peacefulprospects

PEACEFUL PROSPECTS

By Jim McCord

Phasing Out Force

"Republican" theorists have been hatching more detailed schemes than the public yet imagines. Recent exposures profile their "jacobin" plans to streamline the world-with American power and force-by toppling troublesome tyrannies.

This website presents an elemental alternative. Obviously a new world could be fostered by Lincolnesque appeal to the "better angels of our nature." (The key of course is simple empathy in the Holy Land: what it is like to be on the other side of a war.) Jacobin force will be superfluous once the neglected compassion-at the heart of world religions-is finally heeded.

Machiavellian realpolitick can be phased out, as childish preparation, while global players graduate toward adult honesty. The "1776" architecture of Adam Smith and Thomas Jefferson-for modern political/ economy-can be implemented by letting Natural Law take its course.

Humans do aspire (rather vaguely) to such higher goals. To "live and let-live" can lead to social justice merging into universal truth and beauty. Mythology across the ages-devolving into philosophy and religions-has inspired these notions: about how things ought to be. Plato taught that such dreams describe "ideal" reality; as it already is.

Folks fight though about how to "get there." Our confusing language has both facilitated and obstructed slow realization of what is actually available. That has been the rub. People indulge conflicting beliefs. They point toward actually ideal reality; if but everyone could be persuaded to agree with these verbal formulations. (Perchance by force.)

Once humans realize that verbalized beliefs are mere opinions-on which there will always be disagreement-society can work unhindered toward universal abstractions common to everyone. They repose among our hidden higher (non-verbal) faculties: those "affections of the soul" introduced at the close of Book 6 in Plato's REPUBLIC.

Yes, humans have been fussing for centuries about how to actualize Plato's ideal. Now it is obvious. Let it happen, naturally-as in zen. We have been trying too hard; thinking too much-in words. They have wagged our dreams long enough. Those higher faculties (pure reason and understanding) are ripe for exploitation to finally slip into the

now available Good Life . . .

Website Summary

An illustrative theme throughout this site is suggested by an archetypal story from Book 7 of Plato's REPUBLIC. He there depicts developing humanity as preoccupied with language (labeling "shadows on walls of a nurturing cave/ cocoon"). Plato symbolized individual maturation from there toward higher consciousness as the "flight of a fugitive."

My particular flight is traced throughout as a journey-to Vagabondia along "Route 66." Higher abilities to think beyond language, along the way, are developed deliberately; notably by visualizing dreamy "archetypal" symbols (unfolding as an unrealized "code" of life if one learns to dream-while-awake).

The resulting holistic thinking connects one with a forgotten existential reality (now obscured by "left-brain" conjecturing). It was called the "Immediate" in George Santayana's REASON IN RELIGION (1905) and a "neglected beauty of the obvious" by Karl Llewellyn in THE COMMON LAW TRADITION: DECIDING APPEALS (1960). This primal reality is actually Plato's "ideal." It can be reached by activating our higher, non-verbal faculties (which are introduced at the close of Book 6 in Plato's REPUBLIC).

This surprising experience transcends our current world-view; which has been constricted-over the centuries-by such verbal dichotomies as "good versus evil" and ""mind versus matter." I have formulated a New Paradigm of reality by synthesizing such "opposites" (ventured within the ever-shifting context of personal experience: unfolding throughout this website).

The transcendental experience reaches for "ideal" reality beyond those verbal distinctions; which have polarized the wordy ideologies folks fight about. They have divided currently crazed humanity into warring camps. As humanity grows beyond Plato's Cave, nevertheless, increasing usage of our higher faculties can phase out any need to argue about the fundamentals of life, death and rebirth. We can simply love and let-live.

This is the wildest adventure yet-to survive the existential uncertainty of life as just adults-with only universal common sense as guide. Then, as Plato predicted, the pleasure of being alivewill be maximized-without all the fuss-as transformed folks flutter free like butterflies from formative cocoons.

This pie-in-the-sky has always been there.