Reply #23: I'm a pacifist in process. [View All]

By choice, not by inclination. Since I already know how to fight, I think my lesson is to learn how to cooperate. How to achieve goals without aggression. So I've been working on it for decades. I check my responses and reactions to events, and I feel discouraged, because I want to rage against them. And then I look back over the years, and I realize that I have made tremendous progress. The process continues.

There is a man I have tremendous care and respect for; an elderly quaker gentleman from the east coast who has been out there working for peace since GWB first decided to head to the middle east. Just another chapter in a life of working for peace for him. He sent me some pics of him, and his group, demonstrating in front of a U.S. nuclear weapons facility last winter, with signs saying "Weapons of mass distruction found."

The pragmatists get many things done. The idealists create the conditions that lead to fundamental change for good. Both are necessary. Be a proud idealist, and keep caring about people and the world, John. Maybe, in my final years, I'll be voting for you to bring hope and change where it's needed.