It’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and I want to talk about peace.
With the high levels of social/political conflict and polarization these days, peace is what we all need. It’s also what most of us want, although there are different ideas about what it means and how to create it.
Some believe peace can only come through control and domination of what they fear — for example, one ethnic group discriminating against or trying to wipe out another, or building a massive wall to try to keep them away.
The problem is, it takes effort and energy to control things. Vigilance and diligence. It’s expensive and exhausting. In other words, it produces the opposite of peace — constant wariness and agitation.
What you try to control ends up controlling you.
True peace has to involve respect and the recognition that no one has the right to impose their way of life on another or harm them for their own gain. Peace can only grow from the recognition that we are all human, and that we are all better off when everyone gets their needs met. On the flip side, we all suffer when any of us suffers.
We live in a world of so much potential for cross-cultural connection, through both physical travel and communication technology. We have access to each other in ways we could barely imagine a few decades ago. We have the opportunity, on a mass scale, to really grasp the reality that people are people are people — we want love, belonging, the right to exist, and to have our basic needs met.
Yet so many people are still bought into the outdated notions of separateness and the need to feel superior.
Supremacy is the belief that one type of person is superior to and has the right to hurt or dominate another type — that might makes right. It’s an outgrowth of some of the more primitive aspects of our wiring that value survival above all else.
It’s good to survive, but when we view everything different from us as a threat we need to obliterate, it’s a detriment to who we are, or could be, as a species.
As psychologist Stan Tatkin writes in his excellent book Wired For Love, “Unfortunately, the parts of our brain that are good at keeping us from being killed are also quite stupid. ‘Shoot first, ask questions later’ is the basic credo.”
Tatkin refers to these parts of our brain as ‘Primitives.’ They suck at relationships, love, and peace. But we have other parts that are all about connection and communication, which he calls Ambassadors.
Tatkin’s book is primarily about love relationships, but the implications for society as a whole and relations between different groups of people are also profound.
We have a choice. Our lives and society don’t have to be ruled by fear and the need to control or dominate others.
The things we have in common can bring us together, and our differences can give us that much more life to experience and enjoy.
If you agree, great. How can you act on this more?
What can you do to build bridges, connect with people that are different from you, and cultivate peaceful and mutually beneficial interactions?
What can you do to root out your own unconscious fears or prejudices about people that are different from you?
If you have some grudge or judgment against a group of people, could you have a conversation with one of them for 10 minutes? You might find out that what you thought you knew about them was completely wrong.
Don’t believe it? Check out this true story of a black man named Daryl Davis, who befriended over 200 of KKK members, resulting in them leaving the organization.
Peace is possible.
We need to pull together, despite our fears. We need to recognize that the real threat to our existence is not the existence of some group that seems different. The real threat is the fear itself, and all the misery and destruction it produces.
Violence causes more violence. Hate causes more hate.
If we want a world of peace, we’re going to have to work for it, face our fears, recognize our false assumptions, and be willing to change.
