New Year Thoughts About Israel

I ran across this article today and was reminded of the slow boil that is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:

Israel changes law to make it harder to cede Jerusalem control

Between this and the Trump Administration's decision to recognize a united Jerusalem as the capitol of Israel, things have been moving fast - and not in a good way.

These things together represent unilateral moves by Israel to resolve aspects of the conflict in Israel's favor. They represent a turning away from negotiation as a means to find mutually-agreed upon solutions, preferring unilateral solutions over the other side's objections instead.

Amazingly enough, this is exactly what I wrote my dissertation about twenty years ago. Then as now, I was interested in conflict dynamics: if side A does X, what choices does side B have, and what kinds of outcomes become more or less likely? One of the core organizing principles, which I still believe in today: in conflict, all actions are working either towards a Unilateral solution (imposing your will on the other side) or a Multilateral solution (finding an agreement that both sides accept). Sometimes parties try to do both, but that usually doesn't work well.

The thing about Unilateral strategies is that they are both one-sided (by definition) and path-determinative. If side A chooses to pursue the Unilateral route, side B loses the option of pursuing Multilateral options instead. Side B's options are reduced - either surrender entirely, or go Unilateral themselves.

Regarding Jerusalem and the wider Arab-Israeli conflict, Palestinians now face exactly this choice. Do they become despondent and simply give up, allowing Israel to take over all of the 1948 Mandate territory and becoming second-class citizens in someone else's country? Or do they fight back, pushing what has been a fairly quiescent conflict back into violence?

I don't know the answer here - I can't make a prediction, because I don't have data about how Palestinians see the situation and what their calculations are. But these are the only two outcomes possible - either surrender into de facto apartheid, or go back to violence. Neither is good from the Palestinian perspective, but they don't control the choices they're given.

I'm mindful too that there may be factions in Israel (including, possibly, the ruling Likud party) which see both of these as good outcomes. They will gladly take the territory if Palestinians are willing to surrender it, and they will gladly seize the opportunity to crush Palestinian resistance if provoked.

For those wishing for peace on earth in 2018, this doesn't look like a good start. Either way, Palestinians suffer. Israelis may suffer as well - how much depends on choices yet to be made. Not a great start to the year.

Denouncing Nazis is easy. Living together is hard.

Facebook reminded me that a year ago I posted a piece titled There Are No Enemies.

It's not the most popular piece I've ever published, not by a long shot. It did pretty well - a little over 200 hits - but nothing special.

Re-reading it today, I think it may be one of the most important and difficult things I've ever written. And it helped me codify something that's been bugging me ever since the violence in Charleston and the political fallout that ensued.

In the aftermath of the Charleston violence, nearly everybody took to the airwaves and social media to condemn the assortment of white supremacists, Nazis, and KKK types who instigated the violence. This was easy to do: their brandishing of hateful symbols, their chants against Jews, blacks, and others outside their tribe, their obvious anger and aggression - all these put them squarely against core American values.

President Trump, of course, took tremendous political flak for his response. He tried to lay blame for the violence on "many sides" and seemed to go out of his way to serve as an apologist for the white supremacy movement. They themselves clearly saw it that way, judging by their reactions, especially after his Tuesday press conference. For this, Trump was roundly criticized by pretty much everyone across the political spectrum. The few people in his own White House who didn't distance themselves from this view now no longer work there.

That's all a pretty pat and easy story: Nazis and white supremacists are bad, we're the good guys, etc. Trump aside, almost everyone else will jump on this bandwagon.

But then I come back to my piece from last year: there are no enemies. And I also recall a lesson learned from decades of studying conflicts: conflict only ends when the different sides learn to live with each other.

Yes, white supremacy is morally wrong, and yes, Nazism is a horrible set of ideas. But because we say these things, however forcefully we may say them and however many of us "stand up" to do so, we are stuck with two unavoidable realities:

1) Some people will continue to hold to these ideas, despite (or even because of) our efforts to shout them down.

2) Those people are still our fellow Americans. And, if you hold to the Gospel of Christ, they are still Children of God.

We sort of know these things, deep down, though we don't know what to do with them. These are the reason why so many supporters of Hillary Clinton cringed when she made her famous "basket of deplorables" gaffe. She said in public what we wanted emotionally to say but know is morally wrong: that there are groups of people who are bad people.

In the language of revivalist Christianity, we failed to separate the sin from the sinner.

The problem with that logic, of course, is the conclusion to which it leads. If there are people who are irreducibly bad, then they must be either eliminated from society, driven out, or contained. It is, in fact, exactly the same logic that white supremacists operate under. They're just more open about it.

Lots of political movements - from the Nazis to the Khmer Rouge to the Interahamwe to the founders of Republika Srpska - have taken this idea that those people need to be gotten rid of and tried to put it into action. Every single of one of them failed. Genocide, ethnic cleansing, "purifying" the nation - it never works. It creates a lot of pain and a lot of dead bodies, but in the end you still end up living in a diverse society, and you tend to end up poor and miserable to boot.

That's an easy argument to make when confronting Nazis. But we need to think beyond confrontation, because confrontation itself isn't going to resolve anything.

We thought we had gotten rid of Creationism, until we discovered in the 1990s that it never went away. Most of us read Inherit the Wind in high school and saw it as an historical tale about the last gasp of Young Earth Creationism. Creationists read it and saw it as inspiration. We didn't notice until they started to take over school boards again.

White supremacy isn't going to go away simply because we shout at it, and it isn't going to go away because it's wrong. People are quite capable of holding morally abhorrent beliefs for generations, as our own history with black slavery shows. That some of those beliefs are still in circulation should surprise no one.

So while I applaud people who stand up against Nazis, who show up in Boston to demonstrate that there are far more of us who believe in diversity than there are in them who don't, that's just a band-aid. If the rest of us are vociferous enough, or if we elect a President less inclined to say supportive things about white supremacy the next time around, they may go back into the shadows. But they'll still be there, living among us as fellow citizens.

If we really want to move beyond endless demonstrations - if we really want to seek peace - demonstrations and taking down statues won't get us there. At some point, we're going to have to talk to the people we think of as our enemies. That can't happen in large groups, it certainly can't happen while people are carrying torches and clubs and shields, and it probably can't happen in public with TV cameras rolling. But in the end, it's the only way.

Years ago in graduate school, I wanted to start an article with what I thought was a clever observation: "everyone wants peace, they just want it on their own terms." My advisor stopped me and argued that I should get rid of that sentence. Not everyone wants peace, he pointed out. And he was right.

It's easy to look at those who march with Nazi flags and say, they don't want peace. But do we? We are comfortable in our knowledge that we're right and they're wrong and there are more of us anyway - just as they are comfortable in their understanding that they are right and we are wrong, even though there are fewer of them. Moral righteousness is addictive.

None of this means that we have to "meet them halfway" or adjust our beliefs in a racist direction. That's a red herring. But it does mean that we have to take the time to listen to our fellow human beings, and hope that they in turn will listen to us.

I don't know how to go about that, because all sides prefer the conflict we have to an uncertain peace in the future. But I know that, for myself, we are missing a piece of the moral puzzle: the piece that recognizes the common humanity of our "enemies" and seeks the seemingly impossible task of reconciliation. We have to live with "those people", like it or not. We might as well try to live together well.

Suggestion for Bystanders: Equip Yourself

Since the election of Donald Trump a week and a half ago, our national conversation has been abuzz with different reactions. Attention is turning to the obvious question: what next? What impact will this election result have, and is it already having, on our country? And what can I do to steer things in a better direction?

There are lots of things to look at here, but the one that has caught my attention is the rise in incidents of harassment, intimidation, and violence against a range of minorities and vulnerable groups both during and after the election. That rise has been extensively documented, including here and here. Near and dear to my heart, far too many of these are taking place on university campuses.

Earlier this week I wrote an Open Letter to supporters of President-Elect Donald Trump, inviting them to help make America great again by reducing incidents of harassment, intimidation, and assault against racial, ethnic, and other minorities. As of this writing, that piece has been read over 2600 times. I hope that it has an impact in empowering people on all sides of the political spectrum - but especially Republicans and conservatives - to stand up to the ugliness noted above.

