emperors-new-clothes – josuterdotcom

Mennonite Action (MA) Response

We are enjoying the Christmas here while in Bethlehem on the West Bank, Christians are being slaughtered – with our tax dollars. We bury our heads in the sand. “I didn’t know”. Is it a sin if we don’t know? Or a sin to not want to find out? If sin can be described as a break in a relationship, then not talking with others may be in the same category.

Mennonite Action should not become an institution. They will just ask for money and allow the rest of us to feel OK because we donated. Praying and singing may give comfort to some, but it will not be enough. We must push people to make decisions. We must not only be God’s love but also God’s power.

The pillars of power described by MA can be misused by authoritarian governments. This model implies that we can just kick out the support structures and it will collapse. But we can’t do that. Why? I know people in all these support structure organizations – unions, media, police, etc. We can’t take away their jobs. We should not destroy the current structures without creating – and actually starting alternative forms of mutual support. Anabaptists and Amish should be good at that. Will they take the lead?

Neither will it be enough to form mutual aid societies for our own group. We must push other groups to do the same. With the right tools, they too have the ability to talk, think, and solve problems. It may require a place where people can meet in private and form some opinion before putting it on the table. (“. . . where two or three are gathered. . . “). It must also be a place that encourages seeing with new eyes and making new moves. It must be a place that turns real faith into real action.

Political demonstrations do not seem to be working fast enough. Vincent Bevins describes this in “If We Burn.” It may be that people we call “activists” are not the right people to find a solution, even if they seem indispensable for getting the process started. We must push others both inside and outside the church. Push local groups to use their own money to engage outsiders.

What other things could Mennonite Action do? A few suggestions:

1. Start Anti-War Games. These can be as varied as we can imagine. (see Greenland below)

2. Find alternative modes of moving useful information, especially when the mainstream media has failed. Push to create additional high-tech and low-tech communication sources that cannot be shut down by a power outage or censorship.

3. Ask Questions, Force choices – even small ones. Making choices can be empowering for some people who are never asked to make choices for something outside their own world.

4. Use of hypothetical situations (“what if . . . “) can help clarify our thinking and avoid nit picking. But then turn it into something real, some action and follow-up.

5. Go to nearest Synagogue and engage their members in finding a better way out for Israel. Rejected? Close off their parking lot. If they refuse to engage, then put signs “we support Genocide” in their lawn or on their cars. Force a choice. Push them to believe that their God is a living God who can change The Story. They do not have to be slaves to an Old Story. The world has changed. The Story of their God can change too. If God exists anywhere, it is in the relationship and interaction between two human beings.

6. Find a few AIPAC lobbyists in Congress and, one by one, help them find a new job. Focus many on a few for 1-2 weeks. If not successful move on or change tactics.

7. Create Ten-Two groups in which ten people support (food, rent, insurance) two in their group and free them up to do anything the group wants, including starting other Ten-two groups. Once started, the group is accountable only to themselves. Some will fail but others move forward, going beyond mutual aid to finding some purpose for the group.

8. Use Other Types of Power:

– [ #1-3 are Guns, Money, Information (Mass Media). These will not disappear. ]

– #4-10 include Division of Labor; Competition; Processes that include Privacy, Incentive, and Efficiency; Feedback Mechanisms constructed from the outside; Bottlenecks – both physical and social interaction bottlenecks; Focusing on a Few; Change the Target Learner.

9. We can make communities more secure and stable despite a downturn in the economy if we can push people to talk and solve problems with each other, then do this with other communities. We must think and plan ahead, not simply react to an authoritarian gang.

What type of society do we want to emerge? If we can create real change, there will be real support for MA both in both money and volunteers.

Transformation Steps –

Start quick, local debates both inside our church and in the larger community. Allow some privacy by creating randomly picked teams. If no one engages, then pick, name, and announce individuals for each team. If still no engagement, challenge them in public. Turn over the tables in the temple that allow people to hide. If still no engagement, move on to someone else. This is what Mennonite Action – and the rest of us – should be doing.

Our government may be realizing that taking Venezuela will be harder than previously thought. So now the Trump administration is setting their sights on Greenland. Bullies pick on a weaker states. Find a few people in Greenland (or Venezuela) who are willing to listen. If nobody answers, then put up a prize and have a competition among small groups. Keep it off the front page. Help them find extra, alternative channels of communication to their mainstream media. Then push them to think about what they themselves – personally – will do when US troops show up in their country. Only then is it time to broadcast potential future actions to everyone, including current government leaders. This is a type of anti-war game. It can continue to remain non-violent, even if the other side does not. It must push people and government officials to make decisions. Sticking our heads in the sand will not get us there.

A New Story to Avoid Nuclear War

I was a young boy when my father told me something that I realized was not true. I loved and admired my father, but why would he do that? Maybe he believed it. Maybe that’s what his father told him. Both grew up in different times and different environments. For that I could forgive him.

When the environment changes, the story must change. A powerful story must touch reality at some point yet leave room for imagination. Culture is a collection of stories that work and have value in a particular environment.

