World Peace

As if we could.

Well, maybe we can. We can’t do it yet because there is no real will to do so, but, if we can manufacture the will, we can surely achieve something in that direction.

Right now, we appear to be an angry world. The basic news is mostly about protests incorporating varying degrees of fatality. In extreme cases people all over the world are blowing themselves up to make a point, while trying to kill as many other innocent people along with them as they can. The whole show doesn’t make any of us feel comfortable.

An obvious question to ask is ‘why can’t we all be friendly and just get along with one another? The trouble is, we know the answer. We are good at being angry. We are good at finding fault. Feeling that you have the moral high ground is such a nice sensation and it appears to give us  leave to commit any degree of hurt on those we are accusing of occupying the lower ground. This is Righteous Indignation and fuels much of the cruelty we observe in the world.

With the modern mechanisms of disseminating information so quickly and so selectively, we have created a paradise for two particular people-types. Those that enjoy causing alarm, anger or hurt in others, and those who get high on being angry, alarmed or hurt. The two types can both exist within the same personality, but quite often people are one or the other. And before we all get self-righteous and count ourselves lucky that we are not one of them, think of the times that you have wished to hurt some person or group of people simply because you have been angry or just got the wrong end of the stick. Think of those who recently called for the families of the UK rioters to lose their benefits. That is a Righteously Indignant response. It’s a revenge response. It can’t make anything any better. It is something people suggested because they were angry and thought they were morally better than the offenders. Actually, the real difference between most of us and the truly harmful in the world is that we just think about these things, we don’t carry them through. 

So how can we have world peace? Well, I don’t know that, but I do know a few places we could start.

First, with the semantics (this particular trick only works for the English speaking countries, other language speakers need to think of a similar redefinition where appropriate). We will choose to re-express Righteous Indignation as Destructive Indignation. Then, armed with our new definition, we will go out and about looking for it in ourselves and others. When we find it, we quietly inform ourselves: “Ah, that is Destructive Indignation, something I am trying to have none of.” (Take care at this point not to adopt a moral-high-ground position)

A second thing we can all do is look at humanity and accept what it is and what it is capable of. Yes, we do get angry and we do have a tendency to hit out when it happens – there is probably a very good evolutionary reason for us to have this behaviour wired in.  Then we need to add the rider: “And now it is not good enough; we need to get better at some things; we need to move ourselves on.”

Most importantly, this is not about governments or human rights movements haranguing us or forcing us to improve our ways. It is about each of us, individually, deciding to make the difference.