That about sums it up!

I have been listening to the reports of Assad every day. I hope this is ultimately a transition for the good and I hope it happens soon. Is the death of imperialism on the doorstep? Is it the age of instant communication that brought it about? I don't know what is in the minds of these people but surely, surely they want to move forward in peace after a century of turmoil.

One can only hope, H. Too often after a dictator is deposed or a totalitarian regime fades, the ugliness of the culture surfaces. Long held antagonisms from many sources are suddenly allowed to be expressed. What can follow as is the case with the breakup of the Soviet Union is a vicious thug government as those with the most guns and loyalists take advantage of the power vacuum. It is naive to look at a young nation welded together from formerly different tribes and ascribe to them the label "a people". Oddly enough it is the shared faith that can be the glue as is the case with the Israelis, Jews from many nations and thousands of years of diaspora. If on the other hand that faith has extreme sects and they try to co-locate as we have seen with Shia and Sunni Muslims, when ancient feuds and insults are mixed in, it can be even bloodier than the tyrant.

So one can only hope. Assad is fighting a losing battle the same as Gadaffi. I don't think we can credit instant communications any more than a lightning strke can be credited with the forest fire. It takes seasons of drought and dry tinder to burn the forests. Egypt will probably fall to the Muslim Brotherhood and it seems that former antagonisms are surfacing there as predicted. The deep and embarassing naivete of the web generation in this regard is only surprising given the fantastic information resources available. Note that before the web became a cheap telephone, it was a revolutionary library.

I dont beleive they want to move foreward in peace. Or possibly in theory they say they want it, but that would like be a severe addiction to overcome.

you mean like across the board? you think maybe it is a like an addiction? (that is not arrogance MG, (believe me), i hope it doesn't come across that way...it is just a question or a thought?)

i mean i imagine it might be hard to put one's guard down instantly, but i don't know that that is the same as addiction? i am also saying generally speaking.

i hope i am making sense.

Well, Agnes, Im not sure about "across the board", since there have of course been talks and agreements signed along the way. There is some show of making an attempt at cease fire. What i am saying is that I have not seen any evidence of a desire for peace.

I have been contemplating this post along with some other topics of unanswered questions, and it just struck me that they we have not really made any significant behavioral shift since I was in 5th grade. Middle East History with Sr. Herman, 1965. I dont see or hear any real desire to live in a non-warring culture. Its probably not an addiction, it just feels like it.

Does the fMRI of a crack addict look similar to the functional brain scans of the middle east military... ?
That would certainly be interesting evidence! But without this , we cannot say physiologically its an addiction. Just that you can put these countries through a 12 step programs (and subsequent rehabs) for as long as I have been done with 5th grade, and I don't think they are ready to put down the guns.

Say its cultural, it's in thier blood, they have a mutant gene, they have an addiction. I am not certain of that , only that this is the way of life for so long they literaly know no other way, so don't seek to get there.

We as Americans, on the other hand, see peace as a desired state of living. We know and live in peaceful times. When we say we hope for them, we are not saying we have succumbed to hope, just that this is our perspective, to hope for peacetime living. i am saying this seeminlgy is not a hope of theirs.

I will have to confer with my friend Hillary to confirm this

I just realized why twelves step programs stop at twelve...

I believe that the vast majority of human beings on this planet desire peace, both for themselves and universally. These folks live quietly, for the most part, going about their daily existence, doing the best they can with what they've got. The minority of people who work tirelessly to undermine peaceful pursuits get lots of attention -- the squeaky wheel gets the grease -- and we have seen that it takes only a few with diabolical intent to create catastrophic results. It's hard not to be afraid of the destruction that can be visited upon multitudes of folks by just a few extremists of __________? (You fill in the blank).

With regard to agression and efforts to propogate wars and the death of innocents, I (as someone who deals with addictions of many kinds on a daily basis, and has researched the latest empirical science on the subject) would have to say that you are correct in your assessment that violence on massive and global scales is not the same as the other behaviors we commonly associate with addictions like substances, gambling, eating, etc. It wouldn't show up on an MRI as, for instance, the "flare-ups" we observe occurring within the pleasure center of the brain of, say, a cocaine addict in response to the use of, or even the thought of, the substance or its associative elements. I believe that the subject of anti-peaceful behavior is simultaneously more complicated and more simple.

Consider the "handful" of psychopaths who planned and executed the 9/11 attacks. Then consider the relatively small minority of obscenely wealthy corporate entities who are (I use the term "who" because they are run by people) poisoning our planet for profit 24/7, killing and inflicting enormous suffering on billions of people. These scenerios are like the behaviors of an addict in that they display an urge which is self-centered and fulfils a need for instant gratification: short-term myopic actions carried out without regard for long-term consequences or how others are negatively affected.

