Thinking Peace

Thinking Peace

by Michael Sky

How We the Peaceful

Can Wake Up, Connect,

Share Power, Get Healthy,

and End the War on Terra

Published by Michael Sky at Smashwords

Copyright 2007 by Michael Sky

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Contents

1. The Dangerous Logic of Domination: The Parable of the Tribes; Viral Dominism; Pandemic

2. The Dominist Manifesto: Might Makes Right Makes Might; With God On One Side; Still A Man’s World; Different, Therefore Less Than; The Tyranny of the Bottom Line; Competing Values; Secret Governance; The War on Terra

3. The Common Infection: Dominism Embodied; Gender War; Poisonous Pedagogy; The Family of Man

4. Bias, Denial and the Status Quo: Media Bias; Living in Denial; Political Denial

5. The End of Democracy: Cowboy Diplomacy; We the Silenced; Domocracy

6. Thinking Peace: The War on Everything; Waking Up; The Light of Awareness; The Best Disinfectant

7. Living Peace: Rational Defense; E Pluribus Unum; One People, Many Gods; Differently Equal; Gender Peace; For the Common Good; Humanature

8. Making Peace: The Cycle of Fear; Connect and Conquer; Talking Peace; The Parable Resolved

Acknowledgments

With gratitude:

to Andrew Bard Schmookler, Alice Miller, Niro Asistent, and Riane Eisler, for the core ideas;

to James Bertolino, whose poetry always turns my thinking toward peace;

to the folks at Lulu.com, for making self-publishing fun and easy;

to Anita Holladay, for her wise and incisive editing; to an unknown 13th-century wood carver, for the cover illustration;

to Penny and Lily, just because....

Preface

We gathered in the village green a few days after the attacks of 9/11 to offer our thoughts and prayers, to memorialize the dead, and to console the living. It’s a small town, so I knew most of the people who came that day, and all of the speakers. Yet as I listened to my neighbors struggling to bring meaning to that terrible time, I felt a growing disquiet.

I was immediately put off by all the appeals to patriotic pride.

Several speakers stressed that America had suffered through an evil like none the world had ever known and that the thousands who died deserved special standing in the history of human conflict. Moreover, they proclaimed that America’s response had been uniquely heroic: that the rush of emergency workers into the doomed buildings was a distinctly American act, as was the very depth and manner of our mourning.

But it was not only Americans who died on 9/11 and the continuing threat of international terrorism was obviously not just America’s problem. Chest-thumping proclamations of America’s greatness would strike many, friends and foes alike, as aggressive assertions of American dominance, inappropriate to the moment, and generally offensive. I simply could not understand the need to wave the flag at such a time.

Even more troubling were the calls for violence. Before any of the facts were in or any attempt had been made to understand what had happened—before we knew exactly who had attacked us and why—decent Americans were calling for violent retribution. No one mentioned that such vengeance would surely cause the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians somewhere else in the world, giving the decent people of that country good reason to answer with yet more vengeance.

As I listened my disquiet turned into the awful certainty that a new, especially horrific cycle of violence had been loosed on us all.

Internationally, 9/11 had invoked an extraordinary call for solidarity. We are all Americans! proclaimed a French newspaper, a sentiment that was echoed worldwide. For a fleeting moment we became one planet, united in pain and grieving collectively. It seemed possible that something good would ultimately emerge from those evil acts.

But most Americans doubted overtures of global unity and spurned offers of assistance. By insisting on American exceptionalism—none have suffered as we have or acted as heroically—we insulted and belittled would-be friends. By asserting American dominance—we will respond in our way, on our terms, and without reference to the concerns of others—we split the briefly uniting nations back into separate actors. By threatening with American military power—you’re with us or against us, and any suffering we inflict on others is justified beyond question—we pushed people everywhere down a path of ever-increasing violence.

The events of 9/11 had presented Americans with a clear choice: wage war or make peace. We could either set off to destroy other nations, killing thousands of non-combatants in the process, or we could join with other nations to do the hard work of making peace. Yet few considered the possibility of making peace, and most could not even imagine it. Thinking Peace is about that failure of imagination. Not just, Why are we so prone to violence? but Why can’t we even imagine living in peace?

Because we could not imagine making peace after 9/11, America dragged the entire world into an ever-darkening morass of violence and war. While all Americans share some responsibility for decisions made and actions taken, ultimate responsibility rests with American leadership, and especially with President George W. Bush. Beginning with his first post-9/11 speech, Bush has epitomized the dangerous logic and consequences of the wage-war mentality. Thinking Peace tracks the first few years of the Bush administration, showing how specific policies and actions invariably increased international tensions and made the world more violence-driven and war-mad.