At the end of that letter I wrote this:

In the end, there are only two futures for our country. We either all succeed together in building a society free of fear, a society that can prosper and grow and realize its fullest potential. Or we turn on each other in fear and hatred and loathing and tear each other apart. I know which future I want to build. I hope you will join me.

I believe this in the depths of my heart: of all of the sins humanity is capable of, the sin of hatred and violence is the one most likely to destroy us all. It is also the one that should be most easily fixed, because hatred is a choice that can be made or unmade largely at will. There is no "tragedy of the commons" here, where otherwise-reasonable individuals generate bad outcomes. Unprovoked violence (verbal or physical) is simply bad.

As Clinton supporters and others on the political Left have struggled with how to respond to the election, there have been many suggestions and pieces of advice. From wearing safety pins to adopting anti-harassment bystander tactics, these ideas have been extensively circulated and discussed. I've no doubt that people will try many of these, that some will work, and that the discussion will go on.

A friend of mine recently wrote a blog post collecting general principles which such "resistance" efforts can be shaped by. In that collection she included two important reminders:

• We must face the world as it actually is.
• No one is going to save us. It is up to us.

Along these lines, I would like to offer a suggestion to many of my friends and fellow-travelers who, like me, are alarmed by the rise in harassment, intimidation, and violence directed against vulnerable individuals. I make this suggestion because, of all of the ideas I've seen batted around so far, I'm pretty sure no one else has made this one and no one else will.

Put simply, my suggestion is this: If you want to be an active bystander protecting victims of harassment, or if you are concerned about becoming a victim yourself, learn to defend yourself. Equip yourself, in other words, to fight.

This is rare advice, especially in liberal circles. Most folks in the tribe on the left eschew violence in all of its forms. There are good moral reasons for doing so, and I am not one to argue that violence solves problems. I have made my own position clear: I am a self-defense pacifist. I believe in the use of force only when one is under attack, and only with just enough force to successfully escape the attack.

But the need to train is not primarily about fighting. It's about dealing with fear. If you are in a situation in which you need to defend yourself or someone else, you are much less likely to have to actually fight if you are prepared to.

There's been a lot of discussion online about bystander tactics and how sympathetic people can help stand up to harassment and bullying. A lot of this is driven by the fact that most of the time, bystanders remain bystanders. People don't intervene. And the reason for that is fear.

People don't intervene in harassment situations, or especially during a physical attack, because they are worried about becoming a victim themselves. They're worried that the aggressor will turn on them. When someone is screaming angrily at someone else, it's not too much of a stretch to imagine that the screaming could turn to violence, and that the screamer might direct his anger and hatred at anyone who gets in the way.

Fear paralyzes. For bystanders, it prevents them from getting involved. For victims, it keeps them from effectively standing up for themselves or repelling the attack - even when the attack is only verbal. In situations of harassment and intimidation driven by hatred, the fear is physical and visceral. The big guy yelling epithets looks scary, in part because the back of our brain is screaming he could hurt me.

The only effective counter to fear is confidence, built on learned and practiced ability. The first time we learn to drive a car, it's really frightening - a mistake could get us seriously hurt, and we've never done it before. Once you've been driving for a while, it's no big deal. The fear goes away. The situation didn't change - you did, through experience and practice.

Dealing with physical threats is no different. If you have no training and no experience, it's scary as heck. With training and practice, it becomes less so. And you will make better decisions.

Bullies and harassers are used to frightened people - they know how to push them around and get what they want, which is generally to assert dominance. They aren't nearly so good at dealing with people who aren't frightened, who are assertive. Many of them will give up, because they don't know how to handle resistance. Some will try to escalate the situation, hoping to reestablish their dominance. If you're prepared to deal with that escalation, you can usually prevail there as well.

None of this is to say that you have to actually physically attack an abuser. Most harassment is verbal, with only the threat of violence behind it. You may not engage the harasser at all - see the video linked above for strategies that are victim-centric rather than aggressor-centric. You will be more confident and capable in those strategies if you know you can handle a physical escalation by the attacker.

I've written lots previously on this blog about self-defense, its relationship to fear, and ways and means of developing yourself. If I've kept your attention this long, I encourage you to go read those posts. Read my friend Dan Djurdjevic's stuff at The Way of Least Resistance. Find training opportunities near you - workshops, classes, clubs. Treat it like a skill to be developed over time, rather than an inoculation you can check off your list once. Practice, practice, practice.

If we are going to be effective in standing up to the bullies among us who are now emboldened by this past week's events, we have to be prepared. We need a full set of tools in our toolkit, and we need to be confident in our ability to use them. Do you want to be an effective bystander, to stand up for vulnerable people when they come under attack? Then be prepared to fight. Chances are you won't have to - but you'll be glad you're ready.

Karate and Life: 20 Precepts

Much of what I write - perhaps nearly all of what I write - touches on issues of power, conflict, and peace. Across areas of human endeavor I am endlessly fascinated with how power is created and exercised, how conflict is kindled and resolved, and what paths we should take in seeking to create peace. These ideas weave in and out of my writing, both here on the blog and elsewhere.

Regular readers know that a part of my personal exploration into these issues revolves around learning and practicing traditional Asian martial arts. In this I am both a student and a teacher; I love sharing what I know with others, and I have so much more to learn myself.

Those who spend time in the traditional martial arts world soon encounter one of its central tenets: that karate, or judo, or kung fu, are not merely for fighting in a ring or practicing in a gym. The benefits of the martial arts extend throughout the student's life, and indeed should be actively sought and considered far beyond the simple practice of physical techniques. This is probably why one of my most-read blog posts of all time is titled, The Benefits of Studying the Martial Arts.

Most of what I write isn't new - far deeper thinkers have been developing these ideas for centuries. What I try to do is simply bring them to audiences that might otherwise not be familiar with the practice of Do - "way", in Japanese. Karate-do, Judo, Aiki-do - all have this common root, a call to a broader understanding and self-improvement in service to others.

One of the best synopses of this is Gichin Funakoshi's list of 20 Precepts. Funakoshi, an Okinawan master who brought karate to Japan in the early part of the 20th century, is often credited as "the father of modern karate". He wrote his Precepts as a way to pass his notion of Do along to his students, to remind them that they were engaged in a calling far higher than learning how to defend themselves in a fight.

Starting with this entry I am planning to write a series of blog posts, one for each of the 20 Precepts, with musings and thoughts on how these apply to the world around us outside the dojo (literally, "Place of the Way"). I hope these will be of interest to practitioners and non-practioners alike.

The first Precept is this:

Karate-do begins and ends with respect.

In traditional martial arts, this is summed up in the bow, or rei. Students and instructors alike "bow in" and "bow out" when they enter and leave the training space, and bow to each other at the beginning and end of each exercise. Bowing is a physical means by which we remind ourselves of the culture of respect.

Some people are uncomfortable in traditional dojos because of this formality. Where else in our lives do we have such physical, visceral symbols of respect? In some traditional churches (though fewer all the time), people bow or reverence the altar or the crucifix, but in my experience this practice isn't universal even in churches that do practice it.

The underlying principle, however, is sound - and sorely needed. When we begin and end interactions with a sign of mutual respect, it is much more difficult in between to mistreat each other. If our first thought when starting a new conversation or walking into a meeting is, "I respect the people here as fellow colleagues", our whole demeanor changes. And if things go sideways in that meeting, ending with a similar posture of respect reminds us that we're on the same team, that we're there to solve problems together, that we share much in common.

In our culture today, in 21st century America, we have almost no such signs of respect. And where we do have them, we reserve them almost exclusively for our friends, our family, for those who are inside our boundaries of comfort. "If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you?"

The Christian call to love one another as God loves us can be hard, especially today. That verse is followed by an admonition: "But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return". Even if we cannot imagine ourselves going so far, can we at least take the first step of respecting our enemies?

Funakoshi put this Precept first, I suspect, because he understood that without mutual respect (even mutual love), people will use their power to hurt each other. Karate is a form of power, but we exercise power every day in our conversations and interactions with others. When we start and end with a posture of respect, in between we will work to make sure that we don't use our power to harm, but to help. When I respect others, I want to help them. That is a Way worth following.

Is a Thug Just a Thug? Or Is a Thug a Child of God?

It's been an eventful few months in communities around the country as we try to come to grips with issues of race, poverty, violence, and policing. Tragic deaths of both civilians and police have become touchpoints for national conversations, which is (kind of) a good thing. Not all communities have problems between police and population, but too many do.

