Читать книгу Peaceful Revolution - Paul K. Chappell - Страница 17

What do Buddha, Jesus, Sun Tzu, Henry David Thoreau, Albert Schweitzer, West Point, Mahatma Gandhi, martial arts philosophy, Martin Luther King Jr., the U.S. Army, and Mother Teresa have in common? They all taught me that empathy is the most powerful force in the world. Anyone who thinks empathy is weak or naive hasn’t studied Sun Tzu and doesn’t understand the army. In The Art of War, written in the sixth century BC, Sun Tzu says: “Regard your soldiers as your children, and they will follow you into the deepest valleys; look upon them as your own beloved sons, and they will stand by you even unto death.”4

In Will War Ever End? I explained why armies cannot survive without empathy. Although war is common throughout history, the greatest problem of every army has been this: when a battle begins, how do you stop soldiers from running away? Where our fight-or-flight response is concerned, the vast majority of people prefer to run when a sword is wielded against them, a spear is thrust in their direction, a bullet flies over their head, or a bomb explodes in their vicinity. In the U.S. Army, a complex system of conditioning trains soldiers to stay and fight, but the Greeks discovered a more effective method still used today.

The Greeks understood it is not easy to make soldiers stay and fight during a battle. Human beings are not naturally violent after all, because if we were, the majority of people would not be terrified of violence when they experience it up close and personal. General George Patton said: “Every man is scared in his first battle. If he says he’s not, he’s a liar.”5 If human beings were naturally violent, our fight response would be far more powerful than our flight response, but in fact the opposite is true. Getting soldiers to run away and retreat during a battle is easy. Getting them to stand their ground, fight, and kill other human beings is the challenge.

The Greeks realized, however, that one simple thing could give soldiers endless courage when their lives were threatened; it could inspire them to not only stay and fight, but to sacrifice their lives. At first glance the Greeks’ solution might seem like a contradiction, because the most powerful motivator that convinces people to stay and fight is not a natural propensity for violence or killing, but their capacity for love and compassion. Halfway around the world, Lao Tzu, a Chinese philosopher who lived during the sixth century BC, also acknowledged this fundamental truth about human nature when he said: “By being loving, we are capable of being brave.”6

When the U.S. Army uses words such as brotherhood, camaraderie, and cohesion, it is really talking about love. In this chapter we are defining what empathy and love truly mean; the military tends not to use these words because in our society there are so many misconceptions associated with them. Jonathan Shay, the 2009 Omar Bradley Chair of Strategic Leadership at the U.S. Army War College and a MacArthur Fellow, is a clinical psychiatrist who has dedicated his life to helping traumatized veterans and improving the military. The author of Achilles in Vietnam and Odysseus in America, from 1999 to 2000 he also performed the Commandant of the Marine Corps Trust Study.7 In it he says:

When you talk to active American military officers and NCOs [non-commissioned officers] about love—they squirm. They are embarrassed. On the one hand, their organizational culture highly values rationality, which has been packaged to them as emotion-free—and love is clearly emotional. On the other hand, they instantly start worrying about sex, which in modern forces is always prohibited within a [deployed] unit, whether heterosexual or homosexual. In present-day America, the ideas of love and sex have gotten mashed together …

Of all groups in America today, military people have the greatest right to, and will benefit most, if they reclaim the word “love” as a part of what they are and what they do …

Bluntly put: The result of creating well-trained, well-led, cohesive units is—love. These Marines are “tight.” They regard each other—as explained in Aristotle’s discussion of philía, love—as “another myself” … The importance of mutual love in military units is no sentimental claptrap—it goes to the heart of the indispensable military virtue, courage … As von Clausewitz pointed out almost two centuries ago, fear is the main viscous medium that the Marine must struggle through … the urge to protect comrades directly reduces psychological and physiological fear, which frees the Marine’s cognitive and motivational resources to perform military tasks … The fictional Spartan NCO named Dienikes, in the acclaimed novel Gates of Fire, puts it very compactly: “The opposite of fear … is love.”8

Imagine how you would react if you were walking in the woods and saw a mountain lion running toward you. You would probably be terrified and your instinct would be to run. Now imagine if you saw a mountain lion attacking your spouse, child, or friend. Even with no military training, you would probably grab a stick or rock and rush to protect your loved one. The Greeks and Lao Tzu realized that our instinct to protect those we love is more powerful than our instinct for self-preservation; all of military history attests to this fact. The U.S. Army knows that soldiers fighting only for money are unreliable, but soldiers fighting to protect their comrades or family members are not easily defeated. That is why an army must create brotherhood and camaraderie among its soldiers, and why politicians must say war is necessary for the protection of family and country. Otherwise, retreating from the battlefield would be too tempting.

