01131 War, Peace, Justice

In reviewing the history of the English Government, its wars and its taxes, a bystander, not blinded by prejudice, nor warped by interest, would declare, that taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on taxes. — Thomas Paine, Rights of Man

In time of actual war, great discretionary powers are constantly given to the Executive Magistrate. Constant apprehension of War, has the same tendency to render the head too large for the body. A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defense against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people. — James Madison, fourth president of the U.S.A.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

War is not a sustainable activity and it has no place in a more permacultural future.

Permaculture addresses war by resolving the issues that create tension between nations and lead to war, such as the gluttony that drives our endless quest for cheap natural resources to fuel our industrial machines. While ideology and religion have been blamed for the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, in reality these wars were about control of the oil fields of the Middle East.

We propose better design of our political processes, to eliminate the power of special interests to distort policies to benefit them at the expense of the common good. War is a money-making activity in the United States and elsewhere, so there is never a lack of rich people planning to become richer by encouraging our governments to resort to violence and conquest. It's a problem that goes back to antiquity.

Given the propensity of the developed nations, led by the United States, to make war to protect access to oil, we can help eliminate one cause of war by addressing our addictive dependence upon fossil fuels. In another stacked function, we find that the first step to peace is fossil fuel demand destruction. We need to drive less and to travel less. The more developed nations need to get over their sense of national entitlement to cheap energy that has driven their war adventures in the less developed countries which possess oil and mineral riches. It is always immoral to go to war to seize the resources of another country.

A word of wisdom — “peace is the fruit of justice” — and human history certainly testifies to the truth of that.

When was the last time the oaks went to war with the shrubs in a forest? It’s not a concept that works, is it? Oaks and shrubby understory plants coexist quite well in a forest. The shrubby understory plants evolved there so they are quite happy with the dappled sun/shady interior of the forest. The wastes of each (dead leaves and wood decomposing) create fertility that feeds both and all the other elements and niche occupants of the forest.

While human societies of that level of sustainability are far in the future, the lessons the forests (or the prairies, or the plains, or the deserts) teach us are clear. Members should share in the surplus created by systems create surpluses. The variety of mechanisms for such sharing is enormous. In human terms, we could speak of investment, giving, earning, paying, buying, selling, taxing, sharing, etc.

Contrast this with the tendency of human societies to go to war over greed for loot and resources. The Roman Empire made a profit for centuries by conquering and looting its neighboring civilizations. They rejected mutual trade and benefit in favor of conquest and looting. The day of course eventually came when they too were conquered and looted. Rome, the Eternal and Imperial City was left depopulated and devastated.

In the modern era, the US seems determined to follow the trajectory of ancient Rome. All too often we choose violence as our method of resolving problems and disputes. Sometimes the violence is open and large scale, as with the wars on the people of Afghanistan and Iraq. Other times we use more covert strategies, such as we presently employ in Somalia, Eritrea, South Sudan, and elsewhere. Many nations and para-nations are working their own devious programs — China throughout Africa, Al Qaida throughout Africa, the Middle East, India, and Oceania, and then there is the Pakistan versus India perennial quarrel.

Lust for resources drive these wars. Structural violence profits from, and creates, more, injustice.

The work we do to praxis permaculture design in our own lives has some additional functions stacked on it. One of the more important of those stacked functions is to “create a world of justice and peace.” As long as we in the developed countries live lives of gluttony and greed, our nations will resort to violence to ensure that there are enough resources on hand to satisfy our appetites.

The ugly truth that we hate to confront is that our governments are reflections of who we are as a people. The government is the unfortunately dysergistic sum of our collective experiences, desires, and demands, distorted and amplified by special interests who control the media and our political systems. It has turned dysfunctional because we as a people are on an increasingly dysfunctional downward spiral. We sell ourselves into the slavery of debt bondage to banks so that we can consume, excrete, and consume even more. We are never satisfied with our level of material achievement. We must always have more, more, more. Some do not hesitate to resort to crime to satisfy our gluttonous appetites. From the banker committing fraud on the billion-dollar scale to the neighborhood thief who robs you of your wallet, both manifest of the power of greed in our society to distort our humanity and debase our culture.

In such a situation, it is not a surprise to find that our politicians regularly corrupt the system and loot the public treasury in order to reward their friends and punish their enemies. That’s why the powerful invest such huge amounts of money in our politics. It’s not because people want to support the common good. It’s because they think they will make a profit on their campaign contributions.

The process of political money often distracts people. They fetish on the idea that if we could somehow control that process better, we would make the system more fair. Permaculture derives from long, thoughtful, and accurate observations of reality. And there is nothing in our observation of reality that suggests that any amount of process can do anything to make a system like that of the United States, governing a people as selfish, greedy, and violent as we Americans, more just and fair so that the rich and the powerful do not have inordinate influence over the outcomes of our politics.

We need better people, better design, and systemic change.

The influence of power and money on our government will only disappear as the influence of power and money on We the People, as individual human persons in our families and households, wanes and declines. We willingly allow ourselves to be distracted by those hiding behind the curtain pulling the levers and orchestrating the pretty shows. We willingly close our eyes to truth and embrace falsehood. We the People prefer gluttony, greed, and violence to truth, beauty, frugality, and justice.

As long as these realities remain true, our governments will do evil. If the situation changes, and we become a people of truth, beauty, frugality, and justice, our governments will change and learn to do good. Or at least “less bad.”

So never let it be said that what you do, as an individual human person, in your families and households, doesn’t count, because it does.

It matters to you, to your family or household and all who love and care for you. It matters to your community and to your nation. It matters to the planet and the ecologies and critters great and small who share this space with us.

Everything that you do creates the future. Whether that future is good or bad at least in part is up to you. It’s a significant part too, because it’s Zone 0, your own self. It’s really true that the road to world peace begins in each individual human heart.

Let’s repeat that: This is the road to peace. The United States military will withdraw its troops and fleets to the United States and turn away from our present imperial occupation of most of the world, when We the People have made this possible and desirable by the way we live our lives.

There are several levels of importance here:

• The things we do in our own individual lives and households.,
• Our work to spread the news about permaculture and encourage others to live more sustainably.
• Activities involved with creating structures and systems that make it easier to live in wisdom, justice, frugality, and beauty, and harder to live in gluttony, greed, despair, and violence.

Truth and justice are important. As we live them, they will increase. But if instead we live in falsehood and injustice that will be our future and it won’t be beautiful, wise, or happy.

So what we do is important not only for the cause of sustainability. It is critical for the cause of justice and peace. Indeed, justice and peace are an integral aspect of the holistic sustainability we find in nature and aspire to in human systems.

Without justice and sustainability, there will be war.

Without peace and sustainability, there will be no justice.

When and where there are war and injustice, there will be no sustainability.

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied: and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals, engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. — James Madison