Entry 18. A call to unarmed revolution

This is the statement I read and released after Badiah Sinclair began to implement the Austerity Initiative in S4Y 144. Badi was not happy with me, but the concept started to resonate with people.


The trouble with killing people to make your point is that the argument that started the fight is still breathing.

The Earthians who invaded us were doing the will of people who sincerely believed Sirius 4 was Earth's property. They killed some of us to make their point, but that only made us believe more fervently in our independence. We killed more of them to drive them away, but that only made them want our world even more.

No, not until we sat down and talked – setting aside our weapons but with the threat of more violence as the alternative – did Earth agree to let our experiment in freedom continue.

But now that freedom won with violence is being stripped with violence – oh, perhaps not literally, but with the same old threat of force that governments have always hung over us. What if we struck back in a way that does not meet violence with violence? What if we simply choose to live free, simply ignoring these onerous attempts to curb our liberty, promising not to kill our oppressors but to love them, to return force with a smile, violence with nonviolence, simply refusing to follow their unjust rules? What if we just stopped cooperating?

Using violence we won an imaginary victory over a violent tyranny, and knowing only violence, that which replaced the foreign tyrant has become a domestic tyrant. Now we need a second revolution – a rebellion over our violent nature – to secure our freedom for a much longer term.

I have no illusion that such a revolution would still carry the threat of violence in the background. Taking back what rightfully belongs to us by force is always an option, but that would merely prolong the cycle of violence. True security only comes when we appeal to our better angels, when we take the alternative of violence off the table, when we agree to the principle that no one has a right of aggression over others.

Only when that principle prevails above all others will the cycle of violence be broken and will we be able to enjoy this common wealth of Sirius 4 in peace and prosperity.

Entry 19. Basics of imaginary physics