder? While we may want to change things, we don't have to. Our backs are not against the wall. There are others who have no choice, who are the ones the system uses, starves, for whom simply existing is a battle and a half. We, the enriched, have the luxury to dabble.
But there is no testimony of dabbling. Are we not called to be patterns and examples? To live lives that speak? To seek the truth and then speak it to power? Some would say that token acts, however well meant, are what allow the injustices of the world to continue. Can we live lives that speak if our acts are small, everyday deeds? Can we be patterns and examples of a better world if we don't break the normal pattern? Donating the leftovers is not enough. We were given these gifts so that we could share them. All of them. we were given these gifts because the Light loves us so much, and because the Light loves everyone else so much. Can we be radically faithful to the way of the Spirit while also preserving our riches?
The wealth and comfort and status of middle- and upper-class Americans is a cause of war; the fear which motivate us to preserve it is a cause of war. We must choose between our treasures and peace, between life-comfort and the calling of Light. Friends of the 1st generation were often quite poor, because they stood apart from society and caused such a ruckus. Successful Quaker businessmen came from quieter and less disruptive later generations who were content not to rock the boat. If those who receive our generosity do a little better but still remain poor, and if injustices continue, is that good enough?
The world cannot afford for all humans to live as luxuriously as most American and Europeans live. If we keep on living this way, we grow the seeds of war in our homes and in our hearts. I had to be dragged [around] to this line of reasoning. Friends taught me that even in my most financially desperate moments, I, as a straight white male, was richer by far than many. I could give away money, but I could not give away my identity.
Morass: ["Go, Sell What you Own ...]—As I was reading the Bible, I quietly cheered whenever I saw a commandment for the rich to look after the poor. But slowly I realized the Bible was talking to me. It was no easy thing to realize that the way I have been living isn't good enough, that my points of pride are baby steps, praiseworthy only as beginnings, and terrifying to realize there's a gap between what I've said I believe and what I am really doing. Shall we stay on this side of the gap, not risk the leap [of radical faith and "sell all we own"]? Shall we lie again? We lie all the time, most of all to ourselves. Pay close attention: the Spirit has blessed us more than we want to know, and we are capable of far more than we want to admit, capable of true service to the Light and those the Light loves.
We must 1st admit we have not done enough. Too many are still poor. Can we still speak Truth to power when we are the power? We must admit that being truly Quaker and truly faithful is neither comfortable nor easy. We should be comforted, not comfortable. We were given the duty of leadership long ago, with all the panic and terror and confusion that goes with being out in front. The most crucial testimony of them all, is often overlooked: integrity. It means being whole in the sense of being one in the Spirit. It means having our deeds match our words. Why are we rich? Because we do not know how to part with our treasures or whom we should give them to instead. We are rich because we are served by the greatest war machine the world has ever known. We are afraid of what would happen if we resisted it, and we're afraid we don't know how. We are rich because we are resting on our laurels. Christ Hedges writes: "When we are asked to choose between truth and contentment, most of us choose contentment." Have you chosen truth?
What We Stand On—Chris Hedges and William Broyles, who know more about war than I, see no way out of it. I say Hedges and Broyles are right. To end war with the idea of "answering that of God in everyone—to appeal to a common humanity, when humanity must be the 1st casualty of every war—is impossible. And then I say, everything Quakers do is impossible.
In meeting for worship with attention to business, we are striving for discernment. We attempt to set aside all our own wants and plans and desires in order to find out what we are called to do. In the best and bravest meetings, we may come to a way that everyone dreads, yet is the way we need to go. [It is insane, impossible, yet] we manage. Not perfectly, not always well. From time to time, and not infrequently either, the Spirit moves us in unexpected ways, and the meeting sees its path.
[Consider the impossibility of] individuals attempting to find unity without for a moment surrendering their individuality. We are accepting and submitting to the highest authority on one hand, and rejecting every other form of authority on the other. We talk with God by becoming still and silent. We seek the Truth by sitting and waiting for it to arrive. It's as if we walk into a library, and patiently wait for the book we want, which may or may not exist, to check itself out and read itself to us. And sometimes, it works.
In 2012, I began a practice of daily meditation (or at least dailyish). [It grew from] 10 minutes, to 30, then for an hour or more. My roiling mind began to calm; my worship began to deepen. Messages I had been given before began to gather themselves together into a whole, which grew over the years into this essay & other works. Naturally this led to the Spirit's asking even more of me, & soon I found myself as scared as ever, now of being on my feet & speaking when I didn't want to, such as the 2013 plenary session of North Pacific YM. I rejoice in the memory of giving guidance by being [fearfully] led. [For all the scorn & wrath I have poured out], the Society that wavers between comfort & Truth is the same Society that hears the voice of God. [We know of gaining love by giving love, of coming as & remaining ourselves even as we join in something greater than ourselves, of raging, desiring, fearing while knowing we don't need to be ruled by it, nor anything else but love]. Despairing observers may say, "War is inevitable," but we can prove them wrong in our way of doing business and in our way of life. We are one peaceful voice in a growing nonviolent choir. We have a way that could help many, and even for those who cannot follow our path, it may be a great encouragement to know we exist.
My mind reels at changes we will need to make. It may require giving up homes, surrendering careers, laying down dreams long held. It may require walking into danger. It will require being profoundly, visibly different. I expect us to be pretty bad at it for a long time. The only way to be good at anything is to be bad at it for awhile. [There are all manner of things that we could do, that couldn't possibly make a difference or would take forever to work, that call for seemingly impossible changes in yourself; do them anyway]. What looks impossible is fact, underneath us all the time, more solid than anything, & holds us up. The impossible is what we stand on, for all the world to see.
If we choose to make ourselves patterns and examples, we are one day closer to the City of Light in the Peaceable Kingdom. Getting past the blocks [within us and around us] may be the 1st impossibility that we clamber up on. The world has seen many solitary peacemakers; we must show that humans can indeed live in peace and generosity as a group. If we stand fearfully but bravely and faithfully, we can show how fear can be overcome. Sometimes the Spirit will soothe us; sometimes the Spirit will lead us to something even scarier. The Spirit will never ask us to go alone. Be brave, seek the Truth, love the Light, and know the Light loves you. Trust beyond reason, and you will ultimately get results beyond hope."
Queries—What is your experience of war? How is fear an influence on your life? How have you sought release from those fears? How uncomfortable are you with choosing between your treasures and peace? How do you lie to others, to those who need your help, to yourself? In what ways do you think you may be too comfortable? How do you respond to the idea of "by standing on the impossible for all the world to see, we can reveal that whatever seems impossible [about ending war] is entirely real"? If you were to make a significant change to your life, what would it be? Are you inclined to dismiss the message of a young adult, [uninvolved with children or infirm parents or significant vulnerability]?
http://www.pendlehill.org/product-category/pamphlets
Preface—Roger C. Wilson, Executive Secretary of British Friends' War Relief Service (FWRS) was the appointed lecturer at Pendle Hill, Summer: 1943; travel permit problems delayed him until after close of session. These 4 essays include material [prepared for his planned lectures], & form the basis for his 1st public address here in August. This pamphlet will clarify the theoretical & religious basis of Quaker relief service—H. Brinton
INTRODUCTION—This pamphlet is from notes and is designed to serve as the raw material for talks & discussions. Those sessions happened 1st in London at the end of June, 1943, to trainees for FWRS and Friends' Ambulance Unit (FAU); only ¼ of trainees were members of the Society of Friends. Almost all of them had field service in Quaker relief work. The religious basis of Quakerism as part of Christian tradition has been assumed throughout this pamphlet without discussion. This introduction provides a few useful background notes.
The Friends' Service Council is a permanent body with religious duties that sometimes added temporary foreign relief work to its activities. Friends were not corporately engaged in relief work at home, because there did not appear to be any need which the Friends were peculiarly suited to meet, and no "concern" in a Quaker sense had yet emerged for a permanent social welfare agency. When the blitz began in September, 1940, Friends had to create a committee in November, which developed into the FWRS. Work was done September-October by FAU and an unnamed group out of Woodbrooke, the English prototype for Pendle Hill.
From beginnings in air-raid shelters, rest centers, homeless centers, there has developed a fairly large relief organization with a wide variety of activities [e.g. Citizens' Advice Bureau, for the bewildered in target areas]. There was also a transport system linking together the FWRS' more than 50 centers of activity throughout the country, and a building and maintenance section to keep the centers in working order. At its height 550 men and women were engaged in this service; summer 1943 there were 450, mostly pacifists, mostly military age.
Every "conscentious objector" [CO] is entitled to appear before a Tribunal [British Draft Board]. Rejected claimants go to army or to jail. A few are registered unconditionally & are freed [to act as conscience dictates]. The great majority are registered conditionally, some for non-combatant service, some for the American Civilian Public Service's British equivalent. Men & women often have to choose between several alternative services. If prison is the only "acceptable" alternative, prison sentences are not longer than a year and are often less. There is virtually no opposition to COs in Great Britain, & very little antagonism to the useful, hard-working COs.
FWRS is not, in principle, a form of alternative service. It sees a piece of work that needs doing and tries to find suitable people to do it. Most FWRS members are recent COs. A few are older pacifists come out of retirement to help. A few just prefer to work in our informal environment. None of our members is paid a commercial or professional salary. They receive much less in monetary benefits than the private soldier in the army receive; dependents are supported on a meager scale. The Service is widely dispersed geographically, with a great deal of decentralized authority, and a heavy emphasis on personal responsibility. The tendency to argue has never reached serious proportions. The organization of personnel is the hardest part of FWRS. These notes are an expression of my personal views and convictions. My audience accepts them as a recognizable interpretation of our service experience. It was prepared away from sources of reference and corrective criticism.
Roger C. Wilson, Pendle Hill, September, 1943.
1.) THE RELIGIOUS BASIS OF QUAKER RELIEF WORK: [Kindness & Evil]—What is it that gives relief projects a sense of direction & coherence? Organized kindness doesn't get anywhere unless there is purpose behind it. Kindness can easily become appeasement. Because kindness alone is inadequate, many relief efforts don't get anywhere. We have seen people with great kindness who can't be effective leaders because they had no clear sense of purpose. And there are some whose primary, unconscious concern is to face "hotspots" with physical danger, in order to convince themselves they aren't cowards. They have much to give when courage is the supreme virtue; such people must play a subordinate part almost immediately after a crisis has passed.
The best Quaker relief work has sprung from a sense of common sin leading to a sense of common suffering & the need for/ possibility of, a common repentance. The grace of God, & God's will for us is a real fact which we can know through prayer and worship. Because of their certainty of God's will for them, inspired Quaker relief workers cease to be external agents. They become part of the [suffering] chaos, yet they neither accept nor are degraded by the situation. Because of their knowledge of God's will and love, they have the patience and the understanding to speak to the condition of their [neighbors in the broadest sense]. Some pacifists assume that a reliance on the human capacity for goodness naturally produces good results; there is no evidence for this assumption. We cannot deny the gigantic power of evil and we have no right to assume that devotion to the good will produce results in our generation. How do we grapple with the evil that permits people to regard war as a possible even though hateful method of action?
[Facing and Overcoming Evil]—We Christian pacifists have nothing to say on the immediate, day-to-day political problems, because we are unable to accept the presuppositions about power which the rest of the world accepts. We are essentially "non-cooperators" in not sharing responsibility for current political life. We cannot engage in belligerent activity to relieve the suffering of the Jews. We have to try to participate in their suffering in the conviction that it is ultimately the power of suffering in love that redeems all from the power of evil. And what about our countrymen who are fighting and dying for our right as pacifists to practice this long-term view.
The essential nature of Christianity is its teaching of how to face & overcome evil, not how to avoid it. Christianity enables someone to carry more than one otherwise could of a share of the world's daily evil & suffering without being crushed & frightened by it. As long as humans sin & abuse free will we will suffer. Those who respond to the good within themselves will want to mitigate the suffering by trying to break the circle of sin & its results. The people who suffer aren't necessarily the same as those who sin; sinners don't necessarily suffer. Christians must recognize that the sin is their sin as well. We need the experience of being part of suffering humanity. "Thou, O Christ, convince us by thy spirit; thrill us with thy divine passion; drown our selfishness in thy invading love; lay on us the burden of the world's suffering," is a deep cry for imagination of suffering.
[Germans; Relief Work & its Significance; Politics & Business]—It will be easy for Germans looking for a method of letting themselves down lightly to think that there are some kind generous people who saw some moral justification in the German position & didn't fight for that reason. We didn't fight because we know that fighting is not the best way of dealing with this evil, which was not Germany's alone, but ours too, in the wide sphere of power politics. The sense of mutual sin, for most Brits & Americans, exists in intellectual form only.
The more one engages in social work, the more one realizes that the responsibility for evil lies on all of us, both those who exploit and those who accept the rotten standards of their social environments; I doubt if there are any adult innocents. How does our relief work help people get to their feet and take a renewed or increasing measure of responsibility for the common life? Intellectual or technical leadership must be subject to the Quaker background of prayer and worship. In so far as we are a united service drawing our inspiration from worship, the situation ought to approximate this ideal. There should be a background to & quality in our lives which goes beyond words, beyond particular relief actions to the very essence of living.
Political life tends to be simply one thing after another. The sort of principles which should guide work, enable us to have a policy, take responsibility, & judge leadership [on a religious basis], should be based on deep pacifist principles. Administrators may find it difficult to remember the difference between political & pacifist principles. They are in charge of a large, complicated & rapidly changing "business-like" enterprise. Some calls for help must be answered; others must be declined. How each decision is to be considered, whether publicly or privately, quick ruling or slow consultation, must be established. Multiple issues encourages "business-like" process, rather than working under God's guidance. God's wisdom may involve what looks like the foolishness of humans & certainly involves an inner discipline & responsiveness not usually associated with "business."
2. The Relief Worker: [Core of Divinely Ordinary People]—COs are not, by virtue of their objection, naturally cooperative workers. They have had to make a strong assertion of their convictions; this is not an isolated incident in their lives. They have been in the minority in almost all the issues discussed in our various associations. Our relief work depends upon cooperation of individuals; there must be a large central body of people at peace with God and themselves, at peace in an unworldly way. They must be ordinary people so touched by the grace of God that they may be said to be a core of divinely ordinary people.
The larger the section [of relief workers] the more potentially difficult is the internal tension [between its members]. The individualist who is the maker of tensions is always a potential source of weakness and strength. The individualist is the one who always knows what is right and who therefore is not sensitive to corporate responsibility. Putting 2 people with active imaginations together results in either paralysis or being so overdriven as to consume all of FWRS' and FAU'S resources in one narrow field. [Extraordinary imagination, drive, inspiration, empathy, often reside in people with difficult personal characteristics]. It is most important that the extraordinary qualities should not be toned down, or personalities [subdued]. A good Meeting for Worship depends on a large core of divinely ordinary people capable of giving body to the restless imagination of others. Since age can and does contribute stability, it is likely that we shall need to absorb people in rather high age groups.
Discipline—When someone says they have a concern, we hesitate to say that one doesn't, even when we are dubious. Concern can & should mean that members at any level of responsibility recognize that they have a real contribution to make. It sometimes but never should mean a disinclination to accept principles of good order. Where everything is everybody's business, confusion arises because nothing is anybody's particular business.
For the first 10 years of the Society of Friends, there was virtually no organization; the Society was held together by the unity of the individual religious experience. As numbers grew, it was increasingly difficult to separate right ordering from the "notional." The organization of Monthly Meeting & Quarterly Meeting was evolved for the preservation of order, in the deeper sense of common conviction & responsibility as to the right thing to do. While there is nothing wrong with preference, inclinations, & reasoning, I wish people would [identify them as such] & not dress them up in terms of concern.
Good works can't be done by people who neither enjoy the job nor want to do it. It is quite impossible to make effective use of unwilling service. Somebody has to take responsibility for judging what work should be done, by whom, and how, perhaps encouraging someone to try something they end up enjoying. One needs to be aware of the "sense of the meeting," and when they are not they must be willing to be guided [by whoever that sense has put in charge]. There must be review of and confidence in leadership. [When the sense of the meeting calls for change], a leader must leave one's self behind, must see the sense of the meeting, subordinate self without retreating from responsibility, then lead accordingly and creatively. Members ought to be on the edge of conscientious concern to do something differently from the organization, but act on it in only the rarest occasions. Members must live in a state of tension, but not restless tension.
So far as the organization is concerned, those with authority receive little inherent respect, which is proper, as the emphasis should be on the work being done, rather than preservation of order. As the nature of the work changes, so may the leader's relationship to it. [Because of the changing needs of changing situations], it is never quite clear who is leader in fact and what that one's relationship is to the nominal leader. Leaders have to be prepared to maintain and operate a continuous policy even when it is unpopular.
Responsibility—The phase where Quaker committee secretaries only provided useful information for the committee to act on has gone; the secretary is now virtually the director of the committee's work. It is a more recent development for the field members and administrators to be regarded as partners with the committee. It is recognized that concern for service involves those claiming it in responsibility for carrying it out. It is a mistake to devise one pattern and believe it can be used for all other types of Quaker service; a mistake to discuss organizational machinery as much or more than the work; a mistake to try to establish this machinery too early.
Relief work can only be successfully operated when field workers recognize the moral responsibility as resting with the whole Society of Friends. Any particular Quaker service has its origin in the religious concern of Friends to undertake it. The essence of service lies less in technical organization than in the religious experience and conviction underlying the service. Those who choose to work with Friends must be willing loyally to accept the obligations involved in serving with a branch of the Christian Church, whose focus is worship, not social services. Friends should be grateful for the disinterested vitality brought to the Society's work by non-Friends. The Society's life is not based on outward service but on the guidance of God.
3. [Voluntary Organizations & Long-term Social Organizations: Introduction]—[Editor's Note: What immediately follows in brackets is the likely introduction to this essay on pages 31-34 of the pamphlet, which are missing from the Editor's copy]. [Voluntary organizations have the advantage of mobility & flexibility, while long-term voluntary organizations with a spelled out organizational plan, & well-established parameters & purpose lose some of that mobility & flexibility. The permanent voluntary organization ought to be differentiated from the emergency, temporary organizations].
[Shorter term voluntary organizations can more easily change their focus on each relief project that they become involved in. They tend to have a high proportion of young or young-spirited, ambitious volunteers, that aren't necessarily seeing their role in their relief project as a career path. Long-term, professional Social Workers generally, but not absolutely, feel more limited, & sometimes resent the young "do-gooders" swooping in, causing a whirlwind of relatively rapid change, often without much consideration of social organizations already in place, & then moving on. What follows are examples of relief situations in which voluntary organizations like the Friends Ambulance Unit (FAU) work in varying degrees in concert with the local social organizations].
