Soka Gakkai International : Peace Proposal 2009(Summary)
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Since 1975, SGI president Daisaku Ikeda, has presented a Peace Proposal to the United Nations. Here is a summary of his 2009 Peace Proposal, provided by Dr. Ikeda himself.
You can download the full Peace Proposal in pdf from the link.
[I'm just posting a part of the summary I found personally insightful]
As I have pointed out in these proposals on a number of occasions, the deepest underlying root of the crisis is the love of money itself, of currency, the global Mammonism that constitutes an essential pathology of our contemporary civilization. The currency that controls and dominates market economies has, of course, virtually no use value, it has only exchange value. And exchange value stands only on the foundation of understanding and agreement between people; in its essence it is both abstract and anonymous. It is not directed at such concrete (and therefore finite) objects as real goods and services; thus, as the object of human desire, it has no real or inherent limits.
Soon after the end of World War II, the French existentialist philosopher Gabriel Marcel offered a penetrating perspective, examining the "spirit of abstraction" as a key causal factor in war. While the ability to develop and manipulate abstract concepts is indispensable to human intellectual activity, to Marcel the spirit of abstraction is destructive, a process in which abstractions are alienated from concrete realities, taking on a life of their own.
For example, it is only possible to participate in war if we first deny the individual character and humanity of the opponent--reducing him or her to an abstract concept such as fascist, communist, Zionist, Islamic fundamentalist, etc. Without this kind of reductionism, it would be impossible to justify or find meaning in one’s participation in war.
When looking at the present financial crisis, we have to ask if we as a society have not been caught up in this spirit of abstraction. Have we not fallen prey to the Medusa-like spell of the abstract and anonymous world of currency, losing our essential human capacity to see through to the underlying fact that--however necessary it may be to the functioning of human society--currency is nothing other than an agreement, a kind of virtual reality?
You can download the full Peace Proposal in pdf from the link.
[I'm just posting a part of the summary I found personally insightful]
As I have pointed out in these proposals on a number of occasions, the deepest underlying root of the crisis is the love of money itself, of currency, the global Mammonism that constitutes an essential pathology of our contemporary civilization. The currency that controls and dominates market economies has, of course, virtually no use value, it has only exchange value. And exchange value stands only on the foundation of understanding and agreement between people; in its essence it is both abstract and anonymous. It is not directed at such concrete (and therefore finite) objects as real goods and services; thus, as the object of human desire, it has no real or inherent limits.
Soon after the end of World War II, the French existentialist philosopher Gabriel Marcel offered a penetrating perspective, examining the "spirit of abstraction" as a key causal factor in war. While the ability to develop and manipulate abstract concepts is indispensable to human intellectual activity, to Marcel the spirit of abstraction is destructive, a process in which abstractions are alienated from concrete realities, taking on a life of their own.
For example, it is only possible to participate in war if we first deny the individual character and humanity of the opponent--reducing him or her to an abstract concept such as fascist, communist, Zionist, Islamic fundamentalist, etc. Without this kind of reductionism, it would be impossible to justify or find meaning in one’s participation in war.
When looking at the present financial crisis, we have to ask if we as a society have not been caught up in this spirit of abstraction. Have we not fallen prey to the Medusa-like spell of the abstract and anonymous world of currency, losing our essential human capacity to see through to the underlying fact that--however necessary it may be to the functioning of human society--currency is nothing other than an agreement, a kind of virtual reality?
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