Or do we choose compassion and love?
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Once again we are confronted with extreme violence in the world. According to a November 16, 2015 article in NY Magazine, “What We Know About the Paris Attackers,”
“Authorities believe that ISIS-linked extremists were behind the brutal attacks that killed 129 people and injured another 352 on Friday night in Paris, and details about the attackers and their possible accomplices are continuing to emerge.”
Yesterday I wrote an article, “The Hidden Causes of the Paris Killings And What We Can Do to Prevent Future Violence.” I said that in order to understand the killings we have to understand why young men have become so disconnected from life, they want to kill and to die.
I’d like to take the discussion deeper. We can’t understand groups like ISIS or the young men who join them unless we confront the realities of the world we live in. In his prescient book, The Party’s Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies, published in 2003, Richard Heinberg said, “The world is changing before our eyes—dramatically, inevitably, and irreversibly. The change we are seeing is affecting more people, and more profoundly, than any that human beings have ever witnessed. I am not referring to a war or terrorist incident, a stock market crash, or global warming, but to a more fundamental reality that is driving terrorism, war, economic swings, climate change and more: the discovery and exhaustion of fossil energy resources.”
Though I agree with Heinberg and other climate activists on their general approach to what we’re facing, I believe their message is so heavy and negative most people would prefer to “eat, drink, and be merry” and die tomorrow, than to do what they perceive as the hard work to create a better world.
I have a different view. It was given to me in a sweat lodge vision I had at a men’s gathering in 1995. In the vision we were all on “The Ship of Industrial Civilization” and it was sinking. Most people refused to believe it was going under and wanted to do everything they could to keep it going. Others decided to get off the ship. They got into lifeboats and the lifeboats came together to form a new way of life that is sustainable and good for all living things.
For me, I’m not getting off the sinking Ship of Industrial Civilization because you’ve scared me into it. And I’m not interested in doing boring, heavy work to create a better world. I’m joining the life-boat brigade to a better way of life because it’s the most fun humans can have. It’s a lot more fun to create the world we want than trying to fight an old world view that is sinking.
Like most of us on the planet Earth, those who join ISIS and other violent organizations, feel the reality that the world is out of balance. Like many of us they want to do something. But most people don’t know what to do. When our society becomes so complex that we are unable to solve the problems we create, we look for simple solutions. One of the simplest is to pick an enemy and try to destroy them.
That’s what the young men in ISIS are doing. I imagine them saying to themselves, “The world is fu**** up. We know who to blame and we must destroy them. Dying for a noble cause is better than waiting to die slowly.” Of course there are those on the other side who also have a simple view of things. I imagine them saying to themselves, ““The world is fu**** up. We know who to blame and we must destroy them. We must kill ISIS.”
From everything I know about ISIS, they are clearly a group of people who see the solution to the imbalances in our modern world is to destroy it. We can’t allow that. But we must find a way to stop them that doesn’t force us to be more like them.
I remember buying a button when I was in graduate school at U.C. Berkeley. I was studying to be a social worker and taking mental health courses in an attempt to figure out why I was so unhappy. It was one of those buttons with a clever message. It said, “Support mental health, or I’ll kill you.” It gave me a laugh. I felt irritable and angry all the time. The doctor said I probably had ADHD. This paradoxical message helped me reach out to others in a positive way and calmed me down.
We’re never going to achieve peace by killing those who kill others. It might solve some problems in the short run, but it becomes an endless cycle. More killing leads to more killing. Fear leads to more fear. What would it take to create a world where ISIS recruitment would be met with “sorry, we’re not interested?”
An old man is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy. “It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.”
He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?” The old man simply replied, “The one you feed.”
The world is definitely out of balance. We can choose which wolf we want to feed. I believe that “fighting fire with fire” is not a good way to put out a fire. I’d prefer using the waters of compassion and love. I’m just finished reading a wonderful book, Into the Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeon’s Quest to Discover the Mysteries of the Brain and the Secrets of the Heart by James R. Doty, M.D. Dr. Doty is the Founder/Director The Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE). If you want to feed a “good wolf,” check him out.
I look forward to your comments and suggestions. Visit me at www.MenAlive.com. If you’re interested you can take our quiz on irritability, anger, frustration and how we can heal.
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Photo credit: Getty Images
Hell is the loss of hope and that battle was lost a long time ago. I’ve heard abortion advocates demand abortion services because the woman having an abortion already has 4 children and can’t afford another. Oh, no, there’s no way I can afford or care for a child. I’ve heard them talk about the young mother who needs to have an abortion so she doesn’t ruin her future. People who want to kill ISIS aren’t the first people to decide that someone must die because the problems are too big to solve or their is too much work involved… Read more »