Curiosity

Human spaceflight seems to have entered a lull at the moment, but recently NASA launched the Curiosity rover toward Mars. Just think of the academic and technical understanding it took to construct this large robot, hurl it beyond the tug of Earth's gravity, and then arrange -- from hundreds of millions of kilometers away -- its multi-staged landing onto another world. It is easy to look at the state of the world and bemoan human frailty, but the discoveries and power of science never fail to lift my spirits...and I know of no more dramatic example of either than the exploration of the Cosmos.  I wish the likes of Carl Sagan were here to witness Curiosity make landfall next year.

From Space.com:  10 Amazing Things NASA's Huge Mars Rover Can Do

How TV Ruined Your Life

Yesterday I enjoyed a six-part series on the deleterious effects of television by a British comedian, Charlie Booker. The episodes are as follows:

1. "Fear"

In the first episode, Booker takes television to task for its longstanding reliance on stimulating the brain's fear-response centers, beginning with government public safety programs and then moving on to the constant use of violence in drama and the news.

2. "The Life Cycle"

Booker examines the portrayal and targeting of various age groups -- from the depiction of married men as hapless idiots to the way older people are pushed into the periphery.

3. "Aspiration"

Neil Postman, known for Amusing Ourselves to Death, once commented that commercials advocate a way of life and standards of normalcy more than they do actual products. In this third episode, Booker notes the way commercials and some programs (like Dallas) encourage mindless consumerism that keeps people on a hedonic treadmill, forever chasing the carrot and forever failing.

4. "Love"

The depiction of love and romance in movies and in television have given people unreasonable and unhealthy expectations from what to expect of relationships, as they ignore the substance of companionate love and the work of relationships in favor of stories of soul mates meeting and making Big Gestures to impress one another.

5. "Progress"

Here, Booker rages against the notion that people can find everything they want inside a glowing blue green -- from televisions to iPads.

6. "Knowledge"

In this final segment, the host tracks the decline of educational programming from the heights (The Ascent of Man, Civilization), to the gutter -- ghost-hunting shows hunted by idiot celebrities.

Mother's Day

Today in the United States we celebrate the miracle of childbirth  and importance of motherhood by buying things. Back during the spring equinox, I watched a series of childbirth videos from various mammals. (It seemed appropriate.) It's certainly an interesting process, more dignified in some animals than in others. The elephants just fell out like large...droppings. I tried to find a video that made human childbirth look beautiful, but the only clips I could find which didn't leave me staring at the screen in horror were those which involved water birth. Out of curiosity, I wondered how chimpanzees managed things, and learned that this one at least tried giving birth while upside down.

May Day

May Day is an international holiday created to celebrate the accomplishments and trials of the men and women who have, throughout history,  made the modern world possible.  I celebrate this day not  because of my own personal politics, but because of my basic moral outlook. When we celebrate the worker, we celebrate the majority of humanity -- for most of the world belongs to the working class.

On this day, I invite you to consider that  most everything you can see and touch around you was created by the labor of another human being not unlike yourself. We live in a world created by one another, and virtually everything in our lives has been touched by the lives of countless men and women across the world. The food you eat, for instance, was planted, tended to, harvested, inspected, cleaned, packaged, transported, unloaded, and stocked in the store by people. We are constantly connected to one another.  This is worth being mindful of.

We should also be mindful of the widening gap etween those who create the wealth and those who horde it, between the working poor and the idle rich. It is more present now than at any time in history, for the strength of the few has been increased against the many upon whose backs they are perched.  The reasons for this are many, but the solution is the same.  We must stand together and work -- organize, protest, and defy.  We do not enjoy the civil rights and political liberties that we do because the powerful kings of the past thought it  was the right thing to do: we enjoy them because men and women of the past asserted those rights, demanded those liberties. They used the one weapon which can never be taken away -- strength of numbers -- to force reaction.  Human progress is the story of courage's advance and tradition's retreat.

While there are many appropriate songs I could share today, the song below has the most meaning for me. Back in 2007, as a self-described social democrat, I searched for 'democratic socialism' out of curiosity. I heard Billy Bragg singing the Internationale, and I listened to it again and again that weekend. It spoke to my humanist morals,  to my idealism,  and has taken on a powerful significance. Translated throughout the world into various languages, it may be the most sung song in history. 

