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Healing Practices

Native Philosophy of Peace (PDF)

March 2, 2016 Archivist

Title: Native Philosophy of Peace

Part I. An Introduction to Native Philosophy of Peace

Part II. Speaking Towards Peace: A Native American Way

Pamela Colorado

Lethbridge Extension

Faculty of Social Welfare

University of Calgary

Sam Kounosu

Physics Department

University of Lethbridge

Abstract:

From the time of the invasion by the European Civilization in the 15th century, the history of Native Americans has been a history of violence. The Natives have had to endure and subsist under the genocidal policy of colonial powers that overwhelmed them. And the struggle still continues. Yet, the Natives had a profound Philosophy of Peace and have lived and survived with it. We have a great deal to learn from the Philosophy of the Natives. It also gives us an opportunity to examine “violent” elements in our “Civilization” itself, as well as a way out of it. Since the Native Philosophy of Peace is not the academic kind that can be summarized in a set of propositions but rather is a way of life, we shall not attempt to “describe” it. Here, we shall endeavour to introduce the Philosophy in two ways. In Part I we make a descriptive introduction. In Part II, we narrate the Philosophy in the Native Oral Tradition, aiming at communication at a spiritual level.

Feb. 14, 1987.

An Introduction to the Native Philosophy of Peace

Since the invasion by Europeans in the 15th century, the history of Native eAmerica is a history of violence. Therefore, it may appear almost a contradiction to seek the message of Peace from the Natives. But, because of experiences of violence and facing their own extinction, Natives created urgent messages for Peace and have lived with them and survived by them in desperate situations. We have much to learn from their wisdom that is embedded in their way of life.

The violence which the Natives experienced was not the kind which we consider in the conttext of the “push button” Warfares that our science-technology has made possible nor the Nuclear Arms Race between two Super Powers that the huge bureaucratization of violence has lead us to. And if our concern for Peace is limited to the question of how to prevent Nuclear War from impending upon us, the Spiritual form of the Native message for Peace might appear only remotely relevant to us. However, the very difficulties which we have in reducing the scale of the Arms Race indicates that we have a need to examine if our way of life for itself is a part of the problem. And, in that we may find and gain great wisdom for Peace from Natives who have faced and survived the destructive forces of modern civilization.

To understand and to learn from the Natives, however, it is absolutely necessary that we look back to the history of violence. This is an exercise in dialectics We shall learn Peace by learning about our own violence.

References:

[Vine Deloria, God Is Red, Laurel Book, 1973.

Francis Jennings, The Invasion of America, Univ. of N. Carolina Press, 1975.

Gary B. Nash, Red, White and Black, Prentice-Hall, 1974.

Merrill D. Beal, I Will Fight No More Forever, Univ. of Washington Press, 1963.

Dee Brown, Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, Holt-Rinehart, 1970.]

2. The way Indians were treated in the North American continent was worse than the Apartheid of South Africa today. Outright massacres were carried on even after the Civil War which supposedly liberated Black slaves for humanitarian reasons. One might imagine that for economic growth, the liberated Blacks were useful, whereas “the only good Indians were dead Indians.” And since Natives resisted “Christianity”, the Christian compassion was not applicable to them. They were considered a part of the Wild Nature to be conquered by the Civilization.

The colonialization started with violence. The Spanish came with greed and atrocity in the name of Christian mission to the New World. That part of history is well known, so I shall not talk about that here.

[See Bartolome de las Casa: Brevisima Relacion De La Destruccion De Las Indias, 1552, for the earliest account. In Montaigne’s Essay (1580), the third book, chapter 6, there is a brief remark about the Spanish atrocity.]

The British flowed soon after, with no less violence. According to the few records that are left, British settlers came to the Virginia coast area and found the natives there to be friendly. One report said:

“We were entertained with all love and kindness, and with much bounties, after their manner, as they could possibly devise. We found the people most gentle, loving, and faithful, void of all guile, and treason.”

[David Quinn, The Voyagers, 1584-1590; quoted by Gary B. Nash Red, White, and Black.]

But the Britons did not come there simply to live with friendly natives. The competition among empires in Europe to establish and expand colonies had already started. Naturally, soon the initial friendly relation deteriorated and “incidents” were created for “Show of Force”, which became a universal pattern in most colonialization processes elsewhere. I cite only two examples here.

“No conflict occured until the English discovered a silver cup missing and dispatched a punitive expedition to the nearby Indian village. When Indians denied taking the cup, the English decided to make a show of force, burned the village to the ground and destroyed the Indian’s supply of corn.”

[Edmond S. Morgan, “Slavery and Freedom: The American Paradox”, Journal of American History. Vol. 59, 1972, p. 16.]

“Many were burnt in the fort, both men, women and children. Others forced out…which our soldiers received and entertained with the sword. Down fell men, women, and children…Sometimes the Scripture declareth women and children must perish with their parents. Sometimes the case alters; but we will not dispute it now. We had sufficient light from the word of God for our proceedings.”

[John UnderHill, News from America, (1638), London. Quoted by Richard Slotkin, Regeneration Through Violence. Wesleyan Univ. Press, 1973.]

One notes here that burning villages and destroying crops were already practiced tactics when the British invaded Ireland centuries before that time. Both the Red Army and White Army in the Russian Revolution practiced the same. Hitler used it in W.W. II. Americans did that in Vietnam.

[As to the “metaphor” of Indian War repeated in Vietnam, see Richard Slotkin: The Fatal Environment — The Myth of Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800 – 1890. Atheneum, 1985.]

The idea of “show of force”, or equivalent phrases such as “show who is the boss” appears quite often in the records that were left from the period of colonial time. The British were there with the intent of conquering and domination from the beginning. They needed only slight provocations, if they did not create the excuses. Many stories of Native attacks may well have been fibs constructed, like “the Bay of Tonkin incident” in the Vietnam War.

To be sure, there was romanticizing of Natives as “Noble Savages.” We can read it in poetries of Walt Whitman, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, et al.

(see White On Red, ed. N.B. Black. Kennikat Press, 1976.)]

Or see it in paintings by Benjamin West and others. But the romanticizing was in effect a beautifying cover for the colonial conquest. It did not stop physical and cultural genocide. Quite aware of such a sentiment, John Quincy Adams wrote in 1802:

“The Indian right of possession itself stands, with regard to the greatest part of the country, upon a questionable foundation. Their cultivated fields; their constructed habitations; a space of ample sufficiency for their subsistence, and whatever they had annexed to themselves by personal labour, was undoubtedly by the law of nature theirs. But what is the right of a huntsman to the forest of a thousand miles over which he accidentally ranges in quest of prey? Shall the liberal bounties of Providence to the race of man be monopolized by one of ten thousand for whom they were created? Shall the exuberant bosom of the common mother, amply adequate for the nourishment of millions, be claimed exclusively by a few hundreds of her offspring.”

[Quoted in I Will Fight No More Forever, p. 24.]

The answer to Adam’s rhetorical question was obvious, as we can see in history. The Natives were driven off the land, if not exterminated. They were confined in concentration camps, called “Indian Reserves.” And as the “Progress of Civilization” wanted more and more land, the Natives were forcefully moved again and again to smaller and smaller confinements each time. The metaphor of the “Mother Earth” was Native, not White, nor was it Christian, as we see in the environmental destructions that went on under what was called the “Manifest Destiny.” The rhetoric asked for sharing the gifts of Mother Nature, but the invader came to dominate and rape the Mother. Environmental concern did not emerge until late 1960’s, and collectively speaking, our actions with regard to Acid Rain, Nuclear Wastes, Deforestation, etc., regretably suggest that we have not yet stopped rationalizing our rapist practices.

[see “Metaphysics of Indian Hater” in Herman Melville’s Confidence of Man. 1857. As to hi Moby-Dick, critics pointed out that Melville was writing, in the metaphor of Whale Hunt, on the whole American assault on Nature in the name of Progress.]

We note here that as late as October of the last year, The United Church of Canada has come to Apologize to the Natives for its “policy of cultural genocide”. In an article “Of course we forgive you,” [The Observer, Oct. 1986], Rev. Wilf Dieter narrates:

“I grew up in residential schools…The second year, I remember going back to school. I was crying. My mother was wiping away the tears. Why were my parents sending me away. I guess one of the things I didn’t realize was the law. If she didn’t take me back, the police would come for me.”

This was taking place only a few decades ago in Canada which we think the most peaceful country in the world. What if some agents of a foreign country come in and pass a law to separate Canadian children from parents? Does white majority consider it less than atrocity? Of course, we as the majority “did not know” that we have been practicing the cultural genocide policy, just as the majority of Germans did not know of the infamous concentration camp during W.W. II. The point is that we did not care to know about them. While reading philosophy of Kant or Russell in books, we did not “read” our real philosophy that we practiced and lived in.

3. Today, we may be sufficiently “liberal minded” to say that the colonial practices of the historical past were “mistakes.” But read the rhetorical question of Adams again and see if we have changed our way of thinking. The Capitalists, the bourgeoisie, and the liberal thinkers would say that, “in the inevitable power struggles which bring the progress of the production power”, the “backward” way of the Native life had to be eradicated, although we might try to employ as “humane” means as possible. And socialists and Marxists would agree. The modern intellectuals, left, middle or right, are believers of “progress” in which some unfortunate “backward” portions of humanity will become extinct like Dodo birds.

[see also Ward Churchill, ed. Marxism and Native Americans. South End Press, 1983.]

Christians today would say that the atrocities condoned by the missionaries in the colonial conquest did not represent “True Christianity”, which is presumably based on Love. But, one wonders if the christians clearly distinguish the religion of Love and the religion of Power, and honestly live by the principle of Love, as the Natives have lived by their Spirituality. It appears that the Christians believe more in the Might of Nuclear Weapons and Laser Guns than Love. It is ironical that the presumed anti-christians in the Soviet Union do the same. They both are believers of the same Power.

[However, we pay attention to Liberation Theology.

Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation. Orbis Books, 1973.

Bishop Remi De Roo, Cries of Victims – Voice of God. Novals, 1986, etc.

As to links between Christianity and European Civilization, see:

Max Weber, Protestant Ethics and The Spirit of Capitalism.

Lynn White, “The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis”, American Scientists. March 1967.

Lawrence R. Brown, The Might of the West. Joseph J. Binns Pub., 1963.]

Here I am not talking of the hypocritic morality, but doing purely pragmatic thinking about the consequences and the cost of the European World View. The “Intelligence” of the European tradition is centred around “Power” to dominate people. Our “science” stemmed from the desire to conquer and exploit Nature. Academic and theological knowledge claims are claims of authority and control of thinking. Our official languages are basically the languages of commanding others.

Of course, we know that our competition for power, authority in terms of knowledge claims, etc., is illusionary and for the most part of little significance. Nonetheless, we do use the stylism as a “proper ritual” in academic settings, if we wish to be taken seriously. And, perhaps, the effects/consequences of such a ritual may only be indirect in encouraging the notion of the Conquest of the Wild Nature with Barbaric primitives in it. Our higher Education, which produces elite classes of our society , may or may not be directly responsible for Pollution and Environmental Destruction. If someone argues that the Pollution and Destruction are necessary requirements for the existence of the Elitist System, there would be many objections from the Intellectual elites. They would demand “scientific” proof demonstrating causal mechanisms for the connection. But, in a noncausalistic sense, we are all implicated in the violent history. And if the Nuclear extinction falls upon us, it is we who made it possible, not by default, but by a determined will, a great organized drive and mobilization of intellectual efforts.

4. After all, we do believe in the hierarchical system of Power. In our ordinary language, “Powerless” does mean degradation. We have not reconciled with Love that is powerless. For the North American psyche, it is winning that tells them that they are on “God’s side.” Not fighting tantamounts surrender to the Devil. We say “all men are created equal”, but we are as “equal” as the degree by which we win the competitions. As long as it is legal, and does not offend one’s own “moral feelings”, Might is Right. The only thing that protects one’s safety is, therefore, military superiority. The modern nation-states followed that logic. If one follows the causal-mechanistic thinking which we consider “rational”, there is no other way.

We know SDI would not work, but we do have to keep the illusion of the Superior Power going even at the cost of Trillions of Dollars. Recently, some among us apparently started to worry that the “peace propaganda”, such as The Day After, made us “too soft” and so they produced a counter-propaganda series on T.V. called Amerika to remind people that the Power Principle has to be defended. That is because Power is our religion. If the Power Principle is undermined, the whole social structure of the Western society might collapse.

The only trouble is that the logic of Power has now reached its ultimate in that it can destroy the human race as a whole. That is why some of us are interested in searching for alternatives.

[see also Fritjof Capra, The Turning Point, Bantam Books, 1982.

Morris Bermann, The Reenchantment of the World, Cornell Univ. Press, 1982.]

But there is a problem. If we are to turn around on the way to ultimate power, what would be the alternative? Certainly, going back to the arbitrary dictatorship of the feudal system or the old slave-caste system would not likely secure Peace in any sense. At least, we think, we do have a “civic” sense of peace in the advanced industrial countries. “Democracy”, although perhaps imperfect, seems to correlate with the progress of civilization in the European style. We would say that we cannot go back to the Stone Age, in a metaphor of Indians as wild beasts who lived in inhuman indignity. The Noble Savage metaphor does not work here any more than the romantic metaphor of womanhood works for women’s dignity. But rather, it enforces our fear of going back to Feudalism or Barbarism which we think dictatorial authoritarian. Hence, we would normally not think of the Native Culture as possible instructive material for learning the way to Peace.

5. Surprisingly, however, the Native Americans were not authoritarian. Their communities were organized on the principle of sharing. The Indians were capable of becoming fierce warriors, but they lived in their communities of Love. They had a strong sense of personal dignity, and honored their liberty, though they were not egocentric Individualists. Nash narrates:

“One aspect of child-rearing on which European and Iroquoian cultures differed was in the attitude toward authority. In Iroquois society the autonomous individual, loyal to the group but independent and aloof rather than submissive, was ideal…

They were trained early in life to think for themselves but act for others…

They were being prepared for an adult society which was not hierarchical, as in the European case, but where individuals lived on a more equalitarian basis, with power more evenly distributed among men and women…”

[Red, White and Black.

See also: Walter B. Miller “Two Concepts of Authority”. American Anthropologist. Vol. 57. 1955, p. 271-289.

What Max Weber described in his study of “Authority” may be peculiar to Europe. We also note that, phrases such as “Show who is the boss” appeared frequently in the expressions of British colonialist to justify atrocities committed against the Natives.

In the context of Peace Research, Wm. Eckhardt’s study showed that the “aggressive” and “authoritarian” personality are correlated.]

It is also known that the principle ideas of Democracy in the American Constitution were influenced by Iroquoian ideals.

[Carol L. Bagley and Jo Ann Ruckman, “Iroquois Contribution to Modern Democracy and Communism.” American Indian Culture and Research Journal, Vol. 7 #2, 1983. p. 53-72.]

6. Iroquois, before their contact with Europeans, had established a “United Nations”. The name “Iroquois” stands for a group of five nations established in the 14th century or earlier: the Mohawks, the Onondaga, the Oneidas, the Cayugas, and the Senecas. The philosophy that united these nations was known as “Dekanawideh”, and we can decipher that the basic principle fo the Native “United Nation” was a philosophy of Peace, not the European tradition of “domination by the strongest.”

[Anthony F.C. Wallace, “The Dekanawideh Myth analyzed as the record of a revitalization movement”. Ethnohistory, Vol. 5, 1958.

Wm. N. Fenton Parker On the Iroquois. Book III. Syracuse U. Press, 1968.]

It appears that to the Natives “to know” a philosophy can be nothing short of honestly living by it. Therefore, they left no written “expose” on their philosophy. Nonetheless, we can infer a few glimpses of their philosophy; for example, the Philosophy of “Tree of Peace” has been translated and documented. It is remarkable that the Natives, despite their experiences of violence, had a vision of Peace in which they embraced whiteman within the “Four Roots of the Tree of Peace” that holds the World in love.

The Natives narrated the philosophy of Peace in a form of “prophecy” using a metaphor of a huge tree that protects and provides for all people. Its four roots are said to interconnect and hold the entire World.. They did not see any other possible way to have Peace on Earth, but by love that embraces the whole.

Since Dr. Colorado is to communicate the Peace message in the proper Native way in the following presentation, I shall not elaborate on the Peace Philosophy.

[See also Pamela Colorado, “Inowediwin. Peace and Honor Going Back and Forth Between Us.” Toward Social and Economic Justice, Gil & Gil, Schenkman Publishing Co., 1985.]

I would like to discuss one thing however. In studying the Native Philosophy of Peace, I have come to think that this Philosophy was embedded in a distinct Epistemology from that of traditional Western culture. I shall try explaining, the best I can, the distinct Epistemology that the Natives had.

7. The Natives had an oral tradition and to them “to know” was “to live in” the philosophy, as I mentioned above. They did not have “philosophy” existing only in texts, as in the European case. As a consequence, there existed no written text for their philosophy. Therefore, from our European custom of scholarship being a “book knowledge”, there exists considerable difficulty in researching the Native philosophy. I cannot assert that what I say here is correct. The only thing I can do is to report what I have “guessed” so far in my groping of an hypothesis in hopes of stimulating interest.

We cannot understand “philosophy” here in the sense of technically analyzing written expressions — as lawyers do in technical arguments about the “letter of the law” —, but we have to address “the spirit of the law”, so to speak. and the philosophy has to be deciphered from practice, and inferred from the way of life in the contexts of concrete situations at hand. The western sense of “objective knowledge” alienated from the knower’s own life is absurdity, if not dishonesty to the Natives. That is, Native philosophy was “spiritual” in the sense that it was the inner most thinking of the sovereign soul. And at the same time, the philosophy was “pragmatic” and “existential” in that it did not allow alienation from actual living. It was also akin to the Marxian position, in that “knowing” was “changing the World”. They did not learn “philosophy” as a text, but learned it as “awakening to wisdom”, which is an experience of change in the way of life. “Truth” that does not change one’s way of life is not a Truth, in their philosophy.

Even the Greek work “Truth” (a-letheia) meant “uncover” or “revelation” , refering to the existential experience in learning processes. The authoritarian dogmatism of European religion and academia perverted the active sense to a static sense of “knowledge” that someone could have a “patent” on, stake a claim on, and even could sell on the market. This “objectification’ is a peculiar fetishistic characteristic of the Western Scholarship and Science. It is the Epistemology of Capitalism, although the Communists also believe the same; whereas the natives had a dynamic epistemology.

We talk, in particular in an academic context, in the posture of claiming knowledge, with an implicit assumption that the audiences are hostile and demanding proofs and demonstrations. We are competing in an intellectual market, on an assumption that the adversary system brings the best. This is the assumption of the Free Market and Social Darwinism. Although we have disproved them a long time ago, our stylism has not been changed.

The Natives would much rather think of their statements to be gifts from love. Their discourses are not “power struggles”. Their propositions are “proposals” offered with unilateral commitment by the speakers. They know “giving” is the way of making a community. If the negotiators of Western nations talked in the Native way, we would not have the Arms Race.

We have an intellectual pride in being able to articulate technically on “letters.” But we might look back to see why we have come to do that. Perhaps, we are thinking of our communication as if a battle with a hostile audience and the art of articulation is a defensive shield against expected attack. We also think by articulation that we assert our intellectual superiority, if not attack the other. Do we play such games so often that we come to value the skill? If so, we may be mentally sick in admiring the art of manipulating our letters. To the Natives, it is a puzzle that there can be differences between “letter of law” and “spirit of law.” And they would say it is incomprehensible absurdity, if they were told that the Western Philosophy thrives on technical analyses of “letters” and has little to do with “spirit” or practices in living. They would not understand why we have to be so aggressive even in intellectual games. We analyse violence in Alcoholism as someone else’s problem from an “objective” stance. But, perhaps, we might look at our own tendency to intoxicate in a Power sensation.

