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Conservative columnist, William Kristol, has an opinion piece in the New York Times today criticizing the new MoveOn.org ad about the Iraq war. You can view the ad here.
In the ad a young mother, holding her baby boy, says the following: “Hi, John McCain. This is Alex. And he’s my first. So far his talents include trying any new food and chasing after our dog. That, and making my heart pound every time I look at him. And so, John McCain, when you say you would stay in Iraq for 100 years, were you counting on Alex? Because if you were, you can’t have him.”
William Kristol makes some valid points about this ad. John McCain’s comment about staying in Iraq for 100 years (or even longer) has been taken out of context. The U.S. currently has a volunteer military, so John McCain can’t take this woman’s son. But then he quotes a woman who’s son has been serving in Iraq; she says about the ad: “Does that mean that she wants other people’s sons to keep the wolves at bay so that her son can live a life of complete narcissism? What is it she thinks happens in the world? … Someone has to stand between our society and danger. If not my son, then who? If not little Alex then someone else will have to stand and deliver. Someone’s son, somewhere.”
And Mr. Kristol responds to this statement with the following: “This is the sober truth. Unless we enter a world without enemies and without war, we will need young men and women willing to risk their lives for our nation. And we’re not entering any such world.”
I’m not so naïve as to think we live in a world without enemies or war, but I found myself surprised by Mr. Kristol’s choice of words. “Unless we enter…” he writes before deciding in the next sentence that we’re not “entering” such a world.
Should this really be the question we ask, and the conclusion we draw? I agree with Mr. Kristol that we won’t enter any such world, but we can create a world in which we no longer kill one another in wars. We have the capacity to solve conflicts peaceably. The great majority of individuals do this, and many societies have learned to do so as well. Can’t we work to create a world in which we all solve conflicts without violence, individuals and nations alike?
William Kristol’s perspective is not simply pessimistic, it is essentially passive. That is, passive about the necessity to work for a better world, one in which we have healthy, sustainable, and peaceful systems and societies. Passive about our responsibility to create a safe and humane world so that our children need not “stand and deliver” in war, but rather stand and deliver on viable solutions to war and environmental degradation and poverty and cruelty and a host of other problems.
Mr. Kristol would likely be surprised that I’m calling him passive. After all, he advocates active engagement with our enemies in the form of a strong military and sons going to war. But he is silent on the most important challenge of our time – the challenge to raise a generation that has learned how to create peace. That is the challenge that humane education seeks to meet. It won’t be selfish narcissists who take up this challenge, but rather a generation that has been taught and motivated to be wise, committed, generous changemakers.
~ Zoe
Filed under: humane education, positive choices, responsibility Tagged: | advertising, changemakers, humane education, Iraq, McCain, military, MoveOn.org, peace, responsibility, war
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We create the peace by choosing to be the peace. This is the message repeated over and over and over again by people like Marshall Rosenberg, Pema Chodron and Thich Nhat Hanh, but Thich Nhat Hanh is of particular note because he has actually seen war, and he responded to it by writing Being Peace, in order to teach us how to create the peace by choosing to be the peace.
What Thich Nhat Hanh is saying, over and over again, is that we create the peace by choosing to be the peace, and if we want to bring peace to the world, then we must first create peace inside of ourselves, because every choice I make reshapes reality, and I will make peace inducing choices if I create peace inducing thought patterns inside of myself by exposing myself to peace inducing activities (while intentionally removing myself from the activities, and media, which goad me into making decisions which upset and hurt everyone around me).
Based on everything I have read from Thich Nhat Hanh, I would guess that if someone asked Thich Nhat Hanh to comment on John McCain or William Kristol, Thich Nhat Hanh would say that their thought patterns have been shaped by their experiences, and people who have had different experiences would have different reactions to the same situations because our experiences shape our attitude toward life, our way of perceiving it, and our reaction to it.
Ironically, ten years ago I believe that I would have had a very similar reaction to these men, but I was lucky enough to have some experiences which made me realize that my perception of reality was based on my interpretation of what events meant, not what the events actually did mean. I thought the events meant one thing, but I was totally and absolutely wrong, and my reaction to the events was based on my interpretation of what they meant, not what they actually did mean (which is a concept which was discussed by Marshall Rosenberg in Nonviolent Communication.)
We can create the peace by choosing to be the peace. We must start, as Zoe Weil has, in the formative years, by providing all of the children with the guidance, information and activities they need to understand that they are reshaping reality every time they make a choice, and that they can create peace in the world by making peace inducing choices.
It is important to understand that in the case of certain individuals who think that military movent is the only answer, those individuals feel that military action is the only answer because they are under the influence of forces which create those thought patterns in their heads.
