Peace is the product of
- listening
- caring
- accepting
- and living in a way that is true to your own beliefs and which inspired others to be part of your life and to welcome you into theirs.
Argument never wins peace. Or anything of any lasting value.
The obliteration of difference is the object of argument. The most extreme example of this is war. In a war people strive to erradicate eachother rather than accept and understand the differences they think they fear.
The missile in Com Raid's
End Game print is used to say something about the competitive nature of our own mutual annihilation through war and the terror it brings.
Because the War
is terror.
Let's talk about what war really is.
The conservatives who seem to have a taste and burning belief in war have many simple stories they like to use to illustrate the righteousness of war. To them, war is the testing ground for our nation's noble courage and conviction.
Ever noticed how the story they like to tell most is of WWII? Any aggression be it in Iraq or Palestine is vindicated as necessary to guard freedom in the same way that it was with the Allied invasion of France.
The truth is that this story is told because it is easy to tell. And they are smart to use it. Why? because they are using what is already in our heads, rather than attempting to refute our own innate knowledge or assemble a new, precariously weighed, untested idea. We all know that WWII was a good war, right? We all learnt that at school. We don't even have to think about it to know it. Therefore by making current conflicts an extension of that story we are relieved from the impulse to question them.
Let's look at another story about another war and try and learn something more substantial about what today's war, or any war, really means. There is an important lesson we can learn right now.
The Fog of War is documentary collecting a lifetime's reflections from Robert Macnamara, the US Secretary for State under the Kennedy Administrations. Go
here and buy it.
Macnamara is not a celebrated man of peace, nor a hero or the left. In fact he is still decried by some as a monster and the architect of the Vietnam tragedy (this superb interview with director Errol Morris, who has shown time again a knack for probing into the dark side of human compulsiveness and obsession, tells a different story).
But Macnamara is a man able to observe, think, and learn new things. He is not a conservative.
Between the 16th and 28th of October 1962, Western civilisation as we know it was almost extinguished at the press of a button due to the Cuban Missile Crisis. A secret deployment of Russian nuclear warheads to Cuba jeapordised the immediate lives of 90 million Americans, and almost broke into all out global nuclear war.
Then, as now, the immediate instinct was to kill and invade. Significant military pressure was placed onto the Kennedy administration to invade Cuba and endure the terrible consequences for the sake of "freedom".
However something strange happened within Kennedy's war room. Something unimaginable today in the Bush circle of judgement.
A man stood up and said "no" instead of yes. And his different opinion was
listened to and
respected. As Macnamara put it, this man spoke out and said "I don't agree with you Mr President". "You're wrong". And most importantly, this presence of difference was embraced.
That man was Tommy Thompson, former Ambassador to Moscow, who had come to know Soviet leader Nikita Kruschev by at times keeping close quarters with his family as part of his diplomatic duties.
Thompson believed that Kruschev readily spare himself and his people from sure annihilation if he was given a way to back out from his corner with his pride intact.
An urgent telegraph to Washington was received from Kruschev. This is some of what it said:
"I have participated in two wars, and know that war ends when it has roved through cities and villages, everywhere sowing death and destruction. For such is the logic of war. If people do not display wisdom they will clash like blind moles and then nuclear annihilation will commence."
The tense crisis was resolved without violence. This upset some in the military.
Let's look at the big lesson here, and what it means right now.
Macnamara says this: "Lesson ..1: Empathise with your enemy".
"We must try to put ourselves inside their skin, and look at us through their eyes just to understand the thoughts that lie behind their decisions and their actions".
Instead of trying to run away and "liberate" people, understand them.
How can you fight something that you have no desire to understand?
The North Korean nuclear program is perhaps the greatest threat to world peace in our age. The North Korean nuclear program has only escalated under the climate of intimidation fostered by the Bush regime.
At the height of the fear following North Korea's test, much was said about how talking to the North Korean administration would equal compromise and appeasement (roll again the same old story of Nazi Germany).
How can talking and listening- the act of gathering new information and possibly gaining consent- make anyone poorer, or less capable of future action?
How can understanding take place without listening to people, no matter how much we believe we hate them.
How can we condemn the efforts of other countries such as China to engage North Korea in peaceful dialogue? Perhaps if we could "put ourselves inside their skin", we might realise the legitimate fear the Chinese hold that the crumbling of the North Korean state would lead to a massive refugee crisis on their shred border.
We have to think before we act, and listen before we think.
Instead our leaders have rushed to obliterate perceived difference rather than listen to it and understand it.
Today we are all paying the price. Every cent spent in Iraq is a cent funding the creation of the world's largest terrorist training facility, where insurgents from across the Middle East con come to learn how to kill our troops.
Every cent spent in Iraq is a cent not spent hunting Bin Laden. Aren't our troops good enough to bring him to just were they given every opportunity through targeted funding and clear-cut orders to do nothing but apprehend him?
The principle of "putting ourselves inside their skin" is the key to learning how to effectively communicate with anyone. If you want to make someone do what you would like them to do, there are two things you can try. You can argue with them. You can try to force them to bend and buckle into your way of thought. Or you can use what's in their head by appealing to what they think they already know, so that they want to do something that they believe is their idea to begin with. Which do you think works best? (If you want to read more try reading
this book. It was written 30 years ago to deal with the problem of communicating in a world saturated by mass media. The problem is more acute now than ever. Try reading it. You might be able to find out perhaps one of the most basic laws of human interaction and comprehension).
Going into someone else's skin is also a key to successful business and the creation of wealth. People do not normally give money to other people. But if they will if they believe you can give them what they think they want. Or at least something that is more valuable to them than then currency. This requires imagination and the ability to think from and
be concerned for another person's different point of view.
Is it any wonder that Bush was such a miserable failure as an businessman?
What do you think 'true wealth' is? Some might say it's a measure of what you have. But think about this for a moment: Isn't it a measure of how much you can give? In other words, a measure of your consideration for others.
Money, consent, goodwill, peace. All of these things can never endure without care and consideration for how other people think and feel. As we have recently seen, this is perhaps starting to become apparent to the stubbornly conservative, fraying Bush administration.
Conservatives fear difference. They fear the world. Hence they will disrupt it by force to simple prove to themselves and to others how dangerous it really is. Because there's no better feeling than being right.
Perhaps this is also why conservatives conserve wealth from different people not already in their own small circles of influence. People are different. So they fear them. Hence they fear sex and the disarming intimacy and breaking of rigid personal boundaries that it represents.
Com Raid makes clothes. We also like to say things.