Peace: A Most Ingenious Paradox

What can we make of these facts that we have discovered? The DNA molecule is responsible for the great diversity of unique living species on the planet as well as for the diversity of unique individuals within these species. Because of way in which DNA replicates itself mutations are often introduced into the DNA of living things that often cause the organism to turn against itself. This occurs in all living species; human and non-human. Yet the same division of the DNA molecule that brought diverse species into existence did not produce in non-human species the same self-destructive behavior that plagues humanity.

This is just another of the paradoxes of this thing we call life. What does it mean that ours is the only species that seems intent on destroying itself while the individual organisms within non-human species have the same potential to turn against themselves as ours do?

An illogical world
It is illogical that an organism should seek its own destruction. The primary reason an organism exists is to perpetuate its own existence as long as its life cycle dictates. So how is it that the immune system whose sole role is to defend the body against all enemies begins to attack the body it is “sworn” to defend? How is it that otherwise normal cells continue to divide beyond the limits ordinarily imposed?

Autoimmunity has been defined as “the failure of an organism to recognize its own constituent parts as self” which means that it treats its own cells and tissues as it they were not self. In other words it pretends that they are what they are not. But, since they really are self, in allowing an immune response against them it is pretending to be what it is not. The same is true of cancer cells which, by refusing to adhere to the normal limits of cell-division, pretend not to belong to the organism.

Once again we observe that a characteristic that is unique to the human species is at the level of the individual members of the species shared with all other living species. Non-human species do not engage in self-destructive behavior but within the individual organisms the cells do. Non-human species do not pretend but within the individual organisms their cells do. There is something to be gained from this paradox.

A light emerging
It is not out of malice that the immune system decides to attack the organism’s cells and tissues, or cancer cells decide to cast off the natural restraints on their division. In both cases the body acts abnormally because of misinformation. The mutations in the DNA that are caused by the natural process of splitting the cell’s DNA result in faulty information being transmitted to certain cells and organ systems within the body.

Nature has not found a way to fight this condition. Indeed, it cannot. But we have. And what we have learned about correcting the flawed information that leads to autoimmune diseases and cancers must be used in finding the path to permanent, universal and lasting peace.