Peace: How we Planted the Fragmentation that Causes Distrust

It is always difficult to talk about religion. Even though we all acknowledge that it plays a significant role in our lives we don’t really want to consider exactly what that role is.

We need to discuss religion here because we just spoke about how the beliefs that our human ancestors held about the one they believed was responsible for their existence had the unexpected consequence of leading to the first murder among humans. But this discussion has to begin with ancient religions because it was there that the foundation was laid.

Priests played a central role in all ancient religions but they did not serve the same roles that their modern counterparts serve in contemporary religion. Ancient priests were not separate from the mundane activities of life. Their primary job was to meet the needs of the gods and goddesses but it was considered to be an ordinary job. However, unlike other positions of leadership in ancient societies, they were not appointed to that position because of special knowledge they had about the area they represented. They were as clueless about the gods and goddesses as were the ordinary man in the street.

That ignorance about the deities the priests served was to their advantage. There was no one who could question any claims they made about the deity. It is no surprise that so many religions developed around so many gods.

As the influence of religion and the priests increased in society the need for additional priests grew. New initiates were required to perform the various rites and rituals that had developed over time. This legitimate need led the ancients to make the first attempt at formal education. For the first time individuals were gathered together in a group, we now call it a classroom, primarily for the purpose of instruction. This was the foundation of our modern system of education.

From the very beginning of this blog we have emphasized the role that education plays in ensuring the optimum development of the species. But when the foundation of our system of education was laid the architects were not concerned with the interests of the species. These classrooms were not established to educate the wider society, and certainly not to develop the species as a whole. Their only purpose was to educate priests in a narrow area of expertise that was based on knowledge that could not be independently verified. Each ancient classroom and its curriculum were focused on the development of priests who served in a limited form of religion in a limited locale.

We can see that from the very beginning we began our experiment with formal education on the wrong foot. Our ancestors did not realize that those first classrooms had the wrong focus. It is not surprising that today scholars are lamenting the fragmented state of the modern curriculum. This has always been the focus of our education system. Instead of being used to complete the evolution of the species was our education system that was used to develop only a subset of humanity and this perspective has been at the center of our educational development. A new paradigm is needed if our education is to serve the species as our DNA intended.

Peace: The Roots of Distrust

For a long time I struggled to understand how humans changed a situation that worked perfectly in other species into one that bred distrust, violence and crime. Finally, I found the answer in evidence that is found in the old book of Genesis.

According to the Genesis story after the woman was formed from Adam’s rib he called her “bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh” even though it must have been obvious to him that she was very different from him. This was a clear statement that he accepted her uniqueness and accepted her as part of himself. Clearly, this is what nature intended as we can see from the various organ systems that work harmoniously together to produce a healthy body.

One chapter in the book of Genesis later, we discover that Adam has changed his tune. The camaraderie has disappeared and he now refers to his partner as “the woman you gave me.” This is an interesting change. What caused it? Before we answer that let us take a look at another example of that transformation.

In the next chapter of Genesis we find the well-known story of Cain and Abel; the sons of Adam and Eve. These two brothers were very different; one was a farmer and the other was a shepherd. Within a few verses of that chapter brotherly love had changed to jealousy and hatred and Abel was dead. What was at the root of that change?

The only common thread between those two stories is knowledge about God. In the story of the man, Adam, and the Woman the central cause was a belief that God would treat the different people differently because of their behavior. Based on that belief, Adam hoped that he could escape any punishment he believed was about to be dispensed by separating himself from his wife. What he did not realize is that this is exactly what he did; he erected a wall within the species where one did not exist. She was not different because of who she was but because of what he thought. This principle is painfully obvious today.

The story of Cain and Abel builds on that principle. For a long time I missed the foundational message of that story. To me it was simply a story of one boy who chose to do his own thing then killed his brother when he was rebuffed. Only in recent times did I realize that both Cain and Abel, both of whom are representative of stages of human development, were victims of the same misconception about God. Both had a warped view of the Creator that posited that God doles out his beneficence based on our behavior.

Given that view I finally understood why Cain killed Abel. If you believe in the fundamental fragmentation of the species that was birthed in the mind of Adam and accept that humans are not part of one body perceiving that God favors other people besides you can have only one result. If the Creator of the Universe is not on your side but seems to favor the other side all you can look forward to is a life of subservience. The only way to maintain your sense of worth would be to eliminate those on the other side.

The problem is not a belief in God but a warped view of who God is and what He stands for.

Peace: Division of Labor

The distribution of a growing body of knowledge among a gradually increasing human population was the first example of the division of labor. Predictably, this division of labor resulted in an increasing number of pockets of expertise.

Some of these areas were naturally associated with biological function. Males and females were experts in areas associated with their own gender. The same was true of humans in different stages of physical and emotional development.

Humans also developed areas of functional expertise based on proficiency. Among the first hunters and gatherers some were better hunters and gatherers than others.
Out of these areas of expertise the first leaders of human society emerged. First we had leaders of families and tribes based on biological seniority. Other groupings had leaders based on functional expertise.

From the modern perspective it is easy to blame an increase in specialized knowledge for the fragmentation we experience. None of these divisions posed a threat to human existence because they were based on natural conditions. The same divisions existed among the other species and they are still evident today. Even with those divisions non-human species experience intra-species peace. This shows that we cannot blame differentiation or specialization of knowledge for the tensions we experience today.

Something else is to blame.

Peace: Developing Human DNA

In the beginning of human history there was man and man knew nothing. He did not know what to eat. He did not know what to drink. He did not know what to wear, if anything. He was in the tabula rasa state – a blank slate.

Life would have been impossible if that is all that were true. Thankfully, that backward state, compared to the other species around him, came with a healthy curiosity. But, as we can see from the fragmentation that haunts us, it came with a price. How did it happen? I think that ancient human literature casts some light on this. See if you agree with my reconstruction, if you will?

The early years of human existence on this planet will forever be shrouded in mystery but we have sufficient information to retrace the steps of our ancestors.

A Closer Look
Whether you subscribe to its teaching or not there can be no doubt that the book of Genesis is a part of human literature and it provides an early perspective on the development of a young species.

According to that story, our history began with one individual whose future development was contained in the information encoded in his DNA molecule. It is an interesting commentary on the organismic nature of the species that each human being also begins life as a one-celled zygote. As trite as it may sound, it is good to note that this individual, who is called Adam in the book of Genesis, knew everything that humans knew. He was the entire human race. He represented its present and future existence.

I can imagine that his first curiosities revolved around the need for survival. He had to satisfy his needs for food, water and shelter. He was only concerned with his survival but his survival was inextricably tied to the survival of the species.
Obviously, he satisfied these curiosities by observing the other species around him. This is important because observation is the first step in the scientific method that has driven so much of contemporary human existence.

At the same time that man was gaining new knowledge from his curiosity the population of the species doubled. It is interesting to note that the zygote also divides to become a two-celled organism.

Whatever knowledge humans now had was in the minds of two individuals, then four then more. This is the same process that occurs with a developing human being as cells divide under the direction of the DNA molecule. Each time a cell divides a copy of the DNA molecule is reconstituted in the new cell. Each time a new human being arrived in the species a copy of the information known to humans at the time was passed on so he could contribute to the survival and growth of the species through his own survival and growth.

In this respect humans were no different from non-human species. To some extent the infants of each species have to learn from the adults of the species those skills needed for survival, whether it was how to hunt or how to fly. Humans were different in that they were adding new skills to their DNA profile but the process of education was the same.

The DNA molecule consists of information and education, as well as cell-division, is the process by which the transfer of information occurs. In the same way that cell-division sometimes results in flaws in the organism’s genomic instructions our continuing education as a species seems to have resulted in a flaw in our genomic instructions as a species.

The saga continues.

Peace: Managing Change in Our DNA

Change happens. Life is a series of changes. But the changes that humans have experienced over the centuries go beyond the changes all life experiences. These changes have changed the cultural identity of humans as we have gained a better understanding of ourselves and our environment.

The problem with this set of changes is that, unlike our biological and physiological changes, it was not under the direct control of our DNA. When humans first arrived they had no way of knowing that, centuries later, man would leave the confines of his earthly home and walk on the moon. Our technological advances never crossed their minds. They did not realize that they were consciously completing the evolution of the species, so as to bring us to a perfect end.

