Miscellaneous

More Thoughts on Peace

By Fannie

Riane Eisler:

"Have you ever wondered, for instance, why it is that so many politicians always find money for weapons, for wars, for prisons ? but when it comes to funding health care, child care, and other 'soft' or caring activities, they have no money?...

[B]etween child-battering, wife-beating, sexual abuse of children, rapes, bride burnings, sexual mutilation of girl children and women, so-called honor killings, and other horrors, the number of lives taken and blighted by intimate violence worldwide are much greater than those taken by armed conflict. And yet this violence is still largely invisible."

Item:

One week after a man lit his balls on fire in a failed attempt to commit a terrorist attack on an airplane, President Obama vowed to do "whatever it takes to defeat" Al Qaeda. I assume doing "whatever it takes" will entail pouring more of our fucktillions of dollars into the Wars on Terror.

What if we, as a society, put the same zeal and resources into eradicating some types of violence that we put into others? Might we find an interesting correlation between living in a society that prioritizes solving problems with violence and living in a society wherein individuals prioritize solving problems with violence?

Replacing one domination-based model with another doesn't end the cycle, it only changes who gets to be in charge of the violence.

Full post as published by Fannie's Room on January 18, 2010 (boomark / email).