But That Is Never True

"After the uprising, we found ourselves caught in a dilemma. We knew that war was responsible for shaping the world into all the forms we wanted to change -- and yet there we were, surrounded by hostile enemies who might, at any moment, attack and destroy us. This was the dilemma that every peaceful culture has faced for the last five thousand years, at least. And this was our one advantage -- that we had history behind us. We had seen all possible solutions played out, from resistance to retreat to acquiescence, and we knew [that] none of them worked. That saved us a great deal of time. We didn't have to waste our energies stockpiling weapons or drilling troops; we could jump right to the heart of the matter, which was magic."

"In what sense?" Madrone asked.

Lily nodded to Maya. "You remember that Dion Fortune quote you've always been so fond of? That magic is the art of changing consciousness at will? You can look at a war as a massing of arms and materiel and troops, but you can also see it as something else -- as a delicate web of interwoven choices made by human beings, made out of a certain consciousness. The decision to order an attack, the choice to obey or disobey an order, to fire or not to fire a weapon. Armies and, indeed, any culture that supports them[,] must convince the people that all the decisions are made already, and they have no choice. But that is never true. So, mad as it may seem, this is the terrain upon which we base our defense of this city -- the landscape of consciousness."

From: The Fifth Sacred Thing by Starhawk