We think that we are individuals, free from outside influences, masters of our own thoughts, uninfluenced by outside forces, but it is not so. Every book I pick up, every movie I watch, every newspaper article I read, every piece of music I listen to, every single one of these things influences my thoughts. Every conversation I listen to reshapes my perception of reality, and if we want our children to accurately perceive that they change the world by making choices, then we have to provide them with the experiences they need so that they can comprehend that they create peace by making peace inducing choices.
I have thought, over and over again, about what you wrote, about acts of violence, and how we deal with them, and how the way we CHOOSE to react to violence can either make the situation worse or better in the long run. I have been thinking about it for years, and reading about it for years. The majority of bombers and soldiers, on both sides, in most conflicts, are approximately 18 – 27 years old, give or take a few years. They are, essentially, children, and in some cases they are literally, legally, children.
They may be legal adults, but the simple fact is that I can now look back at who I was and the choices I made when I was 18 years old, and realize that I was nothing but a child, heavily influenced by what other people said and did, wanting to believe that I was master of my own thoughts, but totally imprisoned to other people.
My brother is 19 years old now. He thinks he has his own mind, but I can pinpoint where most of his thoughts have come from, whose behavior patterns he is copying, or who he is influenced by when he says or does specific things.
He is still a child. He thinks he knows everything of importance, but he doesn’t, and the information he is missing is vital to making competent and accurate decisions, and I know that his choices and behavior patterns will gradually change as he comes into more information and begins to have experience in other arenas.
My brother does things which are downright immature. He makes a lot of totally incompetent and dangerous decisions, while seriously believing that his behavior is competent and his decisions are productive. He doesn’t mean to do badly, but he honestly doesn’t know any better, just like I, and many others like me, meant well when we were 19, but ended up causing more trouble than good, while simultaneously believing that we were making good and productive decisions. We believed that our decisions were good and productive because the limited information we had gleaned from the TV, the radio, or our friends, told us that our decisions were good, and it was only with age, as we met more mature, better educated, and more experienced people, and we made lots of mistakes, that we began to understand that we made those decisions when we were 19 years old because we were influenced by outside forces.
Both Marshall Rosenberg (in Nonviolent Communication) and Thich Nhat Hanh (in Being Peace, For a Future To be Possible, and other books) have noted that people who carry out acts of violence are usually doing so because they are fairly young people who have not received adequate care, have been abused, or suffered in some other manner, and are either displacing their anger onto innocent victims, or they are copying the behavior patterns they learned from other people when they are were younger.
It is extremely difficult to live through violence, and I say that from first hand experience, but it is also absolutely imperative to understand that many of the people who are carrying out these acts of violence are extremely young adults, who are just as immature as we were when we were 19, who really are not mature enough to see other options because they have not been given sufficient guidance, and they are doing what they are doing because they are brainwashed by very persuasive propaganda, and are often insecure or mentally insatiable due to abuse or neglect experienced earlier in life, and therefore they are more susceptible to being brainwashed and goaded by highly charismatic leaders. In short, they would not resort to violence if we provided them with adequet education and psychological therapy.
And even those leaders who are influencing these young adults, seriously believe that they are in the right a good percentage of the time.
The only way to get past all of this, to make the world a safe and sustainable place, for all people, is to provide all children, both here and abroad, with the education and guidance they need to become mature and responsible adults. And it does not end when they turn 18. Everyone, of all ages, needs a hand to lift them up at times.
We all need support and guidance, regardless of how old we are. We must revamp the entire societal structure, making sure that free education and guidance is available to people of all ages, so they can receive the guidance they need to make well informed and productive decisions.
We need to make sure that books, audis and DVDs of value are free to all people, through the public libraries and schools, so that both children and adults can reap the benefits of competent leaders like Thich Nhat Hanh, Pema Chodron, Zoe Weil, and Marshall Rosenberg.
We need to make sure that every child studies Nonviolent Communication with Marshall Rosenberg in an age appropriate manner from 1st – 12th grade, so that hey will know how to communicate in a productive manner and to obtain information and results in a productive manner.
Let’s make sure that age appropriate seminars and study sessions on Marshall Rosenbergs Nonviolent Communication techniques are available throughout all of school, and into adulthood through local community centers and libraries, so that we will all learn how to communicate with each other in a productive manner. Let’s make sure that age appropriate seminars and study sessions on Zoe Weil’s Humane Education are available throughout school and in public libraries and community centers, so that people of all ages will learn how their purchases affect the local and global situation. Let’s make Pema Chodron and Thich Nhat Hanh’s works available throughout all of school, and throughout adult life in local community centers, so that we can all learn how to bring peace to the world by creating peace in ourselves first.