And yet...
Things are hiding in the shadows. There are aspects of reality that we don't talk about in polite company. There are parts of my own psyche that I would rather not admit exist.
If you are part of my coastal, liberal, intellectual, idealistic society, you experience the same reality gap as do I. Despite your adherence to non-violence, somewhere in your consciousness is the same nagging truth that plagues me. Like me, you are not completely sure that we humans are capable of evolving beyond our internal animal. You know your own violent impulses. You have experienced conflict. You have felt the urge to kill. And, you know that your own civility is hardly strong enough to insure against violent outbursts. In an extreme situation, even you, an educated liberal, would strike out with the intent to kill.
Violence begets violence. Retaliation in the face of aggression is instinctive, automatic. Survival of our species depends upon the ability of individuals to protect themselves and their families. A husband will defend his wife. A mother will defend her children. There is no limit on these protective reactions. No moral imperative will lessen the reprisal. When dangerous situations force us out of our comfortable realm of civility, instinct takes over. We act from our animal survival center. We will kill in order to prevent being killed.
The Christian ethic of turning the other cheek is a learned behavior. After 2000 years of ingrained learning, we think of such pacifistic responses as being truly human, that they represent the best of human attitudes. But, millions of years of evolution have done little to dull the knife-edge of human behavior. When pushed far enough, we are still violent animals.
Compelling evidence of humankind's animalistic tendencies is that only a minority of humans live in societies where non-violence is espoused.
Many societies and many religions sanction violence. Of the others that do promote a peaceful worldly experience, most specify only that the peace must be upheld with those who subscribe to the same group ideology.
A society or religion will defend its ideology just as strongly as a mother will defend her child. In fact, threats to social ideologies need not be direct in order to elicit a violent reaction. Even the most modern, secure, allowing societal groups set limits on how much diversity they will allow. Any person or group that does not fit into the society's definition is ultimately punished. If the outsiders react in any way, even just with words of criticism, the society will quickly escalate the situation to violence.
So, the reality is that we human animals live in a violent world. A few of us uphold non-violence as a moral goal. How do we reconcile our desire for peace with our instinctive self-preservation reactions?
I suggest that this question of how we live morally in an animalistic world is being avoided entirely by us average Americans. We do not want to explore the question because we really do not want to know the answer.
The answer is too obvious. We know that if we look closely we will see we have one basic choice. We must choose to accept eventual destruction of our society or to abandon our ethic of pacifism. Either we suppress instinctive self-preservation impulses or we ignore the teachings of our parents, our schools, and our churches. The choice is too hard. We are too comfortable in our protected lifestyle.
Our generation has not had to face an opponent who could potentially destroy us. We do not know justifiable fear on a societal scale. We worry more about vague, non-violent threats, global warming, petroleum depletion, than we do about our human enemies. We are ill prepared to deal with fanaticism in this age of suitcase atomic bombs and suicide murders. As the Baby Boomers took over positions of authority and responsibility, we weakened our nation by ignoring the experience of our fathers. We decided that we could change the world for the better and all it would take is for us to be good examples of how human beings should live.
We moved our entire society toward a more peaceful approach to the rest of the world. And, despite the wonderful sound of that statement, we created a new danger. By encouraging Americans to live pacifistically we are risking the very freedom that allowed us to experiment with such attitude in the first place.
It is time to rally our courage and look honestly at our fears and illusions. It is time to look explicitly at our fellow human beings. We must be willing to let go of seemingly honorable idealistic goals and respond to the world as it truly exists.
If we don't, our society will cease to exist. Our ideals will be sundered beyond redemption. We will perish. |
