Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Passion or Reason? Coercion or Cooperation? War and Peace!

Passion or Reason? Coercion or Cooperation? War and Peace!
I believe both. Passion to tell me what I want and Reason to tell me how to get it.
I don't believe passion should be suppressed.
If it is there it must be for a reason.
Yet it can wreck havoc.
Reason left on its own tends towards confusion wondering what's the meaning of life.
Yet people should be free to follow their passions in any way they choose (if they live by themselves in the jungle). If they choose to live with other people and enjoy civilization they they agree not to harm others or get in their way and even better help them follow their passions and they will probably help you follow yours. That sounds good but is often so hard to achieve. It requires communication, compromise, consensus which so often lead to endless delays and feared dead ends.
The alternative is easy: coercion does not require endless communication, painful compromise or elusive consensus. It has worked during the ages. In fact it has worked successfully over the ages in conjunction with cooperation. People united in families, tribes, nations, classes and castes to be able to oppress and enslave and reap the benefits. And it worked. It worked so well that it turned war into the pinnacle of human aspirations of achievement. The best inventors, thinkers, strategists and politicians put their efforts in war and it paid until war grew out of proportion with the industrialized massacre of WWII and especially with the resultant nuclear weapons and systems for their delivery with global access.
At that time one of the creators of these weapons Andrei Sakharov found out that science and technology can only develop in free discussion and so does society.
The new weapons made war not only unreasonable but unthinkable.
Unfortunately some of these weapons were in the hands of despotic and corrupt communist regimes. The United States government undertook two dramatically different approaches both of them successful. Passionately defending human rights in the USSR and its satellites led to the premature death of European communism. In China the pragmatic reasonable approach of improving relations and trade preferences led to the only successful communist country in modern times continuing to exist with US help though no longer that hostile if at all..
How is peace better achievable?
Reason without passion can lead to brilliant solutions and enhance understanding. Yet passion I believe should tell us what we really want. Not what other tell us but that what our heart wants deep inside. The passion that is the source of our fondest dreams. The dreams that always come true.
If the USSR and China problems were solved so easily then the Middle East should be far easier bearing in mind the relative weakness of the corrupt regimes there. It will be extremely easy if the goal is set properly: what we really want. What is that that we want and the people there want and will wholeheartedly support. The solution is simple.

4 comments:

  1. Anonymous11:27 PM

    Great post and well written!

    "Yet passion I believe should tell us what we really want. Not what other tell us but that what our heart wants deep inside. The passion that is the source of our fondest dreams. The dreams that always come true."

    Good reminder for the new year!

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  2. Anonymous6:12 AM

    The world sure needs more blogs like this. So many of them are just fluff, all smoke and mirrors. I applaud you for using yours to say something.

    "That's how you become great, man. Hang your balls out there."
    (From Jerry Maguire)

    I hope you will visit my blog, too:
    www.sharonsoileau.com/distantrumblings

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  3. Anonymous8:13 AM

    Happy New Year! May your 2009 be full of both passion AND reason.

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  4. Sure. the "passion" being the emotions and the "reason" being the quelling or using of the emotions. Nobody ever ignores the "reason". right? Just their "reason" may not be the same as your "reason".

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