[Stepney, London Borough of Tower Hamlets]—Stepney is a district in the London Borough of Towers Hamlet in central London, not far from the Thames and the Tower. It grew out of a medieval village around St. Dunstan's church & the 15th century ribbon development of Mile End Road called Stepney Green. The area built up rapidly in the 19th century, mainly to accommodate immigrant workers & displaced London poor, & developed a reputation for poverty, overcrowding, violence & political dissent. It was severely damaged during the Blitz, with over ⅓ of housing totally destroyed].
In Stepney, poverty, sectarian differences and local occupations had all combined to encourage a [substandard] local government. All the local voluntary organizations maintained that they knew their area inside out. The local government administration found it more than a little difficult to rise to [the Blitz's challenge]. The organizations were not equipped for rapid adaptation. The FAU, among others, went into Stepney air raid shelters and did a vigorous welfare job, partly in the shelters, and partly with the local government authorities, laying out the technical improvements that needed to be made in underground conditions. FAU was not necessarily the wisest or ablest; they were the ones with the most drive, the most highly organized and ambitious.
The enthusiasm, idealism, vigor & whole-heartedness of the FAU enabled it to do what needed to be done; it wouldn't otherwise have been done so quickly. Had the FAU, as a new organization, [known the difficulties of relating to] Stepney's old, established voluntary organizations, it might never have moved at all. The more far-sighted of the permanent agencies realized the value of keen, if somewhat naive, personnel & incorporated them in their own long-term work. The lesson to be learned is that there is scope for a good deal of imagination in both old & new, temporary voluntary organizations in their mutual relationships. Emergency workers can help so long as the war accentuates needs; the ultimate responsibility must be with the area's permanent organizations.
Petersfield, Hampshire—Petersfield is a small town about 17 miles from the heavily bombed dockyard town of Plymouth on the south coast of England. Outside of Petersfield there was short-term, temporary housing. It had: no water; no sanitation; no glass in the windows; no food storage; no proper road. 40 families from Ply-mouth managed to live there through a cold winter and spring [1940-41]. The local "evacuation department" was inclined to evict and disperse the families. We pushed for extensive and expansive improvements to the site. FWRS began welfare activities on the site, and the authorities agreed to our proposals.
Several weeks later, the whole place was burned down. We advocated for family solidarity, for departing from precedent, and for building new dwellings on an emergency scale. We sheltered them in tents, and later housed them at a county almshouse while an argument raged and while the makeshift brick huts were made. It was the strength of FWRS, as an emergency organization with mobile personnel resources [geared towards] non-routine activities, which enabled a voluntary body to persuade authorities to adopt a policy they would not have adopted otherwise; it was an emergency voluntary society which took moral responsibility for finding an answer.
Rest Centers for the Bombed-out/ Bournemouth--The authorities badly underestimated the number of homeless people created by destroyed houses or unsafe conditions. Provision of "rest centers" was backward when the blitz hit in September 1940. The FAU was able to offer the London County Council a high standard of help in staffing & rest center improvement long before there was paid staff. No one else had FAU's flexibility of resources in wartime. Our ability to help depended on willingness of local government to accept CO help, as they did in Coventry & Plymouth. The need for creating a rest-center that had been officially denied, led a senior official to request FAU's assistance, because the situation called for "great flexibility, a complete disregard of normal administrative procedure ... discipline, initiative, unorthodoxy, & appreciation of human need." [This is an example what can happen] with flexible emergency organization & government approval & cooperation.
Authorities in Bournemouth, a wealthy South Coast seaside town, were presented with 250 people from the poorest part of East London. This group was entirely out of hand, simply for lack of knowledge of how to behave [among the wealthy]. FWRS provided clubs and other recreation, & encouraged them to be more cooperative and tidy in their habits by living in one of the houses with the evacuees. There was no other permanent or temporary voluntary organization available. The local authority put up all the money necessary, which was rare.
The Bedford Institute Centers—This center is an organization, Quaker in origin and predominantly Quaker in present management, engaged in a kind of mission-settlement work in several parts of East London. After a time the problems of relationship between the permanent staff and the very ambitious young men and women made available for the duration of the war gave food for thought. The permanent staff was not appointed in the expectation that they would be responsible for directing the work of such young, inexperienced people. Even among Quakers & near-Quakers, the difference of emphasis & background arising out of the turn of events was such that much patience & generosity was called for from all.
Voluntary organizations are disinterested & temporary. More of a personal quality & informality, & greater personal responsibility are possible with a voluntary organization. The status of voluntary workers often enables them to talk to the one at the head instead of the underlings. If they were to take a position as part of city administration, they would lose that access. A Friend on the staff of a British Cabinet Minister wouldn't have the same access as a volunteer Friend acting as a technical adviser. Voluntary societies can respond with a speed of action that can't be equaled by an official machine.
Voluntary organizations can very easily become deeply vested interests talking a very unaccommadating view of collaborating with others or of withdrawal from a field when more effective methods have been devised. Too often a voluntary organization is regarded as a salve to the conscience of people who would hate to have to find a new brand of ointment. Since voluntary organizations provide temporary relief before they refer them on to the appropriate public welfare sources, the amount spent on administration grows, while the amount given away shrinks. This looks bad to the less intelligent subscribers who do not understand the more intimate personal service that voluntary societies provide.
Voluntary organizations can be models of competent, effective organized, disciplined and simple organizations, or they can be models of how service is not rendered. Money is often short because the quality of work is not good enough to win support. The voluntary organization at its best enables human concern for common welfare to flow freely and easily into effective channels. It fails when it continues after the real concern is gone. It fails from the start if it is used by dabblers seeking to escape from a more difficult service that is expected of them.
INTRODUCTION—This pamphlet is from notes and is designed to serve as the raw material for talks & discussions. Those sessions happened 1st in London at the end of June, 1943, to trainees for FWRS and Friends' Ambulance Unit (FAU); only ¼ of trainees were members of the Society of Friends. Almost all of them had field service in Quaker relief work. The religious basis of Quakerism as part of Christian tradition has been assumed throughout this pamphlet without discussion. This introduction provides a few useful background notes.
The Friends' Service Council is a permanent body with religious duties that sometimes added temporary foreign relief work to its activities. Friends were not corporately engaged in relief work at home, because there did not appear to be any need which the Friends were peculiarly suited to meet, and no "concern" in a Quaker sense had yet emerged for a permanent social welfare agency. When the blitz began in September, 1940, Friends had to create a committee in November, which developed into the FWRS. Work was done September-October by FAU and an unnamed group out of Woodbrooke, the English prototype for Pendle Hill.
From beginnings in air-raid shelters, rest centers, homeless centers, there has developed a fairly large relief organization with a wide variety of activities [e.g. Citizens' Advice Bureau, for the bewildered in target areas]. There was also a transport system linking together the FWRS' more than 50 centers of activity throughout the country, and a building and maintenance section to keep the centers in working order. At its height 550 men and women were engaged in this service; summer 1943 there were 450, mostly pacifists, mostly military age.
Every "conscentious objector" [CO] is entitled to appear before a Tribunal [British Draft Board]. Rejected claimants go to army or to jail. A few are registered unconditionally & are freed [to act as conscience dictates]. The great majority are registered conditionally, some for non-combatant service, some for the American Civilian Public Service's British equivalent. Men & women often have to choose between several alternative services. If prison is the only "acceptable" alternative, prison sentences are not longer than a year and are often less. There is virtually no opposition to COs in Great Britain, & very little antagonism to the useful, hard-working COs.
FWRS is not, in principle, a form of alternative service. It sees a piece of work that needs doing and tries to find suitable people to do it. Most FWRS members are recent COs. A few are older pacifists come out of retirement to help. A few just prefer to work in our informal environment. None of our members is paid a commercial or professional salary. They receive much less in monetary benefits than the private soldier in the army receive; dependents are supported on a meager scale. The Service is widely dispersed geographically, with a great deal of decentralized authority, and a heavy emphasis on personal responsibility. The tendency to argue has never reached serious proportions. The organization of personnel is the hardest part of FWRS. These notes are an expression of my personal views and convictions. My audience accepts them as a recognizable interpretation of our service experience. It was prepared away from sources of reference and corrective criticism.
Roger C. Wilson, Pendle Hill, September, 1943.
1.) THE RELIGIOUS BASIS OF QUAKER RELIEF WORK: [Kindness & Evil]—What is it that gives relief projects a sense of direction & coherence? Organized kindness doesn't get anywhere unless there is purpose behind it. Kindness can easily become appeasement. Because kindness alone is inadequate, many relief efforts don't get anywhere. We have seen people with great kindness who can't be effective leaders because they had no clear sense of purpose. And there are some whose primary, unconscious concern is to face "hotspots" with physical danger, in order to convince themselves they aren't cowards. They have much to give when courage is the supreme virtue; such people must play a subordinate part almost immediately after a crisis has passed.
The best Quaker relief work has sprung from a sense of common sin leading to a sense of common suffering & the need for/ possibility of, a common repentance. The grace of God, & God's will for us is a real fact which we can know through prayer and worship. Because of their certainty of God's will for them, inspired Quaker relief workers cease to be external agents. They become part of the [suffering] chaos, yet they neither accept nor are degraded by the situation. Because of their knowledge of God's will and love, they have the patience and the understanding to speak to the condition of their [neighbors in the broadest sense]. Some pacifists assume that a reliance on the human capacity for goodness naturally produces good results; there is no evidence for this assumption. We cannot deny the gigantic power of evil and we have no right to assume that devotion to the good will produce results in our generation. How do we grapple with the evil that permits people to regard war as a possible even though hateful method of action?
[Facing and Overcoming Evil]—We Christian pacifists have nothing to say on the immediate, day-to-day political problems, because we are unable to accept the presuppositions about power which the rest of the world accepts. We are essentially "non-cooperators" in not sharing responsibility for current political life. We cannot engage in belligerent activity to relieve the suffering of the Jews. We have to try to participate in their suffering in the conviction that it is ultimately the power of suffering in love that redeems all from the power of evil. And what about our countrymen who are fighting and dying for our right as pacifists to practice this long-term view.
The essential nature of Christianity is its teaching of how to face & overcome evil, not how to avoid it. Christianity enables someone to carry more than one otherwise could of a share of the world's daily evil & suffering without being crushed & frightened by it. As long as humans sin & abuse free will we will suffer. Those who respond to the good within themselves will want to mitigate the suffering by trying to break the circle of sin & its results. The people who suffer aren't necessarily the same as those who sin; sinners don't necessarily suffer. Christians must recognize that the sin is their sin as well. We need the experience of being part of suffering humanity. "Thou, O Christ, convince us by thy spirit; thrill us with thy divine passion; drown our selfishness in thy invading love; lay on us the burden of the world's suffering," is a deep cry for imagination of suffering.
[Germans; Relief Work & its Significance; Politics & Business]—It will be easy for Germans looking for a method of letting themselves down lightly to think that there are some kind generous people who saw some moral justification in the German position & didn't fight for that reason. We didn't fight because we know that fighting is not the best way of dealing with this evil, which was not Germany's alone, but ours too, in the wide sphere of power politics. The sense of mutual sin, for most Brits & Americans, exists in intellectual form only.
The more one engages in social work, the more one realizes that the responsibility for evil lies on all of us, both those who exploit and those who accept the rotten standards of their social environments; I doubt if there are any adult innocents. How does our relief work help people get to their feet and take a renewed or increasing measure of responsibility for the common life? Intellectual or technical leadership must be subject to the Quaker background of prayer and worship. In so far as we are a united service drawing our inspiration from worship, the situation ought to approximate this ideal. There should be a background to & quality in our lives which goes beyond words, beyond particular relief actions to the very essence of living.
Political life tends to be simply one thing after another. The sort of principles which should guide work, enable us to have a policy, take responsibility, & judge leadership [on a religious basis], should be based on deep pacifist principles. Administrators may find it difficult to remember the difference between political & pacifist principles. They are in charge of a large, complicated & rapidly changing "business-like" enterprise. Some calls for help must be answered; others must be declined. How each decision is to be considered, whether publicly or privately, quick ruling or slow consultation, must be established. Multiple issues encourages "business-like" process, rather than working under God's guidance. God's wisdom may involve what looks like the foolishness of humans & certainly involves an inner discipline & responsiveness not usually associated with "business."
2. The Relief Worker: [Core of Divinely Ordinary People]—COs are not, by virtue of their objection, naturally cooperative workers. They have had to make a strong assertion of their convictions; this is not an isolated incident in their lives. They have been in the minority in almost all the issues discussed in our various associations. Our relief work depends upon cooperation of individuals; there must be a large central body of people at peace with God and themselves, at peace in an unworldly way. They must be ordinary people so touched by the grace of God that they may be said to be a core of divinely ordinary people.
The larger the section [of relief workers] the more potentially difficult is the internal tension [between its members]. The individualist who is the maker of tensions is always a potential source of weakness and strength. The individualist is the one who always knows what is right and who therefore is not sensitive to corporate responsibility. Putting 2 people with active imaginations together results in either paralysis or being so overdriven as to consume all of FWRS' and FAU'S resources in one narrow field. [Extraordinary imagination, drive, inspiration, empathy, often reside in people with difficult personal characteristics]. It is most important that the extraordinary qualities should not be toned down, or personalities [subdued]. A good Meeting for Worship depends on a large core of divinely ordinary people capable of giving body to the restless imagination of others. Since age can and does contribute stability, it is likely that we shall need to absorb people in rather high age groups.
Discipline—When someone says they have a concern, we hesitate to say that one doesn't, even when we are dubious. Concern can & should mean that members at any level of responsibility recognize that they have a real contribution to make. It sometimes but never should mean a disinclination to accept principles of good order. Where everything is everybody's business, confusion arises because nothing is anybody's particular business.
For the first 10 years of the Society of Friends, there was virtually no organization; the Society was held together by the unity of the individual religious experience. As numbers grew, it was increasingly difficult to separate right ordering from the "notional." The organization of Monthly Meeting & Quarterly Meeting was evolved for the preservation of order, in the deeper sense of common conviction & responsibility as to the right thing to do. While there is nothing wrong with preference, inclinations, & reasoning, I wish people would [identify them as such] & not dress them up in terms of concern.
Good works can't be done by people who neither enjoy the job nor want to do it. It is quite impossible to make effective use of unwilling service. Somebody has to take responsibility for judging what work should be done, by whom, and how, perhaps encouraging someone to try something they end up enjoying. One needs to be aware of the "sense of the meeting," and when they are not they must be willing to be guided [by whoever that sense has put in charge]. There must be review of and confidence in leadership. [When the sense of the meeting calls for change], a leader must leave one's self behind, must see the sense of the meeting, subordinate self without retreating from responsibility, then lead accordingly and creatively. Members ought to be on the edge of conscientious concern to do something differently from the organization, but act on it in only the rarest occasions. Members must live in a state of tension, but not restless tension.
So far as the organization is concerned, those with authority receive little inherent respect, which is proper, as the emphasis should be on the work being done, rather than preservation of order. As the nature of the work changes, so may the leader's relationship to it. [Because of the changing needs of changing situations], it is never quite clear who is leader in fact and what that one's relationship is to the nominal leader. Leaders have to be prepared to maintain and operate a continuous policy even when it is unpopular.
Responsibility—The phase where Quaker committee secretaries only provided useful information for the committee to act on has gone; the secretary is now virtually the director of the committee's work. It is a more recent development for the field members and administrators to be regarded as partners with the committee. It is recognized that concern for service involves those claiming it in responsibility for carrying it out. It is a mistake to devise one pattern and believe it can be used for all other types of Quaker service; a mistake to discuss organizational machinery as much or more than the work; a mistake to try to establish this machinery too early.
Relief work can only be successfully operated when field workers recognize the moral responsibility as resting with the whole Society of Friends. Any particular Quaker service has its origin in the religious concern of Friends to undertake it. The essence of service lies less in technical organization than in the religious experience and conviction underlying the service. Those who choose to work with Friends must be willing loyally to accept the obligations involved in serving with a branch of the Christian Church, whose focus is worship, not social services. Friends should be grateful for the disinterested vitality brought to the Society's work by non-Friends. The Society's life is not based on outward service but on the guidance of God.
3. [Voluntary Organizations & Long-term Social Organizations: Introduction]—[Editor's Note: What immediately follows in brackets is the likely introduction to this essay on pages 31-34 of the pamphlet, which are missing from the Editor's copy]. [Voluntary organizations have the advantage of mobility & flexibility, while long-term voluntary organizations with a spelled out organizational plan, & well-established parameters & purpose lose some of that mobility & flexibility. The permanent voluntary organization ought to be differentiated from the emergency, temporary organizations].
[Shorter term voluntary organizations can more easily change their focus on each relief project that they become involved in. They tend to have a high proportion of young or young-spirited, ambitious volunteers, that aren't necessarily seeing their role in their relief project as a career path. Long-term, professional Social Workers generally, but not absolutely, feel more limited, & sometimes resent the young "do-gooders" swooping in, causing a whirlwind of relatively rapid change, often without much consideration of social organizations already in place, & then moving on. What follows are examples of relief situations in which voluntary organizations like the Friends Ambulance Unit (FAU) work in varying degrees in concert with the local social organizations].
[Stepney, London Borough of Tower Hamlets]—Stepney is a district in the London Borough of Towers Hamlet in central London, not far from the Thames and the Tower. It grew out of a medieval village around St. Dunstan's church & the 15th century ribbon development of Mile End Road called Stepney Green. The area built up rapidly in the 19th century, mainly to accommodate immigrant workers & displaced London poor, & developed a reputation for poverty, overcrowding, violence & political dissent. It was severely damaged during the Blitz, with over ⅓ of housing totally destroyed].
In Stepney, poverty, sectarian differences and local occupations had all combined to encourage a [substandard] local government. All the local voluntary organizations maintained that they knew their area inside out. The local government administration found it more than a little difficult to rise to [the Blitz's challenge]. The organizations were not equipped for rapid adaptation. The FAU, among others, went into Stepney air raid shelters and did a vigorous welfare job, partly in the shelters, and partly with the local government authorities, laying out the technical improvements that needed to be made in underground conditions. FAU was not necessarily the wisest or ablest; they were the ones with the most drive, the most highly organized and ambitious.
The enthusiasm, idealism, vigor & whole-heartedness of the FAU enabled it to do what needed to be done; it wouldn't otherwise have been done so quickly. Had the FAU, as a new organization, [known the difficulties of relating to] Stepney's old, established voluntary organizations, it might never have moved at all. The more far-sighted of the permanent agencies realized the value of keen, if somewhat naive, personnel & incorporated them in their own long-term work. The lesson to be learned is that there is scope for a good deal of imagination in both old & new, temporary voluntary organizations in their mutual relationships. Emergency workers can help so long as the war accentuates needs; the ultimate responsibility must be with the area's permanent organizations.
