This is a time of very serious decision for all of us in this country, one has to re-evaluate the whole concept of political witness (turn off the TV it rots the brain). Here at this time, merely to make a moral judgement, to decide for justice and nonviolence and to make the decision known in some way, this is good. But it is also a kind of moral luxury and at times seems perfectly meaningless.
There is certainly the question of sustained non-violent action which has been very meaningfull in the past. We need to think beyond capitalism. Capitalism has a particular logic to it. That logic is based on competition; pitting people against each other - riches for the few and poverty for the many. It puts wealth and power in the hands of the few. It sends young men and women out to kill for Empire. That is the logic of capitalism. The first halting step towards freedom of the self is the acknowledgement of ones enslavement. If we do not recognise that we are slaves, we can never be free.
In his preface to Brave New World, Aldous Huxley wrote of an army of managers who without coercion, controlled a population of slaves who were perfectly mageable because they loved their servitude. "To make them love it" he wrote, "is the task assigned in present-day totalitarian states". The difference between the monkey in the zoo and the man in the street is that the monkey cannot be contained without physical restraint, while the man can be caged and shackled and whipped and exist in captivity until death within a prison without walls and still believe, at his last breath that he is free.
There is a great deal of of dangerously naive and irrational thinking or rather not thinking but just prejudice and emotion. I think the most dangerous in the world is the stupidity and moral blandness of world leaders today. They are blindly and absurdly of their moral flatness and they think that anything they do is in some way perfectly justified. ""Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." [Voltaire] Reverting to savagery but at the same time being cowards, they decide to avoid personal danger themselves. Knowing the working class are gullible, useable, they will use the workingslave as fists. Follow the flap.
Get together brothers and sisters and get up off your knees, refuse to go to hell - the hell of war. Light a lamp in your neighbours brain. Society is, and always will be as free as you make it. Have sense enough or pride enough to make it, or as tyrannical as the majority are meek enough to permit it to be. Conditions always express the will or lack of will of the majority.
For thousand of years we have stormed the world with cannons roar but never won a victory for the working class. Don't let the deception and manipulation get you. One must certainly try to act and make some sense out of the situation. On the other hand there are implications that are too deep for comfort. Do we have to live in a rather pitifull bastardized culture, vulgarized, uniform and full of elements of parody and caricature; what else is developing? It may be in a certain way interesting and even exciting. But also terrible.
Our values are on a daily basis corrupted. I certainly think that we need a much better world than the one we have at the moment. The greatest enemy we have to defeat is the hatred of the other. Power can can wipe out thousands, nations, the world perhaps, but it cannot destroy hatred. We can kill those who have killed us, but each of their dead and ours will be replaced many times by more potent strain of hatred.
We need to find more time. Everywhere people kill time or are killed by it. We need to read more literature. It introduces most individuals of any degree of resolve, to doubt. And once in doubt teaches them to act generously. The whole point is to educate people to doubt, to avoid the extremes.
As long as others inhabit the world, we must of course, temper our lives and actions so that they shall have an equal chance at their own freedom.
"Unhappy the land that has no heroes" says the first. "No" says the other, "unhappy the land that needs heroes". The words of two characters in Bertold Brecht's 'Galileo'.