Peace Couple

What kind of news is this?: Peace Song of the Day for 2/23

susanna — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 03:14:08 +0000

“A Little Good News” performed by Anne Murray is the Peace Song of the Day for February 23rd. The song was written by Charlie Black, Rory Bourke, and T Rocco. This song is full of images and personal impressions about what is in the media, and what should be in the media.

Excerpt from the lyrics:

I’ll come home this evenin’, I’ll bet that the news will be the same
Somebody takes a hostage, somebody steals a plane
How I wanna hear the anchor man talk about a county fair
And how we cleaned up the air, how everybody learned to care…

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The Peace Song of the Day is a project of Duke Augustus and Duchess Susanna, The Duke and Duchess of Peace. The Duke and Duchess recognize that one of the paths to peace is to find soulful and nonviolent entertainment, and to express oneself with art and song.

Let peace begin with me: Peace Song of the Day for 2/22

susanna — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 17:15:46 +0000

Tom Paxton‘s song, Peace Will Come, is the Peace Song of the Day for February 22nd. It is a very sweet, simple song, which would be great for sing-a-longs, or a personal meditation.

Excerpt from the lyrics:

Peace,
Peace will,
Peace will come,
And let it begin with me…

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The Peace Song of the Day is a project of Duke Augustus and Duchess Susanna, The Duke and Duchess of Peace. The Duke and Duchess recognize that one of the paths to peace is to find soulful and nonviolent entertainment, and to express oneself with art and song.

Saltwater in Lennon’s Eyes: Peace Song of the Day for 2/21

Augustus — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 23:55:20 +0000

“Saltwater” by Julian Lennon is the Peace Song of the Day for February 21st. Duchess Susanna found this song among a huge list of antiwar songs posted at Wikipedia:

Excerpt from lyrics:

We are a rock revolving
Around a golden sun
We are a billion children
Rolled into one
So when I hear about
The hole in the sky
Saltwater wells in my eyes

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Let’s not look the other way: Peace Song of the Day for 2/20 (peacecouple.com)
Getting Together: Peace Song for 12/24/2011 (catch-up) (peacecouple.com)
Merry Christmas: Peace Song of the Day for 12/25/2011 (peacecouple.com)
Give peace a chance: Peace Song of the Day for 2/2/2012 (peacecouple.com)
Hippie Thoughts on Peace and Public Service: Peace Song of the Day for 2/9 (peacecouple.com)
Happy Xmas (War Is Over): Peace Song for 12/12/2011 (peacecouple.com)

Camus’ Neither Victims nor Executioners: International Democracy and Dictatorship

Augustus — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 11:13:09 +0000

The eleventh chapter of The Power of Nonviolence: Writings by Advocates of Peace contains Albert Camus‘ 1946 essay Neither Victims nor Executioners. This week we discuss the fifth part of the essay, International Democracy and Dictatorship. Camus wrote this 16-page essay as World War II had just ended, and it seemed as if the Soviet Union and the United States were dragging the planet into the horrors of a third world war. Eleven years later, he would win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Camus returns to the theme that the world is interconnected and the national and the personal level:

There is no suffering, no torture anywhere in the world which does not affect our everyday lives.

This again brings Camus to the need for an “international revolution” in order to bring about a better world: He asks what the paths there are::

I see only two, and these two between them define our ultimate alternative.

The first is imposition of a world order by the US or USSR. He does not endorse this path for several reasons. As a Frenchman and a Mediterranean, he fears the monoculture this hegemony would create. Even more frightening would be the scope of the war, perhaps nuclear, that would be required to create singular dominance.

the sure death of millions of men for the hypothetical happiness of the survivors seems too high a price to pay.

Camus take to task the Marxist perspective that the loss of life is worth the end result. He correctly puts Marx in his time, finding that Marx did not foresee the level of the massive loss of life due to weapons rising to the level of mass destruction.

As before, he rejects this course of action:

Whatever the desired end, however lofty and necessary, whether happiness or justice or liberty – the means employed to attain it represent so enormous a risk and are so disproportionate to the slender hopes of success, that, in all sober objectivity, we must refuse to run this risk.

