Long Peace, Not War

As a truly global civilization is born amid the throes of titanic upheaval, the dawn of this ‘Third Millennium’ – like the opening of the ‘third eye’ – is an inextricable mixture of hope and fear, love and pain, expectation and memory.

            It’s important to remember that peace is in danger of breaking out of the dog-eared, mildewed straightjacket of war that’s held freedom in its slavering maw for ten thousand years or more. It’s important to realise that the reality of peaceful co-existence is still present in the world and that levels of violence have actually been receding for almost a generation. You wouldn’t realise it from the barrage of violence that sells, sells, sells, but humans are actually the most sociable of creatures almost everywhere, most of the time – or humans couldn’t possibly live together in the vast hives they are creating to share their dreams and shield them from their fears of the other.

            Peace actually predominates.

            That said, there are always some who wish it otherwise.

            As we evolve toward a global governance that promotes unity within diversity, some will believe themselves ‘losers’ if they can’t have it all themselves – some families and clans, some governments (governed mints), some fundamentalists (more mental than fun), some corporate (and discorporate) entities.

            Nation states can influence others in the world through diplomacy, economic power or naked aggression. Since the end of the phoney ‘cold war’ the US has placed itself squarely above ‘them’ – everyone else – by claiming the mantle of sole superpower status amid all the people of Earth. But its economic power has been waning since the mid-1980s when it became the world’s largest debtor (a single year after being the world’s biggest creditor). This has accelerated ever since, with astronomical foreign debts accumulated to cripple generations to come – if the current world order is allowed to continue in its present form. With the art of diplomacy all but abandoned, this is where the remaining power of the US – naked aggression – comes in. 

            Since the ‘80s the US has been the world’s largest arms producer and its economic fortunes began to slide with the demise of the last ‘credible threat’, the Soviet Union (United States in Russian). It takes a ‘long war’ to sustain US industry and prolong the agony for its sliding economy – and to equip it with the only large ‘battle-hardened’ military force in the world – even if its enemies are manufactured or far weaker. As time passes the West makes more and more enemies.

The eagle is a scavenger that only picks on smaller prey, pouncing from above, and so the US wages war from the sky – and now space. Do you think all those trillions were spent on ‘defensive space weapons’?

            And yet we all need to believe in a home of the free and the land of the brave. The United States of America inspired most of the people of the world for more than a century. Now there are new orders from the New World.

            So who profits? There lays the question to answer all others.

Now we’re in a world where we all sink or swim together, where it will take our utmost ingenuity, communication and compassion to survive and thrive and nurture the consciousness that must gel to take us all through the next thousand years and beyond. We must realise that the time of national ‘states’ has come to an end – the global situation is now far more fluid than static. It’s time for real global governance to begin, with a really democratic institution replacing the current version of the United nations – one in which each country elects its delegate, sending its head of state to represent it in the world forum.

This apparently small change can subtly yet radically transform the UN – and democracy itself. As my father always said, “Democracy is the worst possible system – aside from all the others.”

It’s time for us ALL to live in the land of the free and the home of the brave – as friendly, spiritual primates on mother Earth.

- R.A.

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