Metaphors reflect our vision and understanding of the world. We think in metaphors and use them to influence other people too. Memes are metaphors with feet. Allistair Crook says the fever of misleading memes should be broken. But how do we do that? It takes a long time for a bad meme to burn out. Because of this lag it may be necessary to take counter measures simultaneously at multiple levels.

The Story of The Emperor’s New Clothes is just as true today as it was when written nearly 200 years ago. The Big Lie in the tale was not that the Emperor had no clothes. That fact was evident. The Big Lie was that people who could not see the new clothes were stupid. This made people shut up. When political leaders are afraid to look weak, it increases the resistance to finding Useful Information, both for themselves and others. In the same way, censorship destroys language. People hide what they mean and some others may create a new language.

Israel needs a New Story. Their Old Story worked in the past but not today in this new and different environment. Can they forgive their fathers, or will they continue to be prisoners of an Old Story?

Environment

By themselves supersonic missiles (SSM) can be viewed as a dangerous and destructive weapon. But this is a nuclear weapon environment. If only the Big Players have SSM’s they will simply be another weapon on the shelf and potentially destabilizing. As a part of a larger system with feedback loops, SSM’s can be distributed to both nuclear and non-nuclear countries where they could be a stabilizing force, allowing us to back away from the Nuclear War precipice.

Even several SSM’s fired by mistake or by malice will not destroy the whole world. There will be time to investigate. On the other hand, detonation of a single nuclear weapon will likely lead to thousands of them being launched. Henry Kissinger noted that after the first nuclear weapon is launched everything beyond that point becomes unpredictable. So it is highly likely that all the missiles will be launched. Consideration of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan during WWII are not helpful in thinking through this problem since the United States was the only one who had them at that time. This situation is more like the old-fashioned gun fight with two gun-slingers – except we are using nuclear guns and everybody dies, including the crowd. Is this how we will treat God’s Creation, this great and miraculous Creation?

Jonathan Schell’s book “The Gift of Time” was a reflection on the luck – or maybe providence – that kept us from using nuclear weapons in the decades since WWII. But time can be so short and even disappear when leaders have only minutes to make a decision that will affect the fate of the world. “He who hesitates loses”. We must not put anyone in that position. Yet some leaders believe that a nuclear war can be won. That is the Story they tell each other – but it is misleading.

Motivation of those who are Gender-Queer might be, in part, a statement that the alpha male model does not work anymore. The alpha male model has brought us this far but continuing along the same path will lead to destruction of everything. The risks go up even further when more nations want nuclear weapons. Yet Queer people want to be protected too, so we and they must find some other type of defense.

Nuclear weapons are not a “great equalizer” as some have said, but rather a “great destroyer”. They warp reality and make individuals blind. SSM’s could be a key stabilizer and function to keep the larger system stable, but only if distributed among all nations and using interlocking regional groups.

Types of Power

A Story can definitely have power but it must match the environment. It should be obvious that we need other types of power. It may be up to citizens to find and use those powers since current leaders are too busy and may have no motive to do so.

Education is power. 30 years ago, Jackie Jackson, a public school teacher speaking as a guest on The Newshour, clearly stated that the value of education is survival of the group, not just getting a job. We argue over school funding while the Russians educate their students in STEM subjects, allowing Russia to build SSM’s while the US lags behind.

Government, business, and mainstream media use BOG (Barrel-Of-a-Gun), money, and information as tools of power. This aligns with the task of government to set boundaries, business to produce goods and services, and media to gather and filter information.

These types of power might be called Type I or material powers since a person who possesses them has power. Type II and III powers are process-structure types of power and include Division of Labor (DoL), Competition, PIE Games, Feedback (FB), Bottlenecks (BN), Focusing on a Few (FoF), or changing Target Learners (TL).

Other types of power include: Discovery of better Questions, Discovery of Points of Resistance, Creation of New Stories, and various Information Games. These are all types of power if they help to get things done. Organization itself might be considered a power, though it may be more a manifestation of power since many organizations will collapse when the power is shut off.

What is the purpose of the Nation-State?

The Treaty of Westphalia that ended the 30 Year’s War in 1648 was the result of exhausted warriors agreeing on some boundaries and promising to keep their hands off others’ property. Since that time the Nation-State has evolved to become the primary protector of its citizens, plus creating a stable and predictable environment. So the Nation-State can evolve, but can it change itself? How? And in what direction? Feedback will be key.

Can democracy handle these increasingly complex issues? How do we Start? Thinking about HOW we talk can be power.

Small seed groups (2 or 3 people) can start something with one of these powers. A discussion or debate does not have to save the world. It only has to take one step or discover one idea. The next step is a “process” discussion like “How do we get this idea into a larger group?” Alternating Issue Debates with Process Debates will move us forward.

We cannot simply point out mistakes or accuse someone of “hubris”. There is hubris at every level, even among children who are unable to hear others from a lower station. Maybe it’s boredom or not wanting to repeat things already learned. Maybe it is a fear of looking bad or an effort to maintain the social hierarchy. So we must help find a new path.