"In The Context Of 1,000 Years Of War" Is Short-Sighted

Maine's newest Senator Angus King appeared on t.v. as a pundit on why flying killer robots are a "humane" weapon.

Domination of airspace by flying robots is well underway, with citizens speaking up to resist.

A Maine wise woman, the activist/artist Natasha Mayers, appeared before the joint Senate and House Judiciary Committee in Augusta, Maine yesterday. She was ordered to remove her hat and the sign around her neck in order to remain in the hearing room. Apparently all those eyes looking at the committee members made them uneasy. They were hearing testimony on a bill to require police to obtain warrants before conducting surveillance by drones.

Dominating the airwaves that bring citizens their information has been the primary method of controlling populations. It is far more pervasive and, really, more effective than the use of brute force. Which is of course resorted to whenever deemed necessary. But force is often not needed as the constant messaging around the supposed superiority of violent methods -- and the reminders of who wields them -- are the very air citizens breathe in the 21st century.

School kids tell me every year that violence always wins. What else would they think growing up on literally millions of images selling them on the false idea that violence is stronger than love?

Let's take the Academy Awards as just the most recent example. As reported by blogger Allison Kilkenny:

the first lady bizarrely showed up surrounded by military service personnel in dress uniform. 

She declared of the Best Picture nominees, “They reminded us that we can overcome any obstacle if we dig deep enough and fight hard enough and find the courage within ourselves.” Of course, the nominees included Zero Dark Thirty and Argo, two propaganda films widely criticized for manipulating true events, and in the case of the former, outright lying by suggesting torture led to the capture of Osama bin Laden. 

Having the first lady—and by extension, the White House—present an award to a pool that included propaganda films was, at best, creepy.

I am here to testify that once upon a time, long before Angus' 1,000 year window of prevalent violence, there were cultures upon the Earth that revered nature and respected fellow human beings. These cultures did not have mass media, the Internet, films or even photography to share their vision of what it meant to be human. We do see some of their artifacts and we do still hear some of their shared wisdom in the form of oral traditions that were passed down through the generations.

One of the most fascinating civilizations (a word that signifies, not civility, but the presence of writing, public works, and surplus food storage among other accoutrements) is that of the Indus River Valley. The harvest goddess statue above is believed to be about 4,500 years old.  In what is now Pakistan and was once India, a culture that showed no evidence of violence or warfare flourished. It had toys, very advanced water and sewer infrastructure, and writing that has never been deciphered. It disappeared in the historical record several thousand years ago, but no one really know why. Flooding? Disease? Invasion? There is little evidence of any of these, so historians are left to speculate.

Voices that are silenced in the din of modern civilization are those that respect the Earth, revere life, and believe that mindful love and cooperation are far more powerful than violence. Those voices are rising now.

If we all come together and stop cooperating with the systems of violence, they will fall in a matter of days. But first, we must believe it is possible.