ROW Episode 41

In this episode we ask why peace seems so elusive and explore the suggestion that it could simply be that we are misdiagnosing the causes of conflict and also applying ineffectual remedies.

Transcript

Sovaida: 0:08

Hello and welcome to Reimagining Our World, a podcast dedicated to envisioning a better world and to infusing hope that we can make the principled choices to build that world. In this episode, we ask why peace seems so elusive and explore the suggestion that it could simply be that we are misdiagnosing the causes of conflict and also applying ineffectual remedies. Tonight, I propose that we explore a theme, the theme of peace. Why does it appear to be so elusive? We know that our world is in a mess, we don't need to belabor that point, but why after so many centuries of war and conflict does peace seem so elusive? A few months ago, I met a woman who told me that her husband had started suffering from joint pain. He went to a doctor and the doctor diagnosed him as having rheumatoid arthritis and put him on a biologic. As some of you may know, biologics are very strong medications with some pretty severe and serious side effects. Soon this poor gentleman began to deteriorate rapidly and was unable to walk, felt very tired and awful. So eventually they went and sought a second opinion. They went to another rheumatologist who, after a very deliberate examination, said,"I see no evidence that you have rheumatoid arthritis. You've been misdiagnosed." And it turns out that the biologic that had been given to him by the first doctor was based on a misdiagnosis and was causing, as a side effect, some neuropathy and other side effects that were making him unable to move and walk. He was immediately taken off the biologic, and while it arrested further deterioration and development of the neuropathy, he couldn't reverse the damage that had already been done to his nerves. Now, it turns out that a deeper understanding and examination diagnosis of his original condition would have unveiled the fact that indeed, all that had happened was that another medication that he was on for blood pressure was causing him joint pain. And a mere adjustment to that original blood pressure medication would have solved this problem. But this poor man now has to live with partial neuropathy and and a whole series of cascading side effects. As I listened to this lady, it occurred to me to wonder whether we are making the same mistake in our world. That as we try to resolve our challenges in a quest for peace, that we're actually misdiagnosing the problem. And beyond that maybe even if we occasionally diagnose things correctly, the remedies that we're applying are not the proper remedies. That's the theme that I want to explore with you tonight. Are we misdiagnosing the problem? Are we using remedies that either have worked in the past, but no longer work because circumstances have changed and humanity's changed, or applying remedies that never worked in the past, but we're still insanely trying desperately to apply them in the hope that the result will be different, which Einstein described as the definition of insanity, trying the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. Or worse, applying remedies that actually exacerbate the problem and make humanity sicker. Let's look at an example of a typical diagnosis that we've been making. We tell ourselves that we, as peoples, whether we're groups based on race, nationality, ethnicity, religion, whatever group we tend to identify with most closely, we tell ourselves that we as members of that group cannot meet our legitimate needs or fix our particular challenges, or feel safe, except by gaining complete and exclusive control over the destinies of our group. And that we can't trust others, those who are outside these groups. And that we therefore need to look out for ourselves, people, nations, political parties, races, ethnicities first, even if it's at the cost of another group. Now, what's interesting is that when you dig a little deeper, this is a conclusion I've arrived at, and I'd be curious, please do put your comments in either to the YouTube channel or here on Facebook. I believe that the reason we have arrived at this erroneous diagnosis is because of two longstanding weaknesses that we have as a human society. The first weakness is this habit of nationalism, and the second is basically, a crisis of identity. We'll explore these a little further, but both of these root causes are grounded essentially and are spawned by deep rooted prejudices that are corrosive to the fabric of society. Let's start with the idea of a fragmented sense of identity. We seem as a human race to be in the grips of what some have called a crisis of identity that stems from prejudices, racial prejudices, prejudices based on sex, religion, education, class, wealth, ethnicity, nationality. And all of these prejudices are really corrosive poisons that are eating away at the fabric of our society. What they do is they lead to a splintering of us into divergent interest groups, which in turn weaken further our society. We need to overcome this crisis of identity and figure out who we are. For without it, we seem to fall into these endless permutations of us and them. The weakness of nationalism comes about because we feel like we have to go things alone, we have to be self dependent, and in fact we can't trust anyone else. And we will do whatever we can to guarantee our well being, particularly as a nation, even if it's at the expense of other nations. Now, the consequence of the, this