|
|
A World Out of Touch With Itself
Where the Violence Comes From
Rabbi Michael Lerner, Editor TIKKUN Magazine
09.12.2001
There is never any justification for acts of terror against
innocent civilians; it is the quintessential act of dehumanization and
not recognizing the sanctity of others, and a visible symbol of a
world increasingly irrational and out of control. It's understandable
why many of us, after grieving and consoling the mourners, will feel
anger and while some demagogues in Congress have already sought to
manipulate that feeling into a growing militarism (more spies,
legalize assassinations of foreign leaders, increase the defense
budget at the expense of domestic programs), the more "responsible"
leaders are seeking to narrow America's response to targeted attacks
on countries that allegedly harbor the terrorists.
But though the perpetrators deserve to be punished, in some ways
this narrow focus allows us to avoid dealing with the underlying
issues. When violence becomes so prevalent throughout the planet, it's
too easy to simply talk of "deranged minds." We need to ask ourselves,
"What is it in the way that we are living, organizing our societies,
and treating each other that makes violence seem plausible to so many
people?" We in the spiritual world will see this as a growing global
incapacity to recognize the spirit of God in each other what we call
the sanctity of each human being. But even if you reject religious
language, you can see that the willingness of people to hurt each
other to advance their own interests has become a global problem, and
it's only the dramatic level of this particular attack which
distinguishes it from the violence and insensitivity to each other
that is part of our daily lives.
We may tell ourselves that the current violence has "nothing to do"
with the way that we've learned to close our ears when told that one
out of every three people on this planet does not have enough food,
and that one billion are literally starving. We may reassure ourselves
that the hoarding of the world's resources by the richest society in
world history, and our frantic attempts to accelerate globalization
with its attendant inequalities of wealth, has nothing to do with the
resentment that others feel toward us. We may tell ourselves that the
suffering of refugees and the oppressed have nothing to do with us
that that's a different story that is going on somewhere else. But we
live in one world, increasingly interconnected with everyone, and the
forces that lead people to feel outrage, anger, and desperation
eventually impact on our own daily lives. The same inability to feel
the pain of others is the pathology that shapes the minds of these
terrorists. Raise children in circumstances where no one is there to
take care of them, or where they must live by begging or selling their
bodies in prostitution, put them in refugee camps and tell them that
that they have "no right of return" to their homes, treat them as
though they are less valuable and deserving of respect because they
are part of some despised national or ethnic group, surround them with
a media that extols the rich and makes everyone who is not
economically successful and physically trim and conventionally
"beautiful" feel bad about themselves, offer them jobs whose sole goal
is to enrich the "bottom line" of someone else, and teach them that
"looking out for number one" is the only thing anyone "really" cares
about and that any who believe in love and social justice are merely
naive idealists who are destined to always remain powerless, and you
will produce a world-wide population of people feeling depressed,
angry, unable to care about others, and in various ways dysfunctional.
Luckily most people don't act out in violent ways they tend to act out
more against themselves, drowning themselves in alcohol or drugs or
personal despair. Others turn toward fundamentalist religions or
ultra-nationalist extremism. Still others find themselves acting out
against people that they love, acting angry or hurtful toward children
or relationship partners.
Most Americans will feel puzzled by any reference to this "larger
picture." It seems baffling to imagine that somehow we are part of a
world system which is slowly destroying the life support system of the
planet, and quickly transferring the wealth of the world into our own
pockets. We don't feel personally responsible when an American
corporation runs a sweat shop in the Philippines or crushes efforts of
workers to organize in Singapore. We don't see ourselves implicated
when the U.S. refuses to consider the plight of Palestinian refugees
or uses the excuse of fighting drugs to support repression in Colombia
or other parts of Central America. We don't even see the symbolism
when terrorists attack America's military center and our trade center
we talk of them as buildings, though others see them as centers of the
forces that are causing the world so much pain. We have narrowed our
own attention to "getting through" or "doing well" in our own personal
lives, and who has time to focus on all the rest of this? Most of us
are leading perfectly reasonable lives within the options that we have
available to us so why should others be angry at us, much less strike
out against us? And the truth is, our anger is also understandable:
the striking out by others in acts of terror against us is just as
irrational as the world-system that it seeks to confront.
Yet our acts of counter-terror will also be counter-productive. We
should have learned from the current phase of the Israel-Palestinian
struggle, responding to terror with more violence, rather than asking
ourselves what we could do to change the conditions that generated it
in the first place, will only ensure more violence against us in the
future. This is a world out of touch with itself, filled with people
who have forgotten how to recognize and respond to the sacred in each
other because we are so used to looking at others from the standpoint
of what they can do for us, how we can use them toward our own ends.
The alternatives are stark: either start caring about the fate of
everyone on this planet or be prepared for a slippery slope toward
violence that will eventually dominate our daily lives. We should pray
for the victims and the families of those who have been hurt or
murdered in these crazy acts. We should also pray that America does
not return to "business as usual," but rather turns to a period of
reflection, coming back into touch with our common humanity, asking
ourselves how our institutions can best embody our highest values. We
may need a global day of atonement and repentance dedicated to finding
a way to turn the direction of our society at every level, a return to
the notion that every human life is sacred, that "the bottom line"
should be the creation of a world of love and caring, and that the
best way to prevent these kinds of acts is not to turn ourselves into
a police state, but turn ourselves into a society in which social
justice, love, and compassion are so prevalent that violence becomes
only a distant memory.
Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of TIKKUN Magazine
and rabbi of Beyt Tikkun Synagogue in San Francisco. He is the author
of Spirit Matters: Global Healing and the Wisdom of the Soul and most
recently (Sept 2001) editor: Best Contemporary Jewish Writing
Back to top
|
|
