Hope and courage overcome

So, we've been told that the war in Iraq is "over." While on my way home, I saw veterans, young men and women, in uniform, returning to the US--some maybe permanently, some who will possibly be deployed to Afghanistan (the active war engagement that seems forgotten) after the holidays. The US military presence in the world is overwhelming and unnerving; this year, the defense budget is on the order of $660 billion, a number that does not take into account the costs of active military engagements, and which I have a feeling does not take into account the cost of having around fifteen thousand military contractors still in Iraq in a "support" role.

Having grown up in India, and having been fortunate enough to visit different parts of the world, I have come to realise something very fundamental about the United States. For all of the hard work and kindness of its peoples, the country as a whole seems to be one that is fearful--there is a fear that seems to pervade people's day-to-day lives, a fear that if we do not do our best, that we will be left behind, a fear that there is always someone else to replace us (and given unemployment numbers, this is likely the case), and a fear that we are no longer the sole superpower (or hegemonic state) of the world. I see the same fear in the way the US conducts itself internationally (listen to the wonderful thoughts of Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC, below), one which equates the opposition to or disagreement with US policy as an affront. I see the same fear, fear that has been draped with protection, that is keeping our government from taking bold and decisive steps in a direction towards a more just and ecologically sustainable world. I believe it is this fear that makes people defensive about the ways of life that have been cherished so far in this country--lives of materialism, lives of credit and debt, lives of benefits for us and costs for the rest of the world. And this is the very fear that dictates the lobbying of those on Wall Street, for if people really knew what was going on between the banks and the government, people may, just may figure out that we live in a house of cards and a culture without resiliency. A resilient culture is dynamic yet stable. Ours is one of bubbles bursting every few years with no visionary approaches to the massive problems at our doorsteps.

Indeed, fear can be paralysing. We are unable to present ourselves as whole before the world because we are unable to admit defeat or apologise for our mistakes, mistakes that we can all agree have been made. This fear must be replaced by hope and courage--the hope that living in fear can be something of the past, that we do not need militaries to fight for what we believe in, but rather that our actions, deeds, and words are respectful of this Earth and its cultures, so much so that we cherish differences, rather than burn and obliterate them. We must have the courage to face up to the fact that our individual ways of life, when aggregated, are causing massive amounts of ecological strife in our backyards, close and far.

Fear is paralysing, but hope and courage are liberating; hope and courage are the opposite of fear. Hope and courage allow us to stand up and speak out to changing social norms, to have difficult conversations with friends and family, to protest the cutting down of trees for new "housing developments," to get in the way of the large corporations that will blow the top of a mountain off with the drop of a hat, to be civilly disobedient. Hope and courage allow us to envision fundamentally different worlds for our individuals and collective lives to exist and participate in. The paralysis of holding on to ways of life we have taken for granted when social structures and the biophysical world are shouting for help must be and can be overcome.

Occupy it all, fear nothing

I went to Occupy Ann Arbor yesterday, a movement in solidarity of the Occupy Wall Street movement. There were about fifteen of us just sitting and talking, holding signs, learning, and sharing stories. We managed to attract the interests of several people walking by, as well as a few car horns.

I wondered, though, why there weren't more people out there, showing support. The message of Occupy movement is something that most all of us can sympathise with, even though some people have portrayed it as some sort of hippie sit-in. I asked David and Heather (the two people to my left in the photo) about this, for it is something I have been thinking about ever since talking to Avik about getting the more "comfortable" people out in protest against continuing ecological degradation and the deviousness of government and corporatism. (These are the people that comprise the middle to upper middle class in the US, those that have enough money to pay the mortgages, have their two cars, two children, and food available from just a few miles of driving.) Are people just not getting the memo?

I am convinced that we live in a state of constant fear. Fear was instilled in us to convince us of the Soviet threat during the Cold War, fear was instilled in us to keep us quiet and keep debate to a minimum when invading Iraq, fear was used as a tactic in response to addressing the housing mortgage bubble, fear was used on us when the government said that AIG was "too big to fail," and fear is being used on us in the politicians' and financiers' responses to the Occupy movement. Fear is being used as a tactic in response to addressing the most obvious and large scale of socio-ecological issues, like climate change. "Things can't change, because they will get worse. We'll lose jobs, and our economy will tank. So just keep doing what you're doing," we are told time and time again. Consequently, we fear that speaking up will make us lose our income, and that we won't be able to pay off our bills and support our families if we do so. We are slaves to fear.

