Healing Our World:
The Other Piece of the Puzzle
Healing Our World:The Other Piece of the Puzzle
The Other Piece of the Puzzle
Humankind is poised on the brink of an evolutionary leap. In the last few decades, we have become increasingly aware of the source of our inner peace and enrichment. Depending on our personal background, we express this great discovery differently. The practical, down-to-earth individuals among us "take responsibility for our lives" as described in Wayne W. Dyer's Your Erroneous Zones. Those of us with a metaphysical outlook "create our own reality" as Shirley MacLaine did in Out on a Limb. The spiritual among us know that "the kingdom of God is within" and follow The Road Less Traveled (M. Scott Peck). Sometimes we simply "find ourselves" through the power of love as Richard Bach did in The Bridge Across Forever. Ultimately, our inner harmony and abundance depend on how we react to our outer world. The creation of peace and plenty in our outer world, however, frequently seems hopelessly beyond our control. In the past century, we've supported widespread social reform. Nevertheless, people are still starving in a world capable of feeding all. In our own country, homelessness and poverty are on the rise. Violence is no longer limited to overseas wars: our streets, even our schools, are no longer safe. The environment that nurtures us is ravaged and raped. When we acknowledge how our reactions contribute to our inner state, we gain control. Our helplessness dissolves when we stop blaming others for feelings we create. In our outer world, the same rules apply. Today, as a society, as a nation, as a collective consciousness, "we" once again feel helpless, blaming selfish others for the world's woes. Our nation's laws, reflecting a composite of our individual beliefs, attempt to control selfish others at gunpoint, if necessary. Striving for a better world by focusing on others instead of ourselves totally misses the mark. When others resist the choices we have made for them, conflicts escalate and voraciously consume resources. A warring world is a poor one. Attempting to control others, even for their own good, has other undesirable effects. People who are able to create intimacy in their personal relationships know that you can't hurry love. Trying to control or manipulate those close to us creates resentment and anger. Attempting to control others in our city, state, nation, and world is just as destructive to the universal love we want the world to manifest. Forcing people to be more "unselfish" creates animosity instead of good will. Trying to control selfish others is a cure worse than the disease. We reap as we sow. In trying to control others, we find ourselves controlled. We point fingers at the dictators, the Communists, the politicians, and the international cartels. We are blithely unaware that our desire to control selfish others creates and sustains them. Like a stone thrown in a quiet pond, our desire to control our neighbors ripples outward, affecting the political course of our community, state, nation, and world. Yet we know not what we do. We attempt to bend our neighbors to our will, sincere in our belief that we are benevolently protecting the world from their folly and short-sightedness. We seek control to create peace and prosperity, not realizing that this is the very means by which war and poverty are propagated. In fighting for our dream without awareness, we become the instruments of its destruction. If we could only see the pattern! In seeking to control others, we behave as we once did as children, exchanging our dime for five pennies, all the while believing that we were enriching ourselves. When a concerned adult tried to enlighten us, we first refused to believe the truth. Once awareness dawned, we could no longer be fooled, nor was laborious deliberation necessary for every transaction. Once we understood how to count money, we automatically knew if we benefited from such a trade. Similarly, when the fact and folly of controlling others first come to our attention, we're surprised and full of denial. I certainly was! When we care about the state of our world, however, we don't stop there. I trust you are concerned enough to persevere and to consider seriously the shift in consciousness this book proposes. Once we have the courage to accept responsibility for our part of the problem, we automatically become part of the solution, independent of what others do. We honor their non-aggressive choices (even if they are self-ish) and stop trying to control them. In doing so, we dismantle their most effective means of controlling us. Others only ignite the flames of war and poverty. We feed the flames or starve them. Not understanding their nature, we've fanned the sparks instead of smothering them. Not understanding our contribution to the raging inferno, we despair that a world full of selfish others could ever experience universal har-mony and abundance. Nothing could be further from the truth! Widespread peace and plenty can be created within our lifetime. When we understand how to stop fueling the flames of war and poverty, we can manifest our dream. |
The essential psychological requirement of a free society is the willingness on the part of the individual to accept responsibility for his life. - Edith Packer, clinical psychologist
...collectively held unconscious beliefs shape the world's institutions, and are at the root of institutionalized oppression and inequity....By deliberately changing the internal image of reality, people can change the world. - Willis Harman, PATHS TO PEACE
...whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. - THE HOLY BIBLE, Galatians 6:7
We are each one of us responsible for every war because of the aggressiveness of our own lives... And only when we realize... that you and I are responsible... for all the misery throughout the entire world, because we have contributed to it in our daily lives... only then will we act. - J. Krishnamurti, FREEDOM FROM THE KNOWN
The truth will set you free-but first it will make you damn mad... - M. Scott Peck, author of THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED
We are not liberated until we liberate others. So long as we need to control other people, however benign our motives, we are captive to that need. In giving them freedom, we free ourselves. - Marilyn Ferguson, THE AQUARIAN CONSPIRACY |
The Principle of Non-Aggression The second step was just as important. If we struck others,
took their toys, or lied about them, we tried to repair the damage we had
done. We replaced the damaged toy out of our meager allowance, perhaps purchasing
one just a little better to make up for the distress we had caused. We advised
those who had heard our lies that we had misinformed them. We carried books
for the playmate whose arm we had bruised. By restoring the balance that
we had upset, we hoped to diffuse the tension our actions had generated.
