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PEACE,
BY ARTHUR HONEYMAN
By nature and disposition, I am anything but a pacifist.
I am strongwilled, assertive and otherwise stubborn. It has been
in recognition of my less than peaceful character that I have
consistently expressed doubt about the viability of global peace
even though I have long protested all national buildup, aggres
sion (especially invasion) and strongarm tactics on the part of
the United States and other powers in the industrialized world.
It was this skepticism on my part that led me to writing articles
in which I expressed a bleak view of globally oriented peace
endeavors as being totally unrealistic. I suggested in those
articles that war is inevitable and that the peace movement
would do far better to advocate tribalism instead of global under
standing. Let small tribes fight among themselves. They would
be too small to destroy the planet I know now that I was wrong.
As of late I have been undergoing a somewhat dramatic
transformation in my attitude about the possibilities of attaining
eventual peace on earth (where else?). Although I remain an
atheist bowed in awe at the vast wonders of all existence, it
occurs to me that this transformation is not unlike the alleged
religious conversion of Saul which compelled him to take on the
responsibility of doing some little thing for humanity. As if I am
being sucked into a vacuum, I am willingly making an all-out
commitment to the promotion of world peace In short, I am
suddenly a fanatic
The Judeo/Christian culture in which the heritages of
George Bush, Saddam Hussein (for Islam is as Judeo/Christian
as Christianity and Judaism), myself and hundreds of millions —
if not billions — of citizens the world over are mutually ingrained
with the labyrinthine notion that war is inevitable because of the
cultural emphasis placed on the individual’s value as opposed
to the value of the whole (which includes the environment and
extends infinitely into realms beyond our fathoming). This has
been a boon to humanity in countless ways, but it has also
become a curse While individuals have explored through
human-made science avenues dimensions and technologies
which have saved and enhanced lives immeasurably (not the
least of which is mine), this same science has also destroyed
much of our instinctive awareness of our life source and our
relationship to it. The messiah and the laboratory mice have
stolen into the night, taking with them our commonality with the
universe.
I am not a theologian or a philosopher, only a dabbler in
soul searching and thought exploration. But if I recall and under
stand correctly from my academic probes into both philosophical
and religious realms of cosmic (causemic?) exploration, the
Hebrew concept “Yahweh" is/was actually an admittedly feeble
attempt to express (rather than explain/explicate) an experience
of awareness of not solely the unknown but our awesome
relationship with all that exists as well. Unfortunately, the very
expression of the thought effectively isolated the concept, put
walls around it, and eventually transformed the hitherto unutter
able Yahweh into Jehovah the discernible god of Israel. So
much for the value of intrinsic good in the power of linguistic
expression and/or the written word. More accurately, it is not the
Judeo/Christian-Greco/Roman culture I am talking about; rather
it is ironically the very hybridness of that culture that has erected
walls of division between acquired/learned knowledge and
experienced/instinctive awareness of what I consider the
umbilical connection to the life source and all of existence.
In an era when knowledge of the cosmos is expanding
with incredible rapidity, we appear to be no closer to unraveling
the secrets of the universe than we were thousands of years
ago. Likewise, in an era when technology makes it possible to
communicate with each other from the opposite side of the
globe merely by pushing the right buttons before transmitting
or internetting our words and voices anywhere on the planet
virtually instantaneously, the same technology and all its power
is revealed to us in chaos and obliteration — which metaphors
apocalyptic visions of a self-proclaimed messiah “whose father
art in heaven." This is the same heaven where Christians, Jews
and Moslems expect to “dwell in the house of the Lord” after the
annihilation which the Good Book' predicted three millennia
ago Perhaps it is such beliefs — the notion that the faithful
and anointed are destined to eternal paradise after life — that
induces people to be oblivious to their relationship with their
“brethren" around the world; but I am inclined to believe that
the opposite is the case — that the act of losing touch with the
fundamental relationship with all existence induces these lonely
individuals to seek solace in imaginary extra-celestial paradise.
But whichever is the case, the result seems that human
ity is determined to annihilate everything that stands in the way
of its supremacy even though it would mean self-destruction.
Humanity virtually puts this goal into words every time someone
espouses the belief war is inevitable
But, lest it be suggested I have naively forgotten that
wars have been on every continent since the dawn of human
existence and that no civilization, culture, nation or religion is
not guilty of engaging in and/or somehow promoting war at
some point in history, this factor looms inescapably evident
in my anamnesis. The gods of Buddhists, Hindus, Pagans,
Pantheists, Shintoists, Taoists, etc., have long accompanied
fierce warriors into battle and on to conquest and often brutal
oppression. History also shows us that more civilized nations
are sometimes more cruelly repressive than primitive ones.
But I believe I am not alone in my observation that even the
unconscionable assault on Pearl Harbor was not nearly as
devastating or inhumane as the atom bombings of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki.
Although it my seem so, my purpose here is not to
accuse or condemn. Rather, I am attempting to make and
substantiate the argument that sophisticated civilization and its
technology along with its zealous monotheism has inadvertently
divorced itself from the core of existence in an effort to achieve
political, social and spiritual supremacy. It so happens that the
West achieved modern technological superiority prior to the
East (which at that time was at peace and committed to cultural
isolation); scientific 18th century Westerners along with their
monogod (which oddly was also a trigod) were restless and
somewhat perplexed and resentful of the notion that the path
to peace and nirvana is through accepting one’s relationship
with the forces of nature.
And so I conjecture that Judeo/Christian-Greco/Roman
culture and its quest for the conquest of nature has resulted in
near-total disregard for the phenomenon of existence and all
its variations. For example, when Europeans arrived in North
America in the colonial era of the 17th and early 18th centuries,
they may have been initially enchanted with what they perceived
as the Garden of Eden innocence of the natives and their
harmonious relationship with their natural surroundings — their
manifest acceptance of harsh conditions as well as deeply
appreciative reverence for the bounty of the land, a reverence
so profound and personal they sought to waste nothing and to
immediately replace that which they borrowed from the earth.
Unlike the 10th and/or 11th century Viking colonists
whose pagan beliefs may have been fierce and uncompromising
but were also inescapably interrelated with the forces of nature
in a personal and immediate sense, these Christian Europeans
and byproducts of classical science had progressed so far
from the Book of Genesis that they forgot its message about
innocence and temptation. Armed with the ideals and powers of
religious zeal and the knowledge and skills of classical analysis,
these refugees from tyranny and persecution fervently blinded
themselves to the accommodating lands on this continent, its
warm native societies and their favorable relationship with their
environment Instead, what the European newcomers saw was
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