John F. Kennedy: We Must Avert Backing Russia into a Corner

THE most famous peace speech of President John F. Kennedy was a commencement address delivered at the American University in Washington, D.C. on June 10, 1963.  Selections from the speech particularly relevant to the present world crises are shown below:

I have, therefore, chosen this time and this place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth is too rarely perceived — yet it is the most important topic on earth: world peace.

What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children   not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women — not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.

I speak of peace because of the new face of war. Total war makes no sense in an age when great powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces and refuse to surrender without resort to those forces. It makes no sense in an age when a single nuclear weapon contains almost ten times the explosive force delivered by all the allied air forces in the Second World War. It makes no sense in an age when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be carried by wind and water and soil and seed to the far corners of the globe and to generations yet unborn. …

I speak of peace, therefore, as the necessary rational end of rational men. I realize that the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war — and frequently the words of the pursuer fall on deaf ears. But we have no more urgent task.

Some say that it is useless to speak of world peace or world law or world disarmament — and that it will be useless until the leaders of the Soviet Union adopt a more enlightened attitude. I hope they do. I believe we can help them do it. But I also believe that we must reexamine our own attitude — as individuals and as a Nation — for our attitude is as essential as theirs. And every graduate of this school, every thoughtful citizen who despairs of war and wishes to bring peace, should begin by looking inward — by examining his own attitude toward the possibilities of peace, toward the Soviet Union, toward the course of the cold war and toward freedom and peace here at home.

First: Let us examine our attitude toward peace itself. Too many of us think it is impossible. Too many think it unreal. But that is a dangerous, defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable — that mankind is doomed — that we are gripped by forces we cannot control.

We need not accept that view. Our problems are manmade — therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man’s reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable — and we believe they can do it again.

I am not referring to the absolute, infinite concept of peace and good will of which some fantasies and fanatics dream. I do not deny the value of hopes and dreams but we merely invite discouragement and incredulity by making that our only and immediate goal.

Let us focus instead on a more practical, more attainable peace — based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions — on a series of concrete actions and effective agreements which are in the interest of all concerned. There is no single, simple key to this peace — no grand or magic formula to be adopted by one or two powers. Genuine peace must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts. It must be dynamic, not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new generation. For peace is a process — a way of solving problems.

With such a peace, there will still be quarrels and conflicting interests, as there are within families and nations. World peace, like community peace, does not require that each man love his neighbor — it requires only that they live together in mutual tolerance, submitting their disputes to a just and peaceful settlement. And history teaches us that enmities between nations, as between individuals, do not last forever. However fixed our likes and dislikes may seem, the tide of time and events will often bring surprising changes in the relations between nations and neighbors.

So let us persevere. Peace need not be impracticable, and war need not be inevitable. By defining our goal more clearly, by making it seem more manageable and less remote, we can help all peoples to see it, to draw hope from it, and to move irresistibly toward it.

Second: Let us reexamine our attitude toward the Soviet Union. …

No government or social system is so evil that its people must be considered as lacking in virtue. As Americans, we find communism profoundly repugnant as a negation of personal freedom and dignity. But we can still hail the Russian people for their many achievements — in science and space, in economic and industrial growth, in culture and in acts of courage.

Among the many traits the peoples of our two countries have in common, none is stronger than our mutual abhorrence of war. Almost unique among the major world powers, we have never been at war with each other. And no nation in the history of battle ever suffered more than the Soviet Union suffered in the course of the Second World War. At least 20 million lost their lives. Countless millions of homes and farms were burned or sacked. A third of the nation’s territory, including nearly two thirds of its industrial base, was turned into a wasteland — a loss equivalent to the devastation of this country east of Chicago.

Today, should total war ever break out again — no matter how — our two countries would become the primary targets. It is an ironic but accurate fact that the two strongest powers are the two in the most danger of devastation. All we have built, all we have worked for, would be destroyed in the first 24 hours. And even in the cold war, which brings burdens and dangers to so many nations, including this Nation’s closest allies — our two countries bear the heaviest burdens. For we are both devoting massive sums of money to weapons that could be better devoted to combating ignorance, poverty, and disease. We are both caught up in a vicious and dangerous cycle in which suspicion on one side breeds suspicion on the other, and new weapons beget counterweapons.

In short, both the United States and its allies, and the Soviet Union and its allies, have a mutually deep interest in a just and genuine peace and in halting the arms race. Agreements to this end are in the interests of the Soviet Union as well as ours — and even the most hostile nations can be relied upon to accept and keep those treaty obligations, and only those treaty obligations, which are in their own interest.

So, let us not be blind to our differences — but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.

Third: Let us reexamine our attitude toward the cold war, remembering that we are not engaged in a debate, seeking to pile up debating points. We are not here distributing blame or pointing the finger of judgment. We must deal with the world as it is, and not as it might have been had the history of the last 18 years been different.

We must, therefore, persevere in the search for peace in the hope that constructive changes within the Communist bloc might bring within reach solutions which now seem beyond us. We must conduct our affairs in such a way that it becomes in the Communists’ interest to agree on a genuine peace. Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy — or of a collective death-wish for the world.

Source: John F. Kennedy, Commencement Address at American University, Washington, D.C., June 10, 1963.

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What Ended the Golden Era of Peace Activism (1810−1850)?

THE period from 1810 to 1850 can be truly called a golden age of peace activism in the United States and England. In response to the Napoleonic Wars in Europe and the War of 1812 in America, many articles and pamphlets began to appear that denounced war. From about 1815, calls appeared to for creation of local peace societies. Eventually hundreds of such such societies emerged, the most influential being the Massachusetts Peace Society, the London Peace Society and the American Peace Society.

