City of no defenses, how do I live in you now? Shadows, thin and wafer-like walk between the gorgeous wreck of buildings. Who must I defend against? Who threatens all I love? Who will come and take me away? Obliteration. Obliteration mounted on obliteration. I put a staying hand to it. And it laughs!

Why do I see nukes not as evidence of man's great material progress but as the revenge of the gods? Like the gods we are either in abject terror or in bitter anger at their presence but are, essentially, impotent. The gods say, "you have tremendous problems in the world; if they get too far the only solution with be annihilation." And then that fearsome laugh of the gods.

To listen to a general speak you'd think that the world was already at war. for all the talk about realistic this and realistic that the only realism spoken to are the blind lusts, the war lust hidden under figures of speech and statistics.

Fantasy stirs up to fight the weapon. Great, hopeful, healthy intentions can create the necessary atmosphere for decisive action but fantasy alone, shared by the scientists, politicians, businessmen, religious leaders solve not a jot. Neither will a simple change in the mind; a convenient shift from apathy to what "one should do and think."

They create a myth; a complex and overwhelming one. They are the primitive energy that humanity has had to fight, exorcise, divert, grow out of through the millenium. The energy comes alive and its presence can either demoralize or it can challenge the instinct to life. And that instinct demands so much change, at the very root, to the root of the mechanisms that will destroy life.

It is energy. But it is primitive energy. It appears to be that type of energy people have always had to fight, exorcise, divest, grow out of through the centuries. It is the maleficent energy come alive and its presence can either demoralize or it can challenge the instinct of life. Ah, instinct demanding so much change at the root! The instinct versus the very root of the mechanisms that will destroy life.

Even the finest thought will not solve the dilemma. Thinking that fantasies alone will change everything is like saying a mass chain letter will make you rich. If people don't commit themselves to the eradication of the poisoned root then perhaps they really don't want to deal with the problem.

There have been very sincere attempts to deal with the dilemma. Yet we know that sincerity is not enough. Every conflict that has been engaged has developed out of a sincere desire of some sort. The question is, "what will men in power adhere to when they are pushed to the wall?" What will powerful people adhere to when all created life is seen as an illusion? When the illusion is seen powerful men return to their own gods; either religious gods or the god of ideology; the god of national boundaries, the god of economic well-being, the god of products. And what does one see? The god of each contending nation is the illusion of the other; the antidote to the other.

Memory begins with the gods; the gods are transformed and acted out by the succeeding generations. The gods become custom and unconscious folkways. The old gods are often pounded into the shape of a new machine.

To the end of time every generation will be forced to deal with the dilemma. It will determine the form of spirit each generation develops over many generations. And what they will be used in some innocuous seeming war?

• All the contradictions of international politics will be played out.
• All the secrets that have been withheld will become known.
• All the barbarisms that have occurred will be remembered.
• All the ideological sands nations have settled on will drift through their fingers.
• The choice not taken will be taken up.

What generation will allow the metaphors of transcendence to become actual, physical reality?

Which one will allow the mockery of the politician and general destroy all life?

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