Petersfield, Hampshire—Petersfield is a small town about 17 miles from the heavily bombed dockyard town of Plymouth on the south coast of England. Outside of Petersfield there was short-term, temporary housing. It had: no water; no sanitation; no glass in the windows; no food storage; no proper road. 40 families from Ply-mouth managed to live there through a cold winter and spring [1940-41]. The local "evacuation department" was inclined to evict and disperse the families. We pushed for extensive and expansive improvements to the site. FWRS began welfare activities on the site, and the authorities agreed to our proposals.
Several weeks later, the whole place was burned down. We advocated for family solidarity, for departing from precedent, and for building new dwellings on an emergency scale. We sheltered them in tents, and later housed them at a county almshouse while an argument raged and while the makeshift brick huts were made. It was the strength of FWRS, as an emergency organization with mobile personnel resources [geared towards] non-routine activities, which enabled a voluntary body to persuade authorities to adopt a policy they would not have adopted otherwise; it was an emergency voluntary society which took moral responsibility for finding an answer.
Rest Centers for the Bombed-out/ Bournemouth--The authorities badly underestimated the number of homeless people created by destroyed houses or unsafe conditions. Provision of "rest centers" was backward when the blitz hit in September 1940. The FAU was able to offer the London County Council a high standard of help in staffing & rest center improvement long before there was paid staff. No one else had FAU's flexibility of resources in wartime. Our ability to help depended on willingness of local government to accept CO help, as they did in Coventry & Plymouth. The need for creating a rest-center that had been officially denied, led a senior official to request FAU's assistance, because the situation called for "great flexibility, a complete disregard of normal administrative procedure ... discipline, initiative, unorthodoxy, & appreciation of human need." [This is an example what can happen] with flexible emergency organization & government approval & cooperation.
Authorities in Bournemouth, a wealthy South Coast seaside town, were presented with 250 people from the poorest part of East London. This group was entirely out of hand, simply for lack of knowledge of how to behave [among the wealthy]. FWRS provided clubs and other recreation, & encouraged them to be more cooperative and tidy in their habits by living in one of the houses with the evacuees. There was no other permanent or temporary voluntary organization available. The local authority put up all the money necessary, which was rare.
The Bedford Institute Centers—This center is an organization, Quaker in origin and predominantly Quaker in present management, engaged in a kind of mission-settlement work in several parts of East London. After a time the problems of relationship between the permanent staff and the very ambitious young men and women made available for the duration of the war gave food for thought. The permanent staff was not appointed in the expectation that they would be responsible for directing the work of such young, inexperienced people. Even among Quakers & near-Quakers, the difference of emphasis & background arising out of the turn of events was such that much patience & generosity was called for from all.
Voluntary organizations are disinterested & temporary. More of a personal quality & informality, & greater personal responsibility are possible with a voluntary organization. The status of voluntary workers often enables them to talk to the one at the head instead of the underlings. If they were to take a position as part of city administration, they would lose that access. A Friend on the staff of a British Cabinet Minister wouldn't have the same access as a volunteer Friend acting as a technical adviser. Voluntary societies can respond with a speed of action that can't be equaled by an official machine.
Voluntary organizations can very easily become deeply vested interests talking a very unaccommadating view of collaborating with others or of withdrawal from a field when more effective methods have been devised. Too often a voluntary organization is regarded as a salve to the conscience of people who would hate to have to find a new brand of ointment. Since voluntary organizations provide temporary relief before they refer them on to the appropriate public welfare sources, the amount spent on administration grows, while the amount given away shrinks. This looks bad to the less intelligent subscribers who do not understand the more intimate personal service that voluntary societies provide.
Voluntary organizations can be models of competent, effective organized, disciplined and simple organizations, or they can be models of how service is not rendered. Money is often short because the quality of work is not good enough to win support. The voluntary organization at its best enables human concern for common welfare to flow freely and easily into effective channels. It fails when it continues after the real concern is gone. It fails from the start if it is used by dabblers seeking to escape from a more difficult service that is expected of them.
It is important to appreciate that the religious life comes first and that the service flows from this. The organization with a real religious sense will seek continually for the guidance of God in relation to the need. Job security and forms of work are regarded as secondary to the real needs of their fellows. [Corporate seeking of the will of God can bind people together into a coherent yet progressive service which has an end beyond technical achievements. Emergency workers will sometimes find fresh work that seems more urgent than the difficult 2nd stage of work already begun. Divine guidance is essential in finding the right proportion of [evolving with the work's next stage and moving on to a new concern].
4. THE POLITICS AND SOCIOLOGY OF RELIEF WORK: [Relief Workers and Politics]—While all relief work may have sociological implications, most of it has no obvious political significance. All relief workers ought to understand what their work is doing to the neighborhood's social structure. We never got near to rioting and sufficient public panic to cause a change in government, but it must have appeared possible to [many caught up in the midst of the blitz's chaos]. The Communists presumably would have welcomed such a situation and might have used the chaos to work toward a government change and peace negotiations.
Should pacifist relief workers have allowed suffering to go untended in order to [bring about peace negotiations]? How far could or should a relief work group identify themselves with a political group having a vigorous relief policy? To become entangled with wider political issues may lead to a stifling of their ability to do an unbiased piece of work. Individual members taking political actions must make it clear they are acting as individuals; [their political action should not interfere with relief work]. Those primarily politicians should resign from relief service. The short-term relief worker can't avoid political responsibility in the long run if they want to play a part in the deep-seated life of a community.
[Relief Workers' Perception of Role]—Is the relief work designed to help people to make the best of and develop their own resources? The tendency in many Poor Law Institutions to put the old people to bed and keep them there the rest of their lives. We ourselves have followed a policy of appeasement rather than [insisting that those we serve take responsibility for a small share of the cost and all of their development toward self sufficiency]. How did the presence of and faith in FAU increase or decrease the sense of mutual relationship be-tween local residents and their permanent official and voluntary organizations? How did FAU affect the long-term sense of apathy in those relationships?
In the voluntary social organizations using trained personnel, there is a steady move away from giving material help toward the giving of skilled non-material service, with the state taking more responsibility for material help. Imaginative voluntary service can play its part in situations where material needs have their roots in a non-material background, [since non-material needs have become a voluntary service specialty]. One of the needs voluntary services met during the war was providing sympathetic insight of a disinterested friend in tangled personal and family situations.
[Relief Work and Politics Abroad]—We are faced with the certainty of acute of acute political disturbances and rivalry. Many of the countries in eastern and southeastern Europe will be involved in revolutions of one kind or another. How should relief be administered in a country engaged in civil war? How should relief workers handle their political sympathies? As long as a really honest effort is made to make supplies available to all, and as long as supplies are not being used for propagandist purposes, I think the conscience of a relief organization can be clear. A number of southeastern Europeans are convinced that Allied occupation armies are necessary. Are relief workers prepared to advocate, or at least accept, a policy of order which will prevent the social situation finding its own real level of stability.
The division between what may be regarded as Communism and what may be regarded as the authoritarianism of regimes based on property is likely to lie at the root of much post-war internal strife. Friends have never hesitated to speak their minds where their own government is concerned. Why should they be expected to maintain neutrality in relation to the politics of foreign countries? Christians should expect to come to views of their own. It is much better to be known to have certain political views than to leave doubt. However strong our political views, we do not pursue them at the expense of penalizing, bullying or starving our opponents, though we may feel obliged to allow suffering to go unrelieved.
In Vienna, we were administering money provided by a political international body, & collaborating with [an officially disbanded] national political group [in opposition with the government] ... We found ourselves in the awkward position of being suspected by the authorities [of illegal association] with a banned political party, and not being trusted by the latter ... who were probably using us for a certain amount of political activity."
Relief Work Abroad & Sociology—The continental Committee pattern is different from what we are familiar with. The English-speaking committee assumes there will be a pooling of contributions out of which a common decision will be reached & action taken. The Continental committee tends to have people making speeches of unalterable principle. A common policy isn't expected to emerge. Committees aren't very often concerned with getting things done. Have we got a moral obligation to try & spread the Anglo-American conception of committee work in order that the bitterness & separatism of Continental socio-political life be lessened?
Discrimination on a political basis happens in Great Britain in areas with rigid class structure. In principle we are ashamed & rarely admit that it happens. Abroad, discrimination is in many places a positive social policy. It is a truth from which we ought not to retreat that there can be no discrimination on any other grounds than those of need, judged on sociological grounds. It will be hard for locals to understand or accept why we insist on a policy of no discrimination. Public services in occupied countries are staffed either by collaborators or nationalists [bent on sabotage]. All in public service are engaged in treachery of one sort or another. Re-establishment of standards after liberation will take time. The exhibition of high standards may depend to a considerable extent on the character of foreign administrators & relief workers. It is therefore important that any foreigners going in should maintain high standards of public morality if the pattern of life is to be re-established on a sound basis.
The technical & spiritual assistance rendered by foreigners must be: assistance not domination; acceptable & not imposed; [compatible with] native genius & not a rootless foreign pattern. Relief workers must have a real appreciation of & interest in the social patterns of the areas in which they serve, & must see how to adapt their skills to new conditions. There is every chance that field workers & administrators, or those nearer to the suffering & those a little further away [& taking a longer view], may misunderstand one another on political & sociological matters. We have to remember that good, honest, innocent neighborliness will go a long way regardless of the organization which surrounds it. It is this robust and confident humanity which gives character to relief work. The answer to relief works' difficulties will be found in the Meeting for Worship and the preparation that goes to it. This depends on the belief that God's will is a fact and not just a fancy or a compromise.
300. Therefore Choose Life: The Spiritual Challenge of the Nuclear Age (by John Tallmadge; 1991)
About the Author—John Tallmadge is Professor of Literature and Environmental Studies at the Union Institute. He is a scholar and practitioner of nature writing with interests in the spiritual aspects of wilderness travel, nuclear disarmament and peace issues. Relationship dynamics, double binds, and the addiction model seem very relevant to the nuclear dilemma. This updated essay offers insights into the post-Cold War era, when we will be faced with planetary challenges of peace and survival.
[Introduction]—The ancient Chinese had an astonishing curse: “May you live in interesting times.” Few times are as interesting times as [the nuclear age]. [In the wake of the rapid corrosion of the Iron Curtain, eaten away by millions of individual minds resolving to live for democracy & freedom], we [felt briefly] what life could be like on an unshadowed earth. A few months after the Berlin Wall fell, I was driving through southern Ohio [when I chanced upon a Uranium Enrichment Plant still in operation]. I found myself thinking of missiles still poised in silos & submarines. While all over Europe the walls came tumbling down, hidden among the green fields in the midst of America, the poisons of the cold war [are still being brewed] as if nothing had happened.
I felt the curse of these interesting times, [as if I had] no credentials, no leverage, no expertise, & yet with a sense of responsibility. It occurred to me that the Cold War had really been fought in the minds of [individual] common people as a spiritual war for their allegiance. The nuclear threat would never be exorcised, except by the moral choice of ordinary people. Each of us must set out alone, in fear & trembling, to discover what paths may lead to our planet’s survival.
The Spiritual Nature of the Problem—In Fate of the Earth (1982) Jonathon Schell offers a nuclear threat analysis. He concludes that nuclear weapons confront humankind with the prospect of extinction. Schell argues that we must look for its consequences before it occurs. “It takes the form of a spiritual sickness that corrupts life [beginning with] thoughts, moods, and actions.” By “spiritual” I mean that part of our life not limited to material objects and sensory experience. “Spiritual growth” means extending the limits of one’s personality in order to participate in relationships of equality with a greater and greater diversity of beings. Spiritual stagnation may be seen as a kind of mental illness. Extinction as a “present reality” [in our imaginations] is spiritual rather than material, [but it can still] seriously disturb us. Extinction can damage our lives before it occurs.
Also, we have tended to focus on this destructive power, often endowing it with a hostile animus. [Actually], we should fear it less than our own evil will to use them. This will to annihilation is something spiritual in-side us that has no material being; dismantling arsenals would not really solve our problems. The stronger our collective will to survive, the healthier & more vigorous our life in the world becomes. Just as nuclear weapons have frozen world politics into a state of permanent crisis, they seem to have paralyzed our imaginations too.
Our will to survive may be strengthened or weakened by how we choose to interpret our situation, [and what assumptions we make]. Throughout the Cold War, both sides continued to make offers they knew would be refused; the results confirmed their worst expectations about the wickedness of the other side and the futility of negotiations. Our expectations have led to behaviors which confirm our expectations and repeated experience has habituated us to this unhealthy situation. Our best hope is to break the feedback loop before the system gets into a runaway mode. The longer we succumb to the illusion [that deterrence is working and keeping us safe], the easier it is to slide toward a despair that may one day prove fatal. We should try to understand the psychology of our current behavior and begin appropriate therapy in this moment of apparent and temporary reprieve.
Nuclear Dependency—In a nuclear age, horror, anxiety, helpless rage, and “psychic numbing” have percolated into our daily lives and produced symptomatic patterns of behavior; some deny it; others embrace it obsessively. [Individual denial takes the form of]: glorifying the American Way; scapegoating [a long list of those “other people”]; living irresponsible, self-centered, and hedonistic life styles; [and a general “live, invest, build for today” attitude]. Some people show an unhealthy obsession with nuclear holocaust; some dream about it. The word “nuke” has become popular. These behaviors suggest that we generally repress our feelings about the nuclear threat; this repression yields a low-level depression. Our condition prevents us from becoming all that we could be. You could say that it stunts our spiritual growth.
Collectively our most striking symptom is our faith in the doctrine of deterrence; [i.e. that only the fear of mutual annihilation can hold them in check]. Jonathon Schell concludes that deterrence makes sense only if you assume that both you and you opponent are insane. Deterrence commits us to building more and more weapons by the assumption that our opponents are so foolish as to fear us in proportion to our accumulated firepower. [We also build] huge standing armies which we will never be able to use against each other.
The most absurd symptom of all is our simple failure to abolish these weapons, or to make their abolition the primary goal of our negotiations. [Our leaders call them effective instruments of diplomacy, and give them names like “Peacekeeper”]. Nuclear states seem to have made their weapons part of their national self-image, and call themselves “superpowers.” They ignore the fact that their weapons have not deterred small countries like Viet Nam, Iran, and the OPEC nations from doing exactly what they pleased.
We cling to these weapons as a means of self-definition. Nuclear states behave like alcoholics who find an identity in the habit they know is slowing destroying them, and they deny they have a problem. These states have shown their willingness to destroy innocent populations, generations of the unborn, and much of living nature in order to protect their “national interest.” Their dependency has progressed to the point of evil, like that of an alcoholic who abuses his loved ones.
“I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore, choose life.” (Deuteronomy 30:19)
In the most general sense, evil is whatever is opposed to Life; it can take both physical and psychological forms. Scott Peck defined “psychological evil” as “the exercise of political power in order to avoid spiritual growth.” Peck argues that evil people seek to control others because they lack self-control & discipline that comes with self-confidence; they seek to make others extensions of themselves. Nuclear dependency participates in such radical evil by threatening us with extinction & preventing our spiritual growth.
Our addiction arose in response to real life issues [i.e. how] to prevent a repeat of WWII. Now that brave & imaginative efforts are being made in the East, the western powers sit back on stockpiles & behave as if nothing has changed. Deterrence’s real purpose is to allow peace without having to give up war. Missile addiction alters our mood & helps us avoid the deeper issues. We refuse to abandon deterrence & embark on the difficult task of building a new world political order. Deterrence, like alcoholism is founded on laziness, fear, & despair. The longer we cling to it, spiraling toward extinction, the more painful & arduous the recovery process will be.
Avenues of Healing/Right Thinking—Recovery is still possible, right up until the moment of launching the missiles. Our 1,000-mile journey begins with a single step: right here, right now, right at home. I believe our personal choices and actions can affect the shape of things to come. I would suggest a healing process of “right thinking” [i.e.] for survival and against extinction, and “right action” [i.e.] strengthening our will to life.
Right thinking requires an individual choice for Life [over extinction]. Right thinking involves acceptance of responsibility as citizens of a state committed to threatening the race with extinction. & right thinking requires a decision to take right action, to commit to therapy. [Most people would indignantly deny] favoring extinction or holding the human race hostage for the sake of our national interest. The same person will likely blame the Soviets for the arms race, & [make excuses why they are unable to do anything], which is standard addict behavior.
[Therapeutic intervention might work], but in the case of nuclear dependency [who can we turn to or listen to]? The nuclear states’ severe narcissism prevents them from taking seriously any opinions except their own. [God won’t make it easier for us; that would] short-circuit a choice-process whose very difficulty is essential to effect. [Such intervention can] only come from within the nuclear states themselves. Each personal decision to repudiate extinction, to admit addiction, to assume responsibility, constitutes a brave & loving intervention, even if it is known only to a handful of people. The person who makes a choice of this kind becomes a living challenge to our narcissistic & weapon-dependent society. [They] feel a new energy & freedom; paralysis dissolves. One has repudiated and thereby overcomes the sloth and despair at the heart of the nuclear crisis.
Right Action—What therapy shall we undertake to strengthen individual & collective will to survive? 1st, since despair & sloth are our greatest temptations, we should begin to lead lives of quiet affirmation. We should go stubbornly about our business of being human in full recognition of the threat’s presence. [We need to continue to live a full life of service to humanity & creation], & celebrate by wholehearted actions whatever is noblest in human life & repudiating lethargy & despair which constitute the real threat to our survival.
2nd, we must cultivate images of truth & hope. Early images of tests inspired awe, terror, & fascination we normally associate with the Sublime. It is not surprising that we interpreted such power as giving divine or at least natural sanction to our political decisions. Images of nuclear war victims seduced us, because while revealing truth, they also concealed truth. [We looked at blast effects of nuclear weapons] & ignored the more lethal secondary & tertiary effects. [Taking these effects into account], there would be no place for survivors to go.
Recent images present facts more honestly. Fallout victims are portrayed so that we know their deaths will be painful, senseless, & disgusting. Perhaps the most truth to appear in recent years is nuclear winter, [with vast quantities of dust thrown into the air obscuring the sun, killing green plants & drastically reducing temperature]. There are also images of hope, [of life going on in spite of the bleakness of nuclear war’s aftermath]. Our most valuable image of hope is our earth’s image seen from space. Gazing upon our world seen from afar ought to shame us out of suicidal narcissism & offer us a sign of the planetary consciousness we need in order to survive.
Because we have a duty to the earth & other human beings, [we need to] rebuild a relationship to the bio-sphere on a symbiosis & stewardship model rather than parasitism & exploitation. Knowing our world’s truth & beauty will strengthen reverence for all life, including ours. Right action must include a re-dedication to healthy relationships with each other & with God. [Our] survival requires nothing less than fundamental reorientation.