Because they did not know the nature of the process of change they were involved in, they were not in a position to manage it. Our failure to recognize that we have gone through this process is the reason we have been unable to control it.
Several important ideas have been overlooked. First is the idea that the purpose of education is to complete the development of an organism. As a result we have consistently confused instruction with education. A related idea is the fact that the human race is an organism, nor an organization. Because of the tremendous achievements we have made because our ability for scientific enquiry we have overlooked the fact that instinctive action is the highest state of existence.

Intelligence allows us to come up with creative solutions to the problems and challenges we face. (We will talk about the difference I see between problems and challenges another time.) But when we arrive at a solution or a working method we switch into the instinctive mode because that is the only way progress can be made. In the process of coming up with new solutions we also gain new information. All of these new ideas become part of our cultural DNA and it is copied into each new human arrives.

The process of enlarging our cultural DNA carries with it the same risks that exist each time a cell divides to produce a new cell. No one cell contains all the information needed to make a body function. The knowledge needed to make a body function is the sum of the information found in all the cells of the body. So, there is no such thing as a human cell but a human cell of a particular kind. The zygote is the only cell that contains all the information needed for the human organism.

In the process of unraveling then recombining, mutations often occur in the DNA. This is the source of auto-immune diseases and cancers. As humans began to explore and to reproduce through division two things happened. The information needed to establish the identity of the human species began to increase and parts of this knowledge were necessarily distributed among various members of the species. Even the most intelligent human is ignorant as far as the entire catalog of human science is concerned. It is only collectively that our species is educated. But the process of dividing our cultural DNA has produced a severe mutation that has resulted in the cancer of humans placing pressure on other humans and the auto-immune disease of humans attacking other humans as if they were their enemies.

Next time I will share my ideas of how I think this happened.

Peace: A Different Kind of DNA

Humans have undergone few substantial biological and physiological changes since they first appeared on this planet. Our organs are in the same place they have always been. Our reflex reactions are arguably the same. Our cells develop and divide the same way. On the other hand, few would deny that we have undergone significant cultural changes, i.e. changes involving human choice, over the same period. This is one of the reasons that inspired the name of my blog. Humans appear to be an anomaly within this eco-system.

When humans appeared on the planet the species that preceded them already had all the tools needed for their survival; their DNA had adequately defined them in terms of appearance, function and behavior. Their anatomy was fixed, their diet was fixed, their markings were fixed, and their reactions to external stimuli were also fixed. Given the success of this model one would expect that human DNA would be the same. But this was not the case. There was one marked difference between the instructions for cultural behavior found in human DNA and those found in non-human DNA.

Most noticeable is the fact that humans do not inherently know how to react to external stimuli. No species has changed the face of the earth the way humans have, yet it is also true that everything we know has come from observing other species and the environment.

This does not mean that we arrived here with an incomplete DNA. That would be a complete departure from the successful state that existed. But it does portray human DNA as being subject to change, with a concomitant change in what it means to be human as time passed. Our identity as humans has changed as we have increased our understanding of the world around us. There was a time that humans could be defined as being cave dwellers or hunters and gatherers. Today our identity includes space travel, nano technology and mastery of nuclear energy. This change in identity is acknowledged in the various eras used to identify the progress of human history.

But the changes in our cultural DNA are never permanent, neither is the direction of change a controlled concept. The fact of change is hard-wired into our nature but the direction of change is not. The direction and timing of any change depends on our ability and willingness to pursue knowledge. Change can be fast or slow; it can be progressive, regressive or neutral. A good example of this is what happened when Galileo demonstrated that the Earth is not the center of the universe and we rejected geocentricism. Many people know the story but most forget the more important parts of this story, like the fact that 1500 years before Galileo, Aristarchus had suggested the very same thing, or that there was never a time when the Earth really was the center of anything but the relationship with its moon.

Aristarchus lived from 310 BC to about 230 BC. This is what Archimedes wrote about him in The Sand Reckoner:

You ['you' being King Gelon] are aware the 'universe' is the name given by most astronomers to the sphere the center of which is the center of the Earth, while its radius is equal to the straight line between the center of the Sun and the center of the Earth. This is the common account as you have heard from astronomers. But Aristarchus has brought out a book consisting of certain hypotheses, wherein it appears, as a consequence of the assumptions made, that the universe is many times greater than the 'universe' just mentioned. His hypotheses are that the fixed stars and the Sun remain unmoved, that the Earth revolves about the Sun on the circumference of a circle, the Sun lying in the middle of the orbit, and that the sphere of the fixed stars, situated about the same center as the Sun, is so great that the circle in which he supposes the Earth to revolve bears such a proportion to the distance of the fixed stars as the center of the sphere bears to its surface.

Interestingly, some wanted his head for making such a suggestion. According to Plutarch:

Cleanthes (a contemporary of Aristarchus and head of the Stoics) thought it was the duty of the Greeks to indict Aristarchus on the charge of impiety for putting in motion the hearth of the universe … supposing the heaven to remain at rest and the earth to revolve in an oblique circle, while it rotates, at the same time, about its own axis.

We now know that a proper understanding of the structure of the space was essential before man could explore beyond this planet. By how much was our space exploration delayed because we did not pay attention to Aristarchus but followed Aristotle instead? Change happens but rarely does it move forward without coaxing.

Peace: Global DNA and Information

Central to our discussion on peace is the link between DNA and information. The main role of the DNA molecule is the long-term storage of information. As we have discussed earlier, it contains the instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms. This is why I asked the question whether DNA is God. The bottom line is that without the information that is encoded in DNA there would be no life and the characteristics and properties of all forms of life appear to be the outworking of the instructions in some master DNA molecule in the universe.

The difference between human and non-human DNA sheds a great deal of light on our discussion. Based on our observations, and that is the best source of evidence we have, at the biological or physiological level DNA in human and non-human species has not changed appreciably over time. Any appreciable difference in the instructions found in a DNA molecule is indicative of a different species.

As intimated in an earlier blog, these discussion focus on the cultural aspect of DNA.

Again, there seems to be no appreciable change in the cultural DNA of non-human species over time. Regardless of specific views on origins, species do not seem to change their cultural behaviors over time. Whales are hard-wired to eat a particular diet and this is all they eat. If their food source were to disappear they don’t change their dietary habits to suit the changing circumstances. This is one of the reasons why species come under pressure. Carnivorous species do not become herbivores when they are unable to find prey.

The variability that is encoded in the DNA molecule allows for “unique” behaviors individuals but the behavior of the species remains constant. For example, we may be able to train dolphins to perform tricks but if two trained dolphins mate their offspring will not be similarly trained. All of this seems to indicate that each non-human species is well-educated; fully developed and mature.

The generally fixed behavior that we observe in species determines the parameters within which the infants of the species will be developed. As an example, newly hatched larks cannot fly and they also cannot whistle. Everyone knows that they will soon learn how to fly but will never learn how to whistle. The reasons are obvious. They learn their cultural behavior from their parents. This cultural behavior includes the desire to work together for the health and survival of the species.

This process has continued unchanged for thousands of years under the watchful eye of an unchanging DNA molecule.

Peace: The Roots of our Desire

President Obama’s speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, as well as comments on the last blog by two readers, illustrates why it is important for us to incorporate into our thinking the idea that the human race is an organism bound by invisible bounds instead of a collection of independent individuals. We are not just alike; we are the same. This is not a new technological discovery from which we can benefit. It is an essential aspect of our existence that we have lost sight of over the years.

It is no surprise that our desire for peace is driven by a need to get rid of and violent conflict and crime. But, as we can see in the rest of nature, violence is not antithetical to life; it is necessary for the food web to function. Because we often think of the immune system as the defender of the body it is easy to overlook the fact that it is more realistic to recognize that the immune system exists primarily to wage war against all pathogenic enemies of the body. Anything that attacks the body is attacked by the immune system. It is for this same reason that war is seen as the precursor to peace. Since the human race is an organism it must also have an immune system. Unlike most organisms in which specialized cells perform specific functions, all humans have the potential to serve in any role necessary for the survival of the species because all men are created equal.

It is hard-wired in us that any of us can serve in any role that contributes to the survival of the species, and that includes fighting our enemies. This is why war is not our problem. It is natural for us to fight our enemies. Our problem is our misidentification of other humans as our enemies. As long as we perceive that we have enemies we will be willing to fight them.

This brings us to an interesting point because, as we have discussed earlier, all of this occurs under the guidance of the DNA molecule. In the next blog I will discuss more about this aspect of DNA and how we can exert influence over it.

Peace: Introductory Thoughts on the Role DNA Plays

This blog has been difficult to write for reasons that may or may not become obvious.

