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I've been watching the current war in Isreal with some interest and as I see a mixture of commentary and accusations of war crimes I struggle to know exactly what is true. I will however commit to my position of renouncing war and proclaiming peace.

War is a scam

Unfortunately, whenever I see people in news or other media arguing for why we need to be involved in a war, whether it be in paying for it or sending people to help fight it, I can't help but think of Alma 48 where it describes appointing men to speak to the Lamanites from their towers against the Nephites. If I were to imagine what that would look like today I don't have to look much past most news programs before I get a sense of exactly what it would look like. When I think of these things I question if the war is really necessary or if it is actually driven by some smaller group's goals for control.

Zion and Zionism

As I follow the war in Isreal I hear people talk about Zionism which is sometimes used as an accusation and reason to hate jews. I'm not unfamililar with what Zionism is purported to be and what I have seen described is indeed problematic. What is most difficult is that when I wish to talk about building Zion the philosophy of Zionism poisons the well in a way that people very frequently will think of building Zion as promoting Zionism when they are in fact opposites. As far as I can tell, at the heart of Zionism is a sense that "we are the Lord's chosen people, therefore we must get rid of or dominate everyone else who isn't".

This is far from the view of Zion I get from reading the book of Moses. In Moses 7 we see a description of Enoch after he receives his commission from the Lord to call people to repentance and begin to establish Zion. It doesn't describe him sending armies to destroy and kill, but it describes him being given words so powerful that the earth itself shakes and their enemies flee. This doesn't sound like someone who needs foreign aid from the world's largest exporter of violence. In fact, Zion appears to be filled with people who have figured out how to integrate and take care of each other instead of casting out anyone who didn't quite fit.

Moses 7:17-18 says the following:

"17: The fear of the Lord was upon all nations, so great was the glory of the Lord, which was upon his people. And the Lord blessed the land, and they were blessed upon the mountains, and upon the high places, and did flourish.
18: And the Lord called his people Zion, because they were of one heart and one mind, and dwelt in righteousness; and there was no poor among them."

What is being described here is the opposite of war. In fact, I will suggest to you that this community was open to anyone who wanted to join and participate in peace instead of fighting against Zion.

If you do your own further reading I believe you will find that Zion is built on voluntary unity with no undercurrent of violence and force as we see in our current forms of government from the nation down to the city and even the local HOA.

It is interesting that not long after Joseph Smith communed with God others started to espouse the philosophy of voluntaryism which as far as I can tell is the ideas of Zion emerging naturally in public discourse separate from an overt religious tradition. This philosophy was even extended by Lysander Spooner in his essay No Treason to the point of declaring a type of anarchism that suggests that the state through its violence is simply illegitimate.

The anarchist quagmire

Having mentioned anarchist philosophy I do wish to take a moment to point out that anarchists are not a cohesive unit. Anarchists are frequent users of the No True Scotsman fallacy when describing each other because each one seems to have extreme philosophical purity standards by which they judge their peers. There are different camps and sub philosophies, enough so that someone could write a book about the nuances and differences between them, though I doubt anyone would want to read it. Suffice it to say, there are some who are looking for peace and there are others who are not, I'm focusing on the ones who are looking for peace.

Social Power and The State

Before we go too much further it will be important for us to define what I mean by "social power". Social power is the resource and energy capacity that individuals and families in a community have for effecting change or responding to emergencies. Think of it as the potential a community has for charities that contribute to causes like caring for the needy, supporting the arts, or talking on public projects.

Natural and man made disasters are times when we see the most prominent examples of social power being expressed. It does not take long to find recent examples of non-state organizations and groups forming to bring relief.

I adopted this definition of social power when I was introduced to it in Our Enemy, the State by Albert Jay Nock. In his book, he describes the dynamics between state power and social power. One of the chief properties of social power is that when state power increases social power atrophies. Nock writes, "We can get some kind of rough measure of this general atrophy by our own disposition when approached by a beggar. Two years ago we might have been moved to give him something; today we are moved to refer him to the State’s relief agency."