Prospects—With addiction, as with sin, a cure is possible right up to the moment of death, for the problem adheres in the mind of the person more than in his external circumstances. The spiritual view enables us to appreciate the importance of individual moral choice as central and decisive. Science cannot give us moral advice or make our choice for us; all it can do is make clear the material consequences of our choice. If we believe in a living future, it may arise, but if we do not, we will surely perish. We do not get to heaven; we become heaven.
I said that the solution to our problem was unimaginable to us at the present time and that this lack of imagination constituted our problem. We have the capacity to imagine the broad outlines of any solution. [God posed the challenge long ago]: “I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore, choose life.” (Deuteronomy 30:19).
57. Atomic Peace: The Reaction of Good (by Harold C. Goddard; 1950)
[About the Authors]—MARGARET GODDARD HOLT (1911-2004) Painter, writer, educator, community activist, leaflet-maker/distributor, prolific letter-writer, decades-long peace & justice vigiler. Born in Swarthmore, PA to Harold & Fanny Goddard, she absorbed the values of the Quaker Society of Friends, though never became a member. The passionate painter became the passionate activist, organizing, & marching with 1000's in the 1960s' social movements; she marched in the Poor People's Campaign of 1963 in Washington DC. Margaret was intensely engaged, present, fully conscious of both the beauty and the suffering of this world.
HAROLD C. GODDARD (1878-1950) He taught math for two years. At Columbia Univ. he received a PhD in English and comparative literature in 1909. He taught at Northwestern Univ. 1904-1909. From 1909-1946, he was head of the English Department at Swarthmore College. "Dr. Goddard [could lay a] book before us, and it presently became apparent that we were in fact studying and expanding all our range of possible understanding. Through ... literature he taught philosophy, psychology, and always the pursuit of meaning and the zest for life that great art is." Although often believed to be a Quaker, Goddard was never a full member.
Foreword—[There was] a time when the atom was considered the indivisible unit of matter; chain reactions were not part of everyday language. Rufus Jones' "Way of Contagion," the chain reaction of good, has always been a central principle of the Society of Friends. This pamphlet follows that tradition with Dr. Goddard's life sketch by his daughter Margaret, followed by his essay, "Atomic Peace."
[Life Sketch] of Harold C. Goddard (1878-1950)—I 1st think of my father quoting Blake: "I give the end of a golden string;/ Only wind it into a ball,/ It will lead you in at Heaven's gate,/ Built in Jerusalem's wall." He would play ["Fill in the Blank] with lines of poetry; gleefully we would fill in the missing words. His love of and devotion to children must have stemmed from his own happy childhood. Picking a daisy, he would say: "See its bright [sun-like] eye. But how did it happen, how did it decide, to be a daisy and not a buttercup? Is it the dirt? Finally, we came together to the mystery of the seed; the flower's secret was as safe as ever. Father would quote Blake: "Enthusiastic admiration is the 1st principle of knowledge, and the last." Father was a thorough New Englander and happy to be one. To have come from the tradition that produced Emerson, Thoreau, and Dickinson was a joy to him; he also had strong affection for Russian writers, and admiration for the Chinese. He would read Chekhov over and over, noticing points he had not noticed before.
Father was born in Worcester, MA. His father lived by very strict & narrow Puritanical morals & ideas, & yet was the gentlest & lovable of men. His wrath & excitement [was reserved for] politics & religion. Father's mother was many years younger than his father; she had a gay & lively disposition. She was the ideal grandmother. She believed that children are only children once & they should have a wonderful time while they can. It seemed father lived for 2 or 3 people; he got intense joy out of many different things, both large & small.
Harold also turned much of his natural supply of fire & storm into non-personal channels. As a boy he drew intricate, [intense] drawings of burning buildings, ranks of marching soldiers, & furious battles with exploding cannons; he had an early interest in Hell. He was busy with playing, carpentry, baseball, walking in the woods with his father. He was read to from classics and the Bible, but never went in for long hours of reading, and felt ignorant of great literature even after college graduation. [From early on], he had an interest in politics, government, in world affairs, and particularly in justice. Father and Mother [were passionate] about problems of justice & government. The happiest memories of his childhood were of visits to his grandfather's farm. Years later, at Swarthmore, he took perhaps 1,000s of walks in the Crum Woods, often before breakfast. The happiest memories of my childhood were walks in the woods with him; we both have a Golden Age to remember.
[Harold & Fanny met] when Harold was in 2nd grade. Mother's devotion to Father, began later than his for her, but wasn't exceeded by his. How slow & dull his 25 year courtship would sound to those who didn't realize its inner excitement or know his belief in self-discipline's power & anticipation's joy. No one could think of one without the other. A former student said that, as much as she learned about Shakespeare, in his seminar at our house, she learned even more about happy marriage. The most amazing thing about him was his understanding.
His essential quality was the ability to experience imaginatively, deeply, & fully without being swallowed up by experience. People at his bedside for his last illness said they were strangely comforted, as though it were they who were in need of encouragement. He was able to finish his book on Shakespeare after 12 years, just in time. He always maintained that true humor, as distinguished from mere wit and fancy, is closely allied to imagination. [He took pleasure] in puns, Falstaffian repartee, and stories with his intimate friends.
He had very little time for sociability in later years. His teaching, writing, & family kept him so busy that he learned that every minute is a pearl of great price. [He fell in love with literature while he studied & taught math during the day &] listened to Browning on Sunday evenings. At Swarthmore, he started the idea of small evening classes which became a Goddard tradition. Father acquired a deep mistrust of academic scholarship, of "pure intellect" research, which was a strong influence on his teaching. His students' essays about him reflected the theme that he never taught memorized and soon-forgotten "facts"; he always taught life itself. One student said: "I can't think of Dr. Goddard's teaching as over. I don't remember his classes for I'm in them now."
A man of such strong loves and deep convictions must necessarily have hatreds strong enough to balance them. Tyranny, I think, sums up, in one word, the essence of what he hated, tyranny with the fear and lack of freedom which it brings. As head of a department, he wanted an atmosphere of absolute freedom for each member to teach according to his convictions; he never forced an idea; he used authority as sparingly as possible. His Shakespeare book had as a theme the conflict between freedom and authority.
The last of "The River Duddon" sonnets by Wordsworth brings together Father's essential belief as well as anything so brief can: "I thought of Thee, my partner and guide,/ As being past away.—Vain sympathies! ... as I cast my eyes,/ I see what was, and is, and will abide;/ Still glides the Stream, and shall forever glide;/ The Form remains, the Function never dies;/ While we, the brave, the mighty, and the wise,/ We Men, who in our morn of youth defied/ The elements, must vanish—be it so!/ ... If something from our hands have power/ To live, and act, and serve the future hour;/ ... If as toward the silent tomb we go,/ Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent dower,/ We feel that we are greater than we know.// MARGARET GODDARD HOLT
4. THE POLITICS AND SOCIOLOGY OF RELIEF WORK: [Relief Workers and Politics]—While all relief work may have sociological implications, most of it has no obvious political significance. All relief workers ought to understand what their work is doing to the neighborhood's social structure. We never got near to rioting and sufficient public panic to cause a change in government, but it must have appeared possible to [many caught up in the midst of the blitz's chaos]. The Communists presumably would have welcomed such a situation and might have used the chaos to work toward a government change and peace negotiations.
Should pacifist relief workers have allowed suffering to go untended in order to [bring about peace negotiations]? How far could or should a relief work group identify themselves with a political group having a vigorous relief policy? To become entangled with wider political issues may lead to a stifling of their ability to do an unbiased piece of work. Individual members taking political actions must make it clear they are acting as individuals; [their political action should not interfere with relief work]. Those primarily politicians should resign from relief service. The short-term relief worker can't avoid political responsibility in the long run if they want to play a part in the deep-seated life of a community.
[Relief Workers' Perception of Role]—Is the relief work designed to help people to make the best of and develop their own resources? The tendency in many Poor Law Institutions to put the old people to bed and keep them there the rest of their lives. We ourselves have followed a policy of appeasement rather than [insisting that those we serve take responsibility for a small share of the cost and all of their development toward self sufficiency]. How did the presence of and faith in FAU increase or decrease the sense of mutual relationship be-tween local residents and their permanent official and voluntary organizations? How did FAU affect the long-term sense of apathy in those relationships?
In the voluntary social organizations using trained personnel, there is a steady move away from giving material help toward the giving of skilled non-material service, with the state taking more responsibility for material help. Imaginative voluntary service can play its part in situations where material needs have their roots in a non-material background, [since non-material needs have become a voluntary service specialty]. One of the needs voluntary services met during the war was providing sympathetic insight of a disinterested friend in tangled personal and family situations.
[Relief Work and Politics Abroad]—We are faced with the certainty of acute of acute political disturbances and rivalry. Many of the countries in eastern and southeastern Europe will be involved in revolutions of one kind or another. How should relief be administered in a country engaged in civil war? How should relief workers handle their political sympathies? As long as a really honest effort is made to make supplies available to all, and as long as supplies are not being used for propagandist purposes, I think the conscience of a relief organization can be clear. A number of southeastern Europeans are convinced that Allied occupation armies are necessary. Are relief workers prepared to advocate, or at least accept, a policy of order which will prevent the social situation finding its own real level of stability.
The division between what may be regarded as Communism and what may be regarded as the authoritarianism of regimes based on property is likely to lie at the root of much post-war internal strife. Friends have never hesitated to speak their minds where their own government is concerned. Why should they be expected to maintain neutrality in relation to the politics of foreign countries? Christians should expect to come to views of their own. It is much better to be known to have certain political views than to leave doubt. However strong our political views, we do not pursue them at the expense of penalizing, bullying or starving our opponents, though we may feel obliged to allow suffering to go unrelieved.
In Vienna, we were administering money provided by a political international body, & collaborating with [an officially disbanded] national political group [in opposition with the government] ... We found ourselves in the awkward position of being suspected by the authorities [of illegal association] with a banned political party, and not being trusted by the latter ... who were probably using us for a certain amount of political activity."
Relief Work Abroad & Sociology—The continental Committee pattern is different from what we are familiar with. The English-speaking committee assumes there will be a pooling of contributions out of which a common decision will be reached & action taken. The Continental committee tends to have people making speeches of unalterable principle. A common policy isn't expected to emerge. Committees aren't very often concerned with getting things done. Have we got a moral obligation to try & spread the Anglo-American conception of committee work in order that the bitterness & separatism of Continental socio-political life be lessened?
Discrimination on a political basis happens in Great Britain in areas with rigid class structure. In principle we are ashamed & rarely admit that it happens. Abroad, discrimination is in many places a positive social policy. It is a truth from which we ought not to retreat that there can be no discrimination on any other grounds than those of need, judged on sociological grounds. It will be hard for locals to understand or accept why we insist on a policy of no discrimination. Public services in occupied countries are staffed either by collaborators or nationalists [bent on sabotage]. All in public service are engaged in treachery of one sort or another. Re-establishment of standards after liberation will take time. The exhibition of high standards may depend to a considerable extent on the character of foreign administrators & relief workers. It is therefore important that any foreigners going in should maintain high standards of public morality if the pattern of life is to be re-established on a sound basis.
The technical & spiritual assistance rendered by foreigners must be: assistance not domination; acceptable & not imposed; [compatible with] native genius & not a rootless foreign pattern. Relief workers must have a real appreciation of & interest in the social patterns of the areas in which they serve, & must see how to adapt their skills to new conditions. There is every chance that field workers & administrators, or those nearer to the suffering & those a little further away [& taking a longer view], may misunderstand one another on political & sociological matters. We have to remember that good, honest, innocent neighborliness will go a long way regardless of the organization which surrounds it. It is this robust and confident humanity which gives character to relief work. The answer to relief works' difficulties will be found in the Meeting for Worship and the preparation that goes to it. This depends on the belief that God's will is a fact and not just a fancy or a compromise.
300. Therefore Choose Life: The Spiritual Challenge of the Nuclear Age (by John Tallmadge; 1991)
About the Author—John Tallmadge is Professor of Literature and Environmental Studies at the Union Institute. He is a scholar and practitioner of nature writing with interests in the spiritual aspects of wilderness travel, nuclear disarmament and peace issues. Relationship dynamics, double binds, and the addiction model seem very relevant to the nuclear dilemma. This updated essay offers insights into the post-Cold War era, when we will be faced with planetary challenges of peace and survival.
[Introduction]—The ancient Chinese had an astonishing curse: “May you live in interesting times.” Few times are as interesting times as [the nuclear age]. [In the wake of the rapid corrosion of the Iron Curtain, eaten away by millions of individual minds resolving to live for democracy & freedom], we [felt briefly] what life could be like on an unshadowed earth. A few months after the Berlin Wall fell, I was driving through southern Ohio [when I chanced upon a Uranium Enrichment Plant still in operation]. I found myself thinking of missiles still poised in silos & submarines. While all over Europe the walls came tumbling down, hidden among the green fields in the midst of America, the poisons of the cold war [are still being brewed] as if nothing had happened.
I felt the curse of these interesting times, [as if I had] no credentials, no leverage, no expertise, & yet with a sense of responsibility. It occurred to me that the Cold War had really been fought in the minds of [individual] common people as a spiritual war for their allegiance. The nuclear threat would never be exorcised, except by the moral choice of ordinary people. Each of us must set out alone, in fear & trembling, to discover what paths may lead to our planet’s survival.
The Spiritual Nature of the Problem—In Fate of the Earth (1982) Jonathon Schell offers a nuclear threat analysis. He concludes that nuclear weapons confront humankind with the prospect of extinction. Schell argues that we must look for its consequences before it occurs. “It takes the form of a spiritual sickness that corrupts life [beginning with] thoughts, moods, and actions.” By “spiritual” I mean that part of our life not limited to material objects and sensory experience. “Spiritual growth” means extending the limits of one’s personality in order to participate in relationships of equality with a greater and greater diversity of beings. Spiritual stagnation may be seen as a kind of mental illness. Extinction as a “present reality” [in our imaginations] is spiritual rather than material, [but it can still] seriously disturb us. Extinction can damage our lives before it occurs.
Also, we have tended to focus on this destructive power, often endowing it with a hostile animus. [Actually], we should fear it less than our own evil will to use them. This will to annihilation is something spiritual in-side us that has no material being; dismantling arsenals would not really solve our problems. The stronger our collective will to survive, the healthier & more vigorous our life in the world becomes. Just as nuclear weapons have frozen world politics into a state of permanent crisis, they seem to have paralyzed our imaginations too.
Our will to survive may be strengthened or weakened by how we choose to interpret our situation, [and what assumptions we make]. Throughout the Cold War, both sides continued to make offers they knew would be refused; the results confirmed their worst expectations about the wickedness of the other side and the futility of negotiations. Our expectations have led to behaviors which confirm our expectations and repeated experience has habituated us to this unhealthy situation. Our best hope is to break the feedback loop before the system gets into a runaway mode. The longer we succumb to the illusion [that deterrence is working and keeping us safe], the easier it is to slide toward a despair that may one day prove fatal. We should try to understand the psychology of our current behavior and begin appropriate therapy in this moment of apparent and temporary reprieve.
Nuclear Dependency—In a nuclear age, horror, anxiety, helpless rage, and “psychic numbing” have percolated into our daily lives and produced symptomatic patterns of behavior; some deny it; others embrace it obsessively. [Individual denial takes the form of]: glorifying the American Way; scapegoating [a long list of those “other people”]; living irresponsible, self-centered, and hedonistic life styles; [and a general “live, invest, build for today” attitude]. Some people show an unhealthy obsession with nuclear holocaust; some dream about it. The word “nuke” has become popular. These behaviors suggest that we generally repress our feelings about the nuclear threat; this repression yields a low-level depression. Our condition prevents us from becoming all that we could be. You could say that it stunts our spiritual growth.
Collectively our most striking symptom is our faith in the doctrine of deterrence; [i.e. that only the fear of mutual annihilation can hold them in check]. Jonathon Schell concludes that deterrence makes sense only if you assume that both you and you opponent are insane. Deterrence commits us to building more and more weapons by the assumption that our opponents are so foolish as to fear us in proportion to our accumulated firepower. [We also build] huge standing armies which we will never be able to use against each other.
The most absurd symptom of all is our simple failure to abolish these weapons, or to make their abolition the primary goal of our negotiations. [Our leaders call them effective instruments of diplomacy, and give them names like “Peacekeeper”]. Nuclear states seem to have made their weapons part of their national self-image, and call themselves “superpowers.” They ignore the fact that their weapons have not deterred small countries like Viet Nam, Iran, and the OPEC nations from doing exactly what they pleased.
We cling to these weapons as a means of self-definition. Nuclear states behave like alcoholics who find an identity in the habit they know is slowing destroying them, and they deny they have a problem. These states have shown their willingness to destroy innocent populations, generations of the unborn, and much of living nature in order to protect their “national interest.” Their dependency has progressed to the point of evil, like that of an alcoholic who abuses his loved ones.
“I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore, choose life.” (Deuteronomy 30:19)
In the most general sense, evil is whatever is opposed to Life; it can take both physical and psychological forms. Scott Peck defined “psychological evil” as “the exercise of political power in order to avoid spiritual growth.” Peck argues that evil people seek to control others because they lack self-control & discipline that comes with self-confidence; they seek to make others extensions of themselves. Nuclear dependency participates in such radical evil by threatening us with extinction & preventing our spiritual growth.
Our addiction arose in response to real life issues [i.e. how] to prevent a repeat of WWII. Now that brave & imaginative efforts are being made in the East, the western powers sit back on stockpiles & behave as if nothing has changed. Deterrence’s real purpose is to allow peace without having to give up war. Missile addiction alters our mood & helps us avoid the deeper issues. We refuse to abandon deterrence & embark on the difficult task of building a new world political order. Deterrence, like alcoholism is founded on laziness, fear, & despair. The longer we cling to it, spiraling toward extinction, the more painful & arduous the recovery process will be.
Avenues of Healing/Right Thinking—Recovery is still possible, right up until the moment of launching the missiles. Our 1,000-mile journey begins with a single step: right here, right now, right at home. I believe our personal choices and actions can affect the shape of things to come. I would suggest a healing process of “right thinking” [i.e.] for survival and against extinction, and “right action” [i.e.] strengthening our will to life.
Right thinking requires an individual choice for Life [over extinction]. Right thinking involves acceptance of responsibility as citizens of a state committed to threatening the race with extinction. & right thinking requires a decision to take right action, to commit to therapy. [Most people would indignantly deny] favoring extinction or holding the human race hostage for the sake of our national interest. The same person will likely blame the Soviets for the arms race, & [make excuses why they are unable to do anything], which is standard addict behavior.