Other suggestions:

1. "Power in a Union", Billy Bragg

2. "Ludlow Massacre", Woody Guthrie

3. "Solidarity Forever", Pete Seeger

4. "The Internationale", Alistar Hulett (traditional English lyrics)

     No savior from on high delivers

     No faith have we in prince or peer

     Our own right hands the chains must shiver

     Chains of hatred, greed, and fear.

5. "Internationale 2000", Maxx Klaxon (even more modern lyrics with more of an electronic than a folk sound.)

     Turn off their televised illusions

     Stand up and look them in the eyes

     Declare your mental liberation

     Shake off the dust, and claim the prize. 

Stand up, O victims of oppression

For the tyrants fear your might

Don't cling so heard to your possessions --

You have nothing if you have no Rights.

 

Let racist ignorance be ended,

For respect makes the Empires fall               

Freedom is merely privilege extended

Unless enjoyed by One and All 

So come brothers and sisters

For the struggle carries on

The Internationale unites the world  in song!

So comrades, come rally --

For this is the time and place

The International ideal 

Unites the human race.

Fall of the Berlin Wall, 9 November 1989

Let no one build walls to divide us,

Walls of hatred nor walls of stone

Come greet the Dawn and stand beside us

We'll live together, or we'll die alone

Earthrise

In our world poisoned by exploitation

Those who have taken, now they must give

And end the vanity of nations --

We've but Earth on which to live

So come brothers and sisters

For the struggle carries on

The Internationale unites the world  in song!

So comrades, come rally --

For this is the time and place

The International ideal 

Unites the human race.

"Tank Man". Tiananmen Square. 4 June 1989. 

 And so begins the final drama,

In the streets and in the fields

We stand unbowed before their armor

We defy! their guns and shields

When we fight, provoked by their aggression

Let us be inspired by like and love

For though they offer us concessions,

Change will not come from above!

So come brothers and sisters

For the struggle carries on

The Internationale unites the world  in song!

So comrades, come rally --

For this is the time and place

The International ideal 

Unites the human race.

Elementary, My Dear Watson...

After hearing that a supercomputer named Watson beat two of Jeopardy!'s champions, I turned to YouTube to look for footage of the show and found instead this PBS Newshour story that focuses on how Watson's software, a new approach in "machine learning", allows it to understand human speech.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reporter Miles O'Brien: It amazed me how Watson gets all the jokes, wordplay, and puns that are hallmarks of Jeopardy! -- and Watson gets smarter with each answer.
David Ferrucci, lead designer: It learns, based on the right answers, how to adjust its interpretations. And now, from not being confident, it starts to get more confident in the right answers, and then it can truly jump in.
O'Brien: So, Watson surprises you?
Ferrucci: Oh, yeah, absolutely! In fact, people say, "Oh, why did he get that one wrong?" I don't know. "Why did he get that one right?" I don't know.
O'Brien: Computers that learn, understand, and even surprise us? What could go wrong with that?

...
"Hello, Hal, do you read me? Do you read me, Hal?"
"Affirmative, Dave. I read you."
"Hal, open the pod bay doors, please, Hal."
"I'm sorry, Dave; I can't do that." 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I did finally find coverage of the match, though. First part is here.  The first part of the challenge has Trebek showing the audience footage of his visit to the computer.

The 21st century will be a very interesting one, I think.

Musical Dharma

I never fail to feel heartened when this group of young Buddhist monks*, marching solemnly through the countryside in their habits, suddenly breaks forth into a silly, lovable English song.

*According to a documentary I watched recently, it is not uncommon for poorer people in places like Tibet to offer children they cannot afford to feed to the monastery. I think that happened in Europe, as well...

Imagine

I have shared music from Playing for Change before,  not so much for the exquisite music as the beautiful dream it represents by bringing people from all over the world to make music together. Instruments from varied cultures join in harmony together, and the result...is astonishing. This particular song shares that same vision, uniting humanity --  abandoning narrow dreams and fruitless obsessions for a cosmopolitan spirit.

