Everything has a down-side, including being a powerful state. The danger in this case is that power corrupts and with that process individual citizens are inextricable associated.

So I really think that this group poses an important question in this community.
With over twenty thousand peace-lovers, and so many of them in America, I hope that there are a good number of people who are interested in some serious thinking.

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Hello Janos,
Our country is too large to truley be a democracy. With the values of selfishness at the core of our society it is natural for the politicains so far from view to feather their nest at the expense of the workers. I think the country should divide into smaller more managable units like the State level but Americans are so brainwashed into believing Abraham Lilncl\oln "saved" the country when he busted local states rights, imprisoned descenters, moved money for arms illegally, sents troops into combat without congressional approval, started the military industrail complex.

On the other front the people on this network are just lonely and trying to connect on a social/sexual level is my experience.
I have been informed that in most states there is serious interest in secession from the Union.

Although there is the danger that smaller units still selfishly and short shortsightedly motivated could still create havoc. Look at what went on in Europe before the EU.
I think that only an awaken to the buried fact that we are one family and all wars are civil wars can change it.

The late Adi Da wrote his last book on the devastating effect of the general tribalism of humans. He pleads for the establishment of a global cooperative forum as a vehicle for representing humanity to itself by realising its own underlying Prior Unity

The trouble is that most "peaceniks" think that peace is a matter of individual self-improvement and meditation, unwilling to face the fact that governments dominate weaker neighbours and go to war in our name.

I am trying to stimulate this realisation here at a high risk of offending people.
Thanks for this invitation and regrets for the delay in posting.

I was referring to the many comments I have come across while roaming part of the interned dedicated to social change in general. Comments to the effect that, "one can only change oneself", "one creates ones own reality", "crate peace within and---since reality is one---the world will become peace", "think peace and one will attract peace", etc.

It is a big, important subject, involving personal and collective psychology and reading the lessons of history, resistant of power elites to give up influence, complacency of good people as an escape from feeling of powerlessness, irritation with questions when there seems to be no answer.

I have been watching peace efforts fail since my days in the 1960s in an organisation called the Peace Pledge Union "I renounce war and never again to support another".
Peace is an outcome. The biggest source of its absence is fear of "the other". In political terms this fear dominates as "fear of other nations" who, we are told, when needed that, someone is out to destroy "our way of life". The British and American nations are in Afghanistan and Iraq because elements there are scheming to do just that.

I am not denying the existence of terrorists or defending them, only saying that terrorism is also a result of long-drawn out misguided policies toward national neighbours also born of suspicion and fear.

This group was set up discuss "How Can we at Ipeace move the US towards peace?". All governments seeking to influence other nations, in order to secure some unequal advantage, tend to move further away from peace. It so happens that at this time the US suffers from the strongest temptation to dominate the world. So let's stay with that, just as a for example. One half of the US population voted for war and this is the problem for the other "peace loving" half.

I have no solution to suggest, just the bad news that something is missing without which all the hopeful talk about peace will fail to lead to peace. That something may well be the unwillingness of people to withdraw the legitimacy they grant to their governments when rumors of war are put about.
As Willis Harman says, government intentions and policies succeed because they have legitimacy and “that legitimacy comes from the perceptions of the people. People give legitimacy, and they can take it away. A challenge to legitimacy is probably the most powerful force for change to be found in history.” (Global Mind Change, The Promise of the Last Years of the Twentieth Century).
What can an average ordinary person do to regain their power so to speak and take back control from the power elites.

The frustrating but truthful part-answer is that what seems we can do is often not what needs to be done. But without knowing what really needs to be done, and being distracted by doing things because they are the only ones we can do, there is no way of hitting on the right/effective thing to do. (The story of the fellow who lost his key somewhere springs to mind: he is looking under the streetlamp because it is too dark where he lost it.)

My answer, lame as it may sound—although the Law of Attraction philosophy confirms it, is to think what could be to open the way to the answer to your question.
Take the actuality, as I exampled it, whereby fifty percent of the American people were dragged into another war by the other fifty per cent as a result of lying government propaganda. Why were so many good people susceptible to the lies? They were susceptible to fears. Why? Because they are so insecure (lack of welfare, decent jobs, Medicare—inadequate Medicare even for the seemingly well-off) in their general lives that little persuasion is needed to make them see enemies wherever the government suggests that enemies are.
I hope this does not sound too abstract, because it is not. It directly relates to quality of consciousness, awareness, informedness, to the need to think for ourselves.
A degree of insecurity is essential to keep people susceptible to manipulative information, and that insecurity is maintained by the current way most social systems operate in serving the “power elites”.

In brief, this community of nearly 21,000 souls would better serve the cause of peace of it honestly faced, with the help of the vast available literature (for example), the obstacles to peace—not I order to wallow (as some other communities do) in the knowledge of those obstacles—but in order to enable itself to overcome them. Or are we here to seek personal peace rather than world peace---the former not being enough to bring about the latter?

Finally, the “elites” control people and their governments through withholding the benefits that accrue to two fundamental monopolies:
--Control over natural resources (land in particular, as the term refers to living space)
--Creating a nation’s money supply (lyingly called “credit”) out of thin air.

This is the source of power and there lies a legitimacy the people can challenge and withdraw.
PS.
As individuals we can not do it. But if we put desire for personal peace in front of desire for world peace, together we can. Have you come across the "last will and testament" (entirely my description) of World-Friend Adi Da, Not Two Is Peace?

As George says below, We must find a way to bring out the truth and speak it. That refers to "we the people" together. 21,000 would be a good start
Hello Janos,
I have heard no talk about session from the union. Here in Michigan there was a group forming that was arming itself for protection from what they percieved as a corrupt government, the Michigan Militia. They were attacked and locked up for conspiracy, talking about resisiting the government.

I think we are in Afgahnistan because of an oil pipeline, according to Chalmers Johnson and Iraq because of oil not because of any real threat from the natives there. I agree with your preceptions and frustration with the "be the peace you want the world to be" meanwhile bombs are dropping on families by drone airplanes and anyone who resists is a terrorist or insurgent. We must find a way to bring out the truth and speak it. But things are different now than in the 60's th elite owners have insulated themselves deeper and own the medias and the politicians here at least. They manufacture consent. I will be glad to send you as many books as you want I have 700 sitting here. Maybe you can spread them around your country email me. I am not concerned about the finances.
George
According to Wikipedia authors there is such a movement. but it seems to be a fairly orderly program.

True, the elites are probably more ensconced. But the way they could squash "non-friendly" regimes up to about some thirty years ago is much curtailed, I hope.

I think this community could do a lot more in working for world rather than personal peace. But how to mobilise it without upsetting people?

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