Capstone Essay: "To Abolish War" |
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Capstone Essay: "To Abolish War" |
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"Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore. We have seen the future, and the future is ours." - Cesar Chavez
Summary: The thesis of this essay is that the institution of war could be abolished through a combination of Constructive Programs and Obstructive Programs. Good works alone won't end war. To transform dominator, warring cultures into egalitarian and nonwarring ones, Constructive Programs are needed to prepare the way, to establish the groundwork for a new lifestyle. But alone they will not result in a paradigm shift to a Gene Roddenberry-style Star Trek future on earth in which there is gender and racial equality, poverty has been eliminated, and conflicts are resolved by the rule of law instead of through military force. Paradoxically, Constructive Programs unless paired with the force of Obstructive Programs can enable dominator cultures to remain firmly in place. Moreover, to bring about a major social transformation we will need leaders to unite men and women as full partners in shaping a massive cultural shift to a more egalitarian, just, and nonwarring future.
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Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear—kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor—with the cry of grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it. (MacArthur 1965).
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If my letter makes no appeal to your heart, on the eleventh day of this month I shall proceed with such co-workers of the Ashram as I can take, to disregard the provisions of the Salt Laws. I regard this tax to be the most iniquitous of all from the poor man's standpoint. As the Independence movement is essentially for the poorest in the land, the beginning will be made with this evil.
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