Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup metatuning LONG -- Of "rational animals"

Hello, there, everyone, and in response to some recent posts, I would
like to make my position clear: I condemn the crimes against humanity
committed on 11 September 2001, and affirm my love for the victims of
these attacks, even while also recognizing the humanity of those
responsible.

I detest the human rights violations of the Taliban, including the
oppression of women as well as the practice of the death penalty, to
which I am unconditionally opposed in any part of the world. At the
same time, I feel great solidarity with the nonviolent and feminist
traditions of Islam which might provide a basis for building a very
different Afghanistan in a very different Near East, where other
spiritual traditions such as Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism,
Buddhism, and the Iranic faith traditions would also be honored.
Such a world would also include a Palestine/Israel based on a concord
of communities and faiths, where the Palestinians would be equal
citizens in their own homeland along with Jews, and Jerusalem might be
united and internationalized, a symbol of peace for the world.

To oppose the death penalty unequivocally, to say that it is _not_ a
good idea to kill the people responsible for this attack, although I
would have no quarrel with capturing them and bringing them to justice
before a tribunal of the kind specified by Amnesty International, is
not always a formula for popularity.

To say that I seek to understand the human motivations of the Taliban
is not to say that I wish to sanction their executions and other
crimes against humanity. To affirm their humanity makes me all the
more responsible, out of _caritas_ or compassion for them and their
victims, to stop or prevent those crimes, wielding the weapons of
nonviolence.

Please let me share some reflections on this based on my own
experience, because I realize that people meeting me mainly here may
be more familiar with my views on optimizing a tuning than with the
personal context in which I write in these sad weeks.

In the summer of 1976, 25 years ago, I spoke out against the
executions in Angola of some mercenaries, including a citizen of the
USA, after a war crimes trial. It wasn't that I condoned or
romanticized their crimes, it was simply that I was against killing,
especially the killing of subdued prisoners.

Not everyone approved of my position: it was said that I had no right
to criticize a "Third World" regime, especially one deemed
progressive. However, my view was that executing people was wrong,
whether done in the name of colonialism or of anti-colonialism.

In 1962, I had opposed the execution of Adolf Eichmann, who had
organized the murder of 6 million or more Jews, likely some of them my
not-too-distant relatives -- although I embrace all as my sisters and
brothers, and the millions of non-Jewish victims of the Holocaust
also.

Is this to condone the truly unspeakable enormities of the Holocaust
or Shoah? -- no!, it is to say that we must not emulate or repeat its
crimes even in punishing them.

Sometimes I ask myself: if Eichmann had not been executed in 1962,
something that might have marked the most powerful act of mercy and
humanity by a government in the history of the world, then might
Israel have found it harder to drop 2000-pound bombs on apartment
buildings in West Beirut in 1982? But then, in such an alternative
history, might not there have been a Palestinian/Israeli Federation in
the region after the Second World War, with both Jews and Palestinians
sitting as judges to sentence Eichmann to life in prison while
educating the world as to the crimes which must never be repeated?

Of course -- but it is appropriate to affirm not once but many times
-- my first solidarity and love is with that woman who was executed by
the Taliban, whatever the circumstances which may have surrounded her
killing of her spouse. She is my sister, whether her act of violence
was one of simple self-defense, or cold-blooded assassination, or
something in the wide range between.

Her killers demeaned their own humanity and brutalized their
community, as they have sadly done in many ways, including the
oppression of women and their exclusion from education. I reflect on a
drawing I have seen of a woman teaching in a mosque in Baghdad in the
13th century, and all the more deplore that these crimes are being
committed in the name of Islam.

Please make no mistake: I favor international sanctions against
regimes that retain the death penalty, and oppose extradition of even
the worse criminals to such countries. That goes for Afghanistan, or
for any country which has not brought itself into line with
international human rights standards as articulated by Amnesty
International, the European Union, and others.

Because I regard the members of the Taliban as humans, and humans who
might be a profound force for peace and a more tolerant and socially
just Islam in the great tradition of Khan Abdul Gaffir Khan, the
warrior of nonviolence who joined with the Hindu Gandhi in the
struggle for liberation, I must all the more detest and deplore their
crimes, which provide an excuse for the structures of inequality to
continue which should be transformed by people power.

Here we come to an aspect of this dialogue which reminds me of a
definition of humanity proverbial in the tradition of Aristotle and
also writers such as St. Thomas Aquinas: a human is a "rational
animal." Galileo, in his _Dialogue Concerning the Two Principal World
Systems_ (1632), has an interlocutor quip that some people seem to
have only the genus ("animal") but not the difference ("rational").

As a person of faith and an evolutionist, I would suggest that the
paradoxes of "rationality" may color the social and spiritual lives of
humans and chimpanzees alike, who share some 98% of the same genetic
background (I am not sure which protein sequences or whatever are
being compared, but the affinity is a notable one).

Among both species, in certain types of "intercommunal" conflict, a
tragic kind of "dehumanization" or "dechimpization" may take place
where one's sister or brother chimp or human is treated as if a member
of some prey species -- and both species are capable of hunting other
primates, for example monkeys. Mayhem or murder may follow, and
sometimes even conduct which could be described as genocide -- on a
smaller scale among chimps, given the more modest means of technology
and transportation.

As a vegetarian, I note these roots of violence, always present as a
potential -- although chimpanzees also have a rich repertory of
strategies for peacefully waging and resolving conflict, itself an
integral element of living together for chimps or humans.

With others here, I decry any glorification of the _act_ of killing an
estimated 7000 or more people, a theater of terror -- even as I affirm
the humanity of the victims and the perpetrators alike.

Having travelled to Boston and New York by air, and also sometimes to
Washington DC, in years past, I can very easily imagine myself among
the victims. My love and empathy and prayers go to them and their
families as I recognize this common vulnerability.

At the same time, while trying to understand the humanity of those who
carried out this crime or planned it, I reflect also on the acts and
statements of some other "rational animals."

Consider, for example, the ingeniously engineered firestorm in
downtown Tokyo on the evening of 9 March 1945, in the terrorist
operation known as "Operation Meetinghouse." Something like 300,000
people may have died, many burned alive or suffocated as high
explosive and incendiary bombs started a firestorm sucking the oxygen
out of the air. There seems a consensus that more people may have been
killed than in either atomic bombing of the following August -- or
possibly both.

Even history books favorably disposed to this "military tactic"
frankly describe it as "terror," an attack largely directed against
civilians to "raise the price of the war," and possibly to persuade
the woman or man in the street to demand that the government seek
piece.

We are not talking about a raid against a lawful military target where
the bombs miss their mark, nor about a raid on an oil refinery or
munitions factory reasonably related to the war effort. We are talking
about the carefully calculated incineration of hundreds of thousands
of women, men, and children as a method of total war.

Of course, one might add, the Rape of Nanking in 1937 was equally
inhumane -- and I have no desire here to align myself with those who
would "sanitize" either Japanese or United States history, possibly
making future atrocities a bit less morally impossible by failing
squarely to acknowledge the lessons of the past. We do not need more
wars to set up and maintain "Co-Prosperity Spheres" or "New World
Orders."

