This is http://www.essayz.com/b0408031.htm Previous-Essay <== This-Essay ==> Following-Essay Click HERE on this line to find essays via Your-Key-Words. {Most frequent wordstarts of each essay will be put here.} ===============================================================> See what editing of this essay will come later. <======
%ESSENTIAL FOUNDATIONS TRANSCENDING DISINTEGRATIVE 040803 %EVIL RELATIONSHIPS JUSTIFICATION VIOLENCE PEACE 040803 %VIOLENCE COERCION DOMINATION SYSTEM ANALYSIS WARS 040803 %DISHONESTY DECEPTION SEX COERCION VIOLENCE GODS 040803 %DOMINATION CONTROL MANAGE POWER CONCENTRATIONS 040803 %WEALTH ARROGANCE DICTATE DECEPTION DISHONEST FEAR 040803 When considering the essential foundations for personal and communal integrities --- how are we to helpfully distinguish between the connotations of: coercion, violence, domination and control? 1. Through coercion we can force people to deal with truths and make choices which they may wish to avoid. Through coercion we may embarrass and make people angry, because they have been trying to avoid behaving responsibly. Coercion is not necessarily violent or destructive. Coercion is assertive, but not necessarily disintegrative. Speaking truth-to-power is likely to be coercive and embarrassing --- while being necessary and essential to the reform of The Powers That Be. 2. Violence entails the violation of some form of integrity, integration or a pattern of order. Violence is essentially disintegrative. Violence is "in-order" only when it is truly essential to unilaterally destroy some form of integrity, integration or a pattern of order; e.g., one which is dominated unilaterally by some dictator, arbitrary ruler, emperor, king, queen, gang- ruler, lead-terrorist, etc. Even terrorists, criminals and dictators have their own perverse forms of integration, integrities and patterns of order/orders! However such forms of domination are overall disintegrative within Space-Ship-Earth as a whole. 3. Domination carries connotation of unilateral: control, exclusivity, alienation, excommunications, etc.; through: a. Concentrations of power, wealth, influence, respect, honor, posessions, slaves, servants and technological threats and/or weapons. b. Perversions of truth, virtues, understanding, relationships, communities, cooperation, myths, world-views, cosmologies, and knowledge --- which make many people vulnerable, poor, powerless, dis-eased, ill, sick, homeless, dependent, etc. c. Manipulating diseases, mental-illness, sickness, communal-disorder, etc. to maximize the vulnerability of those who are to be controlled. 4. Control carries connotations of there being efffectively some-one/thing in charge of people's behaviors through micro-management technologies; e.g., in an Orwellian "Community" wherein there is no-unity, no- integrity, no-honesty, no-freedom, nor-free-will. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - In light of the history of and the abuse of the concept of a "Just-War"; what may we helpfully say about the concepts of "Just-Coercion", "Just-Violence", "Just- Domination" and "Just-Control"? Walter Wink in "The Powers That Be" offers helpful background information on the history of and the abuse of the concept of a "Just-War"; starting with the uniformily-pacifist Christians in the early centuries of the Christian-Way, the adoption of the Christian-Church and the Institutional-zation of Christians by Emperor Constantine, the growing dependence of Christians upon Constantine's-Way-of-Domination and the "rationalization" of military-service by Augustine who died in 430 C.E. Can humans really facilitate, promote and realize personal-and-communal integrations-&-integrities through: Just-Wars, Just-Coercion, Just-Violence, Just-Domination, Just-Controls, Just-Micro-Management, Just-Power-Concentrations, Just-Wealth-Concentrations, Just-Arrogance, Just-Self-Righteousness, Just-Dictatorships, Just-Deception, Just-Dishonesty, Just-Stealing, Just-Excommunications, Just-Alienations, Just-Destructions, Just-Disintegrations? Just-Genocides? Just-Mutually-Assured-Destruction? Can there be any integrity arrived at by asking and answering questions framed in the above way --- without challenging the very way in which the questions are framed; the attitudes, assumptions, world-view, cosmology and mythology which lays the foundations for the framing of the questions? Do such questions have any integrity; or are they essentially misleading? Walter Wink deals with such issues in Chapter 7 of his book "The Powers That Be" under the title: "Beyond Pacifism and Just War". The above extends Wink's analysis beyond just the overall notion of "war" --- down into the realms of most: personal, communal, religious, business, professional, scientific, intimate, and sexual relationships. Might the dilemmas faced in discussing the notion of a "Just- War" be best resolved within such an extended analysis? Might it be that the most important things we can do to eliminate war --- have to do with how to eliminate resorting to the disintegrative behaviors which we instinctively know we need to "justify" and "control" (?) in order to enjoy shalom and civilization? Within what conceptual framework can justice tryly be done? Perhaps we need to attend more intently to the suggestions of: Jesus, Leo Tolstoy, Mohandas Gandhi, Muriel Lester, Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorthy Day, Cesar Chavez, Hildegard and Jean Goss-Mayr, Mariead (Corrigan) Maguire, Adolfo Perez Esquivel, Daw Aung San Suu Kye--to point us to a-new-way of confronting evil-relationships and into social-transformations we are only beginning to imagine today. (See Chapater 5 of Walter Wink's Book "The Powers That Be".) (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy) ==========================================================