As is typical, the "public" conversation - by which I mean the conversation carried in major media outlets among "the chattering classes" - has been largely polarized along political lines. While there was some hope that the choking death of Eric Garner might rally some conservatives/Republicans to the cause of tamping down excessive use of force by police, the shooting death of two cops in NYC on the heels of a Democratic mayor's participation in anti-violence protests largely destroyed that prospect. For the most part, what I see is self-identified conservatives lining up to defend the police while self-identified liberals to varying degrees call for police reform and justice for recent civilian victims (Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, John Crawford).

Media coverage, of course, doesn't help our broader understanding. Cameras pan tight on crowds of protesters, which makes them look large by removing any context around them. We see lots of politicians speaking at podiums, which is what politicians do when given the opportunity to get in front of cameras. We see plenty of insta-punditry to criticize politicians on the other side for saying the wrong thing, for saying anything, or for saying nothing at all. All of this, it seems to me, is 100% heat and 0% light.

In the last couple of days I have run across two items, completely disconnected from each other, that I think represent important but ignored ideas. They help pull back the cameras so we can think about the broader questions important to all of us: what kind of society do we want, and how do we get there?

The first is a blog post I had been meaning to read for some time, titled "In Defense of Violence". The blogger writes a variety of thoughts about the use of force and self-defense, topics near and dear to my heart (as readers of this blog will know). But most importantly, she makes a central observation that lies at the root of many of the problems in our current national conversation (paraphrasing here from her article):

We teach ourselves and our children that violence is always bad. As such, we don't teach ourselves and our children about violence - when it is appropriate and in what forms, and when it isn't.

This is true both for police violence as well as for civilian violence. We're actually badly divided within ourselves as a culture - we both deplore and worship violence. In the case of police, we take government use of force as a "professional" matter rather than what is should be in a democratic society: a universal concern for all of us. Police shouldn't write their own rules of engagement; they should hold to rules written by society at large. Certainly they should have input into those rules, and I've seen police with some extremely thoughtful ideas on the subject. But police forces themselves answer to us - they can't be the final word.

Likewise, we have a bizarre relationship with guns and violence in the hands of civilians. John Crawford is dead because he picked up a pellet gun from a Walmart store and carried it casually, which someone apparently found threatening enough to summon police and which the police apparently found threatening enough to shoot him for. Tamir Rice is dead because he was carrying a pellet pistol. In other parts of the country, gun owners take great pride in openly carrying weapons (real weapons!) in public places and stores, and they don't get shot. Yes, race matters here. So does class, and so does local culture. In a country as large and diverse as ours, we have to expect local differences. But the range of those differences shouldn't include innocent people being gunned down, by police or anyone else.

So we need to have a serious conversation about violence and its uses by civilians. I've blogged before about guns and self-defense (posts too many to mention; here and here are a couple to start with). But that conversation is stuck in a quagmire of memes and bumper-sticker slogans and a lot of shouting by the rabid few. If the "In Defense of Violence" post has a point, it is that we need to take that conversation back from the self-interested ideologues and talk seriously to each other as people - not as "liberals" or "conservatives" or anything else.

The second item that sparked my thinking was from one of the many ideological talking heads "contributing" to the ongoing "debate" about police violence and the protests in NYC, Ferguson, and elsewhere. In this case, an avowedly conservative show (The O'Reilly Factor) trotted out an avowedly conservative commentator (Ben Carson, who happens to be black) to defend the police against attacks (both physical and verbal). You can see a synopsis and a link to the interview here. But what really caught my eye was this particular snippet by Carson, which the Fox News site picked up in the summary and the headline:

"The community has to recognize that a thug is a thug. When people do bad things, there are consequences," Carson said.

This struck me because of something I've been wrestling with lately: a framework in which, rather than "picking a side" and dehumanizing the people on the other side, we can engage in conversations with people we disagree with, about serious and even tragic subjects, while continuing to recognize the humanity of each other. The phrase that keeps coming to mind: each of us is a Child of God.

By this I don't mean something primarily theological, or even theologically coherent. What I am looking for is a mental frame of reference in which I can continue to recognize the worth and humanity of every person, whether I agree or disagree with their thoughts or actions.

Carson's glib bumper-sticker statement, of course, runs in completely the opposite direction. He wants to put white hats and black hats on everybody so that he can defend the virtuous and punish the wicked. I guess it must be comforting to play God like that. But I think it's the wrong approach.

To be clear: there are people in the world who, despite their humanity and inherent value, will try to hurt others unjustly. Some of these people are civilians, and if they're lower class we call them "thugs". Some of them are wealthy and wear suits and they usually get treated pretty well, even when the damage they cause is far more widespread than any thug could dream of. And some of them carry badges and wear uniforms and are called police officers. None of this should be surprising - if you change clothes and circumstance, some people will still do bad things to other people.

But if we actually want to things to get better - if we want to work towards a society where fewer police are killed in the line of duty, and where fewer civilians are shot by police, and where fewer people are terrorized and assaulted by either strangers or those close to them - we need to stop pretending that we can draw neat boxes around people and label some of those boxes "good people" and others "bad people". We need to treat violence and the use of force seriously - not as some Hollywood fantasy exercise and not as something that can be contained to only a few. We need to acknowledge everybody's legitimate need to live in peace, and think about what we do when that is violated - by anybody. And above all, we need to listen to the collected wisdom of many centuries: treat others, and view others, as we ourselves would be treated and viewed.

Resolving Conflict is Simple - It's Just Not Easy

There's a lot of conflict in the air as we enter the new year. Various factions in Washington are in conflict over the Federal budget. Various factions in society are in conflict over gun restrictions. And some hard-core tribalists want to continue the conflict that played out during the election.

I have spent my entire adult life studying conflict - how to analyze it, how to understand it, how it gets resolved. Conflict resolution, as hard as it is to achieve, is really very simple. Not easy, but simple. Because there are (on the whole) only two ways that conflicts get resolved:

1) One party beats the other into submission and takes what it wants - the "winner take all" ending.

2) Both parties come to an agreement that ends the conflict - the voluntary and mutual ending.

The essence of civilized politics - the grand discussion of political philosophy for the past 400 years - is about how we get rid of the first outcome and enable the second, and how when outcome #1 is necessary the decision is made objectively on the basis of rules we all agree on ahead of time, rather than on who has the most power.

The systems we have built to accomplish these ends aren't perfect, and still need a lot of work. But on the whole, we've come a long way - Steven Pinker's observations about the decline in violence are only one indicator of our progress. And the march of that progress is, to a significant degree, a measure of our advancement as a civilization. The less we take from each other by force, the less we allow the strong to lord over the weak, the less we end our arguments in fistfights (or gunfights) rather than agreements, the better we are as a people. The recent massive protests in India, to take just one example, are a reflection of a shared human desire to beat back the barbarity that took that young woman's life and impose a more civilized society based on mutual consent.

To a substantial degree, this is an unremarkable observation - few of us want to live in a broadly winner-take-all, dog-eat-dog society. The problem comes, of course, in the particulars. When it comes down to particular issues, some forget the bedrock of mutual civilization in their desire to Win and Be Right.

What do I mean? Here are a couple of examples:

• In his address a week following the Newtown shooting, NRA Vice President Wayne LaPierre continued his organization's unwavering opposition to any legislation placing any sorts of restrictions on firearms. In a speech labeled by commentators across the spectrum as "tone deaf", Mr. LaPierre blamed everybody in reach and drew a simplistic "good guys/bad guys" view of the world. This is not the first time that the NRA has signaled its aversion to dialogue. Many of its most hard-core supporters cheered his stance, continuing a deadlocked "discussion" that has frustrated a great many Americans who would like to find a way forward.

• The following Facebook meme showed up on my FB feed today (posted originally by a FB group, the Conservative Club, with over 8500 followers - not enormous, but not a trivial number either):

The core message here is one of tribalistic bravado - "we're not gonna take it anymore!" Of course, what exactly these folks propose to do (aside from call their opponents childish names) is left to the imagination. But the gut feeling here is clear - we will win and they (morally bankrupt, Godless, soul-less evil Communists) will lose.

