Perfect World
In a perfect world, we would not be talking about torture because the concept would be unthinkable.
In a perfect world, the quality of life of people in some areas of the world would not mean the exploitation and death of both people and the planet.
In a perfect world, people would not starve by the road while others own private roads.
In a perfect world, the color of one's skin, the sex of one's birth, the direction of one's affections; the religion one follows, the economic level of one's family, would not set one's course to security or exploitation.
In a perfect world, we would not fight endless wars over resources.
In a perfect world, no one would need an army or a bomb or an automatic weapon.
In a perfect world, people would not need drugs to buffer themselves from their existence.
In a perfect world, we would not be debating competing rights between fetuses and mothers because women would be seen as equal in consideration to the life that they bear; women would have autonomy in their lives; children would be valued by the community; there would be birth control for men and women; and ... and.
In a perfect world, when we said "life isn't fair" the unfairness would not be constructed by the society we live in.
But we don't live in a perfect world.
Some would argue that means we should just get along and go along.
For others, it is a farcical concept.
For some it means that we need to engage our hearts, minds, and hands in constructing a social existence that moves us towards a perfect world.
Will we achieve that world? Perhaps not. I am certainly not a utopian idealist. However, I am very aware that we have created the world we are in. We have created the cruelty. We have created the inequality and destruction. It was not visited upon us. It is not an "accident" or part of the "human condition."
Nope, we made it.
True, what we have made has also made us captives to a certain extent. We have become dependent upon destruction and exploitation for the survival of some at the cost of many.
However, it must be possible to break that captivity. It must be possible to change.
In fact, if we do not change what we have created, humanity may be but a footprint in the sand that was here and gone between waves.
In a perfect world, the quality of life of people in some areas of the world would not mean the exploitation and death of both people and the planet.
In a perfect world, people would not starve by the road while others own private roads.
In a perfect world, the color of one's skin, the sex of one's birth, the direction of one's affections; the religion one follows, the economic level of one's family, would not set one's course to security or exploitation.
In a perfect world, we would not fight endless wars over resources.
In a perfect world, no one would need an army or a bomb or an automatic weapon.
In a perfect world, people would not need drugs to buffer themselves from their existence.
In a perfect world, we would not be debating competing rights between fetuses and mothers because women would be seen as equal in consideration to the life that they bear; women would have autonomy in their lives; children would be valued by the community; there would be birth control for men and women; and ... and.
In a perfect world, when we said "life isn't fair" the unfairness would not be constructed by the society we live in.
But we don't live in a perfect world.
Some would argue that means we should just get along and go along.
For others, it is a farcical concept.
For some it means that we need to engage our hearts, minds, and hands in constructing a social existence that moves us towards a perfect world.
Will we achieve that world? Perhaps not. I am certainly not a utopian idealist. However, I am very aware that we have created the world we are in. We have created the cruelty. We have created the inequality and destruction. It was not visited upon us. It is not an "accident" or part of the "human condition."
Nope, we made it.
True, what we have made has also made us captives to a certain extent. We have become dependent upon destruction and exploitation for the survival of some at the cost of many.
However, it must be possible to break that captivity. It must be possible to change.
In fact, if we do not change what we have created, humanity may be but a footprint in the sand that was here and gone between waves.
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We may never have a perfect world, but we can always work toward a "better" world. A more just world. A more caring world.
May 17, 2009 11:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Rowan, my post is now up. I'll be interested in what, even from a professional point of view, you think. And maybe it will spur you on to another blog. :)
May 18, 2009 11:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
We work toward a better world Rowan. I took a look again at Solon who reorganized Athens. You can trace habeas corpus to him.
We just had a president who scoffed at that right. And by the way, The Conservative Supreme Court has been watering down that same right for decades.
We make strides and we fall back. Six Billion People is a lot of people. Three hundred million is a lot of people.
A lot of interests at odds.
Eleanor Roosevelt--cited in one of TheraP's blogs, worked for universal human rights, many listed on your list.
Oh well. We keep on truckin, Huh.