Science Saved my Soul

The Apprentice Philosopher recently sent me a video recently and after three viewings I realized I had to share it.   At the beginning of the video, its author recounts an experience he had encountering the Milky Way -- stepping out into the night,  struck by the grandeur and majesty of the Cosmos but being able to appreciate it all the more because of his understanding of modern cosmology.  He then compares this moment of soul-stirring clarity to the feelings religions attempt to reproduce and gain a monopoly on.  As he talks, beautiful imagery and subtle, but effective music plays in the background. It's in the spirit of Carl Sagan's Cosmos and Richard Dawkins' Unweaving the Rainbow.  Selected quotations are below.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


The Milky way itself contains 200 billion stars, give or take. These numbers are essential to understanding what a galaxy is, but when contemplating them some part of the human mind protests that 'it cannot be so'.  Yet an examination of the evidence brings you to the conclusion that it is, and if you take that conclusion out on a clear dark night and look up, you might see something that will change your life. This is what a galaxy looks like from the inside -- from the surburbs of our sun. Through binoculars, for every star you can see with your naked eye, you can see a hundred around it, all suspended in a grey-blue mist.  But through a modest telescope, if you wait for your eyes to adjust to the dark, and get the focus just right, you will see that mist for what it really is -- more stars,  like dust, fading into what tastes like infinity.  But you've got to have the knowledge -- seeing is only half of it. 

That night, three years ago, I knew a small part of what's out there -- the kinds of things, the scale of things, the age of things. The violence and destruction, appalling energy, hopeless gravity, and the despair of distance -- but I feel safe, because I know my world is protected by the very distance that others fear. It's like the universe screams in your face: Do you know what I am? How grand I am? How old I am? Can you even comprehend what I am? What are you, compared to me?  And when you know enough science, you can just smile up at the universe and reply, "Dude -- I am you."

When I looked at the galaxy that night, I knew the faintest twinkle of starlight was a real connection between my comprehending eye along a narrow beam of light to the surface of another sun. The photons my eyes detect, the light I see, the energy with which my nerves interact came frm that star. I thought I could never touch it, yet something from it crosses the void and touches me. I might never have known.  My eyes saw only a tiny point of light, but my mind saw so much more. 

There's no word for such experiences that come through scientific and not mystical revelation. The reason for that is that every time someone has such a mind-gasm, religion steals it -- simply by saying, "Ah, you've had a religious experience."

To even partially comprehend the scale of a single galaxy is to almost disappear -- and when you remember all the other galaxies, you shrink one hundred billion times smaller still.  But then you realize what you are -- the same facts that made you feel so insignificant also tell you how you got  here.  It's like you become more real, or maybe the universe becomes more real.  You suddenly fit. You suddenly belong.  You do not have to bow down -- you do not have to look away. In such moments, all you have to do is remember to keep breathing.

The body of a newborn baby is as old as the Cosmos. The form is new and unique, but the materials are 13.7 billion years old -- processed by nuclear fusion in stars, fashioned by electromagnetism. Cold words for amazing processes -- and that baby was you, is you. You're amazing -- not only alive, but with a mind. What fool would exchange this for every winning lottery ticket ever drawn?

When I compare what scientific knowledge has done for me, and what religion tried to do to me, I sometimes literally shiver. Religions tell children they might go to hell and they must believe -- while science tells children that they came from the stars and presents reasoning they can believe.  I've told plenty of young kids about stars, atoms, galaxies and the Big Bang, and I have never seen fear in their eyes -- only amazement and curiosity. They want more.  Why do kids swim in it, and  adults drown in it? What happens to reality  between our youngest years and adulthood? Could it be that someone promised us something so beautiful that our universe seems dull, empty, even frightening by comparison? It might still be made by a creator of some kind, but religion has made it look ugly -- religion paints everything not of itself as unholy, and sinful, while it beautifies and dignifies its errors, lies, and bigotry like a pig wearing the finest robes. In its efforts to stop us facing reality, religion has become the reality we cannot face.

Look at what religion has made us to -- to ourselves, and to each other. Religion stole our love and our loyalty and gave it to a book, to a telepathic father who tells his children that love means kneeling before him.

There might yet be a heaven -- but it isn't going to be perfect, and we're going to have to build it ourselves.

Ten Centuries in Five Minutes (Updated)

Spotted this at the Buddhist blog.  The map doesn't just portray exchanges of territory, but territory seized by moving armies. Because there's no date given, this video is particularly enjoyable for students of history. I thought I was witnessing the unification of Germany under Bismarck until France invaded Spain, at which point I realized that was Napoleon's 'Confederation of the Rhine' earlier.

Special thanks to Neurovore of N^4 for letting me know the first video was taken down by the money-whoring powers that be.