Heather said something very profound. She said that fear is a more primal state of being than what is needed to address the issues that face us. What we really need right now is compassion, and the energy, solidarity, and action that comes out of a compassion towards people's lives, and the Earth that supports us. Instead, our primal beings are catered to when fear is used. Compassion is a higher state of being than is fear, and therefore, it is more difficult to be compassionate than it is to be in fear. Then again, straight-laced people, who have "listened" and done everything they have been told to do by the corporations and the government are losing their livelihoods, and are being kicked out of their homes. These are the people that will hopefully join the Occupy movement. 

At Liberty Plaza, showing support. From left to right: Katie, me, David, Heather, don't know, don't know.

The Occupy movement is ostensibly one whose message is as clear as it is vague. What is clear is that most all of us have continued to be duped by "the system," that grand government-industry-military-corporate complex. Many have worked with the ideals that this country has "epitomised," and yet have been left behind in the name of continued centralised power, centralised money, and the too-big-to-fail mentality. On the other hand, the vagueness of the movement's message allows people to bring in their own views and own concerns to the table. Rather than a singular issue movement, the Occupy movement represents a vast spectrum of anti-corporate, anti-government sentiment.

In the end, however, as this trash-free journey has made me realise, change comes from within. It is very easy to point fingers to the government, or to Goldman Sachs, or those other sleazebags on Wall Street, who are sociopaths of the highest calibre. But this country is at least semi-democratic. (Do not be fooled into thinking that this country is fully democratic.) So where have we gone wrong? How could we have let this happen? We have not had actual guns to our heads forcing us into this situation. Somewhere, we have lost sight, we have lost track, we have not paid attention, and we have let the power grab happen. The corporations have, on the other hand, not lost track, and have continued to pay attention. It is only then that they have such a power hold over this culture. We must find the chink in the armor.

I am fascinated to see how this unfolds.

(I will be away from the blog for a week. Tune back in on Saturday.)

What does peace mean to you?

While both require planning, perseverance, and a steadfastness, peace stands in stark contrast to war. Peace preserves, accepts, and cherishes differences. War obliterates them.

I cannot say whether or not we are closer to living a life of peace or not, particularly when it comes down to the different cultures that make up this human world. Peace is likely not going to come from a compromise of our differences. Indeed, if even Americans cannot resolve their differences through compromise, then how can we expect the Western world to compromise on their differences with people in the East? Peace will come only when we accept the differences that exist. But acceptance is only a first step. We must cherish the differences, while at the same time making an intense effort at truly understanding why people would resort to flying planes into buildings. And so today, a decade on, how has peace influenced the debate on conflict resolution?

It amazes me that we think humans are the greatest thing in the world, but when it comes down to our differences, we will resort to violence to make sure that power stays concentrated with certain people. There is a clear discrepancy, it seems then, between doing all that we can to keep humanity alive, and then resorting to violence to kill humans when we don't agree. Of course, someone that has power might say then that it is in the interest of the broader humanity that their power is being used as violence against others, but that is unjustifiable.

Just as with many of the most complicated issues of our time, words have jumbled meanings. War can happen in the name of peace, and people convince themselves that this must be true. But what about this statement?

Since the Second World War, more than four fifths of the people killed in war have been civilians.

And despite the grief that comes with the loss of human life, there are many more dimensions that we don't think about when we think of war, and the environment is one of those things. How is the Earth's capacity for life changed when we war? Asked another way, what do our differences mean for the environment? Well, differences themselves are borne of the environment. Cultures are outcomes of environmental conditions, different ones, all over the world. This cannot be denied. And so when we resort to violence, we not only kill people, but we disturb and disrupt the ecosystems that build a culture.

