This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The seduction of war is insidious because so much of what we are told about it is true; It does create a sense of comradeship, which obliterates our alienation and makes us, for perhaps the only time of our life, feel we belong. War allows us to rise above our small stations in life. We find nobility in a cause and feelings of selflessness and even bliss. And at a time of soaring deficits and financial scandals and the very deterioration of our domestic fabric, war is a fine diversion. War, for those who enter into combat, has a dark beauty, filled with the monstrous and the grotesque. The Bible calls it the "lust of the eye" and warns believers against it. War gives us a distorted sense of self; it gives us meaning.
Alienation | Beauty | Bible | Cause | Diversion | Feelings | Life | Life | Lust | Meaning | Nobility | Self | Sense | Time | War | Bible |
The monks have no sadness. They wage war on the devil as though they were performing a dance.
George Marshall, fully George Catlett Marshall, Jr.
The only way human beings can win a war is to prevent it.
War |
Arthur Ponsonby, 1st Baron Ponsonby of Shulbrede
When war is declared, truth is the first casualty.
Before going to war say one prayer, before going to sea say two, before getting married – three.
We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realize that we know where it lives, that it is inside ourselves.
Alex Comfort, fully Alexander Comfort
In a state of war each sincere citizen feels responsibility to society in the abstract, and none to the people he kills.
Abstract | People | Responsibility | Society | War | Society |
We believe that the most basic of all changes in human social organization have been the result of three processes. Starting 8,000 to 10,000 years ago, agriculture was invented in the Middle East – probably by a woman. That’s the First Wave. Roughly 250 years ago, the Industrial Revolution triggered a Second Wave of change. Brute-force technologies amplified human and animal muscle power and gave rise to an urban, factory-centered way of life. Sometime after World War II, a gigantic Third Wave began transforming the planet, based on tools that amplify mind rather than muscle. The Third Wave is bigger, deeper and faster than the other two. This is the civilization of the computer, the satellite and Internet.
Change | Civilization | Computer | Force | Internet | Life | Life | Mind | Organization | Power | Revolution | War | Woman | World |
In a civil war the firing line is invisible; it passes through the hearts of men.