We do know that Nuclear War in its scale is not the same as aggression at a personal level. We do have concerns about social structures of violence, but it may be that Nuclear Aggression is a collective consequence of our aggressive drive which manifests even in academic contexts.

And in talking of aggressiveness, we might also pay attention to our attitude of contemptuously looking down at “subjective” experiences in the name of “objectivity” or “value neutrality” of “science”. It might very well have come from our alienated neurotic psyche. I might concede to some theory to an effect that the scientific sense of “knowledge” can only be generated from alienation, enigma or fear, and although the “knowledge” does sometimes “sublimate” the aggression, it leaves residues of fear or hostility which leads us to violence. If so, we have a serious task to change “science” as such for the sake of Peace. And on this point, Native Philosophy appears to be very instructive.

[As to “Science as a destructive element”, see Birgit Brock-Utne. Education For Peace. Pergamon, 1986. This is a feminist critique of science. ]

Healing Practices

Philosophy of Peace Education

March 2, 2016 Archivist

Philosophy of Peace Education

For 1986 CPREA Conference

S. Kounosu

University of Lethbridge

Title: On Philosophy of Peace Education

Abstract: Peace Education is gaining popularity among educational institutions. However, there are problems particularly in view of the traditional roles the educational systems played for nationalism and their implicit philosophical or even ideological biases which tended to help the making of wars rather than constructing peace. In this paper, some of the problems contained in the traditional philosophy of education are discussed, and a few suggestions are made for a paradigm shift in education. Taking cognizance of the Pedagogy for Oppressed, the Theology of Liberation, and Critical Sociology that emerged in response to the general crisis of the world today, Peace Education is considered as the transformation of intelligence toward the 21st century. The main basis of this paper is a philosophy of communication, intended t be distinct from the traditional philosophy of knowledge.

Introduction

The World today is coming to an extraordinary phase of transformation, which contains both a possibility of Nuclear extinction and a possibility for a great social evolution comparable to Renaissance.

The challenge of Peace Education is to perceive the possibility of the great social evolution and to play the central role in actualizing it. That is, the possibility of Peace has to be perceived and the conditions for Peace have to be constructed. In this sense, Peace Education is evolutionary in aiming at the future which is not “reality” at the present moment. And it is distinct in its logic from that of the traditional sense of education which is concerned with the adaptation to a given set of conditions that exist at a time. Peace education proposes the possible future and intends to make what it proposes. In this, Peace Education has to be “prophetic”, and explicitly “value loaded”, and it cannot stop at the level of transmitting knowledge of fact as unalterable conditions given. If our intelligence cherished in educational institutions so far is the kind that is fixated on “facts”, Peace Education needs reformulation of the intelligence itself. Peace Education is a learning by the humanity as a whole, and it is to transform the way of learning as well.

That we have come to this phase, however, is not an arbitrary intellectual accident, nor is a utopian imagination. The phase of industrialization and accompanying colonialization appears to have come to the final stage. Limits of the energy-material resources and environmental pollutions can no longer be ignored. The ideology of economy, based on a faith in ever increasing production power, is no longer viable. And the educational system, which has been effective in the industrialization phase, now faces the challenge of finding a new paradigm, even if there were no danger of Nuclear Holocaust.

And Peace Education, even if it is conceived as that which is concerned with preventing Nuclear Holocaust as the immediate task, is inseparable from the education for the social transformation. For the Nuclear War is industrialization of wars, and as such it is a necessary consequence of the powerful paradigm prevalent in the past several centuries. It was not a group of mad politicians and military men that made the Nuclear Bombs, but highly intelligent scientists, engineers, and managers of organizations, who were products of the higher education, that made the bombs and systems of the wars. In that sense the educational system is far from an innocent by-stander of the Nuclear crisis that our civilization faces today. Education was not neutral as to the value system that led the civilization to this stage. And if there can be any possibility of Peace on the Earth, the philosophy of Education itself must be changed, starting with the very pretence that it is value neutral.

Historically, it was industrialization and colonialization that made the school system of education both necessary and possible. The technology for the industrialization, or rather”technologization” required the emergence of educated managers and educated workers. It liberated people, to a degree, from the caste system based on inheritance and kinship. But it created a technical elite class which is more efficient and powerful in operating large-scale social organizations than the social hierarchy of the feudal castes. The school system of education played the major role in the creation of the technical elite class. The industrialization did succeed in expanding production of material goods and provide a bases for higher standards of living than what was possible under the feudal system. The production power made large-scale education possible, and the education made further expansion of the production power possible. It was in a “vicious circle” of positive feedback, just as wars are in the dynamics of escalation. In a Marxist term, that was the “reproduction” circuit of the technocracy. And education was a part of the positive feedback loop of the “reproduction” process.

And the modern nation-states with huge mechanisms of bureaucracy and military forces became possible by the emergence of technical elites. They were the governing mechanism of the modern society, the organizers and managers of productions, the officers of military forces, the inventers and maintenancemen of industrial technology. Educational institutions were organized to produce the elites and workers.

Interestingly, the expanded scale of market with heterogeneous population required a new basis of communication. The “scientific rationality”, newly emerged at the outset of the Industrial Revolution, assumed the role of unifying intellectual authority which religious institutions failed to maintain. Although educational institutions inherited many aspects in practices and philosophy of “teaching” from the religious institutions, they had to adapt to the “scientific rationality” which is the infrastructure of the technological mentality.

The historical process then can be viewed as a stage in development of communication, in addition to the development of production power. The socio-historical impacts of printing technology are well known. The machine itself is not, perhaps, impressive but it made the emergence of printed media possible and created professions associated with it. The technology of printing made standardization of language and hence imposition of uniform thinking possible. Without the technology of printing, the bureaucracy of national government, military organizations, and large business firms, would not have been possible. In turn printed media came as a technology of communication and its mastery became the main concern of the education.

The technology also opened a way to what we know as the Democracy, through its capacity of mass production and mass distribution. But we note that the mass media is also a means of propaganda controlled by technological elites. Although mass media does allow expression of the “people’s voice” and entertains a certain degree of “plurality”, it does require the skill of articulation which acts as a barrier to direct access by the majority of people. It also created separation of “the producer” and “the consumer”. If the media is to be a tool for peace, either the general population has to learn the art of communication or the format of the media has to be changed from that of “the superior in power and knowledge talking to the inferior” to that of “exchanges among the equals”.

That the technology of communication is developed in the form of mass production for mass consumption is also reflected in the way educational institutions conduct their business. the dominant format of communication in educational institutions today is that of issueing command. As A. J. Ayer in Language, Truth, and Logic (1946) argued, to the mentality of modern intellectuals, even a simple statement of fact is a political act of the speaker commanding the listeners to know the fact asserted. It presupposes ignorance of the listeners to whom the speaker is superior. “Speaking to” is an assertion of power over the listener. In schools, teachers are the ones who speak. And even in our conversations, we are observed to be playing the game of “one-up-manship”. Our negotiations are often in the form of “power struggle between adversaries”, not the form of “consultation” for arriving at cooperation. Our formal education and academic disciplines do not help us much in communication in the sense of “exchanges among equals”. And, it is not surprising then, our national governments are not competent in the communication that would lead to cooperation for eliminating the danger of Nuclear Ar. We are not educated to communicate efficiently, but rather educated to compete in power struggles.

The modern education that emerged in our technocratic age is “rational” to the degree which efficient production of material goods, and more importantly, transmission of commands in large social scales demand. But it is defective in not only its concealment of the implicit political bias, value choices, but also in not educating people to be competent for political and value choices. It failed to provide the skills and develop means of communicating on issues of social cooperation in political and value choices. Science education did provide the skills and means for large social scale agreements as to “objective facts”. I suppose, that is what is so called “Rationality”. But for setting out “purposes of actions” in a large social scale, we have not developed the necessary competence. We not that “purposes” are not “facts”, and as such , they require a different philosophy to deal with.

The traditional philosophies of Education paid little attention to the “philosophy of purpose” and the problems of how to communicate in such contexts. In the historical context, the neglectis understandable. It is the employer who sets the purpose. Workers and technical elites as hired hands are only expected to be competent in carrying on what is commanded by the employer who pays. In that sense, what the majority of the educated population does is “purposeless” and “value neutral”. Modern professionals and workers are slaves to whoever pays them. Only through indirect means, such as consumer market and civil elections, they come to be of some influence. Occasional references to ideals of Democracy and flairs of Revolutionary movements are not sufficient for motivating educational systems to consider problems of purose and value, let alone problems of communication in these regards. Rather, schools are preoccupied with job training. Academic training is thinly disguised professional training to which the “education for good citizen” is subservient. The practices of educational systems are “value nneutral” in that they effectively block developments of competence in the art of communication with respect to social scale purposes. Peace education is inconceivable within “value neutrality”. Peace Education, if there can be any, has to be “political” to the extent it concerns with choices of values in social scales.

Yet, to construct the competence in communication as such requires competent communication. Here we have a problem of a vicious circle in reverse. We have to start a positive feedback loop of an escalating dynamics for Peace Education from where there was only a negative feedback sense for Peace. This is difficult.

One of the difficulties is our rhetoric. For discussion of social scale communication, it is inevitable that we face the complexity of large interactive systems. Yet our usual rhetoric in intellectual discourses is basically that of simple Newtonian Mechanics of talking “an object in motion under a cause.” A linear sequence of such descriptions constitutes our narration, though linguists tell us that comprehensions require awareness of webbed relations. But the rhetoric of simple object mechanics is hardly adequate for talks of complex webs of interactions and inter-relations which make up systems. We note here that it is not so much because we are “ego-centric” that we have troubles transcending individualistic metaphors in our narrations. Rather, it is the simplicity of talking of one object at a time that bind us in the the individualistic metaphor such as saying “Mr. Reagan (or Mr. Kadafi) is the cause of terrorism.” For the effectiveness of communication in large social scales, the simplicity is an important requirement, particularly in relation to the general competence in communication that exists now. However, it is also possible that the competence in communication can be improved. We can see the history of civilization as an evolutionary process of competence in communication, in parallel to the Capitalist-Marxist view of history as a development in material production capacity.

I am proposing here that development of competence in communication to be the aim of Peace Education. And under the general theme of “competence in communication”, I am thinking of those in the following 4 contexts:

i International understanding and cooperation

ii Change of social structures towards more equality and accommodations, away from power relations.

iii Revolution in our sense of “knowing” (epistimology, science, intelligence) towards “learning” which is a form of mutual interactions and as such “communication”. It is dynamic and closer to “performing” — hence “competence”, not “possession of static knowledge”.

iv Managing of communication internal to “psyche” (mind) as a complex system similar to community.

These 4 contexts are distinguished for conceptual conveniences. They are integrated thruough complex dynamics. Peace Education has to deal with the problems of “Integrated understanding” of complex dynamics. “Communication” for itself is an aspect of the synamics of complex systems. Perhaps, “System Dynamics”, not necessarily as “physics”, but a “philosophy”, is included in the program of Peace Education. I do not have enough space in this paper to elaborate on this, but I think it is important that some attempts are made to elucidate “Peace as a Dynamical system”.

And from the complexity of systems, which defies determinism, we may learn that our assertions of “scientific certainty” are often arrogant illusions. As many accidents in systems demonstrate, we do not have the “knowledge” if it means to have a completeness. Rather, we do have to “perform” with an incomplete set of partial information. The operations in such situations, which happen to be the majority of the cases, are more akin to what existential philosophers talked about. Peace education, in my view, must stress this point that we are concerned with practical performances in less than perfect conditions. “Peace”, in that sense, is a verb, and it ought not be imagined as something perfect and static (a noun sense). Peace that we look for is the kind that can be practiced in imperfect conditions. And we are far from “perfect beings”. Rather, we have to “live with problems” and the degree of competence in the “Art of living with problems” is expressed by an adjective “Peace”.

There are certainly many problems if we are to do Peace Education. It is a big challenge. I shall not be able to discuss all the problems, let alone provide the “answers”. I shall touch upon onluy a few problems as starting points of discussion. Besides, I think Peace Education is not for “teaching the answers” to be memorized and recited by students. It is rather learning the way of dealing with problems. That is to say, Peace Education is “learning of ways of learning”. And the learning has to be done by the community as a whole. I approach Peace Education as if it is “Warmongers Anonymous” — in a pun with “Alcoholics Anonymous”. If that is acceptable to this conference, I would like to practice “conferring” here, rather than taking the academic posture of asserting a great truth (as if!).

II. Education and Communication

Faced with the threat of Nuclear Holocaust, and for that matter with many other socila problems, we come to talk of education as a way of solution. But the term “Education” has two distinct meanings. One is that of education of individuals in adapting to existing social conditions, such as professional training. It is for competitions in the job market, and this is what the practices of school systems are mainly concerned with. Another is that of education in the sense of leaning by a society as a whole to change itself. Einstein is often quoted as saying “The Atomic Bomb changed everything except the way of thinking.” He was suggesting that the human race as a whole must change the old way of thinking in order to survive. And for that we think of “education” in the second sense to perform the necessary transformation of the whole human community.

However, “The education for individualistic competition” and “the education as learning of a community to transform” are not necessarily contradictory. That is, provided an autonomous dynamics often referred to as “the Invisible Hand” of the market competition functions well, the individual competitions are expected to bring about learning of the community. The nominative aims of the two senses of education are dialectically related. And there is an intermediate sense of education as the means of nationalistic competition. But there lies a problem. We usually do not make clear distinctions between them, and when “the Invisible Hand” fails to funciton well, the first sense dominant in school systems becomes the opposition to the second sense.

In our history, we might acknowledge that competitions within each nation and among nations brought human race as a whole to closer inter-relations. Although the sacrifices and costswwer very high, even wars could be seen as opening intimate interactions and communication among people. Given the levels of competence in communication at those historical stages, colonial trades and even wars may be recognized as parts of the historical learning process. Taht i, after all empires fell, we are left with an enlarged scale of communication and hopefully we have learned the art of communication in that scale. Today, we have a “World Community” — or we ar about to make one, if we succeed in overcoming the problems of power struggles. We made our lives so interdependent that there is no escape from it, even if the interdependency is about to bring us a disaster. The only way out is to manage the system of interdependency well. And the way to manage the system is the “communication”.

Perhaps, when people come to talk of Education for Peace, they implicitly mean the learning of communication by the world community. I think that possibility is worth a serious exploration and I shall argue a case for it. In order to do so, however, a few explanations about “communication” are necessary.

The view of the world history as a process of learning to communicate — or rather of learning to construct a collective “intelligence” by competent communication, is just an alternative view, parallel with the dominant view of the classical economists (including Marx) who saw the history as an ever enlarging reproduction of material production power. The views need not be in conflict, though they are a pair of dialectical opposites. Only for the sake of making things explicit, I shall stress the opposing aspects, particularly in their implications to the philosophy of education and the issue of war/peace.

The role of communication is to make things explicit in the social scale. In this aspect, communication is concerned with “knowing”, or “discovering” in a social scale. But it is done so as to construct cooperation in that scale. Particularly, in the context of Peace Education, the most important aspect of communication is that of “proposing” actions by the community. As such, communication is “value loaded” and “political”. I suppose from this political naturee of communication, we come to regard “communication” to mean “transmission of commands”, as in such usages as “Communication-Command Centre”, etc. but I shall be talking of “communication” in the sense of mutual affairs, such as “interactions”, “exchanges”, “negotiations”, “consultations”, etc. I regard the communication in the sense of “transmitting commands” as a primitive form, although the most technological theory of communication appears to be preoccupied with communication at this level. The communication at the level of “mutual affair” requires competence in the art. It has to do with “performance” than “knowledge”. Peace education has to be of relevance to this “performance” , not just “knowing what peace is”, but becoming competent in “performing peace”.

The above summarizes my opinion, but there are a few notes to be added.

Needless to say, to make something “explicit” can be concealing what is not said, as in the case of propaganda and implicit censorship. The concealments come because a society cannot talk about and be aware of everything that goes on. There is “political hegemony”, so to speak, as to what is to be communicated to what extent. There exists a certain paradigm at a time in a society that a certain set of things are “of interest” to be talked about and others are not. And the

efficiency of communication favors a certain fixed pattern, often with metaphorical images and metaphysical assumptions, if not ritual symbolisms. Unfamiliar tacts are disadvantaged because they require a longer time and more effort than that along the established patterns, even if there was no prejudice. If there are prejudices, particularly implicit ones, communication would be blocked. In such occasions, we used to appeal to force-violence to break the blockage. In the Nuclear Age, we can no longer afford such an easy way out, but we have to try a highe art of communication. We note education as such has to do with “performance”, not “knowledge”. And in this, a paradigm shift in education is inevitable.

There are natural obstacles in communication and if a society is not competent in the art, it can easily fall into “prejudices”, “superstitions”, etc., by default. It may well be true that many Europeans under the Nazis did not “know” the systematic ethonocide was going on, just as many Americans did not “know” they were killing off Indians even after the Civile War.

I add here that if one view of “thinking” is to be a particular kind of “communication” inside a “brain as a community”, the above role of communication still holds. “To know” is to make explicit in the intellectual sense. We note that our “psyche” does conceal what is going on in our “mind”. Many functions of our brain are not “known” to ourselves. By our “vergaization”, we “know” and “knowledge” as such is very limited even as to what our brains are doing. Consequently, communication at the intellectual (verbalized) level is very limited in its scope and difficult. This is more reason why we need education in the art.

But we can regard knowing operations, such as “Discoveries” of laws of motion, etc. in physics, as “verbalization” of what were not expressed in human languages. The verbalized “laws of Nature” are important to the community, for they can be communicated and provide the basis on which cooperation in the community can be built. That is, intellectual “thinking” is social to taht degree and distinct by its communicability. And the ability of a community to respond to its needs and environment is critically dependent on its competence in communication — to verbalize problems and to allow efficient transmission within.

This is the reason whey we need the second sense of education cited previously. You may understand this by noting that the kind of societies depicted in The Brave New World by A. Huxley, for example, does not give a sense of being “educational” despite being “knoledgeable”, because they do not have efficient communication in the sense of “learning by community”. I suppose our world community at this moment is somewhere in between the ideal learning kind and the extreme non-learning kind.

I have contrasted “materialist view” to communicational (information theoretical) view in the above. This may require some explanations. The “materialist view” of either the right or the left, is the dominant view in our society in the past few centuries, and it constituted the metaphysical foundation for education. And, in the context of considering Peace Education, the “materialists” would think of teaching how many Nuclear Weapons are made of what materials and what material damages are expected from their use, etc. Warning camps are accounted in terms of how many men, tanks, guns, planes, battle ships and carriers. Something physical takes the centre of attention, perhaps simply because it is easier to imagine physical objucts. It does give a feeling of familiarity and concrete immediateness, as terms like “objective”metaphorically suggest.

Perhaps, it is natural for us to pay attention to “objects”. It is like watching “actors” on a theatrical stage. The actors are not the “play”, but we only come to comprehend the play as a whole by tracing what the actors do.

But such a strategy of thinking is too limited to be of help for comprehending complex systems and situations. The complex systems and situations contain “feedback loops” and the “tracing object” type narration-representations is useless for them, if not misleading. We do have to use “abstract” terms such as “force”, “energy”, “time”, etc. in physics for example. The advantage of “materialist” strategy of narration in giving the feeling of “concrete immediateness” and “familiarity” in metaphors, now acts against developments of the art of describing. Without cultivating abstract imaginations, we cannot even do simple physics of mechanical motions, let alone comprehending the dynamics of systems. Modern physics since Newton is not “objective” at all, if people mean “object-likeness” by the term “objective”. In fact, the notion of “objectivity” itself is a highly abstract one and very elusive at that. Nonetheless, the term was useful in the historical context by suggesting a certain “feeling” by the metaphor. It came tbe a mislieading one, only because people forgot that “objectivity” is an abstract metaphorical notion.

