War and our willingness to use it, and our intentional preparation for it, demonstrates the twisting of the mind caused by the worldview of separateness. It is the epitome of insanity itself. The original meaning of the word insane is “not whole.” A culture and society that institutionalizes separateness to the degree ours does cannot be considered whole, cannot be considered sane.
It should be clear by now that our war-making doesn’t make us safer and only leads to more hatred and war. Martin Luther King Jr., in the speech many consider to be his most radical, his Beyond Vietnam speech (1967) quoted a Vietnamese Buddhist leader:
“Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom, and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism.”
War, especially war in the nuclear age, cannot be reconciled with our longer-term survival. Our survival requires compassion, restraint, and maturity, it requires deeply held values that prioritize and uphold peace, justice, and environmental sanity. Lip-service won’t cut it. Dr. King understood that what was most needed in America was a revolution of values. In his Beyond Vietnam speech he said:
“A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, ‘This way of settling differences is not just.’ This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
Dr. King understood that our war-making was just one of the systemic problems we face. He understood that war, racism, poverty, and inequity were symptoms of sickness within American society. I think he also understood that spiritual death cannot ultimately be separated from physical death, that once the soul is lost, and with it all hope and clarity, that total destruction is inevitable.
We can stop all this madness – together. I’ve come to believe that a shared understanding of root causes will hasten the process. This is what Restorative Activism is about. The Beyond Vietnam speech is available from Alternative Radio and I strongly recommend it as inspiration.
Scott