It has begun to emerge that the attainment and maintenance of peace will involve some aspect of the exciting subject of DNA. But there is more to DNA than just the instructions pertaining to the development of living cells. I have been thinking of the implications of the fact that DNA contains the instructions for what happens in every living system.

As I mentioned in a previous blog, it appears that the DNA of every species is a copy of the Master DNA in the universe that existed before any other living thing in the universe. This means that in the beginning there was DNA. But this is the same thing I say about God. Am I being sacrilegious to entertain the thought that DNA is God or that God has DNA?

Then Romans 1:20 states that the hidden things of God are revealed in the things that He made. What does that say about those who study the creation, especially those who are studying the structure of the human genome? Are they looking into the eyes and mind of God?

What think ye?

Peace: A Familar Model - III

The last blog raised several issues that are very relevant to our mission of eliminating standing armies and the distrust that feeds them from the human experience. The first is the fact that the human race, as is true of every species, is not a loose collection or amalgamation of organisms but is itself and organism.

I was able to find one article on the internet in which the author boldly tries to argue the very opposite. The argument he tries to make here is very strange but I also find it to be interesting in the context of this discussion.

“Sometimes, I speak of a species as one organism. But it is not. A species is a collection of organisms that evolved according to Darwin's Five Laws.
Nonetheless, sometimes the `one organism' metaphor is useful. Just as an organism needs to eat and reproduce, so does a species.
Sadly, the metaphor may also be misleading. A friend of mine recently employed the metaphor to argue against human wars: just as one leg in a human should not fight the other, so one country should not fight another. According to the metaphor, humanity as a species was like a single organism.

I am no authority on the theory of evolution but I do not think that Darwin’s theory posits the evolution of individual organisms but, rather, of populations of organisms. In the final paragraph the author appears to be unaware of the contextual nature of war.

But there are other thinkers who have seen the organismic nature of the species. This is seen in Schaffle’s image of society as a living organism as well as his notion of collective conscience as a composite. Émile Durkheim, the sociologist, also accepted Schaffle’s image of society and was of the view that the whole is more than the sum of its parts, and morality must be analyzed as a property of the collective (society) rather than a characteristic of the individual. Hobbes (he of the social contract) also insisted that human behavior could be explained by looking at the "particles" that form the human body. (Click here and here for more on Émile Durkheim’s ideas on this topic.

As we go through the coming postings it will become obvious that the reason why we have not been able to attain sustainable peace, i.e. a condition of peace that does not need to be maintained by the threat of violence or mutually assured destruction, is directly related to the fact that we have a faulty view of the nature or a species. This is because in our search for sustainable peace we are not concerned with how the species functions but with why it does not function as it should. The thinkers we mentioned above were more concerned with exploring the operations of society than in bring healing to a sick species. A machine (which is what a collection of parts is) and an organism may not differ in terms of how they accomplish their purpose but they certainly differ in terms of how they may be repaired.

When a machine malfunctions it is enough to find the part that has malfunctioned and replace it. When an organism malfunctions parts cannot be so easily replaced. A machine does not care where a replacement part comes from, as long as it is compatible. An organism does not accept parts that are not original. This is why after successful organ transplant surgery the patient must continue on a regimen of anti-rejection drugs. An efficient machine can be built by bringing together the best parts available. But a collection of perfect body parts does not mean one has a healthy body. As long as we can we will treat the body to bring healing to one organ because the organ exists first as a part of the body.

Another thing that has hampered us in our peace seeking efforts is the fact that human organizations, arguably our greatest inventions, are machines. Organizational theory is an extension of or builds on General Systems Theory, which recognizes that the universe is a system whose components are also systems. But our interest in organizational theory has obscured the distinction between natural systems, of which the human race is one, and human made or synthetic systems that we have crafted inspired by what we have learned from observing natural systems.

Other issues raised by the last blog include, whether DNA really affects choice based cultural behavior, what is the equivalent in the species of the immune system in each organism, whether the mutations caused by cell division have an equivalent in the species, and the possibility that the type of “gene therapy” I have recommended is appropriate to bring lasting peace to humanity.

Peace: A Familiar Model - II

The zygote is much too small to be seen with the naked eye and few of us have the training necessary to be able to distinguish one type of zygote from another. But thanks to some remarkable work done in laboratories we now know that each zygote, regardless of its species, is home to the deoxyribonucleic acid molecule, or DNA, which contains all the instructions for the survival of each organism and its cells. Knowing what type of DNA controls a zygote cell enables us to predict what type of organism it will produce. This works in a negative way because it is easier to predict what the new organism will not look like than what it will look like. For example, I know that the product of a human zygote will not have wings but do not know whether its earlobes will be attached or not.

DNA is both an important and interesting molecule. It is the ultimate mystery of the universe. No one knows where DNA came from. It seems to have been in existence long before any form of life existed; probably before anything existed in the universe.
Living things are made up of cells and each cell contains the DNA molecule which contains all the instructions for the development and maintenance of the cell.

Working on the assumption that DNA predated every living thing, it appears that each species represents a unique copy of this universal DNA molecule, and the unique characteristics of each species is the result of the genes that make up DNA being switched on or off in a variety of ways. Each species is “perfect” because it is an original copy of universal DNA, for lack of a better term.

DNA directs the zygote to begin dividing itself and each new cell that is formed similarly continues dividing until we have a full grown human being. Whereas each species has a unique original copy of the instructions in DNA each time a cell divides the two strands of the DNA molecule are unzipped and through the process of replication each new cell ends up with a new DNA molecule. Errors are few and far between, but they do occur at the rate of about 1 in 1 billion nucleotides per replication.

Most of these errors pose no threat to us but in a few cases these mutations in the genes cause life threatening diseases like the family of auto-immune diseases in which the immune system erroneously views parts of the body as foreign invaders, or cancers in which certain are instructed to keep on dividing beyond the naturally imposed limits. Because the body has no defense against instructions that come from its own blueprint these diseases pose a threat to the entire body.

It is important to note that mutations found in an organism only affect that organism. Neither cancer nor any of the autoimmune diseases threaten the survival of the human race but they threaten the life of the person who is diseased. Because these diseases are not caused by the environment in which the cells are but by the instructions within those cells, the best cure is to change the faulty instructions. This is what gene therapy attempts to do. Other medical interventions are able to avert the threats but they come at a heavy price.

Next time we will take a look at the lessons we can learn from these genetic diseases in our quest to design a future without distrust and standing armies.

Peace: More on the Familiar

In recent years fascination with the role that DNA plays in our lives has increased dramatically. Most are aware that our biological and physiological traits, e.g. whether our ear lobes are attached, the color of our eyes or whether we are able to roll our tongues, are determined by our genes. Some researchers also believe that genes influence alcoholism, homosexuality, and a predisposition for anxiety.

In 2007 researchers at Oxford University announced the discovery of a gene that appears to increase the odds of being left-handed. The Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM) database lists more than 2,000 observable traits with a known molecular basis, including Down syndrome, schizophrenia, and many forms of panic disorders. One scientist has also claimed to have identified genes that are linked to homosexuality as well as the existence of a "God gene" for religious experience (Learn more here). All of this comes with the warning that:

“While the idea that researchers can find a single gene for a specific behavioral trait makes for an exciting news story or a sensational movie, it simply isn't true. Human traits, especially involving behavior, are likely to have a complex genetic basis incorporating many genetic and environmental influences.”

In spite of this caveat, there can be no doubt that everything that humans do is influenced by our DNA.

This is so obvious that no one paid much attention to a scientist who boldly stated that everything that happens in the world depends on the sequences in the human genome, partly because our socialization has caused us to focus on the way that DNA affects us as individuals rather than how it affects us all as a species. We don’t all have the same genetic markers and the presence of a particular marker often only indicates that there is some probability that any behavior associated with this marker will manifest itself in later years. On the other hand, what is characteristic of humans is manifested in all humans.

There is more to the DNA story than presently meets the eye. DNA affects the way we behave as a species. But the relationship between DNA and personal behavior is different from the relationship between DNA and species behavior. Over the next few blogs we will explore this difference.

Peace: A Familiar Model - I

It turns out that the life cycle of the human race is very similar to the life cycle of individual human beings. This is very important in our search for peace as it provides insight into how we can solve this problem using information we have already discovered and are familiar with. Let us start by taking a look at the life cycle of the average human being.

Each human begins life as a zygote. The zygote is formed through fertilization, when the male sperm combines with the female egg. It is interesting that everything about the beginning of life is automatic except for the act of placing the sperm and the egg in the same environment.

