THOUGHTS ON WAR AND PEACE

We will get rid of war or war will get rid of us

Just when the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were beginning to lose their grip on our national consciousness, wars in Ukraine and Gaza have arrived to take their place. One thing about which there is no doubt: in the United States there is a forever war machine.

In the words of Albert Einstein, “I know not with what weapons we will fight WW3. But WW4 will be fought with sticks and stones.” We will stop the madness one way or the other, either through wisdom or through the inevitables consequences of our collective insanity. The global apocalypse I see in my mind is never the stereotypical landscape of a ruined city, but rather the Louvre in rubbles. The accumulated genius of the last few thousand years reduced to ashes. The ultimate loss of everything.

President John F. Kennedy said mankind would end war, or war would end mankind. Yet the war-monger class is on a roll. They see Ukraine and Gaza as mere appetizers, salivating at the very thought of the main entree in their evil feast: war in the South China Sea.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a pacifist. I look at the military the way I look at a surgeon. If we have to have surgery we want to make sure we have the best. And the United States should have the best surgeon on hand at all times. But a reasonable person tries to avoid surgery if possible. And what is called “the Blob” in Washington doesn’t try to avoid war, so much as it seems always on a hunt for the next one. A just transition from a war economy to a peace economy, despite the fact that it would render a greater ROI for society, does no such thing for them. Their goal is not to fund peace but to fund war.

All of this mirrors an internal dynamic that exists within all of us: the urge to create versus the drive to destroy. A craving for peace versus an impulse to violence. The power of love versus the power of fear. Wars without are merely the externalization of wars within. Humanity is always in the process of evolving, and the choices we are confronted with now are the choices that will determine whether or not as a species we’ll survive much longer. In the words of Dennis Kucinich, “We must challenge the belief that war is inevitable.” The only ultimately survivable option is to reach a state of awareness in which war of any kind is simply unthinkable. It will have dropped away. It will have become mere memory.

And we will get there. In A Course in Miracles it says it’s not up to us what we learn; it’s only up to us whether we learn through joy or through pain. In the meantime, the wisest thing we can do is to imagine a planet at peace and reverse engineer from there. Nations must evolve from adversaries to competitors to ultimate collaborators in the creation of a more beautiful world.

In the video above I reflect on current issues of war and peace as we grapple with them as a nation today. Among other things, I speak about the concept of a Department of Peace.

I hope, of course, to have the ultimate opportunity to put my ideas to the test.