War, huh, yeah... what is it good for?

Absolutely nothing. Say it again.

Pow! Right in the kisser… This game requires a winner and a loser.

WAR. Not only what is it good for, but what the @&#! is it?

a state of competition, conflict, or hostility between different people or groups

That’s the third definition in my computer’s dictionary.

Here’s how I say it…

War is two or more opposing forces in direct opposition to each other, using ‘force’ in an attempt to overpower, harm, push back, kill. In other words, war is hell.

My definition of war does not include contests that result in winners and losers based on an activity or skill, not intended to physically harm anyone, like tennis or chess or poker. Those are games. I guess boxing is a game too. I don’t know how to draw a clear line between a game and a war. I don’t want to call any activity designed to hurt or kill a ‘game.’

War theoretically is a game. It has agreed-upon rules, they tell me; when those rules are broken we call it ‘war crimes.’ When you drop an atomic bomb on some country, what ‘rule’ are you following?

War. What a strange word, in English. Say it a bunch of times. Your lips and teeth and tongue hardly need to touch. It’s an utterance, a sound, from the back of the mouth.

There is too much in this world we do not call war, but is war. Whenever someone wants to win, get something, get their way, and in order to do that, must harm their opponent without caring, that is war. It is worse when the primary intention is to harm the opponent.

Henri Rousseau, 1844 - 1910, La Guerre (The War), c. 1895

War is a zero sum game. As it says below, the net improvement in benefit of the game is zero. Nothing. Nada.

Zero-sum game is a mathematical representation in game theory and economic theory of a situation that involves two competing entities, where the result is an advantage for one side and an equivalent loss for the other. In other words, player 1's gain is equivalent to player 2's loss, with the result that the net improvement in benefit of the game is zero (my emphasis).

To understand the statement above requires a different kind of awareness than war mentality. To perceive that there is such a thing as ‘net improvement in benefit of the game’ means looking at the effect of the actions on the whole, not just from one side or the other.

Perceiving the whole as a whole is the opposite of perceiving yourself and your opponent as mutually exclusive.

Perceiving the whole shifts the game from black and white zero sum win/lose to see-saw balance win/win. There is a world of diplomacy and negotiation between competing interests in which the aim is some kind of win/win, some kind of balance that leaves everyone feeling more or less satisfied. For all players to accept ‘winners (plural) take more or less’ instead of ‘winner (singular) takes all,’ requires an understanding of the potential inherent in the real art of the deal; not the war-inspired I’m going to screw you as much as I can so-called deal.

The alternative to a zero sum game in which winner takes all is not a zero sum game in which the finite good or goods are shared. The alternative to a zero sum game is a non-zero sum game; it is a game of increase. Abundance is brought into being by creative minds and hearts. Everyone ends up with more than they started with.

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Octavia Butler said it.

How to be a simpleton

Everyone says that my way of life is the way of a simpleton.
Being largely the way of a simpleton is what makes it worth while.
If it were not the way of a simpleton
It would long ago have been worthless,
These possessions of a simpleton being the three I
choose
And cherish:
To care,
To be fair,
To be humble.
When a man cares he is unafraid
When he is fair he leaves enough for others,
When he is humble he can grow;
Whereas if, like men of today, he be bold without caring,
Self-indulgent without sharing,
Self-important without shame,
He is dead.
The invincible shield
Of caring
Is a weapon from the sky
Against being dead.

From The Way of Life, by Lao Tzu, translated by Witter Bynner

The challenge in being part of the solution, and not part of the problem, is maintaining and protecting one’s spirit, one’s heart and mind, in a safe space. Our faith in a kinder, gentler, more fair and loving world is our greatest weapon. Our determination not to accept unacceptable terms for how to live from scared people, but to trust our own terms, is a weapon from the sky.

The more people there are who hold a vision that is caring, inclusive and creative, the more the poverty of those whose vision depends on hurting others shows itself as the dis-ease it is.

What is missing from the money/power religion is the power of life itself, the power of creativity, the power of love. The only way you can get a chick to come out of an egg is to nurture it with warmth and safety until it is ready to make its own way out of the egg and into the world. Crushing the egg does not work.

Those who now misuse power so wantonly and furiously are unable to see or understand the limits of force. You cannot force a flower to appear by ripping open its bud. You cannot beat someone up to make them love you. I am actually astonished that at this point in human history, in the evolution of our species, we are still such big believers in brute force, when its helpful applications are so small.

Villains, fictional and actual, can never know the warmth, the vibrational rightness of being in sync with the great energy that brings forth all living things, including us. When you are with this energy you do not have a will to hurt others.

What, me worry? Well, yes, maybe.

I recognize that there are times when a direct intervention in what someone else is doing that causes great harm becomes necessary. Still, what each one of us does or does not do (there is no try) must arise from the deep well of self-awareness.

I am in a self-questioning place right now. My questions are not overt. They are more the sit down and shut up and see what happens kind of questions. The fact that the external world is so full of real danger and wrong actions confuses me, because I would rather not pay attention to that.

I think of what John Adams wrote to his wife:

I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine.

I want to study painting, poetry and music, not politics and war. There is evil abroad in the land now, and I do not know what I should be doing in response. Time and my heart will tell me.

©Janina Lamb

There are as many ways to make yourself useful as there are yous.

We each have to figure this out for ourselves. You might need to become a spy for the resistance. You might need to sit by yourself in a little room and write poetry. You might need to plant a garden and share its produce with your neighbors, even the ones who voted for someone different than you did.

I do believe that Peace on Earth begins at home, and home is where the heart is. Tend to yourself as sweetly and seriously as possible, so that the flower bud you are may slowly open its petals to reveal your greatest beauty.

Let your self-awareness increase until you become contagious with the virus of self-awareness. It is a beautiful virus. Spread it around.