What To Do with Officer Friendly

Back in January, a police cruiser and I passed each other going separate directions on a deserted highway winding through a small town. I checked the rear-view mirror as he passed me, ever-wary of being pulled over. An Alabama State Trooper pulled me over once in my first year of driving because I neglected to notice a headlight out, but I'd avoided catching any police officer's attention -- until then. His lights came on, and I automatically switched lanes and pulled into a quiet residential street. I am always wary of being pulled over by the police because I rarely remember to put the state-mandated insurance card in my car. This week I had it in my leather jacket, though, and considered myself fortunate indeed.

Were this just a routine traffic stop, it wouldn't be particularly memorable -- but it ended up in my being frisked. I have never cared much for authority,  but neither have I ever been a troublemaker. Throughout my life people remarked at how well-behaved and nice I was. I followed the rules -- my rules -- for behaving decently, in part to keep authority away from me. When authority targeted me,  I feel anger and indignation.  Little wonder I found Stoicism, with its emphasis on individuals following principled rules for themselves and not depending in outside authorities, or anarchism with its ever-defiant contempt for outside authority, so likable.  Because I do not trust authority, and because I so seldom cross its path, when the officer came to my window I was nervous. I handed him my library card before realizing that wasn't what he wanted, and when I tried to hand him my insurance card he also got the car's title and various other papers.

His reason for pulling me over was that he thought my seatbelt was undone. It was not. I suppose ordinarily he would have bid me good-day, but my nervousness piqued his curiosity. He explained to me that when he spotted nervous behavior from people he detained, he assumed they were nervous for having something to hide. My autonomous nervous system was in full gear, my face sweaty, my hands shaking, and my arms visibly vibrating.  The officer, who I'll refer to as Officer Friendly,  suggested that someone carrying a few kilos of drugs might be nervous.

I chortled at the prospect of my being a drug courier, at which point he asked me if I minded stepping out of the car -- at which point he frisked me. By this time my fear was ebbing away, quickly, replaced by astonishment and amusement that I was being frisked. We talk for a while, and he's still concerned about my being nervous. He wants to know why.  Though I let him frisk me and even search my car, I wasn't so foolish enough to explain to Officer Friendly that I was wary of abusive policemen and of authority in general. Instead, I told him that I hadn't been pulled over in many years and was not expecting it.  He wanted to know why I didn't bump into police officers much, and as valiantly as I tried to tell him that I was a simple fellow who didn't clash with anyone, I think he got the feeling that I was some survivalist character who only came down from my mountain to fetch supplies. I suppose my leather jacket, scruffy face, and car interior didn't help: on this day, it contained my laundry bag, an overstuffed bookpack, perhaps a dozen books, and odds and ends resulting from a week of commuting.  He searched the car, repeatedly inquiring if I was sure I wasn't hiding anything -- if I was sure there were no drugs or concealed weapons in the car. "I'm a man of peace," I felt like saying as I stood in front of his cruiser's camera and resisted the urge to wave at it.

Officer Friendly and I chatted as he searched my car -- with my permission. I'd given it unthinkingly, not realizing he had to ask, and that I had the right to resist him. But he was such a friendly fellow, so likable, that I readily agreed to everything he asked and came away from the situation very amused.  I have no use for drugs, and my only use for a gun would be euthanasia in the event of terminal cancer or such,  so I had no objections to him searching. I had a copy of Red Emma Speaks  in my backpack, but I could just say that was for research purposes on the off-chance he recognized the book as being a collection of anarchist Emma Goldman's writings.  In retrospect, though I should have been more cautious, I still think he was justified by my behavior at the start. That has not stopped me from trying to correct my ignorance, which I did in part tonight when I watched this documentary from the American Civil Liberties Union, called "BUSTED: The Citizen's Guide to Surviving Police Encounters".



The movie consists of three skits in which police officers confront people on the road, on the sidewalks, and in their homes. Each skit has two parts: in the first, the confronted citizens respond as I did and wind up in jail when the police officers seize all the opportunities naivete has given them. In the second, as the ACLU spokesperson narrates, the people 'flex their rights'.  The acting only seemed wooden in the third skit, the video itself should prove helpful to Americans who do not know how to respond in police situations.

Message of Hope

(Though I transcribed this for those who can't watch larger videos, it is worth experiencing if you can. Sagan's voice is set against a very complementary piano piece and beautiful imagery.)