In the above, the point about “objective knowledge” is stressed, because there is a well observable trick in media manipulation. That is, government and military officials often come out with impressive sets of numbers — known as the “number game”, to say in effect that people who say something critical of them are “ignorant” but they know the “objective facts”. Tp an extent, ordinary citizens are disadvantaged in terms of “factual information”. Many things discussed in the context of the Arms Race are military secrets. And, even if some information is not secret, it is not easily accessible to ordinary citizens. What are so called “Weapon Experts” come out and try to intimidate and discredit critics.

But other than impressing someone by possessing “knowledge” , the cited numbers, etc. are not important at all. They are cited for “ritualistic effects”. The fact that a guy happens to know exactly what the explosive power of a certain specific type of warhead is, does not make his opinion trustworthy as to military value of the weapon system, strategy or political implications. But the problem is that we have a habit of being impressed by numbers that we have a fear about. We do not listen to people who do have wisdom in their plain talk that we can understand. It is as if we do not trust our own intelligence and we look down on someone whose talk is understandable to us. We respect what we do not understand, perhaps out of fear. In classroom teaching, it is a well known trick to exhibit a big word or a big equation to impress students. Unfortunately, students would not pay attention unless they are threatened a bit. So that such a practice goes on as “educational technique”. I wonder if Peace Education also employs such a trick.

Our ways of communication are multiply layered and we are affected by many factors which we may not be conscious of. Our modes of communication are highly “redundant”. That communication is multi-layered and redundant is actually advantageous in the sense we have several channels to override noises and judge reliability of signals. But that makes our communication very complicated. For example, it is very simple to instruct arithmeatics to a simple computer. But it is very hard to do the same to humans. Humans have advantages in performing complex tasks such as pattern perceptions, or anticipating motions of evading an enemy plane, etc., but not in simple tasks. I imagine, this is because our brain is a very complex system. And the way two or more brains interact through exchanges of symbolic signals, such as series of alphabets, is very fascinating dynamics which we understand very little.

In talking of “communication”, we are talking of very complex systems, situations, or dynamics. The kind of Communication we are concerned in peace education is at least “two way interaction” and it presupposes “loop structure” of feedback to begin with. We may have to learn about system dynamics as such. This would be one agenda in peace education. It is not so much the question of “knowledge”, but the question of “competence” in performing the art. This is another paradigm shift in education, if there is to be peace education. And the only way we can learn the art is to practice it. That is, the peace education has to be on a format which allows and fosters development of “communication”, not just “transmission of knowledge”.

III. From the Pedagogy of Authority to the Pedagogy of Liberation

We know how to teach ourselves to be “good soldiers”, “good inventors of weapons”, “good competitors”, “efficient destroyers of environment”, etc. That is evident in our history. But we have not developed “Education for Peace”. The educational system itself has to learn the way of peace. We do not have ready-made “peace education” but we have to construct one by learning without prior knowledge.

This is paradoxical. One might ask if Peace can be learned at all. However, this paradox is not new. Some 2000 years ago Aristotle heard and recorded the same paradox about learners. His version of the paradox was narrated like the following.

“the learners wish to learn only because they do not know the object of the learninig. But, without knowing what to learn, it is impossible to know how to learn. Hence, it is impossible to learn.”

I imagine the argument was invented by Sophists and they were waiting for people to step into the trap by saying, “Therefore, students should follow the master.” The sophists, although they might be game players, knew better. They would point out the problem of how th master had learned. The paradox is interesting in that the answers to the paradox set philosophy and operational modes of education. Let us see some of the responses to the paradox.

Religious teaching had a neat metaphysical escape from the paradox in that “God”, who is external to the ignorant humanity and knows everything, supposedly teaches. To that extent, a religious institution held a monolithic control over a population; it acted as the authority to arbitrate conflicts among people within the dominion and thereby reduced the frequency of violence. On that merit, religious institutions could have been “peace teachers” to the “ignorant and violent people”. This constitutes a philosophy of teaching.

I shall nickname the above “Pedagogy of Authority”. It is characterized by having some “superior being” teach someone inferior. And we notice in this context that “knowledge” to be taught must be justified as much as it is to be imposed on learners.

To be sure, our educational institutions are by and large “secular”. To the extent the religious institutions in the past were often instigators of “Holy Wars”, the secularization was an improvement. We have learned to live with religious tolerance. However, we have today “Nationalistic Wars” and “Ideological Wars” which resemble religious wars in many aspects. And in educational practices, we have inherited the “Pedagogy of Authority” from religions, despite the secularization.

The idea that an absolute authority act as the peace-teacher and peace-keeper on the basis of power to suppress undesirables still has a strong influence in our society. In the the present context of the Superpower competition over Nuclear hegemony, the idea that one superior power can be the peace-keeper and hence the achieving of the superior status is desirable for the world peace is apparently popular and the idea is driving the world towards Nuclear Holocaust. Therefore, we need to analyse this philosophy in some more detail.

We note that the authoritarian philosophy of education persists even today, despite the secularization that took place in our history. The modern Nation-States are more efficient in organizing the population under its dominion to fight wars than religious institutions and Feudal kingdoms. In a sense, the Nation-State suppresses small-scale violences and moderate struggles within, but it has the monopoly of violence against people within and against other nations.

There, religious dogma was replaced by the “scientific-technological rationality” which is more competent in providing grounds for social scale consensus. Science-technology is liberating in that it allows a degree of “plurality”, while maintaining an effective control over population. iN that sense, science-technology is the replacement of religion as the authority for the social scale thinking. The philosophical discipline of “epistemology” emerged as an art of justifying the “knowledge” to be imposed by some power authority. Rules of Evidence, Logical Proof, etc., are needed to justify the power implied by “knowledge”. They are the means to subjugate “less intelligent people”. And the metaphorical image of knowledge transmitted from supperior to the inferior persists even in Information Theory in terms of Entropy Law.

In Handbook on Peace Education, edited by C. Wulf and published by International Peace Research Association, in 1974, Haken Wiberg pointed out a “caste distinction” between Peace Researchers and Peace Educators. He observed that Peace researchers as the producers of knowledge assumed a superior position to peace educators who were perceived to be merely the transmitters of the knowledge produced. The reason for this was division of labours and the specialization strategy of “science”. But it does reflect the authoritarian tendency even in peace researchers to imagine human relations in a metaphor of “from superior to inferior”. Communication is recognized as being of a secondary importance, and the question of integration-synthesis is altogether forgotten. I think this is a manifestation of “technological elitism” that is prevalent in our age, and one obstacle to be overcome in the waty to peace. So let me elaborate on the point further.

In the modern age, the idea that an authority can impose peace upon a barbaric population by force came out in a form of colonialism , as one might read in the poem, “The Whitemen’s Burden”, by R. Kipling, composed 1899 when the U.S. took possession of the Philipines. The “Whitemen” wished peace and went out on a crusade to impose their idea of peace on other people. The method was wars and education.

We can also read the poem as an expression of a philosophy of education which missioned itself to impose “civilization” on the “barbaric” people within a society, as well as ones outside. IN that sense, it was also applied internally to the whitemen’s society. Population had to be pacified and domesticated for the production capacity to grow and commercial enterprises to go on unhampered. Education as such is admittedly more “peaceful” than repression by physical violence and perhaps more “cost effective.” But the psychology of fear was necessary in the maintenance of the ultimate authority which is a disguised violence.

Education as such did not eliminate physical violences but rather it stood on violence. We see even today that “teaching” is still accompanied with “corporal punishment” and it does stress “classroom control” as confinement and restriction of children. The notion that children are “ignorant barbarians” who have to be kept under strict control, if necessary by force, is fading gradually. And perhaps in higher education that is practically extinct. But nonetheless, the authoritarian sense of “teaching” is still prevalent event today. And recent reports from Japan talk of rampant violence in schools. Educators attribute the violence to be the results of stresses in the highly competitive society and the “authoritarian pedagogy” required for the competition. In terms of armaments, Japan is one of the most “peaceful” nations. But in terms of lifestyle and education, Japan is not “peaceful.”

Perhaps, however, the degree in which we dissociate the notion of authority from fear of violence is a measure of internalization and it is also a measure of success in “Education” as such. We no longer need to appeal to violence to get necessary accommodations in ordinary social relations. We know if we fail to be “reasonable” , whatever the level of “reason” we can practice, we would have to use physical forces which are very expensive in termssocial costs as well as in terms of personal safety and property damages. In that sense, we have achieved a degree of Pacification through Education. This has to be acknowledged. But, “pacification” is not “peace”.

We might say, in a large-scale historical view, that we have come a long way towards Peace. We might even congratulate ourselves by saying that only a few more steps to reach the point of no-return on the way to Peace. But a few remaining difficulties, if so perceived, are not the same kind that stem from the general population being ignorant and barbaric. Rather they come from the power structure of our domesticated life that depends on ultimate violence. The “education” which it practices for maintainance of the power structure as such, is then a part of the problem for itself.

If the efficiency of the modern nation-states is less, say not able to organize Nuclear War capacity, we may have had a longer time scale to solve the problem of wars. But, as it is, the efficiency or rather the technical “intelligence” of the Nation States is very hight and we are almost overwhelmed by it. Once triggered, our Nuclear Intelligence can destroy the life systems on the Earth in a matter of a few hours. We must credit our “education” for the achievement of high efficiency in that particular aspect. That is, the Pedagogy of Authority worked successfully in that respect.

Of course, the problem is our dismal failures in other aspects of our social organization. For Peace the authoritarian education would not do. For it was the authoritarian education that taught how to fight wars. Authoritarian posture is no different from the way a Baboon colony establishes who is the Boss, although it does replace small violences among members of the colony by a large one and thereby reduces frequency of violence. The theory that humans ar viciously aggressive “Naked Apes” is wrong in terms of anthropology and biology, but it is correct as a description of our social practices.

I view that the aggression of the scale we practice today is not an innate nature in us, but it is “education” into us. As human communities came to face problems of increasingly large scale social interactions and communication, they have “mis-developed” out of fear and by the appeal of power to secure the safety into the authoritarian direction. It was essentially a “defensive’ strategy, although it came out in “offensive postures”. In this sense, I have a doubt if the fear of Nuclear destruction and death is an adequate basis for peace education. “Defense” and “Offense” may be two faces of the same coin at the depth of psychology, beyond just being propagandist manipulations of the two words. That is, the “authoritarians” may be aggressive because of their paranoic fear. The way out may be found in courageous exploartions which transcend fear and even take risks.

And as to alternatives to the pedagogy of authority, there are interesting hints from “Liberation Theology”. Liberation Theology is interesting, because the religion that invented the “pedagogy of authority” contained in itself antidotes to it. The religion in each ancient community functioned as “the collective intelligence” of the community, and as such it had to contain some elements of practical wisdom for good life. Christianity talks of Love, and it has a particular preoccupation with the “oppressed”. We note that “love” was a practical necessity without whichh the community would have become extinct. Naturally, therefore, it contained Liberation Theology. It was the “establishment” of a power institution that inhibited developments in the domain of Love. That is, the dynamics of love relations in communities had to exist anyhow. It is only in intellectual recognitions that the dynamics was concealed and barred from intellectual communication and thereby being kept ineffective in social-political sense.

Interestingly, the rhetoric of the religious dogma asserting its institutional authority was basically that of “fear tactics” — such as the devils who would attack if one has no defense. Whereas, the stories for Love show no concern with safety nor preoccupation with defense. Love often involves courageous sacrifices of personal safety. If there is danger, then the strategy is to share the danger at one’s risk. I think this psychological dynamics is very important. For, we can compare the rhetoric with that of the Arms Race which requires existence of a “devil”. And, in a contrast, the advocacy of peace which involves risk taking — which thereby become vulnerale to labels like “unrealistic”, “irrational”, “utopian”.

Liberation Theology attempts to liberate itself from the power structure of the traditional religious dogma, in order to “liberate people from the oppression”. It attempts to liberate itslef from fear within as well as fear from outside. And the “liberation within” is educational. If we compare, at this point, Liberation Theology with Liberation Pedagogy —say in the form expressed by Paulo Freier in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Continuum Pub. Co. 1985), we see the messages are the same. The armed struggles by the oppressed people today are just as bloody as the ones in the history, but we note that they are no longer simple ones of “seizing power”. Every one of the struggles stresses the liberation within. And the practices of the revolution are marked by very high recognition of the importance of communication among people in learning. As much as armed struggles are there, somewhat “authoritarian” practices of “Revolutionary Leadership” is still visible. But we can observe that “vertical” metaphor of hierarchical power structure is considerably weakened in the rhetorics of the liberation, and increasingly more appeals for “horizontal” metaphor stressing communication are made in them now.

Peace Education can take hints from Liberation Theology. The philosophy of Peace Education has to liberate itself from the power structure that is leading the human race to ultimate destruction. But it cannot stand on the fear of Nuclear Death. We like to free ourselves from fear of Nuclear Holocaust. For that our philosophy must be free from the Fear, and be able to risk the defenseless position. Here, if we need a slogan, we could make up such as: “When all Defenses go, Peace will come!”

To be sure, within our present notion of “rationality” and “reasonableness”, one cannot ask, let alone compel anybody, to be “defenseless”. Even with the “authority” of being Professors of Peace Study or Peace Researchers, we cannot force the risk on anybody. Unlike theology, we do not teach articles of Faith. We can only suggest the “theology” and discuss it as a possibility among others. But then, not compelling peace on anybody may be consistent with the notion of Peace. We can propose, discuss, consult, and negotiate for practical agreements. That is, we are back to communication.

In reference to the Paradox of Learner cited before, we remind ourselves that we are the Learners. And we are searching the ways of learning peace. We do not have “the answer” in deterministic sense, nor can we start from “the answers” in deductionistic sense. Being liberated, that is being Free, is being vulnerable. We are not safe. We must accept the risk for the sake of peace. In practical terms, however, we are not absolutely Free. That gives us practical things to do, in struggles relative to the problems we have. In that sense, we can propose and try certain hypothesis and learn whether or not they work step by step relative to the problems. That is, the problems are our guides. I have criticized the present practices of education and of the intellectuality in general. But I ought to be thankful that there are problems and contradictions which guide my learning of peace. The “liberation” also comes from within.

Appendix to Chapter III.

It is instructive to reread Kipling’s “The White Man’s Burden”, for it is not just an expression of colonialism, but also an expression of the dominant paradigm of education in the past and even today. We need to reflect upon the philosophy of education as such and consider if Peace Education can be on the same philosophy. Therefore I cite the poem here.

The White Man’s Burden

1899

The United States and the Philippine Islands

Take up the White Man’s burden —

Send forth the best ye breed —

Go bind your sons to exile

To serve your captives’ need;

To wait in heavy harness

On flutter fold and wild —

Your new-caught, sullen peoples,

Half devil and half child.

Take up the White Man’s burden

In patience to abide,

To veil the threat of terror

And check the show of pride;

By open speech and simple,

An hundred times made plain,

To seek another’s profit,

And work another’s gain.

Take up the White Man’s burden —

The savage wars of peace —

Fill full the mouth of Famine

And bid the sickness cease;

And when your goal is nearest

The end for others sought,

Watch Sloth and heathen Folly

Bring all your hope to nought.

Take up the White Man’s burden —

No tawdry rule of kings,

But toil of serf and sweeper —

The tale of common things.

The ports ye shall not enter,

The roads ye shall not tread,

Go make them with your living,

And mark them with your dead!

Take up the White Man’s burden —

And reap his old reward:

The blame of those ye better,

The hate of those ye guard —

The cry of hosts ye humour

(Ah, slowly!) toward the light: —

‘Why brought ye us from bondage,’

‘Our loved Egyptian night?’

Take up the White Man’e burden —

Ye dare not stoop to less —

Nor call too loud on Freedom

To cloak your weariness;

By all ye cry or whisper,

By all ye leave or do,

The silent, sullen peoples

Shall weigh your Gods and you.

Take up the White Man’s burden —

Have done with childish days —

The lightly proffered laurel,

The easy, ungrudged praise.

Comes now, to search your manhood

Through all the thankless years,

Cold-edged with dear-bought wisdom.

The judgement of your peers!

IV. The Problem of Cooperation in Diversity

There will be many problems in Peace Education. I shall discuss only one of them here, in hope that there are many discussions about other problems in this conference and elsewhere. The problem I would like to discuss here is rather “philosophical” in a derogatory sense that it is a somewhat abstract one of cooperation among people with diverse sets of values, ideals, and cultures. However, the problem shows up in various contexts and perhaps it is of some help to discuss it at an abstract level. And it is important because there is a moral-political notion that for a cooperation perfect agreements on everything are needed. And, there is a tendency in teaching practice to insist that there must be, or can be, only one right answer to any problem.

It is perhaps a residue from the monotheistic religions that we are monolithic in thinking. The rhetoric pretending the best tend to be simple and there appears to be popular demand for it. We think strong assertive posture is effective in mass communication. And we teachers tend to feel it necessary for intellectual coherence that one system of thought must be presented as the best, if not as the truth. Of course, we do know for example that theories in physics disagree with each other and they are not absolute truth, yet they are not entirely useless. Even mathematical routines, such as “differentiation” have many different “interpretations”. But we think it to be “pedagogical” necessity to pretend as if what we teach is the best, or the truth. We may be unnecessarily aggressive from our habit in academic competitions. WE may be free from egotism to think we know the best, but there are practical considerations as to avoiding confusions from too many “ifs” and “buts”. For passive audiences, too many competing ideas and theories may be burdensome in that they have to exercise their own thinking. Under the system of divisions of labour, we expect specialized experts to give us the best answer. Even for Peace, we might unconsciously slip into being the “consumers”, rather than being the “producer” of Peace. Being “user friendly” may be a good thing in many technological developments, but there are questions as to whether that is also applicable to peace education We may have to consider if easy consumability is the way of peace education, for that implies peace to be passive rather than active.

Any society, or any “Culture”, as much as it is recognized as a coherent system, it must have a certain set of fundamental agreements. Cooperation among the members of the Culture is necessary for the Culture to survive as a culture. And if the people involved are “thinking beings” at all, they have to share a certain set of “beliefs” or “metaphysical assumptions”. Particularly, if effective communication within a culture is to be carried at the level of linguistic symbols, sharing of a “philosophy” is the precondition for its practicality.

If a society cares at all about its survival, the society, as ones in our history, imposes a philosophy and controls thoughts, by coersion, by rituals, by education, or punishments and rewards. To learn a language is to learn the value system implicit in it. Without being competent in responding and manipulating the value symbolisms, one cannot be a respectable member of the society. Besides it is simple and economical, if we can reduce our thinkings into one uniformal system. Many philosophers apparently tried to construct a grand system of thinking for that purpose, though inevitably they failed. Scientists sought after “One Truth”, until the 19th century — many scientists apparently still believe in “Truth” even today, although it is denied at the formal theoretical level of their discipline. We do value “unity”, “solidarity”, “consensus”, etc. and feel pleasure being among agreeable friends. Those are essential conditions for communication.

However, we have another problem today. That is, we live in a “pluralistic world”. By the developments of world trades, or rather the colonial expansions we come to contact societies with different cultures. Just as it was not practical nor wise to insist one religion over everybody, it is not practical nor wise to insist one culture. technology appears to have unified the humanity in a certain world view, but it created complexity in the interdependency of the living in the modern age and breeded diversity in market activities. The size and extent of social domain absolved into technological controls exponentially multiplies complexities, diversities, and entropy costs.

In addition we have Ideological differences in the Superpower Nuclear confrontation. There, we would say that attempt by one side to achieve “unity” of the world under its hegemony is that main reason of the conflict. And here I remind you that until recently, we thought that “science” transcends all cultural differences and therefore it can unify the world. We now pay some respect to “cultural” elements in science, thanks to writing of Popper, Kuhn, et al. And nowadays we find many books on “Sociology of knowledge” in our libraries which discuss dependancy of “knowledge” and even “reality”, on cultures. At least in practical contexts, we cannot ignore the diversity, even if it is considered to be undesirable. And if we consider diversity to be desirable — I do, but there appears to be people who do not, such as Americans who do not understand why Canadians insist a superficial cultural distinction from that of the U.S. in the face of obvious economic benefits in assimilation with them, — then the problem is more serious.

