In Search of Kindness


By William T. Hathaway


Editorial disclaimer: William is a frequent contributor to this site, as I am sympathetic to his clear voice advocating for peace and spiritual wisdom. This piece is more pointedly political so I will insert a disclaimer with its publication. My brief critique is as follows:

While I agree with some of the underlying sentiments of the article, I take issue with the simplistic dichotomy of capitalism-bad / socialism-good, or the simplistic remedy (taking their wealth away and giving it to the workers), which sounds much like the Marxist-Leninist model Hathaway fairly criticizes. The “kinder and gentler” society he advocates is obviously laudable, but to equate that with the undefined and admittedly problematic rubric “socialism” is a stretch too far for my taste.

In the interest of free discussion of ideas, however, I’m posting the article as submitted, and invite further discussion from readers in the comments. –Nowick Gray


Now is the season when priests proclaim, “Peace on earth, goodwill towards men” and mainstream media soothe us with stories and images of kindness.

But why do peace and goodwill remain just dreams? Why is kindness so rare in the world today? Why is it limited to the personal sphere? Why is the wider world so cruel?

The root cause of this is capitalism, an intrinsically violent and harsh social-economic system that shapes us. By forcing people to compete for the essentials of life, it generates selfish, aggressive personalities. Individual accumulation is the priority rather than cooperative sharing.

But capitalism is not as harsh as the feudalism it overthrew, and feudalism was not as harsh as the absolute monarchies it overthrew. Humanity is very gradually progressing through revolutions to a kinder society.

But that won’t be achieved by being kind to the capitalists. We will have to inflict the greatest unkindness on them they can imagine: take “their” wealth away from them and return it to the workers who created it. The rich will fight that with all their power. So the system must first collapse before that power can be conquered.

Then we will be able to build real socialism, which has never existed before. The Soviet Union was a travesty of true Marxism-Leninism imposed by Stalin. He and his successors financially controlled the revolutionary parties in China, Vietnam and Cuba and forced this dictatorship onto them. The results are nothing to emulate.

Conservatives claim that socialism is impossible because it goes against human nature, which they see as inherently violent, individualistic and competitive. But they are confusing capitalist nature with human nature. Most anthropologists agree there is no fixed human nature. Even within capitalism, humans differ widely from culture to culture. Individuals have many potentialities that become developed or repressed based on culture and heredity.

Liberals claim that overthrowing the dominant order is an impossible dream. Seeing themselves as pragmatic realists, they seek compromise with the capitalists.

But fundamental social change has never been achieved through gradual reforms. Those just prolong the old system by pacifying the masses. It requires a crisis and collapse, then a revolutionary upsurge that removes the old order and builds the new. Capitalism is now starting to fall apart, so this century should be exciting.

We live in a turbulent time of transition to a peaceful and kind society: socialism. The best program I’ve found for getting there is the Freedom Socialist Party’s.

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William T. Hathaway’s books won him a Rinehart Foundation Award and a Fulbright professorship. His novel Lila, the Revolutionary is a fable for adults about an eight-year-old girl who sparks a world revolution for social justice.

My Dear Other

By William T. Hathaway

Loving the other through mutualities of hurt,

loving the other without understanding the other,

groping in darkness to find the other,

blundering towards and beyond the other,

fleeing at the sight of the other,

escaping from exile to greet the other,

yearning for and recoiling from the other,

two planets swinging in cross-orbit around the sun of our love,

a sudden glimpse and then gone

but ever returning,

always affirming,

Yes, this is our way,

there can be no other.


William T. Hathaway’s books won him a Rinehart Foundation Award and a Fulbright professorship in creative writing. His peace novel, Summer Snow, is the story of an American warrior falling in love with a Sufi Muslim and learning from her that higher consciousness is more effective than violence.

Taking a Sledgehammer to an Ant: The Madness of Brutality

by Mankh

There are those of an ilk whose minds and heartlessness have not changed. From a friend I learned that in 599 AD in Europe, grieving was banned. Recently I read the article, “Germany bans public grieving and solidarity with Palestine”.[1]

I have oftentimes experienced, and heard others agree, that bursts of anger are typically a cover for sadness. In other words, when bursts of anger don’t alleviate the angst, giving one’s self the space to feel sad and grieve often does. Perhaps what lies under the cover of the anger on steroids brutalities currently being afflicted on the Palestinian Peoples is a deep sadness, a sadness that Zionist Israelis are too cowardly to face. In my experience, it requires embracing the unknown to sit… and feel one’s way through an issue or an angst rather than trying to logically solve it — though there are times for that as well.

I won’t go much further with attempting to psychologize about terror and other battle tactics, rather use the example to explore the type of consciousness that is plaguing humanity and the sacred Earth from which each of us is fed, watered, and clothed, and the type of consciousness that can turn things around — for the truest consciousnesses have never wavered except by the wobblings of humanity. Or as Leonard Cohen wrote:

“God is afoot, magic is alive
Alive is afoot, magic never died
God never sickened
Many poor men lied
Many sick men lied
Magic never weakened
Magic never hid”

Or has there been a day in all of history that the sun did not shine somewhere? When the Earth did not provide food somewhere?

This is the type of consciousness I look to in order to grapple with the sadness — and yes, anger — at the consciousness that reduces cities to rubble and human beings to dust. Of course my personal bag of tricks will not directly bring peace to the Middle East… but if I can at least shed some light or echo the sentiments of others, then camaraderie can override despair and have a ripple effect of action.

The Middle East region is tangled with many Peoples and religions of which I may or may not agree on many things, but what I do know is that not allowing a People to be themselves is a form of extremist segregation, or in the current case, ethnic cleansing.