The movement as a whole had many notable achievements, including getting serious attention by government officials, shaping public opinion, organizing large protests, and eventually sponsoring three international congresses. However after 1850, in both the US and England, the movement began to lose force and never fully recovered. Today relatively few people — even antiwar activists — are familiar with this important part of history.

The historian Merle Curti, in a book devoted to this movement, mentions several possible reasons why the movement effectively ended. These are of more than mere historical interest: they should be considered in relation to the need to create a similarly effective organized movement today.

Briefly, the reasons for the movement’s waning include:

Reliance on charismatic leaders. The main figures in the peace movement — for example Noah Worcester and William Ladd in the US — were driven by immense passion and conviction and were tireless workers. Ladd, in particular, sacrificed not only his fortune but his health in his efforts. When this generation of leaders died, the movement lost force. Such is probably the pattern of many social movements.

Aging membership. Along with this was a gradual aging of the movement’s original members. It couldn’t replenish its ranks by interesting younger people to join.

Disillusionment. In England the bloody Crimean War first shook activists’ confidence, and then war piled upon war. Some became disillusioned; others succumbed to the growing war spirit.

Conflict with other ideals. Curti suggests that nationalism and liberalism became stronger ideals than peace. These movements not only drew away potential antiwar activists, but (as in the case of nationalist revolutions) sometimes made war seem justified. This remains a consideration today, as many people whom one might expect to support the cause of peace consider things like “democracy” and “social justice” legitimate reasons for aggression.

American Civil War. The Civil War effectively ended the peace movement in the US. For many, slavery was considered an evil sufficiently great to justify war.

Indifference of churches. Despite the fact that the founders of the movement were Christian and, at least initially, based their position on Christian teachings, they were never able to interest Christian churches at large. Unfortunately, the same remains true today.

Pendulum effect. Partly this occurred as an inevitable return swing of the pendulum. Any new social or intellectual movement meets with resistance. The struggle for peace cannot be accomplished quickly. One can only hope that over time gains will be greater than losses.

Internal friction. From the outset the movement was divided on the issue of defensive wars. Strict pacifists insisted that all war was wrong. Others contended that war in self-defense was legitimate. Pacifists countered that any war could be justified if one grants the principle of defensive war. There never was any solution to this split and it weakened the movement as a whole.

While the movement didn’t last, Curti also notes two important accomplishments. First, it produced solid arguments against war:

Perhaps the most striking contribution of early organized pacifism was the development of a body of brilliant arguments against war. By 1860 practically every argument against war now familiar had been suggested, and almost every current plan for securing peace had been at least anticipated. While the arguments against war in the earlier years were chiefly religious, moral, and philanthropic, they tended to become less and less an expression of the general spirit of liberalism and romanticism. They tended to become increasingly realistic and to make greater use of economic and political considerations. This was in part due to the working alliance of the free traders and peace men in England and to the influence of French socialist thought on the opponents of war. Increasing attention was given, for example, to the wastefulness of war and to the burdens it inflicted on the working classes. Much emphasis was put on the desirability of developing closer economic ties, bankers’ agreements for the refusal of war loans, workingmen’s international associations, and other types of economic federations. By 1850 Elihu Burritt had urged that an organized general strike of the workers of the world against war was the only possible alternative to a court and congress of nations. (Curti, p. 225)

Second, they developed practical plans for the achievement of peace:

A fourth important contribution of the early crusade for peace was the working out of definite practical plans looking toward the ultimate establishment of world peace. The plan for the inclusion in international treaties of stipulated arbitration clauses was first advanced by an American, William Jay, and was vigorously supported both here and abroad. The most important practical plan, however, was William Ladd’s scheme for a court and congress of nations …. Plans were also made for the codification of international law, for disarmament, and for the development of internationalism through educational and other projects. (Curti, p. 226)

On this web page are some of the more important essays and sermons produced by the movement, along with a bibliography.

Bibliography

Uebersax, John. Essays and Speeches from the Antebellum Era (c.1800–1850) Peace Movement (online collection, with bibliography)

Curti, Merle Eugene. The American Peace Crusade 1815-1860. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1929.

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The Congress−Military−Industrial Complex

WAR is not only the greatest moral evil, but the greatest economic evil as well.
Why do wars continue? We must ask the question, cui bono — who benefits?  The answer is clear:  US defense contractors reap billions of dollars annually producing advanced weapons.  If we stopped war, these huge corporations would go out of business.  They exert immense political leverage to control the foreign policy of the US to promote wars and a climate of international mistrust and fear.

But members of Congress all too willingly play along.  They receive millions of dollars annually from companies like Lockheed-Martin, Boeing, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman in the form of campaign contributions.  Then they boast to their constituents about how many jobs are being created to build aircraft carriers and nuclear missiles.

This book, The Politics of Defense Contracting by Gordon Adams is a seminal study of the Congress−military−industrial complex, or the iron triangle:

This is the first systematic study of the relationship between government and defense contractors, examining in detail the political impact of the eight most powerful defense contractors. It details ways in which Boeing, General Dynamics, Grumman, McDonnell Douglas, Northrop, Rockwell International, and United Technologies influence government, from their basic contract activity, corporate structure, and research efforts, to their Washington offices, Political Action Committee campaign contributions, hiring of government personnel, and membership on federal advisory committees. Adams concludes with specific recommendations for changes in disclosure requirements that would curb some of the political power corporations can wield. It also suggests specific ways in which the Iron Triangle can be made subject to wider congressional and public scrutiny.

