DEC/JAN 2002
Thoughts
in the Presence of Fear
Wendell Berry
The
Prospect of Peace
Daisaku Ikeda
Reducing
Dependence On Oil Will Ensure America's National Security
US
Civil Rights in Serious Jeopardy
Michael Ratner
Engineering
Consent on the Domestic Front
Danny Schecter
The
Emperor is Naked
Don Kyhote
Green
View of Fundamentalism vs. Modernism
Kelpie Wilson
The
One Eternal Truth
John Darling
World
Trade Organization Continues to Fail
Danila Oder
McKenzie
River Gathering: Funding Change for 25 Years
Richard Seidman
Dreams
and Visions: The Fountain of Wisdom
Royal D. Alsup, Ph.D.
From
Survival to Serenity
Ianna Bredal, MBA
Environmental
Film Festival Coming to Ashland
Barry Snitkin
Herbal
Help for Winter Weather
Chanchal Cabrera, MNIMH, AHG
How
to Make the Most Out of Your Therapy
Julie Weber, MSW
Taking
Aim at Blame
Peter Moore, MFCC, CGP
Understanding
Problem Behaviors of Animals
Jocelyn Y. Whidden
The
Christmas Presence
Peter Melton
Cosmic
Calendar
Salina Rain
The Prospect of Peace
By Daisaku Ikeda
The central issue of the current era is crushing poverty. There can be no peace where hunger reigns … instead of engaging in cutthroat competition, we should strive to create value. In economic terms, this means a transition from a consumer economy—the mad rush for ownership and consumption—to a constructive economy where all human beings can participate in the act of creating lasting worth.
When the Twentieth Century began, there was a general beliuef that human progress was limitless. The lofty ideals and purposes envisioned at the outset of the century were oblierated, however, by the extremist ideologies that swept world, leaving slaughter in their wake. Perhaps no other century has been witness to such endless tragedy and human folly; the global environment has been grievously damaged, and the gap between rich and poor seems ever widening.
The last years of the century proved to be a period of dramatic transformations. It seemed, at first, that the end of Cold War in 1989 heralded far brighter prospects for humanity’s future, but those hopes were soon dashed as the world was wracked by regional and internal conflicts. It was as if the Iron Curtain had been finally pried open only to unleash the pent-up demonic forces of war and violence. Since then, more than fifty nations have undergone the wrenching drama of violent conflict, division or independence. These wars have claimed millions of lives.
Humankind is faced on every side by inescapable dilemmas: the threat of nuclear arms and other weapons of mass destruction, the intensification of ethnic discord, damage to the environment from the effects of global warming and destruction to the earth’s ozone layer, and the spread of psychopathic, brutal criminality.
Now we stand at the start of the third millennium. At this moment in history, we should determine to eliminate all needless suffering from this planet that is our home. In our efforts to realize this goal, we will find the key to ensuring that the new century does not mimic the last but begins an era of peace and hope. Now is the time to build a new age that shines with the glory of humanity and culture by focusing again on the sanctity of life.
We are charged with the task of achieving not just a passive peace—the absence of war—but of transforming those social structures that threaten human dignity in order to realize the positive, active values of peace. Efforts to enhance international cooperation and the fabric of international law are, of course, also necessary. But more vital are the creative efforts of individuals to develop a culture of peace, because it is on this foundation that a new global society can be built.
What Is the Path to Peace?
What is needed to advance human history, to move from darkness to light, from despair to hope, from killing to coexistence? What light can dispel the gloom and illuminate the expanses of the next thousand years? These are questions we must ask ourselves in all earnestness.
Josei Toda, my mentor and the second president of the Soka Gakkai, passion-ately longed to eliminate misery from the face of the earth. His fervent wish forms the basis of my thought and action. During the crucial middle part of the twentieth century, Mr. Toda advocated a Buddhist humanism and instituted actions designed to stem the flow of human unhappiness. He insisted that all our notions of progress must take into account forecasts of conditions two hundred years in the future. At the same time, he exhorted us to use dialogue as a way to create an enduring solidarity that embraces all of humankind.
My own efforts to discuss the most vital topics with informed and concerned people from all over the world are my response to Mr. Toda’s exhortation. I am convinced that in plotting a course for the twenty-first century we must both learn lessons from the present and uncover spiritual treasures from the subterranean currents of history. To accomplish this, I have entered into dialogue with repre-sentatives of all peoples on the basis of our common humanity.
Barriers to Peace
The first question that arises when one takes on a task so clearly and absolutely positive is this: What inhibits the world from making peace? It is important to know where our resistance lies.
Isolationism
The first obstacle is intrinsic to the scale of the undertaking, which can
be over-whelming for people lacking a solid, inclusive spiritual foundation.