When men are alone and violence threatens their lives, they are usually cowards. Military strategist Charles Ardant du Picq said four men who do not know each other will be afraid to confront a lion, but if they know each other their courage cannot be overcome.9 To build the courage that results from caring about others, the army taught me to treat my military unit like my family and to fight in order to “protect the person to my left and to my right.” At West Point I learned a famous passage from Shakespeare’s Henry V: “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; for he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.”10

Gandhi, serving as a medic for the British during the Boer War, witnessed the power of brotherhood in the military: “It was a sultry day. Water was very scarce. There was only one well. An officer was doling out tinfuls to the thirsty. Some of the [Indian stretcher] bearers were returning after leaving their charge. The soldiers, who were helping themselves to the water, at once cheerfully shared their portion with our bearers. There was, shall I say, a spirit of brotherhood, irrespective of colour or creed … As a Hindu, I do not believe in war, but if anything can even partially reconcile me to it, it was the rich experience we gained at the front. It was certainly not the thirst for blood that took thousands of men to the battlefield … they went to the battlefield because it was their duty.”11

Just as the U.S. Army takes soldiers from every racial and religious background and trains them to unite as family, Gandhi witnessed how the bonds of brotherhood within the military transcend race and religion. Like Gandhi, my father also saw how the power of brotherhood can transcend our differences. When I was growing up, my father always told me, “The only place in America where black men are treated fairly is in the military. People will be nice to you, but when they find out you’re part black they’ll turn on you. The military is the only place that gives black men a chance. You’ll never be able to get a decent job unless you’re in the army.”

Half white and half black, my father was born in 1925 and grew up in Virginia during segregation and the Great Depression. The U.S. Army was desegregated in the early 1950s, many years before segregation ended in the South. This made a strong impression on my father. During the 1940s and 1950s, his belief that he only had opportunity in the military was largely true. A hard worker who began picking fruit when he was six years old to earn extra income for his family, he excelled as a soldier and retired as the highest enlisted rank, a command sergeant major.

In Will War Ever End? I discussed how the American soldiers who left their jobs behind to fight in World War I were paid little more than a dollar a day for their service to our country. After the war ended, the government promised that these veterans would receive adjusted compensation to pay for their lost wages while fighting overseas. When the promise was not fulfilled, the veterans built a community where white and black people lived, protested, and fought for justice together. By applying the camaraderie they learned in the military, the Bonus Marchers lived in a desegregated community decades before the end of segregation in America.

The army is certainly not free of racism today, but when camaraderie in the army is high, racial tension among soldiers is lower than in other parts of society. The army doesn’t create camaraderie through brainwashing, Gandhi realized, but by instilling genuine bonds of empathy and solidarity among soldiers.

Gandhi scholar Peter Brock explains how Gandhi’s respect and admiration for the military shaped his life: “Gandhi showed here another trait that appears constantly in his later writings: his respect for the positive qualities war can bring out in men alongside the evil ones, for the heroism, comradeship and sense of duty it engenders among ordinary men … he would seek to create a technique that could preserve the virtues of the warrior while eliminating the negative aspects of warfare …12 [Gandhi believed people] must regain the martial qualities of the Kshatriyas [warriors] of old before qualifying to become true disciples of nonviolence.”13

Gandhi realized if he could channel the warrior spirit toward waging peace, his movement to free India of British colonialism would have people with the discipline, strength, and courage necessary to overcome any challenge. He knew what military commanders throughout history have understood: when soldiers become a band of brothers they will perform incredible acts of heroism to protect their friends.

This is the Medal of Honor citation for Private First Class Ross McGinnis. On December 4, 2006, in Baghdad, he chose to sacrifice his life to save his friends.

That afternoon his platoon was conducting combat control operations in an effort to reduce and control sectarian violence in the area. While Private McGinnis was manning the M2 .50-caliber Machine Gun, a fragmentation grenade thrown by an insurgent fell through the gunner’s hatch into the vehicle. Reacting quickly, he yelled “grenade,” allowing all four members of his crew to prepare for the grenade’s blast. Then, rather than leaping from the gunner’s hatch to safety, Private McGinnis made the courageous decision to protect his crew. In a selfless act of bravery, in which he was mortally wounded, Private McGinnis covered the live grenade, pinning it between his body and the vehicle and absorbing most of the explosion.