Our program for peace, therefore, had two parts: (1) honesty, tolerance,
and respect toward others and their property (i.e., refraining from threatening
first-strike force, theft, or fraud); and (2) repairing any damage we had
caused. We will refer to this dual approach of honoring our neighbor's choice
and righting our wrongs as the practice of "non-aggression." On a one-to-one basis, we do exactly that. We would never
steal from our next door neighbor, whom we'll generically refer to as "George."
As adults, we feel no more entitled to his car and money than we did to
his toys when we were kids. We practice non-aggression by respecting
property that is legitimately his. Maybe George likes to wear things
we wouldn't be caught dead in, but we wouldn't take a swing at him just
because he doesn't conform to our standards. We practice non-aggression
by being tolerant. If George doesn't contribute to our favorite charity,
we wouldn't tell him his donation was going elsewhere just to get it. We
practice non-aggression when we deal honestly. If we accidentally
damaged George's property or person, we'd make it right again. We practice
non-aggression by repairing any damage that we have caused. The scientist did not actually receive any shocks; he was only pretending. The naive volunteers did not know this, because each of them had received a very real, low-voltage test shock as a demonstration. When the shocks reached a third of the maximum level, the scientist cried out that he could take no more and the experiment should end. The undercover volunteer tried to convince the real one that the experiment should continue. However, in every one of the 20 tests, the naive volunteers refused to keep shocking the experimenter. Apparently, the average person could not be convinced by a peer to force the scientist to continue against his will. (1) In another study, however, the results were very different. The two experimenters switched places so that the scientist stood beside the naive volunteer and shocks were administered to the undercover one. When the "victim" cried out at one-third the maximum voltage, only 20% of the naive volunteers withdrew from the experiment. The others, at the insistence of the scientist, continued. At two-thirds maximum voltage, the victim cried out that he had a heart problem and feared for his life. Another 15% of the naive volunteers refused to continue, even though the scientist claimed that the shocks weren't severe enough to cause permanent damage. A full 65% of the volunteers continued to shock the victim even after he made no other sounds. Because the victim was hidden in a nearby room, some of the volunteers feared he might be unconscious and were extremely concerned for his safety. Yet, at the insistence of the scientist, they continued to shock him until they had administered the highest voltage three full times! (2) The scientist didn't need to force the volunteers at gunpoint; only verbal commands were required. Even when the volunteers feared for the safety, even the life, of the victim, they were willing to proceed as long as an authority figure, but not a peer, urged them to. When the naive volunteers were interviewed afterward, certain trends emerged. The 20% who refused to continue as soon as the victim wanted to quit felt that they were responsible for shocking him. Administering the shocks was acceptable only if the victim agreed to it. They obviously believed in honoring their neighbor's choice_regardless of what anyone else told them to do. Those who continued shocking the victim were more likely to place the responsibility for his pain on the shoulders of the scientist or the victim himself for being a slow learner. Yet they surrendered their responsibility only when an authority figure, the scientist (second study), not a peer (first study), urged them to. A typical comment made by the volunteers was "I was just doing what I was told." (3) Similar statements have been made by those who executed Jews in the Nazi concentration camps in World War II or massacred women and children at My Lai in Vietnam. We defer to authority figures because they are supposed to know more than we do. If a mistake is made, it's easy to lay the blame at their feet. Ultimately, however, we are responsible for choosing the authority figure we defer to. Choosing to defer to one who urges aggression against others still puts the responsibility on us. Each of us would like to believe that we would be in the small group that refused to be persuaded by the authority figure to go on shocking the victim. When Milgram surveyed people who were unaware of the results to predict where they would stop, none believed they would go past two-thirds of maximum shock. (4) Clearly, what we believe we would do and what we actually would do are quite different. We believe that we consistently practice non-aggression
and that selfish others must be responsible for war and poverty. Milgram's
studies teach us that our words and actions don't always match and that
we can be unaware of this discrepancy. If we truly wish to help our world,
we must first identify ways in which we may be causing the problem. Let
us examine an instance of common, everyday aggression and see how we respond. How We Violate the Principle of Non-Aggression Daily
