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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
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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