Yet one must ask: did the uncounted thousands of children who were
killed on 9 March 1945 in a calculated act of democide take part in
the slaughter in Nanking? What was the role of the rest of the world
in condoning what had happened in Nanking -- or in Berlin in
1933-1936, before Naziism began to be a "geopolitical concern" for the
general region, to borrow a later jargon?

One point I often make is that if one rejects the terrorism at
Hiroshima or Nagasaki, one must also reject the terrorism at Tokyo or
the World Trade Center. Once it is permissible to kill civilians as a
matter of military strategy, we are mainly quibbling over the means,
as uniquely terrible as nuclear weapons are with their element of
radiation, and also of global or local fallout.

However, in studying the ways of "rational animals" in Afghanistan and
elsewhere, we should indeed also consider Hiroshima and Nagasaki. At
the time of the bombings, Otto Hahn, a physicist and refugee from
Germany who detested racism, heard someone remark, "It's better for a
hundred thousand [Japanese] to perish than one of our boys."

For Hahn, this was as it were an echo of the Naziism he detested; but
many "rational animals" in the USA -- not in Afghanism, but in the USA
-- celebrated the the destruction of a city by a single bomb as a
great victory.

Here we must address not only the acts of "rational animals," but
their calculations, indeed their use of "rationality" in planning
those acts.

For many of the scientists who designed and built the weapons used,
the purpose was not democide but deterrence -- what if Hitler acquired
the same weapons, but first? As some Roman Catholic theologians, for
example, have suggested, possession of nuclear weapons under certain
exigent circumstances for deterrence may be somewhat morally
distinguishable from their actual or intended use; as a pacifist
myself, I can nevertheless appreciate this possible distinction.

However, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were intended and
carefully planned for maximum destructive effect -- not on some
military target, but on an area crowded with civilians. This was the
same kind of planning emulated by Timothy McVeigh in his bombing of
the Federal Building in Oklahoma City on 19 April 1995, and by the
terrorists in their suicide bombings in New York and Washington on 11
September 2001, and doubtless in their intended attack evidently
averted by the heroic resistance of passengers on the airliner which
crashed in Pennsylvania.

When Timothy McVeigh spoke of regretting the "collateral damage" he
had caused (the killing and maiming of children in a daycare center
within the building he destroyed), he was speaking a strategic
language with much precedent, from Tokyo to Baghdad. However, for
McVeigh and for the planners who targeted Tokyo, Hiroshima, and
Nagasaki, killing a large number of civilians was not an accident, it
was the intention.

If these intentions had been otherwise, the nuclear targeteers of 1945
could have picked some isolated installation, or given a demonstration
over Tokyo Bay -- still exposing innocents to the blinding _pika_ or
flash of these new weapons, and also to doses of initial radiation
with long-term health consequences we now know better, but not seeking
to kill hundreds of thousands as an instrument of policy. As I have
already have noted, such "rational animals" should rationally reject a
terrorist operation such as Meetinghouse over Tokyo, killing an equal
or greater number with conventional and incendiary bombs, also.

Further, let us consider the conduct of some of our fellow "rational
animals" in commemmorating such "regrettable necessities" of war and
terrorism. A number of years ago, there was a controversy about the
"celebration" at an air show in the USA of the anniversary of
Hiroshima by a staged "atomic bombing," including a simulated mushroom
cloud.

Thus we have "rational animals" among us who not only viewed such
crimes as justifiable, but as an occasion for celebration -- at a time
when not only the short-term effects of blast, heat, and initial
radiation had become known, but also the longer-term effects such as
childhood and adult leukemia and other forms of cancer as well as
dramatically increased birth defects.

Here I focus on the acts and attitudes of "rational animals" in the
USA, because for those of us who have grown up and lived here all our
lives, it may be easier to recognize the humanity of our fellow
"animals," our sisters and brothers, closest to home. The history of
Russia, or Japan, or China, or of the Arabic, Kurdish, and Turkish
civilizations where Islam largely prevails, would have provided a
tragically all too rich material also.

Please let me also say that the intolerance, murder, and destruction
visited in the name of Islam on Kurdistan, India, and other regions
which happened to follow religious traditions outside the "People of
the Book" are very properly highlighted and denounced.

At the same time, we should reflect how "rational animals" seeking to
realize the best qualities of humans and chimps might view the
systematic conquest and genocide in the name of religion of the
Indigenous peoples and nations of what is known among some of these
nations as the Great Turtle Island, the North and South of the
Continent invaded in 1492.

How many revered heroes of expansionism and slaughter are honored by
people professing allegiance to the Torah or the Sermon on the Mount
-- and, one might add, like the heroes of a conquering and too often
murderous Islamic tradition, often revered in part because of their
other deeds quite worthy of such honor despite the unspeakable crimes
in which they participated, by intent or by default and sheer
inertia.

It would seem that we humans and chimps sometimes have a desire, a
need, very graphically to "display" our power, whether by hurling
rocks or cruise missiles -- or by conducting rituals of protest and
reconciliation.

As "rational animals," we need to realize that there are better and
higher ways to be awesome than through terrorist destruction, ways
which chimps may already be practicing in some of their rituals of
nonviolent conflict, mediation, and mutual embrace.

It is hardly a moral or theological novelty that one should condemn
the sin while embracing the sinner -- whether a member of the
murderous Taliban or the Saudi hierachy which also publicly executes
women while maintaining "friendly" relations with the USA, or a man or
woman holding a position of influence in a democratically elected
government who endorses support of friendly "authoritarian" regimes
which kill untold thousands of their civilians through the actions of
"security forces" and death squads.

Of course, one must also embrace the victims, and indeed one of the
evils of a culture of revenge is that it focuses on generating more
pain rather than on the vital, victim-oriented, tasks of healing and
restoration.

People like Bud Welch and Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation
in the USA can speak of these truths far more eloquently than I; the
challenge is to affirm a love for victims and perpetrators alike at a
time of terror, anger, and injustice on many sides in a world filled
with individual and institutionalized violence, but also with much
basic human and chimplike compassion and decency.

Please let me also clearly acknowledge, in reference to my open letter
to Senator Clinton, that the systematic torture and murder of women in
Afghanistan is, of course, evil on a different scale than attacks or
discrimination against Lesbians and Gay men in the USA; but if
prejudice and sexism and victimization are the enemies, then to seek
human rights wherever they are violated seems to me an imperative in
this dangerous time.

In peace and love,

Margo

🔗Afmmjr@...

🔗mschulter <MSCHULTER@...>

Hello, there, Jeff Scott and everyone.

Thank you for raising the question of whether birds are descended from
dinosaurs, a question which provides an opportunity to share some of
my own views as a theist and evolutionist.

Please let me emphasize that these are only my comments as something
of an amateur paleobiology watcher with a special interest in the
Precambrian Eon (maybe fitting my musical tastes also), and that a
professional scientist like Dr. Chalmers or Paul Erlich might have
much to add, or correct, as far as the science I discuss here.

