Category: War

Gareth Porter: Will Obama be truly post-Cold War? Transcript here.

Historian and author Gareth Porter discusses with Pepe Escobar the positioning of Senator Barack Obama relative to the power of the national security establishment in the US; the legacy of JFK; the feasibility of the US refusing to occupy Muslim lands; and what it takes to be elected president of the United States.

In Part I, I wrote about the Parable of the Tribes, which explains the historical spiral of human civilization towards increasingly war-like cultures and ever more lethal war technology.  We discussed how the self-destructive behavior of humans in society can look demonic.  In this part I want to discuss a spiritual technology for defusing belligerent behavior–empathy.

I notice that as the Constitution of the United States is increasingly perverted, mangled, and subverted, people are not saying the Constitution is responsible for lawlessness.  Nor do they clamor for dumping the whole thing.  To the contrary, we call for a re-enshrinement of the Constitution in its place of honor.  Many of us don’t have such clear-sightedness with respect to religion.  Seeing the brilliant insights of early sages mangled, manipulated, and co-opted has caused many to reject the basic ideas of religion along with the humans who perverted them.  Herein we refresh our acquaintance with an idea fundamental to every major religion–the Golden Rule–in the hopes that it provides a way out of our spiral toward extinction.

A people who plans, organizes, and executes the torture of human beings must consider whether they are properly called demonic or evil.  The word demonic implies agency from an autonomous power,  While modern science has thoroughly discredited the existence of mythical demons, recent and current self-destructive behavior of humans give the appearance of springing from some power whose interests are at direct odds with the crucial needs of the human race.  We will take a look at the parable of the tribes, an explanation of how ongoing war-culture pressures civilization to adopt increasingly self-destructive traditions, actions, beliefs, and symbols.  We will then look at the antidote, focusing on an idea reached separately by the wise men of widely varying cultures, all in the throes of war and instability:  the Golden Rule.  I will present the Golden Rule as neither a commandment from god nor as a merely moral imperative; rather, it can be seen as a technology of human psychology and spirituality.  Empathizing with others before acting may be the key to human behavior which can free us from our current accelerating death spiral.

A people who plans, organizes, and executes the torture of human beings must consider whether they are properly called demonic or evil.  The word demonic implies agency from an autonomous power,  While modern science has thoroughly discredited the existence of mythical demons, recent and current self-destructive behavior of humans give the appearance of springing from some power whose interests are at direct odds with the crucial needs of the human race.  We will take a look at the parable of the tribes, an explanation of how ongoing war-culture pressures civilization to adopt increasingly self-destructive traditions, actions, beliefs, and symbols.  We will then look at the antidote, focusing on an idea reached separately by the wise men of widely varying cultures, all in the throes of war and instability:  the Golden Rule.  I will present the Golden Rule as neither a commandment from god nor as a merely moral imperative; rather, it can be seen as a technology of human psychology and spirituality.  Empathizing with others before acting may be the key to human behavior which can free us from our current accelerating death spiral.