Musings on Non-Violence, Time, Economics and Innovation

http://youtu.be/TTFm_fxeusA

When you utilize an attack-weapon, or kill-device or seek harm and initiate force, you manufacture a scenario of necessary response from the victim. Primally, I know that the wielding-with-intent of a weapon against me would induce a dominantly visceral response, not one of arduous logic. I would thereby expect the initiation to almost automatically create a violent scenario. 

 Once it has been initiated, either with a gesture towards the weapon, a firing of the weapon, a swing, or any other means of initiation, you have generated a fundamentally visceral and primal situation. These situations are resolved without foresight or lengthy reflection, but an instantaneous reaction, a reflex of survival.

This doesn't necessarily claim that it's resolved with a reaction of force, flight is a potential response in many cases. The undertaking of flight with the subsequent pursuit from the initiator is still a violent scenario. You're forced into a state of completely adrenaline-filled terror or, more accurately, desperation for survival while someone pursues you further.

Violence is an equation that begins with an initation. You could argue that violence begins with the formulation of motives but at the point it is yet to be violent. Also, motives can be subsequently abandoned and never enacted, therefore violence does not occur in the formulation of motives but in the initiation. Once you have initiated force against another, you have then manufactured the scenario of necessary response. In the absence of initation there is consequently an absence of violence.

Time, Economics and Innovation 

Time is the ever-receding resource of temporal form. Being a temporal form, but equipped with foresight, the utilization of time as a resource is inevitable. Hence our rigid work-schedules, set sleeping schedule, eating schedules. We harness it for immense efficiency, but efficiency is relative to the pursuit. Our current pursuit is one of economic development, of extracting and utilizing natural resources to continue to expand the economy. In the effort you manufacture tasks for people, with a particular reward. This reward would be money in our case. Money being a universally-identified thing of value. 

 When you look at food, intently and carefully, you see the slavery were all intrinsically bound to. We work for food and shelter, when living in a city. This food and shelter is provided for us so that we may dedicate our time to other means. But someone has to tend to our necessary demands, we just don't all have to. So an economy is reasonably an inevitability of city-life, which itself demands the need for lawful enforcement, sewage control, waste control, electricity.. We have a lot of nuanced tasks that need to be completed by somebody almost full-time. To abandon our economic model is to abandon a system that enables immense diversification by unifying every citizen under a common value. A value is necessary for the exchange of goods and services.

 Perhaps, though, our present economic system is creating values which are fundamentally unsustainable and harmful to the environment. Harming the environment is a fundamental wrong; you do not corrupt your sustaining force if your goal is sustain yourself and your offspring. It's fundamentally incompatible with even elementary logic; if you rely on something for sustenance and continuance, you do not corrupt it for immediate or near-by gains. Particularly so in the knowledge of a time-span that exceeds your own lifetime. One which stretches for eternity, through your offspring, and through there's until it cascades down into the infinite. Perhaps a perpetual existence is possible, firstly we need to preserve home base while we work towards expanding beyond a single resource-base. Makes sense, no?

Once we've reached beyond earth the instrumental adaptations that occur on the new planets will substantially individualize the separate planets, with each becoming its own breed. The environments we'd have to respond to are as of yet unknown, but that doesn't mean they're unknown forever. Discovery will happen if facilitated. Imagine all the foreign environments were simply yet to perceive through the senses, with no present clue as to how to manage them. Our ingenuity would be released into novel environments, manufacturing an entirely novel reaction. And as we've seen on earth, once we invent our tools, our tools become an inseparably symbiotic reliance. 

Responsibility and Accountability

In order for this tribe, or cluster of people unified under a universal currency and an ever-evolving moral theory, to exist peacefully and prosperously we need to be accountable for that which we are responsible. This moral-umbrella that we're sharing is of course not a static thing, rather a continually accreting and morphing thing. With new principles slowly weaving in and antiquated principles being slowly relinquished. 

If we're all going to implicitly agree to partake in the offerings of this culture and society, we should all adhere to similar principles and if not, at least adhere to non-aggression. Always, in the proceedings of evolving this thing, ideas trump violence. Indeed, ideas can prevent violence, this requires the agreement of non-violence of course. It may not be a contract but certainly we individually agree to behave within parameters that harm no one, so we can all function in harmony and prosperity. This is what civilization is, or at least should be.

When someone commits an injurious or debilitating action against another, what do we do? Of course, under our system of justice - punishing those that harm or debilitate - we respond. The response to evil, or wrongdoings or harm or debilitating actions, is necessary. We cannot avoid it. This doesn't grant that it's an inevitability of human-behaviour, but in the occurrence of it there must be a response. With this population-density combined with the dissociative nature of our tribes, evil,  debilitating, harmful wrongdoings are evidently present. 

So how do we respond?

 I wouldn't suggest that prevention is the one and only saviour, capable of entirely expunging evil from civilization, but it's an effective agent. Through early teachings in reason, logic and philosophy, by instilling dialogue as a means of resolution, I would assert that we would experience a lower frequency of inappropriately settled disputes, thereby reducing violence. Twofold, reason encourages compassion, reason permits rational resolutions of things. For this to occur we would necessarily need every citizen, or the overriding majority, to agree under some means of unification. 

 We all enjoy harmonious interaction with the members that form our closes bonds. A social mammal relishes in social environments. Not necessarily all social environments, but certain ones. That one friend you reciprocate with well, your group of friends, etc. It assures us we aren't alone, that we're all traveling through this nebulous journey together, figuring it out as we proceed through. That we will support each other and relinquish prejudice and censorious behaviour and coalesce. These qualities are indisputably beneficial, my own and your own experience confirm this. 

Earlier I mentioned that due to the density and dissociative nature of our tribes we experience evil. What does that mean? How could it be corrected rather than combatted?

 It's evident, through anthropological studies, that humans are tribal animals that rely on cohesion and alliances, that we thrive in tribes. In the tribe, each member must be responsible and accountable. If you are responsible for building the huts and they collapse on me,  you're accountable. If you're responsible for cultivating the food and come winter we suffer a famine, you're accountable. There's an intricate web of responsibility and accountability, with each member relying on each other. 

 What's essential for the tribe is that each member sustain a relationship with each other, in order to track their behaviour and ensure they're working for the benefit of the tribe. When a member commits a crime against the tribe, they're accountable to the whole tribe,  because civilization doesn't progress through delinquency. 

In order to ameliorate the present state of our tribes, I would argue we need to erect more incentives for communities to function like communities. This would include things like: more localized systems of government that focus on smaller constituencies, local food production, smaller schools with fewer students, and more accountability. As our population continues to increase I think it's vital that we focus on smaller communities because as it currently stands, government is elected by the majority of the minority. Constituencies are becoming too large to accurately account for everyone.