First of all, I would say that there is overwhelming evidence that
birds and dinosaurs share a quite close common ancestor among the
family tree of vertebrates, although the exact relationship has been
debated for decades, and I seem to recall that within the last two
decades or so some new evidence of very early birds has been brought
to bear.

About 140 years, in the Bavaria of 1861, a fossil was found known as
_Archeopterix_, a creature combining reptile-like features with
feathers. The imprint of the feathers could be seen in this fossil,
just as the fossils of Cambrian biota recorded in the Burgess Shale
discovered around the beginning of the next century would reveal such
finely preserved details of soft-bodied invertebrates over half a
billion years ago.

This was an "intermediate form," suggesting the hypothesis that the
first birds may have evolved from dinosaurs by the Jurassic Period of
the Mesozoic Era, known as the age of reptiles, about 165 million
years ago (or 165 Ma, "165 mega-anni," to use a recent abbreviation).

Other fossils of birds with reptile-like features such as teeth, for
example a great diving bird found in the Cretaceous or Late Mesozoic
rocks of Kansas, also supported the hypothesis that birds (Aves) had
branched off from reptiles, and, it was supposed, more specifically
dinosaurs.

In fact, around the early 1980's, some paleobiologists took the
position that birds might themselves be considered present-day
dinosaurs, sharing their warm-bloodedness with some nonavian dinosaurs
of the Mesozoic, and all belonging to the same "clade" or group.

This was a very exciting time in evolutionary biology and paleobiology
(known during my childhood as "paleontology"), when the theory of
"punctuated equilibrium" or dramatic evolutionary changes in "fits and
starts," was at center change.

Sometimes the theory may have been carried too far, for example in
hypothesizing the sudden origins of complex eukaryotic cells within
the last billion years or so, but such overenthusiasm is not new.
Thus Galileo, having correctly postulated the diurnal and annual
motions of the Earth, insisted that the diurnal rotation was the main
cause of the tides -- rejecting Kepler's hypothesis of a lunar
connection, to which Newton's gravitation would lend a firm basis.

(Based on my reading up to maybe a couple of years ago, I might guess
that eukaryotes had originated by around 2.0-1.5 Ga -- that is,
giga-anni, or billions of years ago -- but I'd like an update.)

At any rate, the concept of birds as dinosaurs had great appeal, and a
few years ago, at least, the main "problem" with this kind of
"cladistic" outlook was that some fossils of early birds had been
reported in the Triassic or early Mesozoic, something like 225 Ma.
Since this is also the era of the early dinosaurs, one might argue
that both dinosaurs and birds likely branched off from some earlier
reptilian line.

Similarly, to say that chimps and humans share a close common ancestor
is not to say that humans descended from chimps, or vice versa, but
only that they are intimate relatives, as their genetic affinities
suggest.

Thus while I can share a layperson's understand of the hypotheses and
rough dates proposed for the dinosaur-bird question, I would want to
know more about the current state of the fossil evidence and proposed
interpretations before trying to give a "state-of-the-art" answer, or
maybe summarize the sides of a state-of-the-art controversy.

Then, again, I find it worth noting that the fossil record is both
fragmentary and selectively biased: there might have been various
kinds of simple multicellular lifeforms around 1.5-1.0 Ga, for
example, unlikely to have any place in this record, except possibly by
inference (e.g. effects on other, partially recorded, members of the
biota or facets of the environment).

The evidence of molecular biology, also, can suggest patterns of
relatedness and rough estimates of divergences between groups,
although here, too, much has been open to inference and debate.
For example, the degree of genetic affinity between remotely related
invertebrates has been postulated by paleobiologists such as Bruce
Runnegar as evidence for the emergence of such multicellular animals
at a point well before that recorded in the known fossil record.
Others have questioned the assumptions of such a hypothesis.

Then again, I would be curious about how the state of the fossil
evidence might have changed over the last five years or so, maybe with
some relevance to this kind of question.

Some things certainly _have_ changed since Darwin, to say the least,
at times answering difficulties that he himself raised.

For example, in the mid-19th century when he propounded his theories,
the absence of any recognized evidence of life in the long Precambrian
Eon -- which we now date as running roughly from the origins of the
planet around 4.6 Ga to the opening of the Cambrian Period at around
570-550 Ma (when last I checked) with its rich invertebrate
assemblages already well-known to 19th-century geologists -- appeared
to raise questions about the idea of a gradual evolutionary process.

However, the 20th century revealed a rich record of Precambrian life,
including for example the finding of reported filamentous microfossils
(fossils of microorganisms with cells joined in filaments) from
Warrawoona in northern Australia dating to around 3.5 Ga. By 2 Ga or
so, there have been reports of megascopic fossils -- large enough to
be visible to the unaided human eye -- with regular shapes, suggesting
that pluricellular or multicellular or possibly what I might call
"megacellular" forms (a giant and very complex multinucleate cell) may
have attained an impressive size.

Thus it appears that life has been a feature of Earth through about
80% of its history, although many questions remain open to debate, and
that patterns of evolution or "descent with modification" can be
traced both through the fossil record and through the evidence of
molecular biology which we all carry within us.

From my own theistic perspective, the patterns of evolution are one
aspect of the natural laws through which the Creator operates in the
realm of the physical universe, much like the laws of gravitation,
electromagnetism, and quantum mechanics -- and also the laws of
acoustics, I might very appropriately add in this forum.

In itself, the science of evolutionary biology is neither theistic nor
atheistic nor agnostic, any more than the science and art of
mathematics. As one Roman Catholic author remarked, the study of
evolutionary theory is a "nontheistic" topic, like the study of
nonmiraculous methods of long division. From a Catholic or other
theistic perspective, these areas of knowledge and all areas of
knowledge or _scientia_ ultimately are gifts of God, to be revered
with wonder and accepted with a scholarly humility.

Here I would add that atheists and agnostics have also expressed this
wonder at the complexity and marvellous order of the universe with
great poetry and beauty, and that any theist devoted to a God of Love
must embrace these sisters and brothers as comrades in the republic of
learning and the community of humanity.

The idea of a reconciliation between faith and reason, between science
and theology, is not new, and sometimes theologians have propounded
most adventurous scientific hypotheses.

Writing maybe sometime around 1440 for example, Nicolaus of Cusa
explored the nature of the physical universe in his _De Docta
Ignorantia_, "On Learned Ignorance," in which he posited a cosmos
filled with many solar or planetary systems, and various kinds of
extraterrestrial lifeforms and civilizations.

Among the questions raised by Cusa, known for his role as a Bishop and
Cardinal seeking concord in a troubled Church, is what we now know as
the Cosmological Principle, the theory that the basic physical laws of
the universe are the same everywhere within it. He suggested that
processes of change observed on the Earth might take place on other
planets or parts of the universe also -- leaving it as an open
question. This was contrary to the Aristotelian doctrine that no such
changes took place in the "superlunary" regions beyond the Moon.

Along with Pope John Paul II, I take evolution itself as more than a
mere hypothesis: it is an integral part of the modern scientific
worldview, bearing on topics ranging from paleobiology to population
genetics.

