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The
Golden Rule - A Step in the Right Direction for Overcoming Violence In the hours immediately after September 11, almost all the talk on television and radio was about retaliation and war against terrorism. For a balanced person, it was time to reflect on peaceful means for resolving conflicts - is it true that only a non-violent resolution of conflicts can produce lasting non-violence? I believe so. Violence begets violence -- vicious cycles of violence cannot be stopped by more acts of violence. But how do we stop violence? The answer seems to be the Golden Rule-- "Do unto others what you want others do unto you," said Jesus, or, "Do not do to others that which you do not want done to you," said Confucius. The Golden Rule is a universal appeal for internal consistency, the foundation of integrity, which we all treasure as a virtue. Applying it means that if we do not like to have our innocent citizens killed by terrorists, we should not take violent action against terrorists with acts that will kill more innocent people. Retaliation against countries that harbor terrorists may bring back the historical conflict between Muslims and Christians, as far back as the Crusades of 1096. Before we unconsciously revive this massive conflict, let us practice what we believe in, and what we often preach to others. The Golden Rule is universally accepted by all religions. If we can be consistent with our belief, violence can be controlled. Why do the terrorists hate America? To me Americans are kind and generous to others. Only a minority of Americans believe in their moral superiority. However, they have such conviction about their moral values that they want the rest of the world to adopt them. Might this arrogance be the seed of hatred against the U.S.? Americans also believe in peace. American political leaders helped others negotiate peace with their enemies, e.g., Israelis and Palestinians, Irish Protestants and Catholics. At least that was the case until recently. Therefore, they should understand very well the vicious cycle of revenge and the need for courage, trust and patience to break that cycle. Trust requires faith, optimism and good will. That was how the Israeli-Palestinian peace accord was reached (however short lived that was) and how the Irish peace was made. Now, having tasted for ourselves the bitter medicine of violence inflicted on us by people who, for whatever reasons, treat America as their enemies, are we going to learn the same lessons we taught others? Or are we going to succumb to emotions and base instincts, or worse still, "reasoned" and "moral" justification for revenge? Will we fuel the vicious cycle that we taught others to break? Is this not time for America to reflect on our true belief in peace? Is this not time for the rest of the Americans, who do not subscribe to our moral superiority and who want "unity in diversity" for the whole world, to stand up and say, "Let's walk our talk! Let's set the example for the rest of the world and break the cycle of vicious revenge!"? To help us understand the forces affecting humanity, I suggest that we look at two theories, which offer some ideas of how humanity can break through more than two thousand years of stagnant cycles of violence and retaliation. One is a book by Robert Wright, "Non-Zero: The Logic of Human Destiny." The Non-Zero theory says that human evolves culturally to achieve a non-zero sum gain for the community. In other words, cultural evolution is not so random after all but has the inevitable result of improving the overall collective benefits of humanity, through social complexification. This gives us hope that over time, perhaps thousands of years, humanity learns from its mistakes and eventually comes up with improvements that are long lasting. An example is that humanity has evolved from tribal warfare to feudal empires, from superstition to science and reasoning, from dictatorship to democracy and liberalism, etc. The second book is "A Theory of Everything - An Integral Vision for Business, Politics, Science and Spirituality" by Ken Wilber, an American Buddhist philosopher. In this theory, human evolves through spiral stages (see Figure 1), and previous stages are platforms where new ideas spring up. A small group of thinkers come up with these ideas, e.g., those behind the U.S. Constitution, and eventually more and more people get exposed to them and subscribe to them. On another dimension of this theory, each person born into this world has to go through these stages individually from birth and acquires increasingly higher levels of enlightenment. Different countries also have different mixes of population who are at different stages of development. As a result of these diverse mixes of people still subscribing to different stages of values, it is very difficult for consensus to be reached in a country and in the world. Furthermore, depending on the level of educational, social and economical development in different countries, what works best for an advanced Western country like the U.S. or European countries may not work at all for less developed countries. Thus, we have the dichotomy between the "human rights above all" in the West versus "economic well-being above unlimited human rights" for the less developed countries. Imposing the values and systems of one country or culture on another may not work and in fact may be counterproductive. What can be done to bring the world closer to true peace and true global unity? The answer may involve the understanding by more and more people about the futility of revenge and so-called justice by punishment. The Golden Rule has not been put to practice at a political level by enough people. Jesus' words, "You were told to hate your enemies, but I say to you, love your enemies," were uttered two thousand years before Gandhi tried to put them into practice with non-violent resistance. However, this idea has been labeled by pragmatic people as "impractical," "pacifist," "weak," etc. But perhaps these are ideas that truly will work, in the long term. P.S. Figure 1 contains a challenge to Chinese thinkers. What is the Chinese population distribution by these eight levels of value systems? How can China catch up with the Western countries without risking destabilization?
Figure 1 - Distribution of Population by Value Systems (from The Theory of Everything) (The author is a director of The 1990 Institute, a non-profit organization in the San Francisco area.) |