The Zionist Israelis show no remorse for considering and acting upon the Palestinians as “human animals,” as Defense Minister Yoav Gallant referred to them. This simple breach of logic and empathy is a root of the violence, but the bigger conundrum is how to stop such violence, how to break the spell, as it were, or perhaps more accurately, the adrenaline addiction whose extremes are numbness and brutality.
Compare the photos of the hollowed rubble buildings of Dresden, Gaza, and Syria.

THAT is the mentality, or lack thereof, of the perpetrators. Their consciousness is hollow and barren resulting in ballistic temper tantrums of which they show no remorse, thus do not grieve. They exist as shells, and the rubble shells they inflict on others mirrors their own consciousness.

The USEmpire and other countries financially support and are full-fledged behind such sledgehammering. But how many citizens of the USE will connect the dots come election time or the next opportunity to wave a flag for a holiday? How many will connect the dots that they are politely and patriotically asking a strung out addict to change, quietly supporting the addiction.
Off the radar of the play-by-play warmonger, mouthpiece, corporate news is a key bit of the current puzzle as to Israel & Co.’s brutality: natural gas in the Levant Basin: “Gaza’s maritime offshore gas reserves, worth billions of dollars,” according to a 2013 article by Felicity Arbuthnot.

“What is significant is that the civilian arm of the Hamas Gaza government has been bypassed in regards to exploration and development rights over the gas fields:
“The field, which lies about 30 kilometers (19 miles) west of the Gaza coast, was discovered in 2000 by British Gas (currently BG Group) and is estimated to contain more than 1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
“The Egyptian official explained that Israel required the start of practical measures to extract gas from the Gaza fields at the beginning of 2024, to ensure its own security. (Al-Monitor, October 22, 2022).”[2]

My bold, so as to highlight what is surely suspicious timing with regard to the attacks on and publicly stated intention to eradicate the population of Gaza, and without caring even if some Israelis are in the way of the prize.

Turning around
I picked two words, fascism and totalitarianism, so as to shed light on the situation and assist finding a way out of this mess.

Fasces “meaning “bundle”; Italian: fascio littorio is a bound bundle of wooden rods, sometimes including an axe (occasionally two axes) with its blade emerging… it symbolized a Roman king’s power to punish his subject…”[3]

“Carried before a lictor, a superior Roman magistrate, as a
symbol of power over life and limb: the sticks symbolized punishment
by whipping, the axe head execution by beheading.”[4]

The positive spin:
“The word fascio came in modern Italian political usage to mean group, union, band or league. It was first used in this sense in the 1870s by groups of revolutionary democrats in Sicily, to describe themselves.”[5]

Back to the negative:
As Alain Joxe explains in his book L’Empire du Chaos (Empire of Chaos, or translated book title, Empire of Disorder),
”…the definition of fascio: armed groups. They are paramilitaries,
they have special uniforms, they are militias.”[8]

Adding Prime Minister Nutanfauxjew citing the bible’s “a time for war” turns the fascism into theofascism.

People banding or bundling together without the violent axe or whipping sticks is a source of strength and camaraderie whatever one’s religion, spiritual path, or atheism.

Similar to “fascism” is “totalitarianism.” One definition of Totalitarianism: ”the political concept that the citizen should be totally subject to an absolute state authority.” Yet its, ahem, total opposite is shown with one root of “total” being “teuta-, Old Irish tuoth “people,” Old Lithuanian tauta “people,” Old Prussian tauto “country,” Oscan touto “community,” German Deutsch, Gothic þiuda, Old English þeod “people, race, nation,” Old English þeodisc “belonging to the people.””[7]

Headline, November 4, 2023:

“The Israeli army has escalated its aggression, targeting hospitals, schools, mosques, churches, bakeries, and all economic institutions in Gaza.”[8]

The People vs. the fanatically religious, violent, corporate state. The People wanting to live their lives and get along as well as possible (before 1948 they actually did, see The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Israeli historian, political scientist and professor Ilan Pappe), to eat, drink, have a roof, some work to do, time to play and the ability to practice whatever form of religion or spirituality serves their journey.

Yet when the State chooses to subjugate and dominate the People, the side-effects range from working five jobs to pay the bills to having to flee a homeland because a sledgehammer of brutality is hell-bent on eliminating the community of ants that refuse to play the State’s sick and lie-filled game of black-magic, to echo Leonard Cohen. At least it’s encouraging to see the masses of people in the streets around the world demanding a ceasefire.

If we don’t peacefully band together as human beings and with our non-human allies, in groups small and large, we will give the theofascists, the totalitarians, nazis, extremists,whatever one calls them, more of a chance to reduce human consciousness to the rubble of Dresden, Syria, Gaza, reduce to the scorched earth policy perpetrated on the forests of Turtle Island, the Amazon rainforest, and more recently, Lahaina.

NOTES:
[1] https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/10/23/germany-bans-public-grieving-and-solidarity-with-palestine/

[2] “Wiping Gaza Off The Map”: Big Money Agenda. Confiscating Palestine’s Maritime Natural Gas Reserves”

Video: “Wiping Gaza Off The Map”: Big Money Agenda. Confiscating Palestine’s Maritime Natural Gas Reserves

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasces

[4] http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fasces

[5] “Fasci Siciliani” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasci_Siciliani

[6] Alain Joxe, translated by Ames Hodges, Empire of Disorder,
Semiotext(e), 2002, p24.

[7] https://www.etymonline.com/word/*teuta- and The American Heritage College Dictionary: Fourth Edition.

[8] https://www.palestinechronicle.com/getting-bread-in-gaza-costs-blood-occupation-destroys-the-11th-bakery/

Mankh (Walter E. Harris III)
allbook-books.com