Has War Outlived Its Usefulness?

As we watch the war in the Middle East unfold on our television screens, each day bringing new scenes of devastation and horror, more and more I am hearing people say, "This is crazy, there has to be a better way." These comments are not just coming from my peace and justice friends, the already converted dovish ones I can count on to espouse such things. No, this time I'm hearing this from unexpected quarters, from people I would never have expected it from. Yesterday's news of 37 children killed in the village of Qana seemed so over the top, so outrageous, that I thought, "that's it, they have to stop now," and yet they are not stopping. The rockets continue to rain on Israel and the Israelis will not stop until they feel they have knocked out Hezbollah completely, until they feel safe. And I don't know when, Hezbollah will ever stop. So we're probably in this one for a very,very long time.

I can understand the Israeli need to feel safe and secure within its borders. I can understand its need, even its addiction to feeling powerful, following as it does on a two thousand year history of persecution and extermination. I can understand that Hezbollah gets to feel really powerful by going up against Israel. Boy what a rush that must be when you have not felt powerful, respected or admired in the world in recent memory. They are fighting for dignity and empowerment and respect all over the Muslim and Arab world and it probably feels great and they are not about to let go soon. The problem is that every death in this war, whether that casualty is a civilian, a soldier or a Hezbollah terrorist, plants the seeds for more terrorist acts, more revenge and retaliation in the future. The entire premise that this war is fought on, is bankrupt.

People fight wars because they think that the use of overpowering force will stop people from acting violently toward them. That may have been true at different points in history. One may make the case that overwhelming force caused the Nazis and the Japanese to surrender in WWII. But the face of warfare has changed in the past sixty years or so and state to state wars are increasingly rare. More and more violence is the result of lawless militias, insurgencies, terrorist groups and cells wreaking horror against large state targets. These are people who are angry about something, people who feel left out, people who want something, who feel powerless, who have yearnings that have not been heard. And because they feel so weak, so powerless, they turn to violence which in an instant makes them feel powerful. There's nothing like a gun or a bomb to make you feel powerful--fast. They feel devalued and they do not value life; they will take it in an instant. How to stop them? Is bombing them into oblivion and taking out a lot of civilians at the same time the best way to stop them? Do you really help your cause if you make heroes of these people?

There is a saying in the addiction field that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, each time hoping for a different result. As I watch the war in Iraq and the war on terror that the US is conducting, I can't help shaking my head ruefully. Do they really think this is going to make a difference? It's the same reaction as I watch Israel conduct it's war, first against the Palestinians and now against Hezbollah. How many of your children do you want to die, in this or in future wars? How many of your grandchildren will be dying in future versions of this war? Are you ready for your economy to be devastated? Your infrastructure to be destroyed? Your beautiful cities to be torn up? Everything you've built to be demolished, all of this so you can say, well, at least we've survived? Survived for what? I thought life was about living, having fun, loving, making music, dancing, laughing, playing, contributing to the common good. If you and your children and grandchilden and your country are maimed and destroyed, what kind of life is that? Is that a life worth living?

I will put this very starkly and boldly: I think war has outlived its usefulness. I think we have come to a turning point on this planet and it is time to find a better way to solve our problems in getting along with each other. Even if war may have solved problems at some point in our history, I believe that it is now unworkable on this ever more crowded planet. I believe that we are on the cusp of an evolutionary leap in our development as human beings. There was a time when human beings routinely committed cannibalism. We longer do that. There was a time when we routinely practiced slavery. We not longer do that on this planet and when it happens it is front page news. We are in the throes of an evolutionary change where rape and domestic violence are becoming socially unacceptable. They are still practiced in many quarters, but more and more around the world these practices are illegal and unacceptable. This is the place we are coming to with war and violence. It's not that it is bad. It's not that it's wrong. It just is unworkable. And it's time for humanity to learn new skills to replace the violence option.

Why have humans resorted to war and violence so quickly and why haven't we learned other behaviors to take the place of violence? Pretty simple. When we are in conflict with another, whether one individual or a group, we feel powerless and one thing makes us feel powerful--the threat of force or the actual use of force. Hence the use of guns and bombs and lethal force. And, after using lethal force, even in very constrained and orderly ways known as the military, people get very used to it and tend to glorify it and mytholigize its use. We want to keep it around because it makes us feel powerful and safe. To even consider other options is very frightening to us. It makes us feel vulnerable and exposed. And yet, I am convinced, that if humans are to survive and thrive on this planet, that we must, absolutely must, learn and master new ways of behaving and dealing with conflict without the use of violence.

What are some of these ways? Can we actually learn these ways? Having spent my life learning them, I can vouch for the fact that the new behaviors are eminently learnable. It takes determination but anyone can learn these new skills. Here are some of them:
--Deep listening from the heart to the sufferings, needs and yearnings of the other
--Turning toward the "other", the "enemy", being willing to encounter, to understand, to befriend those who have hurt you
--Being willing to listen to the grievances of the other without getting emotionally reactive and defensive
--Learning to control one's emotional reactions or "triggers" so you don't fly off the handle all the time
--Learning how to "walk a mile in the shoes" of the person who is different from you
--Give up being a victim and take 100% responsibility for your life, both as an individual and as a group
--Take responsibility for the hurts you have caused and make amends, both as an individual and as a group
--Give up talking in slogans (e.g."democracy") and the absolutes of black and white thinking and embrace the greys of this world
--Instead of simple, fast solutions for problems, look for the upstream, more complex, long term root causes to problems
--Practice connecting with people at the heart level, even when its hard
--Learning the ways of forgiveness

We could be living a life of playfulness, contribution and fulfillment or we could be living lives of devastation, grief and loss. We can choose. We can create it the way we want it. We don't have to live the way we've been living. All it takes is the decision, individually and collectively, that we are sick to death of grieving and funerals, of blood and mangled bodies, and children, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters buried too early, much, much too early. Choose.