[Therapeutic intervention might work], but in the case of nuclear dependency [who can we turn to or listen to]? The nuclear states’ severe narcissism prevents them from taking seriously any opinions except their own. [God won’t make it easier for us; that would] short-circuit a choice-process whose very difficulty is essential to effect. [Such intervention can] only come from within the nuclear states themselves. Each personal decision to repudiate extinction, to admit addiction, to assume responsibility, constitutes a brave & loving intervention, even if it is known only to a handful of people. The person who makes a choice of this kind becomes a living challenge to our narcissistic & weapon-dependent society. [They] feel a new energy & freedom; paralysis dissolves. One has repudiated and thereby overcomes the sloth and despair at the heart of the nuclear crisis.
Right Action—What therapy shall we undertake to strengthen individual & collective will to survive? 1st, since despair & sloth are our greatest temptations, we should begin to lead lives of quiet affirmation. We should go stubbornly about our business of being human in full recognition of the threat’s presence. [We need to continue to live a full life of service to humanity & creation], & celebrate by wholehearted actions whatever is noblest in human life & repudiating lethargy & despair which constitute the real threat to our survival.
2nd, we must cultivate images of truth & hope. Early images of tests inspired awe, terror, & fascination we normally associate with the Sublime. It is not surprising that we interpreted such power as giving divine or at least natural sanction to our political decisions. Images of nuclear war victims seduced us, because while revealing truth, they also concealed truth. [We looked at blast effects of nuclear weapons] & ignored the more lethal secondary & tertiary effects. [Taking these effects into account], there would be no place for survivors to go.
Recent images present facts more honestly. Fallout victims are portrayed so that we know their deaths will be painful, senseless, & disgusting. Perhaps the most truth to appear in recent years is nuclear winter, [with vast quantities of dust thrown into the air obscuring the sun, killing green plants & drastically reducing temperature]. There are also images of hope, [of life going on in spite of the bleakness of nuclear war’s aftermath]. Our most valuable image of hope is our earth’s image seen from space. Gazing upon our world seen from afar ought to shame us out of suicidal narcissism & offer us a sign of the planetary consciousness we need in order to survive.
Because we have a duty to the earth & other human beings, [we need to] rebuild a relationship to the bio-sphere on a symbiosis & stewardship model rather than parasitism & exploitation. Knowing our world’s truth & beauty will strengthen reverence for all life, including ours. Right action must include a re-dedication to healthy relationships with each other & with God. [Our] survival requires nothing less than fundamental reorientation.
Prospects—With addiction, as with sin, a cure is possible right up to the moment of death, for the problem adheres in the mind of the person more than in his external circumstances. The spiritual view enables us to appreciate the importance of individual moral choice as central and decisive. Science cannot give us moral advice or make our choice for us; all it can do is make clear the material consequences of our choice. If we believe in a living future, it may arise, but if we do not, we will surely perish. We do not get to heaven; we become heaven.
I said that the solution to our problem was unimaginable to us at the present time and that this lack of imagination constituted our problem. We have the capacity to imagine the broad outlines of any solution. [God posed the challenge long ago]: “I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore, choose life.” (Deuteronomy 30:19).
http://www.pendlehill.org/product-category/pamphlets
[About the Authors]—MARGARET GODDARD HOLT (1911-2004) Painter, writer, educator, community activist, leaflet-maker/distributor, prolific letter-writer, decades-long peace & justice vigiler. Born in Swarthmore, PA to Harold & Fanny Goddard, she absorbed the values of the Quaker Society of Friends, though never became a member. The passionate painter became the passionate activist, organizing, & marching with 1000's in the 1960s' social movements; she marched in the Poor People's Campaign of 1963 in Washington DC. Margaret was intensely engaged, present, fully conscious of both the beauty and the suffering of this world.
HAROLD C. GODDARD (1878-1950) He taught math for two years. At Columbia Univ. he received a PhD in English and comparative literature in 1909. He taught at Northwestern Univ. 1904-1909. From 1909-1946, he was head of the English Department at Swarthmore College. "Dr. Goddard [could lay a] book before us, and it presently became apparent that we were in fact studying and expanding all our range of possible understanding. Through ... literature he taught philosophy, psychology, and always the pursuit of meaning and the zest for life that great art is." Although often believed to be a Quaker, Goddard was never a full member.
Foreword—[There was] a time when the atom was considered the indivisible unit of matter; chain reactions were not part of everyday language. Rufus Jones' "Way of Contagion," the chain reaction of good, has always been a central principle of the Society of Friends. This pamphlet follows that tradition with Dr. Goddard's life sketch by his daughter Margaret, followed by his essay, "Atomic Peace."
[Life Sketch] of Harold C. Goddard (1878-1950)—I 1st think of my father quoting Blake: "I give the end of a golden string;/ Only wind it into a ball,/ It will lead you in at Heaven's gate,/ Built in Jerusalem's wall." He would play ["Fill in the Blank] with lines of poetry; gleefully we would fill in the missing words. His love of and devotion to children must have stemmed from his own happy childhood. Picking a daisy, he would say: "See its bright [sun-like] eye. But how did it happen, how did it decide, to be a daisy and not a buttercup? Is it the dirt? Finally, we came together to the mystery of the seed; the flower's secret was as safe as ever. Father would quote Blake: "Enthusiastic admiration is the 1st principle of knowledge, and the last." Father was a thorough New Englander and happy to be one. To have come from the tradition that produced Emerson, Thoreau, and Dickinson was a joy to him; he also had strong affection for Russian writers, and admiration for the Chinese. He would read Chekhov over and over, noticing points he had not noticed before.
Father was born in Worcester, MA. His father lived by very strict & narrow Puritanical morals & ideas, & yet was the gentlest & lovable of men. His wrath & excitement [was reserved for] politics & religion. Father's mother was many years younger than his father; she had a gay & lively disposition. She was the ideal grandmother. She believed that children are only children once & they should have a wonderful time while they can. It seemed father lived for 2 or 3 people; he got intense joy out of many different things, both large & small.
Harold also turned much of his natural supply of fire & storm into non-personal channels. As a boy he drew intricate, [intense] drawings of burning buildings, ranks of marching soldiers, & furious battles with exploding cannons; he had an early interest in Hell. He was busy with playing, carpentry, baseball, walking in the woods with his father. He was read to from classics and the Bible, but never went in for long hours of reading, and felt ignorant of great literature even after college graduation. [From early on], he had an interest in politics, government, in world affairs, and particularly in justice. Father and Mother [were passionate] about problems of justice & government. The happiest memories of his childhood were of visits to his grandfather's farm. Years later, at Swarthmore, he took perhaps 1,000s of walks in the Crum Woods, often before breakfast. The happiest memories of my childhood were walks in the woods with him; we both have a Golden Age to remember.
[Harold & Fanny met] when Harold was in 2nd grade. Mother's devotion to Father, began later than his for her, but wasn't exceeded by his. How slow & dull his 25 year courtship would sound to those who didn't realize its inner excitement or know his belief in self-discipline's power & anticipation's joy. No one could think of one without the other. A former student said that, as much as she learned about Shakespeare, in his seminar at our house, she learned even more about happy marriage. The most amazing thing about him was his understanding.
His essential quality was the ability to experience imaginatively, deeply, & fully without being swallowed up by experience. People at his bedside for his last illness said they were strangely comforted, as though it were they who were in need of encouragement. He was able to finish his book on Shakespeare after 12 years, just in time. He always maintained that true humor, as distinguished from mere wit and fancy, is closely allied to imagination. [He took pleasure] in puns, Falstaffian repartee, and stories with his intimate friends.
He had very little time for sociability in later years. His teaching, writing, & family kept him so busy that he learned that every minute is a pearl of great price. [He fell in love with literature while he studied & taught math during the day &] listened to Browning on Sunday evenings. At Swarthmore, he started the idea of small evening classes which became a Goddard tradition. Father acquired a deep mistrust of academic scholarship, of "pure intellect" research, which was a strong influence on his teaching. His students' essays about him reflected the theme that he never taught memorized and soon-forgotten "facts"; he always taught life itself. One student said: "I can't think of Dr. Goddard's teaching as over. I don't remember his classes for I'm in them now."
A man of such strong loves and deep convictions must necessarily have hatreds strong enough to balance them. Tyranny, I think, sums up, in one word, the essence of what he hated, tyranny with the fear and lack of freedom which it brings. As head of a department, he wanted an atmosphere of absolute freedom for each member to teach according to his convictions; he never forced an idea; he used authority as sparingly as possible. His Shakespeare book had as a theme the conflict between freedom and authority.
The last of "The River Duddon" sonnets by Wordsworth brings together Father's essential belief as well as anything so brief can: "I thought of Thee, my partner and guide,/ As being past away.—Vain sympathies! ... as I cast my eyes,/ I see what was, and is, and will abide;/ Still glides the Stream, and shall forever glide;/ The Form remains, the Function never dies;/ While we, the brave, the mighty, and the wise,/ We Men, who in our morn of youth defied/ The elements, must vanish—be it so!/ ... If something from our hands have power/ To live, and act, and serve the future hour;/ ... If as toward the silent tomb we go,/ Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent dower,/ We feel that we are greater than we know.// MARGARET GODDARD HOLT
Atomic Peace: Here was this atom in full breath,/ Hurling defiance at vast death.//
Foreword—The older we grow, the more we value experience above all knowledge-sources. I draw illustration & quotations ⅓ each from: the wisest men; my former students; children (the younger the better). [These 3 are in singular agreement].
[Introduction]—The atomic bomb is our time's outstanding fact—not just as a scientific triumph & military weapon but as a symbol of what "civilization" has brought us to, the ugly fact of the bomb's existence. How shall we meet the menace of modern scientific war? The many innocent scientists who contributed to it, a step here, a step there, weren't contemplating the end they were moving toward in an unconscious chain reaction. Our world hasn't enough honesty & goodness to be ready for atomic fusion. The answer to this menace is: a rejuvenated UN or world government; the spread of freedom & better living conditions for all; religion. World government may bring order, the opportunity for peace & yet not actual peace; likewise better economic & other living conditions. The atomic bomb, can be a diabolic device; nothing purely human ever defeated the diabolic. Jesus was always pointing out that evil men are more efficient in evil than good men with good. Jesus advised us to study evil, & then turn it inside out. How does this advice fit the present situation?
[A Force for Good]—WANTED: A force for good as potent as the atom bomb is for evil, creating a vast result out of a chain reaction of little forces, leading not to disintegration and destruction, but integration and creation. Life itself as revealed in the process of organic growth is such a force. It is only the difference in tempo between nuclear reaction and organic growth that conceals the likeness. Organic growth is a sort of slow explosion, not into ruin and chaos but into form and beauty. Men were intended to be as lovely as trees; but look at us.
This chain reaction may be seen on a smaller scale in the mental and spiritual life of man even more convincingly. What name do we give the force we find inside us? The words now used [have a confusion of meaning], as they do when you use the Word God. [Shakespeare is evidence of the great] force of creative genius. A former Swarthmore student said: "King Lear," is a miracle. There is nothing in the world that is not in this play. It says everything, & if this is the last and final judgment on this world we live in, then it is a miraculous world." It is made up of little things, a special sequence of syllables, sounds, words and images, binding them together into a harmonious explosion of catastrophic power.
[Imagination]—Imagination is creative thinking that is triggered by things like a moving experience of a Beethoven symphony, one that leaves you aware deep down of the contrast between the banality of your life, and the world into which Beethoven gave us a glimpse. It could provide motivation to turn your whole life upside down. It is revealed in great poetry and music, in a saint's life, in the unconscious wisdom of a child, or one living a simple, unworldly life. Imagination is the highest form of truth; it is the synthetic as opposed to the analytic power." The truth of imagination is part of holiness.
God bestows love as a rehearsal & pattern for the rest of life. The test of love's genuineness is that its glow extends beyond its central object & touches everything around him or her. Rupert Brooke wrote that imagination's secret "consists in just looking at people & things as themselves—neither as useful, moral, ugly, nor anything else; but just as being... I feel the extraordinary value, importance, & beauty of everybody I meet, & almost everything I see ... It's feeling, not belief ... I supposed my occupation is being in love with the universe." Imagination is power to see that beauty. It is vision to the point of seeing the invisible; it is the power to dream & to make the dream come true. Genius & childhood see the latent essence of life within [an object or person].
[Imagination's Attributes]—Imagination is not only love and vision—it is power. [Imagine a] child dancing a poem. [As a real or imaginary "witness," you will see] a miniature atomic explosion. [Imagine a bell, from motionless, dead silence, to wildly swinging up to the sky, ringing out a "frantic melody]." Every one is a ringing or unrung bell. Imagination has to do with the things that do not change for 1,000's of years yet are remade every morning. How is it that war breeds war, but an old story about war breeds peace? Imagination is love, vision, power, and wisdom. [The images of angels, bells, & Trojan horses are symbols]; symbols are the alphabet of the imagination. Symbols transforms the life energy into spirit. It is a bridge, a mediator between this world and another world that is real and yet not realized. The effects of symbols on the mind can be revolutionary.
[Setting up Chain Reactions]—Symbols and images are above all things capable of convincing and overwhelming the critical minds of American college students, and setting up chain reactions among them. There is a line from Anton Chekhov's Note Book: "A conversation on another planet about the earth 1,000 years from now. 'Do you remember that white tree?" One day a student I did not know and I were exchanging words about the campus' beauty. Suddenly she looked at me and asked, "Do you remember that white tree?" A chain reaction had been set up; from a white tree to Chekhov, to some friend of this girl, to her, to me, and back to a white tree. The power of imagination [is universal and] brings men together.
Jesus too spoke in images & the Kingdom of Heaven is simply his name for what the poets mean by imagination. The old-fashioned word for imagination was heaven. The word got so entangled with a crudely literal idea of a future life that it lost its power. Dostoevsky uses "heaven" in the sense of "imagination." Leaven, the image of millions of little bubbles, all acting in concert, [is a powerful image] of a creative kind of chain reaction. Tolstoy has a Russian peasant say in War & Peace, "Let me lie down like a stone & rise up like new bread."
[Bigness, Leaders, and Leaveners—The US believes in Bigness, the bigness of the publicity agent, the big advertiser. There is another kind of bigness that has grown out of [a connectedness of] a million small things, like an oak. William Penn, Jefferson, Emerson, Thoreau, and William James speak of this kind of bigness. Emer-son writes: "I think no virtue goes with size;/ The reason of all cowardice/ Is that men are overgrown,/ And, to be valiant, must come down/ To the titmouse dimension."
William James writes: "I am against bigness & greatness in all their forms; I am with the invisible molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, [seeping in] through rootlets & capillaries, rending the hardest monuments of man's pride, if you give them time. I'm against all big organizations ... national ones first & foremost; against all big successes & big results. [I am] in favor of eternal forces of truth which always work in the individual and immediately unsuccessful ways ... till history comes [long] after.. and puts them on top."
We are often told that this country needs leaders [to provide order]. When it is a question not of order but of peace what we need is not so much leaders as leaveners, who are a secret conspiracy of goodness against existing society. A lone spiritual saboteur working secretly may bring our salvation. Emily Dickinson writes, "Valor in the dark is my Maker's Code. Everyone, anyone, can enlist in this conspiracy, this spiritual war, and do one's fighting in the odd moments of his life in service to the state. If enough enlist, the war will be won.
[Nature, the World and the Soul]—Every year nature holds up an allegory of [millions of tiny victories leading to the conquest of mighty winter by spring. Who would guess when the 1st timid grassblades show green that Nature would have the power to overthrow Winter. The miracle is accomplished because every leaf and flower does its share; each is just busy being itself. Each one who is true to oneself is by that face true to the whole. The result is that great collaboration we call spring. It could be the same in the inner human world, if we only remember that [our inner world's] sun—the imagination—is on our side and all we have to do is to live out with its help the unique image in which we were created.
But the world is bent on not letting us do just that. It doesn't want us to ring our bell, [find our hidden angel, or fully live our lives]. Life becomes a battle to keep our inner selves alive, to guard our soul's inner citadel from the world's intrusions and [keep it whole]. Only the higher warfare of the soul—the old word for imagination—will end it, a warfare which Matthew Arnold described in Palladium [Excerpt]:
"... Backward & forward roll'd waves of fight/ Round Troy—but while [Palladium] stood, Troy would not fall.// In its lovely moonlight, lives the soul./ Mountains surround it, & sweet virgin air; Cold splashing past it, crystal waters roll;/ We visit it by moments, ah, too rare!// We shall renew the battle in the plain/ ... We shall rust in shade, or shine in strife,/ & fluctuate 'twixt blind hope & blind despairs,/ & fancy that we put forth all our life,/ & never know how with the soul it fares.// Still doth the soul, from its lone fastness high,/ Upon our life a ruling effluence send./ & when it fails, fight as we will, we die;/ & while it lasts, we can't wholly end."
[Introduction]—Our age has been characterized as the Nuclear Age or the Space Age, to celebrate [humankind's sudden command of time, space, and energy, in a fashion more absolute than one ever before dared to dream. The dark face [of this never-before-imagined control] is the age of mass, even absolute and universal, extermination and destruction. Instead of [going to] the moon, we must quickly find the human way out and reclaim this planet for humanity. Our national nuclear energy and weapons policy was conceived on false premises, and has been directed toward unsound, and ultimately inhuman and immoral objectives.
American national security has been built on a series of delusions. Our "pre-eminence" in scientific knowledge and technical skill reveals itself to be a childish vanity. Our rivals drew upon the same common reservoir of knowledge, which offered many outlets it was not in our power to control. Boasting of massive powers of retaliation have only hastened the USSR's development of similar powers. The military measures we took have proved infinitely more dangerous than the dangers they sought to prevent. [The folly of] ending political conflicts by mass extermination [has been revealed] to all but the invincibly ignorant.
What should cause the deepest concern at this moment is actually our moral backwardness. These 2 rival governments have at last collaborated in a suicide pact. Instead of schooling ourselves and all of humankind on the new personal responsibilities and the new collective disciplines that nuclear energy imposes, our leaders have shown no better grasp of the atomic age's problems than their Russian rivals.
Equal Blindness—The 1st step in overcoming Soviet Russia's advantage is to withdraw from this competition. The American & Russian governments have so far been equally lacking in morality. In their increasingly life & death struggle, each government has chosen the way of death: parity or superiority in the capacity for human extermination. Both governments are under the sway of stagnant ideas & obsolete behavior patterns, a stone age morality applied to an atomic civilization. Nuclear weapons make war's irrationality become total. The American way is now as dead as the Russian way, unless we both admit that the human way of life is the only way that matters. Our conduct has departed from the human norm. We have no sense of horror, or guilt. We act as if nothing unusual has happened. The specialized minds who model their patterns of behavior most closely on the machine, have trained themselves to eliminate the human factor from their thinking & conduct. These agents, thinking exclusively in terms of physical results, in utter disregard of the human elements, [risk extermination of humankind], & make the acceptance of their [self-destructive] dream the criterion of patriotism & sanity.
