Letting Our Peace Flow: A modest baptism of the Deaggression Movement
I learned this, at least, by my experiment;
that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams,
and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined,
he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
- Henry David Thoreau,
from the conclusion to Walden Pond
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And so it begins, at least my two cents worth of hopeful contribution to the general cause of freedom. I've been occupied for the past several weeks on these pages in the development of the Sacred Nonaggression Principle (and book of the same name)—the SNaP basically elevates the simple nonaggression principle [the kindergarten axioms: don't hit, don't steal, be honest] to the highest moral standard in society... holding that everyone, especially government, consider it their sacred honor to manifest. I presented the SNaP to the 2009 Free State Liberty Forum, and placed the SNaP book in the hands of several libertarian leaders and thinkers. I expect to receive endorsements from some of these key individuals imminently.
And I find now that the internal logic that has impelled me to
"advance confidently in the direction of my dreams," as well as the literary techniques I continue to refine, leads me to lay down the other shoe:
For example, one might ask, "Okay, here's the SNaP and the SNaP definitely seems to good, so what do we actually do to make it happen?" If you review Chapter 5 and Chapter 6 of the Sacred Nonaggression Principle, you'll see that I've contrived some starter concepts for entraining the SNaP initially into the minds of our neighbors in our communities. But in general, we need to spread the meme of the SNaP thru all of society—it especially needs to "infect" the centers of power so that many individuals who wield aggression will feel morally compelled to cease and desist... and to mend all this horrific, ignorance-based damage to humankind.
Successful memes require movements. Or at least ubiquitous, powerful icons and images that invoke, in our case positive, emotional attraction... on a level that isn't altogether "rational." I.e. motherhood and apple pie. For the SNaP I've come up with world peace, abundance, and a high "popsicle index." Here is my starter concept for the Deaggression Movement image banner and bumper sticker:
This is an appealing message suggesting, well, peace and love and care for our children. These qualities by themselves suggest abundance (at some point we may include a dollar sign or a smokestack for all the Randians out there). Realistically, in terms of creating a movement to end and undo aggression, we're off and running. Once you have the fundamental idea and its benefits, as Preston Tucker said, "the rest is just machinery."
Let's give some attention though to that machinery:
Spiritual Focus
Naturally, from my background in the libertarian industry, and awareness of some rather successful movement-prosecuting organizations—I think particularly now of the Advocates for Self-Government that Marshall Fritz founded—I'm familiar with the general method of political approach. It's a largely intellectual method, in which arguments are arranged to convince prospects of the value of liberty. The Advocates and the best of the others, IMHO[1], focus on becoming black belts in effective communication. Consequently, they are successful... at least more successful than many; I have no doubt long-range that the nonaggression principle communicated in this manner will win the day.
However, looking out at the world, it seems "the Cartel's" academic orthodoxy and mind-control media (my new term: academedia) have effectively blockaded the dissemination of our life-saving, planet-saving ideas of liberty. And government power continues to grow. I do cover this problem in my book, and I address methods to overcome the blockade. Indeed, an appropriate image for the power-people knowledge-blockade is the little girl with her finger in the dyke (please no salacious images) on the other side of which swells a three-hundred foot tidal wave.
But the power people won't let go easily, especially of the mind control. One of the key concepts of the SNaP as I developed it was the spiritual/morality quality. More recently, as I'm doing my thinking for explicitly founding the Deaggression Movement, I'm focused even more heavily toward the spiritual axis. To describe my perspective exactly, I'm going to transcribe an especially long passage from Eckhart Tolle's book, The Power of Now:
All evils are the effect of unconsciousness. You can alleviate the effects of unconsciousness, but you cannot eliminate them unless you eliminate their cause. True change happens within, not without.
If you feel called upon to alleviate the suffering [esp. caused by aggression] in the world, that is a very noble thing to do, but remember not to focus exclusively on the outer; otherwise, you will encounter frustration and despair. Without a profound change in human consciousness [that the SNaP enables], the world's suffering is a bottomless pit. So don't let your compassion become one-sided. Empathy with someone else's pain or lack and a desire to help need to be balanced with a deeper realization of the eternal nature of all life and the ultimate illusion of all pain. Then let your peace flow into whatever you do and you will be working on the levels of effect and cause simultaneously.
