This is not a suggestion. It is a command: Stop fighting, you world leaders and the media that enable them, stop killing and starving innocents and most mostly-innocents alike, because I/we can’t take it anymore. Any more of this, and our species risks complete self-annihilation.
And who is the “I” or “we” issuing this command, you would like to know?
It is the command center and the heart of our human survival. Which has acquired some wisdom over the course of the 150,000 years our species has been in existence. And which is now telling us: your games are too dangerous. You have no more room for fatal mistakes.
Since becoming the undisputed lone superpower and sovereign of the earth, in 1989-90, thanks to the breakup of the Soviet Union, the United States has, because of its hubris and its poor quality of its short-sighted, ignorant, uninspired, and revenge-and-ego motivated leaders, sunk to the level of first among equals in a multi-polar world in which the two other Great Powers, presently, are Russia and China, who are now united in their decision to resist unfair hegemonic dominance (I’ve never used this overused and self-important h-word before, but the present situation seems to compel it). We lost our chance, on account of having trusted corrupt leaders and power-seekers to be visionaries and saints, and we must accept this new reality, because not recognizing it could be fatal to the whole of human civilization.
This is my view of present world situation, and I have never felt so pessimistic about the human species, that we nearly let a million people die of starvation (it’s still possible), and another 35,000 die and countless others wounded or disabled for life, and this view has resulted mainly from listening to non-mainstream voices that have mostly been deliberately shut out of the lying and billionaire-serving mainstream media: Prof. Noam Chomsky, Professor John Mearsheimer, Scott Ritter, Col. Douglas Macgregor, Prof. Richard Wolff, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Norm Finkelstein. Even Jordan Peterson, who pointed out to Piers Morgan. “I think we all have a bit of Stalin and Hitler inside us. More than a bit.” Either that, or we’re simply indifferent, or ignorant, victims of brainwashing and poor education.
Achieving a near-perfect or even partial world peace is the paramount priority for humankind now, because wasting our energy and goodwill on any cause or action that, while not unjust in itself, breeds division and enemies (especially long-term enemies driven by ego-wounds and past slights), destabilizes human cooperation and endangers the prospects of long-term stability.
What am I leading to? Here’s what I have been thinking of over the last year of disharmony between my three highly intelligent sons, and a very intelligent daughter-in-law. And if unhappiness or dissension within families cannot be controlled or even solved, and that too between well-educated parents and children, how much hope does that promise for peace and love and caring between nations, races, and classes? And this is what I say to myself and my children: Don’t do it for me or for you, but for the sake of humanity. Let’s make this our paramount objective: to Stop Fighting, and Start Loving.
To batter and pulverize, then ignore and let die hundreds of thousands of civilian Gazans, including children, or to batter an already wounded and weakened father who has one foot in the grave, and then ignore him as he fights for his life: that’s not heroic. The far more courageous action would be to give love. To love unconditionally, my parents and my children, just because my parents and children didn’t arrive on the planet and instantly reach their present state. A long sequence of events and influences, including historical and biological accidents, brought them to where they are now. We are mostly limited by our experiences and our genes (which, even in a family, vary from one person to another), and have to make a constant and strenuous and uncompromising effort to stretch our visions so as to accommodate at least a bit of the other.
To love would not be limited to saying the words “I love you,” and trying to put some feeling and sincerity into each such statement. Your love should include showing empathy and understanding towards the other, arrived at by letting the other person talk, and listening to them, and trying to imagine going through those same experiences, and being subject to those precise influences. In other words, the ability, backed by determination and effort, to see the other person’s point of view, to see what the world looks like while standing in his or her shoes.
It’s possibly the only remedy we have left in the long battle to bring peace and dignity to the lives of the people of Gaza, and to all the people of Ukraine and Russia who have been hurt or lost family members and a family life because of the inability of grown men to sit down and listen to others, and determine to talk and to understand until they have reached an agreement that solves the problem without shedding a single drop of blood. This is the only way humanity can win, with the only losers being the arms merchants and the corrupt and avaricious.