Wednesday, May 29, 2013


Eso’s Chronicles 174
Mother of Solutions (V)
© Eso A.B.

While philosophers such as Slavoy Žižek proclaim that there is no alternative to global capitalism: “The true message of the notion of the Third Way is that there is no ‘second way’, no alternative to global capitalism so that, in a kind of mocking pseudo-Hegelian ‘negation of negation’, the Third Way brings us back in the first and only way. Is this not global capitalism with a human face?”*

What escapes Žižek is that unnoticed by the ranks of “…professional and credentialed opinion leaders, particularly journalists and academics”,  http://www.globalresearch.ca/media-disinformation-and-the-conspiracy-panic-phenomenon/5336221 (see 3rd paragraph) the recently arrived ‘new age’ of Internet Populism is challenging the status quoers at their tame song and bringing solutions to problems unimaginable to ‘credentialed opinion leaders’ (Žižek among them).


I have mentioned this war, denied and as if behind the curtains, in previous blogs (167), when I touched on the subject of the Tibetan immolators, a type of warrior not seen in the West since the days of Jan Hus, the Christian heretic unsympathetic to Christian conventionalists (proto-capitalists Catholics). In 1415, nearly 600 years ago**, Hus chose to be burnt at the stake (in Constance), rather than surrender to the dictates of the Habsburg Emperor Sigismund. That the immolator or self-sacrifice is a warrior to be taken seriously is evidenced by the fact that the government of China has threatened to stick anyone who aids or gives succor to self-sacrifice with a charge of aiding and abetting a criminal act.


As if to underscore the issue of the reappearance of self-sacrificial warriors (whether of Tibetan or other origin), a Sri Lankan Budhist monk recently set himself on fire https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMtBikwFvyY to protest animal slaughter http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-22681763 (a crime perpetrated in the service of the inhabitants of the desert city) and the intrusion into Sri Lankan culture of minority religious faiths (such as neo-Christianity and neo-Islam), both born of and sympathetic to capitalism.


The Sri Lankan government condemns the Sri Lankan media for video taping the event and not forewarning the government about what was about to take place; and may bring charges against the video journalist. One of the reasons for the action of the Sri Lankan government is the claim (of what the BBC reporter Charles Haviland calls ‘ultra-nationalists’) that the “Sinhalese ultra-nationalist ministers in the government have praised the incident as an act of self-sacrifice for the good of the country.”


While I am opposed to immolation by fire due to the extreme pain, suffering, and body mutilation it causes, I am not opposed to waging war against government military type of violence by self-sacrifice.


Military type (gang) violence has long plagued all nations and cultures on our planet. Foremost among the initiators of this violence are governments, which enslave-recruit young men to do their bidding.


The first among overt practitioners of violence are of course they who serve in government led armed forces. These are followed by government opponents who borrow their resistance tactics from government example. Muslim terrorists who arm themselves with strap-on explosive devices, and while sacrificing their own lives in the act, know of no or have no moral qualms about slaughtering innocent people who happen to be nearby as a result of chance. While ostensibly fighting on behalf of Islam and the traditions of Islamic nations, the Islamist terrorists ultimately fight for but an Islamic form of capitalism, which as such will not bring any better solutions for Islamists than Christians.


What is the solution?


The solution stares us practically in the face. Put simply, it is a radical change in methods of fighting war. The method puts an end to violent attack or defense, and is replaced by fighting war by means of self-sacrifice. The war employs no bullets or explosives that are used against others. There are no burials of the dead accompanied by honor guard rifle salvos. Indeed, there are no grave yards, but everyone who sacrificed his-her life has their name and a short bio entered into a permanently available internet scroll accessible through a special ‘spot’ on the menu bar on every computer.


One of the missing links in the Tibetan Budhist self-sacrifice effort is the failure of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan community to provide for all to see a memorial scroll for its not-violent soldiers. By failing to provide for their own, the Tibetans fail to bring the message of their method of fighting a war to the attention of the world, at the same time as the community fails to significantly change the world for the better and do the missionary work that needs to be done.


The platform for the honor scroll can be provided by any already existing platforms, and such a platform may, beginning with the UN and the support of all ‘AntiWar’ platforms, have an almost an infinite number of sponsors representing many causes of civil society.


The sole bonding mechanism, so to speak, however, should not be the cause, but the not-violent and self-sacrificial method used to fight for the cause. Ending war as we know it, is in itself one of the great causes. However, before this can happen, humans need to change their attitude toward death.


*Slavoy Žižek, “The Universal Exception”, Continuum, p 149.

**Jan Hus was imitated by Jan Palach, who immolated himself in 1968, protesting the Soviet invasion of Chehoslovakia.

Link of interest:

Venner suicide: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22620143
Women immolate http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-22697399

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