We spent much of 2012 listening to rhetoric from folks like Mr. LaPierre and the Conservative Club. In the context of an election, it was easy to dismiss this as pandering for votes - even as some of us worried about the corrosive effect on society as a whole. Now at the start of the new year, nearly two months after the election, there seems to be a lot of this kind of barbarity still around.

I use the term "barbarity" here not for hyperbole, but for its definition. If your approach to politics (or any conflict) rests on an unwillingness to dialogue, discuss, consider, compromise, or hunt for mutual solutions, you stand against the basis on which civilization is built. Refusing to look seriously for a mutual agreement while rejecting the rules we have set up for resolving disputes (as the Conservative Club's ill-considered meme does) is simply to say, "I'm right, you're wrong, and I'm going to beat you senseless until I win." Or, to give a real-world example of this kind of "dispute resolution" in action:

Tenants killed in snow-shoveling row

This landlord in Maine apparently decided that the only way to resolve his dispute with his tenants was to kill them. I doubt we'll hear Mr. LaPierre, or any NRA supporters, discussing this case.

So we as transition from one year of rabid partisanship to another, let's try to remember that the most basic disagreement in our society isn't between Democrats and Republicans, or between Right and Left. It's between those who think that civilization is based on reason, evidence, the search for mutual agreement, and the rule of law; and those whose adherence to dogma (Right, Left, or otherwise) will drive them to reject anything - reason, evidence, compromise, or law - that stands in the way of their total victory.

Tim O'Brien, recipient of the 2012 Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award, gave a speech recently in Dayton. In that address, he talked of his own experience in Vietnam, and the "two heads" (Left and Right) which have argued in his own mind ever since about that war. He expressed great concern about those who make the "one headed" mistake - thinking that they are right, that they know everything there is to know, and that there is nothing left to do but beat their opponents into submission. To the extent that this thinking gains the upper hand in our society, we are in real trouble. Let's hope that 2013 sees an increase in reasonableness and a retreat from dogma.

Our Own Ideas About Guns Are Killing Us

A connection of mine posted the following to Facebook today:

I'm sure the people that write these fables (and yes, I don't think this is actually true) think they're being clever. But this is an example of what I wrote about the other day when I argued that Guns Don't Kill People, Ideas Kill People.

I've no doubt that a number of people will read this little vignette and think, "Yeah, right on! That'll show 'em!" They'll feel a warm, emotional glow of self-satisfaction as they bask in reflected self-righteousness. But in point of fact, this is a parable of barbarity. A society that actually worked this way would only be described as barbaric.

I will say, as a side note, that the person who posted this story is a church-going Christian who is proud of his/her faith. I apparently missed the part of the Gospel where Jesus commanded us to shoot thieves in the back.

The barbarity of this response - you stole my purse, therefore you deserve to die at my hand - can be clearly seen both in our own laws and in how we view other societies. In other parts of the world, people are shot or stoned for adultery, or their hands are cut off for stealing, and we call them uncivilized. In our own set of laws, a convicted thief is sentenced to jail, not to death - even the most ardent death-penalty advocates have never suggested that it be extended to purse-snatching.

"Hey," some will argue. "It's just a joke. Lighten up!" But it's not just that I fail to see the humor in jokes about killing purse-snatchers. The ideas contained in humor are serious, and they effect our behavior. Not so long ago, jokes about lynching blacks were widespread in the American South - and so were actual lynchings. Do we find it acceptable to joke about rape? About domestic violence? So why is this funny?

Most of the people who kill with guns feel quite justified in doing so. Yes, some of them are mentally ill - but even they have to get their ideas from somewhere. And many are not - there are thousands of gun murders per year in the US, and in nearly all cases the shooter felt perfectly justified despite being apparently sane. Those feelings of justification don't come out of nowhere - they are a part of our society, woven into our conversations and our collective consciousness, just like the "joke" above making its way around the internet.

If you want to live in a society where you can use deadly force to "defend" yourself any time you like, may I suggest relocating to Afghanistan or Somalia. If you want to live in a society of laws and civilization and a chance at peace, help stamp out these ideas. In the end, getting rid of our gut-level "justifications" for shooting is the only way to move towards genuine peace.

Everyone's a Law Abiding Citizen ... Until They're Not

One of the popular phrases in the ongoing discussion about guns and gun restrictions is "law abiding citizens", as in this quote from Ohio Governor John Kasich:

"Whatever we do, we don't want to erode the Second Amendment rights of law abiding citizens."

He said this in the context of signing a bill slightly tweaking Ohio's concealed-carry laws. The changes in the bill are fairly minor, and don't have a lot of impact on the broader national debate. But the phrase is indicative.

Update: Wayne LaPierre, head of the NRA, made the same point at a news conference today by uttering the following:

"The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun," said Wayne LaPierre, chief executive of the National Rifle Association

The image of the "law abiding citizen" is a popular one in gun-rights rhetoric. Its popularity stems in part from its emotional, mom-and-pop, America-and-apple-pie feel. Who would be against the notion of law abiding citizens exercising their rights? Isn't that what freedom is all about?

Underlying the idea of the "law abiding citizen" is a fundamentally Manichaean view of the world. The term assumes that there are two categories of people in society: "law abiding citizens" and "bad guys". The law abiding citizens are good and trustworthy and would never misuse their guns or do other bad things. The bad guys, by definition, are the ones that cause the problems. The proper response, therefore, is for law abiding citizens to make sure that they have more power than the bad guys, so that the latter can be kept in check and defeated where necessary.

This worldview permeates our psyche. It is the basic plot line of the vast majority of American movies and TV shows, and many of the most popular books. We bathe ourselves in this mythology on a daily basis, to the point that it is so deeply seated in our subconscious that it doesn't even occur to us to examine it. Which is why the phrase "law abiding citizen" has such staying power.

The problem, of course, is that as mythologies go this one is a really terrible reflection of reality. For a supposedly Christian (according to some) society, we have apparently forgotten the wisdom of Paul:

I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. So then it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. (Romans 7:15-19)

Eastern philosophy speaks in similar fashion about Yin and Yang, the darkness and light that dwell within each person. The Prophet Mohammed spoke of the greatest Jihad being the struggle within. That people are not "all good" or "all bad" is hardly news - we've understood this for thousands of years.

Even if we ignore the wisdom of collected human history, circumstances should show us the same truth. By all accounts so far, Adam Lanza was a "law abiding citizen" right up until last Friday. So was James Holmes prior to his shooting spree in Aurora. The same is true of two other recent unprovoked shootings (here and here), and of George Zimmerman, and of any number of other high-profile shooters. At the University of Toledo, a dispute between two friends who were rooming together apparently escalated into a knife fight that left one severely wounded and one dead.

In every one of these cases, people were "law abiding citizens" right up until the moment when they weren't. In some cases, the perpetrators were convinced that they were still "law abiding citizens" even as they committed acts that are against the law, and that society finds reprehensible.

If we're going to have a serious conversation about violence, the use of force, and the appropriate laws and means of preventing violent deaths, we have to get rid of our "law abiding citizen" mythology and deal with a far more complex reality. In a different context and long ago, Walt Kelly got it right: We have met the enemy, and he is us. If we acknowledge that, maybe we can move beyond childish simplicity to the difficult choices of a difficult world in which, often, we are our own worst enemies.

Guns and the Temptations of Power

It is fitting that the first installment of Peter Jackson's "Hobbit" series of movies has just come out. The Hobbit, for those who haven't enjoyed Tolkien's writing, is the precursor novel to the Lord of the Rings series. The thing that binds the books together is a magic ring, found by accident by Bilbo Baggins in the midst of an altogether different adventure.

Those who have read and understood Tolkien know that the ring is the fulcrum of the entire story. It is a stand-in for Power - the One Ring to rule all things, to command, to govern, to dominate. It is a concrete symbol of our quest for tools that will allow us to control others.

In the story as it unfolds, Tolkien - a keen philosopher as well as writer who regularly talked with some of the intellectual giants of the 20th century - made his views on the nature of power clear. The ring is all-consuming, and ultimately turns whoever tries to wield it to evil. It turns an ordinary hobbit named Smeagol into a nasty, brutish, almost inhuman monster called Gollum. It turns friend against friend, and tempts the already-powerful of the day to tyranny and war. Tolkien's entire Middle Earth saga - including the even earlier mythology in The Silmarillion - is a series of parables with one central theme: power corrupts.