Without Even Realizing It! Of course, another way we could proceed would be to vote for a tax to purchase and maintain the park. If a large enough gang of our neighbors voted for it, George's hard-earned dollars would be used for a park he didn't want and wouldn't use. If he refused to pay what our gang dictated, law enforcement agents, acting on behalf of the winning voters, would extract the tax, at gunpoint, if necessary. If he resisted too vehemently, George might even get killed in the scuffle. Wouldn't we be using a gang called "government" to steal from George? Wouldn't we be the first ones to turn guns on a neighbor who hadn't defrauded or stolen from us? Wouldn't George eventually retaliate by getting government to turn its guns on us for projects that he prefers but we want nothing to do with? Wouldn't we alternate as victims and aggressors, as minorities and majorities? Wouldn't we just be taking turns directing the law enforcement agents toward each other? Through taxation, pacifists are forced at gunpoint to pay for killing machines; vegetarians are forced at gunpoint to subsidize grazing land for cattle; nonsmokers are forced at gunpoint to support both the production of tobacco and the research to counter its impact on health. These minorities are the victims, not the initiators of aggression. Their only crime is not agreeing with the priorities of the majority. Taxation appears to be more than theft; it is intolerance for the preferences and even the moral viewpoints of our neighbors. Through taxation we forcibly impose our will on others in an attempt to control theirchoices. As individuals, we may not support taxation and other forms of aggression-through-government. However, the composite of our separate views, as reflected in our laws, indicates that as a nation, as a society, as a collective consciousness, we believe that aggression serves us. As we'll see in the next few chapters, just the opposite is true. Aggression creates poverty and strife in our city, state, and nation just as surely as it does in our neighborhood. How could it be otherwise? Aggression could hardly produce peace and plenty simply because we use it as a gang instead of as individuals. Using the same means brings us the same ends. It's as plain as the nose on our face and just as difficult to see! Only by looking at what is reflected back to us can we observe it. Indeed, taxation and other forms of aggression-through-government are so taken for granted in our culture that one of our most popular sayings is that "nothing is certain except death and taxes." Yet slavery was once as universal. Taxation is thought to be indispensable to civilization today, just as slavery once was. Advocates of taxation claim that since most people pay assigned taxes before the guns show up, they have implicitly agreed to it as the price of living in "society." Most slaves obeyed their master before he got out the whip, yet we would hardly argue that this constituted agreement to their servitude. Today, we have an enlightened perspective on slavery, just as one day we will have an enlightened perspective on taxes and other forms of aggression we now think of as "the only way." Just as our ancestors rationalized slavery, we've created the illusion that taxation is legitimate. Like the volunteers who continued to shock the victim at the insistence of the scientist, we feel our actions are justified, perhaps even noble. We believe that we can create a world of peace and plenty if we are given a free hand to force those selfish others to do things our way. We feel taxation is indispensable for certain necessities (e.g., defense, clean air and water, helping the poor, etc.). Instead, as the following chapters illustrate, aggression in any form only hurts others and ourselves. We reap as we have sown. In Part II (Forgive Us Our Trespasses: How We Create
Poverty in a World of Plenty), we'll see how our well-meaning aggression
has created poverty, compromised our health, destroyed our environment,
and fostered monopolies and cartels that manipulate us. Special interests
chuckle at our naivete as they use our fears of selfish others to pit us
against each other for their benefit. In trying to control others, we
find ourselves controlled. Aggression hides in our culture under many names. Taxation is only an example, but one of the most widespread and uneconomical. If this concept seems incredible to you, consider the shift in awareness that it implies. Are we like children, accepting five pennies for our dime?  |
Thou shalt not kill... Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. Thou shalt not covet...anything that is thy neighbor's. - THE HOLY BIBLE, Exodus 20:13-17
Men have the right to use physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use. The ethical problem is simple and clear-cut: it is the difference between murder and self-defense. - Ayn Rand, author of ATLAS SHRUGGED
He must make full restitution for his wrong, add one-fifth to it and give it to the person that he has wronged. - THE HOLY BIBLE, Numbers 5:7
...civilization means, above all, an unwillingness to inflict unnecessary pain... those of us who heedlessly accept the commands of authority cannot yet claim to be civilized men. - Harold J. Laski, THE DANGERS OF OBEDIENCE
In growing up, the normal individual has learned to check the expression of aggressive impulses. But the culture has failed, almost entirely, in inculcating internal controls on actions that have their origin in authority. For this reason, the latter constitutes a far greater danger to human survival. - Stanley Milgram, OBEDIENCE TO AUTHORITY
In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place. - Mahatma Gandhi, father of modern non-violent resistance.
