A Chat with Destiny

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By Marta Steele (about the author) Page 2 of 2 page(s)

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Outrageous thing to say, I know.

We can't impose sanctions on a group spread throughout the world.

Peace advocates say that we need to reach toward understanding before resorting to arms, the solution of so much throughout history.

Twin Towers and the Pentagon, killing innocent people and changing the world that existed before then. The threat of their violence rules so much of our lives, has negated so much we took for granted, just like those hideous fumes that erased the achingly blue sky on 9/11.

Germany is now an ally and Japan's constitution outlaws a military or any type of warfare, an amazing exemplar the rest of the world ignores. We associate electronic gizmos and automobiles with Japan. That article of their constitution pertaining to peace is now being threatened. We were informed of that by a Hibakusha, Mr. Saito, who survived the Hiroshima attack even though he was within a meter of the epicenter. He travels around now seeking support to keep that sacred text enforced.

If Germany and Japan have evolved so much, history would indicate that this amazing reversal can happen again.

But if another cataclysm occurs, so that an Israel will no longer be necessary, so much will follow, including a whole new set of issues a strengthened populace will combat with more wisdom than violence, a populace now steered by a universal declaration of peace, similar to that article of the Japanese constitution.

I admit that I've used the examples of Germany and Japan as a bridge to an ideal society. But perhaps this time we can avoid the violence ingredient. Considering what we share over what alienates us.

In Washington, DC, members of all three Abrahamic faiths gather together to discuss and communicate, in small groups usually, with the hope that we are creating something large, a world where an Israel need no longer exist, where all concrete walls become a bad memory.

In a film shown at the Washington Friends Meeting two weeks ago, set in Nigeria, Muslims are warring with Christians, with massive bloodshed until their two charismatic leaders decide to climb over the rubble and become allies, to climb over ancestral hatred. They succeed, at least in the short term. The film shows members of the two religions embracing even as they remember slain siblings, parents, and children, slain friends.

At the end the imam and the pastor tell viewers that they are friends not because they want to be but because they have to be. The antagonism has risen above religion or has forced out principles the two religions share--love of peace.

Can this miracle self-propagate beyond Nigeria to all warring factions? Can a reconciliation between two relatively small groups spread like al Qaeda cells, ruled not by negatives but by principles we all revere, at the abstract level at least?

Globalization can figure positively in this arena.

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Marta Steele is a writer/editor/blogger/sometime professor/indexer/proofreader extremely concerned that our democracy is going to pot and using all her skills, including some knowledge of some foreign languages, to try to make things better. She (more...)

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