Excerpt #33 from my book, Interconnected, Interrelated & Interdependent, Like It or Not:
NEUTRAL ZONE
Let’s consider war as it serves as the ultimate example of our inability to resolve issues and, as a consequence, what we do to each other.
War is a phenomenon with which we are all too familiar.
It has been a part of our lives throughout our history.
From the Greco-Persian wars (499-478 B.C.) through a long list of major historical conflicts, we have become well acquainted with this appalling act of ours.
There is no clearer empirical evidence of our primitive nature and brutal behavior.
When one thinks about war objectively, it’s inconceivable that we engage in it.
“We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount . . . Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants . . . We know more about war than we do about peace, more about killing than we do about living.” (General Omar Bradley)
That is a stunning but true statement that we know more about war than we do about peace.
It’s time that we figure that out and reverse it.
Realistically, unless this happens across all of humanity, it’s not going to happen at all.
Battlefields come in many varieties.
We war with ourselves, each other, and other nation states.
It’s a pathetic confirmation of our unstable and unsustainable nature; it’s a primitive example of the immaturity of a young species.
It’s a mindset that must be unlearned, overcome, and transcended.
The various costs of preparing for and engaging in conflicts are astronomical.
Yet, despite the price, the carnage, and the indescribable suffering, we continue down the same road.
Ironically, despite all the costs, our lives are less secure; we exist threatened.
Some years ago, Ted Sorensen wrote: “In the vain pursuit of an unachievable illusion, nuclear superiority, we have lost sight of the critical fact that preparing for war leads to war. When in history has it been otherwise?”
“There are powerful voices around the world who still repeat the old Roman precept—if you desire peace, prepare for war.
“This is absolute nuclear nonsense.
“A war can hardly fail to involve the all-out use of nuclear weapons.
“Such a war would be over in a matter of days.
“And when it is over,
“Who and what would be left?. . .
“A few mutilated survivors with no hospitals, no help, no hope.” (Lord Mountbatten)
Why don’t we get over this idiocy and be aggressive about peaceful coexistence?
Yes, I know. It’s not easy.
It takes both sides.
Many cling to primitive thinking.
What they are clinging to is ignorance, an exhausting obstacle.
We have arrived at a point in history where the major powers have achieved military parity at a level guaranteeing mutually assured destruction.
It appears, if we wish to survive, that our age calls for new solutions to our ancient problem of incompatibility.
As Dwight D. Eisenhower pointed out: “A nation’s hope of lasting peace cannot be finally based on a race in armaments, but rather upon just relations and honest understanding with all other nations.”
This applies equally to relations between people.
Given our past, it is understandable that as we seek peace, we coincidentally continue to introduce ever more devastating weapons of war.
It is an occupation at which, in anticipation of our next inevitable conflict, we have grown increasingly proficient.
It is a predictable pattern of behavior for a people who have only known peace as an intermittent experience.
That is the reality and it’s indisputable.
As a nation well versed in war, we have a good idea of the costs of both preparing for and engaging in it.
But what do we know of peace, that ephemeral state for which we reach out and of which we so often speak?
We cannot be very knowledgeable about something of which we have experienced so very little, if at all, in its purest state.
One definition of peace has it as a condition representing the cessation or absence of war, thereby indicating what it is not but not what it is.
In pondering this, it’s apparent that peace is something more than just the cessation of hostilities.
For while we are presently not engaged in warfare, we exist in a constant state of repressed fear of annihilation, and by that measure can hardly consider ourselves to be at peace.
For to conclude that we are at peace, is to make of peace a mockery and a disappointment.
For the moment, as long as thousands of weapons of mass destruction are poised on launching pads, it is likely we are somewhere between war and peace in a kind of a neutral zone.