old diagnosis that is rooted in nationalism and a crisis of identity is that we have come up with a solution, a remedy that we have been following for a very long time. Unfortunately, that remedy is very destructive, and that remedy is that of fragmentation. This is how the story goes: we tend to break up into smaller and smaller groupings, thinking if we just hunker down into our little groupings, if I just have my own nation or my own territory for my race or ethnicity, or if all the members of my religion could congregate somewhere, we could just look out for ourselves and let the rest of the world take care of themselves. The question that I would pose is, Let's look at those who've done this sort of thing and ask ourselves how well has it worked? Because if a remedy has been tried, especially repeatedly, we want to see whether the remedy has actually been effective or not. Here are some suggestions for questions to ask ourselves. Let's look at the country of South Sudan, which broke off from Sudan itself. The question is, after a number of years of having achieved independence and fragmented the original nation, so now we have two nations, are the people of South Sudan actually now happy? Are they free of conflict? Are they better off economically and otherwise? Reports this year, 2023, indicate that two thirds of the population, in other words, 7. 7 million people, will face severe food insecurity and the worst hunger crisis the country has ever faced. In that sense, in terms of food security, they're worse off than they have ever been in the past. This food insecurity has two main drivers. One is ongoing conflict, so conflict is not ended. And this conflict is ethnic based, so it's this crisis of identity that has spurred it and has led to the displacement of large numbers of people who live in displacement camps. The other factor of the food insecurity is climate change that buffets these poor folks between droughts that stop them from eating food and floods that flood their fields and destroy their crops and their harvests. So it would seem from all the reports that, despite this quest to take control of their own destiny by splitting off and splintering off from Sudan, the South Sudanese are not any better, in fact are in worse condition than they were before. Let me look at another country. Let's look at Eritrea, which is an African country that broke off from Ethiopia. It started as a self determination movement to free the Eritreans from initially colonial rule and then the rule of Ethiopia as a sovereignty. And yet the Center for Strategic and International Studies now reports that in Eritrea there is a complete closure of political space. There's economic decline, international sanctions, and isolation. And it now ranks near the bottom of the global assessments regarding human rights, religious freedoms, a free media and democracy. So apparently if these reports are to be believed--and I have no reason to doubt them-- Eritrea is not faring very well, despite, again, an attempt to take control over its own destiny. Let's go to Europe and look at Brexit, this painful separation and divorce of the United Kingdom from the EU. All reports indicate that Britain has not only not fared better, which was the promise of Brexit, but is now worse off. It has the lowest growth rate of the G7 countries and the IMF, the International Monetary Fund, forecasts that it will be the only G7 economy to shrink this year in 2023. Consumer prices are inordinately high, trade has suffered a tremendous blow, and business investment, on which they relied so heavily, is 31 percent lower than pre referendum levels. Remember, the referendum to leave the EU happened in 2016. So by all indications, Britain is faring a lot worse, having left the European Union, having fragmented and withdrawn itself. Despite the fact that this particular remedy of fragmentation, in response to the diagnosis, that I termed a misdiagnosis, appears not to have delivered the well being and security that people seek, we continue to see others clamoring for it. So in Spain, we have the Catalans who've been agitating to separate. Folks in the north of Italy have been agitating to separate from the rest of Italy, and we've got these movements in many parts of the world. Sometimes I think if we take it to its logical conclusion, human beings are very adept at finding smaller and smaller groupings with which they identify in order to make themselves feel better or in this mistaken belief that they can improve their lot, they think we will become the elites and we'll just take care of ourselves and to hell with the rest of the world. And the logical conclusion is that we will try to reverse this trend that we've been on for hundreds of years, which is ever widening circles of integration, moving from loyalty to family, to clan, to city state, to nation, and now really to the world is the next logical step. The other key point to note here about why fragmentation does not work as a remedy is that It ignores the reality of the world we live in, a reality that says that we have become so interconnected and interdependent as peoples and nations that we've become like a single human body. And we're sticking our heads in the sand wanting to ignore it. I mean, a truth is a truth. We can't help ourselves. And beyond that, most of our most dire problems, in fact, our existential problems like climate change and the threat of nuclear war, are harder to resolve when we splinter apart. We actually need collective solutions to these collective problems. Here's the question. What if