From then on everything is driven by cell-division. Cell division is the basis of life. Each of us have about a trillion cells that all came out of a single zygote through this process of cell division. One cell divides into two, two divide into four, four divide into eight, eight divide into sixteen, and so one, until you have a trillion cells.

Of course, this is not all. During the early divisions cell begin to differentiate. Some cells take on specific characteristics and become heart cell, muscle cells, bone cells – all types of cells associated with the eleven organ systems in the human body. By the time a child is born the zygote has become a fully equipped human being, ready to take on the world. The organs are maintained through continued There is a limit on the number of divisions that All of these processes occur automatically under the guidance of the DNA molecule which contains all the instructions for building and maintaining a body. Each zygote has a copy of human DNA and this copy is replicated each time a cell divides.

The human race went through a similar process. I base this conclusion on some ancient writings that present a relatively accurate view of the early years of the human race. Most people know these writings as the book of Genesis in the Scriptures of the Jewish and Christian religions. I would not be surprised if other religions have similar accounts.

In any event, according to Genesis the human race began with one individual, Adam, who would be the counterpart of the zygote. Adam was then divided resulting in two individuals, the woman and the man Adam and Eve. Just as we see in the body the division continued and there obviously was some differentiation that resulted in a number of unique people groups.

Under Attack
Each of the organ systems in the body is important but one of the more important is the immune system. The immune system protects the body from daily attack from a variety of pathogens. The immune system knows which organisms are part of the body and it attacks any organism that it does not recognize as a friend. Because of the immune system the body is able to fight off disease caused by foreign organisms. But there are a set of diseases that the immune system is powerless against. It can fight the symptoms of those diseases but it cannot fight them.

Scientists have discovered that somewhere in the division process mutations in the genes occur, resulting in the DNA giving wrong instructions to certain cells. One type of these instructions results in auto-immune diseases in which the immune system falsely identifies parts of the body as being foreign and launches attacks against them. In the other case cells continue to divide beyond the natural limits on cell division resulting in cancers that threaten the life of the organism.
It is easy to see the connection between these diseases and the lack of sustainable peace (dis-ease) that humans experience. We can use developments in the fight against cancer and immune diseases to inform our next steps on the road to health and peace.

Peace: Born into Ignorance?

Somewhere in this conversation the idea has emerged that the human race is not a loose conglomeration of individuals but an organismic whole. When I say that the human race is an organismic whole I mean that it is a unified organism in the same way that individual human beings are organisms. And just as each of us is born and develops into mature adulthood there was a time when the human species was birthed by the earth’s ecosystem and it has gone through a process of development or evolution towards maturity.

There was a time in the distant past when one could traverse all 196,935,000 square miles of this planet, the third rock from the sun, and not find one single human being. But when humans did arrive they found a thriving eco-system that supported a great number of disparate species and life forms. We were “welcomed” as a legitimate member of that eco-system with the obligation to preserve it. This young new system was able to thrive and grow because it shared the same properties of cohesion and trust that marked the other species on the planet.

But how did we know what to do when we arrived here? It is easier to deal with that question by thinking of the human race in its infancy being in the same position as an infant human being. Cell life is guided by DNA and when a human being is born this DNA guides its physiological and biological development. It is not up to the fetus to decide where its organs will be located within the body or how many body parts it will have. But infants also lack the information necessary to know what to do culturally.

Humans have accomplished so much technologically it is difficult to grasp that compared to non-human species humans in the infant stage were totally clueless. We did not know what to eat; we did not know what to wear. If we did not have the animals to copy from we probably would not have survived the first hundred years.

What we call human intelligence begins to look more like managed ignorance and it is clear we have not managed it quite a well as we would have hoped. None of the non-human species exchanged trust for distrust. Why did we?

Peace: Three Systems serving One System

I hope those who are following this blog are excited about the information that is bubbling to the surface as I am. (This is the second time I have used this metaphor though I don’t recall ever using it before).

The last discussion was not meant to separate the education system from the systems of religion and government. Each of these three systems has played a vital role in the continued development of humanity. As we saw last time, the education system is not selected because it was superior because it is as fragmented as the religion system and the government system. But all three participate in the transfer of information and when information is put to productive use it becomes knowledge that is transformative for the human system. It is this transformation of information into knowledge that we strive for in this blog.

It is unfortunate that some have tried to insert a wedge between these three systems. Whatever their motivation the only result is the fragmentation of the species. Each of these three systems is an expression of human thought. We did not borrow these systems from alien species.

But somewhere in the process of developing these systems the focus was transferred to the interests of subsections of the species instead of on the needs of the system. Why is it so difficult for national governments to come together to advance global development. Why do our religions remain so divided? Why does our educational curriculum not teach the oneness of the species?

The answer is related to the early development of the species. The obvious evolution of the human species points to the growth of the species from an infant stage to a mature stage, in the same way that each individual moves from infancy to maturity. Just as infants are characterized by trust and adults by distrust, in its infancy stage the human race was characterized by cohesion and trust, but now in its intellectually mature stage it is characterized by distrust.

How did this transformation take place, and to what extent were the three systems of education, religion and government involved? The answer to that question may help us in our quest for equality and peace.

Peace: Education and Instruction

Let us take a closer look at the distinction Benson made between education and instruction. To really understand how significant it is for us to make this distinction in our search for world peace consider this. In "A History of Education before the Middle Ages" (1913) Frank Pierrepont Graves, called education "conscious evolution." The seed for that idea was sown by Thomas Davison in "A History of Education," (1901). Graves understood Davison to be saying that "all the development of the universe that had taken place in the stages prior to the advent of man might . . . be considered as the result of a sort of unconscious education."

In every other species, development or evolution has been a reaction to changes in the environment. Only in humans has our development also been a reaction to changes in our knowledge. These changes in our knowledge are the domain of our system of education. As we learned more about our environment we consciously changed our behavior and contributed to the evolution of our species. This is how we made the change from hunters and gatherers to agriculturists, from cave painters to computers. These were conscious stages of development that contributed to the education or the evolution of the species.

Instruction is truly the handmaiden of this education process. The human race is not defined by the collective knowledge of the world's human population. The stage of development that the species has attained determines the domain for individual learning by individual human beings. When humans believed that the earth was flat this is what human beings were taught. But no one human being knows everything that humans know as a species.

But there are also aspects of the species, e.g. biologically and physiologically, that apply to every human being. Since the human race is a system each member of the human race should exhibit the basic characteristics of a system. An educated human being would not threaten the existence of other human beings whether through war and physical violence or damage to vital human institutions, e.g. school and economic systems. Individuals who do such things may be learned but they certainly are not "educated."

Somehow we have managed to mis-educate the species and infected the species with distrust.

Peace: To Clarify a Point

There are two striking reasons why the task of renewing humanity falls first to the education system even though it suffers from the same disqualification as do religion and government. In a future blog I will discuss the fact that “education” is the solution to every human problem. But the education system also gets the nod because it is the only one of the three that is capable of surviving the type of change necessary to accomplish this task.

Let’s take a look at government. Nature appears to abhor the very idea of world government. It is intriguing that even though most animals live in groups out of which a leader always emerges, this leadership always remains local. A pride of lions is led by one lion but there is no lion in any jungle who leads the other lions in the entire jungle. There is not one example of global leadership in the entire animal kingdom. Government works best at the national level.

The current practice of religion could not survive a new paradigm in which all men are accepted as being equal regardless of their philosophy.

But the distinction between education and instruction means that the education system can take on both roles. We will always need a system that delivers specialized instruction in different areas. What we are lacking is a general approach that emphasizes the oneness of humanity so that this thinking is central in human thinking.

I cannot help but wonder what it will take to convince us all that the biggest challenge we face today is distrust and that our present systems are incapable of dealing with it.

Peace: Getting to the Heart of it.

Until now you probably gave no consideration to the meaning of the words education and instruction or to the relationship between the two. Like most people the fact you used the two interchangeably, or at a minimum believed that to instruct was to educate. In spite of this general ignorance, the ideas we are discussing here are not really novel; they simply have never been globally applied before. But now that the spotlight has been shone on them it is obvious that instruction is not education and Benson is correct in calling instruction the handmaiden of education.

Education appears to be much more complicated than we have been led to believe by the education community. The education system is actually an instruction system because instruction is what they have been delivering. However, this does not represent a failure on their part; they have been true to their mission. Allow me to explain.