We were hunters and foragers; the frontier was everywhere. We were bounded only by the earth, and the ocean, and the sky. The open road still softly calls; our little terraqueous globe is the madhouse of those hundred thousand, millions of worlds. We, who cannot even put our own planetary home in order -- riven with rivalries and hatreds -- are we to venture out into space?


By the time we're ready to settle even the nearest other planetary system, we will have changed. The simple passage of so many generations will have changed us. Necessity will have changed us. We're...an adaptable species. It will not be we who reach Alpha Centauri and the other nearby stars --it will be a species very like us, but with more of our strengths and fewer of our weaknesses: more confident, far-seeing, capable, and prudent.


For all our failings, despite our limitations and fallibilities, we humans are capable of greatness. What new wonders, undreamt of in our time, will we have wrought in another generation? And another? How far will our nomadic species have wandered by the end of the next century, and the next millennium?  Our remote descendants, safely arrayed on many worlds through the solar system and beyond, will be unified -- by their common heritage, by their regard for their home planet, and by the knowledge that whatever life may be, the only humans in all the universe come from Earth.


They will gaze up and strain to find the blue dot in their skies. They will marvel at how vulnerable the  repository of all our potential once was -- how perilous our infancy, how humble our beginnings...how many rivers we had to cross  before we found our way.

(Carl Sagan, reading from The Pale Blue Dot)

Reduced Shakspeare Company

After witnessing William Shatner rap Marc Anthony's funeral speech for Julius Caesar, I thought I'd seen everything. A related video led me to the Reduced Shakespeare Company's "Othello Rap", and then to this comic abridged performance of The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliette, which makes one of English literature's great tragedies a laugh act. Part of this stems from their delivery of the lines -- flavoring Shakespeare's elegant tongue with some modern English, and reacting to odd turns of phrase -- but much of the humor is physical. The entire play is presented by two people (not including a narrator), and they duck behind the background scenery to quickly change parts. They gesticulate wildly and dance about, and break the fourth wall with gusto.

I laughed throughout, and am now engrossed in their version of Hamlet.

The Wave

Recently a friend and coworker told me about an slightly aged public service-type movie called The Wave, in which a teacher turns his classroom into a cult after not being to explain adequately how the Nazis came to and endured in power for so long while committing so many heinous crimes. The dialog and acting are sometimes stilted and forced, but the ending scene is particularly effective.



The full thing is a little over forty minutes, during which time Mr. Ross's classroom becomes more and more a cult experience beginning with lessons on posture, acquiring chants and symbols, and maturing the way such things do -- creating violence against those outside the group or those inside who question its merits. Even the teacher, who knows what he is doing, is affected by the increasing role he plays in his students lives. The film culminates with a group-wide meeting in the school auditorium, where Mr. Ross tells them they are part of a nation-wide youth organization intent on reforming the nation. "Look at your future", Ross yells, and the entire audience is struck dumb by footage of Hitler and the Hitler Youth, perhaps taken from Triumph of the Will.

You thought you were so special. Better than everyone outside this room. You traded your freedom for the luxury of feeling superior. You accepted the group's will over your own convictions, no matter who you hurt. Oh, you thought you were just going along for the ride, that you could walk away at any moment... but where were you heading -- and how far would you have gone?  [...]

If history repeats itself, you will all want to deny what has happened to you and the Wave. But if our experiment is successful, you will have learned that we are all responsible for our own actions, and that you must question what you do -- and that you will never allow a group's will to usurp your individual rights. I know this has been painful for you. It certaintly has for me, but it's a lesson we'll all share for the rest of our lives. 

Freethinkers such as myself and most readers will probably not think themselves too susceptible to this kind of thing, but we all have our weaknesses. The idea of community is particularly alluring for social animals like ourselves, as is perhaps the instinct to cooperate with tribal rulers.  When do the ends justify the means? Whatever our weaknesses, strengths, or desires, someone is willing to take advantage of them and corrupt good intentions to foul deeds. The price of liberty  -- both from other people and from our weaknesses -- is indeed vigilance.

Better Man

Keb' Mo', associated with the international music and humanitarian effort Playing for Change, has several songs on Youtube I enjoy. I particularly like the third verse and chorus of his "Better Man".



Lyrics:

Sittin' here in my problems,
What am I gonna do now?
Am I gonna make it --
Someway, somehow?


Well, maybe I'm not supposed to know --
Maybe I'm supposed to cry.
If nobody ever knows the way I feel,
That's all right: that's okay.