How does something immoral, when done privately, become moral when it is done collectively? Furthermore, does legality establish morality? Slavery was legal; apartheid is legal; Stalinist, Nazi, and Maoist purges were legal. Clearly, the fact of legality does not justify these crimes. Legality, alone, cannot be the talisman of moral people. - Walter Williams, ALL IT TAKES IS GUTS
A society that robs an individual of the product of his effort... is not strictly speaking a society, but a mob held together by institutionalized gang rule. - Ayn Rand, THE VIRTUE OF SELFISHNESS
...while men usually recognize criminal acts when they are committed by an individual in the name of his own interest, they often fail to recognize the very same acts for what they are when they are committed by some large gang in the name of "social justice" or the "common good." - Jarrett Wollstein, SOCIETY WITHOUT COERCION
...we are living in a sick Society filled with people who would not directly steal from their neighbor but who are willing to demand that the government do it for them. - William L. Comer, AVOIDING THE HIGH COST OF DYING (AND MANY OTHER FINANCIAL DILEMMAS)
...the moral and the practical are not in conflict, provided one knows what is, in fact, moral. - Nathaniel Branden, JUDGMENT DAY |
To determine whether we shortchange ourselves by choosing taxation and other forms of aggression as a means to our ends, we must understand what wealth is and where it comes from. We usually equate money with wealth, but they are really very different things. Imagine a person stranded on a desert island without food, water, shelter, or medicine, but with a billion dollars in gold coin. Is this person wealthy? Hardly! Food, water, shelter, and medicine prerequisites for physical survival are true wealth. Money is valuable only if it can be exchanged for something of value, such as goods or services. Money is only a measure of how much of the available wealth a person has access to. If no wealth is available, money is worthless. Just how much wealth is available? Imagine the total wealth in the world 2000 years ago. Did even the richest of the ancients have access to antibiotics, anesthetics, or surgery when their children had appendicitis? Could their entertainers give them the same quality, selection, and special effects that are now available on television? Could they find out about events on the other side of the globe a few minutes after they occurred? Could they "reach out and touch" family members who had migrated to faraway lands? Could they visit their distant relatives after a few hours in the "friendly skies"? Even the wealthiest of the ancients did not have many things we take for granted. A greater number of people than ever before now enjoy a lifestyle that our ancestors could not even imagine. Our wealth has increased greatly. Where did we get all this wealth? The eQUOT certainly did not get an additional endowment of natural resources between ancient times and the present. Instead, we discovered new ways to use existing resources. Coal, oil, and natural gas give us an unprecedented amount of power. We transmit this power over electrical wires and send communications via satellite. The antibiotics produced by fungi have been harnessed to fight infectious bacteria that invade our bodies. We stimulate our immune system with vaccines so that the ancient plagues have all but vanished. Artificial wings fly us all over the globe. Mass production, assembly lines, and robotics help to replicate the wealth-creating ideas. The new wealth allows creation of still greater wealth. For example, the energy trapped in fossil fuels lets us create new metal alloys that require higher smelting temperatures than wood can provide. One idea leads to the next. We see that specific ideas on better uses for existing resources and the replication of these ideas are the real source of wealth. Natural resources are like seeds that grow into wealth when they are nurtured and developed by individuals acting alone or in concert. For example, oil was once considered a nuisance that contaminated good farmland. Not until enterprising individuals discovered how to pump, refine, and use it did oil turn into "black gold." Even water must be "developed" (drawn from a stream, well, or reservoir) before it can quench our thirst. The amount of wealth a country produces does not depend primarily on its endowment of natural resource "seeds." Japan has almost no mineral wealth, while Mexico is well endowed, yet the Japanese are certainly more affluent than the Mexicans.1 Similarly, North Korea is poorer than South Korea. (2) East Germany created much less wealth than West Germany before reunification in 1990.2,3 Obviously, resource endowment is not the primary factor that determines a country's wealth. Population density cannot be the dominating factor either: both Japan and West Germany have a greater population density than their poorer neighbors Mexico and East Germany. (3) When we consider that resources will one day be mined from planets other than the earth, that matter and energy are totally interchangeable, and that basic chemical elements can be transmuted, we realize that resource seeds are so abundant that they do not impose practical limitations on the creation of wealth at all. Even if our fossil fuels should be foolishly exhausted, for example, energy is abundantly available in each and every atom if only we knew as we one day will how to tap it safely. Even if we foolishly devastated our home world by unsound environmental management, a universe of other planets are available to us when we learn as we one day will how to reach them. Human resources, our "how to" ideas, and the replication of these ideas, determine how much available wealth there is at any one time. Since human creativity appears unbounded, the amount of wealth possible is virtually infinite! Truly we live in a "no limit" world! The realization that resources do not limit the creation of wealth is a liberating one. Our country's wealth does not depend on the happenstance of its geographical boundaries, but on the self-determined thoughts and creativity of its populace. We create our world. What secrets do the countries that enjoy great wealth possess? How are their popula-tions different? As this book will demonstrate, cultures with a strong belief in the practice of non-aggression, individually and collectively, enjoy the highest level of peace and prosperity.
