Anuvrat International Conference

Bernie’s Guide For The 21st Century

(draft)

Chapter ONE  “Chaos”

Gandhi:

“There is enough for everyone’s need, but not for everyone’s greed.”

Bernie:

Because humans have conquered many of nature’s powers,
Because humans do not know enough about Mother Earth,
Because the energy from fossil fuel is very rich and powerful,
Because humans have made the industrial economy most dependent on fossil fuels,
Because fossil fuels are now needed to produce and transport food, to produce and transport most of the products of society;
Because the population has grown to over seven billion people due to the energy from fossil fuel,
Because the resource consumption per capita exceeds the natural resources of the earth,
Because humans have not learned to work by nature’s law,
Because human evolution has consistently led to wars for natural resources and other advantages,
Because the United States has been consuming 30 to 40 % of earth’s natural resources while having only 5 % of the earth’s population,
Because India and China, each having 1.2 billion people, now aspire to the U.S. way of life as a standard of living,
The 21st Century is seeing wars over resources.
This way of life is leading to the 6th extinction in the 21st Century.
Now, chaos is happening.  (Ukraine, the Middle East, Africa, the United States.)

Explication: Modern economy is based on growth. Natural resources are limited. GDP must end and a new system developed. We must begin new way mobilization, no more “business as usual.”

World on the Edge, How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse, Lester Brown,
“Two Realities” Richard Heinberg, July 7, 2014, Resilience.org
“Energy And The Economy - Twelve Basic Principles” Gail Tverberg, August 15, 2014, COUNTERCURRENTS.ORG.

CHAPTER TWO  “Human Violence”

Gandhi:

“It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honored by the humiliation of their fellow beings.”

Bernie

It has been becoming clearer to me that humans do violence to others out of deep fear that they will loose their basic meaning, the source of their identity and livelihood.

Humans choose symbols for their worldview in order to define their way of life which they see as necessary. For them the symbols are reality, the truth, the way it is. In this sense symbols are cultures, religions, ideologies.

Humans evolved over millennia (40 to 100,000,000 years) from animal existence to beings with brains superior to other animals.

Evolution is still happening, enabling humans to dominate creation, including animal existence, existence which lasts forever intentionally. To insure this existence human identity groupings see themselves as superior to other identity groupings, therefore, having the right to dominate others, by violent force if necessary. With this sense of eternal superiority, the self image is honored in the minds of dominating identity groups.

It is all illusion.

Cultural anthropologist, Ernest Becker, claims that the motivation for human violence has not changed from ancient times, only the means for doing violence has changed.

Becker based his views on the basic reality: the horror of human existence as a puny being in the universe.

“The essence of normality is the refusal of reality. Philistinism; or fetishizaiton (constricting full view of reality); partialization of life … Humans aren’t built to be gods, to take in the whole world; they are built liked other creatures, to take in the piece of ground in front of their noses.” Denial of Death, Becker, p 178.

Gandhi saw every human as a person, as having the same being - mind heart, dignity - embodying the truth of all reality (“Truth is God.”) He had no enemies. He would die to change a policy, but would not harm another. Gandhi distinguished the laws of the jungle as violence from the “higher law” required to be human: “nonviolence.”

From ancient times peoples have grouped themselves around an identity, a meaning, (tribe, culture, religion, personal achievement, etc.) Superiority means blessed by the eternal.

Violence arises by using scapegoat, sacrifice, and denial to justify itself. 

Self-image in this sense can lead to humiliating others. The violence of our times is replete with examples.

Gandhi ultimately based his view on the Gita, his Bible, and always went to Chapter 2 for its core meaning. The last view points to “immortality” as his source of power.

“He is forever free who has taken
Out of the ego-cage of I and mine
To be united with the Lord of Love.
This is the supreme state. Attain thou this
And pass from death to immortality.”
Gandhi the Man, Eknath Easwaren.

“Love never claims, it ever gives. Love ever suffers, never resents, never revenges itself.” Ibid

(In addition to the works of Becker and many related to his thinking, I have studies the works of Robert Jay Lifton who studied the perpetrators and the victims of horrors from WWII to the present.)

