Читать книгу Soldiers of Peace - Paul Chappell - Страница 19

Many people have described our planet as a ship sailing through space. This well-intentioned metaphor tries to encourage us to live together peacefully by reminding us that we all share the same planetary home. But as a child I found this metaphor disempowering, because we cannot control where the Earth is going; we have no control over our planet’s course through our solar system and the universe. This is a good thing, since life flourishes on our planet because its course basically stays the same, revolving around the sun at a distance not too close, not too far.

However, there is a metaphor for the Earth where human beings are not passive passengers on a ship moving through space, but active participants responsible for the direction and destination of our world, a metaphor that can empower us to achieve our highest human potential and solve our global problems. This metaphor involves seeing the Earth as a ship sailing not through space, but time.

The Earth is a ship surging through the waters of time, constantly moving forward into the future, unable to reverse course and return to a previous time period. Humanity today has a lot of power to control the path our planet takes through the wide horizon of the future. And if we make a mistake by wandering down a destructive path, there is no going backward on the sea of time.

Humanity is a crew sailing through time, able to direct where our ship the Earth goes, with two primary destinations on the horizon of the future. Because problems such as environmental destruction, war, and nuclear weapons threaten human survival, we can choose to solve these problems and sail toward survival and prosperity. Or we can choose to sail toward the extinction of humanity and most life on Earth. If our planet metaphorically sinks, due to our delicate biosphere becoming so badly damaged that complex life on Earth becomes unsustainable, we will sink with it.

I have heard people say that humanity should start colonizing Mars as a backup plan, in case we destroy Earth’s delicate biosphere. But Mars makes the harshest desert on Earth look like paradise. As I will discuss in the next chapter, I do not romanticize nature, but instead recognize how extremely difficult survival on Earth can be. In fact, scientists estimate that over 99 percent of the species that ever existed on our planet have gone extinct. But compared to the hellish landscape of Mars where there is no running water on its surface (running water quickly evaporates), a person cannot breathe the air, plants cannot flourish, and the magnetic field that deflects solar radiation is fragmented and weak, our planet is a utopia, a Shangri-la, a Garden of Eden.

If we as human beings cannot get our act together and survive long term on Earth, even though this planet gives our species every advantage needed to prosper, what makes us think we will be able to survive long term on the hell that is Mars? As Carl Sagan said, “Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.”¹⁹ If we seriously damage or destroy the Earth’s delicate biosphere, there is nowhere else for us to go. There is no other planet anywhere near us that could sustain humanity long term, especially if the abundant Earth could not sustain our current behavior and way of thinking.^* Our fate is tied to the Earth, and because we have the power to direct its path on the sea of time, its fate is now tied to us.

Human thinking changed enough on issues such as human sacrifice, animal sacrifice, scientific inquiry, women’s rights (in most parts of the world), and state-sanctioned slavery to reach a critical mass and create new social norms and laws. Today, human thinking must change in other ways. Unlike many of the issues in humanity’s past, which did not threaten human survival, issues such as environmental destruction, nuclear weapons, and war can drive humanity to extinction. When we are dealing with problems that threaten human survival, time is not our friend. If we do not deal with these problems urgently and proactively, our species can drown and go extinct in the sea of time.

This book is about peace literacy, the understanding humanity requires to safely guide our ship the Earth through the dangerous sea of time. All of us can work together to lead humanity away from extinction and toward survival, prosperity, and a sustainable biosphere. In fact, putting our Earth on a safe course is such a difficult underdog struggle that every person who can help is greatly needed. In a world filled with misinformation, myths, and illusions that deny our shared humanity and responsibility to our planet, every soldier of peace matters in the struggle for a brighter future.

A unique constellation of stars can guide us toward a brighter future. Every culture in history has been fascinated by the stars. This is part of our shared humanity. Ancient cultures created stories about constellations in the night sky, and people on both land and sea used the stars to navigate. When African Americans escaped from slavery in the nineteenth century, they often went north by journeying toward the North Star. Sailors around the world used the stars to guide their ships across the dark and unforgiving ocean. Stars helped our ancestors survive and not lose their way, and in the twenty-first century humanity also needs stars to help us survive and not lose our way. The stars humanity needs today can be found in the constellation of peace.

What is the constellation of peace? During this dangerous time in history when humanity has the technological capacity to destroy itself, we cannot survive in reality unless we understand reality. The four stars in the constellation of peace, which I explore in this book, are metaphors symbolizing four features of reality that are largely misunderstood today. In a world where there is so much confusion, humanity must understand these four features of reality to survive and prosper during our fragile future.

By exploring the four stars in the constellation of peace, we will uncover essential truths about reality, continuing our journey on the road to peace. Since many of our misunderstandings about peace result from our misunderstandings about reality, to become literate in peace we must also become literate in the nature of reality. By gaining literacy in the nature of reality, we can also gain realistic hope, radical empathy, and revelatory understanding.