we were to attempt a fresh diagnosis of what's actually going on? So the fresh diagnosis is exactly what I alluded to and mentioned a second ago, we live in a world in which we're inextricably linked and interconnected. And the best way for any peoples, grouping, nations to guarantee their well being and their security and to ensure that this organ of the body is in peak health is to ensure that the entire body is in peak health. We have to think about the good of the collective whole. And by doing that, we will ensure the good of the parts. In order to do that, we need to deepen our unity and behave in accordance with, adjust ourselves to the reality that we are one. We can no longer go it alone as nations. We all heavily rely on each other. The problem is not that we need to be more autonomous or more independent of each other, but rather that we need to learn to exercise our muscles of collaboration, have more cooperation, and dare I say it, have deeper integration. Evidences of this truth that we are one is all around us. The war in Ukraine, and we've covered this in previous episodes, has shown us that even though this was technically a regional conflict, it has spawned global crises. A global food crisis, a global energy crisis, global inflation crisis, and has increased the danger of nuclear war to the highest it's been since 1962. Unfortunately, people in our world are not talking about this. It is one of those threats that looms over our heads, and God forbid, if we were to unwittingly and out of ignorance slip into a nuclear war, humanity would be devastated. And when you see that happens in conjunction with climate change, it really doesn't bear thinking about. It's an absolute disaster. We are interconnected in so many ways. I saw a report a couple of days ago. It says the United States has just realized, as it's trying to rely increasingly on nuclear fuel as a transitional fuel to get itself out of the use of fossil fuels and as it transitions to green energy, it recognizes that 20 percent of its nuclear fuel to fuel its nuclear submarines and so on, comes from ultimately Russia, in indirect ways, but the source is Russia. And that now it is seeking to establish independence. What are all nations going to do? Is every nation going to grow its own crops, manufacture everything it needs, have its own minerals for all the things it needs, including making batteries and electric vehicles? We don't all have access to mines of lithium and copper and so on. It's just untenable. I was reading another article today that said that Israeli farmers don't know what to do. They're in tears because they rely so much on foreign workers to work on their farms. There were 30,000 workers who came from Thailand who had been working in Israel before this last war broke out on October 7th and 9,000 folks from Gaza. So 39,000 people are missing. And most of their folks are reservists and are now fighting on various fronts. So the farmers say, what are we going to do? We're not going to be able to sustain these farms. Really understanding the interconnection between human beings at all levels is something that keeps hitting us in the face, and we need to actually accept it. Now, we do need to acknowledge something. We have tried over the course of the last century to attempt to come up with solutions, institutional solutions particularly, that integrate humanity further so that it can tackle its global challenges. Each of these attempts has taken us one step forward in the direction of attaining peace in the world. That's really been the overarching goal, but we have failed to take the ultimate steps, the decisive steps to achieve a lasting peace. When we look at these three attempts, we'll see a pattern. Each has been marked by a crisis that has gotten so bad that it has then spawned a constructive reaction. We have the First World War at the beginning of the 20th century that was basically the First World War that we all suffered. And it brought about so much suffering, death, and destruction, and we created this institution called the League of Nations. The idea being that it would ensure that this kind of war never broke out again. Clearly, the League had many weaknesses. I'm not going to get into them, but we can have a conversation about what those were that then led to a Second World War, which was even worse than the first. Again, after the Second World War we created the United Nations, a second attempt at creating a global institution with a mandate to, amongst other things, maintain and restore peace in the world. And we also built international economic institutions, and we made tremendous strides in the field of human rights and the development of international law. Then we came to the Cold War, the third crisis that resulted as a result of the hostility, entrenched hostility between two blocs. After the Cold War ended, we thought there was a spirit of cooperation, collaboration, an intention for nations to work together, resulting ultimately in the Millennium Summit with a thousand civil society members gathered in New York City and a commitment to the Millennium Development Goals. And yet, despite all those efforts, we've now been backsliding. So this road towards peace has been very uneven. Four steps forward, three steps back. It's been very painful. Although there is an overarching trend towards peace, frankly, right now, it's not surprising that most people can't see it. But we've stopped short of total integration at every turn. So here we are now, in absolute crisis around the world, with all these conflicts