Suchergebnisse

"The first principle in the management of the guilty seems to me to be to treat them as men and women; which they were before they were guilty, and will be when they are no longer so; and which they are in the midst of it all. Their humanity is the principal thing about them; their guilt is a temporary state. The insane are first men, and secondarily diseased men; and in a due consideration of this order of things lies the main secret of the successful treatment of such. The drunkard is first a man and secondarily a man with a peculiar weakness. The convict is, in like manner, first a man, and then a sinner…; but when the keeper watches a hundred men herded together in virtue of the one common characteristic of their being criminals, the guilt becomes the prominent circumstance and there is an end of the brotherly faith in each, to which each must mainly owe his cure. This, in our human weakness, is the great evil attendant upon the good of collecting together sufferers under any particular physical or moral evil. Visitors are shy of the blind, the deaf and dumb, and insane, when they see them all together, while they would feel little or nothing of this shyness, if they met each sufferer in the bosom of his own family. In the one case, the infirmity, defying sympathy, is the prominent circumstance; in the other, not." Harriet Martineau.

The threat of violence, & the occasional outbreak of real violence (which gives the threat credibility), are essential elements in conflict resolution not only in internat'l, but also in nat'l communities. Individuals & groups, no less than nations, exploit the threat as an everyday matter. This fact induces flexibility & stability in democratic instit's & facilitates peaceful soc change. The argument of this essay is that the risk of violence is necessary & useful in preserving nat'l societies. Reason as understood by 18th cent Rationalists, 19th cent Postitivists, & 20th cent Pragmatists, plays an important role in conflict resolution as a means of gaugir the possibilities of potential violence in bargaining situations. But conflicts cannot be resolved as merely legalistic, academic, or ideological abstractions. The dimensions of commitment & potential violence constitute the real substratum which give the myths of consensus their reality. AA.

Héraclite d'Ephèse disait que la guerre est la mère du droit des gens. Rien n'est plus vrai: la guerre est, hélas, la première et la plus importante des relations entre les peuples. Sur 3.400 ans d'histoire connue, il n'y a eu que 250 ans de paix générale !La tendance à tuer et à détruire, la violence, la cruauté, sont des dérivés de l'ancestral instinct de conservation. On cherche à tuer ou à nuire pour avoir une chance de plus de subsister. Chez certains animaux, lorsque l'un d'eux est blessé, ses congénères s'acharnent sur lui et l'achèvent.

The ancient Greeks rarely fail us when we turn to them in a receptive but cautious spirit for conceptual clarity, and their treatment of the abstraction "power" and terms related to it is relevant and suggestive. In Greek, a root contained in several words associated with political power has two meanings. The verbarcheinmeans both "to rule" and "to start"; the nounarchémeans both "sovereignty" and "beginning." J. L. Myres, in his analysis of Greek political ideas, suggests:It is now clear that in compounds the prefixarkhé(as in our words "architect" and "archbishop") describes not merely the first or chief man of a company or organization, but the initiatory function of him who "starts" the others to work, and originates the design which they are to complete. And this appeal to Greek practical life confirms the view that what is essential in the notion ofarkhéis just this initiatory "push" or "drive" with which the gifted man imposes his will-and-pleasure on the rest.

One of the aspects of unconventional warfare is the use of violence applied concurrently to the weakening of the state & to the corruption of its social bases. 2 streams of historical development are discernible. The first of these involves the tactics of guerrilla war; it is illustrated by the pattern of opposition to Napoleon's armies by Spanish irregulars. The second is that of revolution utilizing violence as a principal tool for altering society; it is illustrated by the Arab revolt during WWI & by the Nazi take-over in Germany, which was one of the few examples of the successful subversion of an economically developed country. The union of these 2 streams is accomplished in the modern synthesis of Mao Tse-tung. That synthesis, applicable chiefly to nascent, underdeveloped nations with relatively open societies, uses violence in such a way as to make society sick before the state is overthrown, letting the proposed Communist alternative shine by comparison. This pattern achieves a remarkable internal harmony, employing the same violent means to weaken the state, to subvert it by corroding the habits essential in an open society, & to train the members of the authoritarian administration to be established after victory. AA.