(Editor’s Note: In last week’s Thursday’s Columns, our ace reporter was struggling with the decision of whether or not to take off across the country to join a peace rally this week in Washington, D.C. )

Response to Last Week's Column

Good column, Abby.

To go away from what you are doing, which you are doing because it is the most useful thing you decided you could do, to join the D.C. march, that's a strategic decision that the strategist, you, has to decide.

How best to invest yourself?

As for "the war," there are many wars, wars within wars — whether nuclear, or, say, one individual or group dominating, or attempting to dominate another individual or group, the individual or group responding anywhere along a spectrum from submission to total defiance, usually somewhere in between, strategically to the extent it's conscious, usually not very strategically, usually manipulated by others intervening in the war, for their own conscious or unconscious reasons. Seems to me.

As for the demonstration in D.C. Is it a protest? If so, against whom, with what likely effect?

Or is it more a rally, the participants requiring contact with others feeling & thinking similarly?

Again, if the latter, are you best invested joining, or leading as best you are capable, as you have been doing?

As for the Air Force Academy, that wouldn't be the primary target, I don't imagine. Isn't NORAD, or whatever has evolved from it since I became aware of its existence in the 50's, headquartered in Colorado Springs. I recall that the great novelist, Robert Heinlein (Stranger in a Strange Land) moved to your area, to get away from what you call "the war," only to find himself horrified to be on one of the main targets if nuclear war broke out.

But if there is nuclear war, everyone loses, however far they would be from first impact — so there is no fleeing away or toward it, only trying to make something else happen, & trying to live with the idea that, likely, whether it happens or doesn't, & how & when, is beyond your capacity to affect, much — & doing what you can about other aspects of "the war," given what you are actually capable of, or might become capable of.

For my part, I believe I am best invested in Eric Chaet in a kind of leadership role far greater than my current obscurity, but far less than leader of everyone & everything. Like you say, that includes cleaning the bathroom, etc., & my equivalent of your on-going columns.

I'm struggling to make the possibility actual — still far, far from successfully, which grieves me, & which causes me to be anxious, & to have to struggle not to give in to disabling resentment of those I must somehow induce to cooperate, effectively, with me, while I do the equivalent of writing my column, without just repeating myself, or expressing frustration, or pandering — or giving in to despair or self-pity or other varieties of self-indulgence.

I have been reading about Descartes & Spinoza, in order, at first, better to understand Leibniz, whom I study in order better to do my work & have greater success, both individually & for all those of good will I might affect.

Yesterday, I came across a set of useful ideas of Spinoza: that freedom is understanding one's emotions, rather than being, unconsciously, ruled by them; & that there are 3 primary emotions: appetite, joy (experiencing growth of power), & grief (experiencing diminishing of power).

In 1968, I decided not to go back to Chicago to demonstrate against the war. It seemed to me that what I was doing was as usefully productive as I could do, & that what was about to happen in Chicago was unlikely to be usefully productive.

How little use my efforts have been so far, grieves me. I'm always striving for more wise, good, & effective power & results. You've helped. Keep helping, help more. And do likewise, yourself.

As for "the war," it's not going on more or less now, than at any time in our lifetimes. 

Think, for instance, of the suffering that's apparent in the songs of Woody Guthrie, from the 1930's, when there was "peace."

The war then was between those who had enough & everyone else — in the USA & Russia, most apparently, at that time — though the war in China then was shooting — & in Germany, then, the war was the sort of politics we've recently been experiencing in the USA —  plus, of course, all the less well-known struggles in, say, Mexico, the Amazon, black Africa — & Gandhi, et al in India/Pakistan.

And Dar-al-Islam — the places where Islam dominates, and the various colonies, protectorates, & puppet governments of the British & French governments, then. "War" for the government of Japan or Italy, which led to shooting wars, soon thereafter. Or, these days, "war" in Venezuela & Argentina — not to speak of the shooting wars in east Africa, or the non-shooting struggle for power in the rest of Africa, or the frozen struggles for power of southeast Asia.

You're in the middle of "war" where you are, & have been since birth, & will be, almost certainly, til you die. Those who define war as something you're not part of, are at war with you, in a way. Your column, the books you publish, are your ICBM's — & especially, what you do with yourself every moment.

Good column this week — very good. Thanks. If you go to D.C., or don't, take good care of yourself. I wouldn't want to lose your columns — or, especially, in my case, the publishing of my work, whether in print or online. It's not much yet, but it's the most, currently, & a lot more powerful than is apparent, I believe, & profoundly hope.

Eric

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Lawrence Abby Gauthier

ace reporter

The Westphalia Periodic News