Photo by Stijn Swinnen on Unsplash

War is a kind of universal insanity. Excusing mass murder is something both sides of every conflict agree on. At least excusing THEIR murders and condemning the murder committed by their adversaries.

We should encourage soldiers everywhere to quit. We should discourage civilians everywhere from supporting any military action. We should teach every population to treat every human being with respect, and to never cooperate with a cruel, violent or otherwise oppressive force — whether foreign or domestic.

War and violence and cruelty are only possible if we identify and vilify groups of people as “the other.”

There is no “other.” There is only us—frail, temporary creatures who live for a few decades and then die, and disappear forever.

How are we going to live these precious decades of consciousness? Killing each other? Hating each other? Brutalizing each other?

I think that war and vilification of “the other” is massive stupidity and it would be unlikely to happen except that humans are social creatures. And so, to get along, we learn to hate the same people as our peers.

But we need to be better than that.

If You Want The “Bad Guys” Brutalized Or Killed, Then YOU Are The Bad Guy

Sometimes—often—both sides are bad guys. They are not necessarily equivalent. Usually one side is being far worse than the other, usually the side that has more and better weapons.

But rather than arguing who’s worse and who started it, we simply need to end it. We need a worldwide movement of people who refuse to kill and who refuse to support killing or subjugation or brutalization.

But our civilization is sick. We always thank soldiers for their service. Politicians end their speeches with “god bless our troops.”

We celebrate the “service” of killing because soldiers sacrifice themselves for their country. They risk their lives.

So did Luigi Mangione. Arguably, his sacrifice was more heroic because his cause was more heroic than bombing cities and villages and killing thousands or millions of people in Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan. Ask yourself—what was the value or intent of the killings in Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan?

But killing—all killing—is wrong. The soldiers who were sent by the real criminals to kill “the other” were wrong to kill. As was Luigi Mangione.

All of the killing must be stopped. And the way it’s stopped is not only by NOT building terrible weapons—although that’s a part of it. It’s not by shunning politicians and leaders who endorse, excuse or promote brutality and murder—although that’s a part of it.

The solution is to reject and ridicule and dissent from the values of our civilization, the horrible values that created the sick civilization we have today. The solution is to embody love and caring and sanity and kindness.

This isn’t some crunchy granola hippie fantasy. (Although there was much to admire about the hippies.) This is a genuine option, a real possibility and we would be foolish to not embrace it.

We must be the change we want to see in the world. At first, we will look to people like we are a weird cult. Remember that they—and we—have been gaslit since birth and the stupidest and most cruel behavior and values have been normalized. In fact, sick values have been the bedrock of society.

But when people keep seeing the open and brazen kindness and generosity, it will slowly sink in that our existing leaders and values aren’t good—that the strange unconditional love is the right way.

We need to be stubborn and brave and must be willing to defy the insane civilization with our kindness. We must NOT thank hired killers for their service. We must tell them that they can be better than this, that they are being duped and used. That serving the cause of violence and conquest and an undeserving elite is to waste and dishonor your life, and your family.

Because that’s the truth.

Once There Is A War, We Have Already Failed

In our short wonderful terrifying lives, we should be friends. At the core, we all face the same human reality. We can celebrate life, enjoy each other’s company, gasp at the beauty of our Earth, and care for people and animals and our planet. Or we can be crushingly stupid and be angry, and fearful, and violent. And destructive.

Stopping a war is hard and tricky but we must work to stop wars. However, as in most things, the better approach is prevention.

In all countries everywhere we must bravely begin withdrawing our support for evil. We must stop paying taxes that are used for war and weapons and all forms of oppression. We must stop doing work that supports brutality—must refuse to participate in manufacture of guns and bombs and warships and warplanes.

We must refuse to “serve” in the military and discourage our children from participating in the outrage of war. We must dismantle private prisons and ICE and every cruel institution in our country and in every country.

We must wield the general strike—the force that humbles the most powerful dictators and empires.

I Understand It’s Hard, But That Doesn’t Excuse Us From Meeting The Challenge

Yes, it’s hard because the bad guys have terrible weapons and because they have enforcers—police and others that enforce their cruel and insane “laws.” Authorities everywhere enforce “laws” that are cruel and immoral. We had Jim Crow Laws and Nuremberg Laws. We had and have laws that are designed to brutalize “the other.”

These laws should be disobeyed in favor of the law of our consciences.

What’s the approach? How do we do this? We are subject to violence and to starvation and homelessness if we stand up to the authorities.

Yes, and we are subject to the same if we lay down and submit. So, we need to start now, start slow and subtly. And we need to learn how to resist, to withdraw our cooperation—in stages.

This is how people power works. This is how ordinary people, without using violence, brought down dictators. Salazar. Bolsonaro. Marcos. Milosevic. Ceaususeu. Jaruzelski.

Yes, people power defeated them all. And don’t be fooled. They were very powerful and seemed to be invincible. The tyrant always appears to be invincible until he is defeated. Today we have Trump and Putin and Xi and Kim Jong Un.

We can defeat all of them. This is the truth. Why? Because they are in power ONLY BECAUSE WE SUPPORT THEM. And we support them because, mistakenly, we believe we have no choice. We believe they are powerful and that we are weak.

But their enforcers are our loved ones—our children, parents, spouses, relatives and friends. We can talk with the enforcers and persuade them to put down their weapons at the critical moments. If we can’t (yet) completely withdraw our cooperation with evil, we can quiet quit at weapons factories, at private prisons, and financial firms, at fossil fuel companies, at terrible agencies like ICE.

And, as we practice and learn to become better at resistance, we can level up until we hold a general strike.

A general strike is usually the death blow to tyrants. Sometimes they fall even before we get to that.

When we stop empowering them, going by their rules, doing what they demand of us, they are simply impotent old men. They are powerless because they don’t do anything. They are incapable of doing anything. When we stop doing what they ask, everyone can see how pathetic they are.

There is urgency. Among other crimes, fools like Trump are ruining our planet. We need to really get going. We need to start organizing and taking action. We need to be strategically smart. We need to focus.

As you can see, people are coming out into the streets to speak out. This is a great thing—it makes us sane, caring people visible to each other. It shows us that we aren’t alone, and that our numbers are large and growing. Remember, that for every protester you see on the streets, there are a dozen or more who support the resistance—but are afraid or too discouraged to do so openly.

We can do this. We KNOW we can do this because successful movements and revolts have happened time and again throughout history. Nonviolent noncooperation is the way. WE already have the power, but we have been using it in support of our opponents. We can shift our power away from thugs and towards solving the climate crisis, and towards helping each other.

We must commit ourselves to replacing this horrible civilization with the humane one that every sensible person on the planet desparately wants and deserves.