The former U.N. secretary-general, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, when we met in July
1998, sum-marized the spiritual landscape of humanity at the end of the century:
In light of the globalization of financial, environmental and health issues,
domestic problems cannot be solved without addressing international ones.
People must be interested, he said, not only in their own countries but also
in international conditions. They feel uneasy, however, when confronted with
the tide of internationalization and withdraw into their own small “village”
(region or state) and traditions, tending to avoid encounters with foreigners.
He called this a “new isolationism."
The Illusion
of Efficiency
A second barrier to break through is another form of self-limitation, in this
case resulting from the supremacy of technology. Undeniably, the twentieth
century has benefited us greatly in the form of the many advantages of techno-scientific
progress. In some instances, however, disregarding humanity, “progress”
has proceeded with frequently tragic consequences. The crux of this is the
principle of efficiency that has come to rule people’s thinking in the
modern world. Efficiency advocates stress the most effective, the most efficient
and the most convenient. The pursuit of efficiency has stimulated scientific
and materialistic advances, but its insidious tendency to reduce human beings
to mere things is often overlooked. For instance, at the height of the debate
on nuclear deterrence there was much talk of assured destruction, damage limitation,
cost-versus-benefit ratio and other similar terms. Such merciless and grotesque
language derives from the cult of efficiency, which relegates human beings
to the status of things and pursues expediency at the expense of countless
human lives. Politicians and scientists—the elite of the nuclear civilization
and establishment—succumb most easily to the doctrine of efficiency.
This sacrifice to the god of efficiency has cast a shadow over all arms-reduction
talks.
A sternly critical examination of the extent to which so-called progress has actually contributed to human happiness must form a large part of our efforts to pioneer a path of hope in the twenty-first century. My actions are founded on the belief that this is humankind’s great responsibility.
Greed
A third obstacle to peace is rooted in the fundamental motivation of greed
for power. The twentieth century began in midst of vicious power clashes for
domination and colonial expansion among the great powers. In A Geography of
Human Life, Tsune-saburo Makiguchi, the first president of the Soka Gakkai,
described these competing powers as glowering at one another, ready unashamedly
and cruelly to snatch up other people’s land at the slightest opportunity.
Their struggle for dominance spawned not only two world wars but also the
Cold War, which spread the threat of nuclear confrontation over the whole
world.
Owing to the frantic Cold War arms race between Eastern and Western blocs, military might escalated beyond human control. Arms intended to annihilate an enemy menaced the survival of their possessors and drove humanity to the brink of global destruction. Human destiny hung in a perilous balance.
Though Cold War walls have now tumbled, the struggle for supremacy still rages, albeit in a different mode. The drive for global unification through military might has given way to a new struggle for economic domination, under the banner of open markets and free competition where the law of the jungle pervades. In what has been called the “casino” of global capital markets, huge sums of money surpassing the scale of the real economy change hands every day. All this takes place beyond the regulatory reach of national governments and under the slogan of market principles.
Poverty
If the grip of such ingrained greed seems difficult to loosen, a fourth obstacle
is even more primal: need. In many cases, the causes of the devastating conflicts
in various parts of the world are rooted in economic deprivation. The central
issue of the current era is crushing poverty. There can be no peace where
hunger reigns.
We must eradicate hunger and poverty and devote attention to establishing a system of economic welfare for the approximately five hundred million people who suffer from malnutrition today and to the two-thirds of the world’s nations that are impoverished.
Instead of engaging in cutthroat competition, we should strive to create value. In economic terms, this means a transition from a consumer economy—the mad rush for ownership and consumption—to a constructive economy where all human beings can participate in the act of creating lasting worth.
Environmental
Irresponsibility
A fifth obstacle to peace impacts not only human civilizations but all life
on the planet: disregard of the environment. Economic growth and prosperity
brought about by technological advancement have so captured people’s
imaginations that the progress and spread of the civilization of science and
technology has known no limits and no barriers.
But now we find the triumph to be marred, with damage to the earth’s environment inflicted by the side effects of that civilization, telling us that progress may in fact turn out to be our downfall. Air, water and soil pollution, indiscriminate cutting of vast forests, desertification, damage to the earth’s protective ozone layer and the resultant effects of global warming: none of these issues can be simply left to resolve themselves. Today, ecologists are telling us that if radical changes are not made, life as we know it might not survive another century.
It has become clear that the solution to such global issues as environmental destruction will require new approaches that transcend national boundaries. Action to assure the survival of humanity cannot be taken as long as our thinking is bound in the narrow confines of the sovereign state. A way of thinking that is rooted in a truly global outlook is the most pressing need of our times.
