"Throughout the inhabited world, in all times and under every circumstance," writes Joseph Campbell, "the myths of man have flourished; and they have been the living inspiration of whatever else may have appeared out of the activities of the human body and mind. It would not be too much to say that myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestation." J. Campbell, The Hero With A Thousand Faces, 3 (1973).
Below is a poem on the myth of justice. This appears in the original edition of Leaves of Grass, published by the American poet Walt Whitman in 1855.
Great is Justice;
Justice is not settled by legislators and laws .... it is in the soul,
It cannot be varied by statutes any more than love or pride or the
attraction of gravity can,
It is immutable .. it does not depend on majorities .... majorities
or what not come at last before the same passionless and exact
tribunal.For Justice are the grand natural lawyers and perfect judges .... it
is in their souls,
It is well assorted .... they have not studied for nothing .... the
great includes the less,
They rule on the highest grounds .... they oversee all eras and
states and administrations,The perfect judge fears nothing .... he could go front to front
before God,
Before the perfect judge all shall stand back .... life and death shall
stand back .... heaven and hell shall stand back.Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, "Great Are the Myths"
Sequence 4: "Great is Justice" 142, 144-145 (Original ed. 1855)
(Penguin ed. 1959)
NOW COMES Janet Heller Howell, a history museum director from Amesbury, Massachusetts. She brings to the Internet her magnificent collection of images and quotations: About Justice. Here are the spiritual links between the universal ideals of freedom, liberty and justice, the foundations of democracy brought forward from Cicero to King.
There can be no universal freedom, liberty, and justice, however, nor any form of genuine democracy in a society guided by a philosophy of greed, as described by Milton Friedman, the sage of capitalism. Adding political structure to this economic philosophy, Political Action Committees (PACs) have become an increasingly significant force for what has been called "the politics of selfishness." They provide "a specializing influence that ignores the great need for integrative thinking and decision making," as reported by John N. Warfield, the great pioneer of integrative sciences, in a paper he wrote almost 25-years ago. Systems Planning for Environmental Education, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man And Cybernetics, Vol. SMC-9, No. 12, Dec 1979.
The last 25-years of research
and development involving integrative sciences, have given special attention to the advancement of meaningful group dialogue. This work has been marked by a revolutionary breakthrough in techniques that are very effective in dealing with complexity through idea generation and synthesis. Despite this breakthrough involving highly successful projects at major American institutions such as George Mason University, Ford Motor Company, and the US Congress, Professor Warfield reports, "the higher levels of power" in such organizations have "neglected" these successful developments. Powerful executives "feel threatened" by these techniques that can provide great benefits to the users, Warfield observes, resulting in bad decisions motivated either by "stupidity or illegal intent."J.N. Warfield, SYSTEMS MOVEMENT: Autobiographical Retrospectives, in International Journal of General Systems, Dec 2003, Vol. 32(6): pp. 525, 550-51, 555. There is good reason why powerful executives may feel threatened by Warfield's techniques. The motivation to exercise unilateral control over others is fundamental to the plan for existence of such persons, but power sharing is fundamental to meaningful dialogue, which Warfield's methods insure. This contradiction is incommensurable to the higher level power structures of public and private organizations. Indeed, a comparative outline of the theories of action that comprise the current situation under the capitalist ethic and a desirable future guided by democratic sustainability, discloses the incommensurable set of values that define the historical reality of capitalism versus democratic ideals. V. Schreibman, Knowledge Organization for the Betterment of Humankind (2d edition Sept 2002), Schedule 1, Setting for Decisions, explained in, V.Schreibman, A System of Social Interaction (Revised March 2, 1998).
From these conditions American society has emerged with a philosophy of greed adopted as the norm, competent human interaction and effective design are neglected by the higher level power structures, the ideal of democracy is locked in a death struggle with the realities of capitalism, and there is no rational standard-in-use to discriminate between competing moral conceptions. In this state of human existence, "morality, the conduct of life, becomes just a matter of preference."
The result is a society made up of individuals who have nothing transcendental (i.e. a common history, a common life project, a meta-narrative) to share except an interest in exploiting each other in the most effective and efficient way possible. Hernán López-Garay, Dialogue Among Civilizations: What For?, in INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL ON WORLD PEACE (March 2001): pp.15, 28.