I shall not argue as to whether or not there can be one agreeable frame for knowledge transcending cultural and ideological differences. But, regardless of the super-metaphysical position as to the possibility of the “unification”, we face the “plurality” and “diversity” of the world community today and have to consider Peace in that context. We need not have perfect agreements on everything, particularly on metaphysical questions. But somehow we have to find a practical set of agreements to live together. And, here lies a problem for Peace Education.

We notice in religions, ideologies, scientific theories and even in geometries, that many controversies are about metaphysical assumptions — such as if two parallel lines meet at infinity or not. In practice, it probably makes little difference if two parallel lines meet at infinity. And it is humanly impossible to reach the “infinity” and actually see the differences. It may offend Christians, but it is very strange for outsiders why Christians insist that the “virgin birth” must be believed in order that the message of love is received. Nonetheless, the “axioms” are very important in the linguistic sense. If we are competent in talking and thinking in different language systems, we may not need to fight about such “ideal assumptions”. But at the moment, we do not have efficient ways of communicating without imposing implicit metaphysics as the common ground.

At any rate Peace Education has to deal with the problem of how to construct cooperations in the world with rich Diversity. Puritanic sentimentality would not do, even though we may be sympathetic to it. At least, we need to consider Tolerance as to the differences, if we fail to understand people who think differently from us. If we are to consider the problems of ideological differences in the context of the Superpower confrontation, we need some ground strong enough to sustain our discussion without going into a fatalistic “relativity” that gives up peace. We are required to be competent in elaborating both positions. We not here that this is not “value neutrality”. Rather, it is full explicit discussion of value systems in which we and others live. We must expose implicit assumptions and values that we stand on, as much as we expose other’s assumptions and values.

It would require critical examinations of out own frame of references on which our “knowledge’ stands. Peace Education cannot be the education that imposes our particular frame of references on our students. That is, the bases of “knowledge” themselves have to be made explicit. Perhaps disciplines such as “Sociology of Knowledge” might appear academic mumbo-jumbos and useless snobism to us. But we do need to know and understand our own “cultural biases”, before talking of others. If we are to teach about the self-imposed blindness in Cold War rhetoric, we need to know if our academic stands might not contain equally ridiculous biases.

And beyond that, Peace Education has to propose ways in which people can construct cooperations without subjugating one group under another. Unfortunately, we do not have “epistemology” to do that yet. Peace Education has to develop the “epistemology” of its own. If Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis is of any guide, I imagine the creation of the new epistemology is equivalent to creating a new language, and that would change our mode of communication. We may have to be even poetical in that.

Interestingly, the difficulties with different cultures, ideologies, etc., repeats in smaller scales when we try to cross the boundaries between fragments of science. It was the grand strategy of science, or rather of the modern intellectualism, to fragment thinking into specialties. Presumably there will be integrations after the “Divide and Conquer”, and cross fertilization among specialized knowledge has been tried and even successful in some cases. But it is acknowledged that, by and large, we are not competent at integrations. The majority of practice in various “science” in professional senses is on the strategy of “Divide and Conquer”, and teaching practices follow the same pattern. Peace education, in this respect is exceptional. There is no way that peace education can be a fragmented science. Reports on peace education points out problems of integration — say for a political scientist to understand physics of weapons systems, genetic consequences of nuclear radiation, complexity problems in computer technology, as well as moral philosophies, for example. Peace education carries an extra burden of being a “generalized” intelligence. It is not the teaching of a specialty.

And there we face a problem of learning “second-hand”. It is unreasonable to expect any individual to know everything at the first-hand. We have to rely upon communication from other learners and by imagination we have to digest what is reported. Of course, in practice, people have been doing the second-hand learning. In fact, “science” would be impossible and meaningless, if we deny the second-hand knowledge. But it so happens that the prevalent philosophy of science (knowledge) concentrates its analysis and commentaries on the first-hand knowledge. Such a philosophy of knowledge (epistemology) is totally inadequate for our social practices, besides being dishonest. We depend on each other to know most anything. We do not have direct access to most information that we need to think of the World. Our practical daily life requires that we have to deal with information presented in highly abstract symbolisms at a high speed which hardly leaves chances of deep reflections. In a complex society, therefore, competence in communication if of critical importance.

And in addition, since it must be a communal effort by people of different cultural backgrounds and different ideologies to construct a way of peace, each of us as individual thinkers cannot and ought not attempt constructing the “philosophy of peace” as an individual enterprise. We are dependent on others to make peace. We can only do the construction in consultations and negotiations. If we consider peace learning to be the learning of the human community as a whole, then communication among us is analogous to communication among nerve cells in our brain.

We might think of it, in a metaphor, that peace has to be learned by the “collective intelligence” of the humanity as a whole. If such a metaphor is appropriate, then we partake in a collecive thinking for peace. But in order for us to start consulting and negotiating, we need a practical condition of peace for them to be possible. This is a “vicious circle” in reverse.

However, if people recognize the problems at all, people do have a motive to come to conferences with those involved in the same problems. We are somewhat like Alcoholic Anonymous in this respect. We might call ourselves “Warmongers Anonymous” ! We come to learn because we have problems and those who share the problems can help. The mutual helping is an important aspect of peace that we wish to learn. And the key element of the construction is communication.

In response to the Learners Paradox, we could say that we can learn from problems. To deal with problems is the learning. If any accumulative sense of effect is sought , we can point to the competence in learning. That is, we learn how to learn. Interestingly, one can look at the history of physics, which is a series of mistakes upon mistakes, as a “learning of how to learn”. And to deal with problems is to have “interactions with” them, and as such “learning” is a form of “communication”. I would imagine the same may be said about Peace Learning.

And there have been encouraging signs for emergence of new paradigms of learning. Recently, a Japanese journal published, under the title “Networking of the Youth”, reports of six cases where young people started their own ways of group learning. The reports are impressive in several senses. Firstly, the journal has been reputed as that for “intellectual snobs”, or at least it has traditionally kept “academic respectability”, and has never printed anything of the kind. Those six groups of young people are not “famous”. They are not “academic”, nor have any pretence of intellectual superiority. They are “experimenting” and having “fun” doing things. The journal itself is changing. Secondly, it is impressive in comparison with what radical students in Japan used to do in the 1960-70’s. They no longer maintain “elitist” attitudes and they are open to most anybody who wishes to join. Thirdly, their “networking” is international. They go to the Philippines, North and South Korea, etc. They look for direct contact with people. Fourthly, they are impressive in contrast to the highly competitive and high tech style of life that the majority of Japanese now have come to live. According to the same journal, Japanese school education is the most advanced one in the world technologically, but at the verge of moral bankruptcy aunder the stress of the high technology. The youth are trying to find the way out. They do not have “philosophy” of the academic sense, that is in technical sense, but they do have a philosophy in a practical sense, constructed and growing with experiments/experiences. Fifthly, they are different from the “hippy commune” type of the 1960-70’s in that they are articulate in communication with others, or at least try to be. And most impressive of all, one of the organizers of networks says of himself as being “Careperson” (in English). He apparently understood what it means to “Care”. One can take pleasure in hearing emergences of new paradigms such as those. It may mean the beginning of the end of school education. But possibilities to Peace Education are visible. I imagine there are many such signs elsewhere, and I like to hear of such experiences.

Perhaps the description above may be confusing, but it is partly because of the nature of the problems. And I think it is very important for Peace Education to include considerations on the problems of learning. I acknowledge the above to be a sketchy outline for a philosophy of peace education. There are needs of discussing what we can do under the specific conditions that we have to operate now and in the foreseeable future. I would like to be apart of the struggles. And I hope, the suggestion of general direction is useful as an educational exercise.

References:

On the Pedagogy of Liberation

P. Freire Pedagogy of the Oppressed Continuum, 1985

P. Freire The Politics of Education Bergin & Gravey Pub., 1985

H.A. Giroux “Educators as Transformative Intellectuals”, (Speech given at the Univ. of Lethbridge, 1982).

The pedagogy of liberation has a deep relation to the theology of liberation. See:

G. Guitierrez A Theology of Liberation Orbis Books, 1973

R. De Roo Cries of Victims Voice of God Novalis, 1986.

II. On Peace Education

C. Wulf Handbook on Peace Education International Peace Research Association, 1974.

S. Lee “A Course on the Morality of Nuclear Weapons” Teaching Philosophy, Vol. 7, No. 2, Apr. 1984.

L. M. Grob “Buberian Peace Education in the Mideast” Education Theory, Vol. 35, NO. 4, Fall, 1985.

III. On the Crisis of Technological Society

F. Capra The Turning Point Bantam Books, 1982.

J. Ellul The Technological Society Alfred A. Knopf, 1973.

C. Mitcham (Ed.) Philosophy and Technology The Free Press, 1972.

IV. On Critical Sociology and Education

P. Connerton (Ed.) Critical Sociology Penguin Books, 1976

J.E. Curtis (Ed.) The Sociology of Knowledge Praeger Pub., 1970.

G. Gurvitch The Social Frameworks of Knowledge Oxford Univ. Press, 1971.

J. B. Thompson Critical Hermeneutics Cambridge Univ. Press, 1981.

M. Murphy “Affective Education: The Future” Toward Century 21st. C.S. Wallia (Ed.) Basic Books, 1970.

E. Hurwitz Jr. (Ed.) Criticism, Conflict, and Change. —Reading in American Education. Dodd, Mead & Co., 1972.

H. Esser (Ed.) Transformation of Knowledge Occasional Paper 44. Mar, 1984. Canadian Commission for UNESCO.

H. A. Giroux “Theories of Reproduction and Resistance in the New Sociology of Education” Harvard Educational Review, Vol. 53, p. 257, 1983.

J. Habermas Communication and the Evolution of Society Beacon Press, 1976.

J. Curran “communications, Power, and Social Order” Culture, Society, and the Media M. Gurevitch (Ed.), Methuen, 1982.

V. On Ethical Questions

H.T. Engelhardt, Jr. (Ed.) Morals, Science and Society The Hastings Centre, 1978.

M. Brown (Ed.) The Social Responsibility of the Science The Free Press, 1971.

These references were used, not as the sources of quotations, but as sources of inspiration. I owe to them a great deal as to the “ways of thinking”. This is an acknowledgement of intellectual heritages.

Elders, Indigenous Mind, Indigenous Science

18 June 1999 Letter- In Appreciation of Dr. Colorado (PDF)

November 29, 2015 Archivist

APELA COLORADO

272-2 PUALAI ST.

LAHAINA, MAUI, HI

96761

18 JUNE 1999

Greetings return to you, Doctor Colorado, in the love and in the light of the ancestors, The Source of Life.

We of the ancestral tribal mind, dream our dreams and they are full of gentleness of the mind, the warmth of the heart and the humility of the soaring spirit; “Let peace prevail, enfold it with the red cloak”. If darkness comes persuade it to follow the way of peace. The ancestral bowl of light.

In appreciation and support of women of vision, like yourself, Doctor Colorado, there is a connection to the Universe where Kane retrieved from Lehua, the bowls of light and two red stones. Like the ancestors, you are connected to the Universe by your own visions as part of an inseparable aspect of creation- the merging of the ancestral tribal mind.

This sense, the intuitive avenue through the heart, opens the mind to the appropriate translation that it may enter the theoretical aspect of living and effectively integrate those feelings of the heart into usable theory of that ancestral tribal mind.

Since time on Mother Earth is so limited and time within the bosom of the Universe is so extensive, there is room for you to develop your own level of cosmic vision and give birth to it through the appropriate channels of physical reality.

The level of the material human mind is limited and grows slowly, but the level of the spiritual tribal heart is eternal, and as it becomes filled with aloha it changes the very nature of the material man into the vision he holds most dear: that of himself as an alive and integrated extension of the Universe- The Ancestral Grand Plan.

Doctor Colorado, you have distinguished yourself by a consistent superior performance of the ancestral mind on the beach of Quida, Benin, West Africa, January of this year, 1999. Proof of the quality of your instruction can be seen by the fact of students’ dissertation, one that I witnessed, in Dakar, Senegal, West Africa, this last March, 1999. You have clearly demonstrated that you are eminently qualified as a Kumu- an Elder, a teacher, and a foundation built and established with the ancestral strength of compassion. I appreciate, respect, and support your good work and recommend its essence to those of interest.

May the spirit of the land and all its relations, with the ancestral tribal mind of the Oneida, create a sanctuary fully imbued with aloha. With the permission of the ancestors I leave you, Doctor Colorado, in the love and in the light of the ancestors, The Source of Life; rejoicing in the power and the peace braided with the cords of patience, revealing the tapestry of aloha.

Respectfully,

Hale Makua

Hono Ele Makua

Indigenous Science

4 April 1988 Personal Correspondence on Anger (PDF)

October 8, 2015 Archivist

On Anger

04/04/88

Dear Pam

This is the second part of the letter to you on Violence/Anger. I presume you, as a Bear, are testing my Peace Research. I can assure you that by doing Peace Research I have come to know “nothing”. Peace is a kind of gem that you cannot “Possess” nor can you “Manufacture” by Science. It is not a question of Knowledge, but more to do with “Grace” in Christian term, or “Cosmic Love” in Buddhist term. You might call it “Gii Li” in your favorite term. I tell you about this later.

Last weekend, I went to Calgary and saw the “Spirit Sings”. It was a poor show. It was said to cover from 1600 to 1800. But the choice of the period was Political, as if from unconscious Cultural Bias. It neatly avoided the violent history of Invasion, Oppression, and Genocide. It evaded pre-colonial Native Culture. The main body of the show was Bead Work. The cheap glass beads were European imports. Indians sold two continents for these damned glass beads made in places like Firenze, Italy or Amsterdam, Holland!!! There was no display of native Copper Work etc. It implied that Natives had no culture before Europeans “taught” and supplied materials.

A few artifacts were genuine Native American. Several canoes, wood crafts, stone carvings, and one earthen pot, etc., were there. But they were the ones Europeans liked and collected. And the famous Sacred Mask was not placed properly, but crowded with other displays around. The arrangement of the surroundings was like a supermarket commercial display. The Mask deserves a room to itself, and it has to be placed appropriately in a “sacred” context. The Glenbow bookstore ought to sell books like the Vanishing White Man (Stan Steiner) to educate about what is happening to the World. The “Civilized” people who celebrate the Olympics only in Narcissism make me sick.

The only one that caught my attention was a “Wampum” made of natural seashell beads, purple and white, depicting people joining hands. It is a documentation of a Treaty. Perhaps it was from Iroquois, or from East Coast. The Museum does say it is a Treaty Document, but does not tell what the Treaty was. Nobody wants to remember the Treaty. White Culture is indifferent, or rather does not wish to know. The Natives would think it too painful to remember. So it sits in a Museum as a dead artifact whose meaning is lost forever. I wonder if anyone now can read the Wampum. (Purple is a sad color, but it is my favorite color. It appears just before the Red of Dawn. I can feel the kind of people who made the Wampum.)

Looking through Glenbow show, my niece commented that the Japanese would not have traded nothing for the cheap beads. She could not understand why Native Americans were “crazy” about the damned beads. I do not understand that either, and could not explain to her. I thought of explaining it in terms of “Pride” which blinded Natives. But I stopped short of saying that. I have to check that with you. [*1.]

Old Japanese did not have a taste for “bright colored” stuff. Europeans who came to Japan apparently found that out soon enough and did not even try. Japanese art designs had to be “simple” and unobtrusive. They did not like the “Complexity” of Chinese Art much either, when they came in contact with it before the Europeans came. Their sense of beauty demanded “subtle authentic elegance”, half-hidden in “ordinary practicality”. Until recently, they despised “show offs” as superficial. they did use ornaments, but valued “gems” in purple more. Stones and metals may be valuable enough, but they praised “Artists”, not “Artifacts”.

Tea ceremony, Flower arrangement, Poetry, and even Cooking, are typical of Japanese arts which are performance-centered, non-objective and ephemeral. They are “done”, just like Love-making, and that’s it. Or they are like the punch-line of jokes, there is no “justification”, no “explanation”, and nothing more can be added.

They are “Gems of the moment” created and gone, just like the momentary smile of a beautiful girl. There is nothing more to be asked. Nobody can “keep” the Gems as such, let alone “possess” it. And because they are ephemeral, they are most precious.

The above story has to do with your question. It is not Japanese art that I wanted to tell you about. If I could, I might have tried House Made Of Dawn to bring you here. Unfortunately, I don’t know enough about the House Made Of Dawn to do the same. I guess there must be Anger behind House Made Of Dawn. You know it and that is why you can read it. But I cannot find Anger in the story. There are many references to “drinking” in Momaday’s story. You know what it is. But I do not know what “drinking” means. Perhaps, to understand contemporary Indians, one has to understand Alcohol. I fail in that.

So I talked about Glenbow Show to Japanese Arts to say the following.

Peace is like the passing of a Gem of the moment. When Pam looked at the Oklahoma Moon, that was a moment of Peace in this sense. She might say “Aha”, or Weep, but she cannot keep it. She cannot display the “gems of the moment” as such in Museums either. The only thing she can do is to try to create moments. It may take a great anger to bring out such a moment. Then, one is obliged to act out the anger.

I heard Woody saying “It Hurts. It Hurts”, on CBC broadcasting from the picket line against the Glenbow show. It was a “primordial scream”. For that moment, CBC crews must have sensed a meaning in Woody’s “scream”, for otherwise it would have been “edited out”. but then, how many people heard it as a scream? I mean Natives. It is offensive to say this, but I wonder if Natives are “sensitive” enough. To be sure, if a lot of Natives scream loud, I would be frightened. After all, I am a parasite on the dominant power structure that oppresses the Natives. Yet, I cannot understand why Natives are not angry.

At the beginning of knowing You, someone referenced you as “She is one angry woman”. I thought it very interesting. But, so far, you disappointed me. I have not seen you angry in any big way. Why aren’t you angry? Are you getting too old? I say this to you, because not angry means that you don’t love enough.

I am not a great guy to talk about Anger. I am too “intellectual” to be angry. But you should not use my failure for your exercise. By writing to you, I am guilty of making an “intellectual” out of you. I know that. But I count on your Spirituality to resist that. And what happened to your “Aquarius Conspiracy”? You are supposedly a “Believer”, “Revolutionary Doer”, and “Passionate Lover”. I am a “doubter”, “technician” and “critical analyzer”; a typical “Virgo” which is the dead opposite to Aquarius. We have to make the best out of our bad match. And I think it would be best that you be in anger.

It is strange for a Peace Researcher to say such a thing. But, I don’t see a point in being just another nice guy who would dare not go beyond his reasonable defensive safety. Peace is not the keeping of Defense. It calls for the creation of a Defenseless World. For that, the world needs extraordinary, crazy guys. Any fool can be “reasonable”. Don’t be one. In anger, You can have all the fun and excitement that alcohol can give and extras such as creating something and giving it to the World.

[*1.) As to “Pride”, I have a suspicion that it also has something to do with Alcoholism. Sometime ago you said that Alcohol makes the drinker feel “Powerful”. That was a clue.

The “Power” in the sentence is not the “power” in the sense of “Facilitator”, but rather the “Power” of those who seek domination. It is the same Power that The British Empire sought. It is a denial of vulnerability. British called it “Invincible”. But Alcoholics seem to take it in a defensive sense. They “forget” defense, but there is nothing to give out. the Pride in Power there is empty of authentic content and does not facilitate creation of Love-Eros. They seem to not be aware that all human beings as bodily existences are just passing things, and no better off than alcoholics. Non-Alcoholics are just as miserable beings to whom alcoholics need no alcohol to feel superior. I would think of “En-noblement”, beyond “Empowerment” for Natives. And to avoid the romanticism of the “Noble Savage”, I recommend Fallible Man. By understanding Vulnerability, one gets into a state of mind called “Caring” which is needed to substantiate being “Noble” in daily life beyond ritualistic moments. The Power sense from Alcohol is superficial ritual, romanticism without authentic content, and worse, alcoholics know it, and hence are defensive. Life in anger and love is unconsciously full and overflows its limitations, and hence is “unreasonable”.

