It’s too easy to reduce acts of kindness to an “aw, isn’t that nice?” sort of irrelevance. What if we thought about them, instead, as templates for foreign policy?
For one thing, if we did, there would be no such thing as “foreign” policy — no segregation of most of humanity behind borders and labels, to be controlled and, most of all, feared. There would only be getting-to-know-you policy, not in a simplistic sense but with a deep and courageous curiosity . . . because our survival depends on it.
Another way to say this is: War doesn’t work. Bombing ISIS doesn’t work. Closing our border to Syrians — or Mexicans — doesn’t work. Yet “we,” by which I mean the whole world, or at least its community of nation states and terrorists (a single entity, as far as I can tell), go back to this suicidal behavior again and again and again. “France is at war.” We greet terror with revenge. It accomplishes nothing except to make matters worse — infinitely worse — but somehow it feels right at the time, so we keep doing it.
Why are we violent but not illiterate?
I ask this question all the time. It was originally posed some years ago by Washington Post columnist Colman McCarthy. The answer is obvious, of course. We’re taught to read; originally, we taught ourselves to read. We invented written language. The human species is now in the process of inventing something just as crucial: how to love itself, how to engage with itself nonviolently. We’ve been organized for far too long in a state of only partial connection, relying on the presence of enemies to stay in solidarity with our neighbors. We’ve expended, especially in recent millennia, far more of our intelligence and treasure on the means to fortify ourselves from — and kill — the enemy than we have, perhaps, on anything else. Think nuclear weapons.
Of this I am certain: The human transition to nonviolence will not happen from the top down. The surreally farcical 2016 GOP presidential race makes this clear. The official reaction to every conceivable threat, real and imagined, is to throw more violence at it, to pound it out of existence. And the official discussion that accompanies such action never dares to question violence itself, almost as though violence and cowardice have a nearly unbreakable link.
But change is coming up from the human roots. It’s time to begin noticing it.
Last week I wrote: “Please write and tell me about how personal acts of compassion and connection have resolved conflicts and created understanding. I’ll devote future columns to such stories. Tell me how sovereign people are changing the world — not through hate but through the courage of love.”
I plan to devote future columns to the complex phenomenon of compassionate connection. The goal is not to simplify or “nice-ify” the world, as the cynics would dismiss such a project, but to help open up our awareness of the dynamics of compassion and, most importantly, ask how we can employ these dynamics at every level of human interaction, including geopolitically.
The point is, bitterness, hatred and violence — which always add up to dehumanization — make matters worse, whether the conflict is between individuals, tribes (street gangs) or nations. How can we address conflict at every one of these levels in a way that solidifies understanding and strengthens rather than shatters relationships? How can we avoid killing our enemy and reaping — as we always must — the horrific consequences?