Nuclear
Negativity
The final obstacle humankind must contend with is the ultimate embodiment
of human negativity: nuclear weapons. Nuclear security and nuclear equilibrium
are essentially impossible to achieve. Buddhism teaches the oneness of life
and its environment, which means that the subjective world is inseparably
linked to the objective world. Because of this bond, as long as the objective
environment includes the threat of nuclear weapons, humanity can know no peace.
Preparing for Peace
Depending on one’s point of view, these barriers may seem monumental if not eternally immovable. A closer look at the world today, however, will reveal a number of causes for optimism about humankind’s capacity for change: the rise of the “soft power” of knowledge and expertise in place of the “hard power” of military might, political authority and wealth; a growing commitment to nonviolent transfer of power, as witnessed in the forging of the “rainbow nation” of former president Nelson Mandela’s South Africa; the flourishing of “people power,” reflected in the upsurge of an estimated ten thousand non-governmental organizations addressing human rights and safety issues; and the miraculous dissolution of Bolshevism, which from its very birth was marked by violence and terrorism, without a bloody holocaust.
What can we learn from these positive outcomes that can be applied elsewhere to pacify the world’s current clashes and avoid a violent future? We may talk of a third millennium, but the mere change in calendar dates will not bring about a change in the nature of the age. Only human will and action can create history and open new horizons.
Not long ago I met with Austrian Chancellor Franz Vranitzky in Tokyo. He said to me then: “There is an old Latin proverb that goes ‘If you desire peace, prepare for war,’ but in my mind, the saying should be ‘If you desire peace, prepare for peace.’ And that is what guides me in my work.”
But how do we prepare for peace? Which paths will lead us out of our internal wildernesses and allow us to live together happily, the way humanity has always dreamed of?
The first path
is taken alone: Whether we can become good citizens of the world hinges upon
the degree of self-control we can achieve. The ability to see ourselves penetratingly
enables us to transcend national boundaries and ethnic lines.
Self-restraint is a prerequisite of the second stage of the journey: the path
of dialogue. I cannot emphasize enough its importance, because I believe that
the propensity for logic and discussion is the proof of one’s humanity.
In other words, only when we are immersed in an ocean of language do we become
truly human. In Phaedo, Plato astutely associates hatred of language (mislogos)
with hatred of people (misanthropos). To abandon dialogue is in fact to abandon
being human; and if we abandon our humanity, we cease to be the agency of
history, relinquishing this authority to something of a lower order, a kind
of bestiality. We know only too well that history is filled with tragedies
where bestiality, in the name of ideology or dogma, trampled upon humankind
with brutal force and violence.
Dialogue—an open, respectful con-nection among people—will serve people best if they share a common vision free of illusions; without it, the path of dialogue has a shaky foundation. Underlying the fanfare announcing the new age is a deafening, frightening roar, produced as the familiar systems making up our world order are torn down forever. To overcome the identity crises undermining the soul of modern humanity, we must attempt to discover a new sense of community based on a new cosmology.
Unless that cosmology is to remain in the realm of abstract ideas, it must be translated into the fabric of life: To lay the foundations for a lasting peace, we must deinstitutionalize war. We must effect a transition from a culture of war to a culture of peace. It is time to formulate a set of clear, basic principles on which to build a culture of peace. I am confident that if people everywhere engage in sincere dialogue to identify a common basis for belief and action, and if all people join as equal partners to create that culture of peace, we will witness the dawn of an era in which happiness can be enjoyed by everyone.
Culture defines communities, but larger entities are already in place that exert powerful influences on the world: The role of nations, too, must be transformed. However halting our progress toward a world less centered on nation states may be, what is entirely clear is that a world in which states count for less is a world in which individual people will count for more.
As the role and responsibility of individuals shaping history grow, it becomes all the more critical that we each learn to live as creative and active global citizens, recognizing and working to fulfill our respective responsibilities in the new millennium.
Finally, at the convergence of the paths is a process that will not be difficult after the rigors of the journey: total disarmament.
War Normalizes Insanity
As a Buddhist following the philosophy of the thirteenth-century Japanese teacher Nichiren and the example set by Josei Toda, I deeply believe that no individual can experience true happiness or tranquility until we turn humankind away from its obsession with war. War has held humankind in its irrevocable grip throughout history; it is the source of all evil. War normalizes insanity—the kind that does not hesitate to destroy human beings like so many insects and tears all that is human and humane to shreds, producing an unending stream of refugees. It also cruelly damages our natural environment.
We have already paid a heavy price for the lesson that nothing is more tragic and cruel than war. I believe we have as our first priority an obligation to our children to open a clear and reliable path to peace in the twenty-first century.
Excerpted with permission from For the Sake of Peace: Seven Paths to Global Harmony, A Buddhist Perspective, by Daisaku Ikeda (252 pg; 2001, Middleway Press, a division of Soka Gakkai; Santa Monica CA) ISBN 0-9674697-2-4; www.sgi-usa.org.
