Að snúa hlutunum við - er endir Búsáhaldabyltingarinnar í náinni framtíð?

*Kraftur þeirra sem vilja fyrir alvöru breyta*

Inversion; umsnúningur eða endurröðun beinist meðal annars að því að gera byltingu með því að snúa við valdi og gera algjörlega nýtt stjórnskipulag. Markmið Búsáhaldabyltingar á Íslandi er því númer eitt að losna við spillingu, og breyta valdastrúkturnum þannig  að gera allt til þess að koma í veg fyrir að spilling fáist þrifist. Búa síðan til nýjan struktur sem tengir almenning inn í stjórnunina með því að taka hana sem venjulega vinnu. Losa umfram því við græðgi og dreyfa valdi. Hluti af hugmyndum mínum í skjalinu: "Okkar Ísland" er einmitt þessi umsnúningur sem fellst í því að tryggja það að valdið, lögin koma frá fólkinu sjálfu. 

Hér í þessum pistli langar mig til að koma inn á þessa tengingu sem varð til á bloggi mínu smám saman. En hver einstök eining er partur af heildinni. Í þeim tilgangi vil ég meðal annars koma inn á mitt framlag og þátttöku í Búsáhaldabyltingunni og sína fram á tengingu við hugsanlegar aðstæður til breytingar að stjórnkerfi Íslands.

Mín þátttaka og framlag að aðdraganda Búsáhaldabyltingar

Í október 2008 mun ég hafa verið mikið að blogga um hvernig hægt væri að losna við þáverandi ríkistjórn á Íslandi. Daglega kom ég þá með pistla um ástandið í þjóðfélaginu. Á bloggi mínu hafði ég byggt þannig upp kraft og eldmóð með mér og reyndi ég allt til að koma fram með hugmyndir hvernig hægt væri að losna við stjórnina. Þannig fékk ég þá hugmynd að skrifa á ensku um ástandið á Íslandi inn á alþjóðlegri Politics forum. Í bréfinu leitaðist ég eftir að fá svör hvað hægt væri að gera. Fullt af svörum komu og nokkur umræða myndaðist um tíma (ég hafði sjálfur á árum áður tekið þátt í ýmsum forum á Internetinu og þekkti því nokkuð vel um hvernig umræða á forum fór fram). En ca. 10 til 12 dögum seinna fékk ég þau viðbrögð sem ég var að sækjast eftir, frá manni sem stjórnaði svokallðri "gangstalking" vefsíðu. En gangstalking merkir meðal annars að fyrirtæki, ríkistjórnir eða valdahópar fá fólk til aðstoðar við sig til að áreita fólk kerfislega með sí endurteknum hætti þangað til það gæfi eftir. Ýmsum meðulum beitt eins og tildæmis angra það með því að láta sjást að fylgst væri með því, trufla það við vinnu. Hleypa úr dekkjum bíla þess og svo framvegis.

Þannig fékk ég hugmyndina að "inverse eða reverse gangstalking" (að snúa hlutunum við) sem fólst í því að nú væri það almenningur sjálfur sem kerfislega áreitti ríkistjórn í stað þess að vera áreitt sjálf. En segja má að fólkið sem tók þátt í byltingunni var eiginlega að beyta svipuðum meðulum sem ríkistjórn hafði verið að nota á almenning sem var/er: áreiti, yfirgangur og ofurvald.

Ég hvað fast að því að einhver svona úrræði væru þau einu sem hægt væri að nota til að gera byltingu án blóðsúthellingar. Ég heimsótti því heimasíðu Harðar Torfasonar og kom fram með þá hugmynd að almenningur gæti áreitt ríkistjórn með sífelldum hávaða og látum. Nefndi þar að fólk gæti safnast saman með öll þau áhöld sem hægt væri að nota eins og: Potta, Trommur og Pönnur og svo framvegis. Dreifa sér síðan í kringum Alþingi og gera allan þann hávaða sem hægt væri að gera til að trufla störf alþingis. Andstaða fólksins alls átti síðan sinn þátt í því að þáverandi ríkistjórn hröklaðist frá völdum. 

Vissulega getur vel verið að fleira fólk hafi komið með einhverjar svipaðar hugmyndir en þetta var bara mitt framlag..........

En í reynd er það ekki nóg því þessum svokallaða viðsnúningi er alls ekki lokið. Friðsöm bylting getur tekið marga mánuði að klárast og felst meðal annars að losa þjófélag við spillingu og yfirgang stjórnvalda. Að hreinsa til. Finna svo leiðir til að dreyfa valdi eins og hægt er. Til þess að skoða um efnið má kynna sér ýmislegt um byltingar eins og tildæmis um Pólitík og byltingar í Burma sem hér er svo dæmi sé tekið.

