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.