At the same time, I might suggest that a common phrase in evolutionary
theory might usefully be revised, especially in view of some of the
less fortunate metaphors it may suggest when quite improperly applied
to areas of human choice such as racial and social policies.

Rather than speaking of "Survival of the Fittest," we might speak of
"Reproductive Success in a Given Environment." The former term may
suggest a selection process based on some special "fitness" or merit
in a moral sense, when in fact we are referring to the ability of a
species to reproduce in the conditions _at hand_, whether or however
one wishes to assess them from a moral or other viewpoint.

This does not mean that the natural processes of evolution are immoral
or contrary to the imperatives of human ethics -- some of us would say
ultimately the imperatives of a loving Creator -- but only that these
processes operate on a different level, like the processes of
radioactivity, which may be used to enhance our understanding of the
history of our solar system, or to unleash unparalleled evil.

However, I would caution that evolutionary hypotheses or explanations
should not be used as a replacement for human ethical judgment,
although they may inform this judgment.

For example, the concept of reproductive success might be somewhat
congenial to an explanation which St. Thomas Aquinas gives for the
formation of lasting marriages among humans: such stable unions
provide a nurturing environment for young offspring with a prolonged
period of vulnerability.

More generally, natural laws in this physical sense set parameters
within which the drama of human choice and history unfolds, but leave
that choice in the realm of ethics and conscience.

For example, one might argue that sustained same-sex partnerships
among humans, with or without "sexual activity" as narrowly defined,
might result in a range of "kin selection" benefits, so that even if
the domestic partners do not themselves participate in other,
heterosexual unions resulting in reproduction, they promote the
survival of the community itself through the other social roles the
partners may play.

While such hypotheses are of interest, they do not themselves address
such ethical and cultural and ultimately theological (for a person of
faith) values as love, mutual sharing, and diversity.

Of course, from a theistic perspective such as mine, one can see these
different possible levels of a loving relationship as a kind of
intricate counterpoint, one level of explanation or reality not
contradicting but harmonizing with another.

There is also a question of how much of a role "genetic drift" may
play -- one might say an artful indirection, from a certain human
point of view.

For example, the possible adaptive benefits of musical ability in
humans have been debated from a viewpoint of biological or
reproductive selection. Did musical abilities in some way promote the
biological survival of humans -- or were they more of an incidental
"byproduct" of the evolutionary process?

Whatever the answer, I would say that the beauty of music makes it a
gift most sacred and divine of the Creator, with a vital power in the
realm of human comradeship and solidarity, whether as an adaptation
for biological success or a grace bestowed through a benevolent and
bountiful "drift."

As Cusa's "learned ignorance" suggests, these are topics to be
approached with great humility and awe, and I deeply respect those who
may draw different conclusions.

My purpose here is simply to comment on some of the scientific
concepts, and to share one view the relationship between science and
theology.

May I express my deepest respect for Jeff Scott, John Chalmers, and
others who have shared their views on these topics.

Most appreciatively, in love and peace,

Margo

🔗mschulter <MSCHULTER@...>

[Dear Monz and others: after writing this and getting online to post it, I
checked new messages in metatuning, and found that you had mentioned
Giordano Bruno even while I was writing about him. What I'd like to
emphasize is that the characterization of Bruno by at least one writer of
the early 17th century as an "atheist" could be more a denunciation than
an accurate description of Bruno's philosophy, but reflects a kind of
prejudice to which Johnny has rightly called attention.]

Thank you, Johnny Reinhard, for some most thoughtful responses to my
posts, always respectful in presenting your views.

First, please let me confirm that I hold you in a spirit of great
respect, and also that you raise some vital issues which it is my
responsibility to acknowledge with gratitude and reply to with great
humility and circumspection.

Atheists and agnostics have indeed been underrepresented, or
unrepresented, in many statements about "a united community," and it
is my special responsibility to help correct this omission.

In the USA, the principle of separation of church and state was
intended by Founders such as Jefferson not only to exclude
establishment of a particular denomination, but to place religion
generally on a nonstate basis.

The "we" of a democratic community includes atheists and agnostics as
much as anyone else, and I must respond by your words by saying that
I have not sufficiently stressed this point in my comments here --
an especially important duty for those of us who happen to be theists
and are well aware of this kind of exclusion.

Thank you for the timely reminder!

What has stuck with me since childhood is that 1600 was the year in
which the philosopher Giordano Bruno was burned alive for "heresy,"
variously interpreted as atheism, pantheism, or possibly covert
"Lutheranism" (a synonym for many things in the Italy of that time).

That was the same year that Artusi published his famous condemnation
of "Modern Music" after the style of Monteverdi, an artistic
controversy in which no one was killed, to my knowledge.

To burn atheists or agnostics alive in 1600 (and there were others
around this time, whether or not Bruno would fit such a description),
or more politely to ignore them in 2001, represents a kind of
exclusion which a loving theist should be first to oppose.

Now we come to a very important question you raise which shows how
nonviolent people do not stand on a pure moral ground above compromise
or even "collateral damage": the issue of the death penalty, and of
nonviolent sanctions against it on a personal or international level.

To wage a war, even a war fought with nonviolent weapons of social and
economic force, is sometimes to apply a powerful kind of coercion as
well as to seek a transformation of attitudes: strikes and boycotts
are methods of exerting power as well as appeals to morality. They can
be used in a range of causes, including involuntary segregation of
minorities as well as their integration and equality.

Thus for those of us who reject the death penalty, it should not be a
matter of starving a population until they -- or their governors, who
may or may not reflect the views of larger segments of the public to
any given degree -- abolish it.

To favor sanctions is to favor the use of a potentially very dangerous
kind of weapon, as well as a possible tool for liberation with a
minimum of physical and moral harm: the goal should be to wield a
scalpel, not an axe. The sanctions directed against Iraq may be an
example of the latter, and they take place in the context of a policy
which does not fully address the human rights of Kurds and others in
the region who might provide a natural immunity against the excesses
of Saddam Hussein and possible Ba'athist successors, so to speak.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-1957, and some of the measures
taken in relation to South Africa during its apartheid period, may
suggest a more constructive and less destructive use of sanctions.
The struggles of organized labor in many countries provide other
examples.

To inflict death on many children through starvation or lack of
medicines is a different thing than the selective economic
dislocations and also moral embarrassment involved in a discriminating
use of the boycott weapon -- but still, some innocents will suffer.

There is a continuum here, ranging from the denial of basic
necessities of survival (which Gandhi opposed even while sometimes
advocating the boycott of Indian collaborators with the British) to
denial of weapons of mass destruction, or the technologies imminently
likely to result in their building.

The abolition of the death penalty also raises a point of
international responsibility which your remarks might suggest to me:
the sharing of costs for the long-term and secure imprisonment of
people convicted of crimes such as genocide or war offenses by the
world community as a whole, not only the often impoverished countries
where these crimes occur.

For example, if we urge the people of Rwanda not to execute even the
organizers of genocide, then the world community might fairly take on
some of the costs of imprisoning those criminals, or even provide
secure prisons for them in other countries. The world largely stood
by while the genocide happened, so it might fairly share some of the
cost of doing justice in a humane way.

