Evolution not Revolution
When you hear about wars and murders, gang warfare, atrocities, the threat of nuclear annihilation which still hangs over us all, it can be pretty depressing. As can the unfair distribution of wealth throughout the world, with millions dying of starvation whilst most of the world’s wealth is in the hands of the few.
It seems there is no spiritual progress for humanity, until you look back into history and see how much worse things were then. Read The Bible or some other ancient text, and you’ll see what cruelties were enacted upon completely innocent people, sometimes, if what we read there is true, sanctioned by people like Moses. Instructing the Israelites to rape and kill innocent people, including children. There’s the crucifixion of Christ and others, a common form of torture and execution at one time.
We come to the the Middle Ages and the Inquisition, with more terrible tortures, people burned alive, or hung, drawn and quartered. Stoning to death was also sanctioned in The Bible, in The Koran, etc. It still goes on today in some Islamic countries.
Very, very gradually we have become more civilized, though horrors and atrocities still occur. While we and other countries threaten millions with nuclear weapons we cannot claim to be really civilized. When we bomb innocent civilians, and teach young men to kill each other just because they are born in different countries, we can’t claim to be really civilized either.
On the other hand, outside of war situations and hoping the nuclear weapons will never be used again and will eventually be abolished, we have made slow progress. Whilst various forms of torture are still practised behind closed doors it is no longer acceptable for any nation to admit it happens, and things like burning witches alive, etc. cannot be decreed by courts of law. Indeed capital punishment has been abolished in many countries and in many states of the U.S.. Even in those states which still keep it, at least the gas chamber and electric chair are slowly being retired in favor of the lethal injection. Progress in human rights and a better world is painfully slow. It is more advanced in some countries and cultures than in others.
Lenin once wrote about progress being ‘Two steps forward, one step back’, and that certainly describes his revolution. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels showed how the world’s workers were exploited in the era of capitalism, which followed on from feudalism, and pointed the way forward to a better world under Socialism and ultimately the utopia of Communism. What happened in the Soviet Union and the other Socialist countries showed the limitations of the revolutionary method and the so-called ‘Dictatorship of the Proletariat’, which turned into a dictatorship of a new privileged bureaucratic class. I’ve written about why this occurred in previous blogs, but the point I want to make here is that in the 20th Century there was a real attempt to build a utopian society, and while this was never achieved, the basis of a fairer society was established. All the Socialist countries had good public services, subsidized essentials, good public transport systems, good education, good health services, full employment, security in old age, but the privileged elite which had infiltrated the organs of power lived in luxury compared to the ordinary citizens. Unfortunately in the years 1989-1991 all the good things this imperfect Socialism had achieved were swept away, and many of the corrupt politicians and bureaucrats who had exploited the people were kept on. More like one step forward, two steps back in that case!
Nevertheless some of Marx’s and Engels’ principles have been followed elsewhere. Here in Britain, immediately after WWII, we had a wave of Socialist measures including the setting up of the Welfare State including the National Health Service, following Marx’s formula for Communist society: ‘from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs’, since these things were paid for by taxation in some form or other, but were free to those who needed them most. Unfortunately the post-War Labour government’s achievements have also been slowly whittled away by subsequent administrations, but here and in many other countries free medical and hospital services are still available.
Of course there was the terrible 20th Century slaughter of two world wars in which millions of innocent civilians and conscripted soldiers died, and the Nazi Holocaust. It is said that this world is where we learn lessons, and that is why progress is so slow because we have to learn the hard way not to repeat these terrible things.
I am, and always have been, an optimist. I always hope for a better world, and believe a new generation will find a way to gradually bring it about. I also believe the mistakes of the past are valuable lessons for the future, so any 21st Century Socialism must avoid, for instance, the one-Party state or one-Party dominated coalition if a corrupt new bureaucatic ruling class is not to emerge again and limit progress towards the Communist ideal, if indeed that can ever be achieved. I have very strong doubts about that, since it involves the withering away of the State itself so places enormous responsibilities on individual citizens to act collectively in a self-governing society without money, police, armed forces, etc. I would be satisfied if world wide Socialism was established with no privileged ruling elite, but even that seems a very long way off, though now Latin America seems to be leading the way.
However building a better, fairer world based purely on materialism, or dialectical materialism, will never work. My friend Victor Zammit has written about dialectical spiritualism. We must all become aware that we survive death, and that there is a law of cause and effect, also known as karma. What we sow surely we will reap, nobody gets away with anything. Once humanity becomes convinced by the overwhelming evidence of the true nature of the afterlife, now all over the Internet but suppressed by much of the media, by orthodox science and orthodox organized religion, then much more rapid progress will be made to a fairer society.
Medical advances mean resuscitation of people who once would have died has greatly increased the prevalence of NDEs (Near Death Experiences), and these prove there is an afterlife, that our minds are separate from our physical bodies, and the trauma of the Life Review shows that we are all connected, and that our actions and their consequences will be felt by us, whether good or bad. There truly is no Heaven and no Hell, these are gross simplications of organized religion. There are endless spheres, dimensions or planes and we gravitate after this life to be with people much like ourselves, so you can imagine where people like Hitler and other cold-blooded murderers ended up! Not in very pleasant places, but there is the possibility of progress and spiritual development for all when they tire of being treated as badly as they treat others.
