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Last Updated (Tuesday, 19 May 2009 20:08) Written by Heiko Seelbach Thursday, 14 May 2009 19:39

Book Review Paige, "Nonkilling Global Political Science", by Heiko Seelbach, Wiesbaden (April 12, 2009)
Very impressing, awareness widening work for everybody who is prepared to look beyond their own nose. Standing somewhat apart from peace work and other activism and being sceptical about the possibility of a nonkilling society, I continuously tried to contradict the author, Glenn Paige, in the first chapter in which he describes so many human atrocities and possible causes; continuously I have objected that humans are not so bad in general; that the mentioned causes may be possible causes, but in practise they generally aren't the real ones.
It was joyful to follow the author after that, from chapter 2 to the end, when finally the many human examples were tackled, that stand for nonkilling, taking the burden of the first chapter off my shoulders. For according to chapter 1 you can basically only feel guilty being a member of this horrible species, although you don't have anything to do with the horror personally, or don't want to have anything to do with it. Finally, Paige showed me individuals and projects with which I was able to identify and also willing (maybe this need for identification is a little proof for human nature preferring nonkilling to killing.)
Up to the end of the volume I could understand the necessity of this broad and thought-provoking approach which the author postulates for further analysis and exploration. As utopian as a nonkilling society must sound for all of us who have been socialized and conditioned in a world of killing with all the values that go with it ... yet when we discard the often prevailing arrogance against different ideas, then Paige can only be right. To say it with Hermann Hesse: you have to think the impossible to reach the possible.