Wealth belongs to its creators. All three individuals helped to create the chairs. Without their effort, the new wealth would not exist. When dealing with other individuals, we instinctively recognize this fact and act on it. We would never dream of going to George's house with a gun to steal the wealth he has created. He'd retaliate and we would take turns being victims and aggressors. With continual "warfare," a jungle-like atmosphere would pervade our neighborhood, and property values would plummet as wealth was consumed in the struggle. Effort would be directed at making war instead of wealth. Enlightened self-interest gives us strong incentives to practice non-aggression individually. If we personally steal from George, we create havoc in
our neighborhood. Nevertheless, we believe we can avoid this outcome if
the government enforcement agents, acting on our behalf, perform the identical
action. We believe the act of stealing is ennobled if the authority of the
majority deems it to be for "the common good." As we'll see in
the next few chapters, the laws of cause and effect still apply. The consequences
of aggression are the same, whether perpetrated by an individual or a group.
When groups of neighbors ask their government to steal from other
groups of neighbors, we take turns being majorities and minorities,
victims and aggressors. A jungle-like atmosphere prevails as effort is directed
toward making war instead of wealth. Enlightened self-interest directs us
toward the practice of non-aggression collectively if we would only realize
it! The "free market" is the name given to describe the marketplace ecosystem when it is free from aggression. In the 1800s, our country came closest to this ideal. As a consequence, penniless immigrants flocked to our nation to make a better life for themselves and their loved ones. America became known as the "land of opportunity" and the richest nation on earth. Wealth was the natural by-product of a marketplace ecosystem free from aggression. As detailed in Chapter 19 (The Communist Threat is All in Our Minds), democracies tend to have less aggression than the Communist ones. This is why North Korea and East Germany, before unification, created much less wealth than their "free world" counterparts. (2,3) Even in the early days of the United States, the marketplace ecosystem was not entirely free from aggression, however. If a drug company sold untested products or if doctors misrepresented their training, the distraught consumers or their survivors had minimal recourse. Some forms of aggression, notably fraud, were widely practiced by individuals. Our ancestors knew how to practice non-aggression themselves. What they did not know was the most effective way to deal with those who aggressed against them. Consequently, this aggression persisted. Eventually, people began to believe that freedom from aggression was an unattainable ideal because selfish others were always ready, willing, and able to take advantage of their neighbors. They adopted the belief that the aggressors enjoyed "too much freedom." People instructed their government to strike first and use aggression to prevent aggression. Their motto became "do unto others before they do unto you." To fight the "evil" of aggressionentsey became aggressors themselves, with consequences more terrible than those they sought to prevent. Let's see exactly how this happened in our own land of opportunity. |
...most real wealth originates in individual minds in unpredictable and uncontrollable ways. - George Gilder, WEALTH AND POVERTY
...Amnesty International's listing of human rights abuses shows a definite pattern where those nations with the least respect for human rights are also the poorest. By contrast, those with the greatest respect for human rights tend to be the richest. - Walter Williams, ALL IT TAKES IS GUTS
...the free market is a society in which all exchange voluntarily. It may most easily be conceived as a situation in which no one aggresses against person or property. - Murray Rothbard, POWER AND THE MARKET
The trouble with people isn't their ignorance-it's the number of things they know that just ain't so. - Mark Twain, American humorist and novelist |