The Climate Crisis and the Skills of Peace (part 2)

There's a lot of violence in the world, although the destruction of civilized societies by the power of modern weapons we see around the world today is perhaps a lesson more in technology and profit than in human nature. Civilization depends on peaceful means to address differences, disputes and conflicts, but we don't seem to understand or value this until it is threatened. Too bad, because the Climate Crisis is going to test the potential of civilization to generate even greater skills of peace, and apply them to a global community. Or else civilization, along with most of humankind and the ecosystem that nurtured us, will disappear.

Part of our problem is how routinely our violent instincts are exploited. Leaders exploiting our fears, defining them in simplistic us-or-them terms, and convincing us that they are our only protectors, is the obvious and often repeated example, though having fallen for that again in the 21st century is not an encouraging sign.

This exploitation has become something of a foundation for our culture and economy. As a species, we become instantly alert to threat, poised to fight or flee, because instant recognition of threat and instant impulse to action is a survival instinct. Because threat gets our chemicals going, even the artificial threats of movies and TV shows, they are ideal for grabbing our attention, which is what's needed to sell tickets and commercials. The guaranteed attention and glandular response is one primary reason that our "entertainment" is mostly violent, and that violence not only convinces us the real world is like that (despite much of our everyday experience) but it supports the societal dogma that conflicts are settled by violence.

Of course we have other survival instincts, and survival strategies. They just aren't as easy to exploit to sell us, although that doesn't stop merchandizers and politicians from using them as well.

We are so institutionally addicted to violence that we're killing ourselves with it. Even after more than a decade in which our armed forces are called upon to do what is called "peace keeping" as a significant part of their duties, we still have no significant training for these duties. Instead we devote all our efforts to the tragic transformation of young Americans into killers. It's only one of many tragedies being played out in Iraq, but it's a significant one.

Now when we are going to need these skills of peace more than ever, we are turning in the opposite direction. Experts know that violence alone is never going to stop terrorism. Yet the cowardly use of 9-11 to sow fear and justify needless warfare and torture is the most flagrant evidence of our deterioration. Despite even the military's insistence that torture doesn't work, it has become not only national policy but national entertainment. There were no depictions of torture on U.S. television in 1996 and 1997, but more than 200 in 2003 and at least a hundred in each of 2004 and 2005, most of them on the very popular series, "24," but not exclusively. Conspicuously (and stupidly) violent commercials were noticeably prevalent during this year's Super Bowl.

So far the 2008 presidential campaign doesn't look promising in this regard. Despite all the theories blaming warfare and violence on testosterone and "the patriarchy," the presence of a woman candidate in the race who feels she has to talk tough and rattle sabers to show she's qualified only perpetuates the emphasis on violent approaches to conflict over other possible solutions.

The Skills of Peace allow us to approach conflict with appropriate means. Most of us can conceive of situations in which violence seems necessary, but the point is that it is automatically used in far more conflicts than it is necessary or even useful, partly for lack of commitment, knowledge and skills in employing alternative and more appropriate means. Even the means and moods we've accepted and used for generations are endangered today, especially in our civic life. I was struck by a particularly appropriate example in a news story, about a conflict over the Climate Crisis itself, and Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, nominated for an Oscar to be awarded later today.

When a small town school in Washington state wanted to show An Inconvenient Truth in a 7th grade science class, a parent objected. Not an alarming or impossible to resolve conflict in itself, but the violent terms of it and how it quickly spiraled into a panic have become all too familiar. First, the extreme terms of the objection. According to the Washington Post article, :

"No you will not teach or show that propagandist Al Gore video to my child, blaming our nation -- the greatest nation ever to exist on this planet -- for global warming," Hardison wrote in an e-mail to the Federal Way School Board. The 43-year-old computer consultant is an evangelical Christian who says he believes that a warming planet is "one of the signs" of Jesus Christ's imminent return for Judgment Day.

Out of all the ways the School Board could have chosen to respond, they reacted by not only cancelling the film for that particular class, but for the entire school district, and informing the teacher who had scheduled the film she would receive a disciplinary letter for not clearing a "controversial" film first.

When this hit the news, the public response was swift, national and extreme. According to the Post, "Members of the school board say they have been bombarded by thousands of e-mails and phone calls, many of them hurtful and obscene, accusing them of scientific ignorance, pandering to religion and imposing prior restraint on free speech."

At that point the school board could have reacted by digging in their heels, but they didn't. One member made an impassioned speech, "I am here to foster healing in our community," he said, while noting with sadness that "civility and honest discourse are dying in our country." In the end the teacher was permitted to show Gore's film as long as it was accompanied by "other views" of equal scientific merit, which she apparently was having a lot of trouble finding.

Some may characterize that school board's final decision as backing down under pressure, or perhaps it was only coming to its senses (whether it was being disingenuous or hypocritical in the first place is another question), but it did at least make a plea for civility. The extreme views and extreme demands of the parent are very alarming, but so too was the response, if indeed it was "obscene" and extreme (such claims have been made falsely, but I've seen blogosphere responses to similiar situations that suggest the claims could well be true.) There is no scientific validity to Climate Crisis denying, and the threats to separation of church and state was real. But it's worth recalling that the initial Fundamentalist opposition to Darwinian evolution in the 19th century was the fear that it was being used to devalue the worth of the individual, particularly those who weren't naturally selected to be rich and powerful. They weren't entirely wrong.

People who fear that science can be used to oppress them are not crazy. Science has often been used to oppress people. Science unintentionally created the very Climate Crisis that science now warns us may well destroy us. There are plenty of ironies to go around. The Skills of Peace cannot be successful without an attempt at mutual understanding, the commonly held rules of civility, and the acknowledgement of compassion as a human quality and a human strength. We're going to feel it differently, but the Climate Crisis affects everyone and everything: the whole world, the whole future. It's global, remember? We're all in this together. We're going to have to solve it together. It's civilization's ultimate test, in more ways than one.