[Think] (reprint) A World Out of Touch With Itself

[Fen Labalme]

Rabbi Michael Lerner of San Francisco, editor of the highly respected
journal Tikkun, has written the following reflection:

====

A World Out of Touch With Itself:
Where the Violence Comes From

by Rabbi Michael Lerner
				
	There is never any justification for acts of terror against innocent
civilians - it is the quintessential act of dehumanization and not
recognizing the sanctity of others, and a visible symbol of a world
increasingly irrational and out of control.

	It's understandable why many of us, after grieving and consoling the
mourners, will feel anger -- and while some demagogues in Congress have
already sought to manipulate that feeling into a growing militarism (more
spies, legalize assassinations of foreign leaders, increase the defense
budget at the expense of domestic programs), the more "responsible" leaders
are seeking to narrow America's response to targeted attacks on countries
that allegedly harbor the terrorists.

	The perpetrators deserve to be punished, and I personally would be
happy if all the people involved in this act were to be imprisoned for the
rest of their lives. Let's not be naive: these are evil people who planned
this and perpetrated it, just as are many who are engaged in acts of terror
against Israel. They should not be excused or forgiven for their acts.

	Yet in some ways this narrow focus allows us to avoid dealing with
the underlying issues. When violence becomes so prevalent throughout the
planet, it's too easy to simply talk of "deranged minds." We need to ask
ourselves, "What is it in the way that we are living, organizing our
societies, and treating each other that makes violence seem plausible to so
many people?"

	We in the spiritual world will see this as a growing global
incapacity to recognize the spirit of God in each other - what we call the
sanctity of each human being.

	But even if you reject religious language, you can see that the
willingness of people to hurt each other to advance their own interests has
become a global problem, and its only the dramatic level of this particular
attack which distinguishes it from the violence and insensitivity to each
other that is part of our daily lives.

	We may tell ourselves that the current violence has "nothing to do"
with the way that we've learned to close our ears when told that one out of
every three people on this planet does not have enough food, and that one
billion are literally starving.

	We may reassure ourselves that the hoarding of the world's resources
by the richest society in world history, and our frantic attempts to
accelerate globalization with its attendant inequalities of wealth, has
nothing to do with the resentment that others feel toward us.

	We may tell ourselves that the suffering of refugees and the
oppressed have nothing to do with us - that that's a different story that is
going on somewhere else.

	But we live in one world, increasingly interconnected with everyone,
and the forces that lead people to feel outrage, anger and desperation
eventually impact on our own daily lives.

	The same inability to feel the pain of others is the pathology that
shapes the minds of these terrorists.  Raise children in circumstances where
no one is there to take care of them, or where they must live by begging or
selling their bodies in prostitution, put them in refugee camps and tell
them that that they have "no right of return" to their homes, treat them as
though they are less valuable and deserving of respect because they are part
of some despised national or ethnic group, surround them with a media that
extols the rich and makes everyone who is not economically successful and
physically trim and conventionally "beautiful" feel bad about themselves,
offer them jobs whose sole goal is to enrich the "bottom line" of someone
else, and teach them that "looking out for number one" is the only thing
anyone "really" cares about and that anyone who believes in love and social
justice are merely naive idealists who are destined to always remain
powerless, and you will produce a world-wide population of people feeling
depressed, angry, unable to care about others, and in various ways
dysfunctional.

	I see this in Israel, where Israelis have taken to dismissing the
entire Palestinian people as "terrorists" but never ask themselves: "What
have we done to make this seem to Palestinians to be a reasonable path of
action today." Of course there were always some hateful people and some
religious fundamentalists who want to act in hurtful ways against Israel, no
matter what the circumstances.

	Yet, in the situation of 1993-96 when Israel under Yitzhak Rabin was
pursuing a path of negotiations and peace, the fundamentalists had little
following and there were few acts of violence. On the other hand, when
Israel failed to withdraw from the West Bank, and instead expanded the
number of its settlers, the fundamentalists and haters had a far easier time
convincing many decent Palestinians that there might be no other
alternative.

	Similarly, if the U.S. turns its back on global agreements to
preserve the environment, unilaterally cancels its treaties to not build a
missile defense, accelerates the processes by which a global economy has
made some people in the third world richer but many poorer, shows that it
cares nothing for the fate of refugees who have been homeless for decades,
and otherwise turns its back on ethical norms, it becomes far easier for the
haters and the fundamentalists to recruit people who are willing to kill
themselves in strikes against what they perceive to be an evil American
empire represented by the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.