breaking out, with climate change, with all these global challenges. It's clear that we now have a window, a fourth window of opportunity. Because these challenges are increasing in number, frequency, and intensity, which are despite the intense suffering that they're causing, which are really unfortunate and have come about only as a result of poor choices that we've made, they do also have the side effect of stirring our conscience, causing us to be disillusioned on a large scale and therefore demanding a radical reconceptualization in how society is structured. We see this in all the protests, starting with the Black Lives Movement protests that spread around the world. Now we see protests for peace and some people of goodwill trying to get their leaders to figure out ways in which we can establish a long term peace for everybody. The three attempts have taught us some lessons, but it's time now for a new remedy. And so we offered the new diagnosis, and now here's the new remedy that I want to propose here. And this is really the crux, one of the two cruxes of today's podcast. It is now time to take the leap and choose to apply the principles of federalism that underlie some nations' systems of government, like Switzerland, Germany, and the United States, and apply them at the global level. What do I mean by this? Imagine if all independent nations and groups were to come together by common consent and integrate and unite to form a central global government whose authority is strictly limited to addressing common and collective problems that cannot be solved except by the generality of the nations of the world. And that also has the capacity to pass international laws that are binding on all nations. Meanwhile, nation states would continue to exist, and in fact, they would retain most of their powers. They would continue to shoulder responsibility for addressing all the problems closer to home, with which they have most familiarity. Indeed, they serve a critical function as distinct, identifiable entities responsible for the welfare and protection of their people and accountable to them and to the international community for any failure to discharge that responsibility. Now, the kinds of problems that one envisions that this global, central government would be responsible for are things like how to reduce global warming, how to mitigate the effects of climate change, how to stem once and for all the proliferation of nuclear weapons. These are things that no one nation or group of nations can do alone. Everybody has to act together. How to oversee the destruction of these weapons of mass destruction. How to manage critical global resources like energy resources, critical minerals that all nations need, water and food to ensure their equitable distribution. Everything else would remain in the hands of national governments or states or local councils as appropriate. Now, it's also important for nation states to exercise power in most domains to avoid the dangers of excessive centralization while also encouraging and maintaining diversity within the context of a unified federation of states. The federation would have a legislature elected by all the peoples of the world, so it would have a democratic legitimacy, an executive, a standing force, which we'll talk about probably a little more next time. And one of the huge side benefits of taking this step towards a unified federal system, is that in areas where people have been fighting over land for centuries, it will no longer matter in whose hands this land is, because they will know that their voices are all represented in the central government, that they will have a say, that they will be dealt with in accordance with global rules that are applied in accordance with a set of global ethics that include the principle of fairness and justice that have all been agreed to in advance, including by them. And they trust that these rules will be applied even handedly. So imagine what the world would be like if Ukraine and Russia, and Israel and Palestinian territories become units of a world federal system. After the Second World War, Chancellor Adenauer of Germany famously said, that after centuries of fighting between the Germans and the French over pieces of land between France and Germany that were rich in coal, particularly the Saar lands, S A R they had fought numerous wars over this. He said, now we don't care in whose hands this piece of land is, because we know the coal that's extracted is in the hands of a supranational institution, the European Coal and Steel Community, that is ensuring or will ensure equitable distribution and access to this at reasonable prices to all of us. And indeed, that's what happened. That problem that had been such a trigger for conflict for so many years, and the Germans and the French used to talk about each other in their literature as, We hate each other> we drink the hate of each other with our mother's milk. We will never be at peace with each other." And yet, practically overnight, all of that disappeared once a system was put in place. So the only answer to the destabilizing forces that threaten the world is the creation of a global order that unifies nations with the assent of all of humanity. We need to make this leap into maturity from this period of turbulent adolescence that we're in as the world community. Fortunately, we know how to do this. We have examples. We can look at the histories of the United States and how it became a federation, and Germany and Switzerland and glean lessons: what worked, what didn't work. And take