To Be Human Is—If we were sufficiently human, we would have recoiled from our self-made nightmare. To be human is to admit that we are limited and fallible, frail in all our powers, and prone to perpetual self-deception, pride, corruption, error, and delusions of infallibility. Those who recognize their humanness know that they are weak even when they seem strong. To remain human, we must look for the truth about ourselves in the taunts of our enemies no less than the rebukes of our friends. Even their most limited decisions must be made in humility, always subject to the challenge of contrary opinion and the correction of facts and events, along with avoiding protective secrecy or censorship. Those who guard their humanness know that it is not for any single nation or human agent to make final decisions as to the use of the powers of life and death. The truly sane know that they are not sane enough to wield these powers except [under strict] guidance and restraint.
So deadened has our moral sense become, by immersion in extermination myths, paranoid dreams, moral disintegration, & criminal delinquency, that the 1st stirrings out of this nightmare have been delayed. One can't be sure our countrymen are able to realize that our political & military program, based on "national interest," has become bankrupt. [The frantic funding] of weapons research & scientific/technical education is an imitative flattery of the Russians.] Perhaps we will carry this imitation into other parts of life, forfeiting the last vestiges of spiritual freedom & democratic control. "A man[/ nation] becomes an image of the thing he[/ it] hates." George William Russell. General Omar Bradley points out the futility of "devising arms ... both ultimate & disastrous," & goes on to say we must turn attention to saving mankind, if we are to have any prospect of saving ourselves.
No Scapegoats, No Saviors—Let us not seek either scapegoats or saviors. The guilt lies heavy on us all. America's errors have been made, by patriotic men earnestly serving their country, and hoping they also are serving freedom and democracy throughout the world. It has not yet been recognized that once nuclear weapons were invented, no nation was any longer at liberty to pursue its own exclusive goals. Even peaceful use of nuclear energy must take care not to upset the ecological balance and poison the planet.
Radioactive pollution now adds a far greater hazard than [even a century of] industrial pollution. In handling nuclear energy no one can afford to make guesses or miscalculations, for here, as nowhere else in life, error is irreversible & irretrievable for centuries. Our psychologically immature leaders, in their moral nihilism, have insulated themselves against the knowledge that would stop them from acting as they do. They pay lip service to the knowledge, but don't allow it to be taken in, or themselves to be influenced by it. How is the support of their policy as unanimous as media portrays it? [How is it as divided as we suspect it is]? Nobel Prize-winning scientists who take issue with the government have been denounced & besmirched falsely as special friends of Russia. Official censorship on political opinion also circumscribes circulation of vital scientific knowledge from those under security restrictions, & is another example [of Soviet style totalitarianism] that we imitate.
Compulsives and Submissives—Some Americans are alive to the disastrous nature of a genocidal atomic policy (called "massive retaliation" by John Foster Dulles) & our frozen-minded conduct of the cold war. The awakening people must face the stubborn resistance to reason put up by the dominant coalition of the Compulsives and Submissives. The Compulsive's fears, hatreds, suspicions, irrationalities, and morbid death-directed myths have been built into our normal institutional fabric. The conformity of the Submissives [with the Compulsives' policies] has been assured, through Madison Avenue, and Radio City, and through [the alluring distractions coming out of Detroit]. Then there is the young who are sometimes called the Silent Generation.
What is it that turns the young to imitate their elders, in acts of juvenile delinquency, acts no more senseless, no more horrible in their results, than adult acts we hypothetically call ABC warfare, that is Atomic, Biological, & Chemical extermination? The young's actions in growing up quickly, or committing random acts of murder & hotrod suicide are the young's response to the Big Bang, as they call the final act of nuclear extermination by which humankind & all life will perish. In the depths of their being, our children are more alive to reality; they are frustrated & silent, but they aren't fooled. A single, lone commander on one of the bases provocatively surrounding Communist nations, misreading the nature of an atomic accident or a series of lightning flashes & explosions, might trigger a full scale outbreak of nuclear genocide, based solely on his standing orders.
Pearl Harbor in Reverse—Hallucinations or misinterpretations of natural phenomena that produce UFOs can just as easily produce imaginary Russian planes, rockets, and nuclear explosions, under pressure of fear and suspicions; over-vigilance could produce a Pearl Harbor in reverse. The fate of the whole planet lies in the hands of any one of a few score weak, fallible people, vulnerable to illness, error, mental disorder, and the added burden of a tremendous responsibility. How far can human self-deception go in convincing themselves [that these centers of nuclear-war-waiting-to-happen are] monuments of security? How is freedom and democracy safeguarded by placing the power to make war in the hands of a few select military personnel?
Only those who had become too deeply involved in error to admit to themselves the inevitable consequences of what they are doing, would pretend that this unqualified gamble was in fact a prudent sort of life insurance. [To paraphrase Captain Ahab in Moby Dick]: "All [our] means are sane: [our] motives and objectives are mad." Freedom, democracy, security, health, wealth, the very capacity to become human would all vanish in the holocaust aimed at exterminating the enemy so that a remnant of our countrymen would temporarily survive. The vile gifts of radioactivity, which we would like to reserve for our enemy, will surely come back to us, if ever we commit this final infamy. The fact that there are now 3 governments equally capable of utilizing these weapons of extermination, triples how mad and diabolical these plans are.
The Moral Bulwarks We Destroyed—In pursuing a one-sided policy, we failed to rebuild ancient moral bulwarks we ourselves ruthlessly helped destroy. We have neglected elementary safeguards against the damage one-sided nuclear war would do to the fabric of organic life. Who are we to cast [aspersions] on Communist governments, their brutality & tyranny, while our own moral position remains exposed & vulnerable, shamelessly plain to all who care to see? Our chronic commitment to nuclear weapons, as a cheap manpower substitute, makes us unwilling to reduce armaments or pursue peace, except on our own inflexible terms.
As a 1st step back to sobriety & decency, let us acknowledge the menace under which humankind is now living wasn't Russia's invention. Our present danger springs from a fact that we have forcefully thrust from consciousness: the physical disintegration of the atom was accompanied by the modern human's moral disintegration (Italics from Summary Editor). Moral disintegration had nothing directly to do with atom bombs. In 1943, in order to minimize combat losses, & hasten the war's end, ["war"] authorities adopted the extermination bombing [of the general population] policy, once used only by fascists & Nazis, to terrorize them into early surrender.
Atrocious military conquerors of history never conceived of, & couldn't have done what was done [on both sides] in WW II. How many civilian deaths in WW II would have been done by hand before the executioners sickened of their task? The farther away human victims are, the easier it is to see them as objects, targets, not people. Overnight, "total extermination" wiped out restrictions & limitations built up over centuries. Dethronement of morality, & human callousness have cost us dear. Random extermination put us in the same class as the criminal & psychotic Hitler. American fire bombs killed 180,000 in 1 night in Tokyo before Hiroshima.
The Path of Nihilism—It was our decision to use the method of extermination that led to our one-sided, obsessive preoccupation with nuclear weapons. This moral disintegration vastly augmented the dangers of atomic power. If we have removed our inhibitions against mass extermination, we have also increased our fears that we as a nation are open to complete extermination. The silence and apathy of the majority condones this collective sin. Religious and moral leaders have shrunk from this subject, or even given their blessing to it. The highly respected Secretary Henry L. Stimson's stand on nuclear policy made it easier for other presumably virtuous people to close their minds to our moral collapse. How can we open our eyes wide enough to realize where we are and where we are going? How can we find enough human-heartedness to repent of our conduct in the past [and change course]? Our leaders are now so deeply sunk in the groove of pre-atomic politics, that they can imagine no alternatives. [In nuclear policy], our leaders' concerns must expand beyond protecting our nation and countrymen to protecting the planet and human race.
The truths about radioactive contamination are grave enough to call for slowing down our headlong program for exploiting these powers. The Atomic Energy Commission sanctioned continued nuclear testing, saying these tests, "only" shortened life by a few days, & would cause "only" 2,000 or less children/year to die from leukemia & cancer. Americans of sober judgement would ask: Who are these self-appointed judges, sitting in judgment on their own decisions, who sanction the robbery of life, [& decide "acceptable" numbers of days a life is shortened, & "acceptable" numbers of children dying from radiation-related illnesses]? This "tolerable risk" is in fact a lethal and intolerable certainty.
End of the Secrecy—Humankind's salvation lies in breaking through the formidable wall of secrecy and suppression, half-truths and outright prevarications erected by our government agencies. Our government has resorted to soothing reassurances based on scientific quakery attached to eminent scientists. Genetic effects and inheritable injuries from radioactivity won't be visible for 2 generations, so no scientific evidence yet exists as to long-term effects of radiation. These baseless reassurances are addled science and tainted politics.
If even peacetime utilization of nuclear energy is fraught with difficulties & dangers, then the concentration used in wartime would be genocidal assaults upon all life. Our security lies not in weapons, but in all having an equal stake in keeping alive & healthy. We need wisdom, self-restraint, & human sympathy on a global scale to safeguard the human race; no single nation or order of men, can claim capacity to act alone in these matters.
No Half-Measures—We shall not demolish atomic armament we have built by removing a few stones, or abandoning a few minor, exposed positions. No piecemeal bargaining, producing a few unwilling moves will bring salvation. The only way to escape our present death trap is to abandon it, forthrightly and unconditionally, as an affront to humanity. To assume we can't turn back, is to accept a narrowing field of vision, a deadening of human sensibilities, substitution of a single senseless act for the varied responses of a living organism.
We took the wrong turn because the right road was still only a faint track, the rude outline of a broad high-way that could not be used until our neighbors were brought together to help build it. [We must share the doing of those] things we have insisted on doing single-handedly, and often high-handedly, in futile conflict with Soviet Russia. Nothing [like nuclear radiation] can be assumed to be an exclusively national problem. Once supple and vigilant minds like Niels Bohr, Erich Fromm, Betrand Russel, Radhakrishman, Boyd Orr, and Albert Schweitzer are called into action, there will be no lack of visible alternatives to the power elite's policies.
About Face! Forward March!—Military & scientific specialists are incompetent to deal with problems on a human level, & so are the last people whose advice we can take. Before the vigilant men we mentioned earlier can help us, we must admit that the security we relied on never existed. Large-scale nuclear war threatens victor as well as victim. We must retrace & take our steps without making them conditional on what other nations will or won't willingly do. What we haven't been able to do by threats & compulsions, we may yet be able to do by fully manifesting our humanity. Before that, we shall have to win over our most formidable enemy: ourselves. We must limit & slow down exploitation of nuclear energies in every form, until adequate physical & moral safeguards are in place, including those against pollution and premature medical and industrial applications.
We must abandon the cold war, seek, & find goals & purposes we can share with the Communist-led peoples. We must recognize the same suspicion, arrogance, & indifference to moral principle in ourselves that we find in Soviet Russia. Our national duty at this moment is to make plans based on the realities of nuclear power, & addressed to the protection & salvation of humankind. We must take this road, even if at first we have to take it alone. No risk we will face is half as formidable as the hazards we live under every day while we postpone this duty. What spiritual influence will produce in the majority a dismissal of delusions of absolute power & seek a fresh start? What will overcome our leaders' [& our oppositions'] rigidity, suspicions & hatreds?
Divine Grace and Human Duty—The situation calls for a great collective illumination, made operative by a providential act of grace, an "on-the-road-to-Damascus" transformation. Neither earnest propaganda, nor prayerful beseechment, nor rational demonstration will of themselves produce the needed result. [Those who think a reversal of course by this nation's majority is impossible] presume to know in advance the limits of human potentiality. Though I am not a churchgoing man, life itself has taught me the meaning of God's grace. What capacities will humankind summon forth to cope with illimitable powers and dangers?
[Pamphlet author cites example of the reversal of the net birth rate's downward trend in the 20th century's 1st half as an example of an unlikely, instinctive & spontaneous change in a seemingly unchangeable trend].
Who [dares] to fix in advance the limits of human imagination, invention, intelligence and sympathy in confronting the present threat to humankind? Who [dares] predict what is or is not possible under circumstances that humankind has not faced before? Our business is not to [limit] what is possible. Ours is the humbler task recognizing what is necessary, and acting with all our power so as to bring it about, leaving the issue itself to God. The one thing necessary today is save the human race from the possibility of wanton extermination and biological degradation. And if we dare to speak and act on behalf of the human race, as brothers helping brothers, who will oppose us? The hour is late for finding the human way out [of wanton extermination and biological degradation]. It will not be easy to replace our selfish plans, limited purposes, diabolical instruments, with plans having truly human purpose ... and divine inspiration ... The mistakes we have made cannot be undone in a day, nor yet in a decade, even with a general awakening and transformation of purpose ... Let us seek "not our own profit but the profit of many, that they may be saved."
105. Private Testimony and Public Policy (by Phillips Ruopp; 1959)
Biographical Notes—Phillips Ruopp joined Friends in England while at Oxford. [After WWII, he was an active world federalist, & has participated in congresses of the world government movement]. He was associated with efforts to encourage [private investment in] community projects in less developed areas. His continuing concern with world order problems, & their bearing on his religious commitment are [shown] in this pamphlet.
[Introduction]—The competing images of world order advanced by the [US & USSR], interwoven with their rational assessment of national interest, may cause a world inferno. [In pursuing this policy], the intellect … is divorced from the concrete contemplation of the facts.” They speak of permissible doses & minimum losses. Edward Teller said: “For peace we need weapons & I do not think my views are distorted. I believe I am contributing to a peaceful world.”
To what extent are the minds of statesmen & strategists prisoners of their own & their enemies’ weapons systems? [They are] realistic in recognizing conflicting national interests. [They are fantasizing in the] view that peace can be preserved by nuclear weapons & that weapon technicians are contributing to peace. They are instruments of terror rather than implements of war. If the bomb were ever used, I hope it would kill me, because the moral situation would something that I could not contemplate. Nuclear weapons do not make war immoral; they heighten our awareness of the immorality of war.
Disavowal & Avowal: A Private Testimony—My private testimony is that war & totalitarianism must be disavowed absolutely. There are alternatives to violence in [confronting both]. The process of conscious political change has [3] aspects: dissatisfaction with existing political fact; comparison of facts with [possible] satisfactory conditions we have imagined; the choice of those means calculated to be most effective in reaching the end.
My assumptions about morality & freedom are: 1) morality is choosing that act which will serve the highest good in our relations with others. 2) highest good is found in [assessing our values & the consequences of our actions]. 3) all acts are potentially sources of conflict. 4) Freedom is the power of choice between different acts. 5) the free man has to choose between acts & accept the consequences of his action. If one has acted in the light of one’s convictions, one has acted morally. It does not necessarily follow that he is right & others are wrong.
My minority viewpoint assumes that the only way to avoid the choice between totalitarianism and war is to choose non-violent means. In a nuclear age every soldier must be willing to obey the order to fire nuclear missiles. Every potential soldier should ask: Am I willing to accept responsibility for obliterating a city, for contributing to massive suffering [and death]? He can only act morally if he can answer “Yes.”
The nature of nuclear warfare makes the question of using non-violent means in international relations one of great urgency. [Even a British career naval officer holds this view on non-violence]. I experience a just & living God who would have us work toward justice & love. We are at war with ourselves; the capacity for good needs to be cultivated. [The human quality necessary is in Latin caritas (charity or love). If a violent action doesn’t produce a violent reaction, but an expression of love for the aggressor, reconciliation’s 1st condition has been achieved. I can accept the regulated use of limited force according to rules acceptable to all; I cannot accept it when the rules have broken down. Then my testimony is that the force of love must substitute for lawful force.
I have no illusions that a majority of any country's people is willing to make such a commitment to non-violence. I have 2 responsibilities as a citizen in the minority: to be prophetic; to be creative. Prophets speak truth to power. I can speak [creatively], constructively to government & fellow citizens in a way that may contribute to the reexamination of basic facts & assumptions. In what follows, I am trying to speak truth to power.
The New Weaponry & International Conflict/Balance of Terror & Limited War—Americans have always wanted things we thought we couldn't get without war (e.g. independence; protection of ships; Union preservation; Germany & Japan’s containment. Conflicting interests in South Korea were temporarily settled by splitting that unhappy country at the 38th parallel. Henry A. Kissinger writes: “Peace cannot be aimed at directly; it is the expression of certain conditions and power relationships, [to which diplomacy must be addressed].”
Balance of terror is an apolitical perversion of the contemporary power struggle. Balance of power ensures competition without risk of destruction. Balance of terror is essentially irrational & even anti-political, useful only as a threat. Since nuclear weapons can be manufactured by small and large states, they tempt governments with nuclear arms to build them. Attempts to control the production, testing, [and unannounced use of nuclear weapons, will lead to the growth of new international institutions to execute and enforce new rules of conduct.
By the interaction, the interplay of power between sovereign nations, their sovereignty is effectively limited and international equilibrium maintained. In 1914, Britain was in trouble. In Congress some members advocated limited war in defense of our liberties on the seas but opposed a general declaration of war on Germany. Military and political strategy made limited war impossible. The post-war settlement imposed humiliation on Germany. In the 20th century the aim was to prove the enemy responsible for the war. The WWII doctrine was that of complete defeat, unconditional surrender through the use of virtually unlimited violence.
There seems to be a near-consensus that The US & Soviet governments have abandoned the notion that nuclear warfare is a practical instrument of policy. [Consequently] the “balance of terror” has set limits on the use of power by either side, though we have painful doubts about the stability of the framework. Where force is thrown against force the “cold war” becomes hot even though still limited. [In the stalemate that now exists] the threat of direct reprisal is inadequate except in the ultimate sense. There is a growing demand for rapid-response, tactical forces, & the insistence that they be kept clearly distinct from strategic forces. [Limited war is at best an awkward transition] from the 19th century’s world order to some future order & new relations between powers.
The Character of the Totalitarian Challenge—The Soviet Union exploits Western technology to [convert from agricultural to industrial dominance]. They exploit [and redefine] Western slogans to enlist the loyalty of masses inside and outside the USSR. The architects of the Soviet structure believed wars to be part of the inevitable process of capitalism’s collapse. With the threat of nuclear retaliation, they base their foreign policy on a truce with the West within which limited war for limited ends can be waged. The internal strains on the Soviet System are not sufficient to cause it to break down. George Kennan sees our containment policy as a way to gain bargaining power which in time might lead to negotiations for disengagement.
The Soviet Union wants to establish & maintain a wall of buffer states to keep hostile powers at a distance. Because of their determination to remain militarily neutral & to uphold their integrity, Finland & Austria live perilously but independently. The Soviets, moved by their fears and by their doctrine of capitalist enmity, interpret the Western posture as aggressive rather than defensive. The Soviets continue to seek warm water routes to the high seas through the Black Sea. The Soviet Union feels it has a mission to impose revolutionary values on other peoples. And there is the sheer desire of those who are powerful to become more powerful.
