There is a solution to the difficult problem of war, but it
is evolutionary. That feels bizarre to us humans, uncongenially abstract. No, we
cannot grow new brains and hearts. But we can
evolve how we think—and feel. We can become more responsive to what reality
keeps screaming at us at the top of its lungs: a global population of seven
billion and rising, along with nuclear weapons, asserts a grand limit, where
the destructive potential of our sheer numbers and our weapons is bigger than
the delicate natural systems that support life. Meanwhile we go on applying the
hammer of war to ancient grudges that war itself will never solve, instead of
expanding the spaces where it feels safe to engage each other from the heart.
When we boil them down, the great religions all offer
variations of the same message: do unto others as we would want others to do to
us. Don’t use violence to resolve conflict. Learn to want what we have not have
what we want. Be as good as our word, real, honest, truthful. Be present, for
this moment is our taste of eternity. Be inclusive, even to the point of including
the perspective of our supposed adversary, for he is genetically identical to us.
Be cooperative—especially with “strangers,” because strangers are potential
friends. Act as if we share responsibility for the good of the whole, because we
do.
This implies both a humbling and an expansion which has
seemed, up to now, impossibly difficult: the realization that being a good
person involves something more fundamental and “less than” being a Jew, a
Christian, a Buddhist, a Democrat, a Republican, a Shia, a Sunni. Those
identifications can be supportive of
our goodness, but often put us in violently dysfunctional conflict with others.
So we need to know that we emerge from a common context that transcends those labels.
We are the outcome of 13.85 billion years of evolution. We are just like
everyone else—and we are a preciously unique expression of all that process. Our
true identity is both less than the thought-forms of nationalism/religion/race/class
and much more than those seemingly crucial but ultimately petty attributes.
In the great journey of human cultural development, there
are some hints that we already get this: the native American understanding of
how we are part of the great web of life; the Arab tradition of hospitality to
strangers; the pan-religious perspective of the contemplative tradition that
run through all religions; the insights of poets that tell us that if we could
fully understand our enemy he would no longer be our enemy; even the clarifying
rigor of the modern scientific method.
All of these glorious cultural achievements point toward a potential
greater glory: the end of war on this tiny planet. They help us to see reality more
clearly and act upon that clarity for good of the whole. Many call this reality
God, but it doesn’t matter what we label it. Life on earth is a vital, moving,
ever-changing process to which we must learn to adapt and evolve, by seeing what
all humans have in common: the same naked birth and death; the same hopes for
each other and our children; the same suffering and the same compassion that
suffering calls forth from doctors and nurses and teachers and public servants.
Does this mean that we cannot practice the rituals of our
religions, rituals which give the stages of our lives order and meaning, the
rhythm of initiation and work and rest and meditation? Does it mean that we are
looking at a future in which there will be no more nations or religions or even
separate races as we know them?
No. If all sects and rituals were magically swept away, we
would renew them as a comfort against the terrifying chaos of life. And there
will always be differences among us, more conflict than ever, which will require
the administration of boundaries and the exercise of compromise. But the
conditions of life today, where all our most important problems transcend
religious and national borders—climate change, feeding billions of people, finding
clean water, preserving the health of the oceans and rain forests—suggest that
while we may go on thinking of ourselves as Israeli, a Palestinian Gazan,
Socialist, Brazilian, our primary identification must be as responsible citizens
of one small planet. This amounts
to no less than a deep evolutionary shift. Already it is bringing about new
political structures, such as revised constitutions that give rights not only
to people but also to natural systems like rivers.
The Gazans and Israelis enduring another futile round of
eye-for-an-eye thinking are understandably disinclined to look upward and feel their
connection to the creativity of the spiraling galaxies out of which they emerged;
they are desperately focused upon day by day survival. So it is up to us living
in greater security to promote—and model—the planetary expansion of identity
that will make their agony obsolete.
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