Alcoholics may be very sensually sensitive people, more so than others. And they are vulnerable because of the sensitivity. But they may also have more “Pride” than others. And because of it, they get hurt more. As a result, they are Defensive all the time. If Alcohol gets them to feel “invincible”, that is a welcome relief, however momentary it may be. An alternative would be the acceptance of vulnerability. But that is apparently not an Option to Alcoholics. Somehow, they feel being vulnerable is incompatible with their Pride.

I hesitated to ask you about this. I sense that you are an Aquarius to whom “Pride” is very important and at the same time it is the stumbling block. It is called “Pigheaded” — Pigs have big pride, if you know them —.

Now that I made you somewhat angry, I would like to introduce you to a book; Fallible Man by Paul Ricoeur. It is not a book on Science, but rather about Metaphysics of “Subjective Mind”, I shall send you the introduction and the table of contents. If you are interested, I shall copy the rest for you. It looks very “snobbishly intellectual – it represents the best of “European Academic Intellect” at the moment. I do worry it might “brainwash” you into an intellectual Snobbism. the combination of snobbism and your stubbornness (pig-headedness) would be deadly. You might become not only incomprehensible to People, but also “arrogant”. But being “arrogant” is not the same as being “angry”. I hope you know the difference, and do not forget that you are a poet.

Please not the term “Affective Fragility” appears in the table of contents as a “mistranslation” of “Vulnerability in being Sensual”. “Pride” is the dialectical opposite to Sensual vulnerability.

Yours

Sam K.

Indigenous Science

Power and Love Principle in Social Organization (PDF)

October 7, 2015 Archivist

Oct. 26, 87.

Dear Pam

Enclosed is a report of what I have been doing.

Yours

Sam

There are some physics in this, if you’re interested.

POWER AND LOVE PRINCIPLE IN SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

A Paper to be presented to CPREA, Ottawa

June 1, 1982. Session VIII.

S. Kounosu

Department of Physics

The University of Lethbridge

Lethbridge, Alberta

Abstract:

Social organizations require the co-operation of their

constituents. One way to secure the co-operation is coercion by

Power of various forms. Newtonian Physics provides a paradigm of

the Power way of system constructions. It is a “forced” relation

among constituents. Another way to achieve co-operation is

through Love. Both ways are as old and basic as Life phenomena,

and one can observe them even in ecological systems. However, the

dynamics of Love are not well understood. In view of the high

energy cost of maintaining power-system structures, this

underdeveloped state of Science of Love is of a grave concern.

This paper is written as a plea for serious considerations and

developments in social dynamics of Love. Implications to

International Peace are discussed.

Power and Love Principles in Social Organization.

1. Power Principle and its Newtonian Metaphor.

It is almost a tautology to say that a social organization requires

the co-operation of its constituents. For without some ways of maintaining a

practical degree of coherence in their interactions, a collection of

individuals can hardly be called “social”. And we expect some mechanisms for

“organization” to sustain functional structures and appearance of a constant

order to claim its identity. Although a collection of atoms (individuals)

like the “ideal gas” of statistical mechanics may be discerned as a

paradigmatic metaphor behind some social theories such as the social

contract theory and the equilibrium economics, society is not a collection

of randomly acting independent individuals.

To keep an order, which may well be even nominal, the society has to

plead, guide, persuade, manipulate, coerce, force or eliminate unwilling or

misbehaving members within. Order costs effort and energy—as is the case

for Entropy cost for mechanical systems, and we have power structures to

carry out the task. If we call the way of organizing our society

“civilized”, then it is distinguished by its high energy cost before its

merits are listed. Our education system is a part of the power structures as

such. If the internalization of the social order is not, sufficient, it is

followed by the penal system. We rely on the “adversary system” to bring out

the best of our justice. The process of justice is at a sublimated level,

but its metaphor is like boxing and its final outcome is at the hands of the

sovereign authority which is the apex of the power structures and has the

right to kill humans. We note that we have never denied the power of the

sovereignty to declare nuclear war and annihilate the human race.

In terms of economy, we have a system of distributing unequal rewards

among us. This has been justified by a hope that competitions for higher

rewards stimulate higher performances and result in a net gain of economy

overriding the cost of the reward system. The competitions are not just for

possession of more material things, but more intensely for controlling

power. To enjoy a high level of consumption is one thing, but to accumulate

“Capital” is quite another thing. We enjoy our high level of consumption and

we are proud of it, if not identifying ourselves with it. However, the

consumption has to be sustained by the capital (means of production) which

is not merely machines and factories but also control of human labor. The

term “accumulation” may not be appropriate for the human-social side of the

Capital as such, but it had to be built with accumulative energy input. And

the distribution consumption side of the economy had to be controlled so

that the construction-accumulation of the production side goes on. Unequal

distribution of reward or “competition” is a technology developed to achieve

the accumulation and maintenance of the power structure.

The unequal distribution of rewards also act as a deterrent to those who are

unwilling or are incompetent players of the game. The threat to livelihood

is a sublimated form, but it is a threat to life and violence. But, since

economic inequality relates and simulates political power structure and what

is conceived as “civil order”, the violence is condoned as a legitimate

exercise of power.

In terms of our inner thoughts or intelligence, we regard that which

is successful in climbing up the ladder of the power structures to be the

high quality one. And we try to attain it, or rather we think we ought to

attain it. Our education system supposedly helps everyone with this ideal,

but the “success” is only relative to failures, like in the “Zero Sum Game”,

and the system only intensifies the adversary competitions. The school

system often acts as a “filtering system” by which “inferiors” are labeled

and it prepares them for inequality that they are likely to face. Freud went

so far as to say that civilization is an illusion. Illusion is distinguished

from “delusions” of the “mentally ill” in that “illusion” is good for the

economy whereas “delusions” are useless, if not damaging. According to

Freud, I imagine, the “Reality” is an illusion which the controlling power

of the economy takes as a set of reference points for its operations. We

assume that the power has the right to “cure” those who have difficulties in

accepting the “Reality”.

In summary, the power is regarded as necessary and an ideal, if not

“the only”, means around which any society has to construct itself. I call

this the “Power Principle”. The power principle says if one desires

anything, apply “force”. If one has a problem, apply “force”. Might is the

answer to all. Thus, human relations are imaged as motions of objects that

have to be forced, and therefore the “intelligent” and “realistic” way of

dealing with them is to apply “force” as Newtonian physics suggests. The

ultimate expression of the power principle is Nuclear War. Chemical,

Biological weapons are relatively easy to prohibit, but Nuclear weapons,

since it represents the power principle of our civi1ization, cannot be

banned easily unless we change the fundamental image-metaphor of how we live

The terms like “force”, “energy”, “power” are terms of Newtonian

physics. I shall not argue whether our ways of social organization are

influenced by image and language of physics, or physics as such is merely

one expression of our ways of organizing. According to L. Mumford (The Myth

of the Machine), machines are modeled after political structures which

existed long before the modern science and technology appeared.

Mumford’s argument is convincing, particularly with respect to the

popular image as a metaphor or paradigm of what machines are; perhaps

physics is a refined expression of a popular paradigm, or even merely a

refined language organization. Terms of physics are borrowed from existing

language. And without the acceptance and support of society, even with mis-
interpretations of popular understanding, science would not have developed.

In the age of specialization and professionalism, popular image-metaphors of

“science” may not coincide with what “science” is doing for (and to) them.

But there has to be a shared

paradigm which makes up a positive feedback loop.

On the other hand, however, it is doubtful if modern society could

have developed in the way it has without the patterns of thought emerging

along with the modern science. The Bourgeois Ideals, the Capitalism, and the

Central Government System appeared along with the Science and development at

roughly the same accelerated pace. And their “take off point” may be traced

to about Galileo’s time.

To be sure, ideals or ideas expressed may not correlate with practice.

At least, time lags are noticeable. I imagine that the image of “machine”,

which may be very o1d as Mumford suggested, could not come into social

practice until some means of converting fossil energy into some forms

similar to human labor were developed. That requires developments in

science, so that the “idea” can be connected to “know-how”. That is, the

idea or image has to be refined. And the idea has to win the support and

cooperation of the society. Willingly or unwillingly, knowingly or

unknowingly, our ancestors made the investments into the development of this

civilization which had a long lead time.

As economists commonly point out, developments as such are slow —

i.e. with time lags — at least at the initial stages. Society supports the

necessary investment for a long time only on a basis of vague notions of

what would come out of the process. It had nothing more than metaphor to go

on. And unless the whole circle of the inter-related developments

constituted a “Positive Feedback Loop”, the system would not have “taken

Galileo needed the accumulated wealth of Italian textile merchants

like the Medici family or the cultural affluence, confidence, and interest

in science such wealth provided. Contradictions and resistances were there,

like the “friction” of Newtonian mechanics. But as a whole, the positive

feedback loop was formed and set into motion.

And the history of the past 400 years of European style development,

which now includes North and South America and some Asian countries, is very

impressive. There we find the roots of our faith in “science” or

“rationality”. Right or wrong, the history so perceived provides the

metaphoric foundation for what terms like “science” and “rationality” mean.

It is not that non-European societies did not have some notion of

“Force”, but the notion of Force even in Newtonian mechanics is rather

static. “Power” as “rate of flow of energy per unit time” is a dynamic

notion. Admittedly it is only a slightly different semantic variation in

terminology, and even physicists today may not make the distinction in

colloquial usages of the term, but the fact that “power” in mechanics

provides a distinction is an indication of a linguistic development and a

corresponding shift in metaphor.

Physics may be nothing more than a linguistic system of model

(metaphor)- making and rules of language for efficient communication. Or one

might say physics is an art of “saying things”

like rhetoric. But “saying things” in certain ways have far-reaching

consequences. Relativity and Quantum Mechanics are the prime example of how

important it is to have a certain way of “saying things”. I cannot tell

whether notions, ideas, metaphors, images come first and generate language

appropriate for them, or language forms come first and generate ideas. I

imagine they are also in the “feedback loop”-relations, if not in a “vicious

If so, it is vain to attempt to “explain” the relations in terms of

the linear mechanics of the “Cause-Effect” rhetoric. We need the language of

“system-dynamics” to describe such relations. Unfortunately, we are in a

process of developing such a language and, at the moment, we are not able to

give an appropriate description of the loop structure that can be accepted

as an “explanation” on a social scale.

At the moment, the best practical language at the social scale is that

of Newtonian mechanics. And within this language, or the metaphors it

provides, only the “power” makes sense. People may not have formal training

in the mechanics, nor are they necessarily conscious of the mechanics

implied by their saying and thinking. But social practices are guided by

languages of the society.

But to the extent we do have to communicate for social life, economic

activities, political commotions, and to the extent that we may be able to

change our languages with less energy than changing social practices, there

is hope to break the vicious circle. Our “thoughts” may be nothing more than

the “Form” in language, as Plato seems to have suggested — that is, we

start our “thoughts” from expressions in a language and we end our thoughts

in some expressions in a language—, but we note that language also

And to the extent Newtonian language and metaphors of Power were

important in the Western history, we can hope to make some input for the

future by generating or, more modestly, by stimulating development of the

physics of Love (Language of love). We note that even Newtonian mechanics

taught us about time lags. If one tries ordinary statistical analysis, the

“force” and “motion” do not correlate at all. This is because “force” is a

term in the second order time derivative. As a number of objects or entities

in dynamical description increases, the leading term in the description of

the system as a whole gets to be higher and higher in the order of time

derivative. That means the effects of the “higher order forces” would

manifest in longer time lags. We should not be impatient, according to

Newtonian Theory.

Of course, we need not believe in Newtonian mechanics. Personally, I

am very critical of it. But as a learning process, one could follow the

mechanics to a point. After all, Newtonian mechanics is the best we

developed so far, even though a few flaws are known.

In a way, all of our descriptions, intellectualizations and

theorizations are not only linguistic models but also simplifications. Our

brain may handle a huge amount of information, but in terms of our

“intellect”, we can only handle a few terms at a time. Social

complexities are beyond our mechanics, unless we appeal to metaphorical

imaginations. In this, Newton already introduced terms like “force” which is

a “ghost term” as E. Mach, Albert Einstein et al pointed out. Yet the “ghost

terms” are the essential ones in the system of “saying things”. The western

history attests to the importance of the “ghosts”. By this I am saying that

terms like “Love” need not be “unscientific” and “irrational”, any more than

“force” and “power” were.

Mach rejected the term “atom”, saying it is a “ghost”. He was correct

in saying so, as the Elementary Particle physics later came to the same

view. But for the Elementary Particle physics to develop and vindicate Mach,

it was necessary to “believe in the “atom” and search for it until then.

Mach was wrong in the development strategy. Mistaken ideas are often a more

useful means of learning than the correct one, for if we have the correct

answer, we have no motivation to learn any further. At least this is my

excuse to dare introduce a “dynamics of Love” as a heuristic device for

I imagine there is a need for studying the Power Principle much deeper

than I outlined above. There are criticisms by social scientists against

“physics” —society, social phenomena are not simple like planetary motion,

obviously, but the “Scientism” in social studies is far more powerful than

the critics appear to estimate. And the basic metaphor of “science” is the

Newtonian Mechanics. If it is difficult to get out of the metaphor, then

second best would be to know what the metaphor is. Perhaps soul searching in

Newtonian mechanics may be the way to overcome the myth. As Zen and

Motorcycle Maintenance tells us, one needs to perform a Proper burial ritual

to go beyond Newton.

However, in order to give some sense of direction to the search, I

would like to present my speculations on the dynamics of love and discuss a

few implications. If my story is of some interest, then I shall come back to

Newtonian mechanics in detail. I think “history” is like “dream

interpretation”, which would be of no interest unless it suggests future

possibilities, if not hope or even “prophecy”. For that matter, knowing

“what is of fact” is of no consequence unless it relates to “What shall be”

(T.S. Elliot). If you find “prophecy” objectionable, then replace the word

with “prediction”. The latter sounds “scientific”, but I would not know the

difference, except for the false pretense the latter semantic carries.

2. Love Principle

—why and how to talk of it—

Love may be everywhere. And there may be many kinds of love. But, in

comparison with the rather elaborate vocabulary for Power Mechanics, we have

only poorly developed means of describing love phenomena. The unbalanced

development of our language concerning Power and Love reflects our sense of

value, priorities, and different sensitivities about the two.

In addition, our “scientific” or “intellectual” vocabulary is

dominated by nouns and visual senses — of objects named and metaphors or

images derived thereof. But in the context of discussing “love” on a social

scale, “love” is more like a verb. It could be replaced by “loving”, but in

the sense we say “rain” for “it rains”, I have retained the simpler form.

I intend here to use the term “love” as a dynamical term. It is not

referenced to a thing or object, not even to an “essence” of platonic

atomism. It needs no object(-ive) “existence”. We recall that terms like

“point” and “line” in geometry need no objective existence, and their visual

images and metaphors are more or less arbitrary choices in subjective

interpretations or “animations”. Terms like “force”, “energy”, “entropy”,

are also of this kind. Some physicists like P. Bridgman even insist that

“electron” is not an object as it might be suggested by its noun name, but

an operational term referring to a set of “doing things” and “measuring-
detection” procedures-processes. “Electrons” is understood as “it

electrons”, in the sense we say “rain” for “it rains”.

Thus the “love” here needs not to have an object(-ive) existence like

vitamins or hormones that can be crystallized in a test tube. It needs not

to be seen in a genetic code under an electron microscope. Somehow it could

be sensed by body sensations, but needs not to have any visual sensation or

perception. Hollywood movies might give us visual images of “love”, but that

is not the kind I shall talk about here. I think visual images, models and

metaphors are helpful to us, and I intend to give several of them. However,

they do not constitute complete pictures of “love”.

My intention here is to start discussions on love by rather “heartless

descriptions” of the “social engineering of love”. It is only a small part

and suggested as a starting point of learning processes. If this paper is

taken by the readers as something like “Soft Technology”, I shall be well

satisfied. As it will soon become evident, even this limited treatment is

difficult enough for me. I am sure that there are many people who know Love

better than I do. And they might point out that my difficulty is due

precisely to such a “heartless” attitude of “system engineering” which is

necessarily limited in scope. Love, by its fundamental nature, has to

encompass everything of life and environment, as they might say. I am aware

of what E. Fromm and H. Marcuse said about love-eros. Their works are indeed

impressive and perhaps there is nothing to add to them. But I

detect a Platonic Atomism in their rhetoric and attempt a dynamic approach

as an alternative here. Like many geometries, alternative approaches need

not inherently be better or worse. Thus I shall try a typical simplification

of physical science here.

For a start I shall try “love” to be any tendency of interaction to

form cooperations. Symbiosis, herd instinct, collective behavior of magnetic

materials, emergence of quasi-stable structure out of random motions, or

even “anti-entropy” may be taken as a metaphor for love at this level of

“Love” as collective behavior of many-body dynamics can be discerned

among soldiers at battle fronts. The huge organization of war effort cannot

be maintained without the “love” of millions of people. Nuclear weapons

could not have been produced without the cooperation and support of many

people. Therefore, one could say that Nuclear Holocaust, if it comes, is a

product of “love”. If people did not accept, obey, and feel good about

identifying themselves with their hero-leader, the Holocaust of the

concentration camps could not have been possible. Without supportive wives

at home, men at work for Capitalism would have become monks and probably

become extinct in a few generations. As for “behind every successful man

there is a woman”, we would say “behind every successful social institution

and development, there is love”. The state of “living together” constitutes

at least “circumstantial evidence of “love” in this broad sense.

The crudeness of the above examples is purposely made to minimize the

image of “nice and sweet love”. “Love” can be nice and sweet, but it need

not be so, and the primary interest here is on the social phenomena-dynamics

of love, not on the romantic aspects of love. Love on a social scale can be

just as infatuating as that of Romeo and Juliet, though it may not

necessarily be “romantic”.

But it is more important to look at the “low-intensity” types with

longer time-scales, like the toil of mothers looking after their offspring.

This type is rather like a “daily routine”, always present and forever

caring, if one takes notice. Even within the Power-centered civilizations,

people do live together, accepting, accommodating, sympathizing,

understanding, communicating, and taking care of the unrewarding “minor

details” of life.

In this connection, it is interesting to note that the experimental

and empirical ways of science (knowing) introduced by Galileo are deviations

from the Greek tradition and closer to Love in that they require enormous

care of minute details of interaction with the environment. But in the

abstract theoretical expressions, they are acknowledged only as supporters.

In practice, the means actually defines what science is. But the end claims

the glory. It is the way we present and image our “knowledge”.

Power cannot exist without Love. Just like the “Macho” or “Man-God”

image, the power takes, or rather needs, all the credit, rewards, and public

appearances, and it can not get enough, whereas Love is content with the

invisible, unrecognized, unrewarding supporter’s position. Power gets its

energy from exploiting Love.

Love has to do with “quality of means, process”, not the “end”,

“purpose”, “intent”. Love is not an “answer” or something that one achieves,

like when heroes finally win over the monsters. It is not “value” or

“evaluation”. It does not look for “what”, but rather is concerned with

“how”. It is the opposite of “intellectualization” and “rationalization”. It

is close to randomness accidents, particulars, that our intellect tends to

look down on with contempt. Sweeping generalizations of our intellectual

expressions are impressive. I fantasize that “Love” adores that, but the

sweeping generalizations have to come from the nitty-gritties of particulars

and have to go back to the chaos of life experiences. The image of love here

is dangerously similar to that of the one who stays pregnant, cooks, cleans,

and cares for everything that comes along in random chances. Unfortunately,

that has to be done if our life process is to continue. The only way out is

to give recognition to the love as such, and for everybody to share the

burden. If we are to replace the love with the power-way of doing things,

the energy costs of the necessary tasks would be forbidding.