There are many historical cases in which the ecological degradation has been used as a weapon to wipe people out, to oppress. In a prescient piece The environmental damage of war in Iraq from The Guardian, written eight years ago before the war, the potential ecologically degrading outcomes of war in Iraq were explored in the context of previous wars, both in the Balkans and in the Middle East:

During the 1991 war devastating damage was done to the oil industry in Kuwait. Iraqi forces destroyed more than seven hundred oil wells in Kuwait, spilling sixty million barrels of oil. Over ten million cubic metres of soil was still contaminated as late as 1998. A major groundwater aquifer, two fifths of Kuwait's entire freshwater reserve, remains contaminated to this day. Ten million barrels or oil were released into the Gulf, affecting coastline along 1500 km and costing more than $700 million to clean up. During the nine months that the wells burned, average air temperatures fell by 10 degrees C as a result of reduced light from the sun. The costs of environmental damage were estimated at $40 billion. Estimates of the numbers likely to die as a result of the air pollution effects were put at about a thousand. Since Iraq has the second largest proven oil reserves of any nation on earth, the potential environmental damage caused by destruction of oil facilities during a new war must be enormous.

Other environmental effects of the 1991 Gulf War included destruction of sewage treatment plants in Kuwait, resulting in the discharge of over 50,000 cubic metres of raw sewage every day into Kuwait Bay.

Secondly, specific weapons likely to be used against Iraq will also create environmental damage. Top of the list of concern are depleted uranium (DU) projectiles.

Guess what? Depleted uranium has wreaked havoc in Iraq. Surprised?

When it comes to "just war theory", both jus in bello and jus ad bellum, how do we hold warring factions to these customs that make attempts at doing "minimal damage to the environment"? Is it even possible? The government and corporations we patronise deal with the issues of defense and war on a day-to-day basis. They in fact make a huge profit from war. The tentacles of war have weaved their way into each and every one of our communities, in all fifty states, from manufacturing to financing to politics to constitutional amendments. So how can we think about peace when war pays the bills?

There is a lack of peace within us. In fact, being peaceful and thoughtful is made to seem passive and subservient. When we find it tasteful to use guns against other people, and use guns as a sign of power and control, we will no doubt find it tasteful to use bombs to blow tops off of mountains to reach for coal - indeed this is a sign of power and control, not over people in this case, but the environment. What may be hindering our cause to find harmony and peace with nature is the violence we are able to perpetrate against our own kind. Or maybe our ability and willingness to perpetrate violence against nature, beautiful and delicate, is standing in the way of finding peace with our own kind. In the end, if we cannot find peace within us, we cannot find peace without us. 

I believe that if we find peace within ourselves and where we are, we can radically redefine notions of "progress" and "community." When I say peace, I in no way mean complacency. When I say peace, I mean that we recognise, understand and internalise our place in the world, our place in our communities, our place within our families, and our place in our own minds and bodies. Being at peace doesn't necessarily mean being satisfied with where we are ethically and morally; clearly, given our increasingly complex world, much of the complexity of which is man-made, there are ways in which we need to be redefining what it means to interact with each other, what it means to be a good citizen and a good steward. As a society as a whole, we are far from the ethical, moral and spiritual heights we need to be at to fully understand our impact on other humans, as well as the environment. There is no way we can envision a sustainable future when we find peace in violence. But if we can find peace in where we are materially and in physical place, we will have reached some level of peaceableness with the environment. Peace with the environment allows us the time to think and appreciate about its marvels, of which humans are one. Such a peace will not allow us to use violent force against any aspect of our environment, humans included. 

What does peace mean to you?

Peace and the deficiencies of anthropocentrism

I was struck by this painting by David Ward, a prisoner here in the State of Michigan, whose work Ode to a dying ideal was showcased along with the art and writing of many other prisoners in Michigan at one of the best events that comes through this University. The Prison Creative Arts Project does wonderful things.

 

I was struck so much that I put a bid on it (click on the photo to see the detail of the border), and won, without even thinking once about my "not buying anything" policy...different issue, one that we can talk about later. What I wanted to write about today was exactly what Ward is getting at with his painting. We cannot go a minute now without listening to people being killed, either people in Iraq or Afghanistan (where it is almost certain that more people have been killed than has been reported in the media here), or people that are being killed so that their voices can be silenced, i.e. in places like Yemen and Libya. People are being silenced here, too. 