On a local level the goal of instruction is to impart to the young the values that the local community has determined is important for its survival. This is why schools exist for individuals. The instruction that takes place in the schools and universities reflect the identity of the local region. It reflects that region’s level of development. The purpose of the schools is not to bring development to a region but to pass on to the members of that society the development that has already occurred in the region. Our proximity to other regions may blur that fact but it becomes clearer when we consider humanity as an entity. Schools around the world exist to pass on to the world’s inhabitants the existing state of humanity’s development. So, one could say that schools engage in instruction to maintain the education status of the race, not to change it. Strictly speaking, one cannot educate an individual; one can only educate a species. You cannot educate an individual because an individual is a product of his species not a product of his classroom. The “education” we receive in the classroom only determines where our performance ranks relative to other humans in our social group.

Instruction does not only take place among humans. We are the only species that come together in groups solely for the purpose of instruction but, as we saw in Benson’s description of education, instruction takes place in every species. The young learn from the adults around them what identifies the species. This is what is happening when a lioness teaches its young cubs how to hunt. Humans call this informal education.

Two points need to be noted. The first is that the education of other species is complete and stable so that what the young are instructed in today for the survival of the species is relatively the same as it has been for centuries. In America, a wolf from 500 years ago could adequately train a cub born in this century so that it could survive in the wild. The biological, physiological and cultural education or evolution of non-human species is complete and adults in non-human species instruct their young because of that fact.

An American human being from 500 years ago could not adequately train an infant born in America in this century so that it could survive here. This is because humans have changed in a way that other species have not changed. We have changed because our evolution has never been complete. Culturally we have continued to evolve. But our school curriculum makes the assumption that necessary but faulty assumption that our evolution is complete.

Distrust is not a product of poor instruction but of poor education. The current education paradigm does not educate; it only instructs because it does not focus on the needs of the race.

Peace: Understanding why our Education System has failed the species

Benson G. Clough is not a well-known name today, but more than a century ago he made statements about education that have much relevance to our current discussion. They are important enough that I reproduce all three paragraphs that come at the very beginning of his book “A Short History of Education.” Peculiarities in the text reflect the fact that he was an Englishman writing in 1904.

The History of Education is of supreme importance in its reference to the development of individual, industrial and national life. In studying this history many difficulties have arisen from a confusion between the terms Education and Instruction.

Life in all its stages is Education. One writer has gone so far as to say that the first two or three year of a child’s life are of the supremest importance, with regard to the foundation of character and the moulding of the future thought-life of the child. And those who have carefully watched the gradual, nay, almost imperceptible, growth of an infant’s power of appreciation and observation will readily understand the value from an educative point of view of the influence of externals. Like animals and plants, children assimilate themselves to their environment, and will, notwithstanding every endeavour to the contrary, reproduce in themselves the traits and faculties which they see in those about them.

Instruction comes later as a handmaid to Education, and involves the direct imparting of knowledge already accumulated from one who know to one who is at the time ignorant. Geography and History, for example, are largely questions of “instruction.” Mathematics and the allied sciences may be almost purely questions of “education.” In so far, however, as for their more rapid acquisition they involve the statement of facts previously acquired, these sciences approach the modern idea of education.

This is a powerful metaphor that sheds light on the failure of our education systems to effectively meet their goals of producing thoroughly educated humans. A handmaiden is a maid or servant working in the service of a master who holds the authority.

Theoretically, the servant works for the master but if the master does not provide any supervision or input the servant does what he/she thinks is best and the result may be nothing resembling what the master had in mind. For as long as our education systems have been in operation we have assumed they were guided by education when they have only known the acquaintance of the handmaiden of education.

The results are finally in. The handmaiden has done the best she could. Her work has not been entirely useless. We have made great achievements in science, technology, medicine and many other areas. But the ideas of a genuine handmaiden can never match the ideas of the master.

We cannot blame instruction for all our ills but being aware of the difference between education and instruction is important if we expect to solve our most pressing problems. The teachers are human. This means that they can only teach what humans know. There is no such thing as an over-achieving teacher. It is also true that students can only learn what they learn from others.

But our system of instruction is inherently fragmented because it is focused on the needs of groups of humans rather on the needs of the human race. We are not educating individuals to be humans but to serve different groups of humans. Built into that system are the seeds of inequality. The handmaiden has taken over the manor.

Peace: Can We Depend on the Education System?

Now that we have shown that the education system is best equipped to return humanity to a state of cohesion this project has just taken on a very interesting twist. I want to be certain I don’t lose anyone in the ride that is up ahead. Let us review how we got here.

This began with the second requirement of the Nobel Peace Prize – the eradication of standing armies. The only way to effectively eradicate standing armies is to get rid of the distrust that makes them necessary. We then discovered that distrust is founded in a false sense of inequality or fragmentation within the human system. This led us to conclude that our primary goal is to eradicate the prevailing sense of fragmentation that humans experience. In attempting to determine who which of our institutions is best equipped to lead this re-education effort charge we concluded that both religion and government are not qualified because they are inherently fragmented.

This leads to another problem. The fragmentation that we find in humanity is a sign of a species that is not well-educated; the education of this species has clearly gone awry. In recent times several people, including Vartas Gregorian, the President of the Carnegie Corporation, have complained of the fragmentation in our educational curricula. If the fragmented nature of religion and religion disqualifies them from eliminated fragmentation from humanity how wise could it be to expect the education system to solve a problem that they seem to have caused? Thankfully, there is a plausible explanation and it involves the interesting twist we spoke about.

There are really two parts to education. The part we are more familiar with is what we call formal education and it really should be called Instruction. This is what goes on in classrooms around the globe. Instruction is based on the fiction that everything that should be known is known. In theory, teachers teach their students established truth. But there is another aspect of education that does not get much attention in the education community even though it may be more important. It is this part of education that we are interested in; the part that says we continue to develop and change as a species.

Everyone knows about the difference between instinct and intelligence. Animals function on instinct but humans have to use their intelligence to figure what they need to do in order to survive. This is because animals had a complete evolution. They know everything they needed to know in order to survive. This also has its limitations as we can see when the food source of certain species is threatened. They lack the ability to come up with a new food source. Humans are better off because we are less informed. Because our DNA does not tell us exactly what to do in each situation we have the privilege to figure those things out. What we should eat, how we should dress, how we should move about. Those issues are settled for non-human species. Humans can come up with a variety of options, and sometimes we can be wrong.

In this attempt to figure things out that we are attempting to complete our evolution or development. Fragmentation is one place where we got it wrong. We need to correct it. The future of the species is at stake.

Peace: Why the Education System Gets the Nod

Because of my Christian upbringing I always expected that the attainment of peace on earth would have a religious connection. You can well imagine my surprise when I realized that the solution that was bubbling to the surface makes no reference to religion. That’s not how the story was supposed to end.

In order to understand why the burden, or privilege, of re-educating the species should fall to the educational community rather than to religion or government, we need to review an aspect of standing armies and distrust that we have not emphasized to this point.

We have already established that standing armies, even though they serve a useful purpose in contemporary society as a deterrent to war and violence, are both a drain on the public purse and a reflection of the distrust that exists in the human psyche. We have not said much about the fact that distrust only exists in the presence of fragmentation. We distrust those who are different from us -- those we perceive not to be complementary to us.

There is no distrust in a wholesome system; each component of the system works cooperatively with other components of the system. Difference does not always indicate fragmentation.

Consequently, in our efforts to eradicate standing armies we can say that our goal is to abolish the perception of fragmentation that now infects the human mind. I call it a perception because, as we shall discuss further later, the human race is only one of the trillions of natural systems that make up the larger system we call the Universe. It is on the basis of this understanding that it becomes clear why it is academia that features in our proposed solution instead of religion or government.

A process that is based on the idea of equality instead of fragmentation is best served by an institution that is not fragmented. Even though world leaders and religious leaders alike speak of world peace, both religion and government are inherently fragmented. Government is the essence of life but human government is also a political system. To maintain their power political leaders have to meet the needs of the fragmented people they represent. Political peace talks always aim for compromise because those who come to the table represent their geographic blocks. Even at the level of the UN the parties are not driven by the global needs of the human race. In the presence of distrust the best they can hope for is a compromise solution.

Most religions advocate peace but there also compromise is the best they can hope for. After thousands of years in which religion has dominated our lives we still find ourselves divided along religious lines. Speaking from my Christian upbringing I know that Christianity envisions a world of peace, yet it is not a world for everyone. In the minds of most Christians, including their leaders, the peace of Christianity is restricted to those who accept the tenets of Christianity. I doubt that Christianity is alone in this perspective but the idea is a non-starter in a pluralistic world.