	Most Americans will feel puzzled by any reference to this "larger
picture."  It seems baffling to imagine that somehow we are part of a world
system which is slowly destroying the life support system of the planet, and
quickly transferring the wealth of the world into our own pockets.

	We don't feel personally responsible when an American corporation
runs a sweat shop in the Philippines or crushes efforts of workers to
organize in Singapore. We don't see ourselves implicated when the
U.S. refuses to consider the plight of Palestinian refugees or uses the
excuse of fighting drugs to support repression in Colombia or other parts of
Central America. We don't even see the symbolism when terrorists attack
America's military center and our trade center - we talk of them as
buildings, though others see them as centers of the forces that are causing
the world so much pain.

	We have narrowed our own attention to "getting through" or "doing
well" in our own personal lives, and who has time to focus on all the rest
of this?  Most of us are leading perfectly reasonable lives within the
options that we have available to us - so why should others be angry at us,
much less strike out against us?

	And the truth is, our anger is also understandable: the striking out
by others in acts of terror against us is just as irrational as the
world-system that it seeks to confront. Yet our acts of counter-terror will
also be counter-productive. We should have learned from the current phase of
the Israel-Palestinian struggle, responding to terror with more violence,
rather than asking ourselves what we could do to change the conditions that
generated it in the first place, will only ensure more violence against us
in the future.

         Luckily, most people don't act out in violent ways - they tend to
act out more against themselves, drowning themselves in alcohol or drugs or
personal despair. Others turn toward fundamentalist religions or
ultra-nationalist extremism. Still others find themselves acting out against
people that they love, acting angry or hurtful toward children or
relationship partners.

	This is a world out of touch with itself, filled with people who
have forgotten how to recognize and respond to the sacred in each other
because we are so used to looking at others from the standpoint of what they
can do for us, how we can use them toward our own ends. The alternatives are
stark: either start caring about the fate of everyone on this planet or be
prepared for a slippery slope toward violence that will eventually dominate
our daily lives.

	Let's not be naive about the perpetrators of this terror. Many are
evil people, as are some of the fundamentalists and ultra-nationalists who
demean and are willing to destroy others. But these evil people are often
marginalized when societal dynamics are moving toward peace and hope (e.g.
in Israel while Yitzhak Rabin was Prime Minister) and they become much more
influential and able to recruit people to give their lives to their cause
when ordinary and otherwise decent people despair of peace and justice, as
when Israel from 1996 to 2000 dramatically increased the number of settlers.

	So here is what would marginalize those who hate the United
States. Imagine if the bin Ladens of the world had to recruit people against
America at a time when:
	
* America was using its economic resources to end world hunger and
redistribute the wealth of the planet so that everyone had enough.

* America was the leading voice championing an ethos of generosity and
caring for others - and it required that as the standard for its own
corporations

* America was restructuring its own internal life so that all social
practices and institutions were being judged "productive or efficient or
rational" not only because they maximized profit, but also to the extent
that they maximized love and caring, ethical/spiritual/ecological
sensitivity, and an approach to the universe based on awe and wonder at the
grandeur of creation.
	
	Think it's naive and impossible to move American in that direction?
Well, here are two reasons why, even if it's a long shot, it's an approach
that deserves your support:
		
* It's even more naive to imagine that military assaults, more spies or
repression can stop someone willing to lose his life while hijacking an
airplane, letting loose a bio-chemical assault, or using new technologies to
wreak havoc.

* The response of people to the World Trade Center attack was an outpouring
of loving energy and generosity which shows the degree to which people
really do care about each other. If we could legitimate Americans allowing
that part of themselves to come out, without having to wait for a disaster,
we would not be "socially Engineering" a "new kind of humanity" but rather
empowering a part of every human being which our social order marginalizes.
There's lots of goodness in Americans.

	We should pray for the victims and the families of those who have
been hurt or murdered in these crazy acts. We should also pray that America
does not return to "business as usual," but rather turns to a period of
reflection, coming back into touch with our common humanity, asking
ourselves how our institutions can best embody our highest values.

	We may need a global day of atonement and repentance dedicated to
finding a way to turn the direction of our society at every level, a return
to the notion that every human life is sacred, that "the bottom line" should
be the creation of a world of love and caring, and that the best way to
prevent these kinds of acts is not to turn ourselves into a police state,
but turn ourselves into a society in which social justice, love, and
compassion are so prevalent that violence becomes only a distant memory.