And so here we are discussing this terrible problem of the human condition on the website of a man who has devoted his life to spreading the words of peace, love, spirituality, humor -- all of the highest ideals and principles that we as humans can and do aspire to..........we might be tempted to wonder what's wrong with this picture. I am looking at this moment and at all of the things that are so right with it. Folks like Pete and Arlo have been telling us for decades that we should concentrate on the light and never be afraid of the dark, because without it we couldn't know the light; that we should never be afraid to do the right thing, even if means throwing away everything we've always done and completely transforming ourselves in order to do the right thing. They tell us that it's never too late to change what we can, and that as terrifying as things might get sometimes, we should never allow fear to prevent us from doing the things that our hearts and minds tell are the right things to do.

Our real power lies in our own individual knowledge and awareness of those things over which we are powerless, and those over which we are not.

The twelve steps don't stop at twelve. After twelve it goes back to one again. Maybe not the same "one,".........but it goes 'round and 'round in a circle, or more accurately, a spiral.........

well it does seem like there are people who are interested in peace (for example, the peaceful protesters), but they keep getting mowed down by assad and them (the syrian government) even though he promised he would tolerate such protests.

I believe people desire control and stability in their individual environment. It sounds barbaric but recent history (well history in general) suggests that people confronted with violent, dangerous and death filled environments will try to control their situations such that they are not among the dead. Even if this means conforming to, accepting and even perpetrating violence, so be it (Read Hannah Arendt's Banality of Evil, the ideas that had her banned from Israel). Eventually, this may lead to "peaceful protests" but those protests have to fall on responsive and capable ears. Protests in Libya and Syria are not aimed at Gaddafi or Assad, their audience is America and France and Britain and Russia and China and anywhere else that maybe able to stop the violence with external pressure. If a ruthless and totalitarian system is reestablished then people will conform to survive. Survival in a conforming society leads to excesses of power and violence.

Government and politics respond as individuals. America has a foundation on individual freedom (which, as we know, requires maintenance so that we can keep these freedoms) but it has chosen during it's history to perpetrate violence and restrict individual freedoms to maintain control and stability in the world. Some examples are Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Nicaragua.... America is a late comer to the game and has not been as brutal as some (The European Empires (collectively), Stalin's Russia, Hitler's Germany). However, the game did change with the British method of dropping bombs to maintain authority that was first practiced in Syria and Iraq in the 1920's. Still, the objective stays the same from the micro to the macrocosm of human politics, control and stability in your world (not necessarily all worlds, but your world.

I wish I could be all peace love and dove all the time but Len proved to me a long time ago, this is in our genes! We are the most dangerous animal!

I mean

Wasn't that the great conundrum about Vietnam?

How can we claim to be a peaceful society when we are carpet bombing 100,000's of people daily half a world away?

I still think instant communication may have impact, I mean, back then, the 30 minute dose of violence on TV (you could get an hour if you switched channels at the right time) surely had an impact on society and made many people question these actions. I know, in more modern times TV has been neutered and we have grown more accustomed to violence, but still?

Nonesuch. No proof is offered or corroborated. Believe as you will and make it so by convincing others, but I've yet to see a convincing proof that we war because our DNA demands it. Our culture does and because we refuse to take responsibility for it, we substitute genetic imperative for fear of being left out of the dance.

Maybe it's a condition of birth, resources and schedules.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/08/opinion/08brooks.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=general

Who said we don't take responsibility?

Let's just say your arguments were so thin and self serving (not as an individual but as a human) that it pushed me to believe that war and are predisposition to violence is in our genes. That is just my perception of the historical facts and my own perceptions of the human psyche. It is not your fault! I just find the refusal to consider what we really are, as humans, in the long run, is very dangerous indeed.

I shudder to think that I could have done the things that Adolf Eichmann or to a lesser but more pointed degree William Calley did, but I don't kid myself to believe that they are an aberration. East of Berlin and West of Moscow between the years of 1930 and 1950 there were thousands of people confronted with survival in its most gruesome and perilous reality. What did they do? How did they respond? Are they any different than you or me?

Like I said before, they made decisions in the great attempt to not end up in the dead pile.

I didn't say it wasn't human. I said you offered no proof it is genetic. When proof by corroborative testing can't be found, consider alternatives. That's science. You're playing a game to gather support using fallacies. That's not science. That's politics.

The backfire effect has kicked in. You are now using any refutation as evidence that you are right when so far, no proof has been offered and a negative can't be proven. Alternatives can be provided.

Add this to your reading stack.

http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/06/10/ ... re-effect/

Consider that when we built the web, we were building the new library of alexandria but within a decade it morphed into the world's cheapest international telephone and address book. The trepidation some of us had in the 80s was what the psych types called "superstitious learning" in what is basically an amplifier of belief. So far those trepidations have been on target. We are easily played but not easily swayed. If we don't like a show's ending, we find one we do like.

And then there are those incredible folks who, throughout history and even today, refuse to compromise their principles even though they know that they will almost certainly wind up on the dead pile.