Seeds of War, Seeds of Peace

RantWoman's inner compost heap seems to be a fertile ground for reflections on others' blog entries.



Here is Mark Wutka on seeds of war in our current political environment. RantWoman recommends clicking through the other topical links in this entry.

http://earofthesoul.blogspot.com/2010/08/politics-and-war.html



RantWoman's point: RantWoman shares concern about focussing too narrowly on specific political outcomes. HOWEVER, RantWoman has other riffs in mind too:

--At the same time as RantWoman was reading the piece above about everyone digging themselves into political trenches with no-mans-land in between, RantWoman was also reading a few different items about legislation supported by blind people to ensure that basic electronic devices are usable and that public transportation systems provide certain very minimal levels of service.

RantWoman has been thinking about how clearly articulating needs and engaging in a political process can enlarge the space for everyone. If the default processes could meed the needs of subpopulations, perhaps this would already be happening. However, when a process has space for everyone to articulate and discuss their needs, the total space for everyone expands by more than the increment of a certain subpopulation size. This is a long-winded way of saying legislation DOES sometimes do God's work.

--Seeds may be just seeds. Not every seed ever sprouts. Some seeds get ground up and baked into bread or pressed for oil or chopped up into quickbread. Even things that get planted do not always germinate. Some do not turn into full-scale war but might grow into tall trees that mess up a sidewalk or drip pine sap all over people's car windows, but that is still a big leap to full-scale war.



On a different note, here is a lovely item from FOR about different paths and conflict prevention:

http://forusa.org/resources/bimaldahal/reflection-conflict-prevention

It's kind of full of academic diplomat-speak, but worth the read anyway.