In this society genuine group dialogue, which alone can provide a basis to meet the challenge of social evolution based on shared consciousness of the human community, has become nonessential, replaced by negotiation, which is concerned with the satisfaction of mere individual self-interest. The Information Age, and the rise of television with its manipulative infotainment, exploitive sex, and gratuitous violence have brought into view the strange disappearance of social capital and civic engagement in America (1995), as reported by Robert D. Putnam, Harvard Professor of International Affairs. This indicates a loss of "the features of social life--networks, norms, and trust--that enable participants to act together more effectively to pursue shared objectives." Scholars have long observed the tendency toward barbarism, disassociation and disintegration of society with the collapse of genuine culture. See e.g., José Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses, 72, 76 (W.W. Norton ed. 1932); Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind, 82, 109-116 (1987). The same period has brought the collapse of the socialist empire, and the triumph of capitalism, exploding privatization and globalism, with a New World Order based on "market fundamentalism" and the Return of the "Robber Baron" Era, producing a culture of corruption and leaving a trail of horror stories: deregulation run amok, accounting scandals, bank scandals, and corporate greed scandals. See e.g., Joseph E. Stiglitz, The Roaring Nineties 302-303 (2003); Arianna Huffington, Pigs at the Trough: How Corporate Greed and Political Corruption are Undermining America (2003); Kevin Phillips, Wealth and Democracy (2002).
These conditions are the very antithesis of the "virtuous and public-spirited citizenry" and "an undergirding civic community" that the ideals of democracy, freedom, liberty and justice are dependent upon, as documented by Professor Putnam, in his the widely acclaimed book, Making Democracy Work (1993). In this state it is not just the economic institutions themselves gone astray but distorted mind sets that turn the espousal of democracy into a thinly veiled cover for tyranny. Here are the doctrines of injustice -- the return of the ancient, barbaric wars of aggression, brigandage, extortion, and coercion that rule by arbitrary power, the model of master and slave in relations between attorney and client -- as confirmed by the increasingly illegitimate actions of American Presidents, the people's representatives in the US Congress, and the judges of the US Courts.
PRESENT BEHAVIOR I. War of Aggression
Fins-DI-05 I will never apologize for the United States of America, ever. I don't care what the facts are. Remarks of Presidential Candidate George Bush, Chicago, campaign stop, 27 Aug 1988. Anyone messing with my son, they're dead. Remarks of Barbara Bush, reacting to falling approval ratings and mounting criticism of the policies of the United States under the administration of her son, George W. Bush, regarding the US War of Aggression against Iraq, which have historically been shaped by that country's rich oil resources, interview on CNN TV, Larry King Live, 20 October 2003, reported by AOL News. D. Rennie, Bush gets tangled in row over Iraq victory banner (Telegraph co. uk, 30 Oct 2003). News story about the controversial efforts by US President George W. Bush to present the "victory" of millitary aggression over Iraq as the moral equivalent to right. I had seen the reality. The United States was up to its neck in torture and murder. Observations of Sister Dianna Ortiz, a Missionary with American Ursuline in Guatemala, in The Blindforld's Eyes (2002). A masterpiece that deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, according to Daniel Ellsberg, author, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers. |
HISTORICAL DOCTRINES OF INJUSTICE I. War of Aggression |
II. War by Other Means The Tree of Biospheric Destruction disclosing the imminent collapse of the biosphere of Planet Earth under the deadly doctrines of capitalist "market fundamentalism." Bush v. Gore (2000). Majority ruling handed down by the Supreme Court of the United States appointing George W. Bush as president of the United States, and overthrowing the exclusive present powers of citizens under Republican government to control the choice of their president. First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti (1978). The Court approved constitutional protection for campaign financing by corporations under the First Amendment and opened the door for wealthy corporations to grab control over the main channels of political discourse by cable, radio and television through an unregulated "soft-money" loophole that has led to, "a meltdown of the campaign finance system," according to a 1998 Senate Committee Report. This situation has severed the election of the United States Government from its root: wealth was specificly debated and rejected as the basis for organizing the American government, to secure the supreme role of the people as the vital core of the election of a national legislature and establishment of the Constitution, at the Constitutional Convention of 1787. William Peters, A More Perfect Union 32, 41-46 (1987). Twenty-five years after the Supreme Court deceded First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, with the nation engulfed by deeply disturbing examples of corruption or the appearance of corruption related to campaign contributions, the US Congress has now sought to plug the soft-money loophole, and regulate "electioneering communication" (i.e., cable, broadcast, or satellite communication), by approval of The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA), 116 Stat. 81, (a.k.a., the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Law), upheld in the main in McConnell v. Federal Election Commission, No. 02-1674, slip op. (Dec 10, 2003), 540 U.S. ___ (2003). Title I regulates the use of soft money by political parties, officeholders, and candidates; Title II primarily prohibits corporations and unions from using general treasury funds for communications that are intended to, or have the effect of, influencing federal election outcomes. The Court expressed the conviction that Congress has the power as a matter of self-protection, "to confine the ill-effects of aggregated wealth on our political system," with the caveat that they were "under no illusion that BCRA will be the last congressional statement on the matter." slip op. at 118. Internet Press Gallery Project (2000). FINS web directory describing the "outrageous, high-handed, unconstitutional" dictatorship exercised by the "media aristocracy," with the support of the US Courts, blocking access by nonprofit internet-based reporters, to the Congressional Press Galleries.
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II. War by Other Means |
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