This is why I think it is notable that the education-based solution makes no judgment about our partisan perspective. It treats the human race as a unit of parts.

While religious and political leaders advocate for a world where the outliers are excluded only the educational/scientific community consistently works for benefits that accrue not only to those who share their views. The mathematician creates his formulas to benefit all. The medical researcher keeps searching or cures that he may never need for himself. It is obvious that education, along with the science that feeds it, is the only human institution with the credentials necessary to advocate for a world where oneness is the ruling principle.

Peace: Exploring the Solution

Now that we know the who, how, when, and what of the solution to our problem with distrust which will create the conditions for peaceful co-existence, we must now turn our attention to why this solution will work as well how it will accomplish our stated goal. In the process we will find that this simplistic solution to a complex age-old problem actually delivers much more than it appears to offer.

What will be the immediate result of our academicians using available research information to illustrate the inherent organically systemic nature of the human race? The result is that over the years these academicians as well as those who consume their academic offerings will begin to internalize the idea that they are part of one organic whole.

The problem we have with distrust is not a lack of understanding that we should trust each other but that we do not instinctively see ourselves as belonging to the same side, so to speak. Distrust is founded in fragmentation. The task is to get humans to see themselves the same way that other organisms see other members of their species.

Our current education system has taught us that the way to change someone's mind on a subject is to provide them with sufficient information to bring about a change in their thinking. This works often, but it has to overcome the natural tendency of humans to push back against new information. The proposed solution assumes forgotten the notion that oneness is the reality, and not a desired condition.

This solution circumvents this problem in a manner that first became evident to me more than a quarter century ago. I learned from a college professor that it is easier to convince people to your way by explaining why you do what you do instead of trying to tell them why they should adopt your way. It is also easier to get someone to like you by asking them to do something for you instead of doing something for them. In the first case their defenses are unarmed because they do not subconsciously perceive an attempt to influence them. In the second, they must temporarily experience what it is to like you while considering whether they like you enough to do something for you.

As a result of implementing this plan internationally adult humans will eventually come to view world the way that infants view it. It will not be long before we cease indoctrinating our children in a fragmented view of their species.

But this is only the first step. Next time I will discuss why the focus is on the educational system instead of government or religion, the two other institutions that wield influence in our lives.

Peace: The Plan to be Implemented

Based on all we know about the world around us, neither evolutionary theory nor intelligent design can explain the presence of distrust among adult humans. Distrust provides no survival benefit to the human species so there is not reason why humans would develop such a trait, especially when the positive trait of trust is evidenced among the infant of the species. From an intelligent design perspective it is illogical that an intelligent designer would design the necessary survival trait of trust into the non-human species and replace it with the destructive trait of distrust, but only among the adults of the species. The final possibility that would ascribe distrust to an entity outside of the human species is not any less problematic. All of this adds to the mystery of distrust; it should not exist yet it does.

With such a unique problem it should come as no surprise that a workable solution may mystify. Sometimes I have felt that the solution I have arrived at can only be appreciated after the foundation for it has been completely laid. But in the process of such thinking it occurs to me that the arguments that would explain the solution would make more sense if the proposal were known. I think the latter approach is the way to go. I will present here the who, what, when and where of this solution. The follow-up blogs will address the why; and there are may of these.

As I noted earlier, the goal is to eradicate distrust among humans as a species, not only from individual human beings. We must focus on what the human race was meant to be like rather than on what it can become. Thankfully, it does not require us to inform anyone that we should not be distrustful, nor the development of a new sophisticated area of knowledge. We already possess all we need to implement this solution.

As a first step, in order for humans to eradicate distrust our academic leaders must through scholarly papers or lectures, demonstrate from their existing body of research how each of the systems they deal with illustrate the natural organic nature of the human species.

The first thing you will note is that unlike other curriculum iniatives that address the lower educational levels this one begins with the higher levels of education. The second is that it treats the human race as an organic whole rather than as a loose collection of individual parts. The third is that this step will lead naturally to other steps. These and others will be discussed in the future.

Peace: The Solution

So, how do we eliminate distrust from humanity? This is the question that must be answered. We know that it can be eliminated because the fact that it is not present in the non-human species that preceded us in this ecosystem nor among infant indicates that it is not an inevitable part of human nature. However, it is also true that after thousands of years of existence humans have had no success in overcoming it. How can we accomplish today what has resisted our efforts over all these years? I would like to suggest that we have not eradicated distrust because we have not really tried to do so.

Distrust is a problem for humans. I don't think it has any redeeming properties. We also know that every problem humans experience is related to information. Either the information is lacking, is misinterpreted or is misapplied. I am not making any great revelation by saying that the education is the key to eradicating distrust. It is here that things get tricky.

We must differentiate between being educated and being informed. An educated human being will understand his role in the system we call the human race and will not be distrustful of other human beings. As we have seen throughout history many of the people we consider to be educated are merely informed, for they are the ones who have begun our wars and have orchestrated the fleecing of communities.

It is obvious that something has gone wrong in the education of the human species. It is not enough to teach humans that they should trust each other because, even though distrust is the absence of trust the relationship between trust and distrust is not the same as the light and darkness, or even awareness and ignorance. When light is introduced into a dark area the darkness flees. When an ignorant is made aware his ignorance dissipates. But the entrance of trust does not eradicate distrust. This is because trust is a focussed quality. We can trust one individual while simultaneously distrusting another. This is why trust and distrust can exist in the same breast, and trust can be instantly changed into distrust by changing one's perception of the previous object of one's trust.

When I speak of eradicating distrust I am envisioning a society in which we relate to each other as adults in the same way we relate to each other as infants; without having to be reminded that we should trust.

To accomplish that we need to first recognize that distrust is related to inequality. It does not matter whether the inequality is real or imagined. War and crime are violent efforts to achieve equality. They are also violent efforts to impose inequality. War and crime do not exist in a world where equality reigns.

This presents an educational problem. Almost out of necessity, our current educational systems are based on inequality. The teacher is not equal to the student. The student is being "educated" to serve the needs of a small group. The focus of our education is on small groups instead of on the global needs of the species. This environment breeds distrust.

We need a global curriculum that works in tandem with our current system of education and instills in all men the understanding that they are part of one system even though they may operate in a small area. It is possible because it occurs in the animal kingdom. The key to this approach to education is to focus not on what we can be but on what we should be.

The more I have reviewed this in my mind the more difficult it appears to explain it. Instead of laying the foundation I will present it and return to fill in the gaps and details. It is possible for humans to live without distrust as infants and as adults. Getting there may be easier than we think.

Peace: Understanding Distrust III

So far we have provided sufficient evidence to show that distrust is not merely an interesting social discussion subject but a viable research subject. We have shown that distrust is a scientific variable because it appears in varying quantities in nature. It is not present in non-human species but it is present among humans, but only in adult humans. I suggest a line of research that takes advantage of the fact that while distrust is present in humans but not present in non-human species it is also not present in the infant stage of the human species.

The absence of distrust, in favor of trust, from any of the other species that share the earth with us is an indication that distrust is a less desirable trait than trust; an undesirable trait that is harmful to the species. That being so the obvious conclusion is that distrust is not part of the natural identity of any of the non-human species on earth. The fact that distrust is never found in infant humans indicates that distrust also is not part of humanity’s natural identity. Somehow we have become infected by a foreign quality. No other explanation fits the conclusions we have drawn. Both evolutionary theory and creation point in that direction.

I guess one can say that any attempt to eradicate distrust is really aimed at regaining trust as an essential quality of the species. This means that the search for world peace by eradicating distrust is not an effort to become something we are not but an effort to regain a quality that we lost. The process is actually more of a restoration or healing than a transformation or conversion. Distrust is threatening the future existence of the human race. We now have the military capacity to destroy significant portions of our population. If we think of the human race being divided into trusting infant humans and distrustful adult humans it is easy to see that in order to guarantee the survival of the species we must "become as little children" and regain the trust that characterized us in the "infancy" stage of our development as a species.

This highlights the fact that the human species, just like any other species on earth, is a natural system and therefore is one organism, even though it looks like a collection of individual specimens. So, instead of being viewed as an inefficient machine in need of improvement humanity actually is a sick body that is in need of healing. To understand this reality metaphor, we need to take a look at how a body functions. (I call it a reality metaphor to drive home the fact that the species is not being compared to an organism or body; it actually is an organism and ought to function as one.)