Johnny, I also agree with you that captured terrorists are still
dangerous people -- as are some criminally insane people. With a
terrorist, of course, we are often concerned not so much about the
prisoner's own ability to use violence, but the ability of his/her
associates or organization to do so.

Here the wisdom of the world points to unavoidable dangers: an
imprisoned terrorist might escape, or provide the occasion for another
terrorist operation to demand her/his release; an executed terrorist
can serve as a martyr, inspiring more killings in reprisal and
providing an example for the recruitment of many more terrorists.

To choose life is not to choose absolute safety, but at least to
reject the methods of the terrorists themselves and keep certain moral
distinctions clear in this struggle, however waged.

Finally, I would like wholeheartedly to agree with a point you make
about Nanking and the Chinese and Japanese, and could apply to any of
these conflicts and atrocities.

In discussing these crimes, my purpose is not to promote further
recriminations or strife, but indeed to call for reconciliation based
on solemn knowledge of wrong and a commitment to peace and right.

There is a certain calculated risk even in mentioning these things
that people may take them as an occasion for seeking revenge, or
denying the humanity of a people rather than learning from their
mistakes (and yes, at some level, I regard even the most heinous and
calculated evil as a "mistake").

To reject revenge in a fragile world, however we might disagree on the
best and necessary means of protecting it against the forces of
destruction, is something in which I will gladly join hands with you,
polymicrotonally or otherwise.

In peace and love,

Margo

🔗mschulter <MSCHULTER@...>

Dear Mary,

Hello, there, and yes, I'm returning in this message to tuning and
polymeters and other pleasant things, with your dialogue with Jacky
providing an occasion.

Here I'll comment a bit on medieval European rhythmic techniques and
polymeters, inviting others (including yourself) to put it in a larger
context.

Jacky, you're more expert and adept in these techniques than I am, so
please feel free jump in at any point.

Around the late 13th century, in the epoch of a musician known as
Petrus de Cruce (maybe his compositions and similar ones date from
around 1280-1300), the basic triple rhythms that prevailed in composed
music were ornamented by divisions of the beat or breve, literally a
"short" note value, into groups of from three to seven equal
semibreves -- with as many as nine mentioned in the theory of the era
(actually Jacobus of Liege, writing to defend and celebrate the music
of his youth, in his _Speculum musicae_ or "Mirror of Music," maybe
around 1325).

Septuplets of seven equal semibreves are used in practice as well as
theory in late 13th-century music, and quite beautifully.

By the early 14th century, some "moderns" were seeking to define a new
musical and notational style based on a systematic ordering of smaller
rhythmic values into semibreves and yet shorter notes known as
"minims."

A breve might be divided in this system into either two or three
semibreves, and a semibreve into either two or three minims -- the
division into three being "perfect," and that into two, "imperfect."
Whatever the philosophical basis of this terms -- possibly theology,
or Aristotle's threefold scheme of beginning, middle, and end --
the moderns of what quickly became known as the Ars Nova or "New Art"
placed the divisions on essentially an equal basis in practice.

One form with some antecedents in the 13th century, but perfected in
the early 14th and practiced over the next hundred years or so, was
the isorhythmic motet based on a fine interweaving of two of Jacky's
dimensions: melody and rhythm, or _color_ and _talea_.

The melody of the foundation-voice, often known as the tenor because
it "held" the Gregorian chant or other melodic material around which
the piece was built, and sometimes of other voices also, was taken as
a _color_, repeated and reshaped as the music progressed (typically in
three or four voices).

At the same time, the tenor repeated a _talea_ or rhythmic pattern,
sometimes subject to diminution (repetition in smaller note values),
lending an accelerating quality and excitement to the music.

The patterns of _color_ and _talea_ would play against each other, so
that the same melodic theme would be repeated with different rhythmic
values. Of this kind of organization may be quite subtle, below the
sonorous surface of the often complex contrapuntal texture.

Sometimes polymeters occur, with a shift in meter in a part sometimes
indicated by coloration, the use of red notes (or sometimes blue notes
in sources later in the century or at the beginning of the next).

Also, the French style of this period, for example that of Philippe de
Vitry, introduced syncopation, which might be defined as displacing a
pattern by an inserted minim, for example. One might represent this in
a modern score by momentary barrings in an affected part of 5/8, 1/8,
3/8, etc.

By the late 14th century, composers had taken a special interest in
developing the most refined rhythmic techniques with a fine feeling
for melody and vertical progressions. The cadential logic is trinic
and Pythagorean, with unstable sonorities resolving to a complete
2:3:4 trine (e.g. D3-A3-D4) or fifth, etc. It is an open question
whether at least some localities in France and Italy where this _Ars
subtilior_ ("more subtle art") was favored may have leaned toward
schisma thirds (e.g. A3-Db4-E4 in place of a written A3-C#4-E4) for
some unstable sonorities.

While the verticality, as with less complex 14th-century styles, is
generally trinic, Mark Lindley has given an example of a piece from
Florence around 1380 (?) which appears to end on a major third with a
sharp. If this is actually what was intended -- and the Faenza Codex
of keyboard music about three decades later does have such closing
sonorities with thirds -- then the use of Pythagorean schisma thirds
(actually 8192:6561 diminished fourths) would provide ratios very
close to 5:4.

Personally, I improvise (however inexpertly) in this general kind of
style in a usual Pythagorean tuning with the bright and active thirds
and sixths, and the remarks of a theorist such as Prosdocimus in 1413
suggest that some musicians of that time shared this kind of taste.

However intoned, the _Ars subtilior_ or "Manneristic" era of the late
Gothic (not to be confused with the later Mannerism of the 16th and
early 17th centuries) has some beautiful music to offer with most
impressive rhythmic virtuosities.

While some writers around the mid-20th century focused on the
mathematical ingenuity and puzzlelike qualities of some of these
pieces, they might also be taken as a kind of written-out indication
of improvisational practices such as might now be called "rubato,"
with one voice maybe shifted a minim (often a quaver or eighth note in
a modern notation, the "lowest common denominator" of counting) out of
phase with the others.

Syncopation might involve the insert of a minim, or a set of two
minims, into a melody, then continuing with several usual measures of
2/4 or 6/8 or 3/4 or 9/8 or whatever, and then inserting a third minim
to bring the voice "back into phase" with the other parts. There are
clever ways that modern barring can be done to suggest such patterns,
although the original notation may be the best guide of all for those
who can read it (a skill I admire rather than possess).

Also, there are pieces with different voices in different regular
meters -- say 6/8 in the lower two parts, and 2/4 in the treble or
main melody of a song in French (here the treble is often the main
attraction, a "treble-dominated" style).

There are also meters, in effect, like 5/8 in one voice against 2/4 or
some other more familiar pattern in another, and divisions such as the
(3 + 2 + 3) found a song from the French-oriented Court of Cyprus
around 1400. It's a wonderful piece, a kind of rhythmic weightlessness
if one takes in the overall effect of the three voices, a trip into
orbit without the gravity or "local vertical" of a fixed meter for all
voices.