Meanwhile, I also firmly believe based on overwhelming evidence, an Inter-Galactic civilization closely observes us, as they have done for centuries but with increasing interest since the development of nuclear weapons, to await the time we have put our wars and national rivalries behind us, and are ready to join the civilized Inter-Galactic community. UFOs are real, and it may be thanks to them and Spirit forces also watching over us that we haven’t destroyed the world already.
I’ll give just two practical instances:
UFOs over the USA on at least one occasion neutralized ICBMs (InterContinental Ballistic Missiles) armed with nuclear warheads in their silos.
On a Soviet nuclear submarine during the 1962 Cuba crisis, one officer refused to agree to push the nuclear button which would almost certainly have started a nuclear World War III. Three officers had to agree, and the other two were ready to push the button. Spirit acted on this third officer to save the Earth.
How many other times have Spirit and/or extra-terrestials acted to save our planet? Now it is time we got our act together and started to save it ourselves, and built a better, fairer, more humane and environmentally friendly society. A less materialist one where not everyone has to own even one car polluting the atmosphere and clogging up the roads, but a society which puts the community and the environment first. You can call it what you like – a Socialist society, a Green one, or simply a society based on spiritual and humanist values instead of purely materialist ones based on greed.
We all agree I’m sure that in the past there were atrocities, genocide/s and extreme cruelty against mankind. Compare the existing life in the twenty first century: overall, are people better off generally than they were some three hundred years ago – and before that? Whilst we do have problems, we can say we made huge progress in 300 years. But I do believe that there are the forces of darkness who want to control everything – including our minds and hearts. And there are the forces of the light – to help continue to evolve. We can see these forces at work everywhere. Our role then is to help all people to experience an ‘awakening’ to what is really going on – to identify where greed, and who the cruelty initiators are – and to actively become part of the forces of the light – where we are guaranteed – that we are – eventually – on the winning side.
July 15th, 2013 at 7:47 amAs always, Tony, a well thought out and excellently executed article.
I agree with all you say here but do have a thought to add.
As to your title: It seems to me that revolutions have added somewhat to the mix of the slow evolution of mankind. This realm is the realm of choice and duality. It is as a classroom to hone sensibilities and learn which choices create “heaven or hell”. When there is a regime, a set of laws, or other things which would fetter or deny segments of humanity then the choice of people to not submit to these things is often termed a revolution. Some revolutions are not violent but unfortunately many turn that way for the side opposing the choice makers often make sure it becomes violent. (It is why the concept of Agent Provocateurs was born.) AS well pent up angers and frustrations will boil up out of the choice makers themselves and they lose their cool and set human evolution back a few hundred years.
When we as a people choose something other than the current status quo or enforced regime or paradigm of thought, etc…it is revolution. We are choosing a revolutionary new ‘something’. When I chose to “revolt” against the religious background I was raised in it was not well received by friends and family. While it did not descend into physical violence it was at times full of violent discussions and attempts at forms of coercion. But I had to revolt to the religious background in order to evolve spiritually.
Revolution is therefore, in my opinion, always going to be part of the evolution package. Hopefully mankind will move farther away from the violent kind but to evolve we must revolt against many things that once was and still are.
Note too that the word revolution has the word evolution built right in!
July 15th, 2013 at 1:53 pmI should have distinguished between violent and non-violent revolution. Too often the methods used to violently overthrow an existing regime, are carried on after the revolution to defeat the remnants of the former regime.
An oppressive dictatorship often follows which targets not just those who would seek to restore the previous regime, but anyone with ideals. Thus in Stalin’s Soviet Union many of the victims of his purges were the original Bolshevik idealists. All Communist Party factions and other Socialist parties were banned by the young Soviet regime, for fear they harbored those who sought to restore the old order.
Those who survived the purges were the opportunists and careerists who joined the ruling CPSU for purely selfish reasons. These people had no principles, so would sway the way the wind was blowing. If Stalin said black was black one day, and then said it was white the next day, they readily agreed.
Violent revolution rarely achieves its original objectives, but often leads to yet another oppressive regime and a new ruling class.
There are exceptions, for instance the revolution which brought about the USA led to a relatively democratic state of affairs compared to being ruled by the British monarch as part of their empire.
However the French revolutions were very bloody, with women knitting as bourgeois heads were guillotined. Terror reigned for many years.
There are alternatives to violent revolution, such as the methods used by Mahatma Gandhi, Sir Bertrand Russell and many others. The revolutionary changes may take longer to achieve, but they can be much more effective.
The trade union movement around the world can exercise its power very effectively if it is united and organized. As Pete Seeger sings, ‘without the workers’ labor not a single wheel can turn’. This remains true even in the age of the microchip, for the stored labor power of the workers by hand and by brain is incorporated in the microchip. The cooperation of the labor force is required for any regime to function, so the workers have enormous potential power in their hands for non-violent revolutionary change.
The key factor in bringing about evolutionary or revolutionary change is unity, self-discipline and organization. Great changes have been brought about by non-violent methods, such as universal suffrage in the UK.
July 15th, 2013 at 9:50 pm