Soldiers of Peace is the sixth book in the seven-book Road to Peace series. This book series can be read in any order, and Soldiers of Peace should be understood as part of a series. If I do not address a subject related to peace in this book, it is probably because I address it in another book. Soldiers of Peace focuses on four features of reality symbolized by the four stars in the constellation of peace, because they are so critical to creating peace that they demand their own book. Just as our ancestors used stars in the night sky to guide their ships across unforgiving seas, we must use the four stars in the constellation of peace to guide our ship the Earth across the unforgiving sea of time. As we sail forward on the sea of time, the light from the constellation of peace can help us navigate toward survival, prosperity, and a sustainable biosphere.

In my book The Cosmic Ocean, the fifth book in the Road to Peace series, I explain humanity’s tendency to neglect the root causes of our problems by looking for easy answers. This book goes deeper than easy answers by working to change our current paradigm of understanding. The first chapter explores the star of struggle, a commonly misunderstood aspect of reality, while the second chapter (the star of training) offers specific guidance and practical steps focused on the process of creating internal peace. The third chapter explores the star of truth, another commonly misunderstood aspect of reality, while the fourth chapter (the star of strategy) offers specific guidance and practical steps focused on the process of creating external peace.

What is peace? Peace is not just the absence of war, but the presence of the light from the four stars discussed in this book. Peace is also the presence of empathy, justice, understanding, and other ingredients explored in the following chapters. In the third chapter I explain that peace is even a weapon that attacks hatred, ignorance, and misunderstanding, rather than people. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. It is a weapon unique in history, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals.”²⁰

The constellation of peace empowers us to wield the weapon of non-violence with maximum force. To successfully sail the dangerous sea of time, we must become skilled at wielding the weapon of nonviolence, just as sailors in history and mythology needed various skills to sail dangerous seas. In Greek mythology, Jason and the Argonauts sailed to retrieve the Golden Fleece. Their ship, the Argo, contained soldiers skilled in waging war, including a woman, the archer Atalanta who had deadly aim and exceptional wrestling ability. In a famous incident, she defeated Achilles’s father Peleus in a wrestling match. In this book I will discuss four other characters involved in the journey of Jason and the Argonauts (Heracles, Nestor, Medea, and Athena) and, surprisingly, I will reveal what they can teach us about waging peace.

To journey on the sea of time toward survival, prosperity, and a sustainable biosphere, our ship the planet Earth will need soldiers skilled in waging peace. Realizing that the well-being of our world requires people who possess the discipline and courage of soldiers, Gandhi called himself a soldier of peace. He said, “I regard myself as a soldier, though a soldier of peace. I know the value of discipline and truth.”²¹

In this book we will discuss what it means to be a soldier of peace, dispelling stereotypes about warriors and peace activists. A soldier of peace has peace literacy skills. These skills are necessary not only for an effective movement, but they also help us create peace with our family members, friends, coworkers, strangers, and even our opponents. These skills are available to everyone, allowing us to achieve purpose, meaning, understanding, human survival, and a more prosperous future.

Some people assume that humanity cannot severely damage or destroy our delicate biosphere, even if we continue to ravage our planet for several more centuries with increasingly destructive technology, but this assumption greatly underestimates our human power to destroy. Some people also assume that humanity cannot be threatened with extinction, even if we ruin our delicate biosphere. But this attitude resembles what the ancient Greeks called hybris (the root word of “hubris”), which meant wanton violence resulting from excessive arrogance.²² The reality is that we are a species, and even a species as brilliant as we are, with so much power to shape our environment, can go extinct. Reality contains laws of thermodynamics and the law of gravity, but there is no law of nature that says humanity must survive forever.

To put all of this in perspective, I want you to consider everything we have discussed so far about the significant changes in attitude toward race, women’s rights, the structure of our solar system, human sacrifice, animal sacrifice, and the importance of reading. Although our world is far from perfect and we still have a long way to journey on the road to peace, so much progress has happened that I have met many people who say, “Can you believe that so many people used to support slavery? What were they thinking back then?”

Now I want you to imagine two possible futures. The first possible future is that five hundred years from now, people will look back at us and say, “Can you believe that people used to possess nuclear weapons, wage war, dehumanize each other, and cause so much damage to their environment? What were they thinking back then?” Although this behavior would seem bizarre to our descendants living five hundred years from now, they would also be proud of us, because we created the change that allowed them to exist.

The second possible future is that five hundred years from now, there will be no humans to look back, because our species has gone extinct, most of the life on our planet has gone extinct, and the world is in ruin. Every example of progress I have discussed can be taken away if we are not vigilant. As soldiers of peace, we must learn to wield the weapon of nonviolence with maximum force so that we can protect progress, create more progress, and transform this first possible future into a reality.