We would be wise to heed Tolkien's message as we carry on our national conversation about guns. Guns are, for many individuals, the Rings of Power of our day. They offer the ability to dominate others. Much of the pro-gun mythology about guns as tools of self-defense ignores this reality, and assumes - as did Boromir and Saruman in Tolkien's stories - that power wielded by the virtuous ("law-abiding citizens") has no effect on their virtue. To believe this is to ignore thousands of years of accumulated wisdom. Tolkien's view is hardly original, and draws on a very long tradition. If we really believe that having guns doesn't change us, we are ignorant fools lost in our own hubris.

"Sure," our NRA friends might say. "Them's a lot of fancy intellectual words. But I don't believe it if I can't see it with my own eyes. Having a gun doesn't make me a bad person." Leaving aside the red herrings in that argument, let's consider these cases as examples:

- In a recent case in Florida, a middle-aged man shot an unarmed black teenager in an argument about loud rap music. The man started the argument himself (by insisting that the teens turn their music down in a public space), and then escalated the argument once they (predictably) objected by talking smack. Did he feel empowered to start the conflict, and to continue to escalate it, because he was carrying a gun? Put it this way - how many 45 year old guys would pick that fight with a carload of black teens if they weren't packing heat?

- In a similar incident, one man shot a stranger in a Little Caesar's pizza after an argument. The source of the argument? The victim began complaining about how late his pizza was. The shooter chose to confront him about it, and the argument escalated. When the victim shoved the shooter, the shooter pulled his gun and fired. The shooter later claimed that he was acting in "self defense" - apparently under the theory that deadly force is an appropriate response to being pushed by an unarmed man. Again, did the shooter feel more confident starting the argument and "standing his ground" because he knew he had a gun?

People every day are confronted with opportunities to start, escalate, or diffuse conflicts. In our muddled thinking, guns represent a "trump card" in any confrontation - hence the popularity of the saying, "never bring a knife to a gun fight." We believe that if we're carrying a gun, we're invincible - that if things get "out of hand", we can control the situation and win the argument because we have the power. To believe that having that power won't change people's behavior is lunacy.

Does this mean that everyone who has a gun will go around starting fights and shooting people? Obviously not. But the outcomes are easy to see in the aggregate. Having a gun in the home, far from making you safer, increases your likelihood of dying from either homicide or suicide by three to five times (not to mention accidents, which are also a serious danger - as in this heartbreaking case in which a father killed his own 7 year old son outside a gun store). Not everyone who has a gun ready to hand will misuse it. But a great many do, with tragic consequences.

The characters in Tolkien's story have a simple (if difficult) way out: they can destroy the ring, removing its power from anyone's reach. We can't do the same with guns - the genie is, as they say, out of the bottle. But there are any number of sensible proposals for reducing the impact of guns by reducing access to the deadliest types.

Those who oppose these proposals do so in the name of broad ideals of Freedom and Rights. They talk of universal truths of Liberty and Tyranny. But those are not the only universal themes of human experience. If you want to argue that gun access should be free and unfettered, you have to confront the reality that guns are a dangerous form of power - and that every form of power corrupts. Restraining power and its corrupting influence has been one of the main challenges of human civilization. Pretending that we ourselves are virtuous and incorruptible will only lead to more death. If we want to live in peace, we have to find a way to reduce the temptations of power - which means we have to give up the fantasy of "guns for self defense only" and confront a reality far more difficult.

Why Religion in the Military Matters

Much has been written, both in the past and recently, about the spread of aggressive evangelical Christianity within the US military. As my colleague Steve Saideman has pointed out, the Air Force Academy has long been known as a less-than-tolerant environment. Now word comes that the problem may have spread to West Point, primary service academy for the US Army, as well.

Much of the criticism here is rightly directed at the Constitutional violation, and therefore the violation of soldiers' and officers' oaths to defend that Constitution, involved in aggressive proselytizing within the services. There is a bitter irony in a military working to defend freedoms for all Americans - including freedom of religion - yet squashing that same freedom within its own ranks.

But there is another, perhaps even more dangerous, consequence to the spread of a particular religious viewpoint within the armed forces. Different religious perspectives, even (perhaps especially) within Christianity, have very different views on the role of the military and the appropriateness of the use of force in general. Broadly speaking, the more a military becomes infused with a particular point of view, the more that point of view will come to shape its decisions, its directions, and the kinds of wars it will or won't fight.

This is particularly concerning when the viewpoint in question is the aggressive strain of evangelical Christianity that seems to have attracted so many adherents within the Air Force and Army. At issue here are more than views about salvation and the inherent infallibility of the Bible. This particular strain of Christianity has very definite views about war and the use of force. Some examples:

• The Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution in support of the Iraq War in 2003, specifically citing Romans 13 ("But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he [the governing authority] does not bear the sword in vain; he is the servant of God to execute his wrath on the wrongdoer.")

• Pentacostal Publishing House, the publication arm of United Pentacostal Church International, has published Will Islam Rule the World? Will the Antichrist Be a Muslim?, a book which asks questions more rhetorical than analytical.

• Sarah Palin, an Assembly of God church member, famously said in a speech that the Iraq war was "a task that is from God," arguing that the invasion of Iraq was part of "God's plan".

Many similar examples can be found pertaining to Israel, the Muslim world, and Iran, just as a number of years ago similar preachers railed against "godless Communism" and the evils of the Soviet Union. I've no doubt that these folks are quite sincere in their views, and that their theology and their politics are logically linked.

I'm not interested in arguing whether these folks are right or wrong, either in their theology or their politics. But it is clear - from examples like these as well as from the widespread use by these and similar churches of "spiritual warfare" imagery - that this is a religious view with a particularly accepting, even embracing, stance towards the use of force as a foreign policy instrument. These are churches, in other words, perfectly happy to go to war (the real, not the spiritual, kind) if the cause is deemed to be "righteous".

Why does this matter? Because a military whose leaders are strongly influenced by this point of view is going to lean more assertively towards preemptive, preventive, and even aggressive wars. They will be quicker to support political leadership that, say, wants to attack Iran over its nuclear weapons program. They will be more accepting than the broader American public (since these are minority religious views within the US) of getting the US involved militarily in various spots around the world, in support of an agenda (e.g. Israel) that may be more theological than practical.

But doesn't the US military answer to elected civilian control? If they take orders from the government (as Romans 13 says they must), why does it matter what their own views are? While this is true, and an important component of our governing system, the military brass can still wield substantial influence over decisions of war and peace. They can do so in particular by setting the parameters of the possible and the impossible. If the US military is in favor of attacking Iran, they will draw up plans, acquire weapons, and train forces in support of that mission. If they're not in favor of such an attack, they can render it very difficult by not having those plans, those weapons, or that training in place.

The upshot here is that a military dominated by a theology that supports the aggressive use of force is, all other things being equal, more likely to end up actually using that force. That's a political decision being made for theological reasons - on the basis of theology not shared by most Americans. And that, even more than the Constitutional violations of oath-sworn officers, is a serious danger that must be addressed in America's standing military.

The Tragedy of Too Much Force

I've written before about the role that guns play in our cultural understanding of self-defense (or, as one very eloquent Australian practitioner and lawyer describes it, "civilian defense"). Today comes a tragic story that only underscores the point:

Connecticut man shoots burglar dead, turns out to be own son

This story, brief and devoid of detail as it is, is a tough read for anybody who is a parent. As I've argued before: right, wrong, legal, or illegal, this man's life is now ruined. He will have to live with this day for the rest of his life, and that pain will never leave him - not to mention its impact on the rest of the family.

I know that gun-as-self-defense supporters will cite other cases in which guns were the right response. And certainly there are cases - precious few, but they do exist - in which someone armed with a gun (along with practice in its appropriate and skillful use) succeeded in defending him/herself, or a family, or someone else. There is always another story to tell.

But that does not take away from the fundamental point: guns are a terrible, awful means of self-defense. They are too deadly, too quickly and too easily. The damage they do is frequently irreversible - the consequences of their use drastically overwhelm the split second it takes to fire one.