Yet Thinking Peace was not written to bash the president.

Bush merely demonstrates tendencies that go to the heart of American culture. His presidency has thus provided an example-rich model for the wage-war mindset that I explore in great length.

I finished the first draft of Thinking Peace just before the invasion of Iraq and am writing this introduction three-and-a-half years later. In the time in between, America has endured an astonishing series of events: the whole shameful fiasco of the war on Iraq; the missing weapons of mass destruction; Abu Ghraib and other instances of American torture of its prisoners; revelation of the illegal wiretapping of American citizens; the swift-boating of John Kerry, followed by evidence of another badly-tainted election; hurricane Katrina; the suspension of habeas corpus; a series of congressional corruption scandals, flanked by a series of corporate greed scandals; the continuing inaction on the threat of global climate change and other environmental issues; and, really, too many more to list.

Everything that has happened since the invasion of Iraq has confirmed the main points of Thinking Peace. As long as America maintains a militaristic, unilateralist, wage-war approach toward international conflicts, the world will suffer through increasing violence and unending war. Mr. Bush’s global war on terror has only made us a more terror-stricken planet. The more America wages its war for national security, the more international insecurity it causes.

I should mention that Thinking Peace does not provide a solution to the war in Iraq. While the book describes several key steps for shifting as individuals, groups, and nations from waging war to making peace, they are for the most part actions best taken before conflict erupts into violence. It is disingenuous in the extreme to demand in the midst of an all-out war that those who opposed the war in the first place now demonstrate how to make peace. For wars rarely end in peace; rather, they end when one side runs out of the bodies, arms, money, and will required to continue fighting.

The way to make peace in Iraq was to let the pre-war sanctions and inspections run their course. Had we opted for genuine negotiations with Saddam Hussein, as opposed to name-calling and vilification, we could have avoided violence altogether and spared Iraq the horrors of invasion and civil war. There will not be another opportunity for real peace in Iraq until the occupation forces have departed and the Iraqi people are free to decide matters with their own best interests in mind.

Likewise, we will never win the global war on terror as long as we insist on thinking of it as a war. Waging war against terrorists only creates more terrorism in the world. Anti-terror military campaigns always terrorize innocent civilians, and of those who survive such onslaughts some will always feel justified in seeking vengeance.

Five years after 9/11, a gunman with a 20-year grudge walked into a one-room Amish schoolhouse and systematically executed five young girls before taking his own life. As the Amish prepared to bury their dead, they invited the wife and parents of the gunman to attend the services. Americans were astonished by their actions, but to the Amish it was a simple matter: only through such forgiveness could the living hope to move forward in peace. Anything less than such forgiveness and, especially, any thoughts toward violent retribution would insure more heartbreaking loss and suffering in the future.

We end the cycle of violence by refusing to engage in violence. This requires a radical change of mind from thinking war to thinking peace. As thinking peace becomes our prevailing worldview, then we naturally start living more peacefully. When enough of us have learned to live in peace, then the long-overdue work of making a peaceful world can begin.

Michael Sky | February 2007

The War on Terra

Was there ever any domination which did not appear natural to those who possessed it?

—John Stuart Mill

Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.

—Peter Ustinov

Chapter One

The Dangerous Logic of Domination

The terrible thing is that once you stray from absolute nonviolence you open the door for the most shocking abuses.

—Howard Zinn1

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 shook America to its core and pushed its people into two distinct camps. Some pleaded the cause of nonviolence, asking that we look to the motives of the attackers, that we examine the prior actions of America that may have fed such motives, that we soberly pursue peaceful communication, negotiation, and reconciliation, while using minimal force to bring the guilty parties to justice. As has proven the case throughout history, only a small percentage of Americans advocated for such peacemaking.

The vast majority looked to their leaders to respond with overwhelming force. Their arguments ran the gamut from gaining vengeance and retribution, to displaying strength and acting with pride, to deterring future terrorists, to waging a worldwide crusade against evil. The country swiftly flared into war fever, with flags and ribbons flying everywhere. Good people struggled to sound righteous and reasonable as they spoke of the need to bomb third-world countries, even at the sure cost of innocent lives. More moderate voices were ignored, marginalized, and accused of hating their country.

