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Dr. Chuck Overby
7815 Angel Ridge Road; Athens Oh, 45701
overbycm@hotmail.com; www.article9society.org


31 October 2010


TO: My dear Japanese Article 9 loving friends -

In this my November 3, 2010 "Constitution Promulgation Day" message I draw from some "USA automobile auto-bumper-sticker wisdom" that I recently saw on a car's rear bumper.

"It is not a measure of 'good health' to be 'well adjusted' to 'sick cultures'"

I urge you, as protectors of one of Planet Earth's most important treasures, your constitution's war-renouncing Article 9, to encourage your nation to chart a "new path" in international relations - one that helps us as a species to grow from "sick" to "healthier cultures." I urge this in addition to your other significant efforts to keep Article 9 alive and well as a model for all other nations. Let me explain.

The "new path" to which I refer relates to things that Japan might do, with Article 9 as its badge of honor, so as to non-violently help prevent "oil and other resource wars," and to help prevent our human species war against dear Mother Earth herself - with our profligate "resource consumption" global warming war that inexorably moves the planet toward Martian lifelessness.

Please see several of the papers on my web-site [article9society.org -- English only] and any edition of our bilingual book [Japanese and English] A Call For Peace: The Implications of Japan's War-Renouncing Constitution, pages 131-203, for much more on the above matters.

This much needed "new path" from "sick" to "healthier cultures" of which I dream, is one that arises in part out of my mechanical engineering thermodynamic understanding of the entropic essence inherent in contemporary "free-market" economic "growth" ideas and practices to which currently almost all Planet Earth's cultures now genuflect. The Second Law of Thermodynamics, the so-called "entropy law," helps us to understand a significant dimension of the "sick-culture" referenced in my "auto-bumper-sticker-wisdom" - economic growth, growth, and more growth.

Continuous "economic growth" in which the entire human species wastefully consumes earth's resources as do we in the so-called "developed world," is impossible for very far into the future. Difficult as it might be, we need to seek "Zero Growth" "Steady-State" economic models and cultures that enable us human animals to find meaningful and fulfilling existences without such entropic disasters as lie in store for us if we do not change our ways.

I am convinced that we as a species haven't long left on Planet Earth, unless we find ways [1] to rid our lovely planet of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, and, [2] to stop creating ever more destructive killing technologies, babies that we engineers and scientists so often lovingly beget, and [3] rather than so much engineering for war, as in the USA, we must organize ourselves so that all cultures seriously and powerfully ask engineering and science talent to give us orders-of-magnitude more "Green Technology by Design" [GTBD]

Of course, in addition to the above three requirements, we must also [4] absolutely get control of our fecundity - that is, learn how to enjoy the existential pleasures of "sex" but without producing so many of those little human animals to gobble up the planet. Item [4] is very important, but also a difficult challenge because it unfortunately opens up a vast "can of worms" into the hallowed ground of some religious and cultural folly.
The fulfillment of the above four Planet Earth "needs," along with a few others, requires a new model to replace the poor unconstrained "free-market" profligate resource consumption culture, dominantly demonstrated by the USA. The USA's culture consists of a "globe circling" 800 foreign military based empire with about half of USA tax revenues devoted to military killing technology and systems, while spending practically nothing on GTBD ideas and needs. USA military expenditures are about equal to those of all the other nations on Planet Earth combined.

Meanwhile, rather than addressing the cultural sickness of our humongous USA demand for "illicit drugs" - we militarize this "sickness" and carry out a "war-on-drugs" by attacking the small farmers in Mexico, Central and South America, and Afghanistan with helicopter [gun and chemical spray] ships. These farmers are simply responding to the immense USA drug demand - something about which we do essentially nothing. These assessments help me to see some dimensions of the "sick" as addressed in my opening "auto-bumper-sticker wisdom."

Back to GTBD -- GTBD is engineering that powerfully places two new "design criteria" at the very front end of the "engineering design process," something that current industrialization and globalization systems generally do not demand. These two new "design criteria" are that technology and systems must [1] "minimize" the consumption of Planet Earth's resources, and [2] not pollute and globally warm her. These two new "design criteria" will also enable Mother Earth to have a "seat at the table" where "benefit/cost" economic calculations are made as to the kinds of things we humans create and use.

Even though Japan is also afflicted with the "economic-growth" mind-set -- I see Japan as being rather uniquely equipped to lead the way and become a "world-class" model for all other cultures on our Planet Earth - a model for a new humane "culture of being" without continuous and mindlessly profligate "economic growth." Let us "grow" in non-material consumptions.

Japan has long demonstrated its ability to design and produce orders of magnitude higher quality and more reliable technologies. For example, your culture almost drove the entire USA automobile industry into the ground in the 1970s and 80s with this kind of high "quality and reliable" technology. This accomplishment in significant ways, as I learned from my 1981 visiting professorship in Japan, arose out of a greater Japanese focus at the very beginning of the engineering design process on design criteria for high quality and reliability. USA's auto industry learned much from Japan on how to design and build high quality and reliable technology. We in the USA might similarly learn much from "world-class" Japanese leadership in GTBD.

My vision is one of Japanese demonstration of new models of leadership in multitudes of GTBD systems that both "developed" and "developing" nations might emulate. These are technology systems that will also "non-violently" reduce the probability of [1] "resources wars" [the likelihood of which much grows with each passing year] -- and [2] our species "consumption war" on Mother Earth called Global Warming.

Thus my dear Japanese Article 9 loving friends, I urge you to find ways to significantly encourage your nation to become Planet Earth's world-class leader for GTBD - and in so doing, to also proudly proclaim to all humanity that this is a fulfillment of some of the promise of your Article 9's war-renouncing wisdom.

Peace,


Chuck Overby, Ohio University Emeritus Engineering Professor
Veteran of two wars - WW-II and Korea [combat pilot]
Humanist Internationalist and Eco-Engineer
1991 Founder of The Article 9 Society

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