Mjög áhugaverður lestur um efnið er bókin: Mental Culture in Burmese Crisis Politics

Houtman, Gustaaf. Mental Culture in Burmese Crisis Politics: Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy. Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa Monograph Series No. 33. Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, 1999,

sem lesa má á Internetinu.

slóð> http://homepages.tesco.net/~ghoutman

 hér er beint í kafla 11:> http://homepages.tesco.net/~ghoutman/chapter_11.htm#11.3

Hér kem ég með stuttar tilvísanir úr kafla 11 úr bókinni (feitletrað er mitt):

Lesið útskýringar númer 2 hér sérstaklaga

1. Revolution (tawhlanyeì)

The above discussion suggests that the mechanism of government is not conceived as independent in and of itself. Rather, these depend on and derive legitimacy from larger ideas about order governed not by ordinary secular laws. The idea that government is maintained, on the one hand, through supernatural magic in order to manipulate loka, and on the other through mental culture to transcend loka remains with us at all times. Hence, one would expect that the concept of political opposition and resistance would partake of this quality also. Let me consider here to what extent Burmese concept of ‘revolution’ draws on such meanings.

The term for revolution in Burmese is tawhlanyeì [eta\lHn\er:]. Taw in this context is an affix that denotes power, sacredness, reverence or royalty, as in ‘sacred relics’ [Dåt\eta\], ‘holy abbot’ or ‘teacher of royalty’ [Sraeta\], or ‘royalty’ [eta\wc\]. Hlan means to change the position of things, such as ‘to turn inside out’ or ‘to turn up’. It thus means ‘inversion’ or ‘revolution’.

2. Robert Taylor's analysis

In his article ‘Burmese concepts of revolution’, Robert Taylor analyses the concept of revolution in the context of modern politics since the 1930s. On the whole, he makes an interesting argument over the distinct uses of the terms ayeìdaw bon, as a lesser concept for revolution implied in the 1948 struggle for national independence, versus taw hlan yeì, the ‘real’ concept of revolution as implied in the 1962 Ne Win revolution. So far, so good. However, Taylor makes this sweeping statement that ‘in the classical, precolonial Theravada Buddhist-derived political thought of Burma, the concept of political and social revolution did not exist’, and that ‘political change meant primarily the substitution of one ruler by another of the same kind.’ While saying this, he proposes no reference to the Buddhist interpretations of the term. At least he could have browsed through Sarkisyanz' Buddhist backgrounds of the Burmese revolution to know that the meanings he attributes to the taw hlan yeì concept need some reference to Buddhist ideas in order to work.

As I see it, there are three problems with Taylor's work. First, his perspective on Burmese politics is blinkered on the Ne Win period, as if 1962 was the magic moment that made everything right. Second, he generalises about other periods as if they were inferior, unchanging, always in turmoil, and so forth, as compared to the post-1962 era, which was revolutionary, well-calculated and pragmatically conceived. Third, the way he illustrates these concepts has remarkably limited depth, as if only Ne Win's ideas mattered, and as if he had finally re-engineered the Burmese language to correctly express appropriate political ideas.

There follows below a corrective of his arguments that in pre-colonial Buddhist-derived political thought ‘the concept of political and social revolution did not exist.’ I have already shown in chapter 9, how the early personalities advocating vipassana, in particular U Hpo Hlaing and Ledi Sayadaw, were characterised as ‘revolutionary’ (tawhlan yeì). In chapter 10, I argued that, in the absence of a secular political space, the Sangha is the custodian for harbouring rebellion. Here, I will argue that the concept of ‘revolution’ can be interpreted in a radically different way from Taylor's approach, taking into consideration a broader range of meanings over a longer period of time. These indicate that revolution has always been there, but it is conceived of as primarily realised in the person, not the collective – this point Taylor misses entirely.

3. Early uses of taw-hlan-yeì

There are at least three early uses of this term. First, the redemption of Vessantara's children from Zuzaka, the Brahmin, is sometimes referred to as taw hlan thi. Prince Vessantara, who was to become Gautama Buddha two lives later, gave his children away to Zuzaka, the Brahmin, in his quest for the perfection of ‘charity’, and said ‘take them as their master’. However, when Vessantara's parents eventually redeemed the children, it was expressed as tawhlan thi, indicating that they had freed the children from ownership by this Brahmin who behaved so despicably towards them.

Second, royalty and monks, i.e. those who are not in bondage to the king, are sometimes able to go after greater forms of freedom. For example, the same concept is used in the Pagan inscriptions to indicate the ‘revolution against greed [that produces the condition] of slavery’ This indicates an early underpinning of revolution as arising primarily in the mind, not necessarily as an ideology, but more as a practice that uproots greed. Such is accomplished by gifts and charity (paradoxically, as perfected by Vessantara who gave away his children in the first place, and by mental culture). Third, this very same verb, used in a passive sense, used to be part of the formal question asked of a monk to know whether he is eligible to be ordained, ‘are you a free from service to the king?’ In the modern ordination texts the question is posed as follows:

[ordainer asks] Are you someone who is truly free [taw hlan] and are not one of the four kinds of slaves,

[initiate answers] Yes, venerable. I am a free [taw hlan] and worthy person.

