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Bob Scott joined propeace todayHi! I am Bob Scott. I heard Susan talk about the proposed Department of Peace at the Columbia, South Carolina, Unitarian/Universalist Fellowship yesterday at our discussion group, called "The Forum". I was most impressed! Our group asked some challenging questions, but Susan had ready answers. Perhaps I could summarize her contact with our group as a dialog: -------------------- Susan: Let's have a Department of Peace Us: That would be just one more government expense. Susan: The military budget costs 50% of the total federal budget. The Department of Peace would cost 2% Us: If you use the word "peace" no one will vote for it because the word is associated with the hippies and liberalism. Susan: That's letting the opposition define the context. We need to follow Lakeoff's advice in his book "Democrats and Progressives Can Win". Us: It'll never work. Nothing is ever accomplished by social activism. Susan: Nothing of real value has ever been accomplished in any other way! ------------------------- Or something like that. Anyway, Susan was very impressive. I am a retired clinical psychologist, former student of piano and conducting at the Juilliard School, an amateur mathematician and astronomer, builder of a 41-foot ocean-going ketch in my back yard (I lived aboard for ten years), and webmaster of The Truth Tree (www.truthtree.com) Susan has inspired me to create a forum on my web site to discuss and debate peace-related matters. The site has already a "Politics" board. I write "position statements" for each of my forums. One point I wish to make about peace in my proposed position statement is that the argument that mankind is doomed to perpetual warfare because of his basic pugnacity or sinful nature or instinctive aggressiveness . . . is just not supported by the facts. I hope to put in some anthropoligical material to help demonstrate that war happens for reasons and that peace can be maintained if anyone is paying attention. I will point out that Greenville and Spartanburg (two cities in my state of South Carolina) have never been at war. Nor has South Carolina ever been at war with Georgia. Stuff like that. I doubt I'll regularly blog here. Too much on my plate elsewhere!
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welcome, and thanks
Hi Bob. Thanks for joining our network. I like your summary of the discussion at the Forum in Columbia. I've known Susan for decades and she has always been quite sharp and on-point. She's been a real asset to propeace.net as an editor and frequent contributor.
I like your website, The Truth Tree, a lot. To those reading this comment: if the title intrigues you at all, go check it out. The site is of high quality and the format is very interesting with the statements of position leading into each forum section. Your mission and spirit of discourse are similar to, although much broader than, those of propeace.net. I'll put a link to your site on the links page here.
Thank you for introducing yourself. Hope to hear from you again, perhaps to share some of your insights into how to usher in new and more enlightened modes of organization and governance?
Regards,
Jason.
Instinctive Aggressiveness
If the address with which you signed up is the address with which you register to vote, you are in SC District 6. Welcome to propeace, where your District matters but not your County because that's how we do national-level politics in this country, and our main agenda item is the passage of H.R.1673 (to be renumbered in two months).
I hope you'll visit often, even if you don't have time to blog. You do indeed have a full platter! I registered at Truth Tree for the sake of reciprocity, and when you write a position statement, you don't mess around! If I follow your recommendations, I have at least another 1 1/2 position statements to go before I should even post on a Forum.
I also hope you will follow through on your intent to have a propeace forum, although a synthesis of the Politics Forum and the Activism Forum serves the purpose pretty well. The "us" in your entry that said that peace is for unsavory characters like liberals and hippies speaks true, and that's why we use more active frames like "propeace" and "peacebuilding." If you think about it one way, peace activism is an oxymoron.
In your remarks, you began formulating your position statement by expressing your intent to debunk the notion that "mankind is doomed to perpetual warfare because of his basic pugnacity or sinful nature or instinctive aggressiveness." There are important distinctions to be made among the nature of these arguments. While I would argue that "basic pugnacity" and "sinful nature" may be readily dismissed as straw men, the instinct for aggressiveness is something else again. Our challenge is to find the way to channel that aggressiveness - to find appropriate outlets until non-violence becomes reflexive. Non-violent conflict resolution takes work - emotional work. Aggressiveness is; whether it is instinctive or learned is irrelevant.
Before you publish your position statement, I hope you will read a few of the remarks I've made here at propeace on this topic. "A Parable of Two Trees" comes immediately to mind, as well as the Comments to two blog entries by Jason White titled "'Independence Day'" and "Declaration of Interdependence."
"Blue in a Red State"