War
has been defended as the necessary release for the depravity of human nature.
There is no depravity in human nature, but in the human artifice which distorts
it, and causes man to fear himself. Fear is the subconscious result of insufficient
self-realization. Self realization is the individual responsibility of every
man, and war is the result of shirking this responsibility by identifying the
self with the society, instead of identifying the society with the self. War
is the result of the inward conflict of a society, and the inward conflict of
a society is the result of the inward conflict of its individual members.
Peace
is attained when force given superfluous and destructive outward expression
is used in its own inward control. The real terms for peace are not settled
upon, but acted upon. The only valid peace movement is that which moves men
to outlaw war in their daily lives. The battlefront is right in front of us;
war begins where charity ends, and that is often in the home.
This
work is dedicated to the people of the world as a forcible and enforceable statement
of the causes and cures of war. It was written in the expectation that the mass
mind, so credulous to the well-phrased falsehood, will be as credulous to the
well-phrased truth. It was published anonymously, so that all may claim it as
their own insofar as they live its truth, and so many authors must remain nameless.
War
is man's violent diversion from his own self-division. It is the defense of
a society which, not having given human life sufficient dignity, dignifies taking
it; it is the defense of a society who's Institutions, having replaced individual
responsibility, assume that the individual is irresponsible, and so by means
of fear, seek to repress the depravity that fear itself creates.
The
Church has become the spiritual institution which fails in its duty to correct
man's faith. The school has become the mental institution which conditions man
to depravity. The State has become the moral institution which exists for the
repression of man's depravity. The military has become the Amoral Institution
of the society which releases that depravity which the State so ineffectively
represses. The Economy has become the material institution which exploits man's
depravity. It is based on the premise that man's resources are limited, while
his desires are unlimited, and that the situation, by manipulation, can be kept
this way. The economy's most lucrative manufacture is the public opinion that
eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, and eternal super-subsidizing of
armaments the price of eternal vigilance. The economy is the basic institution
of a society whose basic drive is material possession, for man strives to possess
matter when he does not possess what matters; material possession is an impoverished
substitute for self-possession.
War
has been defended as the defense of just causes. It is assumed that God will
be on the side of the just; but in war, there is only one side - the side of
destruction. All want God on their side, but who is on the side of God?
We
must come out from behind our barriers, reflecting the light of our common humanity,
and knowing that such naked light will not disclose the darkness of our natures,
but displace it; thus we shall reinforce, instead of our mutual wall, our mutual
will to peace. The fearful hatred which we do not feel we will not see in our
enemy, for the fearful hatred that he does not see in us he will not feel in
himself, and we need never use again the weapon of war. Trust, a calculated
risk, will bring forth good - uncalculated and incalculable.
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War is a disorder of enforced order
within a society whose institutions, having become their own end, are their
own mutual reinforcement. The fear which allows the individual to relinquish
his responsibility to institutions is that which allows him to defend their
status quo with blind ferocity. Such fear allows those who profit from the
status quo to maintain the status quo by playing on this fear in war games
The only unity of a society with
discord within is discord without, and the emergency dictatorship of the status
quo for which this discord without is a pretext. If gunfire cannot weld dissident
elements, it can shoot them down.
Thus, the poor and the youth make
soldiers and corpses of the first rank: the poor because they desire what
the rest of the society has; the youth because they do not. The poor threaten
the society as the embodiment of its false ideals accepted, the youth as the
embodiment of its true ideals forsaken. The first to die defending their country
from its enemies are those whom their country has deemed the enemies of its
status quo.
An enemy is a screen on which our
own depravity is projected and enacted; not one whom we defend ourselves against,
but one whom we defend ourselves by. (That which needs defending does not
deserve it.)
War has for centuries been defended
as the greatest means to end all wars. After centuries of wars to end all
wars, this defense is finally justified; with the technology developed from
centuries of wars to end all wars, this last century has developed the war
that can end all.
War has been defended as the greatest
catalyst to man's ingenuity, since some of his greatest technological breakthroughs
have come during war. War is not the greatest catalyst to man's ingenuity,
but the greatest result; for men, to war, have had to rationalize themselves
into directing their creative power for destructive ends - probably their
own.
War has been defended as that which
defends the future freedom of our children, when it is our children who die
without freedom of choice, defending their future freedom without their present
freedom to live. War cannot be defended as the defense of freedom, for life,
which it destroys, is the essential freedom, without which none other can
exist.
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