Camus’ other choice is international democracy, but he finds that the UN is easily ignored by its powerful member states. He, therefore, finds that we are faced with an “international dictatorship” instead of a a “world parliament.

Since we do not have such a parliament, all we can do now is to resist international dictatorship; to resist on a world scale; and to resist by means which are not in contradiction with the end we seek.

Again, I see a hope in the fruition of his dream in the Occupy movement which spans every continent.

Camus’ Neither Victims nor Executioners: Parody of Revolution (peacecouple.com)
Albert Camus’ Neither Victims nor Executioners: The Self-Deception of Socialists (peacecouple.com)
Albert Camus’ Neither Victims nor Executioners: Century of Fear (peacecouple.com)
Saving Our Skins: Camus’ Neither Victims nor Executioners (peacecouple.com)
Simon Weil’s Reflections on War (peacecouple.com)
Dorothy Day’s Christian Pacifist Stand against US entry into WWII (peacecouple.com)
Dorothy Day’s Pacifism (peacecouple.com)

Let’s not look the other way: Peace Song of the Day for 2/20

susanna — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 16:22:13 +0000

“Soldiers” by ABBA is the Peace Song of the Day for February 20th. Duke Augustus found this song among a huge list of antiwar songs posted at Wikipedia: here.

Excerpt from lyrics:

Soldiers write the songs that soldiers sing
The songs that you and I won’t sing
Let’s not look the other way, takin’ a chance
‘Cause if the bugler starts to play
We too must dance

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Angels against war: Peace Song of the Day for 2/19

susanna — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 12:45:13 +0000

Angels & Airwaves is not the usual kind of group that makes the Peace Song of the Day list. They are an alternative rock band, in the Space Rock style. Though, one of their songs clearly shows the horrors of war, and points to peace. Hope you find it interesting.

“The War” by Angels & Airwaves is the Peace Song of the Day. The song is made extra singable by a chorus of “Oh’s”. (In some live versions, they are almost a yo-oh rock yodel, which the audience can sing-a-long with.)

Excerpt from lyrics:

The War
Angels & Airwaves

Why wont you tell me that
It’s almost over
Why must this?
Tear my head
Inside out
*

And the houses
Laid out like targets
With the deafening sound
We watched them all go down…

The Duchess’s transcription of the “Oh-oh” part to this song:

O-o ohhhh-oh
o-o-oh o-oh

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Peace Song of the Day: Angel from Montgomery

susanna — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 23:11:23 +0000

“Angel from Montgomery” by John Prine is the Peace Song of the Day for February 17th. This is an unusual choice. Its peace is found largely in the sense of harmony it projects. Though, it also has moments about feelings, and suppressing feelings, which teach principles of NVC/Nonviolent Communication. (And, it is a favorite song of The Duke and The Duchess. So, it was destined to make the list sometime.)

Excerpt from the lyrics:

Make me an Angel that flies from Montgomery
Make me a poster of an old rodeo
Just give me one thing that I can hold onto
To believe in this livin’ is just a hard way to go

The last lines of the chorus remind the Duchess of a Russian proverb she often quotes to people expressing the difficulties and complexities of living:

“Living a life is not as easy as crossing a field”

Somehow, things seem easier, when you realize that they are intrinsically difficult (ie: for everyone, at all times, as a part of life and human nature…)

“To believe in this livin’ is just a hard way to go…”

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Note to readers: If you are watching closely, you may realize that the Duchess is behind about a week on Peace Song of the Day. Will do catch-up over the holiday weekend.

Who is leading us to the sound of guns?: Peace Song for 2/16/2012

susanna — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 14:01:11 +0000

Protocol by Gordon Lightfoot is the Peace Song of the Day for February 22nd. This song asks…

“Who are the ones who would lead us now to the sound of a thousand guns?”

You can find the full lyrics (and the chords) to Gordon Lightfoot’s song, Protocol: here.

Hat Tip: Found this song among a very good resource at Wikipedia, List of Anti-War Songs. Recently, I have found several songs off of this list. The list is extensive, eclectic, fun, and very helpful. (Though, many of the songs use strong language that don’t match our projects goal of being sing-a-long style. Yet, songs with the F bomb and other wild language are still useful for poets and other grown-ups.)

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Published February 22, 2012 as a catch-up session for the daily song project.