You can browse the book at Amazon.com.

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Agape and the Social Inflection Point

HERE’S an analysis of the current state of society and of what needs doing:

 

❁ Our society seems headed towards an abyss.  This has been going on for decades. Especially in the wake of Covid and now the war in Ukraine, people are dispirited, alienated and without much hope. The mentality is not good, and nobody has any solutions.

❁ Politics and government will not fix this.  Indeed, political dysfunction is a large part of the problem.

❁ Therefore change must come at a cultural level, and first with individual consciousness. We need a change in individual mentality that will lead to constructive, creative action to transform society.

❁ For such a transformation to occur, it would help to have as many people as possible undergo the same change of consciousness.  This supposes we’re talking about eliciting energies and forms of consciousness that are (1) instinctive and natural, and (2) common to all people.

❁ In order to have the most force and effectiveness, such a transformation of consciousness would ideally have a ‘contagious’ nature. We’d like it to spread ‘exponentially’.

❁ The human impulse of agape (charity/caritas, unselfish love, love of humanity) satisfies the criteria of being universal, instinctive, powerful, and stimulating creative energy.

❁ Agape towards another goes beyond trying to help meet their material needs.  It aims to edify the other, to elevate their spirit, to help them on the ultimate life quest of finding meaning, moral virtue, and happiness.

❁ And implicit in all we have said so far, the highest moral development (aside from love of God) is to direct ones life towards edifying and morally uplifting others.  So if we want to show the most agape love for another, we should seek most of all to help them show agape love for others. That is the agape chain reaction.

❁ Imagine, then, a society where each person sees it as their main social duty not only to exhort and uplift others, but to exhort them to discover their true self in uplifting others.

❁ Imagine a nation where each person is a Socrates.  Where, instead of arguing with each other, each trying to change the opinion of the other on some matter to conform more closely to ones own opinion (which, properly understood, is a subtle form of coercion or even aggression — because we are trying to limit the freedom of the other), our main purpose is to remind the person to seek their true self.  This, I believe, is related to the principle psychologist Carl Rogers called ‘unconditional positive regard.’

What we’re talking about is an inflection point, a change from a negatively oriented society to a positively oriented one.  Imagine society as a network of interactions between nodes, each node being an individual.  Negative interactions breed more negative interactions, and the same with positive ones.  There are two ‘basins of attraction’, to put it in the language of complex systems theory.  What we’re looking for is a phase shift in a complex dynamic system.

Kant’s moral principle of the categorical imperative may be considered here.  In order for an act to be moral, according to Kant, it must satisfy the criteria that we could consistently wish that all other people followed the same principle.  The more having all people follow the rule would produce good outcomes, the more confidence we have that it’s a good moral choice for ourselves.  If all people consistently sought to uplift and edify others, this would have immense positive benefit for society.  Therefore we can be confident this is a good moral rule to follow in our own personal life.

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Transcendentalism. Reading.

“The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

THIS is just a temporary post. In coming weeks, I’ll add material on two subjects: (1) Transcendentalism and (2) self-culture by reading quality books.  Motivating this is my belief is that government and politics are inadequate to meet the challenges faced by society today.  Instead what we need is a raising of collective consciousness.  To some those two words may sound vague, but they actually means something real and definite.  We are at a point in history where, to move forward as a species, we need a new way of understanding ourselves — as individuals, in relation to each other, and in relation to the planet.

To change consciousness may seem a daunting, even impossible task.   But we have good reason for hope: because all human beings hold in their hearts both the hope of a better world, and an understanding of how that better world would be.  Each of us contains the same blueprint for a good society; we merely haven’t yet learned to communicate and cooperate in ways to make that plan a reality.

This is the great task of the generation of young adults today, and of generations to come.  A place to begin is to learn what the last great generation of Idealists had to say on the subject.  Let us stand on the shoulders of giants, and then aim to make further progress.

Shortly I hope to supply a guide and links to relevant writings on American Transcendentalism.  For now, below is a list of related articles on this blog (many contain bibliographies with more material).

p.s. The invariably asked question is “What is Transcendentalism?”  The truth is, Transcendentalism cannot be defined.  Ultimately, it refers to a level of consciousness which is, on the one hand, familiar, but, on the other, difficult to attain in the modern world. It involves the integration of our existence as material beings with simultaneous awareness of transcendent, eternal truths of which we also have innate knowledge. What was called Transcendentalism in the 19th tradition was called Idealism in preceding centuries.  In the West this philosophical tradition goes back to Plato and beyond; and we can find counterparts in Eastern philosophy and religion.

John Uebersax

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❁What is American Transcendentalism? (Includes reading list)

❁Emerson the Platonist

❁Transcendentalism as Spiritual Consciousness

❁Selections from Emerson’s Essay ‘Intellect’ (1841)

❁John Sullivan Dwight: The Religion of Beauty (1840)

❁Abraham Maslow: How to Experience the Unitive Life

❁Beyond the Pyramid. Being-Psychology: Maslow’s Real Contribution

❁The Emersonian ‘Universal Mind’ and Its Vital Importance

❁James Freeman Clarke — Self-Culture by Reading and Books

❁‘The Sacred Marriage’, by Margaret Fuller

❁Culture in Crisis: The Visionary Theories of Pitirim Sorokin

❁Pitirim Sorokin: Techniques for the Altruistic Transformation of Individuals and Society

❁Thoreau and Occupy Wall Street: Life Without Principle

❁The Occupy Movement, Agrarianism, and Land Reform

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Robert F. Kennedy’s Speech, The Mindless Menace of Violence, and its Resonance Today

“Only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our souls.”

