JanStephen James Cavanaugh, Ph.D.
Copyright © 2012 World of Nations By 2020. All Rights Reserved.
On that note, I know not what our future will be, but, like so many professionals in my class, I look within and notice I am working longer hours for less and I look without and see the national debt mounting at a time when citizens my age and younger are going to need massive support to avoid social strife. All this also comes at a time when the winds of war, East and West, North and South continue to "quicken", as the sailors would say. The perfect storm for World War III is an event horizon in my dreams.
Please tell me it is the wounds I carry from war past that has me seeing the future so darkly.
And, given the duality of life, my vision is not all dark, for my dreams also say it is not yet too late.
If not all my words make sense to you, but the general description, the underlying principles and laws of nature fits your world view "good enough", let’s work together to end war, peace through justice.
The rule of just law justly adjudicated is the next best thing to the law of love. With just law comes civil order and with civility, peace. Not Heaven, but heaven on earth, a time of great learning and positive human development. Freud may have been right about man being wolf to man, but we have a choice of what wolf to feed.
I was born in 1943 in Canada, the oldest of eight raised to run the family farms, but a dream changed all that, and in 1964 I expatriated to the United States of America to study for Roman Catholic priesthood with MaryKnoll. Not accepted for first level vows I chose in 1967 to go to South Vietnam to work for International Voluntary Services on agricultural projects. If there is a civilian version of missing in action (MIA), I became one during TeT 1968. My mother to her dying breath would not speak of the shock upon receiving a U.S. State Department letter saying that her number one son was missing in Vietnam at a time of intense war. In 1969 I repatriated to the United States of America, married, naturalized, and in 1982 completed doctoral work in the philosophy and psychology of human development at Pennsylvania State University. My post-doctoral work encompasses academic, private, non-profit, corporate and government practices. To get out of my head and into my body I take to the road as a CDL Class A driver every now and then. Nothing like the thrill of 80,000 pounds on the shifter at 80 miles per hour and signs of "Steep Hill Ahead" and "Reduce Gear" to focus the mind, body and soul! Particularly on a stormy night at three in the morning! For those who care I am a Gemini. And INFJ, a rare bird.
If I could coin a phrase I think of myself as a Zen-Catholic and a communitarian. In the intellectual realm I define myself as a thinker by avocation. Law and war are my foci these days. Before September 11, 2001 it was the sacred disciplines of sex and love, but that study into deep inner psychic realms seems such a long time ago. I am a U.S. citizen by choice and I believe strongly in the liberal principles (John Stewart Mill) of limited government, separation of church and state, human rights and individual dignity as outlined by the founding fathers of our great Constitution with justice as the first order of business. Within that framework is the template for the next order of global human governance.
I fear that the current course of U.S.A. policy (2001-2004), foreign and domestic, plays to the advantage of our enemies. I dream we are on the Titanic of Modernity and we face heavy seas and hot headwinds in the dark of night. There are some us on stern bracing against the winds of war pointing at the fast rising tide to our stern. The captain does not hear our voices; he stares straight ahead. What happens next always wakes me in a sweat.
I have two dreams yet unfulfilled:
To promote the voice and work of peace full-time.
To counsel presidents and kings in matters of war and law.
In the meantime I have to make a living like everyone else.
World of Peoples
End War Forever
The Age of Peace