We will use the human body to illustrate the point. Each body is made up of trillions of atoms grouped into eleven organ systems. Each moment an unknown number of instructions are being issued and carried out throughout the body. For the body to function in a state of optimal health these instructions must be issued on time and must be carried out on time. It would not do the body any good if the heart were to contract when there was no blood in it. The heart pumps blood to the tissues to supply them with oxygen. The haemoglobin molecule in the red blood cells has instructions to pick up oxygen from the lung and transport it to the rest of the body where it is released for cell use. Good health depends on those instructions being carried out precisely and on time.

Examples of this can be seen all around us. For an orchestra to produce a musical masterpiece its members must carry out thousands of instructions precisely and on time. Each marking on the score is an instruction that must be followed. Each beat of the conductor’s baton is an instruction that must be followed. The conductor trusts each member of the orchestra to follow his instructions and to follow the instruction on the score. The members trust the conductor to read from the correct score and to interpret the score accurately. Without trust among its cells a body is not healthy. Without trust among its members an orchestra cannot perform. Distrust has inhibited the ability of the human race to function as it should.

Peace: In Between

I recently came across this example of the effects of our distrust. Humans are the only species who have to undertake these projects to take care care of their young because we are the only who make such projects necessary. Until we eradicate distrust we have to engage in the work at hand.

http://www.firstgiving.com/riziki




Thank you.

Peace: Understanding Distrust II

Humans have long been aware of the problems associated with a lack of trust. However, we have tended to deal with the issue of trust by seeking ways to overcome distrust or develop and maintain trust in the presence of distrust. The basic assumption seems to be that distrust is part of what it means to be human. We may think of eradicating distrust in a particular situation but never completely from the human condition. But this assumption ignores two important facts about distrust which, to all intents and purposes, have inexplicably been overlooked. However, these two facts play a central role in forging a solution to this scourge on our cultural landscape.

The first fact is that distrust is found nowhere else in nature but among humans. It is a unique human phenomenon. This is an important piece of information for two reasons. First, it is generally accepted that humans are the last species to appear on earth, and second, the very first step of human science is observation of the rest of nature. This means that everything humans learn that is not a part of their nature is copied, in part, from the other species. We can safely conclude that humans did not model distrust from other species and we are the only species who exhibit this nonproductive behavior.

Even though the second fact is generally accepted by most of us not much attention is paid to it. Because distrust has not been extensively studied by our scholars it is an unheralded fact that there is an entire class of humans who, on the question of distrust, are as distinguished from the rest of humanity as are the other species in nature.

The boundary between the absence and presence of distrust represents the only bright white line in the human experience. It is such a bright line that it effectively divides humanity into two distinct species. Distrust is not a pediatric affliction; it does not exist among infants. One only has to observe the interaction among infants and children to recognize that. Distrust of other humans does not exist in the infant mind, nor does the fear that such distrust generates. But among the adult of the species the picture is different. Distrust is a characteristic of the adult stage of the species. Many adult humans make bold attempts to overcome this distrust but it remains a daily effort. This distinction between the infant and adult stages of the species is both interesting and instructive.

These two facts present an interesting research situation that will be useful as we attempt to understand distrust more fully. It is not often in a research situation to find that a quality being studied is the distinguishing factor. On one hand we find that all other non-human species exhibit no distrust and this is contrasted with the sole human species that exhibits distrust. It appears that this difference can be attributed to a human characteristic. But this is countered by the factor that distrust only manifests itself in the adult stage of the species. Because of our relationship with the rest of nature I would expect to find that distrust would be present among the infants of the species and the adults would learn from the other species how to develop trust. There seems to be no reason why humans would gain distrust as they mature into adulthood.

For our purposes, it is not necessary to determine at which point in the transition from infancy to adulthood that distrust becomes a part of human nature. It is sufficient to understand that this situation exists; that in individual human beings the transition from infant to adult also marks a downward shift from a state of trust to one of distrust.

Peace: In Between

Before I post my next blog in the Peace series I wish to express my appreciation for the comments that have already been made. I would like to encourage you to continue commenting. I would like your input on two issues that have been raised. Trevor has already addressed the first, which would be the costs/benefits associated with distrust, when he wrote that

Greed and associated violence are feeders of distrust and suspicion. Getting rid of distrust means overcoming ethnocentrism, racism, nativism, capitalism, and many other dangerous contributors.

The truth is that it is distrust that is the source of all these. If we get rid of distrust we would get rid of ethnocentrism, racism. I can think of another. I think there are a number of technological advances we dare not make because we don't trust each other to use them honestly. I encourage you to think of such possibilities and share them here.

Another issue would be the three forms of distrust I proposed. What do you think of that idea? In what ways to you see these three forms relating to each other? Thanks for your contributions until my third offering.

Peace: Understanding Distrust

I would like to reiterate that before we can achieve our goal of eradicating distrust among humans we must understand it and clarify how we became infected with it. That discussion will naturally lead to the costs of distrust as well as the intended benefits to humanity of getting rid of distrust.

Distrust is the lack of trust and it works at three levels. The first level is the one that prompted this series of blogs. At this level distrust can be defined as the absence of certain knowledge that you or others who are like you will not harm you.

At the second level distrust can be defined as the absence of knowledge that you or others who are like you will take care of you in your time of need.

At the third level distrust can be defined as the absence of knowledge that you or others who are like you have your best interests at heart.

Those definitions are important. We have no expectation that other species will not harm us, have our best interests at heart or will take care of us in our time of need. But, we have a sense that we should be able to rely on others like us not to harm us, to take of us in our time of need or adversity, or to have our best interests at heart.

All of these affect our behavior and have attendant costs. They are not necessarily mutually exclusive. They may function in isolation or in combination or one or more may give rise to others. We have already discussed how standing armies exist because nations do not have certain knowledge that other nations will not harm them. Standing armies provide a sense of security. On a personal level that need for security takes its toll in stress and violence. Not knowing for certain that others will take care of us in time of need is one of the reason that some take goods and resources out of the market and hoard them. We must save to preserve our future because there is no guarantee that others will take care of us. Not knowing for certain that others have our best interests at heart sometimes causes us to resist new ideas. A good example is Galileo. Because he was at the bottom of the academic pecking order those at the top of the pecking order refused to look in his telescopes.

These examples show that the cost of distrust goes far above the trillions spent in military and crime prevention budgets. The benefits of eradicating distrust are incalculable.

Imagine a world where trust rules and suspicion and fear are distant memories. A world where one can spend his money on food and other necessities instead of on home security systems. A world where we can travel to any exotic locale we desire without making special arrangements for protection. A world where children can go to school without fear of being viciously attacked. It is within our reach.

With this brief review of distrust and its costs we will next take a look at the origins of distrust. This will provide amazing insights into the nature of humanity.

Peace for a Peace Prize

Those who have raised questions about the award of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama may have unwittingly done us a tremendous service. It turns out that if we follow Alfred Nobel's criteria none of the previous winners of the Peace Prize really deserved that prize. In his 1895 will Alfred Nobel stipulated that the peace prize should go "to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies and the formation and spreading of peace congresses.” Obama is the 97th individual to receive the Peace Prize, which has been awarded 90 times since 1901, but it is obvious that the award committee has been very liberal in its interpretation of the criteria identified by Alfred Nobel.

Fraternity among nations as well as peace conferences are useful tools in the quest for world peace and no one can seriously doubt that President Obama and other recipients of the Nobel peace prize have to one degree or other demonstrated a commitment to both. But what about standing armies? In the nearly two centuries since Nobel's death fraternity among nations has ebbed and waned, and the impact of peace conferences has been spotty, but standing armies have become larger and more sophisticated.

Maybe President Obama had the correct idea in his response to his nomination. After reminding us that the prize has "also been used as a means to give momentum to a set of causes," he went on to say:

That is why I've said that I will accept this award as a call to action, a call for all nations and all peoples to confront the common challenges of the 21st century. These challenges won't all be met during my presidency, or even my lifetime. But I know these challenges can be met so long as it's recognized that they will not be met by one person or one nation alone.

Maybe the time has come to recognize as the most urgent challenge of the 21st century the need to reduce and abolish our standing armies.

Standing armies are a drain on the public purse, even when a war is not being fought. Standing armies must be maintained even when they are not fighting. But the billions spent to maintain a standing army could be used to conquer illiteracy and all its ills. Unlike fraternity among nations and peace conferences that can be used in the quest for peace, the abolition of standing armies will only occur after world peace has been achieved. With its granting of the 2009 Peace Prize to President Obama the Nobel Committee may have just called all of us to seriously consider what it will take to get rid of our standing armies.

