A World Out of Touch
With Itself: here the Violence Comes From
by Rabbi Michael Lerner, Editor, 
There is never any justification for acts of terror
against innocent civilians —it is the quintessential act of dehumanization
and not recognizing the sanctity of others, and a visible symbol of
a world increasingly irrational and out of control.
It's understandable why many of us, after grieving
and consoling the mourners, will feel anger —and while some demagogues
in Congress have already sought to manipulate that feeling into a growing
militarism (more spies, legalize assassinations of foreign leaders,
increase the defense budget at the expense of domestic programs), the
more "responsible" leaders are seeking to narrow America's
response to targeted attacks on countries that allegedly harbor the
terrorists.
The perpetrators deserve to be punished, and I personally
would be happy if all the people involved in this act were to be imprisoned
for the rest of their lives. Let's not be naive: these are evil people
who planned this and perpetrated it, just as are many who are engaged
in acts of terror against Israel. They should not be excused or forgiven
for their acts. Whatever cause they claim to espouse is only dirtied
and discredited by these disgusting acts of violence.
Yet in some ways this narrow focus on the perpetrators
allows us to avoid dealing with the underlying issues. When violence
becomes so prevalent throughout the planet, it's too easy to simply
talk of "deranged minds." We need to ask ourselves, "What
is it in the way that we are living, organizing our societies, and treating
each other that makes violence seem plausible to so many people?"
We in the spiritual world will see this as a growing
global incapacity to recognize the spirit of God in each other —what
we call the sanctity of each human being. But even if you reject religious
language, you can see that the willingness of people to hurt each other
to advance their own interests has become a global problem, and its
only the dramatic level of this particular attack which distinguishes
it from the violence and insensitivity to each other that is part of
our daily lives.
We may tell ourselves that the current violence
has "nothing to do" with the way that we've learned to close
our ears when told that one out of every three people on this planet
does not have enough food, and that one billion are literally starving.
We may reassure ourselves that the hoarding of the world's resources
by the richest society in world history, and our frantic attempts to
accelerate globalization with its attendant inequalities of wealth,
has nothing to do with the resentment that others feel toward us. We
may tell ourselves that the suffering of refugees and the oppressed
have nothing to do with us —that that's a different story that
is going on somewhere else. But we live in one world, increasingly interconnected
with everyone, and the forces that lead people to feel outrage, anger
and desperation eventually impact on our own daily lives.
The same inability to feel the pain of others is
the pathology that shapes the minds of these terrorists. Raise children
in circumstances where no one is there to take care of them, or where
they must live by begging or selling their bodies in prostitution, put
them in refugee camps and tell them that that they have "no right
of return" to their homes, treat them as though they are less valuable
and deserving of respect because they are part of some despised national
or ethnic group, surround them with a media that extols the rich and
makes everyone who is not economically successful and physically trim
and conventionally "beautiful" feel bad about themselves,
offer them jobs whose sole goal is to enrich the "bottom line"
of someone else, and teach them that "looking out for number one"
is the only thing anyone "really" cares about and that anyone
who believes in love and social justice are merely naive idealists who
are destined to always remain powerless, and you will produce a world-wide
population of people feeling depressed, angry, unable to care about
others, and in various ways dysfunctional.
I see this in Israel, where Israelis have taken
to dismissing the entire Palestinian people as "terrorists"
but never ask themselves: "What have we done to make this seem
to Palestinians to be a reasonable path of action today." Of course
there were always some hateful people and some religious fundamentalists
who want to act in hurtful ways against Israel, no matter what the circumstances.
Yet, in the situation of 1993-96 when Israel under Yitzhak Rabin was
pursuing a path of negotiations and peace, the fundamentalists had little
following and there were few acts of violence. On the other hand, when
Israel failed to withdraw from the West Bank, and instead expanded the
number of its settlers, the fundamentalists and haters had a far easier
time convincing many decent Palestinians that there might be no other
alternative.
Similarly, if the U.S. turns its back on global
agreements to preserve the environment, unilaterally cancels its treaties
to not build a missile defense, accelerates the processes by which a
global economy has made some people in the third world richer but many
poorer, shows that it cares nothing for the fate of refugees who have
been homeless for decades, and otherwise turns its back on ethical norms,
it becomes far easier for the haters and the fundamentalists to recruit
people who are willing to kill themselves in strikes against what they
perceive to be an evil American empire represented by the Pentagon and
the World Trade Center.
Most Americans will feel puzzled by any reference
to this "larger picture." It seems baffling to imagine that
somehow we are part of a world system which is slowly destroying the
life support system of the planet, and quickly transferring the wealth
of the world into our own pockets.