THIS speech of Robert F. Kennedy, ‘The Mindless Menace of Violence’, should be read, listened to and watched by all Americans today. It’s not only arguably the finest speech of his career, but one of the great political speeches of the 20th century, and perhaps of all time. Most importantly, it bears special relevance to our current situation in America, and carries even greater urgency now than when it was delivered.

Kenned gave the speech in Cleveland on April, 5, 1968, the day after Martin Luther King was assassinated.  He’d made briefer remarks in Indianapolis the evening before.  The Indianapolis speech is more widely known — but to compare the two speeches is pointless. They could be viewed as single speech, as though if at the first one’s end he said, “And now let us pause, grieve and reflect on this tragedy, and I will continue tomorrow.”

Many vital themes are woven together in this short and moving speech: that American culture is saturated with violence, where this violence comes from, the sense of community it has destroyed, and, most importantly, how this sense can be restored.

He refers repeatedly to the shortness of life and how this makes the message of overcoming violence even more urgent — and one cannot help feel that he somehow sensed his own time was growing short. Less that two months later, Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles, consecrated these words with his own blood.

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On the Mindless Menace of Violence

Speech of Robert F. Kennedy delivered at the Cleveland City Club, Cleveland, Ohio, April 5, 1968.

Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, I speak to you under different circumstances than I had intended to, just 24 hours ago.

But this is a time of shame, and a time of sorrow. It is not a day for politics. I have saved this one opportunity — my only event of today — to speak briefly to you about the mindless menace of violence in America which again stains our land and every one of our lives.

It’s not the concern of any one race. The victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed. No one — no matter where he lives or what he does — can be certain whom next will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed. And yet it goes on and on and on in this country of ours.

Why? What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr’s cause has ever been stilled by an assassin’s bullet. No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. A sniper is only a coward, not a hero; and an uncontrolled or uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of the people.

Whenever any American’s life is taken by another American unnecessarily — whether it is done in the name of the law or in defiance of the law, by one man or by a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence — whenever we tear at the fabric of our lives which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children — whenever we do this, then whole nation is degraded. “Among free men,” said Abraham Lincoln, “there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and those who take such appeal are sure to lose their case and pay the cost.”

Yet we seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike. We calmly accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far off lands. We glorify killing on movie and television screens and we call it entertainment. We make it easier for men of all shades of sanity to acquire weapons and ammunition that they desire.

Too often we honor swagger and bluster and the wielders of force. Too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of other human beings. Some Americans who preach nonviolence abroad fail to practice it here at home. Some who accuse others of rioting, and inciting riots, have by their own conduct invited them. Some look for scapegoats; others look for conspiracies. But this much is clear: violence breeds violence; repression breeds retaliation; and only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our souls.

For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly, destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference, inaction, and decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is a slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books, and homes without heat in the winter. This is the breaking of a man’s spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father and as a man amongst other men.

And this too afflicts us all. For when you teach a man to hate and to fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies that he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your home or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies — to be met not with cooperation but with conquest, to be subjugated and to be mastered.

We learn, at the last, to look at our brothers as alien, alien men with whom we share a city, but not a community, men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in a common effort. We learn to share only a common fear — only a common desire to retreat from each other — only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force.

For all this there are no final answers for those of us who are American citizens. Yet we know what we must do, and that is to achieve true justice among all of our fellow citizens. The question is not what programs we should seek to enact. The question is whether we can find in our own midst and in our own hearts that leadership of humane purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence.

We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions, the false distinctions among men, and learn to find our own advancement in search for the advancement of all. We must admit to ourselves that our own children’s future cannot be built on the misfortune of another’s. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or by revenge.

Our lives on this planet are too short, the work to be done is too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in this land of ours. Of course we cannot banish it with a program, nor with a resolution.

But we can perhaps remember — if only for a time — that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short movement of life, that they seek — as do we — nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and in happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment that they can.

Surely this bond of common fate, surely this bond of common goals can begin to teach us something. Surely we can learn, at least, to look around at those of us, of our fellow man, and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our hearts brothers and countrymen once again.

Tennyson wrote in Ulysses:

That which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Thank you, very much.

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Discussion

Let us draw attention to several points in the speech that bear direct relevance to our present situation in America.

First, we are as a people in a state of complete disunity.  Ironically, just as he states, the one thing that we have in common — and in that sense ‘unites’ us — is precisely our disunity.  We have each and all succumbed to the spirit of division, contention and party. Political participation consists of nothing more than reacting emotionally to biased and distorted news, and hostile comments on social media.

Second, this is suicidal.  Our welfare, hope and survival as a people depend on our unity.  A connecting bond, a sense of unifying purpose, is not a luxury, but a necessity.

Third — and here we begin to see the genius of the speech — Kennedy tells us that the bond that ought to unite us, the one that makes most sense given our peculiar history and situation in the world, is to forge a society that transcends divisiveness, hostility, and violence.  We remain the freest people in human history.  This is not because of exceptional virtue, but because history and geography has blessed us with a land of vast natural resources, immense variation, and freedom from threat of foreign invasion.  We have the resources to feed, employ, educate, and maintain the health of all.  The only thing stopping us is our own folly and perversity.

Fourth — and here again is an immensely important point — the way to achieve this unifying bond of common purpose is not through legislation or government, but “to find in our own midst and in our own hearts that leadership of humane purpose.”  Much is said in these few words. To find something means it already exists.  There is something already in our hearts that will lead us.  It is a true conscience, one founded on love, wisdom and Eternal Verities — and is by no means to be confused with a political doctrine or ideology, no matter how high-minded that ideology may sound.

