[Peace-discuss] festival of trumpets

[E. Wayne Johnson]

(from Tolstoy's War and Peace, 2nd epilogue-)

What force moves the nations?...

A locomotive is moving. Someone asks: "What moves it?"...

The only conception that can explain the movement of the locomotive is 
that of a force commensurate with the movement observed.

The only conception that can explain the movement of the peoples is that 
of some force commensurate with the whole movement of the peoples...

...In dealing with humanity's inquiry, the science of history up to now 
is like money in circulation- paper money and coin. The biographies and 
special national histories are like paper money. They can be used and 
can circulate and fulfill their purpose without harm to anyone and even 
advantageously, as long as no one asks what is the security behind them. 
You need only forget to ask how the will of heroes produces events, and 
such histories as Thiers' will be interesting and instructive and may 
perhaps even possess a tinge of poetry. But just as doubts of the real 
value of paper money arise either because, being easy to make, too much 
of it gets made or because people try to exchange it for gold, so also 
doubts concerning the real value of such histories arise either because 
too many of them are written or because in his simplicity of heart 
someone inquires: by what force did Napoleon do this?- that is, wants to 
exchange the current paper money for the real gold of actual 
comprehension...

...Speaking of the interaction of heat and electricity and of atoms, we 
cannot say why this occurs, and we say that it is so because it is 
inconceivable otherwise, because it must be so and that it is a law. The 
same applies to historical events. Why war and revolution occur we do 
not know. We only know that to produce the one or the other action, 
people combine in a certain formation in which they all take part, and 
we say that this is so because it is unthinkable otherwise, or in other 
words that it is a law...

...As with astronomy the difficulty of recognizing the motion of the 
earth lay in abandoning the immediate sensation of the earth's fixity 
and of the motion of the planets, so in history the difficulty of 
recognizing the subjection of personality to the laws of space, time, 
and cause lies in renouncing the direct feeling of the independence of 
one's own personality. But as in astronomy the new view said: "It is 
true that we do not feel the movement of the earth, but by admitting its 
immobility we arrive at absurdity, while by admitting its motion (which 
we do not feel) we arrive at laws," so also in history the new view 
says: "It is true that we are not conscious of our dependence, but by 
admitting our free will we arrive at absurdity, while by admitting our 
dependence on the external world, on time, and on cause, we arrive at laws."

In the first case it was necessary to renounce the consciousness of an 
unreal immobility in space and to recognize a motion we did not feel; in 
the present case it is similarly necessary to renounce a freedom that 
does not exist, and to recognize a dependence of which we are not conscious.


E. Wayne Johnson wrote:
> U.S. European Command has deployed to Israel a high-powered X-band 
> radar and the supporting people
> and equipment needed for coordinated defense against Iranian missile 
> attack,
> marking the first permanent U.S. military presence on Israeli soil.
>
> http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/09/defense_xband_092608/
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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