“All attack is called Self Defense.”
I have been reminded of that insight over and over again for the past week as Israel and Hamas have inched closer and closer to the next level of their seemingly endless combat that could lead to an all out war in Gaza.
Humanity has been trying to figure out how to bring an end to war since living beings evolved into self-consciousness on this planet. From those very first moments we have found reasons to oppose each other. From those very first moments we have found reasons to fight each other. From those very first moments we have found reasons to kill each other. It has never stopped, from those very first moments to this very moment.
I would venture to say that there has not been one day — not one single day — since the beginning of recorded history when one human being has not killed another. And I don’t mean by accident. I mean deliberately. With purposeful intent.
Not one.
Single.
Day.
…in thousand and thousands of years.
And now here we go again, on this particular day, trying to see just how many people we can kill in the main cities of Israel by showering rockets down upon them, or in the populated areas of Gaza, with air strikes raining bombs.
And as I write this, the talk is of a massive build-up of Israeli troops on the Gaza-Israeli border, prepared to launch a ground assault on a moment’s notice.
What has caused, and “who started,” this latest up tick in the hostilities between these parties is almost irrelevant at this stage. Each side, of course, insists that it is only defending itself. And it is. Seen from each side’s point of view, all each side is doing is defending itself.
Aggression is always called defense. And aggression takes many forms. Not all of it is military. And so it is true that each side in this ongoing conflict has “aggressed” against the other repeatedly over the years. And one has to go back a half-century or more to get to the root of the cause of all of this. And even then the history doesn’t matter. All that matters today is what it would take to end the killing, to end the aggression and counter-aggression that is threatening to embroil a whole region — and even, conceivably, the entire world at some level, if not directly — in a war that could prove unspeakably tragic for the entire human race.
In the past several days I have been reading a wonderful book by MSNBC’s commentator Chris Matthews, Jack Kennedy/Elusive Hero. America’s slain President was personally and intimately familiar with the savagery, barbarity, hideousness and atrocity of war, having served as a PT boat commander in World War II, losing a brother and a brother-in-law in the conflict, and earning the Navy and Marine Medal for “extremely heroic conduct” when he swam for hour hours to a tiny island in the Pacific, tugging a wounded comrade behind him, the strap of the fellow soldier’s life vest between his teeth, after his PT boat had been rammed and split in two by an enemy destroyer. Kennedy lost two men under his command in the incident — and saved the lives of 8 others. The ordeal was something that he, of course, never forgot.
Chris Matthews writes that shortly after the war ended, the future president wrote in a letter to one of his war buddies, “We must face the truth the people have not been horrified by war to a sufficient extent to force them to go to any extent rather than have another war.”
Those words, written 60 years ago, are as true today as they were then — and as they have been for centuries.
Indeed, for millennia.
I have always thought that any human problem can be solved by talking about it. I have said this to my children. I have said this to my wife and to my extended family and to my friends. I have said this in public, at lectures and in spiritual renewal retreats and personal development workshops. I have said this on-the-air in radio and television broadcasts, and in writing in newspaper stories and magazine articles. I still believe that. But we have to talk about the right things.
There are some who say that human beings cannot — simply cannot, for reasons of biology, genetics, you name it — stop themselves from needing to be right…to say nothing of killing each other over their differences. And the problem becomes, what do you do when the other party won’t listen? What’s left when all the talking has achieved nothing? When one or both parties are intractable? When no one will give an inch? Or when one gives an inch and the other takes advantage of it?
How do you solve it when talking simply does not, will not, has not, and cannot?
The answer is that we all need to talk more — but in an entirely different way. We need, as an entire group called humanity, to talk about not what is going on, but why.
And that is something that no one wants to talk about.
Or, at least, very few people do. Because it is going to put the spotlight on — and may be even ask people to change — beliefs. And that is something that many people would rather die than do. And so, they are achieving exactly that outcome.
Conversations with God famously said, “No one does anything inappropriate, given their model of the world.” This is the same as saying that everybody believes that they are acting correctly — given the way they see themselves and see life in any given moment.
What humanity needs to do, then, is talk about its model of the world. When our model of the world, our whole idea about Life and what it is and what it’s for and how it works and why it exits and who and what God is (if there even is a “God” at all) — when the whole construction produces nothing but anger, crisis, violence, killing, and war…and has done so for thousands of years…isn’t it time to question some prior assumptions?
We need to talk about Who We Are and What We Believe and How We Imagine Life To Be and Where We As A Species Wish To Go, and When We Are Willing To Do What It Takes To Get There.
And we need to request, invite, plead, beg, implore, entreat, petition, ask, call on, and beseech our world’s leaders in government, politics, economics, religion, the military, education, and every area of human endeavor to place these subjects at the top of their agenda. We need to call these the Five Required Topics at any meeting that any of them have about anything whatsoever anywhere in the world at any time.
Let’s call upon our leaders now. Right now. Our world’s leaders need someone to lead them. We thought they were going to lead us, but they can’t. Or won’t. So we need to lead them.
You know who to write to. Write to them. You know whom to contact. Contact them. Then post The Agenda to Save Humanity From Itself on every website, in every newspaper or magazine Letters-to-the-Editor column, on every feedback forum of every television show, every week of your life. Do it. Once a week, every week.
Are you willing to do it?
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