There are also proportions, sometimes given the same names as interval
ratios (as in some contemporary music this parallel is drawn), for
example 3:2 or sesquialtera ("again a half," the ratio for a pure
fifth) or 9:4. The first proportion means to sing three notes in the
time previously given to two, while the latter means nine notes in the
time of four, etc.

There's also the refinement of Baude Cordier, for example, of dividing
a 9/8 measure into two equal parts of 9/16 -- to use modern notation.

What I want to emphasize is that this music isn't just subtle, it
_sings_ -- an artist such as Jacob Senleches writes beautiful "jazz,"
complete with refined syncopations of a 14th-century kind and
sometimes naturalistic bird calls.

There's also a piece called _En Albion_ ("In England"), which I first
heard at around the age of 17, I guess -- exquisite, with some
wonderful cadences that gave me a pattern a part of much of my own
improvisations in a neo-medieval kind of style.

It's tempting to list my "Top 20," but for now I'll just say that lots
of this music in the best interpretations over the past 40 years or so
is available on CD's, and some on older records or cassettes which
might be harder to find. For a discography, please visit Todd McComb's
fine Early Music FAQ site:

http://www.medieval.org/emfaq/

There are lots of listings for the late 14th century, a period which
both Todd and I adore, and this recorded music may be one very
user-friendly introduction to what I'm describing very imperfectly
here in words.

Anyway, I hope that gives some idea.

In peace and love,

Margo

🔗mschulter <MSCHULTER@...>

Hello, everyone.

In confronting an evil such as the Taliban -- by which I mean the
Taliban as an organization, not the individual human being within it
-- I'd like to suggest that for "more understanding," we make a very
important distinction.

Failing to make it in either direction can cause lots of problems.

The Taliban as an organization is indeed a horrible evil, and thank
you, Johnny and Jacky and others, for providing us with documentation
on the kinds of human rights violations and oppression going on.

Even for those of us who may be acquainted with the general patterns
of repression and murder, these stories make it concrete, and we have
a responsibility as best we can to see how this tragedy is not some
abstraction, but a horrible slaughter that kills, tortures, and
terrorizes specific women and men and children.

In the 1980's, some of us were telling stories like this about the
regimes in El Salvador and Guatemala, or about the Contra attacks in
Nicaragua, and it's just as important now for the stories of the
people of Afghanistan to be told and heard.

In my view, we must at the same time consider that these crimes are
mainly a _group_ or _state_ phenomenon: people acting in organized
groups as they would likely _not_ act as individuals, or within the
kind of communities people in Afghanistan lived in pre-1979.

In other words, we have the horrible problem of humans acting most
inhumanely when joined in certain kinds of groups. Here I'm focusing
especially on the rank and file, conscripts or recruits who would not
normally be going around killing people, any more say than the young
Americans drawn into the war crimes committed in Vietnam in the
1960's.

Here's a musical analogy, if I may ask pardon for speaking of such a
beautiful art at the same time as such horrible acts. My purpose,
however, is to promote peace and concord -- "more understanding," as
the title of the thread puts it.

Suppose we play a chord including the note D which sounds horribly
dissonant in a given scale and timbre and style. We might say, "The
note D is here a horrible dissonance."

What we are actually saying is that this chord, when it includes D, is
a horrible dissonance -- actually, the _relationship_ formed between D
and other notes.

However, this does not mean that the note D, or its key on a keyboard
if that is the kind of instrument we are using, is inherently itself
"dissonant," and should be removed as "a noise rather than a note."
It does mean that we had better correct that chord -- assuming that
the dissonant effect is not what we want.

In another setting, D might form the sweetest consonance in connection
with a different set of tones. It depends on chord and context, not
the isolated nature of the note D in itself.

For "more understanding," I say that at least for the rank and file of
the Taliban, and some of the recruits to the alleged "terror network"
from other Islamic countries, they are potentially peaceful and loving
people unfortunately joined in the wrong chord -- or group.

To view these people as _evil in themselves_ is to confuse the nature
of the chord with the nature of the individual notes making it up.

Paul Erlich has said, similarly, that in Partchian analysis, a simple
two-voice interval is not otonal or utonal in itself, but these
properties rather belong to a sonority with three or more notes.

This is the point that both Jon and I have been trying to make: we
must strive to see that the members of the Taliban, _as individual
human beings_, are not inherently evil, but that group dynamics have
indeed resulted in the atrocities graphically and, I would say, quite
properly documented here.

This is half of my point: we should not confuse the evils of a group
such as the Taliban, or the U.S. armed forces in Vietnam, with the
inherent nature of individuals unfortunately committing the mandated
or freelance atrocities which the patterns of group behavior demand or
invite.

(This statement also goes for the Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan, by
the way, who did their part to devastate and brutalize the country.
Again, while those of us who live in the USA should take special care
to recognize wrongs close to home, there's no monopoly on evil, and
the USSR did its share and more when it comes to murder and
brutalization. Following Emma Goldman, an anarchist and human rights
advocate who championed the cause of some early Soviet dissidents in
the early 1920's, I would say that these crimes are all the more
detestable because committed in the name of socialism.)

Now we come to the other half of the problem: reasoning that because
the individuals in a group such as the Taliban are indeed human, the
group itself and its actions can't be all that bad, either. They are
that bad, and things that bad have happened all too frequently, with
the world often placidly looking on.

For "more understanding," I suggest that we include some descriptions
in this thread of public executions in Saudi Arabia, an "ally" of the
USA. The accounts I've heard sound much like the execution of a woman
carried out by the Taliban, and these killings are equally immoral.

The fallacy, "They're nice people on an individual level, therefore
they can't be involved in collective crimes against humanity," is a
very seductive one, and both Cold Warriors (or their post-1989
equivalents) and peace activists can get caught up in this error which
Gandhi might call a "Himalayan miscalculation." (He used the term, as
I recall, for his own decision to call a nonviolent campaign at a time
when the discipline of the people was not so strong, and some of them
resorted to violence.)

Sometimes the very "nice people" involved in atrocities are the ones
to confront and make known their own crimes. This happened in the USA
during the Winter Soldier investigations, when Vietnam veterans
conducted their own hearings and described some of the murders and
acts of sexual torture against women in which they had been
involved. I'd say that their crimes competed with those of the
Taliban, and these soldiers themselves were the first to recognize the
enormity of what they had done -- as best as a human can.

In part, it was therapy, and in part, it was a very political
statement in the best sense to end an immoral war and the atrocities
being committed in the same of "freedom."

At times, sadly, peace activists may act, with whatever good
intentions, in such a way as to highlight the humanity of people or
nations but to obscure the real crimes, even mass murder, being
committed by those people, rather than seeking to liberate both
victims and executioners from the cycle of terror.

For example, one prominent peace advocate went to Iran sometime around
1980, during the hostage crisis with the USA. He spoke words about the
achievements of Persian culture -- in themselves, fine and fitting --
but apparently did not make an issue of the murders of members of the
Baha'i Faith them going on, not to mention the executions of thousands
of other Iranians by "Revolutionary Islamic" tribunals.