Engineers know that any mechanical system has to have plays and

tolerance. The system also needs “lubricants”. One cannot control systems

beyond a certain scale with dogmatic order, even though the metaphor of

intellectual description may be “deterministic”. Machines are not. In cases

like Nuclear Power plants, one can conceive safety devices upon safety

devices, but the probability of failure increases if too many safety

controls are build into the system, for safety devices could also fail. That

is, even a mechanical system, if practical, does not operate on the Power

Principle a1one. It needs something analogous to what we shall call Love. I

attempt here to decipher Love Principle from such engineering principles. I

acknowledge my image of Love is not necessarily a popular one. And I am even

afraid that I am degrading love by pulling it down to the engineering level

of discussions. But I am not saying this is all there is about love. It is

only a small part, or a starting heuristic metaphor. I hope our learning

about love is limitless. And I think this way of “knowing” love is tolerated

by the Love principle.

This is analogous to what physicists and mathematicians do to “Non-
linearity”. The “non-linear” simply means situations for which linear theory

description fails. The linear theories and descriptions are simpler and one

can have sweeping generalities, provided linearizations are good

approximations. In fact, in linear descriptions, one rarely needs to be

conscious of the “approximateness” of the description. Tolerance is

automatically assured in the structure of the descriptions themselves. If

the description fails to accommodate tolerance and cannot maintain

stability, the axiom of the linear language automatically rejects such cases

to be outside the universe of the discourses.

Of course, we encounter difficulties. We cannot manage everything by

the linear way of describing and thus knowing things and situations. But our

sciences have developed only as simplification by linearization, thus

whatever we excluded is called “unscientific”. Today, we have a rise of

interests in non-linear phenomena and the prejudice is diminishing. However,

the simplifications strategy of scientific knowing has to be maintained.

This is partly because the intellectual part of our brain cannot handle

complexity. And if “science” is to be useful socially, it has to be

reachable by anybody who is patient enough to follow the rules. The practice

may deviate from equality, say in professionalism, or elitism that thrives

on the monopoly of “scientific expertise”, But even Professionalism has to

claim the universality of science to justify the power of the monopoly

position. And if professionals have theories at all, the theories are based

on simplifications that they can understand.

Interestingly, however, the recent rise in interest for complexity

came about because of computer developments, which can be understood as a

part of the development of our language skills. We can now delegate “simple

routines” to computers and afford to think and talk about complexities. Or

it may be a sign that we have come to realize that we humans cannot compete

with machines In doing simplified routines. If human existence is to be

rationalized, then the image of “rationality” based on simplification cannot

be maintained any longer.

Ironically, our “intellectual basis” is now threatened by the machines

our intellect has created.

Francis Bacon warned about the “cheapening” of intelligence by the

science that was rising in his time. But “science” as such has a historical

role to play. It did prepare the next stage of evolution. Just as Marx was

wrong in predicting the fall of Capitalism within his time, prediction of

the fall of “science” may well be wrong. But no social structure we know of

stayed constant. The vicious circle dynamics supporting such structures may

be stable, but as much as the structures are manifestations of dynamics,

they can only be quasi-stable, that is ephemeral”. Physicists today think

that even the Proton, the fundamental substance of all material existence,

may decay, as much as the Proton is dynamical. And the Greek idea that Order

has to be an eternal constant and therefore “knowledge” has to be eternal,

is slowly fading in our science.

And an idea, metaphor or paradigm that we are describing relatively

fast changes in references to relatively slow quasi-stable structures — a

Buddhist mandala — is gaining popularity. This is a generalization of

Relativity and, perhaps, abhorred by those who like to entertain the feeling

of security in constancy. But as Galileo said, the Earth moves. To say it is

another simplification is vain, if the intent is to defend the old myth. The

paradigm of science already starts shifting.

Here I rather like to exploit the paradigmatic (metaphysical-
metaphorical) nature of our intellectualization (science) to propose and

encourage the dynamical ways of thinking and

talking. Love may not be a suitable subject for this infantile stage of

dynamical language to talk of, in that it can describe love only in contrast

to the Power that the previous language of mechanics talked of. But that

hopefully becomes a translational bridge of two languages or a part of the

transition between the two.

3. TOWARD DYNAMICS OF LOVE.

If we are to extend Newtonian mechanics to describe Love phenomena, it is

perhaps possible to represent some features of Love in higher order terms in

time derivative.

“Force” in the Newtonian language is a term in the second order derivative.

“Power” is “the rate of Energy flow per unit time” and thus it is also a

term in the second order.

One notes that the effect of a “Force” is not immediately visible. It takes

a certain time-lag before we can see the effect of a “Force” in changes of

positions. If one is to take a statistical correlation analysis between a

“Force” and “change of position”, one would not find any relation, let alone

“Causality”. Of course one can take a correlation analysis between “mass

times acceleration and “Force”. The correlation would then be perfect

because the two terms are identical by definition. Since it is a tautology,

it would be vain to hope for discovery of “Causality” in mechanics by

statistical analysis. Social scientists are warned here that Newtonian sense

of mechanics cannot be arrived at by statistical analysis. As to “Cause”,

Newton himself declared that he is not explaining the “cause”, but merely

describing how things move”. In essence “Force” is a ghost term invented for

convenience of description. In Newtonian language then, “Love” would be

another ghost term representing a certain quality referring to the “how” of

motion. If such a term achieves some efficiency of description and thereby

assists us in our competence to communicate, then the term is amply

One of the features of Love as a higher order term is obvious, without any

further specification at all. Love as such is not visible in motion (change

of state) directly. It would take rather a long time before its effects

emerge. In short time scale measurements, Love would not manifest. It may be

that we have to wait a long tine in the evolutionary time scale to see what

Newtonian mechanics deem that the universe of discourse is complete within a

linguistic space of the zero-th and first-order terms — positions and

velocity. For this reason it does not require having any higher order terms

than the second to talk of dynamical situations. However, if one is to talk

of many-body situations – any more than two –. the system of description

consisting of the zero-th first and second order terms in effect make up

higher order description.

In Newtonian mechanics, a situation with N bodies with 3 degrees of freedom

for each can be described in a system, of 6N first order equations. If the

equations do not contain “crosstalks” of terms, each equation can be solved

as if it is for a single body in vacuum. In general this cannot be done. The

“crosstalks” are representations of interactions. In some fortuitous cases,

we can find “collective” motions which are waves extending over many bodies,

but equivalent of individual motions. And even in such cases, the over-all

system itself can only be represented if we desire to talk of the system as

an entity like “society” – by a 6N-th order equation.

A love phenomenon between two people, treated in mechanics as one between

two atomic individuals with only one degree of freedom is already complex

enough that it requires 4-th order equation.

We do not like higher order equations, for we are usually incompetent. So if

possible at all, we like to treat things 1n the first order, or at most in

the second order. That is, atomistic and individualistic talks and thoughts

are simpler. The ordinary practices of Newtonian mechanics, thus, are

limited in lower order treatments. And the wide practice generated a habit,

if not a prejudice, that if someone is to talk in higher order terms, we do

not fear it is “scientific” alone comprehending it.

Ordinary undergraduate texts in physics do not mention “Three-body

Problems”. Intellectuals educated in such limited mechanics become social

scientists who might entertain an idea that to emulate such mechanics is

science, if not “knowing” in general. Despite most people being aware of co-
operative dynamics and Love, talks on such subjects are consequently

regarded as “unscientific”, if not “irrational”, “sentimental”, etc. But the

trouble is not with Love. It is in our incompetence in talking and thinking

I am not saying learning of higher order equations and many-body mechanics

would make us competent in Love affairs. After all, mechanics can only do

certain limited things. Not all features of Love phenomena can be understood

in mechanics. But if we are to entertain the idea of “mechanics = knowing”

at all on the phenomena of systems like social, political and economical

ones, and particularly Love, the higher order terms may be essential in

talking-thinking of “how the system as an integrated whole behaves”.

Higher order systems, aside from the time-lag mentioned before, have the

possibility of “loop-structure” — positive and negative feed-back”–. In

the context of talking about social phenomena, this loop structure is very

interesting. I imagine that so-called “Dialectics” is referring to the loop,

though the language of dialectics is too obscure to be mathematized.

(However, the Catastrophe Theory is of interest in this connection: see R.

Even the second order systems already show the possibility of the loop

structure. And electronics engineers use the concept routinely. The loop can

easily be deciphered in linear approximations as the “eigenvalue” of the

matrix describing mutual interactions (cross talks). The “eigenvalues” are

invariant within projective transformations of references. It is arbitrary

in what “terms” or “measurements” are used in descriptions of the loop.

That a dynamical system contains loop structures is invariant even in a

topological sense. That is, it matters little if we perceive the system or

situation differently. If needed, we can use most any “measurements”,

“scaling”. This feature is a great advantage for social-human studies. In

fact, “measurement” need not be of that which mathematics defined as

“measure”. Social and human scientists are, in topological dynamics, no

longer required to pretend that they are “measuring” in a rigorous sense.

One can even employ “poetical

license” in descriptions, for topological characteristics are invariant

under “poetical license”. This would avoid a great deal of trouble in

In case one is interested in “non-linear” phenomena — say, the “diminishing

return” in economics, for example –, the topological approach is the only

sensible one. I am saying the traditional “quantification” is for the birds,

if not a fraudulent sham. For the situation the system is indeed non-linear,

the approximability by quantitative language is no longer assured. The only

thing meaningful is the “Qualitative” description about quasi-stable

generalities of the situation system. This teaches us humbleness in our

imperialistic tendency to “know”, “predict” and “control” the situation by

quantifications.

If President Reagan’s economic advisers are somewhat less dogmatic and admit

that economics is an approximation and could possibly be wrong, I think

people in the US might find a better way of living together.

The dogmatic attitude of contending “truth” and “being absolutely Right” is

prevalent not only in economics but in politics and particularly in the

military. People know that, in such areas of human endeavors, things are not

easily theorized, comprehended, and controlled. But, paradoxically, the

inherent uncertainty, or rather the suppressed awareness of incompetence

with regard to the situations tend to call forth strong dogmatic knowledge

claims. Assertion of “truth” is used to soothe our anxiety.

Hitler was a great hero and leader because he knew how to exploit the

psychology of people in perplexity. And what is striking is that the

traditional knowledge claim by “science” resembles the psychological trick.

That is, the “Power of Knowledge” is the same as a quasi-religious notion

which emerges and is entertained by people in crisis. “Science” in the sense

of the love affair of learning is often replaced by the “Power of Knowledge”

in such a situation. People demand that “science” is the Messiah who solves

all problems. They would be terribly disappointed if “science” is shown to

be incomplete, or worse, is said to be a love play. People would complain

why they have to foot the bill for a show in space, such as sending men to

the moon at a cost of 30 billion dollars.

If the popular image of “science” is a kind that is powerful enough to blast

away mountains to lay a highway through, then it is natural that people

expect the same science to blast away “Evil Forces” such as U.S.S.R. or

China with hydrogen bombs.

If the image of “science” is the kind that cures the disease of completely

helpless patients and it is often imagined that patients are completely

ignorant of their own state –, then scientists and experts say it is the

Truth and has to be done. People are not requested to learn anything about

their own life but are ordered to act as directed by the authorities.

I think our “science education” is a great propaganda machine. And I even

wonder if “Peace Research”, conceived as a science, is also part of it.

I have said nothing about “indeterminacy” or “uncertainty” that exist in

fluctuating environments or in the Quantum States in this talk about Love

Dynamics. Although I think it is essential to consider “catastrophes”,

“random”, “chaos” in Love dynamics, it is beyond the scope of this talk.

There are also some implications and suggestions from Quantum Mechanics and

Relativity. However, I shall not go into this here, for I am afraid that it

might be taken as a continuation of the scientism that I criticized.

Even without Quantum Mechanics and Relativity to talk of Zeno’s Paradox on

position and motion and time dimension in a dynamical sense, Newtonian

mechanics already suggest our “intentionality” in knowing. To know “what is”

of facts and situations is of little use even in the Power sense of

knowledge. The knowledge as such is valued for its implications as to “what,

shall be”, if not what “ought to be”. We call it prediction, but it is no

different from “prophecy in religious contexts. Our Science as it stands

today is not devoid of religious tendencies; it is political and psycho-
therapeutic as well.

Positivist philosophy in science today would like to eliminate the

“intentionality” from science — here again we see an example of the slip

from “what is” to what ought to be” –. But elimination of the

“intentionality” may be elimination of science-knowing. Rather, one is

advised to recognize the intentionality and treat it with respect; when we

include time dimension in dynamics, it is unavoidable that future and past

come to play active roles in the dynamics. It is possible that loop

structures are made in time dimension. Cyclic phenomena in many human and

social fields are well-known. They may be projections of loop structures in

time dimensions. If we are to talk of these phenomena, the rhetoric-logic of

“what is” is no longer competent. Love that is seen as a higher order term

contains this sense of dynamical time dimension. If we are to talk of these

phenomena, the rhetoric-logic of “what is” is no longer competent.

We note that talks in love relations often contain references to time.

Paradoxically, the feeling of Love transcends Time, yet the transcendence is

based on a feeling of time in a holistic sense, not in mechanical time. That

is, the negation of time in Love is negation of Newtonian time, not the time

of Relativity. As such, I contend that in Love the dynamic Time is regained

by negation of clock time as a Passive parameter. We are not quite free from

the clock time of Newtonian mechanics — it is the foundation of our

intellectual order as it stands now — but we try to see future

possibilities in our love relations and endeavor to “promise” (prophecy)

meaningful relations to grow.

That is, Power of Knowledge and Love are two different ways by which we try

to deal with time flow, anxieties as well as aspirations, uncertainties and

hopes. In Love we accept and take Time in trust and as such it needs not to

be aware of the measuring-controlling sense of Newtonian time. Thus it would

appear to be playful, sensual, or childish. We know that in love we would

die sooner or later, but

that does not bother us at all. Perhaps death, i.e. the ephemerality,

finiteness of our existence is the reason for Love. At least, while we can,

we like to have a beautiful life. It is not by accident that we have the

myth of Chronos (Time) as the god of death. If the clock time is the order

of the universe, then in love we negate its power over us. But, in terms of

modern physics, we need not depend on the clock time for our intellectual

order. We can take dynamical time, if needed, in a topological sense. There

we are not bound by the clocks. Somehow, love contains very good

understanding of time in 4 or higher dimensional frames of reference beyond

the primitive one in the Power sense of knowledge.

4. Love against Taboos

Our notion of love is formed, or rather deformed, other taboos.

Perhaps, left in the natural state unconscious, involuntary functions of our

body. To a conscious feeling, we need some resistance suppression to

heighten our senses.

The Greek myth of love supposes that the original “Man” was a union of

male and female. Only after separation, both genders can experience love in

an attempt to regain the original union. Hegelian philosophy takes the

dialectical view in that from the separation emerges the desire of reunion.

Love as such is a “negation of negation”. In that sense we might say that

without the Power Principle dominating us, we may not be able to recognize

the Love Principle.

Of course we do not need to take naive dialectics of the “opposition

of poles” perceived in the linear metaphor. The dialectical opposites can be

of two different dimensions, or on two different levels. We can recall

examples like the opposition of “point” and “line” in Zeno’s Paradox or

“position” and “momentum” in the Uncertainty relation. The dialectical

oppositions are metaphysical or metaphorical choices in geometries, any of

which need not be superior to others. But we have one in our mind to

coordinate, organize our actions and feelings in reference to it.

Interestingly, brain physiologists tell us that our middle brain, the

Cephalum, is responsible for orgasm. The same part of the brain is also the

one which imagines and projects future states of our body, coordinates

contextual references and organizes actions. That sounds like what we refer

to as “mind”, but its function appears to be one that constructs

metaphysical or metaphorical geometry.

The Cortex part functions on the basis of the over-all structure

provided by the Cephalum as a computer assisting “mind”. Perhaps love is one

element of geometry of the “mind”. And incestuous taboo may be another

important element of it.

Incestuous taboo is not a direct opposite of love in the linear sense.

It only opposes Love with certain specified objects and in certain specified

forms of expression. Our biological organs, save the “mind”, may not be able

to recognize the taboo — in fact Oedipus could not recognize his mother in

the woman he married. This is a social-cultural phenomenon and, as such,

artificial. Love as we recognize is not natural, nor purely biological.

There are certain physical and biological bases and tendencies, but they do

not dictate deterministically what we can do, feel, or think.

The Bible, for example, says “Love Thy Neighbor” on the one hand, and

“Thou shall not covet Thy Neighbor’s Wife” on the other hand. If we are

logical we might say the Bible allows us to covet our neighbor’s husband. Or

we might interpret the Bible as commending a certain homosexual relation.

Of course, here I am deliberately sacrilegious in playing with logic.

But I dare to suggest the interpretations of the moral commands, for they

are sexual taboos imposed on love. And there would likely be some political,

economical motivations or implications behind any taboos.

In cases like the Biblical metaphor of love we might consider social

benefits, such as protection of private property right or prevention of

communicable diseases. Marx contended that the family system is the

prototype of “property” which acts as the production unit. And the Divisions

of Labor started with distinctions of male and female roles in the

production of children. Whether one agrees with Marx or not, discussion of

Love soon gets into the social domain. Biology, or even Psychology, is then

irrelevant. For the good of morals, politics, economy, or whatever we might

say, we have to have civilized taboos against indiscriminate love. And in

turn the taboos define what we recognize as Love, either in accordance with

or against the taboos.

Monogamy may be good or bad. That matters little. It is one of those

nominal values in our artificially, if not hypocritically, constructed mind.

Society appears to be unaffected by practices of violation anyway. But there

is an important consequence from the seemingly harmless exercise of our

“Minds”. That is, we accept social control of Love. A society can set up

taboos against “love of the enemy”, “love of undesirables”, or “love of

inferiors”. We have many peculiar practices in this regard.

In Japan, only some 50 years ago, mothers were obliged to love,

respect and honor the firstborn male child above and beyond her other

children. Like in many other Western countries, her position in a family —

which is the “Property”, the “Capital” — was that of a slave laborer who

produced offspring and reared them. Her love had to be properly channeled.

In the U. S. the term “Nigger Lover” was a derogatory word only until

recently. In Canada today, a “Commie Sympathizer” would not be considered to

be a good Christian, although the “commie” might be the neighbor. If you are

Polish, you ought not to love Russians. A Cuban girl who happens to love an

American may be accused of “consorting with the enemy”.

In business exchanges we supposedly do not mix love. Doctors should

not love patients. Teachers have to avoid relationships which might be mis-
identified as love. Military officers cannot talk of love in their line of

duty. Bureaucrats are not permitted to consort with citizens. Political

heads and Captains of industry are here to give orders, not to display love.

Most institutions in our society are organized to carry on routine tasks and

we refer to love only as deviations from mechanical routines.

It is not that love does not exist in our social organizations. On the

contrary, at least the “fusing” kind of love that Sartre talked of in his

Critique of Dialectical Reason, is essential for the existence of the

organizations. But love as such is not admitted, not allowed to be

recognized under ordinary circumstances. Love has to be hidden so that the

order and edifices of the organizations can be maintained.

During the Industrial Revolution, peasants in England and Ireland were

obviously not loved. Even Marx did not show too much love toward peasants,

and distinguished industrial workers as the “Proletarians” would push

progress ahead, overcoming the reactionary resistance of the peasants. The

capitalists, of course, exploited the peasants, if they did not wish to kill

them en masse like during the Great Famine of 1845-1847.

Due to such denial of love, we have an advanced technological

civilization and the middle class triumphantly emerged and flourished. If

people lived the Love Principle, like Ivan the Fool of Tolstoy did, like

Christ and Buddha preached, or some of the Utopian Socialists recommended,

we would not have this affluence we enjoy now. Not only that, we would not

have developed science-technology, would not have achieved education of

intellectual elites.

