Foreword that can also be read afterwards
Or
Afterword that can also be read before

Translated by Kim Martin Metzger

The UN General Assembly proclaimed the year 2000 the "Year of the Culture of Peace." For this reason, I put together this collection of stories.

Ever since I started writing books for children, I have considered it important to deal with the difficult subject of war and peace in a way that children can understand. It seems to me that it is not enough to tell children that war is terrible and that peace is much nicer. Although even that is a step forward, of course, considering there was once a youth literature that glorified the military and combat action. But most children in our latitudes know that war is something terrible and peace is much nicer. But is peace possible? Or is war an unavoidable destiny that keeps befalling humankind? Doesn’t our history class, as well as the evening news, teach us that war has always existed everywhere in the world and is still with us? A culture of peace, understanding of others, peaceful resolution of conflicts – all of that is well and good: but what if the others do not want to go along?

I cannot imagine how we can banish war from the life of humankind, if we do not search for the causes of war. Only when the cause of a disease is discovered, can a focused and effective method be found to fight it.

It is true that I just skipped all my history classes at university, but at home I have continued my studies of history for myself to this day because, as a writer, the question of what determines people’s actions and thoughts is naturally always on my mind. But of course I cannot claim to have found the philosopher’s stone or that in my stories I could absolutely explain the causes of war. And I also cannot present a complete recipe for the avoidance of future wars. But I want the stories to do more than just give people "food for thought." Writers are always trying to give people something to think about, but at some point, someone is going to have to start thinking. The stories I have collected here are intended to suggest a direction in which a person can continue to think; they are intended to convey a feeling for where and how to search for the causes of war.

Maybe the intentions of the book can best be summed up like this: I try to show  how our actions can be interconnected in such a way, that the ones who do not try their best to further their own interests must perish. But that on the other hand by each of us trying to further our own interests we may in fact unintentionally increase the loss or make worse the damage for all of us. And that we cannot escape this dilemma unless we communicate with each other and coordinate our actions. This moral is simple enough, but the hard thing is to really see through the complex ways in which the actions of individuals, groups, nations, states on this planet are interconnected.

I am trying to teach children to begin to recognize that sort of social mechanism, and I think that this is a novel approach in children's literature.

The Dreamer took shape during a weeklong workshop, arranged by the cultural initiative "Fireworks" in the Oetz valley, Tyrol. The theme was "Free as the Wind and the Clouds." There the children and I wrote a "Wind and Cloud Book."

I wrote The Blue Boy for the children’s television series "Siebenstein" presented by the German television network, ZDF. I wrote it shortly after the wall came down between East and West Germany in 1989, when the whole world was seized by a short-lived euphoria of peace. When the story appeared in a book, we had already experienced the Gulf War. This story is about the hardening of the soul that can produce fear. The point of the story is not that the boy throws away his gun in the end but rather why he throws it away. "Well, you could just throw away your gun," is not enough. First there has to be hope for change.

The Great War on Mars is an attempt to show how the fact that everybody pursues his or her own – actually harmless - self-interests can lead to results that nobody intended.

There’s a similar mechanism at work in The Planet of Carrots. It shows how a specific social system can develop its own dynamic, so that it becomes very difficult to change anything in the system, and even those who are actually placed at a disadvantage by the system can become its defenders.

The Slave, too, is about how it can happen that people can create systems of which they themselves become prisoners.

In The Farmers Who Were Good at Numbers the theme is continued. I wrote this story after reading The Logic of Collective Action by the economist Mancur Olson. In this book, the author reliably demonstrates that it is theoretically impossible for a large group of individuals acting rationally in their own self-interests (this is the favorite model of modern economics) to do something together for a common cause, even if everyone knows that it would be better for all if everyone committed themselves to this cause. He also shows why it is easier for smaller, more manageable groups to do something for a common cause than it is for really large groups.

The Strange People from the Planet Hortus is quite simply about the costs of waging war.

The Strange War shows a possible form of passive resistance. What kind of resistance is possible depends, of course, on the goals of the aggressors. If the aggressors are intent on wiping out the other nation, this form of resistance will not be possible. But most wars are waged to subjugate peoples, not to exterminate them.

Arobanai is an account of the life of pygmies as an example of the life style of hunters and gatherers. It is based on the research conducted by Colin Turnbull.

Star Snake, on the other hand, is the story of a young Aztec warrior and the history of the rise of the Aztec Empire.

These two stories contrast one of the most peaceful and loving societies that has ever lived on this planet with one of the cruelest and most warlike. They ought to be read together in order to compare the various aspects of life in the two societies. How is it possible for beings of the same species to be so different in their feelings, thoughts, and in their actions?

The Two Prisoners introduces something known in game theory as the "prisoner dilemma." It is a classic model for how the quite rational pursuit of an advantage for oneself can nevertheless become harmful to all concerned. As long as one adheres to the conditions of the model, there is no solution.

Report to the Council of the United Solar Systems sums up all of the themes, and maybe it is what the blue boy discovered during the years he studied the blue planet, while gazing through the telescope. It was at the same workshop in the Oetz valley that I wrote the first drafts of this story. The children were encouraged to ask me for stories, and one girl, who coincidentally shares my last name and whose first name is Nina, brought me a note that said, "Martin, please tell me why there are wars." The story is based, among other things, on the research of Lewis Mumford (The Myth of the Machine), but naturally also on my own reflections.

