It's my personal belief that without fear, few of us would be alive — what else would have kept us from riding our bikes into the street, from diving into the shallow end of the swimming pool, from having a picnic on the railroad tracks? I think of fear as emotional radar, a survival instinct that warns me of danger, whether the danger is physical, emotional, intellectual or spiritual.

I've been hearing about a video series called A Force More Powerful, which documents instances in history when non-violent, direct action was successful. Some examples are Gandhi's fight for India's independence and the Danish people's resistance to the Nazis, which succeeded in saving the lives of most of Denmark's Jews. The Quaker meeting I attend has just donated a copy of the series to the Evanston Public Library, and I'm hoping to view it soon.

It is sometimes said that non-violent action is difficult to discern and/or takes a long time. I look at the effects of war, and I think they take an even longer time, and they seem always to lead to more war, so that the effects are really never-ending. And I think war is pretty difficult for everyone concerned as well. My father fought in WW2 and came home with trauma and survivor guilt, which shaped our family life in many overt and subtle ways. For families like that where no healing happens, the wounds get passed on from generation to generation.

I think of the really tough cases, like fighting Hitler in Europe. I wonder if non-violent action might have taken so long that the Nazis could have had time to annihilate more people in the camps. But it's impossible to know for sure, because I think many other things would have gone differently if the Allies had committed themselves to different courses of actions. It might have had an effect on people inside the Third Reich, who might have helped from inside.

I remember at the time of the Gulf War, our allies in Jordan and Syria were saying that there were much smarter ways of fighting Hussein's regime than war, and they know a lot more about his culture than we do. One of the worst things about war is that bombs are stupid — a bomb can't decide to avoid a house because it contains children or adult civilians. I believe that for every civilian hurt by an American bomb in Afghanistan, there are a family and friends who now have reason to hate America.

I think Saddam Hussein is the product of a culture and/or an upbringing, and if we take him out, there will most likely be someone to take his place, and who's to say that person won't be worse?

There is a bill in Congress to create a department of peace. I think peace is not just cessation of war but a whole way of thinking, of choosing conflict resolution over fighting, of believing that conflict resolution makes us all stronger. I don't have all the answers to what we might have done differently, but I believe there are many people, at the United Nations and throughout the world, who have given deep thought to it and are working toward it, and if America put even a portion of the money and energy we currently put into our military establishment into the effort for real lasting peace, we would eventually get there.

Looking at American culture recently in archetypal terms, it makes sense to me that Americans have so much warrior energy — warrior energy is about individuating, it's about separating, and separating is what created this country — this country was created out of a desire to separate from Europe in order to find religious freedom.

This page last updated 12/28/05.   Contact me