Beyond the Hall of Mirrors
Reflections on War, Terror and Human Interaction
by Dennis Rivers, MA
July 2005 Issue of the Journal of Cooperative Communication Skills
Below are a few comments from the article:
One of the great paradoxes of political life and human behavior, is that we imagine that we can bend other people to our will by force of arms. At the same time, we hold that no one will ever bend us to their will by force of arms. This implies some sort of belief that we are strong-willed while "they" are weak-willed. And of course, "they" think the same of us, thinking that they will be able to coerce us, but will never allow themselves to be coerced. This is a lethal fantasy, on all sides, in which grownup folks engage in childlike wishful thinking. It doesn't occur to people that the folks on the other side may be just like themselves. We are all strong-willed, we all resist coercion in whatever way we can. Unless someone becomes more conscious, every proud swagger from one side will elicit an even prouder swagger from the other side. Unless someone becomes more conscious, every taunt and humiliation from one side, will elicit an even bloodier taunt and humiliation from the other. "Bring 'em on, we're plenty tough," sneered President Bush to the insurgents. The Iraqi insurgents taunted back with videos of executions. We responded by torturing captured insurgents, setting off global shock waves. And so it goes, up to the most recent bombings. While this contest of coercion goes on, people are dying with no end in sight. Truly, if ever there were a situation that called for "thinking outside the box," we are in it now.
One possible answer, perhaps the greatest possible answer, to this downward spiral, would be a new turning toward the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. The fact that the Golden Rule has been around for several thousand years, and appears in all the great religions, does not mean that we have fully understood it or mastered the art of living by it. One fruitful way, in my view, of starting over with the Golden Rule would be to explore it more deeply as an effort to steer spirals of human interaction toward life-sustaining outcomes and away from mutual destruction. If we don't want people to try to coerce us, we can begin by lowering our reliance on coercion in all our relationships, both personal and international. If we want people to listen to our concerns, we can begin by listening to their concerns. If we don't want people to point guns or missiles at us, we can stop pointing our guns and missiles at them. Imagining that we can point our guns and missiles at countries around the world, and that they will not be motivated to point guns and missiles back at us, is, whatever else you may think of it, extremely unrealistic. If all behavior is instruction, we can take the initiative and model more of the positive behavior we want to evoke. This won't be easy, but our current slide toward perpetual war and national bankruptcy through military spending is not going to be easy, either. As a Borscht-circuit comedian in the 1950's might have put it: "A trillion dollars here, a trillion dollars there, pretty soon you're talking big money!"
Gandhi must have been thinking about the Golden Rule when he said "be the change you want to see."
http://www.newconversations.net/library/mirrors.htm
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