Wednesday, October 15, 2008

A Self regulating human community

A Self regulating human community

There are few interesting quotes from “The Way Out of This Mess Is the Way of Mahatma Gandhi” by Jeff Knaebel. The article is one in itself to direct younger generation to learn to live.

Liberty is the absence of coercion of a human being by any other human being. To have liberty means to be free without modification or qualification so far as social relationships are concerned. This is apparent when you consider the alternatives for any one social act. There are two possibilities: (1) you determine what you shall do; (2) you are prohibited from determining what you shall do. The second means that some other person or persons will decide what you shall do, and force you to do it. This defines slavery rather than liberty”.

Stop trying to control.
Let go of fixed plans and concepts,
and the world will govern itself.
The more prohibitions you have,
the less virtuous people will be.
The more weapons you have,
the less secure people will be.
The more subsidies you have
the less self-reliant people will be.
Let go of the law,
and people become honest.
Let go of economics,
and people become prosperous.
Let go of religion,
and people become serene.
Let go of all desire for the common good,
and the good becomes common as grass.

~ Tao Te Ching

“Edmund Burke said in 1756, as did Gandhi in our time, "Happiness in the long run rests on truth alone, and that truth is the natural law of human activity and human relations.

He goes on to say that States violate the Law of Nature. In a nearly perfect match of the earlier quote of Gandhi, he says that injustice is grounded in the very nature of the State itself, because the State is necessarily supported by violence.

"To prove that these sorts of political societies are a violation of nature and a constraint upon the human mind, one need only look upon the instruments of violence which are everywhere used to support them. Review the dungeons, whips, chains, racks, gibbets with which every society is abundantly stored …. I acknowledge indeed, the necessity of such a proceeding in such institutions; but I must have a very mean opinion of institutions where such proceedings are necessary." (Works, 1900)”. 

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