Finally, Kennedy suggests that this inner truth of our hearts is intimately connected with an awareness of a certain fragility of human life.

Life is short, fraught with peril.  If we respond to this with fear and defensiveness, we withdraw into narcissism and folly, seeking to insulate ourselves from the ‘terrible truths’ with walls of illusion. Our political beliefs, more often than not, are manifestations of this defensive, constructed reality; and we respond to attacks on our defensive illusions by lashing out, fearing, hating and retreating further into delusion.

But Kennedy reminds us there is another way.  That is see that the fragility of life actually unites us with all people.  It causes us need each other, and makes things like respect, compassion and charity more deeply meaningful.  When we find again and are guided by our heart of hearts, there will be no time for or interest in violence or contention.

Let us then take his inspired words to heart in this time of greatest need.  Let each one begin an earnest search into his or her heart to find that “leadership of human purpose.”

Sources

I would encourage everyone to not only read, but listen to and watch the speech.  Unfortunately there is variability in versions offered online, so some caution must be exercised.

The best transcript I’ve found is from the University of Maryland.  This is closer to Kennedy’s actual words than what is found on the JFK library website.

The best audio version I’ve found is from the City Club of Cleveland.

While the entire speech was filmed (by multiple cameras), I have so far not found any version that has not edited out important parts.  This version is incomplete, but is high quality and succeeds in expressing Kennedy’s facial expressions and emotions better than others — things which are as important here a the words themselves.

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Gods in Ruins

NEEDED at this point in history is a great leap forward in human consciousness, a new way of looking at ourselves — as individuals and collectively. This weekend I had a glimpse of what this leap might look like, and am still trying to sort it out, but I’ll attempt here to convey the essence.

The idea is suggested by a phrase from Ralph Waldo Emerson, “We are gods in ruins.” This sentence has quite a bit of meaning. First, we are gods. That’s plausible enough. Christians and members of other religions believe that human beings are made in God’s image and likeness. Each person is an image of God, and has an eternal souls and has unlimited, divine potentials.

But, Emerson added: in ruins. We may have the potential to be divine, but our thoughts and actions are, with rare exceptions, anything but that.

But consider how different the world would be if each person remained constantly aware that (1) all other persons are divine; and (2) each person was falling short of their divine potential.

Now let’s now add love to the formula. Each person has the potential to love another human being in a divine and godly way. We can recall times when we’ve felt loved and can remember the many and immense benefits this feeling has. And we ourselves can, in theory, love any other human being in this way, producing the same divine positive effects. Your love can work miracles in another person’s life, and theirs can work miracles in yours. Few things if any make us feel better than to be loved. You have the power to produce that feeling in any one of 7 billion other souls on the planet; and there are 7 billion souls who have the ability to have that effect on you.

Consider what I’m saying here. What if, instead of love, we were talking about money. Suppose I said that you have the ability to make any one (and perhaps any number) of the 7 billion people on this planet a millionaire. And 7 billion people had the power to do that for you. What a colossal waste it would be, then, if we had this power and never used it, such that the vast majority of the world’s population lived in poverty!

One might say that surely humanity is not so foolish as to let that happen. Yet consider that love is more valuable than money. A rich person without love is miserable, whereas a poor person with love is happy. The greatest advantage money has, in fact, is to produce circumstances favorable for the flourishing of love. Yet, for the most part, money is not needed for love. Seen in this way it is incredible how we are ignoring this vast ‘natural resource’ of love. It is being utterly wasted.

Now let’s put the two ideas together: the notion of ‘gods in ruins’ and the untapped potential of love. What if each person habitually thought as follows:

1. Each other person on the planet is an image of God.
2. Each other person has divine, untapped potentialities, a principle one being the capacity for divine love and altruism.
3. We are all falling short of this potential.
4. What if I could do something — anything — to help other people be restored to their divinity and use their divine potentialities? How could I better employ my time and energies than to do this? What would make me feel more satisfied?
5. What is more divine than to love divinely? What if I could do something to help another person love divinely?

First we should note that this view is more true than our ordinary consensual concept of what it is to be human. If we are gods in ruins, then we should think of ourselves as such. It would make us less egoistic, anxious, foolish, selfish, frivolous, scattered, and angry. We would soon discover many ways to help other people. And also consider how, were such thinking to become the norm, it would change our perception of society. What if we had a culture in which it was pre-supposed that other people value the image of God in you, and are not only willing but eager to help you realize it? It seems clear that a society based on these values would be vastly superior to our present one, and would reduce or eliminate many of the crippling social problems we now face (beginning with war).

For millennia religions have taught us that we are divine beings — and humanity has chosen to pretend otherwise. Now we may have no choice but to rise to our full stature.

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Pitirim Sorokin: The Role of Religion in the Altruistic Transformation of Society

IN 1948, in the aftermath of two colossally destructive world wars, the dropping of atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the commencement of the Cold War, Harvard sociologist wrote The Reconstruction of Humanity. He saw as few others did the perilous road that lay ahead. Certainly others sounded a warning bell, but Sorokin’s sweeping studies of cultural history gave him deeper insight into the problems of modern society — and the possible solutions — than others.

What he foresaw was a continued decay of society obsessed with materialism and sensate values. The only solution, he believed, was to consciously renew culture on the principles of idealism and altruism. The first half of Reconstruction of Humanity he devoted to debunking false panaceas of popular democracy, science, capitalism, world government and the United Nations. In the second half he presented his prescription, which involved an intentional restructuring of the family, education and religion — all with the explicit aim of raising consciousness and fostering the development of a deep transformation of human personality from egoism to altruism.