Private McGinnis’ gallant action directly saved four men from certain serious injury or death. Private First Class McGinnis’ extraordinary heroism and selflessness at the cost of his own life, above and beyond the call of duty, are in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit upon himself, his unit, and the United States Army.14

Empathy exists in war and peace; and sources as diverse as Buddha and Sun Tzu, Gandhi and the U.S. Army, and Mother Teresa and West Point agree on its importance. But what are the differences between how empathy is used in war and peace? And how does it give us the power to end war and solve our national and global problems? Before we can answer these questions we must first understand empathy. Empathy is our ability to identify with and relate to others. It allows us to recognize ourselves in them, sympathize with their problems, and share their joy and pain. Jack Tueller, an American who served as a captain during World War II, experienced the power of empathy when he saw his own humanity reflected in a German soldier.

This is two weeks after D-Day. It’s dark, raining, muddy, and I’m stressed so I get my trumpet out and the commander says, “Jack don’t play tonight, because there’s one sniper left.” I thought to myself, that German sniper is as scared and lonely as I am. So I thought, I’ll play his love song [a German song called “Lili Marleen”]. The next morning here came a jeep up from the beach about a mile and a half away. And the military police said, “Hey Captain, there are some German prisoners getting ready to go to England.” One of [the prisoners said] in broken English, “Who played that trumpet last night?” And he burst into sobs. “When I heard that number that you played I thought about my fiancée in Germany, I thought about my mother and dad and about my brothers and sisters, and I couldn’t fire.” And he stuck out his hand and I shook the hand of the enemy. He was no enemy. He was scared and lonely like me.15

Every act of kindness, compassion, generosity, and forgiveness is built on the foundation of empathy; every act of hatred and cruelty results from its absence. A characteristic of psychopaths is their lack of empathy. Someone with absolutely no empathy is insane, while a person with enormous empathy is considered a saint. Furthermore, empathy is as vital for our survival as food and water. If every bit of empathy were removed from the world we would all become psychopaths; all traces of civilization would be destroyed virtually overnight.

Without the glue of empathy, the bonds of friendship and family that allow us to cooperate and sacrifice for each other cannot exist. By cultivating empathy in its soldiers, the army is able to take people from different racial, social, religious, political, and economic backgrounds and forge bonds of friendship and family between them. How does the army do this?

At West Point I learned empathy during the beginning of freshman year through an ideal called cooperate and graduate. West Point is unlike most other colleges, because cadets must live together in military units and cooperate to succeed. They are responsible for many duties that cannot be accomplished alone; this sense of teamwork is also emphasized in the academic program. In addition to the classes necessary to complete their major, cadets take a wide variety of mandatory courses such as calculus, physics, chemistry, philosophy, psychology, statistics, international relations, poetry, leadership, political science, engineering, world and military history, environmental science, computer science, economics, a foreign language, law, exercise physiology, swimming, gymnastics, wrestling, boxing for men, and self-defense for women.

West Point has its cadets take these diverse courses not only to make them well rounded but to also bring them out of their comfort zone. During my freshman year I was told that some people are experts at math, others excel at writing, some are best at history, and others have an advantage in athletics. Since cadets have a heavy academic workload of around twenty-one credit hours each semester, most students require at least some help. By working together and learning from each other’s strengths, cadets have the best chance of overcoming adversity and graduating together.

Cooperate and graduate means thinking not only of one’s personal wellbeing but also caring about others and helping them get through their courses. In a society where people often feel isolated and work only for their self-interest, at West Point I never felt alone. If I was struggling with a class I could ask my classmates for help and they would spend hours aiding a comrade.

In addition, classes at West Point usually consist of fifteen people or less, so professors can give each cadet a lot of attention. When I was there the professors had to give us their home phone number so we could call them if we needed help with schoolwork; their daily schedule also had a couple of hours allotted for those who wanted additional tutoring. If you were willing to help yourself you found an impressive support network willing to help you.

At West Point my empathy grew from the understanding that my classmates were experiencing the same hardships as I was. We all missed our families. We were all trying to pass our classes and graduate. We were all in this together. Empathy exists when you can see yourself in others, and when you can relate to their worries, fears, agony, and joy. There was plenty of worry, fear, agony, and joy to empathize with at West Point.

The training in empathy and cooperation I received at West Point still influences my actions today. West Point taught me that life is not about making the most money, but serving others. A community is stronger than a single person, and if we care about and serve those around us we can create a community powerful enough to overcome any obstacle. Rudyard Kipling expressed it this way:

Now this is the Law of the Jungle—as old and as true as the sky;

And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die.

