[Newspoetry] "SEVEN PRECEPTS.."--call for contributions!

[Paul Kotheimer]

howdy NewsPoets:

i am working a little bit each day toward completing my "SEVEN PRECEPTS
FOR A BETTER MILLENIUM" piece, puzzling over the ideas, and consulting
Rousseau's SOCIAL CONTRACT and R. Nozick's ANARCHY, STATE, AND UTOPIA,
among other things.

i would LOVE for newspoets far and wide to make contributions,
suggestions, corrections, counter-arguments, and revisions on this piece
as it stands now.  INCLUDED BELOW is the full text of what i've written so
far. [Sketchy ideas to be fleshed out later are in brackets.]

NewsPoetry WebMaster Joe Futrelle has projected a mid-month date for
completion and posting of the whole paper.  i will be whittling away at
the piece throughout the days today and tomorrow, as well as during breaks
in late night recording sessions with the Prince Myshkins.  no need to
include the full text of this message in your reply, but feel free to clip
and return specific sentences you want to comment on.

thanks a gazillion,

paul kotheimer

 ))))))))))))))))

SEVEN PRECEPTS FOR A BETTER MILLENIUM

INTRODUCTION - BEYOND the ENLIGHTENMENT

Late-Eighteenth century European political philosophies posited the
hypothetical isolated individual as somehow most free, and based all
subsequent proposals regarding the social contract on the ideal of true
freedom for Man [sic] alone in nature.  Now, though, one cannot help but
see this starting point as a fallacy:  In practice, individual humans in
isolation, even in the most temperate and bounteous natural surroundings,
have difficulty staying alive.  They would be slaves to their own physical
limitations and to the limitations of the knowledge and resources at their
disposal.

Only a community of humans can be free, as we now understand the word
"free."

With this new postulate in mind, I propose the following precepts for a
better millenium.  That they bear a similarity in priorities to the ideals
behind the U. N. Declaration of Human Rights is a telling coincidence, and
one worth investigating.  The difference, however, is also telling:  The
U. N. Declaration of Human Rights does not make an explicit commitment to
non-violence.  Perhaps, if it did, and it could have been taken seriously
in 1948, a significant part of the past half-century would be changed for
the better.



Precept Number 1.:  FULL EQUALITY - The Enlightenment, that philosophical
fire in which were forged the democratic states of the present day, gives
us this single great idea:  People are, by birth and by their very
humanity, equal.  It is pernicious nonsense to believe that any person may
rightly be born either monarch or slave.

Yet history shows that the Enlightenment democracies have, systematically
and consistently, negated full equality for indigenous tribes, slaves,
peasants, women, illiterates, cultural minority groups, and the poor.
Stop-gap legislation in this country and elsewhere has resulted in a
prohibative litany of regardless-of's and on-the-basis-of's.  Such lists,
it seems, are always incomplete.--Not to mention the fact that hereditary
aristocracies on the one hand and mass enslavements on the other, both de
facto and de jure, still persist.

For these reasons, communities and individuals must demand that
governments recognize the absolute equality of all persons, period.  


Precept Number 2: NON-VIOLENCE - Violence (defined as "the use of physical
force to injure or abuse" others) and the threat of violence makes utter
nonsense out of any ethical form of government.  The use of violence
subverts any idea of human or civil rights.  Incarceration and grievous
economic inequities are both founded upon the threat of imminent violence.
Every community that wants a true democracy (and beyond) must, first and
foremost, be vigilant against the use of violence (on the part of usurpers
of power) and the fear of violence (on the part of their victims).  

Any other system--political or philosophical--is insane.     

Precept Number 3:  CONSENT AND CONSENSUS - Various Enlightenment
treatises, including the American Declaration of Independence, make
frequent mention of "the consent of the governed."  Electoral politics and
majority rule subvert at all times a sizable minority opinion, and
frequently contradict the opinion of the majority itself.  The marshalling
of the resources of 100 per cent of a nation, or province, or
municipality, on the basis of decisions made by a tiny fraction of the
population (i.e., elected officials) is, far too frequently, a gross
distortion of the political will.  

At the time the current nation-states were being revolutionized into
representative democracies, it was difficult to tally even a hundred
thousand votes from a few hundred miles away.  Present-day technology
makes it possible to tally a hundred million votes in a matter of seconds
and to communicate the results instantaneously to and from anywhere on the
planet.  Furthermore, it is now possible to collect, collate, and
communicate the concerns, objections, and proposals of individual citizens
on a nationwide scale and on a daily basis.  True democracy demands that
communities implement such consensus-gathering systems, not just for the
sake of opinion polling, but as actual direct-action legislative tools.

Precept Number 4:  GUARANTEED SUBSISTENCE - In our view, any system of
ideas which claims that certain children deserve to starve is not moral
and not sane.  Allowing this, it follows that the violence necessary to
maintain economic inequality becomes most evident wherever infants starve.
A community which prioritized guaranteed sustenance, for children first
and foremost, would require less and less coercion, fear, abuse, and
hardship, not to mention family strife and mental anguish.

Precept Number 5:  HEALTH AND LONGEVITY - The human will is manipulated by
fear.  A will, thus manipulated, is not free.  Fear of pain due to disease
is as powerful a coercive force as the fear of being beaten, shot,
stabbed, etc.  It is, in fact, the same coercive force.

If we posit that human lives are equally valuable--if we are "dedicated to
the proposition that all...are created equal," then we subvert our own
intentions when we subvert that proposition by means of economic systems
which make access to adequate health care a matter of course for a small
minority while the same access remains an impossibility for many. 

[not just proactive but preventative on a regional scale--e.g. unhealthy
workplaces and waste disposal practices must go...] 

Precept Number 6:  EDUCATION -  Once the lives and health of individual
members are provided for, human communities can best guarantee survival,
sustainability, and prosperity through the preservation and increase of
their collective knowledge.  That full democracy depends on equal access
to educational resources for all members of a community seems a truism:
No one can make decisions without an understanding of origins, causality,
desirability.  

[again:  not just proactive, but preventative on a regional scale--e.g.
counter-educational media must go...]

Precept Number 7:  CULTURAL ENRICHMENT -

[1.  cultural enrichment = suicide prevention--makes life liveable]
[2.  imagine arts which can be made under conditions wherein the previous
6 precepts are met!]

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