Questions of Inquiry:
1. What about those lawless countries like Somalia and Afghanistan run by warlords and thugs, would talking and listening work there? Isn't violence the only option with people like that? What do you think?

2. What's great about violence? Why should we keep it going?

3. Why do you think people resist learning non-violent behaviors?

Upstream Solutions

As war breaks out in the Middle East, I watch helplessly as Israel reacts, first to the Palestinian kidnapping of one of their soldiers with over the top (or so it seems to me) punitive responses to the civilians in Gaza. And now in the twinkling of an eye, the conflict has widened into Lebanon with rocket attacks launched by Hezbollah into Israel and now of course, we are witnessing the expected retaliation. I sit on my hands and scream with frustration because none of this has to happen. All of this could be otherwise. Yet this cycle of violence is so predictable and it keeps on happening. What is going on here? Do these people, both Israelis and Arabs, have a death wish?

These are important questions to ask, indeed vital questions to ask, if one has more than a passing interest in the idea that this conflict could end. When I say end, I mean completely stop, forever and for all time end. I'm talking about something far more profound than ceasefires and brief periods when the conflict merely simmers on the back burner. I'm talking about all out peace. In order for such a thing to happen in the Middle East, I am convinced that the parties involved in this conflict at every level would have to begin exploring upstream solutions.

The concept of upstream solutions comes from the following parable or extended metaphor. Imagine that you are at the edge of a river and you notice bodies floating downstream. You know how to swim and have lifesaving skills. You jump in and save the first person you see. As you are congratulating yourself on your heroism you notice another body and another body floating by. You raise a ruckus and call for help because you know you cannot save them all on your own. People come and together you work to save the bodies coming downstream. You are heroes! But as you are drying yourself off you see even more bodies coming downstream. This is serious! You need a lot more help and you put out the call until you get more and more people to help. After a while people are getting tired. Finally someone has the good sense to ask, "What's going on upstream? Why are so many bodies washing downstream? Let's go and find out." So they go upstream a while and they find that for some reason people are getting sick in some village and they fall into the river. You decide to take care of them in the village. But more and more of them are getting sick in this village and surrounding villages! After awhile, all the aid workers you can muster are getting exhausted. What to do? Finally someone decides to go further upstream until they find out the real reason people are getting sick and deal with the ultimate and final cause.

When it comes to medical problems and public health issues, the world is somewhat farther ahead of those of us who are concerned with issues of violence, war and murder. When there is an illness, medical researchers study until they find the causative organism or toxin or genetic defect that is responsible for the illness and then they try to find a remedy for that cause. When the cause is a germ or a toxic substance or a contaminated water supply, those things can be attacked and corrected. The situation gets a lot, lot more complicated with social problems like war and violence caused by how human beings think and respond emotionally to the actions of other human beings.

There is a belief among human beings that war is always with us and that violence will never disappear. I simply don't believe that. If that were true we would still be practicing cannibalism and owning slaves. Humans are evolving and we are in the midst of growing out of the antiquated habit of violence toward our fellow humans. It is time to begin looking for upstream solutions for complicated, ongoing and intractable conflicts like the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and other repetitive, cyclic conflicts.

We have come a long way in the past one hundred years or so in understanding human behavior. The fields of psychology and sociology, among others, have helped us to understand how and why humans behave as they do, and the recent upsurge in the study of the human brain has given us an intimate acquaintance with how the brain, and particularly the emotions, work. It has become possible, in my lifetime, to entertain the possibility of humans acquiring emotional intelligence, and many humans have become adept at learning how to manage and control their emotional responses. Even in very demanding and harrowing circumstances people have learned that they can master their emotions. We have also learned an amazing amount about how people respond to traumatic events and how memories of these events linger in the brain, but more importantly, how they linger in the stories and interpretations we make up about what the trauma means. We have even begun to understand how whole cultural, social and ethnic groups can develop and shape their identities around memories of shared historical traumas and we now understand that these memories can be important in fomenting the automatic emotional responses that feed the cycle of violence.

That's what we have learned, or perhaps I should say it's what some of us have learned. Because it amazes me that just because this knowledge is out there in the public square and is well known in the academy and in the professions of psychology and sociology, it has not been eagerly absorbed or taken up by political leaders, diplomats, the military or the public. As creatures who fear death, we still cling to our tribal, ethnic and national groups when we feel threatened or afraid, and we look to our leaders to save us. All too often, their prescription is some form of organized violent response to our so-called enemies. It makes you wonder whether the world really wants to live in peace at all. Is all that language so much feel good rhetoric and window dressing? Do people really want peaceful, joy-filled lives for themselves, their children and their descendants?

If we wanted to end intractable conflicts, and if we truly wanted to live in peace with our neighbors, it seems to me that we would go to any lengths, I mean any lengths, to look at our blind spots from the past, master our tendencies to over-react emotionally, learn how to truly listen to people we don't like and master the skill of standing in the shoes of our enemy. We would become committed to finding the myths from the past that are still running usunconsciously, not because those myths are bad or that we are wrong for holding onto them, but because they are simply unworkable in today's world, because they interfere with our ability to lead lives of safety, fun and creativity. Call me crazy but I love being alive! I think being alive is the greatest thing going and I'd like to stick around for a lot more of it. I'd like every person on the planet to have a chance to fulfill every talent and skill they were born with and to experience as much joy as possible while they are here. Upstream solutions seem like the only way to go if we really want to have some fun around here.