Chorus:
I'm gonna make my world a better place
Gonna keep that smile on my face
I'm gonna teach myself how to understand
Gonna make myself a better man. 


Climbin' out the window, climbin' up the wall
Anyone gonna save me?
Or are they gonna let me fall?
Well, I don't really want to know..
I'm gonna hold on the best I can.
And if I fall down, I'm gonna get back up.
It'll be all right, it'll be okay.

(Chorus)

I don't really want to know,
I'm gonna hold on the best I can.
If I fall down down, I'm gonna get back up
It'll be all right, it'll be okay.

(Chorus)

I'm gonna make my world a better place,
Gonna keep that smile on my face
Gonna teach myself how to understand
Gonna make myself a better man.

Invictus

I read this poem a little over a year ago and quickly put it to memory. The fourth verse is especially meaningful for me, as it takes a stand against the fear of the supernatural ruling people's lives.

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the Pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll.

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul. 

 - William Ernest Henley 

Love Rescue Me

Perhaps owing to my background, I am especially fond of music sung by choirs. Few things grip me as effectively as dozens of different voices singing in concert together,  all contributing to something of beauty. As a more or less nonreligious person, though, there are few choirs I can listen to without finding the lyrics of the song too objectionable. I often listen to choirs with religious lyrics and can enjoy them, but more often the lyrics are too contemptible and ruin the music. Thus, when I find a choir with a beautiful message as well as a beautiful sound, I am eager to share.

Unsurpisingly, I heard this for the first time via Playing for Change.  I've linked to their videos before, and will continue to do so in the future, but this I had never heard until I played their CD. I often listen to Playing for Change just for the joy the sound of their videos gives me. This particular video speaks to me, though. I often relate to the idea of Love the way other people relate to the idea of God, although I don't think "love" exists by itself in a form of Platonic idealism.

The choir singing is the Omagh Community Youth Choir of Ireland. You can see them singing -- and hear an account of how they came to be -- here. The lyrics they used are slightly different from the original lyrics. 

Professoranton

A week or so ago I found a regularly-updated philosophy channel on YouTube: the host has focused on Stoicism several times, which may be of interest to some readers here. This particular video sees him ask the question what Stoicism most offers the modern world given that we use technology to alleviate so much. His sees  Stoicism's approach to death as its most important potential contribution today.

Carl Sagan and "The Glorious Dawn".

A fellow fan of Sagan linked to this on a forum I visit, and I thought I would pass it on. Carl Sagan "sings".

Playing for Change

For the past few months, I've been listening to and enjoying tremendously the international music effort Playing for Change. They bring artists from all over the world together in video to sing and play together. The effect for me is riveting and inspirational: the sound of voices and instruments from so many human cultures playing together is simply marvelous. It's sublime, really.

I would especially reccommend "Chanda Mama" and "Don't Worry". "Chanda Mama" is an Indian folk song with Hindi lyrics, but the sound is so exquisite that it's become one of my favorites. "Chanda Mama" is inserted below.

Universal Soldier

A few months back I posted a song by Bob Rafkin titled "I Am Humanity". The lyrics contained the phrase "a universal soldier, sword raised in my hand". Recently a favorite band of mine did a cover of a song called "Universal Soldier", which I believe to be the source for Rafkin's quoted phrase.

Lyrics (updated from original source, Buffy Sainte-Marie):

He's five foot two,

And he's six feet four,

He fights with missiles and with spears.

He's all of thirty-one

And he's only seventeen,

He's been a soldier for a thousand years...

He's a Christian, a Hindu

An atheist, a Jain..

A Buddhist and a Muslim and a Jew.

And he knows he shouldn't kill,

And he knows he always will --

Kill you for me, my friend, and me for you...

And he's fighting for Palestine,

He's fighting for Israel..

And he's fighting for the USA.

And he's fighting for the Russians,

And he's fighting for Iraq --

And he thinks we'll put an end to war this way.

He's fighting for democracy,

He's fighting for his soil

He says it's for the peace of all.

He's the one who must decide

Who's to live and who's to die --

And he never sees the writing on the wall.

But without him, how would Hitler

Have condemned him at Dachau,

Without him Caesar would have stood alone.

He's the one who gives his body as a weapon of the war,

And without him all this killing can't go on.

No, no...

He's the universal soldier,

And he really is to blame.

His order comes from far away no more --

They come from here and there and you and me,

And brother -- can't you see?

This is not the way we put an end to war.

No, no...