The first thing to bear in mind is the fact that standing armies, as a deterrent to other humans, are a human invention. There is no equivalent anywhere in nature. The second is that necessity is the mother of invention. Every human invention was made in response to a need. Standing armies are an indication of a lack of trust and national security. A few weeks ago I listened to the Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates react to Iran's nuclear buildup. He suggested that Iran may change its posture if they realize that refusing to heed pleas from the global community is not the way to increase their security. He could have mentioned that Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons is a response to a perception that they need to protect themselves from a threat from the outside.

The fact that standing armies were invented by humans indicates that we did not always distrust each other. Before we can get rid of our standing armies we must first get rid of the distrust. To get rid of this distrust we must first understand how we acquired it.

In the next few blogs we will try to understand where we got the idea from that other humans are our enemies, and then propose how we can get rid of it along with the need for standing armies.

The Ultimate Fixer-Upper

Humans are the ultimate fixer-uppers. Truth be told, in our realm we are the ONLY fixer-uppers. Humans spend every moment of their lives solving problems; fixing things that have gone wrong or seem not to work as we would like them to. So, why have we had such little success in fixing our culture, in solving the most pressing problem that we face as a species? The answer is easier than you think and that very simplicity makes it more difficult than we could imagine.

Take a look at your local bookstore shelves and you will find scores of self-development books devoted to telling us how to become better at something or learning how to do something. Architects can buy books on how to become better architects and people who want to become architects can buy books on how to become better architects. Sometimes we have to use these books in conjuction with a formalized course of study but the idea is the same; that there exists the notion of the optimal. Either we are becoming better at what we do or are, or we are discovering how to become what we want to become.

There is one area that is missing in these books. We are already human beings but you will not find a book on how to become a better human being. That is the book or course of instruction we need. It is true that if all humans become better then the race will be better, but that is a temporal fixe given the fact that good humans became what we are now. It is an even more powerful idea that if the race can be made better all humans will be better. That should be our goal.

Stay tuned.

Get it!

Nothing disappoints me more than the reluctance of my Christian brothers to accept the fact that we are one race. It is disappointing to me because this teaching is so powerfully presented in the very book that they claim to their scriptures. It is as if the message of the Bible is incidental as far as they are concerned.

In the beginning God created the heavens (and the earth). I placed those parentheses because the contents are redundant; the earth is a part of the heavens. When it comes to the creation of man most miss the fact that there is only one creative act. God creates man from the dust of the earth; a commondity that was in plentiful supply. In that man there was both male and female, just as it is with every zygote that grows into a foetus and into an adult via infancy. We began as male and femal and each of us began our lives as male and female.

The point that most miss is the fact that God did not create the Woman. The creation of Adam was the last creative act in the Genesis account. The woman was taken out of Adam because she was a part of the man. This is why Adam declared, "This is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh." Why do Christians have such a difficult time with such a simple concept? Is our desire for vengeance so strong. Is our "hatred" of those who do not agree with us so overwhelming? What is the problem with us?

Gone but not forgotten

I posted the following on my facebook page and it has generated quite a bit of discussion:

Recent deaths have brought out the usual remarks, "He will never be forgotten." When I think that some of these people were practically forgotten in their waning years, I wonder why people say these things. To all intents and purposes you... forgot about him while he was alive and you were busy living your life, what makes you think you won't forget him now that he is gone?

Learning lessons

During this absence I have been very busy conceptually. I have learned a number of hard and frustrating lessons, all of which are related to the anomaly of this species and system we call the human race. We have become so accustomed to our current condition that we have begun to believe that it is normative. All our lessons have been learned from nature yet we refuse to apply the most important lesson that nature has taught us, which is that every system exists to maintain its own existence.

There are many reasons for this. The first is that scientific research, which is the main engine of human development is not designed to benefit the human species. Science, by its very design, is meant to benefit individuals or groups of individuals.

This is not easily seen because science, more directly the statistical probabilities that underly scientific research, invokes the distribution of populations. We always assume the population in our research. But that is only a major factor in our analysis of the data. When it comes to application our thoughts go to the individual. This is why we employ the negative term "outlier."

What is an outlier? How can any human being be an outlier in a distribution of human beings? It only means that he does not fit the characteristics of a particular group of humans. So we find that the fragmentation of humanity is built into the tool on which we depend to forge our development.

. . . In between . . .

It's amazing how animals spoken into existence and man created from dust have so much genetic material in common. Even more amazing that animals spoken into existence return to dust the same as man who was created from dust.

From the benign to the malignant

Adam's perception of the Woman as being inferior to him because of something she had done was the basis for Cain feeling so inferior that the only way he could guarantee his survival was to kill his brother. This is not a sufficient explanation because it is obvious that for a while they co-existed peacefully, pursuing different vocations. Why didn't Adam kill Eve if his view of her resulted in one son killing the next. That will be the subject of my next post.

My Gift

Adam's reaction when asked about the fruit is interesting. At first he called the woman, "bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh." The meaning of that statement is found in the commentary that follows, "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh." Adam realized that the Woman was one flesh with him. She did not have an independent identity. But he was reacting out of fear when he called her "the woman you gave me." This is significant. She had gone from being me to being mine.

As bone of his bone she was equal to him, but he now viewed her only as a gift. It does not matter how much a gift is admired and appreciated, it is never equal to the recipient. A gift can be abandoned, discarded, mistreated, destroyed, in addition to being cherished and appreciated. It simply is not equal to the recipient. Why the change? Not because she had changed. She was the same woman. Adam viewed her differently because of something she had done. And in that moment the seeds of human misery were planted, because inequality is the root of all human violence, in the same way that inequality in pressures are the root of all violent storms.

From the Beginning

The evidence shows that humans did not always view each other as enemies. So, the question we need to ask is "How did humans turn from brotherhood to animosity?" I found one ancient document that gives some insight into this issue. Unfortunately, it happens to be a source of irritation between humans. That source is the book of Genesis in the Hebrew and Christian Christians.

In Genesis 2 the Creator puts the first man, Adam, to sleep extracts a rib from his chest cavity and makes a woman out of the rib that He removed. When the woman is presented to Adam he declares (v. 23):
[quote]"This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called 'woman,' for she was taken out of man."[/quote]

That was a sign of identity, unity and brotherhood. But a few verses later, after "the Fall," Adam no longer thinks of her as being a part of him. Instead, when asked why he had eaten of the tree he had been told not to partake of he says, [quote]"The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it."[/quote]

This was quite a change. In the next chapter the story is repeated with different circumstances. In chapter four Adam and Eve produce two sons. Cain grows up to be a farmer who works the soil, and Abel becomes a shepherd. By the time the story ends one brother is dead (8)[quote]Now Cain said to his brother Abel, "Let's go out to the field." [d] And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.[/quote]

Somewhere in those two stories we should be able to determine what it is that changed humans from brothers into enemies and indicate how we can get back to where we were.

Understanding Global DNA

When we get past the double helix of the DNA molecule and the sequencing of the human genome, we are left to conclude that DNA is just information. Without that information the cells would not know what to do and nothing would happen in the body. There would be no life.

Global DNA is also information. In non-human species this information is a fixed quantity. This is why they all operate on instinct. Their behavior is genetically determined and they have the same responses to external stimuli regardless of whether they were here ten thousand years ago or live on earth today. Non-human species don't know everything but they know everything they need to know.

Humans are very different. When they arrived on this planet they did not know anything. This is strange because one would expect that if every species that appeared before humans knew everything they needed to know to ensure their survival that humans should also have the same level of information. Someone appears to have switched the script when humans arrived. But that ignorance is also the basis of what we call intelligence. Intelligence is actually managed ignorance.

In the place of full knowledge we came equipped with curiosity and creativity. This curiosity allowed us to learn from the non-human species around us, and to use what we learned from them to create new knowledge. We have done a great job of learning from these species. Each time we learned something our knowledge base increased and that only made more information available to us. In every instance we improved on what we learned from our environment, except one. Self-destructive behavior is the one thing that humans did not learn from the other species around. Before humans arrived the animals knew not to deplete their food stock or to overgraze their grazing grounds. Violence in nature was always inter-species rather than intra-species. It is logical that when humans arrived on earth they also lived together in peace among each other. Without that they would not have survived those early years of their existence.

How then did we abandon the information that told us that as members of the same species we are brothers and develop a new set of information that caused us to look on each other as potential enemies? This is the question for the ages. If we can address it adequately we may be close to understanding the anomaly the human race has become. We are in search of information.