A few weeks ago Emily and I were driving through town and stopped at an intersection. On the corner there were a few women, dressed in black and standing quietly while holding signs in protest of the war in Iraq. I later discovered that these women are part of an organization called Women In Black and that is one of the ways their group protests, by standing in silence dressed in black. A couple of weekends later, on another street corner, there was a small group of people holding up more signs protesting the Iraq war. This second group were dressed in normal multi-colored attire and were waving their signs, and some were even shouting at the passers-by. This is probably a lot more typical of anti-war protesting here in America, but the thing about this kind of protest, no matter how you are dressed or how noisy you are, is that it really doesn’t do anything to stop the war. Sure, the protesters like to say that they are raising awareness. But it’s a pretty safe bet that everyone driving by already knows about the war and already has an opinion about it, an opinion that isn’t going to be changed by a few Magic Marker signs being waved around over on the side of the road. So really, the only awareness that is raised is the awareness of whatever group is protesting - basically, it’s just advertising for the protesting group/organization. And it has always seemed to me that if these groups really want to make an impact on worldwide violence, protesting in America is only addressing part of the problem. These groups should also be protesting on street corners in Baghdad, Kabul, Bukavu, Harare, Tehran or Beirut. Of course, it’s much safer to protest in America - you can stand all day on any street corner in America and the worst thing that might happen is that some right-wing war hawks might shout out an F bomb while driving by, while on the other hand you probably wouldn’t last 20 minutes standing on a street corner in Mosul carrying peace signs and dressed in black. Nonetheless, I have a difficult time taking these street-side war protesters seriously, because I think that if they really wanted to make a difference, they won’t be standing in relative safety on a street corner distracting uninterested drivers who are trying to simultaneously drive and talk/text on their cell phones. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t want to stop war. War is hell, right? Isn’t that what eleven seasons of M*A*S*H taught us? (Actually, most of us realized that war was bad well before M*A*S*H - what M*A*S*H really taught us was that we were supposed to find it humorous that a narcissistic alcoholic chauvinist was allowed to sexually objectify women - but I digress.) I hate war and want to see it ended - I want the U.S. to be able to leave Iraq with no further violence there after we’ve left. I want to see peace in the Congo and an end to the horrible travesties against the women there. I want to see peace in Israel, in Afghanistan, in Sudan. I want to see Albanians and Serbians living together in peace with no threat of war. I would like peace to encircle the Earth for centuries to come…
But that’s not going to happen. No matter how much you and I want that, there is not going to be that kind of peace on Earth. Even if we convinced everyone we know, and eventually convinced our whole country, even if all countries and nations and governments decided to stop war, even if the whole world agreed… we still would not be able to sustain a real peace. Even if the whole of the Earth, in a moment of united humanity, decided to stop war, we could only stop war for the briefest of moments. And that’s because once the whole world had visualized world peace and put down its weapons and stopped fighting, once everyone had stopped the wars and the violence, once we had attained that covenanted moment of global peace… someone, somewhere would take advantage of this peace for his or her own selfish gain. Someone, somewhere would try to take control or steal or harm another or murder or rape. It may not be you or me, or anyone we know, but without a doubt, somewhere, somebody would certainly do this - and again we would not have peace. And this sin of selfishness - of putting one’s own desires ahead of the needs of others - is buried deep in our human nature. It’s in all of us, although most of us try to control it. But it will always be there within us to some extent, and there will always, always be some who do not care to control it, and that is why we will never have true peace as long as humans are living on this planet.
Now you may think that I’m being cynical, that I’m looking at the worst of our human nature, that I’m a philosophical pessimist, a naysayer and a really bad egg. Except for maybe the egg thing, I’m really not those other things - I believe in the “better angels of our nature”, that there is immense good in most people everywhere, that most people want to live in peace, that many people from all over the globe would help someone in distress or share out of what they have for the less fortunate. In my life, I have been the recipient of that kind of goodness, and my belief in the good of human nature is based on my experiences. But, like many of you, I’ve also experienced the ugliest underside of human nature, and we all experience it even more now that the Internet brings stories and pictures from all over the world into our homes and offices. This dark side of humanity has always been with us, as far back as history can reveal, and it will always be with us. This isn’t about declaring that the glass is half empty - this is about looking realistically at our strengths and flaws, and preparing ourselves for both the best and the worst in people. And this is what convinces me, in spite of the incredible human capacity for goodness, that short of the Second Coming of Christ we will never have peace on Earth.
But that doesn’t mean that we should give up and wallow in hopelessness. I try to remember that catch phrase from the 60’s: “Think Globally, Act Locally”. I can’t personally feed the starving Nigerian children, I can’t end the fighting in Iraq and Darfur, and there’s very little I can do about the atrocities happening in the Congo (yes, I know that I can give money to help most of these causes; however, actually going to these people and making an immediate difference in their lives is beyond what most of us are able to do). But I can support and donate food to the homeless shelter here in my town, I can buy a sandwich for the lady sitting on the ground next to the exit of a shopping center, I can offer a ride to a safe place to the woman who just had a fight with her boyfriend and is walking down my street at night carrying her suitcases, I can buy a pizza as a way of saying “Welcome to the Neighborhood” for my new neighbors who just moved in, and I can buy a fan belt and install it for a UCSB student who’s Volkswagen broke down at a dark, lonely Highway 101 offramp. And I can decide to respond peacefully even when I’m wronged, like I was recently by the jerk who kept my daughter’s $50 deposit after she decided not to buy his car. Even though I often feel that selfishness welling up inside me, the desire to either get ahead or get even, the temptation to put what I want ahead of what might help others, in spite of all of this - in spite of myself - I can try to do what I can to bring peace to my small portion of the world. And I think that that may be the most peace on Earth that most of us will ever know.
All we are saying…