What kinds of crimes against women were being committed in Iran at
that time? One provision of the law followed by the tribunals held
that a woman deemed a virgin could not be executed. Therefore, such a
woman would be subject to a ceremony of "marriage for one hour" to one
of her judges or executioners, who would remove the impediment to a
lawful execution. Such are the crimes of sexual assault and judicial
homicide which humans can commit against other humans.

To humanize the individual Iranians, even the members of the
government responsible for these crimes, was itself good -- to
humanize the crimes against humanity themselves was wrong, very
wrong.

One dynamic that might have played a role here is the tendency of some
peace activists to reason: "My first responsibility is to oppose the
unjust policies of my own government, so I shouldn't be too critical
in looking at the acts of its 'adversaries.'"

A problem with this approach for an activist from the USA during the
hostage crisis with Iran, for example, is that it tends to focus
_only_ on the issue of "freeing the American hostages," not on the
issue of saving the lives of the members of the peaceful Baha'i Faith
or stopping the judicially sanctioned sexual assaults and murders of
young women.

While sometimes it is peace activists who fail to see the evil
committed by individually good people, governments have often outdone
the peace movements in this -- sometimes while the peace movements
were struggling to get out the word for "more understanding" of the
situation at hand.

For example, during the early 1980's, it was the peace movements of
the world which called attention to the slaughter in El Salvador and
Guatemala by the "friends" of the USA, and a progressive Roman
Catholic Archbishop, Oscar Romero, who gave his life on 24 March 1980
so that others might have "more understanding" of the atrocities being
committed by security forces and death squads. He was shot down in his
own Cathedral after pleading in previous months that military aid from
the USA be discontinued so that more of his people should not be
killed.

During the last century, I would say, pacifists and dissenters for
human rights have often been among the first people, not the last, to
recognize the dangers of fascism, Bolshevism, or the death squad
aristocracies ruling in various parts of the world.

While debates about Hitler often focus on _how_ he might have been
resisted, violently or nonviolently, during the first years of his
Third Reich (say 1933-1936), we might wisely focus more on the basic
reality that by and large the community of governments did _not_
resist him at this point.

"More understanding," in my view, means that we understand both the
atrocities and how they are justified, and the individual humanity of
the people who behave so inhumanely given the wrong group dynamics.

Most appreciatively, in peace and love,

Margo

🔗mschulter <MSCHULTER@...>

Hello, there, Mary and Jacky and everyone.

A hocket or _hoquetus_, literally a "hiccup," is a medieval European
technique (also found in other world musics, I would guess) in which,
for example, one note of a melody sounds in a given voice, which then
rests or is "truncated" while another voice picks up the next note.

This could be done between two singers, maybe over a third slower
voice, or in an instrumental performance, which seems very likely for
some pieces described as hockets and making this technique a main
feature, between two instruments with contrasting timbres.

Johannes de Grocheio, around 1300, describes hocketing as kind of
"truncation" between voices, and Jacobus of Liege around 1325 notes
that in pieces featuring the hocketing style -- those described as
"hockets" -- the tempo is _citissima_, very fast.

The notes, as it were, "bounce" back and forth between the voices or
instruments, and a fast tempo might highlight this effect.

The idea of a truncation or "cutting up" of a melody, having its notes
alternating between two voices or instruments, does not necessarily
imply a specific rhythm. The late 13th-century hocket takes place in a
setting of fast triple meters, but the general technique could be
applied to a range of meters and patterns.

One very beautiful 13th-century variation on the hoquet is a
four-voice song with the tenor or foundation-voice moving in a
repeated melodic and rhythmic pattern; the middle two voices often
hocketing back and fourth, and the top voice carrying a lyric French
love song to which the others provide a most artful accompaniment.

Since this piece, available in two four-voice versions with different
rhythmic patterns, also appears in a three-part version without the
lyric upper voice of the French song version, the history may have
been that a Spaniard originally wrote the lower three parts as a
hocket piece, to which the fourth voice was later added.

In one version, the four-voice song has a very sweet and refined
quality, maybe like certain songs from the 1930's, while in the other,
is has more of a "swinging" feel.

Again, while the hocket can be a genre of piece, hocket technique
appears in other kinds of motets or part-writing.

The medieval motet is a very "information-intensive" form, often with
simultaneous text and commentaries, as it were.

For example, one piece has a lowest foundation-voice singing a simple
kind of love song; the middle voice elaborates a bit on this, in a
somewhat faster rhythm; and the top voice, with a more ornamented
pattern, gives us some fast-paced news about three students in Paris,
and how one of them is the lover of the woman on whom the lower two
voices focus.

There's also a famous motet where, above the slower foundation-voice,
the middle voice in Latin warn that clerics who commit "bigamy" should
blame themselves, not the Pope, for losing the privileges of clergy;
the top part, in French, celebrates the joys of Spring and its
invitation to love. Recently, in a book on a history of the English
Parliament, I saw a reference to a Papal decree of 1275 against
clerics who commit "spiritual bigamy," so that might suggest a rough
date for the piece, not unlikely, I'd say, in view of the style.

In listening to everything at once, of course, one can't (at least in
a single hearing) follow all of the texts at once, so one takes in the
general effect: the vertical concords and cadential progressions, the
rhythmic patterns, and some of the strands of melody.

In the 14th-century, while the Ars Nova or "New Art" results in lots
of changes, the motet and the hocketing technique continue, although
the specific form of a "hocket" piece seems to have regarded as a
tradition of the _Ars Antiqua_ or "Old Art" of the previous century
rather than a generally current form.

Interestingly, the great composer Guillaume de Machaut (c. 1300-1377)
wrote the _Hoquetus David_, a hocket placing an old form in a new
stylistic setting. It makes a fine instrumental piece, although at
least one modern scholar suggests that it might actually have been a
kind of test or exercise for singers.

Pythagorean intonation, the historical choice, seems to me ideal for
these pieces, although some 21st-century radical <grin> might try
tuning some of the sonorities with prominent minor sevenths and minor
thirds to 12:14:21 or 12:18:21. Personally, I'd rather follow
Pythagorean for this 14th-century gem, but improvise new music in a
similar style with the 7-based ratios (and also 9:7, 12:7, etc.).

Hocketing-type effects can also be heard in some of the _caccie_ or
"chase" songs of Italy in the 14th century -- the voices "chase" each
other in a kind of canon, often two such faster voices over a slower
third foundation line.

While the _caccia_ often deals with hunting scenes, other themes such
as fishing, fighting a fire (all too tragically timely), or more
philosophical kinds of texts occur. There are often sounds of horns,
cries, and other realistic effects, sometimes juxtaposed between the
active upper voices so as to give an impression of hocket.

Hocketing also occurs in some 20th-century orchestral pieces or the
like; it's a technique that can be applied in many kinds of settings.

Most appreciatively, in peace and love,

Margo

🔗John Starrett <jstarret@...>

🔗mschulter <MSCHULTER@...>

Welcome home, Monz, and thank you for that "Empire" post, something
which maybe I can respond to on my way mainly "back home" to matters
of music and tuning.