We of course today can point out that civilization as such is based on

the subsidy of fossil energy resources we have been plundering. We have

pollutions that threaten our lives, if we do not care about other life-forms

and the environment. We have been escalating the Nuclear Arms Race as a

logical consequence of the way we “progressed” and the neglect and

exploitation of Love. But such is our “Intelligence”.

A popular magazine “Psychology Today” (April ‘82) had an article on

the differences between what “experts” and “laymen” think (value) of

“intelligence”. The article itself may not be of any significance, but it is

interesting that the “laymen” apparently consider or value competence in

social contexts, such as “accept others”, “sensitive to other people’s needs

and desires”, as the meaning of “Intelligence”. The “experts” had no such

notion in what they mean by “intelligence”.

If one tries psychoanalysis on those psychologists who talk of

intelligence, 1t is obvious that the professionals are conditioned by their

training and by their political and economic interests. In most any

profession, as Max Weber said, sorts of traits as “accept others”,

“sensitive to other people’s needs and desires” are not only irrelevant to

their professional competence, but also detriments, hindering their increase

in prestige and income. Scientists are supposed not to be 1n love with

people. There are more important things to do, if the scientists indulge in

secret love affairs. Love does not bring professional advances or rewards to

Love of humanity, if we ever become conscious of it, has to be in

violation of the general rules of conduct for economic, rational beings.

Love is done in violation of taboos. Needless to say, not all taboos are

irrational. On the contrary, most taboos are rational relative to the frame

of references societies take for their operations. And, interestingly,

taboos are often violated without substantial damage to society, as long as

the violations are covered up.

What we perceive as the situation is more important than what we are

actually doing. Without the nominal perception of the way we live together,

we can hardly maintain social coherence. Thus we invent an intellectual

picture of the way we manage to live in this world. The science of

“Intelligence” is just an example. It is a part of the picture we have

constructed.

If the Nuclear Holocaust comes, it is a necessary consequence of our

efforts in developing and organizing an intelligence as such. I often wonder

if Peace Research, even as a manifestation of the Love Principle, is not

relative and depending upon the intelligence as such.

Here I like to believe in the dialectics of double negations. Perhaps

the only humanly possible way to learn about Peace was through the mistakes.

A. Eddington has said that Physics was a series of mistakes upon mistakes.

Yet, we cannot deny that physics did learn something, if not of Nature then

of the way we talk and think. We understand our mind a little better, thanks

to the mistakes.

However the trouble is that in the realm of politics and economics, we

have never acknowledged our mistakes. We have not learned from the Vietnam

war, or the many, many wars before that. We have a notion of sovereignty

which is a Neolithic heritage we got from ancient religious-political

institutions. And the might of the country we associate ourselves with

persists in our mind on the basis of our secret love for it. The love as

such is one deformed by the taboos.

In comparison with our deformed practices of love, the kind of love

preached by men like Wilhelm Reich appears innocent. I must confess that I

do not understand the Orgone theory, let alone believe in it. But that does

not say that the ordinary notions of love in our society make better sense.

If we do not like extreme expressions like those of Reich, we can look

at notions like “Fraternity”, “Solidarity”. “Fraternity” was one of three

ideals that the French Revolution talked about, along with “Liberty” and

“Equality”. In the course of revolutionary history however, only “Liberty”

and “Equality” survived to our age. “Fraternity” was a pre-revolutionary

ideal among French workers. But it was pushed aside in favor of the other

two. The Declaration of Human Rights in 1789 talks of “property right” as a

part of “liberty”, but doesn’t even mention the term “Fraternity”. I do not

know what has happened to “Fraternity”, but reading Marx et al I sense that

it was deemed utopian and “Unscientific”, if not “Reactionary”, and

The term “Solidarity” appeared in the recent Poland crisis. The

Russian translation of “Solidarity”, ironically, would be “Soviet”. And the

“Soviet” is supposedly the supreme authority of the Communist State. But

what is happening in Poland, and elsewhere, does not seem to have any

relation to the term “Solidarity” nor “Soviet”.

The Capitalist system is, of course, not a system based upon

“Fraternity” or “Solidarity”, nor for that matter “Brotherhood” or

“Sisterhood”.

Perhaps Marx was right in saying that, as long as the “State” exists,

repression remains. The “State” as such is the embodiment of the Power

Principle. And to this we might add that subjugation of Love under the Power

Principle is the essence of our intelligence. However, we do not need to

eliminate Power in the absolute sense. Instead of the Utopian ideal of the

“stateless society”, we might try a sensible balance. Perhaps, a little more

recognition and respect for the Love Principle is all.

I shall not say any of these things are right or wrong. But if “Peace”

has anything whatsoever to do with how we humans live together, the problems

of Love have to be examined seriously.

5. Practice of Love and Implications to Peace

Love is not easily controlled nor contrived. One cannot reasonably

expect a love response from the other side of interactions. Love, in a

dynamical sense, is remarkably stable, or rather persistent. It tolerates

disturbances, interferences, environmental fluctuations, and even abuses.

But to initiate someone or some group of people into love dynamics is

difficult, and even if it is successful, love responses are unpredictable.

And it is often noted within our experiences that one might fall out of love

without visible cause or on account of some silly little thing, just like

falling in love. Another thing about love is that it is a mutual affair,

though it may not exactly be equal in dependency, effort, and appreciation.

These are characteristics of Love. One may look at love from an

“Engineering” point of view and analyze it in terms of physics. But that

does not make the engineer or physicist become the creator or controller of

love. We may appreciate and understand love. However, unlike other objects

of knowledge, we are not likely to manufacture a Love Bomb for national

defense purposes. This is an interesting contrast to things which our

science has claimed to be knowledgeable about. At last we have found

something safe to study without worrying if there can be abuse of knowledge,

of pollution-entropy increase. The knowledge of Love, if there was any,

would not drive us out of the Garden of Eden. In fact I hope for the

opposite, though I like to stick to science and refrain from Utopian

speculations.

Despite the unpredictability and uncontrollability of love, however,

there are a few clues to the Art of Love and there seem to be ways to

encourage Love. Or rather it appears that human beings are born lovers –

“genetically programmed to be lovers”, as hard-nosed scientists might say —

, and unless otherwise educated or conditioned, they keep on learning the

art of loving. We can try to remove hindrances, suppressions and

inhibitions. If necessary, we might even try un-educating ourselves in order

to regain love.

The basic step in love, despite all its complexities, appears to be

very simple. That is, we can start with close contact. In fact, most people

know this and avoid close contact. Something happens to our perception or

mode of thinking-feeling operation when someone or something comes closer

than a certain distance so that our visual field is fully occupied. I even

feel this in reading books, in contrast to listening to someone across a

table. Most of the time I am unconscious of it, however, occasionally I

notice a funny feeling that “I” am not in my brain but in the book.

In the “contact” situation, as the prototype of love, we note that our

sense of self becomes confused. I do not think it has to do with

“altruistic” motivation as much as it has to do with difficulties of

maintaining the metaphor of “Self”. In a too close distance we face the

epistemological problem of where the region of “I” starts and where the

“other” starts. We cut our fingernails and hair quite often, but in ordinary

circumstances we do not feel or think that our “I” is diminishing. We eat

food, but we cannot tell when and where the food becomes part of the “I”. In

short, we do not

really know what “I” is, except for the spatial region around our body. If

anything comes into the volume of space conceptually marked as “I”, we have

trouble maintaining the metaphor of “I”.

Of course the volume of space demarcated as “I” is perceptional. It can

be large or small. We do not carry a hard shell around us. And senses like

“Privacy” may even be “psychological” or “intellectual” constructions with

no reference to physical space.

Our sense of kinship and family is generated in close and frequent

contact, but the perceptual “space” is not a physical one. We note

intermixing of time dimension in our perception of relations in this regard.

The sense of family originates in close physical proximity in which the

members of the family live. However, this sense can be extended in physical

space on the strength of perceptual juxtaposition in significances. A dog

can be like a member of a family, but sons and daughters who live in far

away places are considered to be more important in value. To an extent, this

might be due to historical conditioning and social construction of values.

Or more immediately, the sense may depend on memory, if not nostalgia. But

we do note that the sense of “living together” can be extended despite

physical distance and remoteness in time.

There the sense of “I” is extended to include family. It is, perhaps,

because the “I” in that context is the sum total of experiences which

necessarily include interactions. “I” cannot be purely “”individual” like

atoms, independent in isolation and be constant in environment.

Interestingly however, in terms of intellectualization, and in

particular in legalistic contexts, we have the notion that family as an

integrated entity has a will. It is treated as a “person”, that is a

metaphorical projection of “I” to somewhat larger entities. Business

corporations are also this kind of pseudo-“I” and are often treated as

“persons”. There also appears the sense of “Property”. The “property”

belongs to families or other pseudo-“I”. And it is the “property” that

identifies unity in these cases. Just as much as the body was the visible

identity of “I”, the property is the identity of the pseudo-“I”. It is not

by accident that the French Revolutionaries insisted on Property Rights —

against frequent arbitrary confiscation by the ruler of the state — as the

central item in their concept of Justice and Liberty. I think these

revolutionaries were not ignorant of the fact that Justice and Liberty are

abstract concepts. But humans need some media to express concepts, even if

the visible objects are symbolic. Without something to relate the sense of

“I” to, there can be no “I”. Unfortunately, that suited the Capitalism

rising at the time, and the ideal of “Fraternity” without having any visible

medium of expression withered. Marx’s analysis of “Family and Property” was

significant, but it appears to have missed the pseudo-“I” aspect of the

The next step of extending the “I” on a social scale is that of

community – tribe, village, city, artisan guild, religious communion –. It

may be noted that before the Industrial Revolution, peasants were

“communist”, even before the term was invented in the political

vocabulary, and lived off “commons”. The “Commons” were exterminated by the

Enclosure. For Capitalism needed “private property” to dominate the economy.

Historically speaking, the notion and practice of “Family” as the property

owner came after “community”. This is an interesting example of how an

economic system as an expression of the form of people’s relations to each

other affects the way people develop the sense of “Pseudo-I”, or rather

“We”. The “We” is the way people organize activities on a social scale, Just

as “I” was. Of course the social interactions are diverse and often get into

conflicts, if not exploitation and suppression by one part against another.

Thus the notion of “We” is difficult. It used to be that only the Sovereign

King was entitled to speak in terms of “We”. The rest of “we” were not

amused by the peculiar language protocol, but it shows that words and

consequently concepts are politico-economic, even at the simple level of

saying “we”.

The difficulty of “I” also appears in national boundaries. We do not

really know what “my country” is, due to the same epistemological troubles.

This, however, does not prevent us from entertaining quite seriously the

metaphor of “I” and “my country”. Roughly speaking, we can take a

geographical territory as “My Country”. It is a good approximation, though

not absolutely definable. And our international relations are interpreted on

this kind of geometry and we organize our actions based upon the metaphor

mental image. As long as everybody is far away, this meta-geometry is

practical enough. But unfortunately, our interdependency brings in contact.

Then we have trouble 1n maintaining the mental image of the individual

“Self” and the independent “sovereign Country”.

Because of this incompetency of our mental image, we on the one hand

avoid “close contact” with others at a personal level, but we insist on

“national territory” as a protective shell.

We also have metaphors like “Race”. Sometimes the image of “Race” is

mixed up with “nationality”, or “citizenship of a country”. “American”,

“Russian”, etc. is sometimes used as if they were races i.e. Russian

attitude about Jews” etc. But to be fair we have to admit the mix-ups are

natural. After all, who are the “Jewish”, or “Spanish”? What is “Japanese”?

We may trace certain genetic traits or bloodlines in history and get to

certain geographical regions as the origin of the name-labels. But tracing

semantic usage in etymology does not tell what “race” is or what happened to

“race” in the meantime, if it has to do with biology. For that matter, we

are all monkeys, of some varieties. “Americans and British” were right in

calling Japanese “yellow monkeys”, except they forgot that Dr. Darwin, the

eminent scientist of whom they are very proud, told them a century before

that they themselves were some kind of monkeys.

In the face of biological diversities and complexities, it is

ridiculous to maintain metaphors like “Race”. Yet, we even have to fight

wars on the meta-physical basis between people like “Arabs” and “Jews”. We

even have linguistic trouble like “Anti-Semitism among Arabs”, although

anti-Arab and anti-Jew sentiments artificially created on the metaphysics of

“race” do hurt people now living in that particular region of the world.

In one sense the notion of “We” is beautiful. It lets many people

overcome the narrow, self-centered life and makes them somewhat competent to

live together. But on the other hand, the notion of “We” is just as

difficult as the notion of “I” and when the notion is perverted, “we” as

such lead people into bloody fights, not mentioning the difficulties it

creates in social interactions.

The inescapable fact is that neither “I” nor “We” is “Independent”.

They exist on mutual interactions and mutual dependency. However undesirable

we think it is, we cannot eliminate interactions. The only thing we can do

is to try to make the interactions as one-sided as possible. We have to have

relations, thus we try to the best of our intelligence to make the relations

un-symmetric, unequal, less mutual as we can manage. It is a simple

mechanical principal that in an equal, mutual, two-way flow of energy there

can be no “Power”.

Even in “knowing”, modern physics tells us that it is a mutual

interaction between the “knower” and the ““knower””. But the trick is to

minimize the effect on the “knower” and maximize it on the “knower”. That is

where the “Power of Knowledge” is generated. Nature tends to follow the Love

Principle of mutuality. But our Science has to try to cheat Nature into

asymmetric relations. In the contexts of social relations the ruling class

has to maintain differentials and gradients for its existence.

The maintenance of asymmetric relations requires a great deal of

effort and restrictions and inhibitions of Liberty for both sides of the

relations. We construct institutions, including the sense of Justice, to

protect the inequality. Only in love relations we forego our intellectual

preoccupation with denying mutualness. We do then enjoy the liberty and

natural justice as well as Love itself. There we find a foundation of Peace

— Liberty, Equality and Love –.

Viewed with this projection, our effort towards Peace is the effort to

extend the scope of the primordial “contactual love” to a social scale and

encompass the whole wor1d. And if this conjecture is plausible, we have a

lot to learn from children in the way they find playmates.

It is not that the formal contractual ways to make international

organizations are invalid, or that the scientific efforts to convince and

assist governmental structures for Peace are unimportant. But there is

another dimension to Peace, which is not just controlling violence or

managing conflicts. For humanity to learn Love, the impending Nuclear

Holocaust has to be prevented. While spending on huge armaments, it is

difficult to encourage understanding among nations. Thus we have to de-
escalate the arms race. Conflicts in many regions of the world have to be

managed. Starving children have to be fed. Those tasks are urgent. Yet even

those tasks would be he1ped by the understanding of Love and can be used for

learning love above and beyond the Hollywood movie romances; there seems to

be no other basis for Peace than Love.

6. In Summary

I. Love is discussed here as a negation or alternative to

I.1. The formula “Double Negative = Affirmative” is used,

I.2. There are other approaches; Love from ethical, religious,

II. There is one advantage in trying Newtonian mechanics of

II.1. As in the case of geometries and various mechanics,

II.2. As in the cases of geometries and various mechanics,

Power. And Power is taken as a term in the language of

Newtonian Mechanics. Thus, Love appears here as a

deviation from Newtonian World View.

however, as a provisional means. (The principle of

Exclusion of the middle from the Classical Logic may not

be valid. However, I have not come to the logic of Love

in this paper.)

or spiritual side (young Hegel, Feuerbach, Theology of

Liberation), and Love from poetical side.

Love. Newtonian mechanics is the dominant language of

intellectualization today and understood well. Therefore

defects become easily visible.

terms such as “point”, “line”, “force”, “energy”,

“power”, and “love” and “undefined” terms. Terms

(notions, concepts, ideals, metaphors) acquire and

develop-evolve their “meanings” in their usages,

applications in practices, and in feedback loops in

historical time-dimension.

theoretical structure (linguistic systems) are neither

true nor false. They provide organization for talking and

thinking. The power-centered theorizations, ideologies,

political-economical rationality are just as metaphysical

(metaphorical) as love-centered ones. This paper is a

part of comparative study of alternatives.

III. The Power concept in this paper is that of the

Bourgeoisie-Technological society, including both the

Capitalist and the Communist versions. (For this concept

of power, see C.B. MacPherson Democratic Theory: Essays

in Retrival Oxford U. Press 1923.)

III.1. In the Ideals of the Bourgeoisie Revolution: Liberty,

Equality and Fraternity, the last one was lost in the

historical development thereafter. I notice Liberty and

Equality are incorporated in Power centered sense of

political economy. But the Fraternity (Love) is not. I

sense a prejudice against Love and suspect the root of

the troubles of the Bourgeoisie-Technological society,

including our logic of power which leads us to Nuclear

War.

III.2. The concept (notion, metaphor) of “I” (individual, self

ego) in the Bourgeoisie-Technological society of ours is

an “Atomistic” one. It is a possible construction

(theorization), provided interactions (mutual dependence,

love dynamics) are negligible or neglected.

Newtonian mechanics, which we take as the basic model of

“science”, if not intellectualizations in general, was

developed to deal with simple situations with weak

interactions. That is, we are incompetent to think and

talk of Love.

III.3. The metaphor of “I” gets into troubles in Love affairs.

We fear our realization of our own incompetence. Thus we

defend “I” by force.

The more fearful we are, the stronger we cling to our

ego. Our intelligence, rationality, and their language

are developed within this context, by and large.

III.4. If natural fears were not strong enough, we can add

social-political ones like “Scarcity”, which drive us

into a frenzy of wanting to have things. (As to the

development of the notion of “Property Right”, see

MacPherson, for example. Marx, Proudhon et al talked

about this at length.) The notion of Power of ours is

from such an environment — and the environment as such

is made out of such a notion, perception, in a vicious

circle type of dynamics —.

IV. Love stands in a different dimension from Fear. It does

not require having a strong concern for Ego. It is not in

defense of “I” or “Private Property”. It does not appeal

to “Force”, “Power”, “Coercion” and not even “Duty”,

“Obligation”, “Contract”, “Right” etc. of the power

centered social mechanics.

IV.1. It is interesting to ask an inverse question. Namely,

how is it possible at all to lose the sense of “I”,

(individual, atom, Ego) that we have constructed with

enormous efforts in our history? Love simply wipes it off

from our mind-intellect. How come we do not fear this

awesome disaster of Love which annihilates “I”s into

chaos? Many philosophers said that Love is irrational.

Yet we fall. Are we stupid or crazy? Moreover, we can

observe at least the “Fusing” kind of love in most social

organizations. (See J.P. Sartre Critique of Dialectical

Reason. NBL. 1976. For “Fusing” kind of Love.)

IV.2. My contention is that Love is not irrational, but our

“rationality” is incompetent. Our intellectual vanity

makes us say, whenever we fail, the object projected is

irrational. It is we who love and it is we who fail to

understand what we are doing. (Love is not an “object”,

though the modern physics would say that what are so-
called “objects” are symbols, manifestations of dynamical

processes. Thus we need no “objective” existence of Love

to be victimized or to enjoy it.)

IV.3. Love is needed for the making of social organizations.

Nationhood is impossible without some feeling of love,

though it need not take extreme expressions like

“Nationalism” or “Patriotism”. Wars would be impossible,

in the scale by which we recognize wars, without the co-
operation of millions of people. Nuclear Bombs could not

have been produced without some love to maintain

coherence of organized efforts. If we do not expect love,

however perverted and exploited, in a Nationhood, we

would not demand that the Sovereignty act to protect our

private properties, let alone fight wars on behalf of our

interests, at great costs to the nationhood.

IV.4. Therefore, we must understand Love, either in a positive

or negative sense. To say it is irrational is of no help.

Our intellectual vanity may need defense, but our life

suffers more by the neglect. However, it seems that we

have to construct alternative geometries-dynamics to deal

with Love, which appears not to be easy.