We think of guns as a "good" method of self-defense because we want to find short cuts - the proverbial (and in this case ironic) "magic bullet". In so doing, we make two enormous mistakes:

1) We misunderstand the point of civilian self-defense. The point is to protect yourself by whatever means necessary. The point is not to disable/disarm/neutralize your attacker - because that often isn't necessary. Escaping from the situation is successful self defense. So is diffusing the conflict with a few words or a simple action. Only in Hollywood B-grade movies do we conflate "self defense" with "defeating your opponent". I don't have to beat an attacker to succeed; I just have to avoid getting beaten myself. Any encounter you walk away from uninjured is a victory.

2) We fall into the trap of thinking that if we prepare for the "worst-case scenario", that will cover all other scenarios. It doesn't. There is no "trump card" for serious civilian defense - every situation is different. For the vast majority of potentially threatening situations, guns are a very poor response. They pose enormous danger to people on both sides of the weapon.

People who know me, and who have followed my blog, know that my own preferred answer is sustained training in some kind of civilian defense system. My personal preference is for Asian martial arts, which have a wealth of benefits beyond self defense. Can my art, or any other, protect me from any situation? Of course not. There is no 100% foolproof defense against everything. But you can strongly improve your odds, if you are willing to not only learn new skills but commit to practicing them over time.

The ongoing danger of continuing to think of guns as a self defense shortcut is not only that more people will be tragically (and avoidably) killed. It is that we will drive ourselves deeper into our collective error, replacing reasonable self defense with a hair-trigger "I must beat the other guy" attitude. This is a terrible mistake, not only for its immediate consequences but for our ability to learn to live in genuine peace with one another.

On Politics, Elections, and Peace

This has been an interesting election season for me, media-wise. I don't watch TV, don't listen to much radio, and don't have a landline phone - so most of the ways that the Presidential campaigns have of trying to reach me, the ever-elusive "swing state voter", don't work. However much money they're spending is wasted on me, and probably some other people like me.

What I do see, however, is Facebook. This exposes me to two different streams of political communication: the paid ads on the side and the conversation & posting of people on my Friends list.

The paid ads go mostly unnoticed - I suspect that most FB users have long since learned to pay no attention to that part of the screen. Interesting bit of evidence - my employer decided to run a trial campaign of FB ads recently (they turn out to be surprisingly cheap). We got almost no response. Our other internet marketing tactic, buying ads on Google & Bing, was FAR more effective. I'm sorry for owners of FB stock, but their sidebar ads just aren't producing much.

So the official campaign ads I see on FB are pretty much wasted. Far more noticeable (also intrusive and frequently annoying) are the political posts from FB Friends. These appear right smack in the middle, intermixed with stuff I actually care about, so I have to pay some attention. Plus, to be fair, some of them are funny - not as many as their posters think, but some really are.

The problem is that, at least in my limited experience, the FB political conversation is much like the stream of campaign ads, but more so. Whereas about 60% of all campaign ads (on both sides) are negative, this seems to rise to 80% or 90% among the FB crowd. And most of it isn't merely negative - it's snarky, caustic, and hyperbolic to the point of absurdity.

I am continually warned that if Romney is elected, we will all become slaves to the mega-corporations, or that if Obama is elected we will turn into North Korea overnight. I am informed on a daily basis that all Democrats/Republicans are idiots/heartless bastards/evil/damned to hell. It would be funny if the feelings behind these sentiments weren't sincere much of the time.

Lots of smart people have made the sensible and obvious observations about this kind of "discourse". It convinces nobody, especially independents or people who might be persuadable. It only makes those propagating it look like petulant kindergartners. It contributes to the broader breakdown of social capital in our communities by pitting people against each other over differences that matter far less than we think they do. All of this is true, and it bears repeating.

But what I find bothers me most about this kind of political rage is not its irrationality. It is the effect that it has on me, and I suspect on a lot of other people. Rage-induced screaming and sarcastic attack don't just fail to convince; they disturb the peace. They make it evident that there are people who care more about getting things "their way" or winning for "their team" than they do for their relationships with real people that make up the communities we live in - either virtual or real.

Plenty of folks have offered simple advice: turn it off. De-Friend those FB people who are spewing toxic waste. Don't participate. I even had one FB friend, a strong partisan of one side, make a generic offer on FB - people can de-Friend her and she won't get offended. And, in truth, this does solve the immediate problem, insofar as I don't have to look at negative political sewage anymore.

But this "solution" misses the point. If a bunch of angry folks walk into a room and start shouting at each other, and then suggest to those who don't want to shout that they can always just leave, what does this accomplish? It drives away all the voices who want to talk about something else - about common community values, or a shared vision of the future, or peace as a virtue within the community. It cedes the room to the bullies. And that's what bothers me most.

In a certain sense, we have brought this on ourselves. Some among us have bought the lies about every election being "the most important election in my lifetime" and the myth that the choice of a single person makes the difference between prosperity and happiness on the one hand and 1000 years of darkness on the other. And the rest of us, for lack of a better alternative, let them. We don't know what to do when the screamers make things intolerable, so we withdraw into our quiet corners.

Screaming - like violence - is inherently escalatory. That's why every election cycle is a constantly-building crescendo of angry insanity, and why each new cycle is a little louder, nastier, and more rhetorically violent than the last. All of this leaves fewer and fewer spaces for people who care about other things.

As a sidebar comment, it is no small irony that many of the screamers do so in the name of God and of the Christian Church. I'm not a very good theologian, but I'm pretty sure that the priority at the heart of the Christian gospel is relationships. Love one another, we were told. There are apparently folks who think that The Great Commandment can be set aside for convenience, or when the other political party is winning.

To the general problem of screamers taking over the landscape, I don't have any solutions or even suggestions. Violence, rhetorical or physical, is a trump card - it forces everyone else to either play the same game or withdraw. The best hope, I suppose, is that those of us who don't want to play the game might find each other and carve out our own spaces where we can live in peace and try to build real communities.

Fear is a Choice

This being a political election year, we are living through a Season of Fear. From predictions of "1000 years of darkness" to dire warnings that "the future of our children" is being threatened to the latest bit of snark about The 1%/Socialism/Radical Islam/Martial Law/End of the Family/you name it, we are bombarded with screaming messages: Be afraid! Vote for the Right Candidate or you are Doomed!

This would be easier to simply laugh off if it were a once-every-four-years carnival that nobody took too seriously. But many of us do take it seriously. And unless we want to become media-free hermits every Leap Year, the rest of us get exposed to a pretty constant stream of fear-mongering. That stream effects us - our mood, our relationships with each other, our outlook on the world.

Our inability to remember the past doesn't help. In every campaign, there are people shrieking about how Our Civilization will come to an end if the Other Guy gets (re)elected. Amazingly enough, our civilization is still here - still less than perfect, and still with plenty of problems (which, we are assured, we will always have with us) - even though somebody's Other Guy won. Nobody moves to Canada. Yet four years later, we forget and start shrieking again.

The notion that the Tidal Wave of Fear comes only once every four years is also a fantasy. What used to be called "off-year" Congressional races are now run with the same kind of national manic fervor as Presidential races. And to fill in all the gaps, Madison Avenue and news outlets have made fear a 24/7 seller. Not all products are sold this way, of course - but the debasement of what used to be "journalism" to the cycle of constant crisis has been a sad sight for those of us who remember more sober newscasts in the distant past.

Our fixation on fear, whether in politics, the economy, society, or our own personal lives, comes in ways large and small. Political and media organizations alike have spent decades figuring out how to get fear under our skin, without our noticing. Chuck Norris is notable only for being honest, and clumsy. We tend to ignore the screamers, at least those screaming for the other side.

But when all we hear is screaming, we start to become deaf. In particular, we become deaf to the vast, broad, complex tapestry of the real world. In reality, our communities are filled with joy, hope, love, hate, anger, triumph, and despair. When all we hear is fear, we miss everything else - in particular, everything that gives life value and meaning. No one gets up in the morning excited to be afraid.

We sometimes see broad patterns that should concern us - real injustice, unnecessary conflict. But we are terrible about predicting the future. Fear blinds us not only to reality, but to our own ignorance. When we are afraid, we grasp at straws and become convinced that if we just do this one thing - vote for the right candidate, buy the right product, watch the right news program, sign the right petition - maybe things will work out OK. But then there's always the next thing to be afraid of.

The real damage of fear is to shift our focus to the wrong things. C.S. Lewis put it brilliantly in the Screwtape Letters:

He wants men to be concerned with what they do; our business is to keep them thinking about what will happen to them.

