Dear Leo:Here is once more my answer for the text book question, as far as the
psychological sphere is concerned. Without the conversion of the authoritarian
or the fascist personality into a democratic character, there will be no true
peace beyond that of Yalta. Leibniz, Kant, Hegel,Gandhi, Martin Luther King,
etc. were democratic personalities and true peacemakers.Adolf Hitler was an
extreme authoritarian character and a catastrophic war maker: he marched with 4
million authoritarian individuals from all European nations, who are Nato
today, into Russia and killed 26 million Russians and 6 million Jews. The
authoritarian personality has for its main character trait an overwhelming
death instinct and drive, directed against others and himself. Therefore the
authoritarian characters and movements must never be allowed to come to
power.In Solidarity, your Rudi from the House of Peace
From Authoritarian to Democratic Character
By
Rudolf J Siebert
Professor Emeritus in Comparative Religion
When in the past in a particular, positive religion the children were going
decorated and dressed up togeather with their parents, to the worship, and
participated in the liturgical functions, and had their own business in them,
and thus in any case learned the prayers and heared and saw the
reprensentations and images of the religious community, the people, and put
themselves into them, and accepted them in the same immediate mode, as well as
the same kind to clothing themselves, and the customs and the morals thus
reproduced themselves, then this whole process was the natural authority.(5)
Its power was the greatest in the spheres of the subjective, objective and
absolute spirit. The individual may be conceited about his or her independence,
he or she could not fly over this spirit, the natural authority, because it was
the substantial, his or her spiritulity itself. First of all, this natural
authority was completely impartial, unprejudiced and uninhibited and stood
immediately solidly, strong, and sturdy, and soundly in the people, the
nation,without prohibition or ban of the opposite, the principle of subjective
freedom, or free subjectivty, or interiority, or secular enlightenment, or
democracy. Under the natural authority the individuals were neither free nor
unfree, since there was no contrast of reflection, of critical understanding
and of subjective thinking present at all yet. Modern people say, that the
older nations have brlieved this or that religious content.The nations
themselves did not call it believing,in so far as this believing or faith
contained a contrast in itself. The Christian believing or faith may be unique
to Christianity as theReligion of Freedom. On the Protestant Left, the
Anabaptists, or Baptists, rejected the baptism of children precisely out of
opposition to the former Catholic natural authority. There existed , however,
in the history of religions different forms of believing, different positive
religions, who could come in collision with each other. As far as this meeting
of positive religion was concerned, it could happen on the ground of the
representation and of the reflection and of critical understanding, and the
defense, or apologetics could be based on reasons and prooves for the truth: as
e.g. the after the bourgeois enlightenment almost forgotten cosmological, or
teleological, or ontological prooves for the exisence of God. But the coming
together of the nations could also take the form, that they forced other
nations to be oboediant, and adapt to their own faith. Thus, the faith turned
into forcing, authoritarian state power. This happened partially in the state
itself, and partially also toward the outside, the other states. This collision
caused innumerable religious wars: e.g. the wars of the Hebrews against all the
other nations living in Canaan or Palestine, the battles among the Indians
between the worshipers of Schiva and Wishnu, the wars between Catholics and
Protestants in Christianity, also the heresy courts, the Holy Inquisition,
which invented waterboarding and ibherited it to the SS and the CIA, the wars
of the Muslims. It was the honor of God, for which the believers fought in such
collisions, that God would be recognized in the consciosuness and that the
truth of the nation would come to recognition. Against such compulsion and
coercian arose the modern principle of sujective freedom or free subjectivity,
the freedom of faith in general, of democracy.This freedom of religion could
then also give itself the position, that it was to stand above the different
content, which asserted itself as truth.Thus in a formal sense the truth was,
what religious freedom was as such, where it was to remain outside of the game,
what was really believed. agnosticism, relativism. That became then the formal
demand of freedom, which did not look at the truth of the faith, and which
related itself only to the subjective freedom: the content may have been of
whatever quality it wanted to be: agnosticism, relativism.There the difference
stood inbetween the interior, the location of the conscience, where Ego was
with itself, and the essential religious content.The interior was the holy, the
location of the person's freedom, which was to be respected.That was an
essential demand,which man made, insofar as the consciousness of freedom
awakened in him.Here the ground is no longer the substantial content of the
religious faith, but the formal side of the belief.This formalism was
characteristic for the modern , bourgeois; civil society in its totality..Here
belonged also the pluralistic, formal democracy, and the inclusive democratic
character and movements in oppostion to the exclusive, authoritarian
personality and movements in the spheres of civil society, state and religion.