I have written at length about peace and the environment, initially provoked by a discussion about Just War Theory with Professor Richard Tucker (more here, here, here), and then subsequently by a piece written by Hendrik Hertzberg about Gabrielle Giffords' shooting. I re-read what I wrote a few months ago, and my mind has not changed. 

It is interesting how all ecological degradation has stemmed from our anthropocentric ethical structure, which dictates that we will do whatever it takes in the interest of humans, more likely than not at the expense of the environment. There are a couple of deficiencies of this ethical framework that I can think of off the top of my head, which I want to discuss. Firstly, I find it amazing that we think humans are the greatest thing in the world, but when it comes down to our differences, we will resort to violence to make sure that power stays concentrated with certain people. There is a clear discrepancy, it seems then, between doing all that we can to keep humanity alive (anthropocentrism), and then resorting to violence to kill humans when we don't agree. Of course, someone that has power might say then that it is in the interest of the broader humanity that their power is being used as violence against others, but that is unjustifiable. In this case, we don't act anthropocentrically.

Secondly, although it may be more manageable for us to think that we should act in the best interest of humans, particularly from an "evolutionary" standpoint, we inevitable degrade what it is that sustains us. We want to protect our own, and if that means that we need to blow off the top of a mountain to get coal so that our homes can be heated in winter, so be it. But if we think about the longevity of humanity, certainly blowing off of the top of a mountain and consequently polluting streams and rivers is in no way protecting our ability to further ourselves. Anthropocentrism, in this case, just has the ability to cave in on itself, particularly when it comes down to an ever-burgeoning population and the struggle to keep ourselves alive in the future. The future that we have envisioned for ourselves, full of batteries and gizmos and computers, is no less violent toward nature than our present society.

The very act of war itself is unsustainable in the truest sense of the word, while at the same time flying in the face of anthropocentrism. Peace does seem to be a dying ideal.

War and the Environment - Depleted uranium, a radioactive waste

While talking to Matt the other night, the topic of depleted uranium came up. Depleted uranium is a byproduct, in essence a waste, of uranium enrichment processes for nuclear fuel and nuclear arms. I am sure you would not be terribly surprised to hear that the US and other nations produce vast amounts of depleted uranium, given that nuclear reactors are now commonplace. What I am sure you will find shocking, just as I did last week, is that depleted uranium, a radioactive waste substance with a physical half-life of 4+ billion years, and a biological half life of 15 days, has been used as ammunition in Iraq, as well as in Serbia (please click here, here, here and here). Depleted uranium is denser than lead, and therefore can more readily penetrate armour, making it particularly useful to violence. While making it much easier to blow the "enemy" up, it can also be aerosolised into sub-micron size dust that is easily inhalable. The US has used several thousand tonnes of depleted uranium in Iraq. I do like to think that I believe in the precautionary principle - if I don't know whether or not something is harmful, especially considering my judgement and gut instinct, I won't do it. (Of course, the world has thrown the precautionary principle out of the window with most environmental and public health harms.) Any level-minded person would think that any sort of radioactive substance, which is a byproduct of human activity, is likely to be environmentally damaging and toxic to both humans as well as plants and animals. (Of course, there is natural radioactivity.) It is therefore not surprising to me that investigative reports by the BBC (do not click there if you are queasy) have shown that depleted uranium has caused increased levels of cancer in new born babies in Iraq. Efforts to make toxicity information public were, of course, stamped down upon.

I think it is particularly telling of the morality and ethics of a government and state to use obviously toxic materials in war. What is more toxic than these materials is the fact that war itself is accepted and condonable. These last few posts have been dealing as much with peace as they have been with the environment, and these two issues are not mutually independent. A society and culture that condones violence to the environment, to the land, air and water that sustains it, is likely to use violence as a means to an end in dealing with other creations of our environment, namely humans. Peace with humans will only come out of a sustained and thoughtful peace with our environment - an environment that is thought of as a life-sustaining force, greater in emotional and spiritual value than any priceless monetary value we may be able to comprehend.