In a speech before the full U.S. Congress in which President G.W. Bush announced a new war on terrorism, he made clear that America intended to force its solution with little regard for what others thought or wanted. He defined the causes of the conflict solely on American terms and without any reference to American culpability in events leading up to the attacks of 9/11. He issued ultimatums to the rest of the world: If you do not stand with us in this fight then you stand against us. After reading a list of demands to the people of Afghanistan, he warned, We will not negotiate.

This last, coming from a man who had already pulled his country out of several international treaties, was said with great pride. We will not negotiate, because we have no need to negotiate, no need for talk, no need to listen to the opinions of others, let alone any grievances. Only the weak and defeated call for negotiation. Deriving power from the bully pulpit, Bush strutted America’s position as global bully. He drew a schoolyard line in the sand and spit in the faces of any who dared to disagree.

For most Americans, the President’s speech struck all the right notes. He had seized the moment, stood tall, rallied the troops, and inspired national pride. Most importantly, he had made the case for swift and overwhelming force as the country prepared to answer its enemies.

Few Americans considered peacemaking responses. According to the prevailing mindset, negotiating with the terrorists would have dishonored those murdered on 9/11. Changing America’s behavior in any way that might suit the terrorists would have given credence to their actions and invited more of the same. Conducting an examination of the past, with an eye toward specific actions that may have caused other people to feel such anti-American hostility, seemed the worst of treason, as if it would absolve the terrorists while pointing the finger of blame at Americans. Meaningful deterrence demanded that America strike back first and talk later. Any fool could see that righteousness, justice, and the American way demanded an eye for an eye—we must do unto them as they did unto us and before they do it again.

America responded to violence the way powerful countries always do. In meeting violence with a call for even greater violence, America followed a pattern of geopolitical relationship that has driven our world for thousands of years. As the most powerful party in its conflict with a small band of religious fanatics, America moved to coerce, force, compel, and demand its way, to exert and strengthen its domination of all opposition at home and abroad. We will not negotiate, the President declared; America would define the issues, decide upon the best course of action, and then inflict her infinite justice, at whatever the costs.

I will be using the term dominism to cover this whole pattern of relationship. Deriving from the Latin dominari (to rule) and dominus (Lord), dominism refers to a way of resolving social conflicts according to which party can best force matters to its advantage. Like racist or sexist, dominist serves as both noun and adjective to describe dominism-driven individuals and behaviors. Dominists use their powers to force weaker groups and individuals into submission. In a dominist system, people make decisions and resolve conflicts not through democratic, moral, just, cooperative, or reasonable principles; rather, the dominant parties in a dominist system make all critical decisions according to self-serving criteria and then force others to comply.

In her groundbreaking book, The Chalice and the Blade, Riane Eisler introduced and has since written extensively about what she calls the dominator model. She explains that beyond conventional classifications—religious versus secular, tribal versus industrial, right versus left, capitalist versus communist—are two underlying ways of structuring relations, that she refers to as domination and partnership. They’re actually two opposite poles, with a continuum in between. At one end of this continuum is the dominator society. Dominator societies have existed throughout history and have the same basic plan, whether it’s Attila’s Huns, Hitler’s Germany or the Taliban’s Afghanistan. These societies consist of rigid top-down rankings, of superiors over inferiors, men over women, adults over children, in-groups over out-groups—rankings backed up by force and the threat of force in homes, in society, and between societies in chronic wars.2

This model closely corresponds to the definitions of power used by ecofeminist and writer Starhawk. Starhawk writes of power-over, the power to dominate and control others; power-from-within, the force of our own personal abilities and potentials; and power-with, the influence we wield among equals.

For our purposes, power-over describes the essential dynamic of dominist relationship, while power-from-within and power-with together give the full sense of partnership, cooperation, and what I shall refer to as thinking, living, and making peace.

All people wield certain forms and degrees of power manifesting as physical, mental, and creative strengths; personal wealth; legal, religious and political standing in the community; and access to and control of weapons and warriors. We act either as dominists or peacemakers depending on how we use our powers. We either join with others in the pursuit of common goals and the nonviolent resolution of conflicts or we exert our powers over others, using as much force as necessary in order to dominate events to our advantage.

Both sides in the current war on terrorism act from the same dominist underpinnings. The terrorists and the anti-terrorist warriors all believe that by inflicting sufficient terror they can force their enemies into submission. The attacks on America and the ensuing new war unfolded from the beginning as a classic dominist struggle with both sides resorting to as much violence as deemed necessary to achieve their goals.