these principles of federalism,--please don't mistake me, I don't mean looking at the governments of the United States, Germany and or Switzerland, because they're all severely flawed-- but the principles of federalism that underpin them, that's what we need to do. The famous 20th century historian Arnold Toynbee predicted that we would do this as a human race when faced with an existential threat. I would submit that we are already there now and it's time to break this old habit of not wanting to unify into a global unified federation. Even The Economist magazine in 2011 put out an article with an image of a pole with a sign going in two directions--and this was for the EU-- that It would either self destruct or it had to move towards a super state, an EU super state. But then the folks who wrote the article railed against it and said, surely there's another way. There isn't, and we're paying the price, and the EU's paying the price for not having deepened its integration, taken the next step. However, this next step is not possible without the unreserved acceptance of the oneness of humanity. It has to be the starting point for all leaders and nations for reordering the world. It is only then that all nations will be willing to subordinate their lesser loyalties to the best interests of a unified humanity, just as the members of the European Coal and Steel Community were willing to do. An allied principle that must also be applied is the principle of justice or equitable dealing with people. Justice is really the only basis for peace and the permanent foundation, the only viable permanent foundation for peace. These two principles of oneness and justice need to be made the operational and dominating principles of international lives or else we will continue to breed lives of resentment and despair with catastrophic results. We are already seeing evidence of this in the clamor of human beings around the world for peace and justice, whether we saw it in Hong Kong or Myanmar or in Sudan, in countries around the world with respect to the Middle East, with respect to anti Black institutional racism, and on and on. These are just examples, smatterings of examples. Enough is enough. Now, we need to not just approach things from an institutional level and create mechanisms that are grounded in ethical principles like the oneness of nations and peoples and justice, but we also need to approach it from the individual level. We need to also deal with the fragmented identity crisis, right? The only answer to that is for us to create as human beings and embrace a vision of our shared identity and common purpose. This is absolutely key. Without it, we fall into these competing ideologies and power struggles that are just mental constructs. They're just literally figments of our imaginations. Without such a vision, the rival conceptions and primacy of a particular people are peddled to the exclusion of the trust that humanity is on a common journey in which all are protagonists. We are all going the same place. We all want the same things. We're all animated by the same spirit. We are all human. We have the same fears. We have the same desires. We're all created noble and dignified and deserve lives of dignity. Until we realize this we're not going to live in the kind of peaceful world we want. I want to end this presentation with a quote that I usually turn to when I want to elevate my own heart and spirit and my thinking, because with all the news around us, it's very easy to sink into despair or anger, and those are negative sentiments that we have to avoid at all costs because they paralyze us and they blind us to being able to elevate ourselves and see our interconnectedness and our humanity and to come up with solutions that are actually viable and constructive as opposed to destructive. This is from a larger quote from one of the greatest peacemakers of the 20th century, Abbas Efendi, and here's what he said,"I want you to look at every human being and say to yourself, you are a letter from my beloved and I must love you because of the beloved who wrote you. The letter may be torn, it may be blurred, but because the beloved wrote the letter, You must love it." If that's not uplifting and elevating, I don't know what is. If we could only just see the humanity in each other. If you are interested in further information, particularly about the institutional mechanisms and ethical principles to take us to the next step in achieving peace, I would commend to you this book Building a World Federation, The Key to Resolving our Global Crises, that you can get either in digital form or In paperback on Amazon, wherever you are in the world. This is what it looks like, and it's small. So it's easy and quick to read. And if you like it, please share it with others because I've had good feedback. People find it inspiring and say that it contains tangible solutions that people can understand, and it's particularly popular amongst the younger folks. If you teach any classes, please feel free to use it or share it with friends and neighbors. If there are comments, again, please feel to stick them in the comments at the bottom of the YouTube channel. I look forward to seeing you very soon. Take care. Bye bye. That's all for this episode of Reimagining Our World. I'll see you back here next month. If you liked this episode, please help us to get the word out by rating us and subscribing to the program on your favorite podcast platform. This series is also available in video on the YouTube channel of the Center for Peace and Global Governance, CPGG.