The following comes from his section on religion. He saw modern religions as needing to concentrate efforts on two fundamental reforms: (1) a greater emphasis on religious experience (as opposed to doctrine), and (2) achieving a greater proportion of practitioners who see religion as central, not merely peripheral to their lives.

Sorokin, though a sociologist, was quite sophisticated in his understanding of religion. Large sections of his work, The Ways and Power of Love are devoted to the Western monastic system and Indian yoga as means of effecting a thorough moral and psychological transformation of the individual.

The message of Reconstruction of Humanity (which, incidentally, was dedicated to Mohandas Gandhi) is more relevant and urgent today than ever.

III. Religious Institutions

Religion is a system of ultimate values and norms of conduct derived principally through superconscious intuition, supplemented by rational cognition and sensory experience. As such it tends to constitute the supreme synthesis of the dominant values and norms of conduct. Its superconscious intuition makes us aware of, and puts us in contact with, the superconscious aspect of the ultimate reality value, the Infinite Manifold, God, or the Holy. Herein religion is little dependent upon logic and sensory experience. In so far as it attempts to give a rational and empirically correct synthesis of the superconscious, the rational, and the empirical aspects of the Infinite Manifold, it draws upon syllogistic and mathematical logic and upon empirical science.

Virtually all the major religions and all genuine religious experiences have apprehended the ultimate reality value in a very similar way so far as its superconscious aspect is concerned. The differences between the Tao of Taoism, the “Heaven” of Confucianism, the Brahman of Hinduism and Buddhism, the Jehovah of Judaism, the God of Christianity, and “the Inexpressible” of mystics consist mainly in differences of terminology, in the accentuation of this or that aspect of the Infinite Manifold, and in the even more subsidiary differences of rationalized dogmas and cults. In these secondary traits religions vary and undergo change; in their intuition of the ultimate reality value as an Infinite Manifold, as in their basic values and norms of conduct, they remain essentially unchangeable. The scale of values of all genuine religions unanimously puts at the top the supreme value of the Infinite Manifold itself (God, Brahman, Tao, the Holy, the Sacred), and then, in descending order, the highest values of truth, goodness, and beauty, their inferior and less pure varieties, and finally the sensory and sensate values. Likewise, the moral commandments of all genuine religions are fundamentally identical. Their ethics is the ethics of unbounded love of man for God, for his fellow men, for all living creatures, and for the entire universe. In brief, in their intuitive system of reality — values and norms of conduct, religions remain true to themselves, undergoing little change, and depending little upon logic and empirical knowledge.

In their rational and empirical ideologies religions, as has been said, naturally depend upon logic and empirical science. Since these are incessantly changing, religions change also in these respects: in their theological rationalizations, in their cult and ritual, in their empirical activities and organizations. If a religion does not modify these logical and empirical elements in conformity with changes in logical and sensory knowledge (mathematics, logic, and science), it becomes obsolescent in these components and is eventually supplanted by a religion whose logical and empirical values and norms are up to date. The superconscious essence of the supplanting and the supplanted religion remains, however, essentially the same. Religion as a superconscious intuition of the Infinite Manifold is perennial and eternal; as a rationalized system of theology, as an empirical system of cult, ritual, and technical activities, it is incessantly changing.

There has been scarcely any great culture without a great religion as its foundation. The emergence of virtually all notable cultures has been either simultaneous with or preceded by the emergence of a notable religion which has constituted its most valuable component. The decline of any major culture or the end of one era and the beginning of a new era in its life history has again been marked by either the decline of its religion, or by a replacement of one religion by another. Only eclectic cultural congeries have been devoid of an integrated system of religion. Such cultural congeries have functioned mainly as material to be used by creative cultures. Without Confucianism and Taoism the Chinese culture is unthinkable; without Hinduism and Buddhism there would have been no great Hindu culture; without the Greek religion and philosophy Greek culture would have been impossible; without Mohammedanism there would have been no notable Islamic-Arabic culture; without Zoroastrianism the Iranic culture could not have achieved a high level. The same relationship applies to the Egyptian, Babylonian, Judaistic, and Western Christian cultures and religions.

If we wish to build a truly great culture, we must create or recreate one or several great systems of ultimate reality — values and norms of conduct for the various parts of the human race. Like different languages, each denoting the same objects in its own words and idioms, humanity may have different “religious languages,” each in its own way conveying the experience of the Holy, putting men in touch with the Infinite Manifold, and constituting the indispensable condition of the creativity of their culture and of a peaceful, altruistic social system.

Viewed in this light, the existing major religions, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Mohammedanism, Jainism and others, do not urgently need to be replaced by new religions or to be drastically modified. Their intuitive system of reality value (God, Brahman, Tao, etc. as an Infinite Manifold) and their conception of man as an end value, as a son of God, as a divine soul, as a bearer of the Absolute; these intuitions and conceptions are essentially valid and supremely edifying (in varying degrees for the different religions).

Similarly, their ethical imperatives, enjoining a union of man with the Absolute and an unconditional love of man for his fellows and for all living creatures, call for no radical change. Some of these norms, such as those of the Sermon on the Mount, are, indeed, incapable of improvement.

What is needed, therefore, concerns not the essence of the great religions but its revitalization and the modification of their secondary traits.