“The great sin, the source of all other sins, is idolatry. Never has it been greater, more prevalent than now. It is almost completely unrecognized—precisely because it is so overwhelmingly total. It takes in everything. There is nothing else left. Fetishism of power, machines, possessions, medicine, sports, clothes, etc., all kept going by greed for money and power. The Bomb is only one accidental aspect of the cult. Indeed, the Bomb is not the worst. We should be thankful for it as a sign, a revelation of what all the rest of our civilization points to: the self-immolation of man to his own greed and his own despair. Behind it all are the principalities and powers whom man serves in his idolatry. Christians are as involved in this as everyone else.”  THE INTIMATE MERTON, p. 140.

CHAPTER Three  “Identity and Meaning”

Gandhi:

“Be the change you want to see in the world.”

Bernie:

To understand Gandhi’s meaning, his views about truth, love, and human identity must be studied.

Gandhi:

• Every person has dignity due to the person’s existential being.
• Satya –sat - means truth, reality, that which is.
• Human identity with truth is internal, within their very being, as an endowment.
• Sat goes to the ultimate truth, the ultimate reality, which is the source of personal identity.
• No one can grasp the ultimate with their senses because the ultimate is of a non-material quality.
• Swaraj expresses the core of Gandhi’s view of human dignity. Swaraj means self direction. The dignity of self-direction implies a duty to serve others. This is shared due to the root identity in reality.
• This is Love: recognizing and respecting the truth within one and all.
• Therefore, “change” is founded on truth and love. The desired change must be consistent with dignity. Truth, love must flow from a person’s internal truth.

In other words, “BE” “the change”: “Be” equals identity - one’s true self is each person’s objective. “Be” authentic, “BE” truthful.  This is like compassion.  “BE” compassionate. Com-passion means to “suffer with.” All change comes from truth and love.

CHAPTER Four  “Nuclear Weapons & Climate Crisis”

Gandhi:

“When I heard that the atom-bomb destroyed Hiroshima, I did not move a muscle. I said, Nonviolence is the only thing that the bomb cannot destroy. Unless humanity ends the Atom Bomb, it will be suicide for humanity.”

Bernie:

• The United States Government hid the filmed effects on the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
• The United States Government led the world into nuclear arms race with nuclear weapons.
• The United States and the USSR undertook a Cold War from 1950-1989.
• Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) was the stated posture of the Cold War.
• 60,000 nuclear weapons existed at the height of the war. Over 10,000 nuclear weapons exist today. (Over 2,000 at Sub Base Bangor in Washington State where I live.)
• After the destruction of the Twin Towers in New York City on 9/11/2001, the United States initiated StratCom with the policy of Full Spectrum Dominance.
• Now, Full Spectrum Dominance not only includes nuclear weapons and other high tech weapons, but includes “planet earth” as a weapon - i.e. chem trails, HAARP, geoengineering.

So, we now have Climate Change and nuclear weapons. Humans created each. Humans can turn them back. Damage is done. Will humans limit the damage before it is too late?

CHAPTER Five  “The Gap Between Gandhi’s Satyagraha/Ahimsa and the US Government policy of Full Spectrum Dominance”

Gandhi:

“Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.”

US Government policy: Full Spectrum Dominance
Economy, torture, conventional weapons, National Security intelligence, nuclear weapons, planet earth/geo-engineering

Gandhi: “My creed of nonviolence is an extremely active force. It has no room for cowardice or even weakness. There is hope for a violent man to be some day nonviolent, but there is none for a coward.”

StratCom: “Within months of the terrorist attack of 9/11, StratCom began undergoing a drastic makeover at the hands of the Bush/Chaney Administration. From its previously ‘unthinkable’ mission of nuclear holocaust, StratCom was tasked with offensively waging the White House’s “War on Terror”. The command now fields eight missions --- nuclear weapons; cyberwarfare; missile defense; global command and control; intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR); global strike; space; and combating weapons of mass destruction.” STRATCOM, The Most Dangerous Place on the Face of the Earth

(And, within the United States, the police are being militarized. i.e. Fergusson MO 2014)

Gandhi: “My India is the India of 700,000 villages.” The Spinning Wheel and poverty.

US Government: one trillion dollar military budget to militarily dominate the planet.