Nock goes on to describe the ways in which the state becomes kind of a living entity in its own right. Instead of serving its citizens, it takes on a life of its own pursuing its own self preservation and growth, but I already wrote about that recently. The tragedy of this relationship between social power and state power is that as the state becomes more powerful, individuals and families in society slowly lose the capacity to take care of themselves and become serfs dependent on the state for even basic needs.

Bringing all things together

You're probably sitting there wondering where the heck I'm going with this. I submit to you that both of these pairs I started out describing pattern match to each other, that is to say, Zion and Zionism match on the same dimension that Social power and The State are to be evaluated on.

The scale by which we can evaluate all of these is the gradient from voluntary association to centralized control in systems. While it is possible to build a voluntary association, there is an unfortunate tendency to transition to a system that is no longer voluntary. This tendency appears to me to be a part of the meaning of the parable of the trees. Sometimes we want to put someone in charge who is responsible for taking care of us, but there is a strong tendency for people who have no business doing the job seeking it and once they have the power they will not give it back. The tricky thing to figure out now is how to get back to voluntary association.

At its heart Zion has been and is again to be founded on invitation to voluntary association, anything that violates that will fail to establish the order of Zion and descend into the tyranny of the state as we know it now. In order to establish Zion the people that wish to do it will have to be so orderly and so individually responsible that they actually find themselves able to grow their social power despite the state bleeding them of their resources.

Unfortunately as social power increases, it may take an act of God to help fully escape the system of control maintained by the state because you can't escape a thing whose foundation is violence by making war against it. This is seen in the people of Limhi's escape in Mosiah 21 and 22. While Limhi's escape matches the pattern of Isreal being led out of Egypt, an alternative is being prepared to live through a complete societal collapse as observed that one time the chief judge was murdered. I sometimes wonder why people today seem determined to flirt with things that may lead to that second option. Maybe not the murder, but definitely eroding trust in institutions.

What is to be done then?

Jesus taught that you can't put new wine in old bottles. We can't receive the kingdom of God with our current institutions operating the way they do now. If we try to build Zion using the same structures that gave us the state then we just end up with Zionism instead. The real establishment of Zion would probably be declared a threat to our current institutions of law and government's power because it doesn't affirm the state's legitimacy above all else, instead affirming the most high as being over all. But this shouldn't be a surprise because Jesus demonstrating the way of peace instead of working within systems maintained on violence and being the heir to the most high was part of the justification of why he had to die and his great rebellion was that it didn't work.

Earlier I suggested that we are going to have to be extremely orderly to grow social power instead of yielding it to the state. I think that this is the area that must be explored. The 7 Grandfathers Teachings seem to be a good place to start for how to act without letting personal dysfunction cause breakdowns in voluntary associations. This seems to be the great message of Jordan Peterson these days as he encourages people to take up a meaningful struggle and make appropriate sacrifices. If we can all sort ourselves out sufficiently with God's help we will be able to trust each other enough to combine our resources without being afraid that others will simply take advantage of us.

Working toward having no poor among us

While it is hard to predict what kind of things might work, I think the first focus may need to be on helping people reduce their stress so their souls can heal from the difficulties inflicted by our current structures. If we can solve the problems of trust and accountability we can make welfare a community project where we invite those who need help to live with us and integrate into our communities instead of leaving it to institutional welfare programs that keep people isolated as the "other" that needs fixing.

I have felt for some time that the way we currently do welfare robs those who offer assistance of the opportunity to form relationships with those being assisted. As a result we don't grow the social fabric and personal network necessary for a community to come together when trouble comes. This pattern of looking after the basic needs of our neighbors who struggle instead of sending them to state programs would be a worthy sacrifice that could help build our social power. It would be important to cultivate a relationship and participation in the home they are integrating into and not just let it be a place they expect to live while making no contribution at all. It is said that the laborer in Zion will labor for Zion so nobody gets to sit around and do nothing and expect to be taken care of, even if there's very little they have the skill to do. We can sacrifice and accept the efforts they can make in the name of showing our recognition that their soul still has value to our creator.

The end of the road

I've probably gone on too long and tried to string together too many things, but it is difficult to describe these thoughts without starting at the beginning of the various threads that converge on the way of integration and peace. I hope that we can find ways to turn to God and make peace instead of continuing to fall for the path of compulsion and control that is the default when maintaining what appears to be conventional wisdom.