Peace As an Alternative
It Can Happen Eventually
We began, several million years ago, as animals that would band together in groups of, probably, fifty to three hundred individuals. This grouping was determined by evolution as the optimum for the survival of the species and it works for almost any species. There are exceptions, predators that seem to lead a solitary life and other creatures that form gigantic herds or schools, depending on whether they are at the end of the food chain that seeks to feed on others or that tries to avoid becoming food.
Some time in the last 40,000 to 100,000 years we developed the ability to use language and to express our spiritual beliefs and fears. At about the same time, we began forming larger and larger groups. We have finally reached the point of having to seriously consider how to live together as a single species sharing a single planet, a global community.
When we were composed of small groups, the typical response of one group to another was a violent confrontation. Warfare between groups guaranteed that the groups would remain isolated, which protected them from disease destroying the entire race. But as our groups have grown, our ability to commit violence has increased to the point that we have had the ability to cause the complete extinction of our species for several decades.
If our species is to survive, we must abandon the use of extreme violence between groups on our world. It is no longer needed for protection from disease now, our technology giving us other options for developing necessary protection.
But that doesn't imply that the lion will lie down with the lamb any time soon. It only means we must eliminate the worst and most abusive of our tools of destruction. It does mean that all groups must give up their nuclear weapons technology and allow inspection by international teams.
Guess who is least likely to cooperate. The United States? Israel? China?
The United States believes themselves to be the last remaining superpower. They think this gives them the responsibility to police the rest of the world, and they can't imagine doing so except from a position of power.
Israel, the Paranoid Pimple of an East European country created in the middle of a Semitic territory, constantly on the warpath to get revenge for some act ancient or recent, imagined or real, believes they would cease to exist if they couldn't threaten genocide against their enemies.
China operates under a regime and policy that hardly admits that AIDS exists, much less is a problem, and that would have done nothing about SARS if it hadn't spread so rapidly and violently. Their nuclear policy might be rational today but they are capable of an overnight shift with a change in leadership, this tremendous giant of a country being under the near-absolute control of a relatively few people who are likely to be reluctant to allow any of their power base to slip away from them.
Nuclear non-proliferation is a start. But it only keeps the problem from growing. Eventually the problem must be made to go away.
That means nuclear disarmament.
Comments (4)
At the rate we're going I don't have to concern myself with any of this unless reincarnation is an option and I've got another few thousand lives to live.
"a country being under the near-absolute control of a relatively few people who are likely to be reluctant to allow any of their power base to slip away from them" Heck, that applies to any of those countries, not just China! Nuclear disarmament is a good idea, but I'm doubtful it will ever happen.
I'm a meliorist. I take the long term view. I think in terms of centuries and millennia, not just weeks and months. I may not see it during this turn of the wheel, but ...
Yes - that is the ideal. I am not sure I will see it become a reality.
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