Lewis' devils are on very much the same page as the modern political campaign, the modern advertiser, and the modern media outlet. We spend our time thinking about things far beyond our control, instead of focusing on what is around us - what we can impact, which is where our real responsibility lies.

And herein lies our great and only defense. Fear is, indeed, a choice. We choose to listen to the screamers (and to echo their screams), we choose to think about things we can't control, we choose to ignore or neglect the things around us which we can and should be doing. Or we choose to ignore the fear-mongers and invented phantoms, to seek our own peace and to concentrate on what we can do. I choose - or try to choose - not to be afraid. What else is there to do?

Violence Speaks to Violence

Over the last few days, the headlines have been dominated by tiny groups of people who are primarily talking to each other in the language of violence. While the line between peaceful protest and violent outrage is sometimes fuzzy, it's clear that the airwaves are now being dominated by those shouting in anger. The murder of the American ambassador in Libya and the storming of embassies in Yemen and Egypt have captured everyone's attention - the world stage has been seized by the violent.

This is not only true of Muslims across the Islamic World (although most coverage is now going to protests and the potential for further violence). Here in the US, the voices that have been heard most loudly are those that lashed out in anger or disdain (as the Romney campaign did in its initial reaction to events) and, paradoxically, those that created the offending movie in the first place. The President, the Secretary of State, and a host of others have been forced to respond to this agenda of violence, anger, and hate - in the midst of the microscope that is a presidential campaign.

We are, by and large, listening to the violent and angry, and then turning to our leaders to ask "what are you going to do about it?" In so doing, we are missing a fundamental truth and we have lost our own voice in the maelstrom.

The truth we're missing is that, although violence and anger are loud, volume does not mean size. The number of people involved in making the film appears to be remarkably small - and based on news reports, some of those didn't understand what the film would ultimately be about. There appears to have been a very small handful of people whose vitriolic hatred of Islam pushed them to make and release this video. Theirs is a violence of word and voice, if not bullets and fire.

Too, the crowds that have mobbed and attacked US embassies overseas may in fact be relatively small groups of people. The group that attacked the US embassy in Sanaa, Yemen numbered a few hundred in a city of two million. Reports have emerged of others in Yemen, Libya and Egypt who are ashamed of their countrymen, including some moving photos of an anti-violence rally in Benghazi. These voices are not as loud as the voices of anger and violence - but they may well be more numerous.

There is, of course, a third group: those that sympathize with the violence (on either side), that harbor the anger and support those who lash out. We don't know how large this group is, either. The lines are not clearly drawn. But I have seen enough anti-Muslim snark, even among my own FB contacts, to know that there are those who to some degree or another approve of the hatred behind the video. These are the "you're either fer us or agin' us" types whose anger is cloaked in righteous indignation, which often serves as a justification for violence or coercion.

In this kind of environment, violence and anger rule the day. They seize everybody's attention and become the dominant means of dialogue. Violence speaks to violence, while those who want peace are caught in the middle, silenced by the din.

I think that if we're really interested in peace, we have a responsibility to say so. We must first examine ourselves, and make sure we're not falling into the "fer us or agin' us" trap. There are peace-seeking people on all sides - if we want to be among their number, let us first make sure that we're not inadvertently feeding the violence and anger in our own interactions.

Next, we should find a way to speak on behalf of peace. The media probably won't listen - anger and violence sell papers and ads far better - but we should do it anyway. In particular, we should speak on behalf of peace to those around us - to our friends, our neighbors, our co-workers and fellow church-goers, our FB friends, our twitter followers - wherever we have a voice that someone listens to.

Speaking for peace also means listening. We seem to believe that other people will listen to us if we shout loud enough, or are clever enough in our snark - even though we ourselves never listen to such people. If we really speak on behalf of peace, we are willing to listen, to reflect, and to honor and respect others' voices. If a desire for peace unites us, that is enough ground on which to stand in conversation.

We should do this not because speaking for peace will silence the violence and anger, but simply because peace needs a voice. We don't know where our words will travel, or what effect they will have. But we know what will happen if we are silent. If no one speaks peace to the violence and anger around us, the violent and angry will have their way and their wars. We can do better. At the very least, we should try.

It's a Bad Year for Humility

During last night's speech to the Democratic National Convention, President Obama said something unusual during this political season:

“While I’m proud of what we’ve achieved together, I’m far more mindful of my own failings, knowing exactly what Lincoln meant when he said, ‘I have been driven to my knees many times by the overwhelming conviction that I had no place else to go.’”

This kind of expression of humility has been mostly nonexistent in this season of political bombast. Nor do I expect that it's going to become a major campaign theme for the Democrats. In American culture, humility doesn't sell, and for the most part it's not greatly respected.

This is an odd admission for a political scientist, but I avoid most of the campaigning and political "argument" I encounter. I may have to get off FB until December, just to avoid the screeching graphic memes coming from both sides (I have FB friends who are both staunch liberals and staunch conservatives). The snark, the sound-bite insults, the flippant remarks made about the other side - for the most part, these make my stomach churn, and I turn away.

Why do I find this kind of bombast so dispiriting? First and foremost, because it is the enemy of peace. Political campaigns are conducted in the language of perpetual war. When Chuck Norris and his wife spoke of "1000 years of darkness", their hyperbole was notable - but only just. Most speeches - at both conventions - have said much the same thing, simply in more diplomatic language.

This is all nonsense, of course. Most of what the candidates talk about - creating 1 million new manufacturing jobs, or 12 million jobs, or whatever number they make up next - is mostly fantasy. Government does have a role in creating a good environment for the economy. But the economy does a lot of things on its own, and the ability of any given President to "steer" it is minimal. The marginal contributions they make are sometimes important - but that's it.

Of course, nobody is going to run a campaign talking about how the Presidency isn't as important as we think it is. And politicians are always tempted to say that they, and they alone, have the solutions to all of our problems (fascinating that Romney, to take one example, can in the same speech criticize Obama for believing that "jobs to him are about government" and then claim "I have a plan to create 12 million new jobs." Do these people listen to themselves?)

Modern political campaigns - maybe, all political campaigns - are predicated on a basic Manichean argument: the world is divided between the Forces of Good and the Forces of Evil. Our Side stands for Good, Their Side is inherently Evil. Chuck Norris was just being honest about it - but this describes the beating heart of nearly all campaigns.

The truth, of course, is that no party or politician has a monopoly on virtue. Purely unadulterated evil (the sort of psychopathy that says, I don't care about anybody at all and will cheerfully destroy you just for fun) is exceedingly rare. The truth is also that our society is far larger than one office, indeed far larger than the federal government. And everyone from St. Paul to Mohammed to Confucius to Lao Tzu knows that both good and evil reside in all of us - and that the greatest battle we fight is within.

It is unarguably true that our ability to discern Good and Evil is alway less than we think it is. The parable of the wheat and the weeds doesn't get much play most of the time. We have always been willing to inflict a little "collateral damage" in our zeal to kill terrorists, or to marginalize others' voices and choices in the righteousness of our cause, or to excuse our efforts as simply part of the "tide of history". In the name of righteousness, all sorts of evil has been done - not just in the past, but in the present. But we keep ripping up those weeds anyway.

It is no accident, I think, that cultural traditions most focused on peace - from monastic orders in the Western church to Zen Buddhist temples in the East - all emphasize humility. Without it there is no peace, because without humility we raise ourselves above others and feel justified in pushing them down when they resist. We go to war with righteous fervor, and destroy ourselves and own peace in fighting "the enemy".

It is no small irony that both political parties can argue about how many times "God" is mentioned in their platforms, yet neither seems to pay any attention to a great deal of what we think God has tried to say to us - whether we are Jewish, or Christian, or Muslim, or Hindu. There is no religious tradition on earth that does not view humility as a virtue, and there is no shortage of "followers" of each of those religions who treat it as a vice. Of course, atheists don't have any great corner on humility either.

So in this political season of political war and bombast, I find I cannot join the fight. Yes, I agree with some policies more than others, and I find some claims and statements more credible or agreeable than others. But with partisans on all sides out to wage a war of extermination, eager to attack the speck in their neighbors' eyes while ignoring the logs in their own, there is no space for peace. Perhaps like humility, peace too has been moved from virtue to vice, and war is now our preferred state. If so, where are the peaceful - or the peace-seeking - to go?