This also applies if you are supporting a movement designed to stop deeply unconscious people from destroying themselves, each other, and the planet, or from continuing to inflict dreadful suffering on other human beings. [!!!] Remember: Just as you cannot fight the darkness, you cannot fight unconsciousness. If you try to do so, the polar opposites will become strengthened and more deeply entrenched. You will become identified with one of the polarities, you will create an "enemy," and so be drawn into unconsciousness yourself. Raise awareness by disseminating information, or at the most, practice passive resistance. But make sure that you carry no resistance within, no hatred, no negativity. "Love your enemies," said Jesus, which, of course, means, "have no enemies."
Once you get involved in working on the level of effect, it is all too easy to lose yourself in it. Stay alert and very, very present. The causal level needs to remain your primary focus, the teaching of enlightenment your main purpose, and peace your most precious gift to the world.
— Page 167, 168
All [brackets] and emphasis mine — bw
These are profound words, and you don't have to agree with Tolle's deeper philosophical premises to understand and use his communicatory gems... that will enable us "SNaPsters" to put the deaggression idea over the top. And in relatively short order.
"The Ego Has Landed"
Yup, or at least for me that reactive mind that clings and has cravings for false gratifications—e.g. fame, power, intellectual respect, (too much) wealth—has, if not landed, at least lately come close to finding a resting spot on solid ground. I throw this thought out for everyone, too, namely that as we cease to "live in our minds"—projecting or agonizing over an 'imperative' future, or hanging on to past convictions of our individual utter 'magnificence'—we truly open a whole new world for ourselves: a world not only alive with new possibilities we were blind to, but a world wondrously alive right now. I tell you, it's a much better arrangement.
Feel the Power
A closely aligned thought to letting the ego (qua reactive mind; I'm not dissing my Randian-bred individual spirit) go pound sand is entering a special portal of consciousness where "it all makes sense to you." For those who have seen The Matrix, recall the combat scene at the train station where after Neo is resurrected by Trinity's kiss, he gets up and proceeds to seriously kick Agent butt. Specifically, as Neo squares off against the Agents, you see the whole image of the environment flutter in tune with his taking a stance. "He's the one." He's in complete mastery of his "now."
This is the image I have of those of us who come to see the liberating energies of the SNaP as applied in our human-to-human "teaching of enlightenment and peace." Where before we came at the "Agents" in a reactive method with largely ineffective results, by understanding the fundamental high truth of the nonaggression principle we take control of the whole field of battle. Indeed, as in The Matrix, the field is no longer one of battle but of brushing away mindless technotrons. The liberating SNaP invisibly, quietly, quickly destroys their entire power source... turns it jujitsu-like against them.
Technical Approach
I want to briefly describe what I think will be different with the Deaggression Movement relative to the standard political approach we observe for most profreedom organizations today, or really with any politically focused group.
Consider the roughed-out figure below:
In the top figure, we see the standard approach tends to regard the government as somewhat of an abstraction, divorced from the individuals who compose it. Further there's a kind of "chain of command" in the steps leading toward the influence of government to minimize its aggression. For example, Step 1 influences the people who care most, who in Step 2 influence the people, who in Step 4 influence the government, usually through voting in hopes of changing government behavior. I feel this approach's major problem is not being sufficiently direct, and leaving the behavior of people in government readily dictated by forces that encourage aggression.
In the bottom figure, on the other hand, the process tends to ignore government qua abstraction and every bubble (entity) essentially dictates to real govt. people to cut out the crap. Note that while the arrows among deaggress.org, the intellectuals, and the people are two-ended, the arrows between the government people and those who talk to it are only incoming. As if to say, "We're not really interested in what you think, government person, it's what we think that matters, and you must not aggress or we'll end your career decisively. The deaggress.org method is very direct, and public servants get it from all sides... making their lives the simplest if they simply do what they're supposed to do, which is to protect rights.
Deaggress vs. nonaggress? The reason I choose deaggress.org instead of nonaggress.org and prefer to think of the movement as the deaggression movement, is that the prefix connotes for me more of an intent to do something about aggression: to undo existing aggression, remedy past aggression, and prevent future aggression.
By the way, in terms of government service, I think the ideal becomes the citizen legislator or volunteer executive funded without coercive means. Ideally, the government commands virtually no material resources... only protecting public property (yes, personally, I do see a role for a democratic political process to lie at the root of resource infrastructure and "rights" administration and law (e.g. public lands, waters, air), and don't see a practical, imminent method for making all such resources privately owned—and I certainly don't want them corporately owned).
Deaggress.org and Business Plan
As of this five minutes I do have a skeleton site up for deaggress.org. But it's mainly for providing links to my SNaP presentation, my SNaP book, and to other related Web pages. Within the next several days, I will manage to set up the beginnings of the membership and contributor base we will need to move forward. Also, I intend within the next month to write a preliminary business plan... to be posted over there.
