Whirlpools-WP

Dear participants,
Some contributions favour the construction of a World Party without 
remembering some bad experiences, parties and leaders from the past. The 
fact that we want to find a way out of present madness whirpool does not 
mean that we will construct a necessarily better one. Same as our 
ancestors, 
we are falible, so we must remember them to learn from their mistakes and  
greatness. Even if we do it, we are imaginative enough to create new big 
mistakes. So, it seems healthier to assume our past, with all its contents 
and personages, than to deny them, and to watch ourselves.
Each culture has motives of pride and shame in its history, as it happens 
with my personal life. Think of Russia process: from a zarist whirpool they 
jump into a revolution whirpool, then into a stalinist whirpool, and today 
into a neoliberal whirpool. However, they have wise men in their past and 
present (artists, scientists, spiritual leaders,  youth..), where they may 
find the basement to recover as soon as they want. Same may be said of any 
nation and primitive culture. No one brings a full-time guarantee against 
crisis and errors.
If today we know about the dangerous trend of environmental degradation, or 
about the aberrant distance between richs and poors, it is because many 
grassroot observers and dedicated researchers whose name we ignore, 
detected 
it and warned us. If today we understand a little more in other fields like 
ethics, economics, sociology, social psychology, history .. it is because 
we 
had heavy-weights in past milleniums that showed us better new roads of 
action and interpretation, even if they were mistaken in particular actions 
and concepts, or if they did not answer all questions as we would have 
liked.

It may be naive to build a social utopy without grassroot groups 
experience, 
as it would be to build it without careful consideration of the roads that 
those heavy-weights of humankind opened with their words and actions. 
Todays 
planet with 6000 million persons is a complex and fragile entity that will 
not  be sustainable for life and social justice by just saying -small is 
beautiful-, -free market-, -socialism now-, or -peace and love- slogans. If 
we want it, we must deserve it through willness, understanding and 
coordinated action.

Unfortunately, violence is still the preferred tool used to define who is 
the boss, who is the privilegiated, and who is not. Pacifism does not mean 
passiveness without resistance, neither lack of organization and leaders, 
neither lack of solidarity,  neither an easy post-modern relativism in the 
name of respect for others -an elegant version of complicity with 
mainstream 
real powers-.  It is just the contrary, an intelligent, patient and hearted 
strategy to liberate the opressed sectors of society from their main 
chains, 
and also the oppresor sectors from its own ethical and practical temporal 
perversion .  Pacifism does not legislate about matter-spirit, does not 
have 
magic recipes for human happiness, neither deterministic theories about 
history or the roll of any social sector. Pacifists know that the biggest 
fight to be won is inside ourselves. Therefore it does not have the right 
to 
sacrifice the best of our youth in the altar of war, neither approves their 
using by elites of all nations to torture and kill others in the name of 
any 
well advertised myth. But, pacifism understands that there are cases in 
which total  destructive madness can not be faced with naive appeals to 
peace; the judgement of such situations should be left to colective 
superior 
institutions, not to temporal leaders of any nation, nor particular army 
blocks.
Wisdom, understood in the old oriental sense, as a balanced mixture of 
knowledge, goodness and action, exists in all cultures.  Our problem is 
that 
we have no eyes, neither ears for our wisest persons. If I use the world 
whirpool, it is only because Antonio, an amazonian wise indian, once told 
me: In any whirpool that traps you, there is always a point where you may 
escape from it, as far as you understand the whirlpool, and don't try to be 
stronger than it.
That is a humanist message full of hope for all, even for present 
world-leaders and their wrong paths. But few people think that those words 
may come from a simple "incivilized" indian of a southamerican jungle. 
However, they have been told the same message, many, many times, perhaps 
with different words, by some neighbor or forgotten ancestor.
EJCh

Emilio José Chaves
Address: Edif. Los Héroes Apto. 604
               Av.Panamericana, Pasto (N)
               Colombia, S.A.
Tel.      +(92)7222889
email:    chavesej@hotmail.com


______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com