“Nothing is more useless in developing a nation’s economy than a gun, and nothing blocks the road to social development than the financial burden of war. War is the arch enemy of national progress and the modern scourge of civilized men.”
– King Hussein, Address at Tulane University, April 1976 (Link)
Beware the mythic narrative of war. From Chris Hedges:
“If we really saw war, what war does to young minds and bodies, it would be harder to embrace the myth of war. If we had to stand over the mangled corpses of the eight schoolchildren killed in Afghanistan a week ago and listen to the wails of their parents we would not be able to repeat clichés about liberating the women of Afghanistan or bringing freedom to the Afghan people. This is why war is carefully sanitized. This is why we are given war’s perverse and dark thrill but are spared from seeing war’s consequences. The mythic visions of war keep it heroic and entertaining. And the press is as guilty as Hollywood. During the start of the Iraq war, television reports gave us the visceral thrill of force and hid from us the effects of bullets, tank rounds, iron fragmentation bombs and artillery rounds. We tasted a bit of war’s exhilaration, but were protected from seeing what war actually does.
The wounded, the crippled and the dead are, in this great charade, swiftly carted off stage. They are war’s refuse. We do not see them. We do not hear them. They are doomed, like wandering spirits, to float around the edges of our consciousness, ignored, even reviled. The message they tell is too painful for us to hear. We prefer to celebrate ourselves and our nation by imbibing the myth of glory, honor, patriotism and heroism, words that in combat become empty and meaningless. And those whom fate has decreed must face war’s effects often turn and flee.”
This seems relevant.
“It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are really good at heart.
It’s utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of chaos, suffering and death. I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness, I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too, I feel the sufferings of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return once more.”
Anne Frank
Related Posts
On Finding Optimism (July 2013)
Nature, Not Always Red in Tooth and Claw (January 2013)
On Optimism and Human Nature (April 2011)
“If I did not believe that anthropology could also serve as an instrument of peace and a tool for human conviviality … I would have long since renounced this uncomfortable and difficult science and somewhat marginal way of life.”
— Nancy Scheper Hughes, “Saints, Scholars, and Schizophrenics” (2001: 53)
“One sunny mornin’ we’ll rise, I know/ And I’ll meet you further on up the road.”
— Johnny Cash, “Further On Up the Road“
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I thought it might be helpful to visualize just how quickly the number of direct ancestors can grow, and how we can confidently say that all people share ancestors. Let’s say that this is your biological family tree for a just a handful of generations, keeping in mind that ‘family’ here refers to direct biological ancestors. This might not exactly be the family you recognize during holidays and get-togethers, and we all have people who fall in and out of our lives. But everyone has two biological parents. OK, OK, some people might have more than two biological parents, but let’s keep it simple.
Going back a mere three generations, you have 8 direct biological great-grandparents, as this number doubles with each generation we go back.
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“The moral thing I should wish to say to them is very simple. I should say love is wise; hatred is foolish. In this world, which is getting more closely and closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other. We have to learn to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don’t like. We can only live together in that way; if we are to live together and not die together, we must learn a kind of charity and a kind of tolerance which is absolutely vital to the continuation of human life on this planet.”
I think it helps to remember that all humans share common ancestry. While there are certainly cultural and biological differences around the globe today, these are the tip of the iceberg, the distant branches of the tree. Under the surface, at the roots, the distribution of people across the globe owes itself to a long, gradual process of migration — or several migrations — during which time some differences arose (along with the interbreeding with neighboring groups that maintained similarities).
The animation below illustrates some of the major migrations of people across the world over the past 200,000 years, reminding us of our roots and shared connections. Some of this is already out of date. For example, a recent study suggested that modern humans may have reached China by 100,000 years ago, much earlier than suggested in the video. But the point still stands — no matter where they live today, all humans can trace their lineage back to the same place.
“I speak of peace, therefore, as the necessary, rational end of rational men.”
“What kind of peace do I mean and what kind of a peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, and the kind that enables men and nations to grow, and to hope, and build a better life for their children — not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women, not merely peace in our time but peace in all time…I speak of peace, therefore, as the necessary, rational end of rational men. I realize the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war, and frequently the words of the pursuers fall on deaf ears. But we have no more urgent task…Our problems are manmade; therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man’s reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable, and we believe they can do it again…And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s futures. And we are all mortal.”
In an 1839 letter from Emma to Charles Darwin, shortly after they were married, she wrote about her worries that Charles’ pursuit of scientific questions on evolution might lead him further away from religious faith. Emma wrote:
“May not the habit in scientific pursuits of believing nothing till it is proved, influence your mind too much in other things which cannot be proved in the same way, & which if true are likely to be above our comprehension.”
At the time, Darwin would have been around 30 years old, two decades before On the Origin of Species was published. Their correspondence showed that Emma’s concern that Charles’ need for evidence could not be applied to matters of faith, and that this probably meant — to her distress — that they would probably be separated in the afterlife. At the bottom of her letter, Charles added his own note:
“When I am dead, know
that many times, I
have kissed & cryed
over this. C. D.”
Hillary Clinton was recently asked about the leftover bombs that the U.S. dropped on Laos. The heart of her reply:
“This is a humanitarian disaster that we created, and we need to put more money in and work much faster to try to clean it up so we don’t have more deaths and injuries.”
Patrick F. Clarkin, Ph.D. 