We don't feel personally responsible when an American
corporation runs a sweat shop in the Philippines or crushes efforts
of workers to organize in Singapore. We don't see ourselves implicated
when the U.S. refuses to consider the plight of Palestinian refugees
or uses the excuse of fighting drugs to support repression in Colombia
or other parts of Central America.
We don't even see the symbolism when terrorists
attack America's military center and our trade center--we talk of them
as buildings, though others see them as centers of the forces that are
causing the world so much pain.
We have narrowed our own attention to "getting
through" or "doing well" in our own personal lives, and
who has time to focus on all the rest of this? Most of us are leading
perfectly reasonable lives within the options that we have available
to us--so why should others be angry at us, much less strike out against
us? And the truth is, our anger is also understandable: the striking
out by others in acts of terror against us is just as irrational as
the world-system that it seeks to confront. Yet our acts of counter-terror
will also be counter-productive. We should have
learned from the current phase of the Israel-Palestinian
struggle , responding to terror with more violence, rather than asking
ourselves what we could do to change the conditions that generated it
in the first place, will only ensure more violence against us in the
future.
Luckily, most people don't act out in violent ways--they
tend to act out more against themselves, drowning themselves in alcohol
or drugs or personal despair. Others turn toward fundamentalist religions
or ultra-nationalist extremism. Still others find themselves acting
out against people that they love, acting angry or hurtful toward children
or relationship partners.
This is a world out of touch with itself, filled
with people who have forgotten how to recognize and respond to the sacred
in each other because we are so used to looking at others from the standpoint
of what they can do for us, how we can use them toward our own ends.
The alternatives are stark: either start caring about the fate of everyone
on this planet or be prepared for a slippery slope toward violence that
will eventually dominate our daily lives.
Let's not be na€ve about the perpetrators of this
terror. Many are evil people, as are some of the fundamentalists and
ultra-nationalists who demean and are willing to destroy others. But
these evil people are often marginalized when societal dynamics are
moving toward peace and hope (e.g. in Israel while Yitzhak Rabin was
Prime Minister) and they become much more influential and able to recruit
people to give their lives to their cause when ordinary and otherwise
decent people despair of peace and justice (as when Israel from `1996
to 2000 dramatically increased the number of settlers).
So here is what would marginalize those who hate
the United States. Imagine if the Ben Ladins of the world had to recruit
people against America at a time when:
1. America was using its economic resources to
end world hunger and redistribute the wealth of the planet so that
everyone had enough.
2. America was the leading voice championing an
ethos of generosity and caring for others-leading the world in ecological
responsibility, social justice, open-hearted treatment of minorities,
and rewarding people and corporations for social responsibility.
3. America was restructuring its own internal
life so that all social practices and institutions were being judged
"productive or efficient or rational" not only because they
maximized profit, but also to the extent that they maximized love
and caring, ethical/spiritual/ecological sensitivity, and an approach
to the universe based on awe and wonder at the grandeur of creation
(what I call an Emancipatory Spirituality).
One might think it's naive and impossible to move
America in that direction. Well, here are two reasons why, even if it's
a long shot, it's an approach that deserves support: a. It's even more
na€ve to imagine that bombings, missile defense systems, more spies
or baggage searches can stop people willing to lose their lives to wreak
havoc and capable of airplane hijacking, chemical assaults (like anthrax),
etc.
The response of people to the World Trade Building
collapse was an outpouring of loving energy and generosity, sometimes
even risking their own lives, and showing the capacity and desire we
all have to care about each other. If we could legitimate people allowing
that part of themselves to come out, without having to wait for a disaster,
we could empower a part of every human being which our social order
marginalizes. Americans have a deep goodness-and that needs to be affirmed.
We should pray for the victims and the families
of those who have been hurt or murdered in these crazy acts. We should
also pray that America does not return to "business as usual,"
but rather turns to a period of reflection, coming back into touch with
our common humanity, asking
ourselves how our institutions can best embody our
highest values. We may need a global day of atonement and repentance
dedicated to finding a way to turn the direction of our society at every
level, a return to the notion that every human life is sacred, that
"the bottom line" should be the
creation of a world of love and caring, and that
the best way to prevent these kinds of acts is not to turn ourselves
into a police state, but turn ourselves into a society in which social
justice, love, and compassion are so prevalent that violence becomes
only a distant memory.
—Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of
Magazine and rabbi of Beyt Tikkun Synagogue in San Francisco. He is
the author of Spirit Matters: Global Healing and the Wisdom of the Soul
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