The authority for the liberated thinking were its own principles alone. To the
natural individual in his or her sensuous perception the truth had still come
as authority.The autonomous reason, and thinking, turned against the external
authority of religion andof the blind obedience of the subject toward the
princes, the authoriies, the administrations, and the governments. The modern,
formal democracy was born in state and church, family and civil society, with
the exception of the private, capitalistic economy: there has been no democracy
in private capitalistic corporations from thr start. In American corporations
there does not ecen exist co-determination, which in European businesses has
become a reality. Certainly, democracy would interfere with, or would not
function adequately, or would not be effective in the process of the private
appropriation of the collective surplus value. Therefore private, capitalistic
coporations are authoritarian, and are administered by authoritarian
personalities. Like authoritarian churches so do authoritarian corporations
support authoritarian political movements and states. The following 20 top,
global, authoritarian companies aided the
Nazis:[1]Coca-Cola;[2]Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer [M.G.M], [3] Chase Manhattan Bank,
[4] Dow Chemical; [5]Brown Brothers Harriman,[6] Woolworth, [7] Alcoa, [8] Ford
Motor Company [Ford], [9] General Motors [GM], [10] International Business
Machines [I.B.M],(11) Krupp, (12) Thyssen, (13) Siemens, (14) Deutsche Bank
,(15) Dresden Bank, (16)Quandary business empire, (17), August Baron von Finch,
(18)Friedrich Flick, (19) Dr. Oetkers and (20)Porsche-Pinch clan. Toward the
end of the book, de Jong addresses the family of Albert Riemann and its JAB
Holding, We can not speak about fascism without speaking about capitalism. Nazi
Billionaires, Hitler’s financiers, are still in business today. The harmony
between democracy and private capitalism is a myth. Where democracy seems to
appear in private capitalistic corporations, it is merely a matter of
appearance, of ideology, understood critically as false consciousness, the
cover up of particular economic interests, shortly as untruth.In America the
economic elite does not even allow a functional labor party in the federal
state, in congress, which is dominated by business lobbyists. The task of the
future is the supersession of the contradiction between authoritarian and
democratic characters, private approproation of surplus labor, and its
collective production, the establishment of economic democracy, and peace
inside and outside the nations. Otherwise, Tacitus Agricola's epigram was not
only true concerning the ruling class of the late Roman empire, but it also
still remains true concerning that, what President Eisenhower called at the end
of his Adminstration the military - industrial - congressional complex in late
Modernity:
They ravage, they seize by false pretenses, and all of this they hail as the
construction of empire. And when in their wake nothing remains but a desert,
they call that peace.
When adult citizens believe the false propaganda in state and church,
particularly in war times, then this happened because the natural authority
continues beyond the time, when it should have been replaced by autonomous
reason and critical thinking.People refuse to grow up and want to remain like
chidlren, and thus are in need of secular and religious fathers, telling them
the truth, or the untruth. Jesus of Nazareth, criticizing the hypocricy and
vanity of the scribes and the Pharisees, taught his disciples and the people:
You, however, must not allow yourselves to be called Rabbi,since you have only
one Master,and you are all brothers. You must call no one on earth your
father,since you have only one Father,aand he is in heacen Nor muust you allow
yourselves to be called teachers, for you have only on Teacher ,the Christ.The
greatest among you must be your servant. Anyone who exalts himself will be
humbled ,and anyone who humbles himself will be exalted.( Matthew 23.1-12 )
However, the present church, which Jesus founded, is full of fathers and other
authorities, and even a holy father and a pontifex maximus.Authoritarian
personalities must convert into democratic characters in church and state,
family and civil society, if there is to be peace.
On Friday, March 10, 2023, 1:20:23 PM EST, Leo Semashko
<leo.semashko@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Dear friends peacemakers,
To the existential question:WHAT PEACE AND HOW TO ESTABLISH in our time, on the
brink of nuclearwar/suicide, no one has an answer acceptable to all nations due
to traditionalpeacemaking ignorance. Therefore, its understanding must be
sought together, indialogue, what we, the GGHA have been doing during 18 years,
discussingdifferent, sometimes alternative peacemaking ideas and integrating
the trueones into our spheronics: “Gandhian Spherons Global Peace
Megascience”.Now, at a critical time, on the nuclear death brink we offer a new
dialogue forour collective peacemaking textbook: "Spheronics: True Peace
Paradigm",in order to get out of total peacemaking ignorance and start a
constructivepeaceful narrative: https://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=1116.