I envision the Deaggression Movement as embodied by the deaggress.org site to go forward more or less as follows:
First, basically establish the fundamental processes, and architect them into the Website. Business plan for initial funding. ($20Kish?)
The Website will certainly have a forum, and there will be a program for generating membership and contributions to the organization for further work; worldwide sale of The Sacred Nonaggression Principle, and related deaggress.org franchised literature and baubles, is expected to integrate with this "brand icon" proliferation.
A lot of thought and brainstorming is needed to create the brand icon(s), to help the deaggress.org meme and its submemes go viral quickly. Consider the Nike swoosh, Greenpeace, the Pillsbury Doughboy :), other symbols.
Initially, anyway, we want to create a citizen-monitor database for everyone (worldwide) to register notices of acts of aggression by public officials; essentially this becomes the data by which specific acts are redressed in appropriate citizen venues.
Along with a citizen-monitor database for aggressive acts and personnel, it seems an process for auditing the aggression practices of government entities is warranted, as well as associated databases. It would be nice to certify governments as meeting something like the "deaggress.org seal of approval."
We'll probably have three or four levels of process, corresponding to the levels of stateness (local, state, federal, international).
A key part of the process for deaggressing society is research and training. While most of the fundamental understanding of what aggression is has been well established in the extensive body of libertarian literature, to apply the understanding to the environments that governments apply aggression requires some work. (We can have a Fed specialty, a specialty on environmental law, on education processes, on law processes, on accounting, etc.)
The need to develop research and training means we'll have to have a paid (at a level corresponding to what such people could make in business) staff and be able to fund work under the organization's umbrella.
I do not envision deaggress.org being a "for profit" institution—at least until the latter stages (see #8)—but I do envision a potentially vast flat organization that serves a general watchdog function after the deaggression service has been broadly successful.
When the existing world has deaggressed to a significant degree— end of central banking and money, end of drug prohibition, end of ban on agricultural hemp, end of empire, etc. (please refer to my All-American Stimulus Package for 2009)—we can start with a wealth-recovery program to deliver back to the productive-class citizens of the world the $trillions that have been fraudulently taken by the central banks and otherwise taken by unconstitutional aggressions of the consensual crime laws and tax laws and gun laws, what have you. I want deaggress.org to serve as a leader in that recovery operation.
[At some point of deaggress.org maturity, there may be a formal rollout using the central organization to focus energy on a sequencing of local area deaggression campaigns; I haven't thought it out this far.] So as I write this movement-launch column, I solicit feedback from all my readers who are interested. My forum needs to be redesigned, so please simply drop me an email.
I am truly excited by this opportunity to help set up so many freedom fighters to be black-belt level communicators with "the force" and a Neo-like mastery of their political Matrix. We will kick major statist buttski. (Not that we will gloat or anything.)
Please join me.
If this thing rolls out as I envision, we could reach step 10 above within a few years. Imagine! Not to mention world peace, safe streets, abundance... and spiritual awakening. Intravenous heading toward Pluto.
Although many fine freedom organizations are already deployed against the Monolith, the Death Star, the Oligarchy, the Cartel, the Kleptocons— whatever your favorite term is for the mindless aggression-laden
beast that modern government has become—I have a special affinity for this relatively recent addition to the toolbox: Freedom
Force International has the vision to [further as an integrating educational force] the ideology of individualism, the opposite of collectivism at every point. Individualists advocate (and the ideology of Freedom Force is):
Honest elections
A competitive media
An educational system responsive to parents
Encouragement of free speech
A well-armed citizenry
Sound money
Freedom-of-choice in health care
A non-interventionist foreign policy
And national sovereignty
It's a happy coincidence that just as I was putting together this column on founding the Deaggression Movement that I was recruited by the respected former New Hampshire State Coordinator for We the People Congress, Christopher Gronski. Now Chris is the respected president of the New Hampshire of Freedom Force International, and I will let him explain it to you if you will email him at this address.
What basically sells me on the idea of FFI is a) the essential principles
all freedom-loving humans can agree upon, b) the focus on direct citizen participation, and c) the spearheading of the organization by one G. Edward Griffin, my main-man intellectual-scholar hero, author of the book that will open up the 21st century to liberty worldwide, The Creature from Jekyll Island. [Don't worry about the title: this book reveals all the secrets of the kingdom and shows how to end the alleged divine rights of these potentates once and for all.]
Anyway, depending on how both deaggress.org and the FFI develop, our dual angled advance seems ideally complementary. May the SNaP be with us.
"As long as the Matrix exists, the human race will never be free."
— Morpheus