It is essential to recover a vital sense of the living ‘presence of God, of union with the Infinite Manifold, such as has been experienced by the mystics and other deeply religious persons. This experience should not be attended by the emotional outbursts and bodily convulsions typical of many present-day “revivals.” A large proportion of contemporary believers hardly ever enjoy such an experience. Their religiosity is chiefly a formal adherence to the prescribed ritual and cult, a mechanical repetition of traditional formulas, the mere outer shell of religion without its living flame. Hence their religious ideologies scarcely influence their overt conduct.

This reawakening of intense religious experience is inextricably connected with the actual application, in overt behavior, of the ethical norms of religion. The transformation of overt conduct in the direction of ‘practicing what one preaches’ is another fundamental change that must he effected by the leading religions. We have seen that in modem times there has appeared an unbridgeable chasm between avowed beliefs and standards, on the one hand, and their embodiment in actual practice on the other. Thus the adherents of Christianity overtly behave, as a rule, in the most un-Christian manner. Since they retain but the formal shells of their religion, devoid of its real substance, such a chasm is inevitable.

The revitalization of religion consists precisely in these two essential tasks:

(1) re-creation of a genuine religious experience;
(2) realization of ethical norms in the overt behavior of the believers.

A truly religious person, feeling vividly the presence of God, walks humbly and reverently on this earth and loves the other children of God and all living creatures to his utmost capacity.

These are the paramount needs of religious transmutation. Believers, especially religious leaders, must concentrate their efforts on these tasks instead of devoting most of their energy to the external shells of religiosity; their cult and ritual, [note 1] their institutional property and hierarchy, their rational theology and dogmas, their politics and their claims for the superiority of their own brand of religion over the others.

The sacredness of man as an end value and the ethical commandments enjoining love are limited in several religions to the circle of their own believers. This tribal provincialism, with its double standard of morality, should cease. Any true religion of the future must he universal in the sense that everyone, regardless of his race or nationality, creed, age, sex, or status, is regarded as a sacred end value.

Its logical and empirical aspects, which are incessantly changing and whose validity depends upon logical and empirical science, religions must bring into harmony with existing science and logic, dropping what is obsolescent. This concerns theological speculation and dogma, cult and ritual, and the technique of man’s spiritualization and moralization. Keeping abreast with logic and science in these subsidiary features, religion enters into harmonious co-operation with science, logic, and philosophy without sacrificing any of its intuitive truth revealed through the superconscious of its seers, prophets, and charismatic leaders. On the other hand, in its turn it supplements science, logic, and philosophy through its system of ultimate reality — values. In this way religion, logic, science unite to form a single harmonious team dedicated to the discovery of the perennial values and to the proper shaping of man’s mind and conduct.

For the realization of these objectives religions need not only to be familiar with existing techniques but also to create new, more fruitful, and more adequate techniques of religious and ethical transformation. (Cf. the next section of this work for an elaboration of this topic.) [note 2]

If the foregoing tasks are successfully performed, religion will contribute as never before to the creation of a society characterized by peace and harmony, happiness, and a sense of kinship with the Infinite Manifold.

Notes.

1. Sorokin’s comments here might be mistakenly understood to mean he does not appreciate the importance of religious ritual. Rather, I believe his point is that these should be understood not as ends in themselves, but as powerful tools that support and enhance the fuller spiritual life of the practitioner.

2. His later and more definitive analysis of techniques for altruistic transformation of society is found in Sorokin (1954/2002).

Bibliography

Sorokin, Pitirim. The Reconstruction of Humanity. Beacon Press, 1948.

Sorokin, Pitirim A. Social and Cultural Dynamics. Revised and abridged in one volume by the author, Transaction Books, 1957, 1985. (Originally published in four volumes, I–III, 1937; IV, 1941.)

Sorokin, Pitirim A. The Ways and Power of Love: Types, Factors, and Techniques of Moral Transformation. Boston: Beacon Press, 1954; repr. Templeton Foundation, 2002.  [ebook]

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The RAND Corporation: Propagandizing for the New Cold War with Russia

IUSED to work at the RAND Corporation, one of the oldest and most prestigious think tanks — before, that is, I was fired after having had the audacity to have a short conversation one day with peace protesters who were demonstrating across the street.*  I did very little military research there, having been instead hired to work on health policy.  But I did learn two things about the company:  (1) the people who work there are almost preternaturally brilliant; and (2) it will do anything for money. Dracula, if he ponied up enough cash, could hire them to do a comprehensive policy analysis on “How to Suck the Blood out of Every Transylvanian.”

In the 1950’s for example, RAND was responsible for the unnecessary build-up of nuclear bombers and ICBMs.  This happened when the Air Force paid them to estimate the bombers and nuclear missiles Russia had, or would have in the near future.  The work was commissioned — as is typical with RAND’s military research — with a wink and a nod.  The unspoken understanding was “and be sure this report justifies a massive increase in our arms production.”  That’s what defense contractors in Southern California, who built bombers and missiles, wanted.  RAND got the message and promptly set about creating wildly exaggerated estimates of Russian capabilities.

When I got there in the late 1980’s, the Cold War was winding down and Department of Defense funding was drying up.  RAND began to shift attention to less lucrative areas like public health and environmental quality.  That began to change in the post-9/11 era, when RAND found lots of work writing reports on the need to counter global terrorism.

Predictably in hindsight, when money dried up for anti-terrorism research, RAND began pimping itself out to tout the next great security threat:  Russia.  The old Cold War pattern repeated itself:  (1) defense corporations lobby the Department of Defense to buy more fighters, bombers, missiles and tanks; (2) the DoD commissions RAND to write impressive reports that justify new weapons programs based on a threat from Russia; (3) RAND eagerly complies; (4) the generals cite RAND reports as proof that we need to spend billions more to counter Russia.