IV.5. It is instructive to look at the biology of Sex.

Biologists today say that Sex is disadvantageous to the

“Survival of the Fittest”. A-sexual reproduction is twice

more efficient than the bi-sexual reproduction. It

puzzles the biologists why and how the majority of life

forms adapted bi-sexual reproduction in their evolution.

The Darwin notion of the egoistic individual gene

struggling in an adversary environment appears now to be

rapidly becoming a superstition, a bigoted ideology, in

biology today. “Competition in power struggle” does not

seem to hold water.

The biologists suggest that survival concerns the “Gene

Pool”, rather than individual gene. However, even with

this socialism of genes, the phenomenon of Sex is not

understandable. Perhaps, the whole eco-system has to be

considered in the Evolution, though even then the puzzle

of Sex may not be solved.

At any rate, biological studies do not support our

assumption of the “aggressive” nature of life forms.

Rather, Love is more fundamental for life.

(See W.S. Moor et al. “Sex in Random Environment” Journal

of Theoretical Biology vol. 92. pg. 301. 1981. And

references therein. It seems that this line of studies

was initiated by J. Maynard-Smith “What Use is Sex? J.

Theor. Bio. Vol. 30. Pg. 319. 1971.)

V. Our notions of “I” and “Nation” are analogous. The analogy

comes, not as a realization of the similarity, but

because we, as many “I”’s, demand the nation to be in

conformity with our notion of “I”.

“I” is the embodiment of “sovereign will” (B. Russell

talked about this in his book Power), conceived in a

strong perspective of “adversary”, “hostile” environment

and political economy. In the bourgeoisie system of ours,

the “I” is the exclusive owner of properties, by means of

which the sovereign will try its best to extract

satisfaction. To this “I”, the other “I”s are instruments

for attaining what this “I” desires. “Power” notion

conceived in such a context is that of “ability to secure

the conformity between the will of one man and the acts

of other men” (James Mill, quoted by MacPherson).

An atomistic aggregate of such “I”s may concede to the

advantages and enter a collective contractual arrangement

in which they accept a certain set of restrictions. But

the “collective” of “I”s as a whole would then be obliged

to pursue what is yielded by the “I”s. The “Sovereignty”

of a nation, having a “Will”, exclusive properties

(territory) and seeking the maximum power is made by the

contract (supported in the metaphor).

Despite it being a social entity, the egoism conceived in

the adversary perception of the world persists in the

notion (metaphor) of Nation and it is demanded to act

accordingly.

V.1. If the above contention offers even the faintest clue to

the troubles of our society and particularly to the

problem of Nuclear Arms Race, phenomena of Love appear to

be very interesting subjects of studies for Peace.

V.2. Love phenomena do exist and function even under the

dominance of Power ideology-intellectualizations. Whether

humans are stupid or crazy, they do fall in love, despite

good advice by the “rationality”.

We can take advantage of such human nature for Peace. Or

we can construct a dynamics of love and replace the

obsolete “rationality” based on power. “Force” is not the

only possible term in description of motion. Love as a

term in dynamics may not lead to “Causality” (and

Determinism) and as such it appears wishy-washy. But

Newtonian “Force” is not “Cause” either, if one examines

the mechanics critically. The term “Force” only provides

animated illusion of Causality and hence “order”. It is

largely psychotherapeutic by linguistic symbolisms. In

view of the impressive effects of Newtonian metaphors,

our Love dynamics need not be any more “scientific” than

Newtonian Mechanics. Rather, we can use Topological

languages, as Poincare et al did. This allows us

“poetical license” and makes our task a bit easier.

VI. In Peace research, Love appears indispensable and

inevitable. It seems to provide convenience for s

integrating various studies.

S.K.

Indigenous Science

10 December 1988 Personal Correspondence on Paradigm Shift, Peace Research, etc.

August 7, 2015 Archivist

Dec. 10, ’88

Dear Norm

Your letter and the Fibonacci Factor arrived. I thank you for them. But I am not going to “Edit” your writing. I am no “editor” anyway. So instead, I would rather talk about a general problem.

The problem has to do with the puzzling phenomena of “Popularity”. I got a book honoring David Bohm. The book is deceiving in that Bohm is not as “Popular” among professional scientists as the contributing authors in the book suggest by their generous praises. When he was invited by a student group at King’s College, University of London, to give a talk, no professor of the university showed up to listen. When Bohm came to lecture at Red Dear, I did inform his old admirers at Theoretical Physics Inst. U of A. No physiscist showed up in the Red Dear meeting, except me. It was almost like Peace meeting/lecture, poorly attended and ignored by elites that operate and control the “currency” of social scale communication.

Wm. Reich’s works, Immanuel Velikowski’s works, etc. had some following but academically did not “catch on” in the “currrency” of that sub-culture. Thomas Kuhn’s work on “Paradigm Shift” had to wait 10 years in an obscurity — first published in Unity of Science but little attention was paid then, including by those who were associated with the Unity of Science movement in late 1950’s. —. Only after Kuhn dissociated with Unity of Science and re-published essentially the same essay as a separate book, it came into the “currency”. Academics eagerly came on to the bandwagon, probably because, once isolated from the “radical” idea of Unity of Science, it became safe to adapt the catch phrase “Paradigm Shift” into academic vocabulary.

How come Marx got to be so popular that Marx himself had to say am not a Marxist? Whereas Fourier is now forgotten. Why Newton won and Leibniz lost? Both Faraday and Maxwell had “Vortex Cosmology” which was the foundation of Electromagnetic Field Theory, yet hardly any Physicist knows that today. It seems that a Prophet to gain the popular currency, he or she had to be falsified. I guess your Peace Research did not grow exactly as you envisioned. The unpopularity of CPREA, say relative to other recent comers such as Educators For Peace etc., has been well known to us for a long time.

That brings another question; namely “Why anyone would do it?” Van Gogh painted what he wanted. While he was alive, he was nobody. He had a “Lust For Life” and driven insane by that. He could not help himself. Flaubert wrote Madame Bovery, but that is the only one book that he wrote. He did not care to become a professional “Writer”, nor did he do anything else. He was not Popular in the town where he lived as an obscure man. Of course, that one work was enough. But, it appears that those who had a Gift was more like unwilling Victims than Hero. Certainly they did not seek Success. They did what they were driven to do.

We are stricken by the beauty of the “different” World, say, in reading Fabl’s Diary on Insects. He was not writing for a recognition of his scientific works. It meant to be private Love letters to Lady Nature. Since she did not write, he had to record her part as well.

That is quite different story from authors in our “Professionalized” Age, where one is either a “Knowledge Producer” or a “Knowledge Consmer”. If you are Knowledge Producer, then you have to assert your knowledge, advertise it and sell it in the Fashion Market. There can be a great Success in it and certainly the sense of Power is enormous. If one is a Knowledge Consumer, then one is to buy the “Latest”, Just as one buys new car, Hi-Fi computer, or dresses to show off to those who are slower in wit to catch on.

Keynes was the first man to introduce Mathematics into Economics and made Economics a “Science”. Before Keynes, Economics was Just a matter of “Opinions”. His Science changed our way of living since then. Yet in his old age he came to tell his students that “The Economic Utility of Economics is to employ Economists”. Indeed his Science created thousands of Jobs for economists. Before that time “economists” are “Moral Philosophers” and, other than generating “hot air” or interesting odd conversation in typical snobbish British tea parties, they had no practical utility and hence no employment After Keynes, Governments, Business, eagerly sought for economists. The market price of economists shot up. Seeing that many students wanted to have degrees in economics, universities which used to have one or two “Economic Moral Philosophers” had to employ Economics Professors. Where there was a handful of Economists, there came thousands of Economists, employed at very high salary.

That happened within a few decades. That is remarkable achievement of an Intellectual Production. That is why Keynes was a Great Intellectual Hero. And we mean “Success” of Science by such a model.

[*1. In the case of Einstein, the division of labor was in place and there appeared “self-appointed salesmen” who did much of selling. The QM case needs some elaborations. But at any rate, increase in professional employment are quite visible. I am an old fashion guy and had no idea about “Science as Profession”, until I came to read Max Weber in my later years.]

[*2. The group that Kuhn used to associated with was moving toward “Sociology of Science” which is to talk about such phenomena. Kuhn cut that part off, and that is how he became “Famous”. One has to know when to say a certain thing, or rather not to say certain things at wrong times, if one wishes to be “current” in the popular market.]

I do not think you had any idea about Success of your “Peace Science” would be like when you started. But, the idea of “success” in that sense is well established and operating as a Cultural Standard in our society. Regardless we think of it or not, we are controlled by it. Even if we ignore it, the standard of success is held by the society and people Judge us by that. They ask “What’s in it for me?”, If you do not give out an illusion, people see no “Utility” in what you are selling and hence go away. Of course, it is peculiar characteristic of the modern Euro-American society that “Knowing” in a very peculiar sense became almost like “utility, — because of the technology of printing, perhaps — and it became sellable commodity in the market. Arts became market good, and with the advent of T.V. even “spiritualty” became Billion Dollar Industry. The Capitalism triumphed everywhere, despite all that talk by Socialists. Veblen, Schumpter were right in saying Socialism is just a stage of the Capitalism. Marx was completely off the mark in this respect.

Given that, you have a choice of either to be a “Successful Scientist” in selling your products or to be a “Hermit” (or Jesus Christ, Buddha, Medicine Man, etc.) in waiting for Disciples to find and come to you. I did find you and came, but I do not think that was your idea of success. Another choice would be like Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Albert Schweitzer, Lenin, Mao, Castro, etc. They are “activists” and their writings were secondary to acting in importance.

I think about such cases because of my peculiar position relative to Native science that Pam and her group is doing. I am not a “Native”, therefore I cannot be the one who is doing. I stand aside and see what is going on. That suits me alright in that I am a “surveyor”. But it is peculiar. I get a sense as if I am an Alien from a different World. I tell them to be passionate, yet that is not my passion. A stage director pick up a script and formulate actions that actors perform. Where is my own life/lust? I ask “What’s in it for me?” Not that I want anything out of it, but what I wonder why that is my business. To be without “trust” is to be “Meaningless”. I am at the edge of Nietzschean World where a burning Passion/Lust/Will To Power meets with a Total Meaningliessness. If Love Making is a meeting of Life and Death, what I have is a very odd kind of Sex. It is a Sex that I am not in it — as if I am castrated —. I do not feel it “happy one”.

If some people had to be victims of Hiroshima/Nagasaki Bombs, not by their choice but by “accident”, and live a life in a Hell thereafter, I do not have much complain to make. Besides I now know enough about how Native Wisdom has been treated. Being just useful to the others may be one thing I can do. So I aim at that. I just have to careful so that I do not sound bitter. I should stop at being cynical. I might invent a science of how to Make Cynical Love for the benefit of all cynical people out there. After all, it ought to be my specialty to put together contradictions.

[In a sense, Peace Research, Native Science are Science of Making Love for those who have troubles. What is ironical is that the castrated one is the one who is talking. One who does not talk. Every time I write “Native Science is” I know and feel I am faking. It is not for me to say. Yet I do tell Pam what Native Science is or is not. I do it only because she can say no to that any time she decides to do so.]

I f the above sounds “bitter” already to you, then I can amend it somewhat by talking about “Beauty in Discourse”. When people talk or communicate, something beautiful happens — at least some of the times —. Even PLO and Zionist might achieve such a beauty. [In Nws today, I find out that a Jewish Ladies organization met with Arafat and had discussed the Peace Plan.] However, in general, the Joy and wonder of such a moment is too much. So people do not wish to come into “Heavy Talks”. Friendship, Loveship, and Fraternity, even in times of war, are like miracle. But people appear not to want that. “Don’t dare touch me, because something beautiful might happen and I don’t know what to do with it!” is the usual attitude. But that small probability — so small that one might say it has a “negative probability” is nonetheless there.

It also had happened in physics. When Quantum Physics was “in making”, only small number of people came together and discussed, argued, and even fought about what was about to be made. Private letters, frequent visits, discussion meetings, conference were held, involving no more than a dozen people. What was that held together? Where the Passion and the Lust came from? How did they know what they were dreaming about is of any importance?

The development of Q.M. was so different from the individualistic ones like that of Newton, Galilei, or Descartes. And remarkably, it was international. Race nor Creed did not matter. Even Japanese were allowed to join. In comparison to the “organizational Egoism” that I can observe among Peace Research, Education, Action, groups’ that was one hell of a “festival”. Unfortunately, as Q.M. got to be an established science, that “spirit” disappeared. Human Race was not quite ready to have Love Affair in a social scale any larger than a dozen people.

Incidentally, Einstein was a member of what they called themselves “Olympians”. They met regularly at cafe and discussed many things. Somehow, Einstein himself did not mention that too often. The cases of Castro, Mao, etc. can be traced to a small group of people. That is what I call the Beauty of Discourse. To be sure, groups may also corrupt. We have the phenomenon of “In Group” just as well to spoil the beauty.

But some day, I hope it will come to pass that I can talk about Native Science without pain of reminding myself that I am an outsider. For that beautiful time to come, Native have to become free and former imperialists become free. I think the situation of Natives have a parallel with “Arab-Israel conflict”. Peace Research is yet to work on the problem. So I have to do the work. I may not be around to see the result, but that is o.k. So many millions of people are killed every year. We let it keep going on. If I am one of them, I deserve the same treatment.

It is ironical that people who think I am a happy-go-lucky kind of guy and have no idea how debilitating the pain of depression is helping me to put on a brave face and keep working. I they knew, they would get depressed and we all go down together. That helps nobody. In the Science of Sun Dance, “Brave” means the degree of ability to contain one’s own inner pain. Europeans did not see anything beyond physical pains on the surface. Many Natives also lost the “science” of Sun Dance. For example Deloria’s description of Sun Dance in God Is Red only refers to physical pain. He has Europeanized to that extent. The sense of “Brave” to contain inner pain is forgotten. High incidence of Alcoholism, violence to others, and decay/death of native community indicate that. To learn such a science is a significant reward to me. Something must have told me to study Native Science, knowing my weakness.

Yours,

Sam K.

P.S. The enclosed are some of my recent writings. I send your manuscript on Fibonacci to Pam. I think she is in California now.

Indigenous Science

Personal Correspondence on Economics and Peace Research (PDF)

August 31, 2013 WISN Leave a comment

Dear Prof. P. Colorado

Your session in the CPREA is on June 5th afternoon. I do  not know the room arrangement. But it is a part of The Lernered Society Conference. We shall know the details when we get to McMaster University. There is a good likelihood that you might have whole 3 hours for your presentation and discussion. CPREA considers your presentation very important. As far as I am aware, you are the first one who present the Native Philosophy-Spirituality. I am very much honored to be the introducer for your session. I know how busy you are and very grateful to you for doing a great favor to CPREA. I have picked up Native Children And The Child Welfare by Patrick Johnston. Perhaps, this is one of texts you use. But allow me to comment on it. The small book is focused on one urgent issue, and it is important to talk about the issue.Therefore, I do not complain the book does not mention other issues. However, I think of the overall situation and worry that the problem might not be solved within the perspective the book offers.
Of course, I have a few assumptions to say the above. One of them is that Native Children will not be “isolated” from the dominant “culture”, even if they are raised in the Native communities. The “Native Care” by the Native communities is the first step. But even if all the children are brought up by their own family, there will still be problems. And for that matter, the young generation in general, Native or Non-native, is facing a very difficult situation. I know my students in the University, who are from relatively “well to do family”, are having difficulties in finding “meaningful” things to do. The economy today is bad. And the Future outlook is worse. It pains me to think about their frustrations.
To be sure, students today have an “affluent” life. They have never known what it is like to carry “honey bucket” and get splashed all over. But the affluence puts more psychological pressure on them. I had it easy, for I was enormously happy by just having something to eat. I did not need to spend 50 bucks to take a girl out. I had live with 150 dollars a month and my wife came to Philadelphia slum, knowing I barely eat. She never once complained about it, until we start getting a higher income. It seems that the higher the material standard of living is the harder to be happy.
Not that I favor living in a camp tent, particularly in dripping wet one. But I do wonder what in a hell we are pushing for “Growth of Economy”. Why do we have so intense competitions? For what good? And in the meantime, the “bottom” one third of the humanity has to suffer.
higher the material standard of living is the harder to be happy. Not that I favor living in a camp tent, particularly in dripping wet one. But I do wonder what in a hell we are pushing for “Growth of Economy”. Why do we have so intense competitions? For what good? And in the meantime, the “bottom” one third of the humanity has to suffer.
[The “Production Economy” is different from the “Money Economy”. The former is a “Materialistic” economy, however, the “Fetishism of Material Objects” included. The later is an “Informational/Symbolic” economy. It operates on illusions/expectations of speculators. This has been always in the “economy”. But it became overt and dominant in the late 20th century. Alvin Toffler’s The Third Wave etc. talked of the “coming Information Age”. If I extend this historical trend, I imagine we will come to what you are doing, namely exploring entrance to the “Age of Value”, beyond the “Age of Information”. You are a genius!]
Some idiotic economists talks of “Hi Tech”, but they also know that Hi Tech provides very little jobs to people. It happened to have a high profit margin, that’s all. So, what all those people out of work do? They have to live on Welfare? It is not just the Natives that have troubles. If one is so sensitive and good-natured that one cannot exploit other people, then Alcohol may be the one of “pain killers” that one has to depend on. If kids turn to violence, I cannot blame them. They are humiliated, frustrated and angry (as they ought to be). The system is telling them that it does not need them, does not want them. You can raise your kids with all loving cares, but the cruel society is waiting for them and claim them at the end. We know that. Yet we do not do anything about the system. Why? It might make a better sense to make the kids to be insensitive, cruel, selfish, greedy, thick-skinned, bullies, so that they can be “successful” in the society such.
For it does not make a sense to raise “beautiful humans” only to have them lived in Reservations on Welfare. People know that the “economy” as such will collapse sooner or later. You can read it in Wall Street Journal and Financial Post. Market experts are saying that. (They say they have to make more money now because of that, before the market collapse.) There is a slight chance that some Beautiful People survive till such a catastrophe clears things up. In the meantime, however, what those people would be doing? Buddhists would say that one has to learn to live with humility. But, Alcoholics are already living in humility. What’s more Buddha want them to do? Wait till the Hell freezes?
I am a “peace researcher” and wish Peace on the Earth, or at least avoid Nuclear Holocaust. But I am disgusted with the way humanity live today. Nuclear War System is just a symbol of the way we live today. Yesterday, I went to Brocket to observe the Native Education Conference, sponsored by The Four World Development Project. It was fine. I was very much impressed by a lady from Alkali Lake. But I noticed that many of “life-living-skills” that those educators discussed are not taught in schools. Schools are for “academic” stuffs and related to industries, for the “economic growth”. The education wants to make “competitive individuals” to be successful in the rat race. It is amazing we do not have many more problems. Humans are surprisingly loyal and cooperative to the wrong system. Or is it because people think they would lose their jobs by radical change in school system? Someone there was talking of misdeeds of some “Band Councilors”. Apparently, there are people who get more benefits from the present system. If the benefits are paid by other people’s suffering, they may not like it much, but they would say “such is the life”. So the moral is “Don’t drink, but be successful in the system”. Besides, the system does not like bad scenes. If one is cynical, one might say “making drunk scene is a form of protest”, just as the vandalism is. Peace does not come unless Justice is there. The “morality” of our political economy is not an independent issue from the issue of Peace. Are the educators willing to teach that? One thing is, however, that, in the history of suffering, many wise men and women taught of the virtue of patience. Peace Keepers of the Six Nations talked of the need of even “Seven layers of Thick Skins”. The Native kids have to be cared for by love now. Hope is in them. I only worry if they get a good education for the future (not education for “success” in the system). They would have to be good “peace researchers”, if they are to survive.

Yours,

Sam

The Credo Mutwa Research Library