Certainly your experience of around 1980 speaks for itself, and the
sense of a collapsing "Empire" is something that has occurred to me
over the last few years also. Now the question is what it means, and
what to do about it if we can -- to transform a catastrophic
"collapse" into a gentle and liberating "devolution of power" which
makes us all more creative and more human.

Here I find it important, with either the Roman Empire or the kind of
_Pax Americana_ on which you seem to be focusing, not to romanticize
either the Empire or some of the "barbarians" who might be at least
equally cruel. "Neither Nero nor Attila" might be a good motto.

When I ask myself how the early 21st century might be different from
the early 5th century, I come up with one immediate answer, "We have
Amnesty International!"

What Amnesty International represents are _universal_ human values
that can transcend specific borders, geopolitical postures, or
political arrangements. In this transition, we may not be able to
predict the ends, but we can choose means likely to lead toward the
best rather than the worst future.

When I first read the "fat and lazy" metaphor, my response was
something like: "It's not just a question of 'keeping fit,' it's a
question of whether the Empire rested on justice or on conquest and
atrocities in the first place."

From _Carthago delenda est_ to _Echota delenda est_, the history of
either Empire isn't a pleasant one; both are filled with slavery and
slave revolts, and with massacres of Indigenous or other traditional
cultures.

At the same time, there _are_ the real elements of civic rights and
dignity, and a partial relaxation at least of patriarchy at some
points, and these _are_ worth preserving and carrying much, much,
further in a non-Imperial future.

What we need to do, I'd say, is to move in about one century from the
early 5th century to the 12th-century Renaissance of the Gothic --
minus the Viking raids, at least as violent expeditions, and of course
the impending emergence by the late 12th century of the Inquisition.

It's a century of _radical_ changes in energy use, moving the focus
from economic growth in the developed regions to economic stability
and shared development across the North-South divide, and smaller
political units.

We're talking about all-out nonviolent revolution, to beat not only
terrorism but also ecological collapse, which could be as deadly as
any bomb, even the nuclear suitcase or biological warfare version
which any uncomfortably large number of groups might get their hands
on.

This emphatically means defending the best of the Bill of Rights --
and also the best of Indigenous traditions and laws like the Law of
the Great Peace, which the U.S. Constitution borrowed from but
unfortunately often got wrong, e.g. the failure in 1787 to guarantee
the inclusion of women as a critical political check and balance.
Neil, thanks for reminding us of what's been going on here on this
Continent for the last 500 years, something often more clearly
recognized among Europeans than among newcomers here of non-Indigenous
backgrounds!

Now back to that "fat and lazy" metaphor, Monz, which I realize can
actually fit nicely if we apply it in the _moral_ realm, to getting
too relaxed about basic principles and commitments to human rights.

This arguably was happening in the Roman Republic, for example, during
the 2nd century B.C./B.C.E, when assassination became a method of
politics. The proscriptions of the 1st century B.C./B.C.E., as well as
the corrupting force of slavery, continued the moral decline away from
a Republic toward an Empire, with more conquests and crucifixions.

Maybe there's a kind of "natural political law" that empires built on
military force ultimately fall: "There's no perfect defense!"

If it wasn't September 11, it might have been a suitcase with the
necessary minimum amount of fissionable material to sustain an
uncontrolled chain reaction next year or decade, or some artificially
engineered plague the decade after that.

The Nonprofileration Treaty can be read for the inference that if
large nuclear powers keep thousands of these weapons, lots of smaller
states and nonstates may eventually get them too. Fortunately, the
first 56 years after the "first uses" weren't long enough for us to
see these results, but each decade the odds may get more favorable
(for terrorists) and less favorable (for attractive targets).

What it may really come down to is Martin Luther King's speech of
4 April 1967, exactly a year before his assassination. It was his
Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam, but says a great
deal about 2001 also.

One thing we don't want is a future where someone looking at these
things from a 25th-century perspective just might view one of those
terrorists with a nuclear or biological suitcase as a "freedom
fighter" desperately struggling to get justice for a South where
millions have needlessly died of starvation or at the hands of
repressive regimes supported in the name of a "New World Order."

The Taliban, as an organized force, is just as evil as the evidence
assembled by people here proves, but the really scary thing is that
the Taliban could be just the symptom of the moment of a much deeper
disease that Dr. King diagnosed 34 years ago, and died 33 years ago as
he struggled to fight, killed in the line of duty.

The enemy is crushing global poverty, oppression, and the dislocations
caused by superpower amorality in putting convenience above human
rights. We may get a Pol Pot who commits genocide in the name of Marx
and Rousseau, or an Osama bin Laden who sponsors mass murder in the
name of Islam, or some other deadly ideological virus we can't yet
predict.

What Amnesty International -- or more generally its values --
represents is a political and ethical immune system to defend us
against such viruses.

If people are living under reasonably decent conditions, and have
freedom of expression, and freedom of information and learning, then
they are much less likely to get caught up in deadly ideological
"mutations" of this kind.

There will still be some sociopaths, very likely, and such people will
have to be restrained and supervised in the most humane settings
possible, but movements like the Khmer Rouge or Taliban reflect
something other than this kind of individual sociopathy. They reflect
unjust conditions and political arrangements, as remote as some of the
"grievances" and doctrines of these terrorist groups may seem from the
underlying causes we must correct, or anticipate and prevent.

As an alternative to deadly collapse, political or ecological, some
kind of strengthened international law may be inevitable, but with its
enforcement constrained by the Geneva Conventions as well as by the
standards of Amnesty International.

It is time for us move from a "fat and lazy" approach to energy policy
-- "us" means those lucky enough to have the dilemma -- toward
sustainable sources. That means indeed a desperate and all-out war,
fought not with bombs but with solar arrays and fluorescent lights.
Over the past years I've taken to wearing a hat indoors to shade my
eyes from the apparently rather high "intensity" of overhead
fluoresecents, and whether others might have this reaction (I want to
encourage these energy-efficient lights!), I consider my cap as an
important weapon for peace.

Organized labor is another very powerful anti-terrorist weapon: if
people can collectively bargain about their own labor conditions, and
use the nonviolent weapons of strike and boycott if necessary, then
those suitcases may become less likely, and global justice more
likely.

The idea is to change an inevitable collapse into an uplifting
reconstruction on a more human scale. That means the best of the Bill
of Rights, the Haudenosaunee or "Longhouse" of the Six Nations known
as Iroquoian, the city-states of medieval Italy, and the lively
disputations of the University of Paris -- minus the executioners,
Imperial gladiatorial spectacles, or Inquisitions. These are just some
Turtle Island Indigenous or "Native American," European, and
Euro-American images -- and that women teaching a mosque in Baghdad in
the 13th century is another image among the many provided by cultures
around the world.

By the way, while I wrote about avoiding _military_ neo-Vikings,
cultural Vikings bringing a bit of creative chaos to the whole process
could be a great asset -- maybe Vikings bearing 37-limit music and
berserker-style guerrilla theater to various countries, through
traditional means of travel or through cyberspace.

Radical reconstruction liberating us all: that may be the agenda for
the 21st century, a journey "beyond empire to global community."

Most appreciatively, in peace and love -- and welcome back, Monz!

Margo

LONG -- Of "rational animals"

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