Requiem for our repressive times

Myanmar. Georgia. Venezuela. Pakistan.

According to conventional wisdom, the force used in each situations - the crackdowns by governments and the violence on the part of some protesters - is what, indeed, makes the world-go-round.

If it weren't for these shows of force, goes that powerful, inevitable, futile-to-resist insight, there would be none of the peace, freedom, democracy, and reasoned thought that you and I take for granted.

Christ, Buddha, Ghandi, King, Tutu, Muhammad Yunus, and the Dalai Lama. These are kind-hearted, soft-headed fools who do not nearly understand well enough the power of force, the power of aggression, the power of raw power, or even its softer forms, to shape the world in its most genuinely and powerful liberal democratic mold. Thank you, you kindly old fools, goes the contemporary political calculation, but now real men must do the dirty work of democracy.

Men like Malcolm X and Bull Connor, Subhas Chandra Bose and Brigadier Reginald Dyer, Myanmar's supreme leader General Than Shwe, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, Pakistan's General Pervez Musharraf, and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. These are the beacons of progress in the world. Their use of force demonstrates just what can be done when enough power is brought to bear on a recalcitrant people. Soft power. Hard power. Whatever power is needed to make people do what you want. That is how progress makes its way through this stubbornly foolish world unawares of the beneficence of Those Who Know Better and their forceful ways.

So goes the conventional wisdom. They would not claim this mantle. It would make their claim too obvious and their mistakes of judgment too public. But this is what they claim, whether they take responsibility for that claim or not.

And the world spins around that logic like a serpent following its own mating call, its own Siren hiss, until we face more honestly the consequences of that claim.

And so the world spins and spins into oblivion until we take responsibility for its spin. Which we will. Because the world will continue to spin out of control until we do.

There is no world where force or aggression replaces reason or supplants it with wiser and tougher leadership. There is the possibility of a world where force and aggression are better guided by reason. But that is a world led by reason, not by force. And the only way to know what reason might offer in the way of the wiser use of force is to engage without force, as much as possible, since force obstructs reason. Power, the ability to manipulate others for our own ends or even the ends of others, undermines and subverts reason, as a rule, and so should be avoided as a rule, to avoid suppressing, and thus failing to resolve, the quiet but still present conflicts that animate our lives.

This is a fact of a life, not a flight of fancy. And, hence, there are only two ways forward. Ever escalating aggression and the consequences that comes with it. Or a presumption against aggression, as much as possible, but not as an absolute, and a preference for engaged thought and discussion that might more genuinely resolve problems through greater understanding and reason rather than the mindless menace of ever escalating aggression.

If we are to find our way out of so many of our current predicaments, the least possible necessary aggression, and no aggression at all, when possible, should be engaged, as a rule, to avoid the escalating conflicts that can be resolved by reason, and, when they can, will only be resolved by reason. Force and aggression, as much as is reasonably and realistically possible, should only be used when reason is not an option, when aggression and danger are imminent, and when no other alternatives are available. They should not be avoided as an absolute. But, then again, Ghandi, King, and Tutu, at least, never said they should. They just chose wiser paths amid the alternatives.

Or so I say.

Alas, the conventional wisdom says otherwise. And such wisdom has led us into the all-too-wise and unchallengeably thankful path of forceful, aggressive, and repressive times that we find ourselves in, today. With all this wisdom and its fortunate consequences, one would think that the liberal democratic mood would be cheerier and more hopeful.

But something is missing.

Perhaps the reality of a repressive spirit and time does not live up to the fantasy of undaunted safety, peace, and resolution that gave it birth.

Perhaps there is still more for us to learn.

Perhaps there is still a lot more for us to learn.