Soviet aggression follows the line of least resistance, focusing on the underdeveloped countries, where stable governments are difficult to achieve. The Soviets can take advantage of antipathy toward the West, social and economic needs, and weakness. Nasser in Egypt does not have a consistent policy of economic development and social change. The number of owner-cultivators is growing at a snail’s pace. While repressing communists at home, President Nasser has sought their help abroad in his effort to unify the Arab world. Nasser rejects subordination while he accepts military, economic, and technical assistance from the Soviet Union.
Poverty is as dangerous to the West as Soviet power, because Soviet power feeds on poverty. The notion that nationalism can be mobilized without social content & political direction is an illusion. Another illusion is that the greatest danger posed by the Soviet Union is direct military attack. [The Soviets actually act indirectly by] aiding & encouraging native movements against vulnerable governments while preserving diplomatic correctness.
Public Policy: Long Range—How are we to respond to totalitarianism as a nation? Ideas adequate to this condition are desperately needed if American influence on history is to fulfill its early promise. Throughout history, government has been the most effective means of bringing peace. I believe world government should be an explicit long-range goal of American foreign policy, guiding whatever policies adopted in the meantime. This would have to be a federal union governed by a representative body in accordance with democratic principle.
Governments both evolve & are created. At some moment in the evolution of a society its government must be treated like a work of art; the aim must be the cultivation of consensus. Its maintenance depends partly on consent & partly on enforcement. The US government should promote all forms of regional & world cooperation that favors united action. [Existing] institutions should be encouraged. The more important they become as symbols of unity & the more experience we gain in cooperative action, the better prepared we will be to create more comprehensive and effective international institutions [and to] call for a world constitutional convention.
The time isn't ripe for a world constitutional convention, because the American public is not ready to merge its sovereignty with others, & the Soviet rulers are antagonistic. Western Europe’s interdependence with the rest of the world makes it desirable to belong to a decision-making body that includes the US & the Commonwealth. When the time is right, every effort should be made to include the Soviet Union in the world constitutional convention. A 2nd long-range aim of US foreign policy is a world program to raise living standards to a reasonable minimum [in terms of food, health, & shelter]. [For many], free society is a luxury if it doesn't provide bread.
Public Policy: Short Range—What short-range policies will contribute to the evolution of long-range conditions of survival in the nuclear age? 1st, a world development authority to provide the investment capital that is necessary to expand production, job opportunities, wages, & consumption. We need to only invest what can be efficiently used, the governments need to assess their birth rate, & their own effectiveness. Americans showing a preference for international action over bilateral action would prevent the repercussions of bilateral aid. It would challenge the Soviet Union to provide matching development funds. [Our recent efforts] at getting India & Indonesia to join the Western camp leave us charged with trying to buy what can only be freely given. [Better to give them aid they need] as an expression of human solidarity [without military pacts or propaganda].
2nd, reduction of conflict between the US & the USSR. While partial disarmament under UN control would have value, really effective control could only come from [world government]. Nuclear testing needs to be dis-continued. [Each step in reduction of conflict must be such that] each power believes that it gains as much as & loses no more than the other in concessions. An expanded UN Emergency Force could maintain border surveillance, interposing itself between hostile forces so that the status quo could be altered only through negotiations.
One proposal for disengagement is the withdrawal of NATO forces from Germany of Germany out of NATO, USSR out of Germany, Eastern Europeans out of the Warsaw Pact; borders would be guaranteed by the UN Emergency Force. How much independence will the nations of the neutral zone enjoy within the context defined by the powers gathered at its periphery?
Communist China is a fact of [great] importance for the future. Our government should recognize it de facto & stop opposing admission to the United Nations. We can negotiate with Communist China only if they are admitted to UN councils. The chief danger from the USSR is indirect aggression, wherever poverty & anti-Western feelings make people vulnerable to Soviet influence's growth through military aid, loans & technical assistance. I believe that we will have neglected responsibility as free men if we fail to challenge humanity [with a call to] political organization & economic development, with a short-range policy that leads towards [cooperation].
Conclusion: the Vital image—We need the image of an inclusive world order that transcends fragmented dreams of frightened men, imparting to them purpose & vitality. The man of imagination’s subjective valuations are objectified as they are tested and adopted by others. His testimony is justification enough for his life.
[Introduction]—The atomic bomb is our time's outstanding fact—not just as a scientific triumph & military weapon but as a symbol of what "civilization" has brought us to, the ugly fact of the bomb's existence. How shall we meet the menace of modern scientific war? The many innocent scientists who contributed to it, a step here, a step there, weren't contemplating the end they were moving toward in an unconscious chain reaction. Our world hasn't enough honesty & goodness to be ready for atomic fusion. The answer to this menace is: a rejuvenated UN or world government; the spread of freedom & better living conditions for all; religion. World government may bring order, the opportunity for peace & yet not actual peace; likewise better economic & other living conditions. The atomic bomb, can be a diabolic device; nothing purely human ever defeated the diabolic. Jesus was always pointing out that evil men are more efficient in evil than good men with good. Jesus advised us to study evil, & then turn it inside out. How does this advice fit the present situation?
[A Force for Good]—WANTED: A force for good as potent as the atom bomb is for evil, creating a vast result out of a chain reaction of little forces, leading not to disintegration and destruction, but integration and creation. Life itself as revealed in the process of organic growth is such a force. It is only the difference in tempo between nuclear reaction and organic growth that conceals the likeness. Organic growth is a sort of slow explosion, not into ruin and chaos but into form and beauty. Men were intended to be as lovely as trees; but look at us.
This chain reaction may be seen on a smaller scale in the mental and spiritual life of man even more convincingly. What name do we give the force we find inside us? The words now used [have a confusion of meaning], as they do when you use the Word God. [Shakespeare is evidence of the great] force of creative genius. A former Swarthmore student said: "King Lear," is a miracle. There is nothing in the world that is not in this play. It says everything, & if this is the last and final judgment on this world we live in, then it is a miraculous world." It is made up of little things, a special sequence of syllables, sounds, words and images, binding them together into a harmonious explosion of catastrophic power.
[Imagination]—Imagination is creative thinking that is triggered by things like a moving experience of a Beethoven symphony, one that leaves you aware deep down of the contrast between the banality of your life, and the world into which Beethoven gave us a glimpse. It could provide motivation to turn your whole life upside down. It is revealed in great poetry and music, in a saint's life, in the unconscious wisdom of a child, or one living a simple, unworldly life. Imagination is the highest form of truth; it is the synthetic as opposed to the analytic power." The truth of imagination is part of holiness.
God bestows love as a rehearsal & pattern for the rest of life. The test of love's genuineness is that its glow extends beyond its central object & touches everything around him or her. Rupert Brooke wrote that imagination's secret "consists in just looking at people & things as themselves—neither as useful, moral, ugly, nor anything else; but just as being... I feel the extraordinary value, importance, & beauty of everybody I meet, & almost everything I see ... It's feeling, not belief ... I supposed my occupation is being in love with the universe." Imagination is power to see that beauty. It is vision to the point of seeing the invisible; it is the power to dream & to make the dream come true. Genius & childhood see the latent essence of life within [an object or person].
[Imagination's Attributes]—Imagination is not only love and vision—it is power. [Imagine a] child dancing a poem. [As a real or imaginary "witness," you will see] a miniature atomic explosion. [Imagine a bell, from motionless, dead silence, to wildly swinging up to the sky, ringing out a "frantic melody]." Every one is a ringing or unrung bell. Imagination has to do with the things that do not change for 1,000's of years yet are remade every morning. How is it that war breeds war, but an old story about war breeds peace? Imagination is love, vision, power, and wisdom. [The images of angels, bells, & Trojan horses are symbols]; symbols are the alphabet of the imagination. Symbols transforms the life energy into spirit. It is a bridge, a mediator between this world and another world that is real and yet not realized. The effects of symbols on the mind can be revolutionary.
[Setting up Chain Reactions]—Symbols and images are above all things capable of convincing and overwhelming the critical minds of American college students, and setting up chain reactions among them. There is a line from Anton Chekhov's Note Book: "A conversation on another planet about the earth 1,000 years from now. 'Do you remember that white tree?" One day a student I did not know and I were exchanging words about the campus' beauty. Suddenly she looked at me and asked, "Do you remember that white tree?" A chain reaction had been set up; from a white tree to Chekhov, to some friend of this girl, to her, to me, and back to a white tree. The power of imagination [is universal and] brings men together.
Jesus too spoke in images & the Kingdom of Heaven is simply his name for what the poets mean by imagination. The old-fashioned word for imagination was heaven. The word got so entangled with a crudely literal idea of a future life that it lost its power. Dostoevsky uses "heaven" in the sense of "imagination." Leaven, the image of millions of little bubbles, all acting in concert, [is a powerful image] of a creative kind of chain reaction. Tolstoy has a Russian peasant say in War & Peace, "Let me lie down like a stone & rise up like new bread."
[Bigness, Leaders, and Leaveners—The US believes in Bigness, the bigness of the publicity agent, the big advertiser. There is another kind of bigness that has grown out of [a connectedness of] a million small things, like an oak. William Penn, Jefferson, Emerson, Thoreau, and William James speak of this kind of bigness. Emer-son writes: "I think no virtue goes with size;/ The reason of all cowardice/ Is that men are overgrown,/ And, to be valiant, must come down/ To the titmouse dimension."
William James writes: "I am against bigness & greatness in all their forms; I am with the invisible molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, [seeping in] through rootlets & capillaries, rending the hardest monuments of man's pride, if you give them time. I'm against all big organizations ... national ones first & foremost; against all big successes & big results. [I am] in favor of eternal forces of truth which always work in the individual and immediately unsuccessful ways ... till history comes [long] after.. and puts them on top."
We are often told that this country needs leaders [to provide order]. When it is a question not of order but of peace what we need is not so much leaders as leaveners, who are a secret conspiracy of goodness against existing society. A lone spiritual saboteur working secretly may bring our salvation. Emily Dickinson writes, "Valor in the dark is my Maker's Code. Everyone, anyone, can enlist in this conspiracy, this spiritual war, and do one's fighting in the odd moments of his life in service to the state. If enough enlist, the war will be won.
[Nature, the World and the Soul]—Every year nature holds up an allegory of [millions of tiny victories leading to the conquest of mighty winter by spring. Who would guess when the 1st timid grassblades show green that Nature would have the power to overthrow Winter. The miracle is accomplished because every leaf and flower does its share; each is just busy being itself. Each one who is true to oneself is by that face true to the whole. The result is that great collaboration we call spring. It could be the same in the inner human world, if we only remember that [our inner world's] sun—the imagination—is on our side and all we have to do is to live out with its help the unique image in which we were created.
But the world is bent on not letting us do just that. It doesn't want us to ring our bell, [find our hidden angel, or fully live our lives]. Life becomes a battle to keep our inner selves alive, to guard our soul's inner citadel from the world's intrusions and [keep it whole]. Only the higher warfare of the soul—the old word for imagination—will end it, a warfare which Matthew Arnold described in Palladium [Excerpt]:
"... Backward & forward roll'd waves of fight/ Round Troy—but while [Palladium] stood, Troy would not fall.// In its lovely moonlight, lives the soul./ Mountains surround it, & sweet virgin air; Cold splashing past it, crystal waters roll;/ We visit it by moments, ah, too rare!// We shall renew the battle in the plain/ ... We shall rust in shade, or shine in strife,/ & fluctuate 'twixt blind hope & blind despairs,/ & fancy that we put forth all our life,/ & never know how with the soul it fares.// Still doth the soul, from its lone fastness high,/ Upon our life a ruling effluence send./ & when it fails, fight as we will, we die;/ & while it lasts, we can't wholly end."
http://www.pendlehill.org/product-category/pamphlets
97. Human Way Out (by Lewis Mumford; 1958)
[About Author & Pamphlet]—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990) was American historian, sociologist, technology-philosopher, & literary critic. He studied architecture, & had a writing career. Mumford made contributions to social philosophy, American literary & cultural history & technology's history. In Pentagon of Power, Mumford is stating implicitly, as others stated explicitly: contemporary human life's ecology is out of balance; its technical-ecology (guns, bombs, cars, drugs) is out of control, driven by forces peculiar to them & not governed by human needs. This pamphlet is from a speech at the Prayer & Conscience Vigil's closing in D.C. (1957). [Introduction]—Our age has been characterized as the Nuclear Age or the Space Age, to celebrate [humankind's sudden command of time, space, and energy, in a fashion more absolute than one ever before dared to dream. The dark face [of this never-before-imagined control] is the age of mass, even absolute and universal, extermination and destruction. Instead of [going to] the moon, we must quickly find the human way out and reclaim this planet for humanity. Our national nuclear energy and weapons policy was conceived on false premises, and has been directed toward unsound, and ultimately inhuman and immoral objectives.
American national security has been built on a series of delusions. Our "pre-eminence" in scientific knowledge and technical skill reveals itself to be a childish vanity. Our rivals drew upon the same common reservoir of knowledge, which offered many outlets it was not in our power to control. Boasting of massive powers of retaliation have only hastened the USSR's development of similar powers. The military measures we took have proved infinitely more dangerous than the dangers they sought to prevent. [The folly of] ending political conflicts by mass extermination [has been revealed] to all but the invincibly ignorant.
What should cause the deepest concern at this moment is actually our moral backwardness. These 2 rival governments have at last collaborated in a suicide pact. Instead of schooling ourselves and all of humankind on the new personal responsibilities and the new collective disciplines that nuclear energy imposes, our leaders have shown no better grasp of the atomic age's problems than their Russian rivals.
Equal Blindness—The 1st step in overcoming Soviet Russia's advantage is to withdraw from this competition. The American & Russian governments have so far been equally lacking in morality. In their increasingly life & death struggle, each government has chosen the way of death: parity or superiority in the capacity for human extermination. Both governments are under the sway of stagnant ideas & obsolete behavior patterns, a stone age morality applied to an atomic civilization. Nuclear weapons make war's irrationality become total. The American way is now as dead as the Russian way, unless we both admit that the human way of life is the only way that matters. Our conduct has departed from the human norm. We have no sense of horror, or guilt. We act as if nothing unusual has happened. The specialized minds who model their patterns of behavior most closely on the machine, have trained themselves to eliminate the human factor from their thinking & conduct. These agents, thinking exclusively in terms of physical results, in utter disregard of the human elements, [risk extermination of humankind], & make the acceptance of their [self-destructive] dream the criterion of patriotism & sanity.
To Be Human Is—If we were sufficiently human, we would have recoiled from our self-made nightmare. To be human is to admit that we are limited and fallible, frail in all our powers, and prone to perpetual self-deception, pride, corruption, error, and delusions of infallibility. Those who recognize their humanness know that they are weak even when they seem strong. To remain human, we must look for the truth about ourselves in the taunts of our enemies no less than the rebukes of our friends. Even their most limited decisions must be made in humility, always subject to the challenge of contrary opinion and the correction of facts and events, along with avoiding protective secrecy or censorship. Those who guard their humanness know that it is not for any single nation or human agent to make final decisions as to the use of the powers of life and death. The truly sane know that they are not sane enough to wield these powers except [under strict] guidance and restraint.
So deadened has our moral sense become, by immersion in extermination myths, paranoid dreams, moral disintegration, & criminal delinquency, that the 1st stirrings out of this nightmare have been delayed. One can't be sure our countrymen are able to realize that our political & military program, based on "national interest," has become bankrupt. [The frantic funding] of weapons research & scientific/technical education is an imitative flattery of the Russians.] Perhaps we will carry this imitation into other parts of life, forfeiting the last vestiges of spiritual freedom & democratic control. "A man[/ nation] becomes an image of the thing he[/ it] hates." George William Russell. General Omar Bradley points out the futility of "devising arms ... both ultimate & disastrous," & goes on to say we must turn attention to saving mankind, if we are to have any prospect of saving ourselves.
No Scapegoats, No Saviors—Let us not seek either scapegoats or saviors. The guilt lies heavy on us all. America's errors have been made, by patriotic men earnestly serving their country, and hoping they also are serving freedom and democracy throughout the world. It has not yet been recognized that once nuclear weapons were invented, no nation was any longer at liberty to pursue its own exclusive goals. Even peaceful use of nuclear energy must take care not to upset the ecological balance and poison the planet.
Radioactive pollution now adds a far greater hazard than [even a century of] industrial pollution. In handling nuclear energy no one can afford to make guesses or miscalculations, for here, as nowhere else in life, error is irreversible & irretrievable for centuries. Our psychologically immature leaders, in their moral nihilism, have insulated themselves against the knowledge that would stop them from acting as they do. They pay lip service to the knowledge, but don't allow it to be taken in, or themselves to be influenced by it. How is the support of their policy as unanimous as media portrays it? [How is it as divided as we suspect it is]? Nobel Prize-winning scientists who take issue with the government have been denounced & besmirched falsely as special friends of Russia. Official censorship on political opinion also circumscribes circulation of vital scientific knowledge from those under security restrictions, & is another example [of Soviet style totalitarianism] that we imitate.
Compulsives and Submissives—Some Americans are alive to the disastrous nature of a genocidal atomic policy (called "massive retaliation" by John Foster Dulles) & our frozen-minded conduct of the cold war. The awakening people must face the stubborn resistance to reason put up by the dominant coalition of the Compulsives and Submissives. The Compulsive's fears, hatreds, suspicions, irrationalities, and morbid death-directed myths have been built into our normal institutional fabric. The conformity of the Submissives [with the Compulsives' policies] has been assured, through Madison Avenue, and Radio City, and through [the alluring distractions coming out of Detroit]. Then there is the young who are sometimes called the Silent Generation.
What is it that turns the young to imitate their elders, in acts of juvenile delinquency, acts no more senseless, no more horrible in their results, than adult acts we hypothetically call ABC warfare, that is Atomic, Biological, & Chemical extermination? The young's actions in growing up quickly, or committing random acts of murder & hotrod suicide are the young's response to the Big Bang, as they call the final act of nuclear extermination by which humankind & all life will perish. In the depths of their being, our children are more alive to reality; they are frustrated & silent, but they aren't fooled. A single, lone commander on one of the bases provocatively surrounding Communist nations, misreading the nature of an atomic accident or a series of lightning flashes & explosions, might trigger a full scale outbreak of nuclear genocide, based solely on his standing orders.
Pearl Harbor in Reverse—Hallucinations or misinterpretations of natural phenomena that produce UFOs can just as easily produce imaginary Russian planes, rockets, and nuclear explosions, under pressure of fear and suspicions; over-vigilance could produce a Pearl Harbor in reverse. The fate of the whole planet lies in the hands of any one of a few score weak, fallible people, vulnerable to illness, error, mental disorder, and the added burden of a tremendous responsibility. How far can human self-deception go in convincing themselves [that these centers of nuclear-war-waiting-to-happen are] monuments of security? How is freedom and democracy safeguarded by placing the power to make war in the hands of a few select military personnel?
