Perhaps even in the heat of battle knowing what you are fighting for and why is essential. Can you take a moment from the daily, hourly war to have a look at the long view?
If so, read on.
If not, I understand.
The fundamental disagreement between progressives and conservatives goes back as far as history has been recorded. These two sides represent two different human personalty types with two completely different views of reality.
I believe that any healthy society needs both. The complete dominance of either will lead to ruin. Two much change too quickly and the culture is wrecked. Too little change and the culture dies more slowly but absolutely surely.
But that's where we are headed. At this point, each side considers the other so immoral, so evil, that complete domination is the explicit goal.
I had hoped, I have hoped all my life, for people to be able to come together and work out a compromise so we could move forward into the inevitable future without destroying ourselves in the process.
The genius of America has always been compromise. Everyone gets some of what they want and foregoes some. We tolerate each other. Whenever that has failed (and it has) the result has been a disaster.
But that's where we are headed. Each side blames the other for it.
I have this naive hope that understanding -- or a better word might be comprehension -- can lead to communication, which can heal wounds.
But no one wants to listen.
I talk anyway.
After much thought, I believe the crux of the current war is the concept of hierarchy -- the idea that some humans should or must dominate and control others.
I think all my progressive friends see the idea of hierarchy as one of the great evils of humanity that has held us down and perverted us, and the sooner it's dismantled and replaced by the concept of equality the sooner we will see true peace, justice and freedom in the world.
I think all my conservative friends see this ideal as naive and dangerous bunk. They have never questioned that hierarchy is fundamental and inseparable from human nature and the nature of the universe itself. And that the only decision that you can make about hierarchy isn't whether it should exist or not (it always will) but what place in that hierarchy you and the people you care about occupy on it. Are you dominant or are you dominated is the only choice you get to make.
When a giant wall is proposed, conservatives cheer and progressives are appalled. So you see why now? The wall is more a symbol than an actual physical thing. Are we going to protect our culture from the threats of other inferior cultures, or are we going to surrender and become another third-world country?
Progressives respond that is the exact kind of madness that has held humanity in a cycle of hate and destruction for millennia and if we don't break out of it now we are condemning our children to a world of perpetual war and hatred and destruction when the alternative is peace and freedom.
Conservatives snort and say that's crap. It's always been us versus them and it always will be whether you bleeding hearts like it or not and your naive weakness will lead to our downfall. The world is full of enemies who hate us. Power is essential and is the top priority because weakness will lead to our enslavement.
This all comes down to a fundamental difference in personality and worldview.
I know, because at different points of my life I have held both views. When I was younger I was conservative; and I and those with me absolutely believed what I have written here about the conservative world view. I never believed liberals were evil, I believed they just didn't understand the real world.
But as I have become more conscious, and dropped the idea that whatever I was told is true and instead thought things through from an independent perspective, I have changed my mind about 180 degrees.
I don't dispute that human history supports the conservative view. Because it is a product of that view! The assumption that everyone is out to get you and only power and domination of others can keep you safe will lead to exactly that result because you become the threat that others are reacting against, and vice versa. An endless cycle of hate and destruction. What we have seen for thousands of years.
But the question is, is it inevitable?
I no longer believe so. Because I have perceived that the vast, vast majority of humanity are followers. Their goal is to fit in, to follow a leader, and to keep themselves and their families safe. That's all, really. Every nationality, every race, each gender, almost everyone feels this way.
But there are some among us who are restless for power. And it's the nature of things that a select few of particularly driven ones of these push their way to the top and become the leaders that the vast majority follow.
And that, sadly, very few of these self-appointed leaders have the interests of anyone but themselves and their own pack of cronies at heart, however they pretend otherwise.
And their restless search for more of everything leads to the very endless cycle of hate and destruction that’s been the record of history and that we see now.
If leaders would lead their people to peace, there would be peace. I don't believe the vast majority of humanity wants war and destruction and endless competition and dominance of one group over another. They just want to be safe and have their needs met.
But contentment is against the very nature of the kind of people that push their way to the top of societies, whether those are democratic or not. They are always needing more status, more power, more money, more land, more everything.
And therefore they convince their followers, who only want to be safe, that the only road to safety is more status, more power, more money, more land, more everything. And that everyone else is just as greedy as they are. And that therefore war is inevitable; the only question is who wins.
Can this cycle be broken?
I don't know, but I hope and believe it can.
But regardless I absolutely believe that if it's not, the power of our technology wedded to the ancient way of struggle will destroy us all.
We no longer have the option of clinging to the old ways of looking at things and survive as a planet. There are too many people, the planet earth has not gotten any larger; and our technology, which did not exist 200 years ago, gives us both the power to end want and poverty, and the power to destroy everything and every one.
It's our choice and we make it no matter what we do. Let's make it consciously.