As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk the Law runneth forward and back.

For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.16

To build the empathy that makes strong community possible, we must develop our ability to see our humanity in others, recognizing the deep similarities that far outweigh our minor differences. I learned how to do this in the army, which has soldiers from every racial, religious, and social background. Despite these differences, we shared experiences, suffering, ideals, and a mission. But we shared something even deeper than that. We were all born human. We all felt pain and fear. And we all wanted hope, joy, and a life with meaning and purpose.

These similarities are the starting point for empathy, because not only do all American soldiers share them. So do all human beings. Jack Tueller realized this when he decided to play his trumpet for a German soldier after D-Day, and Erich Fromm described the process we must go through to increase our empathy: “If I perceive in another person mainly the surface, I perceive mainly the differences, that which separates us. If I penetrate to the core, I perceive our identity, the fact of our brotherhood.”17

Gene Hoffman, founder of the Compassionate Listening Project, said: “An enemy is a person whose story we have not heard.”18 The key to developing our empathy is increasing our understanding and knowing people’s stories. Only then can we penetrate to the core of our humanity and recognize ourselves in others.

Sun Tzu taught that we cannot effectively confront our enemies unless we know them. Because empathy allows us to recognize ourselves in others, we need it to wage peace. Like Sun Tzu, Gandhi also believed we must know our enemies, but where waging peace is concerned the only way to truly know our enemies is by understanding and empathizing with them. When we do this they cease being our enemies and we can see them for who they truly are: fellow human beings held hostage by fear, hatred, or misunderstanding.

Empathy teaches us to attack fear with compassion, hatred with love, and misunderstanding with dialogue. By knowing his enemies through understanding and empathy, Gandhi developed a strategy that sought to transform them not into corpses, but friends. He knew winning people over to his cause was more effective than killing countless people in war. Empathy is as vital for waging peace as weapons are for waging war. In Will War Ever End? and The End of War I discuss waging peace in greater detail.

A strong muscle of empathy also benefits us in many other ways. It is a form of education: by empathizing with others and being interested in their well-being we increase our knowledge of life, joy, and suffering. It also puts our suffering and personal problems into perspective. For example, if I am completely absorbed in my own interests, living in a tiny bubble where the troubles affecting other people do not concern me, a minor personal problem can seem like the end of the world. But if I have empathy for the billions of people on the planet who earn less than two dollars a day, I can see my minor problems from a wider perspective and they become less overwhelming.

Not only does empathy reduce our suffering by putting our personal problems into perspective, but our suffering can also increase our empathy. Losing a loved one can increase our empathy for those who lose loved ones, because shared experiences help us relate to and understand people’s pain. In my own life, experiencing racism as a child has increased my empathy for those affected by racism, suffering from war has increased my empathy for the victims of war, and facing the challenges of being human has increased my empathy for everyone born into our confusing world.

By exploring what empathy is we can better understand why an army unit cannot function without this powerful bond among its soldiers. Empathy is so vital in the military that in addition to the motto “I will never leave a fallen comrade” from the Warrior Ethos, the U.S. Army’s Non-Commissioned Officer Creed states: “All soldiers are entitled to outstanding leadership; I will provide that leadership. I know my soldiers and I will always place their needs above my own [emphasis added]. I will communicate consistently with my soldiers and never leave them uninformed.”19

Because the army trains its soldiers to empathize with their comrades, it is not uncommon for them to empathize with the enemy. In his groundbreaking book, On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, Lt. Col. Dave Grossman shares a story in which a soldier was unable to kill an enemy:

Then I cautiously raised the upper half of my body into the tunnel until I was lying flat on my stomach. When I felt comfortable, I placed my Smith Wesson .38-caliber snub-nose (sent to me by my father for tunnel work) beside the flashlight and switched on the light, illuminating the tunnel.

There, not more than 15 feet away, sat a Viet Cong eating a handful of rice from a pouch on his lap. We looked at each other for what seemed to be an eternity, but in fact was probably only a few seconds.

Maybe it was the surprise of actually finding someone else there, or maybe it was just the absolute innocence of the situation, but neither one of us reacted.

After a moment, he put his pouch of rice on the floor of the tunnel beside him, turned his back to me and slowly started crawling away. I, in turn, switched off my flashlight, before slipping back into the lower tunnel and making my way back to the entrance. About 20 minutes later, we received word that another squad had killed a VC emerging from a tunnel 500 meters away.