How Then Shall We Live?
The earth is too small a planet, and we too briefly visitors upon it, for anything to matter more than the struggle for peace.
— Coleman McCarthy94
If we want to leave a better world for our children, the question that faces us is this: “How then shall we live?” Following are six suggestions:
1. Recognize ourselves as leaders.
Each of us has a sphere of influence, be it as small as a family unit or as large as a nation. We can begin conversations with others about trauma and educate about tit-for-tat cycles of victimhood and violence that produce trauma and undermine security. We can speak out against polices that inflame such cycles in our communities and nations.
The figure on page 74 emerged from the STAR seminars. It identifies entry points for beginning discussions, depending on the focus or receptivity of the community or group in which we work. We may enter through work in trauma, peacebuilding, justice, human security, or spirituality. No matter what our beginning point, if the goal is building healthy and secure societies, the discussion eventually encompasses all points of the star.
2. Challenge our own faith communities to live up to the highest ideals.
In a world where worldviews and values clash, religious leaders and people of faith have a key role to play. They can get to know each other across religious lines to monitor and counteract ethnic and religious rumors and aggression. But beyond that, people of faith have the responsibility to challenge and confront those within our own religious tradition who preach hate or use our scriptures to sanction atrocities, bigotry, and aggression.95
3. Prevent trauma by learning to wage peace.
Working for peace is trauma prevention. Yet it is not enough to say we are against violence or war and then sit passively by. We must learn about and articulate viable options in the public forum that promote long-term nonviolent responses to conflicts and short-term responses to immediate crises. This means studying how to wage peace with the same intensity that we now study how to wage war. 96
Nonviolent responses to conflict and threat require training as well as anticipation and preparation for a variety of scenarios. For example:
• When activists in the Ukraine suspected that the 2004 election results might be rigged, they developed a nonviolent strategy to challenge the results. In advance they gathered tents, bottled water, blankets, and other necessities that would allow sustained mass protests.
• In the build-up to the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the Sojourners community of Washington D.C. circulated a 10-point plan on how to defeat Saddam Hussein nonviolently. They encouraged churches to insert it into their bulletins, posted it on their website, and spoke about it in public venues. Obviously, it didn’t stop the war. But it raised the consciousness of ordinary citizens that there are viable alternatives to all-or-nothing thinking about difficult situations.
More and more we are seeing that groups who could have resorted to violence are instead using “a force more powerful;”97 that is, nonviolent action for social change, social defense, or third-party intervention.98 Examples are the thousands of Serbians whose nonviolent struggle in 2000 overthrew the dictator Milosevic; the communities who defend their streets against drug trafficking by taking over the dealer’s favorite spots in the neighborhood; or crowds of ordinary people who stood between two forces moving toward confrontation in the Philippines during the last days of the dictator Marcos.99
4. Work at both the personal and the communal/structural levels.
Healing and peace must happen on both personal and communal levels. At a personal level, when we renegotiate the traumas of our own lives and experience healing, we can go into the world as healers, aware of our own strengths and vulnerabilities.
However, if we maintain that changing hearts and minds one by one is the only worthy work in the world, we risk ignoring the millions who suffer now. Imagine that you are a parent in a refugee camp cradling your starving child, and someone tells you that change will come only after those involved in creating your plight are convinced, softened, or converted in their hearts.
Martin Luther King, Jr. said that the law could not make a man love him, but it could stop that person “from lynching me.” The personal and the social/structural are connected. Working only with one is not enough. Both are practical, spiritual endeavors, and both are to be honored and worked at simultaneously.
5. Be informed.
While it is important for people everywhere to be informed, this section addresses U.S. citizens in particular.
A London-based British Broadcasting Company (BBC) news-show host once asked their Washington correspondent why so many people in the U.S. support policies that much of the rest of the world finds disturbing and misguided. The reporter replied, “Because the U.S. is dangerously isolated.”100
Isolated? In an age of unprecedented access to news and information from around the globe? But the reality is that many mainstream U.S. news sources are more entertainment and opinion than substance. International news is given sparse coverage in comparison to other Western democracies. Compare, for example, the news on CNN International with that of CNN U.S. International stories and viewpoints that do not fit the popularly-held image of the U.S. as good and benevolent are labeled “leftist” and “liberal” or are not reported. Criticism of our country from overseas is dismissed as “jealousy.” No wonder that when 9-11 happened, a dominant and genuine question was, “Why do they hate us?”
Not infrequently, international participants at STAR voice the sentiment that they should be allowed to vote in U.S. elections. Why? Because their country’s politics, their trauma, and their futures are so intertwined with and impacted by U.S. foreign policy. Yet many U.S. citizens would be horrified to know of the policies carried out in our name around the world, no matter which party is in the White House.
Information is power. A successful democracy depends on an informed populace. The BBC reporter is right. Hard as it is to hear, many of us in the United States are isolated—by our own free choice.
6. Remember that we are not alone.
Breaking destructive cycles through acting well in spite of threat is spiritual work of the deepest sort. This is not a solitary journey; we need to be connected to communities of like-minded people as we act, listen, and learn in new ways. Together we find sustenance for the long journey from the Source of Life, who has promised that light overcomes darkness, that we do not walk alone, and that a peace beyond our fears sustains us as we commit to living in healing, life-affirming ways.
How then will we live, beginning today?