I used to think that there had been a time when humankind did not know war. When I read Jane Goodall’s account of a war between chimpanzees, I had to revise this opinion. Even in the age of the hunters and gatherers it was possible that one band had to find new hunting grounds and in the process got into a conflict with another band. But after the other band had been driven away, the war was over. Wars could happen, but they were not a critical component of the culture. It was not until the advent of agriculture, with plant cultivation and domesticated livestock, that people were able to store supplies and so even had time for military campaigns. As for the vanquished, these supplies were something that could be stolen without necessarily destroying those who had been robbed. War became a permanent institution because it was a means to gather together the surpluses of smaller groups of people and to invest them in strategies that resulted in an increase in productivity, i.e., in the production of even more surpluses that again could be invested in progress. And this was a far more effective means of subsistence than negotiations or free confederations would have been. The motivations of the individuals in power or of the warriors were less important. In nature, characteristics like horns, for example, arise by means of chance mutations. Whether the horns remain or disappear depends on whether they give their bearer a reproductive advantage or are a hindrance. A tribal chief might start a war out of hatred of his neighbor, for reasons of prestige, for religious reasons, because of pure arrogance, because of built-up aggression, because of sexual frustration, whatever. But war is able to persist as a permanent institution because of several factors: first, it promotes the congregation of people in large empires, and thus it makes gathering surpluses possible. Secondly, because it takes away more surpluses from a large portion of these people than they would be willing to invest in the common cause or in the future. And finally war persists because it promotes "progress" in the form of increased productivity of human labor. An advantage to society does not, however, have to be an advantage to the individual. A community of 500 free farming families would have been happier than an army of 100,000 farming families under the rule of a warrior chief. But only the empire of a warrior chief could afford a capital city with temples and schools for priests where the movements of the stars are studied.

The aggression that humans are capable of is certainly a precondition for wars being waged in the first place, but it is not the cause. Were the young men in Austria-Hungary more aggressive in 1914 than say in 1880? Or did the Kaiser become more aggressive in his later years? Often people’s aggressiveness and hatred of their neighbors must be stirred up in order for them to be ready to go to war or let their children go. Often though, the aggressiveness of soldiers has to be curbed. Whereas, on the one hand, some humans are trained for special units to be fiends, as for example the Green Berets in Vietnam, a modern army needs foremost people who are disciplined and who function reliably; that is, people who let themselves be governed by emotions as little as possible. The human being’s capacity for coolly objective and dispassionate action is, perhaps, even more dangerous than his capacity for aggression. As important as are all the pedagogical efforts that serve to reduce aggression, promote understanding of foreign cultures, teach the ability to solve personal conflicts peacefully, none of these measures can eliminate the causes of war. The industrial market economy that today controls the social structure on our planet is concerned (as no previous social structure has been) with increasing productivity, with producing ever more goods requiring ever less work, and investing the surpluses immediately in increased production and productivity. This not only leads to the fact that we will soon be reaching the limit of what the planet can stand ecologically. Here also lies the root of new wars. It is said that the wars of the future could be fought over ever decreasing resources, e.g., water. That is conceivable. But it is just as conceivable that future wars will be waged between the giant multi-national economic conglomerations, and that they will be about who may sell what to whom.

The important difference is this: A conflict about resources can be resolved. Let us say, the conflict is about water. Such a conflict can be resolved in different ways: One of the competing parties may conquer the resource for themselves and leave the others to starve or to flee. Or they may destroy the other party more or less completely by direct violence. Or the war reduces the population on both sides until the combined population is small enough for the existing water supply. But the conflict can also be resolved if new sources of water can be found, for instance by digging deeper wells, by desalinating sea water; or by inventing methods to save water and reduce its consumption. Conflicts about resources can be the cause of the most terrible, most cruel wars, even of genocide. But conflicts about resources are finite. And it is always possible to at least think of a peaceful way to resolve a conflict about resources. Whereas the war that is caused by the necessity - not the wish, the necessity - to expand the empire, to acquire new markets, to concentrate more surplus, is inherent in the structure of exploitative societies and is infinite.

To avoid future wars, six billion – and soon it will be seven and eight billion – people will have to agree on new economies and social structures. Only when they know something about one another and act with each other in mind, can people avoid increasing the harm to all by seeking only their own advantage. No longer can the goal be to constantly raise productivity – to produce ever more goods with ever less work; the exchange of things should not be the main content of interpersonal affairs. The fact that things can be produced with less and less labor should not lead to ever more things being produced. Instead it should lead to people being able to use the freed-up time to exchange social services with each other: art, entertainment, care giving, healing, education, research, sports, philosophy …

For if every instrument could accomplish its own work, obeying or anticipating the will of others, like the statues of Daedalus, or the tripods of Hephaestus, which, says the poet, "of their own accord entered the assembly of the Gods;" if, in like manner, the shuttle would weave and the plectrum touch the lyre without a hand to guide them, chief workmen would not want servants, nor masters slaves.

Aristotle

Don’t you think we’ve reached that point?