I knew this has been going on recently, having seen occasional references to anti-Russia RAND reports.  What I didn’t realize until this week, however, was its massive extent.  It seems that in the last 10 years, RAND has produced over 50 such reports proclaiming the dire threat Russia poses and our urgent need to contain it. (For a summary, see: Stephanie Pezard, U.S. Strategic Competition with Russia: A RAND Research Primer, January 2022.)

At the bottom of the ethical barrel is a policy brief published in 2019 titled Overextending and Unbalancing Russia (Dobbins, James et al. RAND Corporation Brief RB-10014-A, 2019). It outlines a range of options the US might follow to destabilize Russia ranked by cost-efficacy.

The report would make Machiavelli blush with shame.  The table below lists a cold set of options it presents.

Now here is the problem with all this.  Millions of dollars are being spent dreaming up nefarious schemes for destroying Russia, economically, militarily and culturally. It’s bad enough that virtually no consideration is given to anticipating the long-term consequences — for the US and the rest of the world — of such policies. But worse still is the complete absence of any kind of ethical framework.  It never once enters into the heads of the people who write these reports that, just maybe, (1) Russians are human beings, (2) they are not devoid of human Reason and virtue, (3) neither are we, and (4) we might just, by God’s grace and through human good will, be able to work out our differences positively and constructively (assuming we have differences in the first place).

In a sentence then, the tragic, fatal flaw of all this policy research — which is determining the course of history, current events, and our destinies as a species —,is that it is based on a framework that makes not even the slightest allowance for Idealism.

This should come as no surprise insofar as Idealism has been completely replaced by materialism in modern Western society.  Our popular culture, intellectual life, and most importantly, our educational institutions, are exclusively materialistic in outlook and content — and the ethical blindness of such policy reports as these reflect this broader cultural defect.

I’ll leave off here for now, as there is plenty of food for thought in what’s already been said.  I doubt this will be my last work on the topic.

* The director promptly called me into his office and demanded to know if I’d revealed any secret information.  In fact, I merely asked them what specifically they were protesting. 

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The Hopi Migration Myth and the Destiny of Humankind

THE following origins legend describes the migrations of the Hopi people after they emerged from the Sacred Cave of the Earth. Beyond whatever else it may mean, it serves as a wonderful allegory for the history of the human race:  once we were all one tribe, but over the course of millennia we have divided into countless clans and migrated all over the earth.  But it is our destiny to retrace our steps and join together again, with each ethnic group contributing what unique things it has learned during this vast collective enterprise into a shared store of human knowledge.  Understood in this way, our cultural differences are one of the greatest and most valuable possessions.  Whenever ethnic differences become a source of strife and contention, we should stop and say: “Wait!  Aren’t we missing the important point here?”

The Four Migrations

And now before Masaw turned his face from them and became invisible, he explained that every clan must make four directional migrations before they all arrived at their common, permanent home. They must go to the ends of the land—west, south, east, and north—to the farthest paso (where the land meets the sea) in each direction. Only when the clans had completed these four movements, rounds, or steps of their migration could they come together again, forming the pattern of the Creator’s universal plan.

That is the way it was. Some clans started to the south,  others to the north, retraced their routes to turn east and west, and then back again. All their routes formed a great cross whose center, Tuwanasavi [Center of the Universe], lay in what is now the Hopi country in the southwestern part of the United States, and whose arms reached to the four directional pasos. As they turned at each of these extremities they formed of this great cross a swastika, either clockwise or counter-clockwise,  corresponding to the movement of the earth or of the sun. And then when their migrations slowed as they reached their permanent home, they formed spirals and circles, ever growing smaller. All these patterns formed by their four migrations are the basic motifs of the symbols still found today in their pottery and basketware, on their kachina rattles and altar boards.

Often one clan would come upon the ruins of a village built by a preceding clan and find on the mound broken pieces of pottery circling to the right or to the left, indicating which way the clan had gone. Throughout the continent these  countless ruins and mounds covered with broken pottery are still being discovered. They constitute what the people call now their title to the land. Everywhere, too, the clans carved on rocks their signatures, pictographs and petroglyphs which identified them, revealed what round of their migration they were on, and related the history of the village.

Still the migrations continued. Some clans forgot in time the commands of Masaw, settling in tropical climates where life was easy, and developing beautiful cities of stone that were to decay and crumble into ruin. Other clans did not complete all four of their migrations before settling in their permanent home, and hence lost their religious power and standing. Still others persisted, keeping open the doors on top of their heads. These were the ones who finally realized the purpose and the meaning of their four migrations.

For these migrations were themselves purification ceremonies, weeding out through generations all the latent evil brought from the previous Third World. Man could not  succumb to the comfort and luxury given him by indulgent  surroundings, for then he lost the need to rely upon the Creator. Nor should he be frightened even by the polar extremities of the earth, for there he learned that the power given him by the Creator would still sustain him. So, by traveling to all the farthest extremities of the land during their four migrations, these chosen people finally came to settle on the vast arid plateau that stretches between the Colorado and Rio Grande Rivers.

Many other people today wonder why these people chose an area devoid of running water to irrigate their sparse crops, the Hopi people know that they were led here so that they would have to depend upon the scanty rainfall which they must evoke with their power and prayer, and so preserve always that knowledge and faith in the supremacy of their Creator who had brought them to this Fourth World after they had failed in three previous worlds.

This, they say, is their supreme title to this land, which no secular power can refute.

Source: Waters, Frank; Fredericks, Oswald White Bear. Book of the Hopi. New York: Ballantine Books, 1969; pp. 41 ff.

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