Dancing with systems

Augustus — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 11:30:06 +0000

After re-reading Donella Meadow‘s essay, Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System, I continued to her other wonderful essay, Dancing with systems. She describes why the best way to interact with a system is to dance with it:

We can’t control systems or figure them out. But we can dance with them!

I already knew that, in a way before I began to study systems. I had learned about dancing with great powers from whitewater kayaking, from gardening, from playing music, from skiing. All those endeavors require one to stay wide-awake, pay close attention, participate flat out, and respond to feedback. It had never occurred to me that those same requirements might apply to intellectual work, to management, to government, to getting along with people.

But there it was, the message emerging from every computer model we made. Living successfully in a world of systems requires more of us than our ability to calculate. It requires our full humanity–our rationality, our ability to sort out truth from falsehood, our intuition, our compassion, our vision, and our morality.

Meadows provides a list of ways (with explanations) of how to dance with systems:

1. Get the beat.
2. Listen to the wisdom of the system.
3. Expose your mental models to the open air.
4. Stay humble. Stay a learner.
5. Honor and protect information.
6. Locate responsibility in the system.
7. Make feedback policies for feedback systems.
8. Pay attention to what is important, not just what is quantifiable.
9. Go for the good of the whole.
10. Expand time horizons.
11. Expand thought horizons.
12. Expand the boundary of caring.
13. Celebrate complexity.
14. Hold fast to the goal of goodness.

Related articles

Meadows classics and newbooks from Shuman & Lovins (peacecouple.com)
How to change, or transcend, paradigms (peacecouple.com)

How to change, or transcend, paradigms (peacecouple.com)

Camus’ Neither Victims nor Executioners: Parody of Revolution

Augustus — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 11:15:33 +0000

The eleventh chapter of The Power of Nonviolence: Writings by Advocates of Peace contains Albert Camus‘ 1946 essay Neither Victims nor Executioners. This week we discuss the fourth part of the essay, Parody of Revolution. Camus wrote this 16-page essay as World War II had just ended, and it seemed as if the Soviet Union and the United States were dragging the planet into the horrors of a third world war. Eleven years later, he would win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

I recently heard a lecture where a speaker insisted the only successful revolutions were the French Revolution, the Soviet Revolution, and the Chinese Communist Revolution. The speaker’s definition of a successful revolution was that the power class had to be displaced. Since all of those revolutions were violent, the speaker insisted that only violent revolutions are successful. The speaker discounted all of the nonviolent revolutions of the 20th Century (US Civil Rights, Gandhi in India) as unsuccessful. Camus describes revolution as follows:

Ideally, a revolution is a dialogue in political and economic institutions in order to introduce more freedom and justice; practically, it is a complex of historical events, often undesirable ones, which brings about this happy transformation.

Camus argues that national revolution is never possible without at least the silent complicity of the world’s superpowers. For instance, the Maldives could not have a coup without the United States standing aside.

Camus, therefore argues that the only successful revolution to change the world from violent to nonviolent has to be a world revolution. The Occupy movement which has stretched across every continent may be the first example we have seen of this concept.

Camus rejects revolution as seen through the lens of the violence of World War II with its 30 million killed. Of the two remaining choices, he cannot accept the Utopian views of The US and the Soviet Union which require violence to succeed. He again find the only sane choice is his “relative Utopia” as he defines it “murder be no longer legitimized.”

If rejected, then one must either come out for the status quo – which is a mood of absolute Utopia in so far as it assumes the ‘freezing’ of history – or else give a new content to the word ‘revolution’, which means assenting to what might be called relative Utopia. Those who want to change the world must, it seems to me, now choose between the charnel-house threatened by the impossible dream of history suddenly struck motionless, and the acceptance of a relative Utopia which gives some leeway to action and to mankind. Relative Utopia is the only realistic choice; it is our last frail hope of saving our skins.

Albert Camus’ Neither Victims nor Executioners: The Self-Deception of Socialists (peacecouple.com)
Saving Our Skins: Camus’ Neither Victims nor Executioners (peacecouple.com)
Albert Camus’ Neither Victims nor Executioners: Century of Fear (peacecouple.com)
Simon Weil’s Reflections on War (peacecouple.com)