Good post Rowan
May 17, 2009 11:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
We can work toward a world more just and caring. We can, we do, and we have been. That's why there are so many of us old warriors still stumping around on creaky knees. :) Always there is hope.
May 18, 2009 12:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks to both of you for your thoughts on this.
I guess I think that we need to aim for perfection and know that it is a process and not a destination. If we aim for less, or expect less of ourselves, we shall surely get it.
One thing about 6 billion of us on the planet, is that it MAY present conflicting interests, but it also creates very little room for error.
There are some things that may cause conflict. Such as the mass migration that is increasing due to global warming and changing water resources (and land resources). However, if some were not trying to control the resources of the world, then current conflicts would be greatly reduced.
Many of the challenges we face today we face as a world. They impact all of us and so our interests should be the same if for no other reason - just to survive.
May 18, 2009 12:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
We face so many things that hurt our hearts and our minds, but the good part is we are still trying, like Flower said. Your poem is true in explaining the way mean people try to control everything, but remember YOU help create ideas and understanding.
Keep the faith sister, working to help change happen. Even a perfect melody goes up and down. All the bad things be gone.
May 18, 2009 1:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
The old warriors still sing. ;->
May 18, 2009 9:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
May 18, 2009 2:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
Very sweet poem PCA.
May 18, 2009 7:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for sharing that PCA.
May 18, 2009 9:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
The world is at it is.
And I am following my heart, trusting where to put my energy from one moment to the next. We each have a different calling, different parts to play. Though some of us who find ourselves here share some small part as we connect these dots.
May 18, 2009 4:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
A different, but true life scenario:
Remember the perfect world after 9/11, when the pundits were proclaiming that everything had changed and Americans had put aside their various squabbles and joined together as one patriotic nation under God? Suburban neighborhoods and urban streets sprouted flying American flags faster than fleas could multiply on a dog, outdone only by the number of tiny flags on the suits worn by politicians of any stripe.
We were so united that anybody who dared to speak against a war that was sold on the flimsiest of grounds was quickly shushed, including the journalists who should have investigated the unholy grounds. The Democrats in Congress were so paralyzed by the fear of being seen as anti-national security, that they authorized the war knowing it was a false answer to a question they were not really being asked.
Out of that united citizenry, that patriotic fervor that was so proudly proclaimed and promoted, grew the torture that gave us today's debates, exacerbated the already unequal disparity in wealth, increased the private roads and at the same time increased those lying beside the public ones and unleashed the power of an advanced army on the already betrayed and innocent people of another country. And to anybody that objected, they were labeled as anti-American or America haters. Dissent was no longer tolerated, never mind admired as a symbol of liberty.
I think my idea of perfect has changed. I prefer the quarrels in Congress - in fact, I wish there were more. If the media reports more than it has to, it's better than the alternative. And I no longer even remotely want consensus in our politics. If something is wrong, consensus is not what will make it right and I want no part of a compromise.
Other than that, Rowan, I completely agree. :-)
(PS. I know that you were not referring to this type of 'perfect world'. But I still shudder when I think of that post 9/11 'unity' and 'patriotism' that that led to so much evil. So thanks for letting me rant on this one.)
May 18, 2009 8:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
Good post Rowan.
May 18, 2009 10:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Rowan, I'm inclined to think that violence and cruelty are indeed part of the human condition, and that we didn't "create" them. The many forms of human-on-human violence are expressions of particular behavioral and emotional capacities and repertoires that exist within all of us and can be elicited under circumstances that are propitious and call forth those responses. These capacities can even be honed and perfected, as they are in the martial arts. And we have to admit that we have it within us to take pleasure in violence, either as spectacle or activity, just as we do in other common and natural human behaviors. We presumably have these capacities because they play a sometimes useful role in the ecology of human life.
However, that doesn't mean that human beings are collectively doomed to experience some fixed constant sum of violence in our societies forever. Violence is not some kind of "energy" for which there is a conservation law.