Thoughts on Peace

The only peace we have comes from within ourselves. We each choose, each moment, whether to have peace or not.

The choice is a hard one, because many things around us are not peaceful, are distracting, are agonizing, are worrying. The world around us, much of the time, is not a peaceful place. And many of the people around us are not peaceful people.

We make the choice harder for ourselves when we expect the world to deliver peace to us. If only ... a person would change, my bank account would change, my circumstances would change, the world would change ... then, we think, peace will come.

But peace is already here. The world will change - it changes all the time - just not in the way we expect, or demand, or want. Making our peace dependent on what the world around us does is abdicating, surrendering ourselves to a million forces indifferent to ourselves. We will never have peace if we expect it to be delivered to us.

There is nothing new in this, of course. That's one of the secrets of the world - that there really aren't any deep secrets. The most important things are already with us. The wisdom of peace has been around for centuries, and is all around us - in the Prayer of St. Francis, in the Serenity Prayer, in a thousand other places we've seen or heard of or read somewhere.

So why don't we seek peace where we already are? Because we're distracted by other things. Because some part of us believes the lies of the world when it says If Only ... if we just wait for this or that, things will be better then. Because we want other things more than we want peace - we want fame, or money, or excitement, or experiences, or love, or things, or just Our Way. We want to impose our Will upon the world. We want to Be Right.

I can only speak for myself, but the older I get the more I find that peace is what I seek. This means, of course, not just for myself but for those around me, those I love and care for. But how can I give them any peace if I don't have any to give? So pursuing peace is not a selfish goal, but an act of love.

There's no conclusion here, no pithy observation at the end. It is the same truth that we've always had, just rehashed and recycled. But maybe that's the thing about truth - that the important thing is not to discover but to rediscover, to renew, to recirculate. Because we already have peace within us. We just need to be reminded to look for it.

The Temptations of Anger and the Challenge of Peace

I wrote a few days ago on the problem of Fear and its effect in disrupting peace. At root, that article was about a very basic question: what contributes to, or destroys, peace? And what can we do about it?

I suggested at the time that Fear is a disruptor of peace, but not necessarily the only one. As this question continues to rattle around in my skull, another possible answer has climbed to the surface: Anger.

That anger should disturb my peace is no surprise. The physiological effects of anger are well-known - it increases heart rate and respiration, floods the system with adrenaline, all the usual stuff. With Fear, both sides of the fight-or-flight reflex are in play - in fear, I may run away or I may lash out. In Anger, I am far more likely to lash out, which makes Anger more likely to disrupt not only my peace but the peace of others around me.

So why do we get angry? For all sorts of reasons, but I think there are a couple of broad categories. Most important, and perhaps most common: we get angry when things don't go our way, when something happens or someone does something that doesn't meet our expectations of how things are supposed to go.

A lot of this can be little stuff. Someone cuts you off in traffic, slowing your journey by a few seconds. The store is out of the product you made a side trip to pick up. Someone at work made a different choice than the one you wanted, or committed a thoughtless act that requires you to do something different from what your plans were.

Usually, we think that the anger from these little things is momentary - we get irritated, we get over it, we move on. And on the surface that is true. But there is an underlying, subtler set of effects. The adrenaline stays in the body for a while - sometimes for significant periods of time, especially with repeated prompting. A part of the mind ponders the slight or insult a little longer than we are conscious of. The spirit is diverted to a darker mood. And all of this makes it just a little more likely that we will react with anger to the next minor incident.

So what do we do? In every such response, there are two components. There is the external act or circumstance, and there is my expectation about that circumstance. Anger consists of my putting the two together and reacting to the discrepancy. In rare cases, I may be able to influence those external circumstances, and that may be a good approach. But in all cases, I can control my own expectations.

This is one reason, I suspect, why monastic orders have fostered a discipline of asceticism across history and around the world. It may be as much about learning to control and set expectations as it is about conforming to a particular set of material standards.

Those of us who are not monks, whoever, can still control our expectations. Most of us, most of the time, don't do so consciously - like much of the rest of what we do, our expectations of the world around us run on autopilot. There's nothing wrong with that - it allows us to be efficient and concentrate on stuff that really needs our concentration. But if we have habits of expectation - that we will always arrive at work within 20 minutes, that certain products will always be available on demand, that other people in our lives will always act in a certain way or speak in a certain tone of voice - those habits can get us in trouble when things go differently.

It should be noted that there are expectations that are consciously thought of and defended - indeed, that should be. Anger is not always an inappropriate response. It is, I think, the appropriate response in the face of genuine, malevolent evil. Like the protagonist in C.S. Lewis' Perelandra, if we find ourselves faced with real evil then anger - even the use of force - may be the best response. But for most of us, most of the time, those encounters are extremely rare. Being cut off in traffic isn't evil, just inconsiderate (or maybe just thoughtless). So anger should be saved for those rare instances where it is the right response.

Beyond those few encounters, I think there's another lesson here in how I can provide more peace in my own life - by better managing and controlling my expectations. The fewer demands I make on the world around me, the more I cultivate conscious perspective on what's important and what can be flexible, the less angry I am likely to be. This doesn't mean that I won't be disappointed, or that I necessarily settle for mediocrity or bad outcomes. But it does go some way towards putting me in better control of my response to those outcomes. And like reducing fear, reducing anger is likely to produce more peace.

The Roots of Peace and the Problem of Fear

I spend a lot of my time thinking about war, conflict, and how conflicts are resolved. Somebody (I think it might have been J. David Singer) at a conference years ago said that if you scratch conflict scholars a little, you find peaceniks not far below the surface. Basically, we study what we do because we think that conflict (or, at least, certain forms of it like violent conflict) is bad, and we'd like to find better ways of dealing with it.

Because there is so much conflict in the world, those of us in the business don't want for things to study. There's plenty to keep us busy, and probably always will be. What we don't always do very well, however, is think about peace, beyond a vague sense that peace is the absence of active conflict.

A part of the problem here is that "peace," as a state in which you and I are not fighting, makes my peace dependent on what you do. And there is undoubtedly some truth to that. There are plenty of actors in the world who can disrupt an otherwise-peaceful situation by unilateral action - gunning down worshipers in a mosque, blowing up Catholic schoolchildren, or setting off a truck bomb in front of a daycare building. In that sense, we are all dependent on each other for peace.

But the danger in making my peace dependent on what you do is that I blame my lack of peace on you. My not having peace becomes your fault, which means that I don't have to examine myself or what I am doing or thinking or feeling. It becomes an excuse to externalize everything, especially the blame.

So here's a thought that occurred to me this morning, as I've been rattling around ideas about conflict and justifications for using force. What is my role in creating peace? What does it mean for me to be in a peaceful state? I think one of the roots - maybe the root, maybe one of several - is the absence of fear.

We often think of war and peace, or conflict and peace, as opposites. But as many have pointed out, conflict is ubiquitous and inevitable. It is how we deal with conflict that matters. Do we escalate to violence? To we lash out to hurt the other side? Or do we deal with the conflict constructively to find mutual solutions? That's a dichotomy that's pretty universal across the negotiation literature.

What determines the choice we make? In large part, the presence or absence of fear. If I am afraid of the other, I will likely decide that a mutual solution is not possible. In fear, I feel the need to lash out. The strong support among Americans for retaliation after 9/11 was not because we were angry or filled with hatred for al Qaeda - it was because we were afraid. Hatred, C.S. Lewis reminds us, is "the compensation by which a frightened man reimburses himself for the miseries of Fear."

The scholarly literature on conflict is replete with the same logic - although we don't often frame it that way. What's at the root of the conflict spiral, the arms race, the security dilemma? Fear of the other. What drives enemy images, demonization of the other side, escalation of our perceptions of the other? Fear. Anarchy, the realists might say, is a problem precisely because in the absence of a central authority we are all afraid of one another.

The corollary to all of this is at the same time simple and very hard. If I want peace, I need to cultivate fearlessness. I need to find ways to become less fearful. Where I cannot change the world around me - and usually I can't - I need to do what I can within myself to conquer, subdue, and eliminate fear.

How to do that? That's a subject for another day - probably, for a lifetime. But for today, it is a beginning simply to know that the more I fear, the less peace I will have.