We, humans are different from the animals because we have
the ability to transcend most of the quagmires in which we find ourselves, and
keep muddling through till we pull out of them.
We do so by going above and beyond the tools that nature has
written into our DNA in the form of instinctive impulses, and use our
ingenuity. Those tools exist to insure our survival, but while they help us
overcome most of the difficulties which are inflicted naturally on us, they fail
most of the time to help us get over the difficulties which we create for
ourselves and for each other.
This kind of difficulties is the quagmires from which it is
nearly impossible to pull out by peaceful means. When a situation of this sort
develops, a confrontation between humans ensues, resulting in jungle-like
outcomes – that kingdom of animals. It is that the fittest survives, having
done away with the weak, sometimes savagely.
However, being the intelligent animals that we are, we have
managed to erect a number of philosophical constructs using constituents that
range from simple words of wisdom to comprehensive religious mythologies – all
of which help us navigate the difficulties we encounter when the competing
interests of two or more parties clash. In such cases (call them modern human
quagmires) the parties negotiate a compromise and go on to live better lives;
or they do battle, at which time one party or both get hurt, even perish.
Fortunately for our race, it happens at times that men of
high intellect and personal integrity come along and advocate a third way. It
is to seek solutions that would be “out of the box”. We do this by transcending
the problems at hand, imagining ourselves back at square one. There, we
redesign the contentious situation by starting from scratch and reconstruct it
in a way that gives everyone their due.
To see how this might work in a situation that seems
intractable at this time, imagine the two extremes of (a) everyone in America
having an arsenal of guns, and (b) no one in America but the police and the
army having guns. Which, would you say, will be a more peaceful America ? The
answer is the one with no guns.
Now that we have that idea as a starting point, we can
debate the pros and cons of letting only qualified people carry what sort of
guns under what conditions. When we agree on something, we work out the
modalities that will take us from where we stand now to where we ought to be.
Of course, to do this, we must accept that everyone is
equal, has the same rights as everyone else, and is protected under laws that
discriminate against no one. Would this work in America and every country in the
world? It should work because this is what the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights guarantees. Okay, but what about the rules that govern the relations
between the nations themselves? Are these relations subjected to the same
principles?
Well, that's another kettle of fish. It is that men of high
intellect and personal integrity want the same rules to apply there too. But
other people wish for the law of the jungle to prevail in international
relations. That is, they want America
to be the strongest nation on Earth, and want it to vanquish those who oppose
it.
You can see that mentality at work in “The Mother of Peace,”
an article that was written by Victor Davis Hanson, and published on December
29, 2015 in National Review Online. Hanson starts the article like this: “What
Obama doesn't understand about human nature. Deterrence makes someone not do
something.”
From there, the author goes on to construct a philosophical
system that is based on fear of punishment where the dispenser of the
punishment is a saintly America ,
a superpower that is surrounded by a demonic everyone else … except for the
saintly Israel ,
of course.