A Prayer for a Balanced Response
Jim Lehrman
Howdy folks, Not quite the Rolling Turtle email I had planned to send after our
summer . But please read what I was moved today to write, on the day after my 49th
birthday. Feel free to distribute as you wish. My hope is that this thinking spreads.
Please read and, if you agree, spread it around. Thanks. Love, Jimmy
A Prayer For A Balanced Response Jim Lehrman
As a human, as an ex-rescue worker, and as an American - in that order - I am in
pain for people impacted by the waves of this destruction; waves that will ripple
out insidiously into unknown reaches of time. Today my fear is that amidst an opportunity
to gather world leaders to reach consensus of what is tolerable and what is not tolerable
in the treatment of human beings we, instead, will inadvertently reinforce the beliefs,
world views, and resolve of religious fundamentalists through simply doing what children
do when they are hit. They hit back. History is giving us the opportunity to choose
between furthering the polarization which apparently is so historic to our species
- ie, Protestants vs Catholics in one culture, Arabs vs Jews in another, whites vs
blacks, men vs women, tribe vs tribe, and so on - or coming together to construct
international parameters and protocols in respect of human life - human life in all
cultures, in all classes, in all circumstances. I see us as being at a crossroads
wherein extremism can be given yet more evidence to justify its reason to exist or,
alternately, wherein we come together as a world of nations, and collective of peoples,
to state for the generations to come that, as a united world, we will not stand for
acts against humanity, and that the punishment that comes to those who do act against
humanity will not come as retaliation from one country in conflict but from a world
united against extremism.
I have to say, as hurt as we are, questioning what we have done to ignite or fuel
the extremism will help in our healing. It's too early to go there now but I'd like
to plant that seed, especially in the face of a too quick military response.
At its best, America can be viewed as a public service organization, serving the
peoples of the world. As Gordon Sinclair, a Canadian television commentator, pointed
out recently, America has come to the aid of many countries, in diverse ways and
numerous situations through its short history. It polices and protects, serving a
cause of world peace.
At its worst, America can be viewed as an arrogant abuser of power, the boss of a
good-old-boy network, being generous to those who have the right resources to be
in the club and being greedy and even criminal to those who get in its way. As Abdel-Bari
Atwan, the editor of an Arabic news magazine out of London pointed out recently on
TV, only a small percentage of the 300 million Arabs in the world feel good about
the terrorist acts that happened on September 11th, but it might be valuable for
America to give a serious, critical look at what it is doing that gives life to so
much world-wide anti-Americanism.
With the terrorism of September 11th, we have experienced a good reason to accept
as fact that we are doing something wrong in the world that we think we are serving.
America likes to see itself as being responsive in the world and I would define 'responsive'
here as being able to take action to repair and reconstruct, to seek a fair justice,
and to examine our own responsibility. Rather than just getting angry (which, in
itself, is a valid response) and acting out of that anger, we have to also hold ourselves
accountable for what we create in the world. What we have created has finally come
back and bitten us. If we just indulge our knee jerk reactivity of military retaliation
without looking at how we fueled the anti-Americanism that brought about the terrorism,
we will fall into taking on the identity of "victim" and, fighting our
way out of that identity, we will not come to see how we victimized ourselves. Thus
we will not learn how to stop it from happening again.
I have to admit that I have a hard time with anyone who believes in a Holy War. My
thinking is this: if you believe in a Holy War, you must identify someone as worth
fighting so that you can be holy. Thus, the problem can be described that, on one
hand, religious fundamentalism needs to have a bad guy, and on the other hand, we
make it easy for religious fundamentalism to have a bad guy to fight. How do we break
out of that cycle? Going to war? Bombing civilians? This just furthers and justifies
identifying us as the bad guys far into the future, even if we succeed in destroying
the perpetrators.
A perception of injustice or of "acts of evil" typically results in an
increase in resolve - resolve against the perpetrator. This same resolve leads to
acts of retaliation (from the alleged victim to the alleged perpetrator) that are
inevitably perceived (by the alleged initial perpetrator) as injustice. As that injustice
increases the resolve, the cycle of hatred and destruction continues. As horrific
as we perceive the terrorist acts of September 11th to be, the perpetrators of those
acts of terrorism perceive them to be acts of retaliation. Interesting, no? Can we
really just indignantly ignore the call to at least examine the basis for this anti-Americanism?
My wife just came in from the other room and told me some American businessman said
on TV that if he was the president he would bomb Iraq and Afghanistan right now.
He said that they've jerked us around long enough and we should - to borrow from
the political parody of songwriter Randy Newman - "drop the big one now".
How childish, insensitive, and arrogant we must appear to people in other countries
when we talk like that. Because the lives of innocent people were destroyed on our
land we feel justified in destroying the lives of innocent civilians abroad? Children
can be expected to have that kind of knee-jerk reaction to being hit, but the adults
around them hopefully help them see better alternatives. In our case, maybe we are
too proud to admit that we are like children and need some adult to show us better
ways. It is sad that we limit our learning by our nationalistic egocentricity and
it is likewise sad that there also appears to be a vacancy of elders of the wisdom
needed.
And Mr. Osama bin Laden... if he is, in fact, the mastermind behind the clever and
despicable organization of this terrorism, it's interesting to consider the extreme
things that some people choose to do with their wealth. Extreme wealth can support
extreme fantasies. In the west, people can buy their way to the top of Mount Everest
or even take a ride on the space shuttle. In the mid-east one man of wealth can possibly
stage an event that surpasses Hollywood's technical prowess as well as its imagination,
dismantling and destroying things and lives like a child egocentrically out of touch
with the fabric of life. Religious belief, too, allows people to move to the edges
of sensibility. In the west fundamentalists committed to holding life sacred have
killed doctors who perform abortions. In the mid-east husbands believing in holy
doctrine can have their wives executed for infractions on their manly authority.
And there religiously-bound causes can even encourage people to take their own lives
if they take some American imperialists with them.
I come to the conclusion (unfortunately again and again) that the world is made up
of misdirected immature people. All of us creating a perpetrator that we must destroy
or be destroyed by instead of taking responsibility for how we organize around what
we hear and what we don't hear, what we don't understand and what we assume to understand.
There is much we need to question in ourselves, both as humans and as Americans.
But when I let myself entertain what is possible on the highest level, it is to come
together as a human race and articulate a clear message to extremists who use religion,
politics, or economics to justify acts against humanity, a clear message that the
world is now a world united against extremism. As my daughter's elementary school
principal, Bob Williams, stated in his letter to parents, "The new generation
of kids around the world must learn to meet at the table, not brandish the sword."
May we give the children sensible and sensitive guidelines to be able to measure
injustices.
Jim Lehrman
September 13, 2001
jim@lehrmangroup.com
Prescott, AZ USA
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