Violence is more like like vomiting. We didn't invent or create vomiting. Vomiting is something the human organism does pretty naturally, in response to certain kinds of bodily invasions and injuries. But whatever its beneficial role, it is generally unpleasant, has a variety of potentially harmful side effects and is something most of us would prefer not to have to do at all. And we see how that is possible: we can work to improve medical knowledge and public and individual health over time, and as we do vomiting may become a much less frequent occurrence. Although vomiting is a perfectly natural activity, it is something that could conceivably be, if not eradicated, diminished to the point of extreme rarity.
And I don't just mean we could imagine a world in which people frequently feel the urge to vomit, but have become skilled at "holding it in" in an unhealthy way. Rather, we could imagine a world in which we have done such a good job in arranging our environment so as to eliminate or create resistance to infectious and toxic agents that people rarely experience vomiting any longer, or even have much experience of the suppressed urge to vomit.
I think we can in the same way imagine a world in which human-on-human violence is much less prevalent, and where even the incipient urge to commit such acts of violence is much rarer than it is in our own society. We are a million miles away from such a world, but we can imagine it and take steps toward it. (Perhaps we could call this far-off world "Scandinavia".)
One unduly pessimistic attitude that gets in the way of this ideal of progress is the notion that violence is something less akin to vomiting, and more akin to uncontrollable seismic or meteorological activity, and that the only way to prevent its expression is to suppress it and oppress it: i.e develop a variety of social and individual tactics that combat the urge to commit violence with threats and fears of other counteracting kinds of violence, or tactics of holding our own or others' bodies in various kinds of confinement, strain, stress and constriction, which we practice as a result of having been trained to fear the results of our own expressions of our violent urges. That certainly is a large part of the way we prevent violence, and will no doubt for a long time remain part of the way we prevent violence. The fear some seem to have is that the prevalence and strength of the urge to commit violence is something over which we have no control, and that a society without violence would have to be a society racked with all sorts of neuroses and psychoses flowing from the inhibited expression of urges toward violence. Such critics say human beings need to engage in violence from time to time as a form of catharsis.
But this seems erroneous to me. The urge to commit violence is something over which we do have control. We know what it means to experience relaxed peace of mind and joy, states of mind that clearly differ from the state of mind of stressed inward suppression of violent urges. We can imagine a world in which the former states predominate more and more frequently, because we have arranged our social and physical environment, and trained our minds, in ways that prevent the causes of the urge to commit violence, and so there is no urge to suppress.
May 18, 2009 10:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks Dan for sharing your thoughts, and laying them out so well.
I would agree that everyone can participate in atrocity under the right circumstances. And violence may indeed a "reflex" to certain stimuli. However, like vomiting, it is rare unless there is illness.
Since we are using the vomiting analogy, it seems to me that violence has become more like bulemia than any natural urge. It is a symptom of an underlying illness. In the forms of mass destruction it sometimes takes, it seems based in an ability to divest the target or targets of any relationship to "us" - whoever "us" is.
May 19, 2009 12:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
In the forms of mass destruction it sometimes takes, it seems based in an ability to divest the target or targets of any relationship to "us" - whoever "us" is.
Is that really really any kind of abnormal or pathological state, Rowan? People do it all the time. Love and hate, warmth and coldness, attachment and detachment - these all seem like fairly normal human emotional attitudes we can have toward others.
I would suggest that when people engage in violence against others they typically don't see those others as having no human relationship whatsoever to themselves. Rather they view them as standing in the particular relationship of "enemy" as opposed to "friend". Or else they see the other aspects of their human relationship as subordinate to some more important means-end relationship, where the end is something of high value.
May 19, 2009 1:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
Maybe we have different experiences. I have had those in my life who I actively "hated." My foster parents for example who were as abusive as all get out. I would pray every time they were late getting home that they had died in a car accident, or would just disappear from my life forever. However, I had no "enemy" connection. I knew full well they were human beings with feelings and "issues." I did not experience a disconnection from them.
So, personally, they are the prime lived experience I have of "hatred." I guess I wished violence upon them. I never even "thought" violence at them. No fantasies of beating them up, or shooting them. So I guess I just don't connect to the naturalness of violence.
May 19, 2009 2:04 AM | Reply | Permalink