This will be a model andexample of a peaceful dialogue for all, which today has
been nullified anddrowned in militarism. Unfortunately, today, not a single
peace organization inthe world offers or organizes any similar dialogue of
different peaceful ideasand approaches being satisfied only with its own. At
least we, the GGHA, didnot receive an invitation from anyone to publish our
ideas that illustrates theauthoritarian, racist and dictatorial order in global
peacemaking, determiningits failure. We would be happy toparticipate in any
peace dialogue on the platform of any organization, ifone is found with it. Why
is the dialogue killed today, how will it turn out inthe future and how to
revive it?
To revive it, we invite everyresponsible peacemaker, withoutdelay, to sit AT
ONCE and write ONE page of youranswer to the above question for a peacemaking
textbook, or find and send me asimilar fragment from your article or book.
(More details are in the first attachment, 3 p. The second attachment, 8 p., is
myinterview to an international magazine in January 2023, dedicated to the
systemcore of peacemaking spheronics and its textbook, any thesis of which you
couldmake the subject of your critical or constructive discussion at your
dialogpage, which will be guaranteed to be published in the textbook). To
understandthe social role of peacemaking dialogue, we must take into account
two eloquenthistorical facts in order to learn from them.
Firstly, the tragic resultof Hitler's refusal from the dialogue offered to him
by Mahatma Gandhi (https://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=ru_c&key=1000)on the eve
of WWII, which led to 80 million victims and the inglorious death ofthe Third
Reich along with Hitler. The moral of this fact: the refusal fromdialogue is
the refusal from peace, this is death, this is the limitation ofthe mind,
destructive for all, its dogmatism, stagnation and fanaticism, likeHitler's.
Therefore, let's not be like Hitler and repeat with our silence hissad refusal
from dialogue in his arrogant, racist silence, which is beingreproduced today.
Or does his experience teach us nothing?
Secondly, the saving resultof the wise dialogue between John F. Kennedy and
Nikita Khrushchev during theCaribbean crisis
(https://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=1113).They were able to overcome
the fierce military, political, economic andideological confrontation between
the two nuclear powers (exacerbated today),and save their peoples and humanity
from nuclear genocide, which would have beeninevitable in the absence of their
dialogue, had they become like Hitler.Kennedy and Khrushchev proved that the
essence of true peacemaking is theachievement of peace in the dialogic
overcoming of deadly confrontation inrecognizing the common denominator/goal -
saving the lives of their nationsthat modern leaders lack in order to proceed
in the logic of peace dialoguefrom the reverse, from the common.
Anotherfundamental, ontological question is the question: WHAT kind of peace is
possibleand necessary to prevent the nuclear suicide of humanity in our time?
Why do weemphasize the “true peace” and what does it mean really,
ontologically? True peace:- this is not a temporary and ghostly peace, such as
Yalta, filled with warsand an arms race, which prepared for 80 years the
humanity nuclear genocide andis impossible today with the extreme depth of
total confrontation anddisagreements between two nuclear civilizations in all
spheres: social,spiritual (informational) , political and economic.
The true peace is brieflyexpressed in the following historical definitions,
which are integrated byspheronics. It is the “divine peace of pre-established
harmony”by G. Leibniz; "the perpetual peace of harmonious socialnature" by I.
Kant; "universal peace of humanity nonviolent spherons"by M. Gandhi; "the
humanity absolute peace, which must end the war before the war endswith
mankind" by J.F. Kennedy; “world peace built on understanding and a
substantially new manner ofthinking” by A. Einstein, etc. Only on similar true
scientific peace can atrue peacemaking be built and its global peace
eradicating its ignorance alongwith its offspring, with nuclear suicide, wars,
arms race, military budgets andother militaristic pathologies.
Let innovative spheronics becreated, figuratively speaking, only by 1%, but it
carries the core of the spheronstrue peace, which is fundamentally verified at
all levels from the individualand the family to humanity as a whole and
constitutes an acceptable to allpeoples and practically realizable constructive
alternative to nuclear suicidethat is revealed in my interview.
We hope that the above factsand arguments will be enough to motivate a
responsible peacemaker to participatein the peacemaking textbook-dialogue with
your one page.
With respect and wish for truepeace in dialogue,
Dr. Leo Semashko,
GGHA Founder (2005) andHonorary President