The monk is admitted to the ordination ceremony only if he can answer that he is indeed free. This emphasis on prior freedom as a requisite to ordination indicates that those who become monks have autonomy from royal and any other kind of service. Once a monk, this freedom is subject to certain guarantees, as the domain of the Sangha is relatively autonomous. It was from this relatively independent Sangha hierarchy, furthermore, that kings drew their highest servants. The Sangha was the path of labour mobility and the nexus for relations between village and capital that a king needed in order to sustain and legitimate his authority.

Fourth, and here it is possible to link the second and the third concept, this ‘revolution’ idea is sometimes explicitly linked to the uprooting of the self. There is an overlap between emancipation from the king, from slavery and from ‘I’. The term for ‘I’ in Burmese is ‘your holiness slave’ and to become a monk means no longer requiring to use this term for oneself. In a booklet entitled Revolution against the self Teizàwbatha argues that the revolution concept in the initiation rite described above implies that monks are ‘revolutionaries against the self’ as they are engaged in uprooting self, ‘the buildings of the enemy’, samsara and wrong-viewedness, by uprooting craving [tanha t%Ha]. This, he argues, is what is implied in the Buddhist concept of ‘emancipated one’ [ariya Ariya].

When we juxtapose these ideas about revolution, we realise that what the Burmese mean by revolution needs to be understood in terms of the Buddhist domain. Indeed, only drawing from Buddhist practices permits true freedom from the kilesa, and thus to uproot the self. Here, since ultimate freedom from slavery is to uproot ‘I’, these ideas bind mental culture to revolution. The fact that this interpretation is not without merit is evident in the powerful use of mental culture terminology in the speeches by historical political revolutionary figures, including monks and secular leaders.

Evidently this is not irrelevant to the post-1962 concept of revolution considering Maung Maung's analysis of Ne Win's role in what is known as the Revolutionary Government. Maung Maung begins his description in the same way as the royal chronicles, in which history is a form of contemplation on impermanence. Furthermore, U Nu's rule, overthrown by Ne Win, had presented politics as being about setting in place the possibility for people to attain to nibbana. The first seven pages of Maung Maung's account of the Ne Win period are devoted to the assertion that not only is the individual subject to samsara, but so is the community, the village, the district and the country. Since he follows Aung San in saying that ‘politics is samsara’ (rosalega líkt íslenska orðinu samsæri), Burma's journey is also a journey of samsara. It is important on this samsara journey to make the sasana flourish. However, the BSPP asserted that ‘on an empty stomach, it is impossible to be moral’. So without the necessities of life it is impossible to be totally free from the mental defilements of greed and anger. Therefore, under Ne Win socialism the revolution was represented as the ‘pragmatic’ preparation for nibbana within the material world. This suggests that, according to Buddhist criteria, Ne Win's revolution was a ‘lesser’ and not a ‘greater’ revolution. I therefore believe Taylor is quite wrong even to characterise the Ne Win period as revolutionary – it was Hpo Hlaing, U Nu, and now Aung San Suu Kyi, who are the revolutionaries. They motivate people, Ne Win did not.

Hence, to understand revolution it is not enough to juxtapose an unchanging pre-colonial Theravada idea void of revolutionary potential against Ne Win's modern idea – the two blend and the later concept feeds on the earlier. Ne Win's concept was never as radical as what Taylor imagined it to be. The revolution was one of the spirit which it was in the interest of the army, in control over loka, to deny.

*** 

Eins og þeir geta séð sem hafa tekið sér tíma til að lesa þetta efni þá er ýmislegt áhugavert í lestri þessum þó túlka mætti og heimfara efni þess inn í nútímann með þeirri forskrift lífsins sem er nú. En hugmyndir koma fram meðal annars með lestri af ýmsum bókmenntum um pólitík og heimspeki.

*Nýjar leiðir fyrir Ísland*

En nú þarf að byrja fyrir alvöru þau verk að endurbyggja Ísland með nýjum tækifærum fyrir almenning. Við höfum nú tækifærin til þessarar enduruppbyggingar og megum alls ekki missa af þeim!

Grandvaraleysi stjórnvalda er að trúa og treysta á "ofurgengi" fjármálaafla heimsvaldasinna sem, þótt þeir segi annað, notfæra sér slæma fjárhagsstöðu landa og ríkja til að ná yfirhöndinni og með því ofurhald á heiminum. Svokallað "New World order" er því ekkert annað en heimsyfirráð í krafti peningamanna, þeirra ríkustu.

Það er alveg ljóst eins og komið hefur svo fram á undanförnum árum, að Ísland hefur ekkert með að gera að standa í einhverjum ofurpeningaviðskiptum fjármálaspekulanta. Landið okkar er svo lítið og eitt og sér. Við þurfum að byggja upp af okkrar krafti þar sem þátttaka allra í þjófélagi byggist á sanngirni, án ofurvalds, græðgi og spillingu.