We keep wondering: ‘Why do they hate us?'
Well, maybe some people are mad because we are doing things
that we would regard as unjustified and heinous acts of war
if anyone dared to do them to us.
— Stephen M. Walt in Foreign Policy magazine

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money
on military defense than on programs of social uplift
is approaching spiritual doom.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.

As noted in Empathy Note #1, we live in a world where smaller and smaller groups have access to more and more destructive capability. This technology-driven danger presents us with an odd transformational imperative in which proactive love, trust and caring for each other have become more practical – I repeat: practical – than our usual strategies for self-protection.

Imperial power

Self-protection at the national level usually goes by two names: “defense” and “security”. Unfortunately, those two words have often been used as PR cover for policies that looks more like empire – the use of military, diplomatic, and economic force (informed by surveillance and supported by educational and cultural dominance) to make sure that other peoples do what the power center wants them to do.

Continue reading “Tom Atlee: Real Security From Empathy Not Empire”