All dominist systems begin with the threat and use of force. The force can range from the extreme violence of murder and war, to the moderated violence of slavery, rape, homeland destruction, and property plunder, to the more civilized tactics of monotheism, sexism, racism, crony capitalism, targeted law enforcement, partisan politics, and various societal sanctions.

The best dominist systems use as little force as possible to keep the underlings in line. Yet however velvet the glove, successful dominist systems always resort to terrorizing violence when necessary. All dominism ultimately derives from violence and inevitably involves the infliction of some degree of fear, ranging to terror, upon one person or group by another. Whenever the dominant party in a relationship uses violence or just the threat of violence to coerce behavior, the submissive or losing party has been terrorized.

When an employer makes clear the ability to fire any employee who does not follow orders, that softly-communicated threat conceals a big stick of potential terror: loss of livelihood, loss of self-esteem, loss of home, of family, and of life itself.

When a man makes clear his capacity to use his superior size and strength to force his way with a woman, he injects an undertone of dominist terror into all of their interactions. When a parent makes clear that a spanking will follow any childish act of disobedience, the whole family gets twisted into a terror-infected, dominist system. Though much of the dominism of modern culture has a civilized veneer, the reality of coercive force and violence always looms beneath the surface.

Dominism has been the prevailing mode of human social intercourse for thousands of years. It appeared first in early conquering tribes and has since defined the conduct of organized groups through times of empire-builders, crusaders, imperialists, inquisitors, conquistadors, colonialists, dictators, tsars, führers, and a thousand petty tyrants. Scanning human history, we see the heavy hand of the dominist in all times and places directing the course of events. The exigencies, demands, and abuses of dominism have come to color every aspect of human relationship and have shaped our world so thoroughly as to make violent struggle seem natural and inevitable. We consider it human nature that the strong resort to some degree of force whenever necessary in order to dominate the weak. Law of the jungle, we say. Might makes right, dog eats dog, to the victor belongs the spoils. Survival of the fittest.

This last bit of social Darwinism provides all the intellectual cover that modern dominists ever need. In the dominist worldview, people find themselves locked in a forever struggle over finite resources and only the fit—the strongest, the smartest, the richest, the most capable of forcing their way on others—will survive, indeed, should survive. The weak, the ignorant, the poor, and the passive deserve failure. Their passing only improves the gene pool. The meek should neither inherit nor bequeath.

Thus, in any conflict, the most dominant have every right, in fact, should feel compelled to pursue their best interests, at whatever the costs to others and with as much force and inflicting as much terror as necessary. Secular dominists see this as an eat-or-be-eaten fact of life and Law of Nature, beyond question or debate. Religious dominists hear God’s own voice whispering in their ears, assuring them that God is on their side, that they are doing God’s work, and that any harm to others merely fulfills God’s will. Dominists of all persuasions consider too much reflection on these matters as distracting and potentially weakening.

The Parable of the Tribes

Imagine a group of tribes living within reach of one another. If all choose the way of peace, then all may live in peace. But what if all but one chooses peace?

—Andrew Bard Schmookler3

The Parable of the Tribes is both the title of a book and the essence of an elegant theory of social evolution offered by Andrew Bard Schmookler. Schmookler focuses on the seeming inevitability of coercive power in human affairs. He defines power as the capacity to achieve one’s will against the will of another. The exercise of power thus infringes upon the exercise of choice, for to be the object of another’s power is to have his choice substituted for one’s own.4

Schmookler suggests that coercive power became an issue in human relations when the activities of differing groups began to encroach upon one another. He believes that steady increases in human population eventually brought individual societies, or tribes, into contact. Natural conflict arose over mutual needs and desires for land and resources. As the expanding capacities of human societies created an overlap in the range of their grasp and desire, the intersocietal struggle for power arose.5 Some societies, exercising their freedom of choice, began to infringe upon the free will of other societies. The society that could best infringe upon or dominate others tended toward more certain survival.

Schmookler’s question, What if all but one choose peace?, is the crux of the Parable of the Tribes. If, in the pursuit of conflicting desires, one society resorts to coercive domination, then every other society of necessity gets driven into dominist patterns of relationship. A peaceful society, under attack, faces three basic choices—to fight back, successfully or not; to retreat to new territories; or to passively surrender to either eradication or assimilation into the dominator’s culture. (We will explore a fourth choice, the ways of peacemaking, in the second half of this book). However, in every one of these outcomes the ways of power are spread throughout the system.6

The inevitable spread of power-over dynamics appears most obviously in the choice to