Only those who had become too deeply involved in error to admit to themselves the inevitable consequences of what they are doing, would pretend that this unqualified gamble was in fact a prudent sort of life insurance. [To paraphrase Captain Ahab in Moby Dick]: "All [our] means are sane: [our] motives and objectives are mad." Freedom, democracy, security, health, wealth, the very capacity to become human would all vanish in the holocaust aimed at exterminating the enemy so that a remnant of our countrymen would temporarily survive. The vile gifts of radioactivity, which we would like to reserve for our enemy, will surely come back to us, if ever we commit this final infamy. The fact that there are now 3 governments equally capable of utilizing these weapons of extermination, triples how mad and diabolical these plans are.
The Moral Bulwarks We Destroyed—In pursuing a one-sided policy, we failed to rebuild ancient moral bulwarks we ourselves ruthlessly helped destroy. We have neglected elementary safeguards against the damage one-sided nuclear war would do to the fabric of organic life. Who are we to cast [aspersions] on Communist governments, their brutality & tyranny, while our own moral position remains exposed & vulnerable, shamelessly plain to all who care to see? Our chronic commitment to nuclear weapons, as a cheap manpower substitute, makes us unwilling to reduce armaments or pursue peace, except on our own inflexible terms.
As a 1st step back to sobriety & decency, let us acknowledge the menace under which humankind is now living wasn't Russia's invention. Our present danger springs from a fact that we have forcefully thrust from consciousness: the physical disintegration of the atom was accompanied by the modern human's moral disintegration (Italics from Summary Editor). Moral disintegration had nothing directly to do with atom bombs. In 1943, in order to minimize combat losses, & hasten the war's end, ["war"] authorities adopted the extermination bombing [of the general population] policy, once used only by fascists & Nazis, to terrorize them into early surrender.
Atrocious military conquerors of history never conceived of, & couldn't have done what was done [on both sides] in WW II. How many civilian deaths in WW II would have been done by hand before the executioners sickened of their task? The farther away human victims are, the easier it is to see them as objects, targets, not people. Overnight, "total extermination" wiped out restrictions & limitations built up over centuries. Dethronement of morality, & human callousness have cost us dear. Random extermination put us in the same class as the criminal & psychotic Hitler. American fire bombs killed 180,000 in 1 night in Tokyo before Hiroshima.
The Path of Nihilism—It was our decision to use the method of extermination that led to our one-sided, obsessive preoccupation with nuclear weapons. This moral disintegration vastly augmented the dangers of atomic power. If we have removed our inhibitions against mass extermination, we have also increased our fears that we as a nation are open to complete extermination. The silence and apathy of the majority condones this collective sin. Religious and moral leaders have shrunk from this subject, or even given their blessing to it. The highly respected Secretary Henry L. Stimson's stand on nuclear policy made it easier for other presumably virtuous people to close their minds to our moral collapse. How can we open our eyes wide enough to realize where we are and where we are going? How can we find enough human-heartedness to repent of our conduct in the past [and change course]? Our leaders are now so deeply sunk in the groove of pre-atomic politics, that they can imagine no alternatives. [In nuclear policy], our leaders' concerns must expand beyond protecting our nation and countrymen to protecting the planet and human race.
The truths about radioactive contamination are grave enough to call for slowing down our headlong program for exploiting these powers. The Atomic Energy Commission sanctioned continued nuclear testing, saying these tests, "only" shortened life by a few days, & would cause "only" 2,000 or less children/year to die from leukemia & cancer. Americans of sober judgement would ask: Who are these self-appointed judges, sitting in judgment on their own decisions, who sanction the robbery of life, [& decide "acceptable" numbers of days a life is shortened, & "acceptable" numbers of children dying from radiation-related illnesses]? This "tolerable risk" is in fact a lethal and intolerable certainty.
End of the Secrecy—Humankind's salvation lies in breaking through the formidable wall of secrecy and suppression, half-truths and outright prevarications erected by our government agencies. Our government has resorted to soothing reassurances based on scientific quakery attached to eminent scientists. Genetic effects and inheritable injuries from radioactivity won't be visible for 2 generations, so no scientific evidence yet exists as to long-term effects of radiation. These baseless reassurances are addled science and tainted politics.
If even peacetime utilization of nuclear energy is fraught with difficulties & dangers, then the concentration used in wartime would be genocidal assaults upon all life. Our security lies not in weapons, but in all having an equal stake in keeping alive & healthy. We need wisdom, self-restraint, & human sympathy on a global scale to safeguard the human race; no single nation or order of men, can claim capacity to act alone in these matters.
No Half-Measures—We shall not demolish atomic armament we have built by removing a few stones, or abandoning a few minor, exposed positions. No piecemeal bargaining, producing a few unwilling moves will bring salvation. The only way to escape our present death trap is to abandon it, forthrightly and unconditionally, as an affront to humanity. To assume we can't turn back, is to accept a narrowing field of vision, a deadening of human sensibilities, substitution of a single senseless act for the varied responses of a living organism.
We took the wrong turn because the right road was still only a faint track, the rude outline of a broad high-way that could not be used until our neighbors were brought together to help build it. [We must share the doing of those] things we have insisted on doing single-handedly, and often high-handedly, in futile conflict with Soviet Russia. Nothing [like nuclear radiation] can be assumed to be an exclusively national problem. Once supple and vigilant minds like Niels Bohr, Erich Fromm, Betrand Russel, Radhakrishman, Boyd Orr, and Albert Schweitzer are called into action, there will be no lack of visible alternatives to the power elite's policies.
About Face! Forward March!—Military & scientific specialists are incompetent to deal with problems on a human level, & so are the last people whose advice we can take. Before the vigilant men we mentioned earlier can help us, we must admit that the security we relied on never existed. Large-scale nuclear war threatens victor as well as victim. We must retrace & take our steps without making them conditional on what other nations will or won't willingly do. What we haven't been able to do by threats & compulsions, we may yet be able to do by fully manifesting our humanity. Before that, we shall have to win over our most formidable enemy: ourselves. We must limit & slow down exploitation of nuclear energies in every form, until adequate physical & moral safeguards are in place, including those against pollution and premature medical and industrial applications.
We must abandon the cold war, seek, & find goals & purposes we can share with the Communist-led peoples. We must recognize the same suspicion, arrogance, & indifference to moral principle in ourselves that we find in Soviet Russia. Our national duty at this moment is to make plans based on the realities of nuclear power, & addressed to the protection & salvation of humankind. We must take this road, even if at first we have to take it alone. No risk we will face is half as formidable as the hazards we live under every day while we postpone this duty. What spiritual influence will produce in the majority a dismissal of delusions of absolute power & seek a fresh start? What will overcome our leaders' [& our oppositions'] rigidity, suspicions & hatreds?
Divine Grace and Human Duty—The situation calls for a great collective illumination, made operative by a providential act of grace, an "on-the-road-to-Damascus" transformation. Neither earnest propaganda, nor prayerful beseechment, nor rational demonstration will of themselves produce the needed result. [Those who think a reversal of course by this nation's majority is impossible] presume to know in advance the limits of human potentiality. Though I am not a churchgoing man, life itself has taught me the meaning of God's grace. What capacities will humankind summon forth to cope with illimitable powers and dangers?
[Pamphlet author cites example of the reversal of the net birth rate's downward trend in the 20th century's 1st half as an example of an unlikely, instinctive & spontaneous change in a seemingly unchangeable trend].
Who [dares] to fix in advance the limits of human imagination, invention, intelligence and sympathy in confronting the present threat to humankind? Who [dares] predict what is or is not possible under circumstances that humankind has not faced before? Our business is not to [limit] what is possible. Ours is the humbler task recognizing what is necessary, and acting with all our power so as to bring it about, leaving the issue itself to God. The one thing necessary today is save the human race from the possibility of wanton extermination and biological degradation. And if we dare to speak and act on behalf of the human race, as brothers helping brothers, who will oppose us? The hour is late for finding the human way out [of wanton extermination and biological degradation]. It will not be easy to replace our selfish plans, limited purposes, diabolical instruments, with plans having truly human purpose ... and divine inspiration ... The mistakes we have made cannot be undone in a day, nor yet in a decade, even with a general awakening and transformation of purpose ... Let us seek "not our own profit but the profit of many, that they may be saved."
http://www.pendlehill.org/product-category/pamphlets
Biographical Notes—Phillips Ruopp joined Friends in England while at Oxford. [After WWII, he was an active world federalist, & has participated in congresses of the world government movement]. He was associated with efforts to encourage [private investment in] community projects in less developed areas. His continuing concern with world order problems, & their bearing on his religious commitment are [shown] in this pamphlet.
[Introduction]—The competing images of world order advanced by the [US & USSR], interwoven with their rational assessment of national interest, may cause a world inferno. [In pursuing this policy], the intellect … is divorced from the concrete contemplation of the facts.” They speak of permissible doses & minimum losses. Edward Teller said: “For peace we need weapons & I do not think my views are distorted. I believe I am contributing to a peaceful world.”
To what extent are the minds of statesmen & strategists prisoners of their own & their enemies’ weapons systems? [They are] realistic in recognizing conflicting national interests. [They are fantasizing in the] view that peace can be preserved by nuclear weapons & that weapon technicians are contributing to peace. They are instruments of terror rather than implements of war. If the bomb were ever used, I hope it would kill me, because the moral situation would something that I could not contemplate. Nuclear weapons do not make war immoral; they heighten our awareness of the immorality of war.
Disavowal & Avowal: A Private Testimony—My private testimony is that war & totalitarianism must be disavowed absolutely. There are alternatives to violence in [confronting both]. The process of conscious political change has [3] aspects: dissatisfaction with existing political fact; comparison of facts with [possible] satisfactory conditions we have imagined; the choice of those means calculated to be most effective in reaching the end.
My assumptions about morality & freedom are: 1) morality is choosing that act which will serve the highest good in our relations with others. 2) highest good is found in [assessing our values & the consequences of our actions]. 3) all acts are potentially sources of conflict. 4) Freedom is the power of choice between different acts. 5) the free man has to choose between acts & accept the consequences of his action. If one has acted in the light of one’s convictions, one has acted morally. It does not necessarily follow that he is right & others are wrong.
My minority viewpoint assumes that the only way to avoid the choice between totalitarianism and war is to choose non-violent means. In a nuclear age every soldier must be willing to obey the order to fire nuclear missiles. Every potential soldier should ask: Am I willing to accept responsibility for obliterating a city, for contributing to massive suffering [and death]? He can only act morally if he can answer “Yes.”
The nature of nuclear warfare makes the question of using non-violent means in international relations one of great urgency. [Even a British career naval officer holds this view on non-violence]. I experience a just & living God who would have us work toward justice & love. We are at war with ourselves; the capacity for good needs to be cultivated. [The human quality necessary is in Latin caritas (charity or love). If a violent action doesn’t produce a violent reaction, but an expression of love for the aggressor, reconciliation’s 1st condition has been achieved. I can accept the regulated use of limited force according to rules acceptable to all; I cannot accept it when the rules have broken down. Then my testimony is that the force of love must substitute for lawful force.
I have no illusions that a majority of any country's people is willing to make such a commitment to non-violence. I have 2 responsibilities as a citizen in the minority: to be prophetic; to be creative. Prophets speak truth to power. I can speak [creatively], constructively to government & fellow citizens in a way that may contribute to the reexamination of basic facts & assumptions. In what follows, I am trying to speak truth to power.
The New Weaponry & International Conflict/Balance of Terror & Limited War—Americans have always wanted things we thought we couldn't get without war (e.g. independence; protection of ships; Union preservation; Germany & Japan’s containment. Conflicting interests in South Korea were temporarily settled by splitting that unhappy country at the 38th parallel. Henry A. Kissinger writes: “Peace cannot be aimed at directly; it is the expression of certain conditions and power relationships, [to which diplomacy must be addressed].”
Balance of terror is an apolitical perversion of the contemporary power struggle. Balance of power ensures competition without risk of destruction. Balance of terror is essentially irrational & even anti-political, useful only as a threat. Since nuclear weapons can be manufactured by small and large states, they tempt governments with nuclear arms to build them. Attempts to control the production, testing, [and unannounced use of nuclear weapons, will lead to the growth of new international institutions to execute and enforce new rules of conduct.
By the interaction, the interplay of power between sovereign nations, their sovereignty is effectively limited and international equilibrium maintained. In 1914, Britain was in trouble. In Congress some members advocated limited war in defense of our liberties on the seas but opposed a general declaration of war on Germany. Military and political strategy made limited war impossible. The post-war settlement imposed humiliation on Germany. In the 20th century the aim was to prove the enemy responsible for the war. The WWII doctrine was that of complete defeat, unconditional surrender through the use of virtually unlimited violence.
There seems to be a near-consensus that The US & Soviet governments have abandoned the notion that nuclear warfare is a practical instrument of policy. [Consequently] the “balance of terror” has set limits on the use of power by either side, though we have painful doubts about the stability of the framework. Where force is thrown against force the “cold war” becomes hot even though still limited. [In the stalemate that now exists] the threat of direct reprisal is inadequate except in the ultimate sense. There is a growing demand for rapid-response, tactical forces, & the insistence that they be kept clearly distinct from strategic forces. [Limited war is at best an awkward transition] from the 19th century’s world order to some future order & new relations between powers.
The Character of the Totalitarian Challenge—The Soviet Union exploits Western technology to [convert from agricultural to industrial dominance]. They exploit [and redefine] Western slogans to enlist the loyalty of masses inside and outside the USSR. The architects of the Soviet structure believed wars to be part of the inevitable process of capitalism’s collapse. With the threat of nuclear retaliation, they base their foreign policy on a truce with the West within which limited war for limited ends can be waged. The internal strains on the Soviet System are not sufficient to cause it to break down. George Kennan sees our containment policy as a way to gain bargaining power which in time might lead to negotiations for disengagement.
The Soviet Union wants to establish & maintain a wall of buffer states to keep hostile powers at a distance. Because of their determination to remain militarily neutral & to uphold their integrity, Finland & Austria live perilously but independently. The Soviets, moved by their fears and by their doctrine of capitalist enmity, interpret the Western posture as aggressive rather than defensive. The Soviets continue to seek warm water routes to the high seas through the Black Sea. The Soviet Union feels it has a mission to impose revolutionary values on other peoples. And there is the sheer desire of those who are powerful to become more powerful.
Soviet aggression follows the line of least resistance, focusing on the underdeveloped countries, where stable governments are difficult to achieve. The Soviets can take advantage of antipathy toward the West, social and economic needs, and weakness. Nasser in Egypt does not have a consistent policy of economic development and social change. The number of owner-cultivators is growing at a snail’s pace. While repressing communists at home, President Nasser has sought their help abroad in his effort to unify the Arab world. Nasser rejects subordination while he accepts military, economic, and technical assistance from the Soviet Union.
Poverty is as dangerous to the West as Soviet power, because Soviet power feeds on poverty. The notion that nationalism can be mobilized without social content & political direction is an illusion. Another illusion is that the greatest danger posed by the Soviet Union is direct military attack. [The Soviets actually act indirectly by] aiding & encouraging native movements against vulnerable governments while preserving diplomatic correctness.
Public Policy: Long Range—How are we to respond to totalitarianism as a nation? Ideas adequate to this condition are desperately needed if American influence on history is to fulfill its early promise. Throughout history, government has been the most effective means of bringing peace. I believe world government should be an explicit long-range goal of American foreign policy, guiding whatever policies adopted in the meantime. This would have to be a federal union governed by a representative body in accordance with democratic principle.
Governments both evolve & are created. At some moment in the evolution of a society its government must be treated like a work of art; the aim must be the cultivation of consensus. Its maintenance depends partly on consent & partly on enforcement. The US government should promote all forms of regional & world cooperation that favors united action. [Existing] institutions should be encouraged. The more important they become as symbols of unity & the more experience we gain in cooperative action, the better prepared we will be to create more comprehensive and effective international institutions [and to] call for a world constitutional convention.
The time isn't ripe for a world constitutional convention, because the American public is not ready to merge its sovereignty with others, & the Soviet rulers are antagonistic. Western Europe’s interdependence with the rest of the world makes it desirable to belong to a decision-making body that includes the US & the Commonwealth. When the time is right, every effort should be made to include the Soviet Union in the world constitutional convention. A 2nd long-range aim of US foreign policy is a world program to raise living standards to a reasonable minimum [in terms of food, health, & shelter]. [For many], free society is a luxury if it doesn't provide bread.
Public Policy: Short Range—What short-range policies will contribute to the evolution of long-range conditions of survival in the nuclear age? 1st, a world development authority to provide the investment capital that is necessary to expand production, job opportunities, wages, & consumption. We need to only invest what can be efficiently used, the governments need to assess their birth rate, & their own effectiveness. Americans showing a preference for international action over bilateral action would prevent the repercussions of bilateral aid. It would challenge the Soviet Union to provide matching development funds. [Our recent efforts] at getting India & Indonesia to join the Western camp leave us charged with trying to buy what can only be freely given. [Better to give them aid they need] as an expression of human solidarity [without military pacts or propaganda].
2nd, reduction of conflict between the US & the USSR. While partial disarmament under UN control would have value, really effective control could only come from [world government]. Nuclear testing needs to be dis-continued. [Each step in reduction of conflict must be such that] each power believes that it gains as much as & loses no more than the other in concessions. An expanded UN Emergency Force could maintain border surveillance, interposing itself between hostile forces so that the status quo could be altered only through negotiations.
One proposal for disengagement is the withdrawal of NATO forces from Germany of Germany out of NATO, USSR out of Germany, Eastern Europeans out of the Warsaw Pact; borders would be guaranteed by the UN Emergency Force. How much independence will the nations of the neutral zone enjoy within the context defined by the powers gathered at its periphery?
Communist China is a fact of [great] importance for the future. Our government should recognize it de facto & stop opposing admission to the United Nations. We can negotiate with Communist China only if they are admitted to UN councils. The chief danger from the USSR is indirect aggression, wherever poverty & anti-Western feelings make people vulnerable to Soviet influence's growth through military aid, loans & technical assistance. I believe that we will have neglected responsibility as free men if we fail to challenge humanity [with a call to] political organization & economic development, with a short-range policy that leads towards [cooperation].
Conclusion: the Vital image—We need the image of an inclusive world order that transcends fragmented dreams of frightened men, imparting to them purpose & vitality. The man of imagination’s subjective valuations are objectified as they are tested and adopted by others. His testimony is justification enough for his life.
Comments
Post a Comment